Notorious hate preacher Anjem Choudary, who led a flag-burning demonstration outside the US embassy on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and voiced support for jihad, has been jailed for pledging support for ISIS.
Choudary's co-defendant Mohammad Mizanur Rahman, 33, was also handed a sentence of five years and six months.
Choudary has courted controversy over two decades, skirting the edges of the law, backing extremism but with no proof of actually inciting violence. He earned the wrath of Britain's tabloid newspapers, making him - by his own admission -- the country's "most hated man."
In 2014, he pledged allegiance to ISIS and its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, bringing him under scrutiny and leading to his arrest.
"Both men were fully aware that Daesh is a proscribed terrorist group responsible for brutal activities and that what they themselves were doing was illegal," said Sue Hemming, head of counter terrorism at the Crown Prosecution Service, using an alternative name for ISIS.
"Those who invite others to support such organizations will be prosecuted and jailed for their crimes," Hemming added.
British authorities say they were able to link Choudary to the battlefields of Iraq and Syria; UK police say they don't know exactly how many of the 850 Britons who have traveled there were directly influenced by him, but they say he is a "key" figure in ISIS's recruitment drive.
"These men have stayed just within the law for many years," Commander Dean Haydon, of the Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorism Command, said when he was convicted.
"But there is no one within the counter terrorism world that has any doubts of the influence that they have had, the hate they have spread and the people that they have encouraged to join terrorist organizations."
ISIS pledge of allegiance
Despite his vocal support for the terrorist group, Choudary has previously insisted he is not a danger to the public. "I don't pose a threat to anyone in this country," he told CNN in 2014. "I pose an ideological or political threat, definitely."
But authorities in Britain say Choudary has been linked to the radicalization of a string of the terrorists who have stood trial in the UK over the past 15 years.
ogether with Omar Bakri Muhammad, he founded the now outlawed radical Islamist organization Al-Muhajiroun. Bakri Muhammad was later banned from the UK over links to al Qaeda.
He was pictured at a protest with Michael Adebolajo, later convicted of the violent murder of British soldier Lee Rigby, and he was linked to Siddhartha Dhar, suspected by authorities of replacing Jihadi John as ISIS executioner.
But rather than traveling to Syria himself, he has stayed in Britain - where he was born and raised -- and taken on the role of a vocal supporter for ISIS and radical Islam.
"Sometimes the propaganda and the verbal jihad is even stronger than the jihad of the sword," he says.
A jury at London's Old Bailey found Choudary (and his associate Mohammad Mizanur Rahman, 33) guilty of "inviting support for a proscribed organization" - a charge he had denied.
Choudary has been repeatedly in the headlines for his views.
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