Hate preacher Anjem Choudary joked with Hatton Garden gang they deserved to have hands chopped off
HATE preacher Anjem Choudary joked with the Hatton Garden gang that they deserved to have their hands chopped off.
The IS fanatic was in jail alongside the crooks behind the £14million gems heist.
And trained solicitor Choudary became so close to them in HMP Belmarsh, South East London, he offered them legal advice on how to hang on to their loot.
But the 54-year-old, now free after five years for encouraging terrorist support, also warned them of their potential fate
Choudary, released last month from a court order on speaking in public, said: “They once asked me if they would get their hands chopped off when the Sharia came. I said, ‘Of course’.”
He added: “They also asked me about how proceeds of crime legislation worked — they were very interested in that.”
Choudary said career criminal Brian Reader, 82, even became a father figure to him.
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Reader, who led the raid in London’s diamond district in 2015, was freed in 2018 on health grounds but faced a £7million proceeds of crime order.
Choudary said: “When I had an appeal fail, he put his arm around me and said, ‘Don’t worry Anjem, son, it will be all right’. It was like he was my dad.”
He claimed the gang talked of a film dramatisation of their raid, saying: “They kept joking that Kevin Costner was going to play one of them.”
