One SL bomber was radicalised by UK hate preacher

One of the Sri Lankan Easter Sunday suicide bombers, who blew himself up at a small guest house in Dehiwela near Colombo, was allegedly radicalised by UK's notorious hate preacher Anjem Choudary, the media reported.

Abdul Lathief Jameel Mohamed, 37, was the link between the Islamic State (IS) and the bombers who carried out the April 21 attacks, which claimed over 250 lives, according to UK security services.

The killings at three churches, three luxury hotels and two other locations were blamed by the Sri Lankan government on local Islamic group National Thowheed Jamath, which is believed to have ties with the IS that claimed the carnage.

Mohamed tried to blow up the luxury Taj Samudra hotel in Colombo. But botched his attempt to detonate bomb at the hotel and blew himself up at a much smaller guest house in Dehiwela, killing two guests.

A UK security official told the BBC, Mohamed was radicalised and supported the extremist ideology.

"I tried to reason with him. When I asked him how he got into this, he said he attended the sermons of the radical British preacher Anjem Choudary in London. He said he met him during the sermons," the official said.

Choudary, the father of five, spent three years of the five-and-a-half years sentence in prison after he was detained in 2016 under terror laws for encouraging Muslims to join the IS.

The Choudary-led extremist group al-Muhajiroun was outlawed by the UK government following the July 7, 2005 attacks in London. But it continued to operate under a number of different images.

He helped radicalise some of Britain's most notorious terrorists, including London Bridge terror attacker ringleader Khuram Butt; Michael Adebolajo as well as Michael Adebowale, who murdered British soldier Fusilier Lee Rigby in Woolwich, southeast London.

UK counter-terrorism investigators believe the suicide bomber attended the Kingston University in southwest London from 2006-07, before going to Australia for a post-graduate degree.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, Mohamed's sister Samsul Hidaya said he had been educated to the highest level but became increasingly withdrawn and intense as he descended into extremism.

--IANS

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