Six men, including a Muslim named Abu Izzadeen, were charged in Britain on Sunday with inciting terrorism overseas and fundraising, police said. The men, aged between 21 and 35, were arrested in pre-dawn anti-terror raids on Tuesday, and were due to appear before City of Westminster Magistrates Court in London on Monday. The six — Izzadeen, 27-year-old Omar Zaheer, Shal Jalal Hussein, 24, 35-year-old Simon Keeler, Ibrahim Abdullah Hassan, 21, 28-year-old Rajib Khan — were all charged with terrorist fundraising. Izzadeen, Keeler, Hassan, Khan were also charged with inciting others to commit acts of terrorism overseas. In addition, Hassan faces the charge of possessing articles suspected to be related to the commission, preparation, or instigation of a terrorist attack.The men were arrested at four addresses in east London, one in Southall, west London, and one in Luton, a town north of the capital, arrested by the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command and local police officers. The arrests were in relation to speeches made at a mosque two-and-a-half years ago. A well-known figure towards the extreme end of British Muslim opinion, convert Izzadeen repeatedly disrupted a speech by Reid in east London last September, calling him “an enemy of Islam” and “a tyrant”.
Izzadeen, a former electrician born in London to a Jamaican family, is said to be a former spokesman for the radical Islamist group Al-Ghurabaa. Al-Ghurabaa is an offshoot of the now disbanded Al-Muhajiroun led by radical cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed, both of which are now banned in Britain. He came to prominence for refusing to condemn the deadly July 2005 suicide bombings in London and has described Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W Bush as the “real terrorists” for military action in Iraq and Afghanistan.