LONDON: British police on Thursday arrested nine men including leading radical preacher Anjem Choudary in London on suspicion of links to the banned extremist group Al-Muhajiroun.

The arrests “are part of an ongoing investigation into Islamist-related terrorism and are not in response to any immediate public safety risk,” the Scotland Yard said. Police said they were also searching 18 residential and commercial properties in London and one in Stoke-on-Trent, central England.

Al-Muhajiroun aims to overthrow the British government and replace it with an Islamic state before establishing a global ‘caliphate’, according to the London-based International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence.

The organisation was last banned in Britain under the Terrorism Act in 2010 although it has been proscribed in the past only to re-appear again under different names — as in the wake of the bombings in London on July 7, 2005.

Mr Choudary, who is of Pakistani descent, is a co-founder of the group along with Omar Bakri Mohammed, who is serving a prison sentence in Lebanon for terrorism.

A 47-year-old former lawyer, Mr Choudary regularly makes controversial statements on sensitive issues of national security that are picked up by British tabloids but he has been careful to stay on the right side of criminal law.

Published in Dawn, September 26th, 2014