Muslim Convert Possessed, Shared Islamist Terrorist Material

LONDON, ENGLAND - JANUARY 11: Ibrahim Anderson arrives at The Old Bailey on January 11, 20
Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images
Victoria Friedman

Convicted terrorist Ibrahim Anderson has pleaded guilty to sharing extremist material and possessing Islamic State-related publications.

The 44-year-old Muslim convert from Luton, Bedfordshire, pleaded guilty via video link from Wandsworth prison to London’s Old Bailey on Wednesday to several charges committed between the Summer and Autumn 2020.

Anderson pleaded guilty to four charges of possessing material related to ISIS, ten charges of disseminating terrorist publications, and one charge of breaching notification orders to tell authorities about an email address he used, according to the Evening Standard.

The BBC had reported last year on the content of the material, which appeared to be violent films produced by Islamic State. Anderson was said to have used a fake name to create a Facebook account and posted two Islamic State videos, and sent a further eight on the encrypted messenger app Telegram in July.

Lawyer Patrick Harte claimed that in sharing the material, his client “did not intend his act to encourage terrorism”.

Mr Anderson will be remanded in custody until another hearing on April 30th.

This is not the first time that the Muslim convert, known for his distinctive ginger beard, has been in front of a court for disseminating extremist material.

In 2016, Anderson and 63-year-old Shah Jahan Khan, also from Luton, were found guilty of terrorism offences, when in August 2014, they set up a stall on Oxford Street in London, handing out leaflets encouraging people to join Islamic State.

The Times had reported it was the first time that legislation banning the promotion of a proscribed group had resulted in a conviction.

Anderson was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. Following his 2016 conviction, the Daily Mail reported images taken by Anderson of his three young children posing in front of an Islamist flag.

In two separate photographs, his eight- and six-year-old sons are seen holding swords, and in another, his toddler daughter is wearing a pink headscarf.

Investigators had found the images in October 2014 and were shown to the trial jury.

The newspaper added that Ibrahim Anderson, born Andrew Anderson, had converted to Islam in prison whilst serving three years in prison for robbing a petrol station in the late 1990s.

According to a study published by the Henry Jackson Society last week, Islamist terrorist inmates are free to radicalise other prisoners because of an “institutional failure” to separate them, as a result of the collapse of the system to keep them segregated.

Of the three separation centres established within British prisons since 2017, just one remains open (HMP Frankland in Durham).

Counterterrorism research fellow at the think tank, Eilish O’Gara, said, according to The Telegraph: “Institutional failure to remove dangerous TACT [terrorist] offenders from the general population has resulted in the emergence of hierarchical gangs across many of our high-security prison estates.”

“Over the years, these Islamist hierarchies have facilitated the increased radicalisation of both TACT and non-TACT offenders through manipulation, control and intimidation,” she added.

A report from January claimed that just three per cent of Britain’s jailed jihadists were being isolated to prevent them from radicalising other inmates.

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