A key terror suspect has skipped bail and fled to join the Islamic State in Syria after British police failed to confiscate his passport, merely asking him to hand it over instead.
Siddhartha Dhar, 31, was arrested with eight other men in September as police and the security services investigated supporters of banned group al-Muhajiroun, led by infamous British Sharia law advocate Anjem Choudary. His release on bail was arranged on the conditions he would surrender “travel documents” including his passport to authorities, not promote radical Islam in the UK, and to present himself to a police station in December for the trial to continue.
Instead upon release Dhar, who now goes by his ‘Islamic’ name of Abu Rumaysah immediately went home to pack his bags, and within 24 hours had boarded a coach with his wife and four children for the continent. These actions, which could have been prevented by the Home Office confiscating his documents came to light after other bailed members of the suspected terror group appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ court to ask for their own surrendered documents back.
The court was told of Dhar: “He failed to comply with the conditions to surrender his travel documents to police. It’s my understanding that he is no longer in the jurisdiction and that he is currently in Syria”, reports the Daily Mail.
Dhar has been a relatively high-profile member of Britain’s extremist community, taking a leading role in prohibited organisation al-Muhajiroun and allegedly running the controversial ‘Sharia Patrols’ in East London, which harassed women who they perceived to be inappropriately dressed, and gay men.
Interviewed by British television weeks before his arrest under his pseudonym of Rumaysah, Dhar said of his desire to flee the United Kingdom: “I think it’s very naive of the Government to think they can prevent Muslims from desiring to migrate there [The Islamic State] and live under Islam.
“I think it’s in the interest of the Government to allow citizens in this country to migrate to places that they want to. It’s better to do that than to go underground and off the radar… the ironic thing is in this country you’ve got freedom of speech, but for Muslims there is no freedom.
“What I would say is that I’d love to live under the Islamic State, I’d love to live under the Sharia, and I hope that one day Britain gets to live under the Sharia as well”. Dhar said many Muslims wanted to emigrate to Islamic nations from a Britain they didn’t identify with, and even suggested Muslims should be allowed to renounce their British citizenship and be supported by the government in their endeavour to migrate.
He said: “If the government were to allow an open and transparent way for Muslims to migrate to places where they want to… they do that on the condition of renouncing citizenship, I’m sure you’d see many Muslims willing to do that.
“I think Muslims, they don’t really hold citizenship, or a British passport at heart as much as many British people think.”
Breitbart London reported Dhar’s low opinion of Western life in April, when he said: “[You] never know in the future what lies ahead… the Jihad is not a bad thing. It is a noble aim. When the Sharia is established I think that will be the beginning of the end of the United States of America, of Britain, of Europe and the entire world which is currently being governed by man-made law”.
Now having fulfilled his dream to live under Sharia law, Dhar is one of some 600 British citizens believed by the security services to have travelled to Iraq and Syria to fight global jihad with extreme Islamist groups like ISIS and al-Nusra.
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