Patrick Christys: Anjem Choudary is still spreading hate online - we should lock him up and throw away the key

Convicted terrorist and hate preacher Anjem Choudary is currently being allowed to pump out radical filth online because our justice system is far too weak to deal with him properly, and now he’s taking the mickey out of us as well.

Choudary was sentenced to just five and a half years due to his support for ISIS. A report actually concluded that Choudary had caused between 70 to 100 people to turn to terrorism, but due to a variety of legal loopholes he’s managed to largely get away with it.

The Commission for Countering Extremism concluded that these loopholes need to be closed if we’re going to stop Choudary from striking again. But, the shocking thing here is that Shaun Hipgrave, a director in the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism, admitted he was unaware of any of the Commission’s recommendations until being directed to them by the Manchester Arena bombing inquiry on Tuesday.

How on earth can this guy not know about the report?! What hope do we have of stopping future attacks, or getting in the way of radicalisation if a director in the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism can’t even be bothered to read a report telling him what needs to be done?!

Choudary wasn’t just sent to prison, he was given a ban on public speaking – but this expired three months ago and he’s using a platform called Telegram to whip up social media storms calling for things like the release of ISIS prisoners in Syria.

He actually sends out press releases and these are viewed tens of thousands of times. So he’s back at it. And then on top of that he’s revealed what we all already knew about the Prevent Scheme – that it’s a load of rubbish and a waste of time and money. Choudary was assigned a supposedly deradicalized terrorist to talk to him in an attempt to get him to change his ways.

But Choudary had this to say about the whole thing: “We never talked about jihad or sharia or anything like that. "It was a complete waste of time.

"We had small talk for two years." He’s openly mocking us at this point. Apparently we’re still monitoring Choudary and he’s deemed to be a ‘great concern’.

Well not that great – we haven’t come up with a way to block him spreading extremism online, and he’s free to walk the streets. If he’s saying that Prevent doesn’t work, then surely he’s admitting what we all know, which is that he still holds the views he held before.

Those views were his support for ISIS. Isn’t this tantamount to him publicly saying he still supports ISIS. Which is a crime. So why don’t we do the world a favour, lock him up and throw away the key.