London: A London Bridge jihadist was linked to an extremist network that radicalised a teenage boy who plotted a terror attack on the 2015 Anzac Day parade in Melbourne, and has tried to build a support base in Australia, it has emerged.
A jailed British hate preacher and his associate - who is still active on YouTube - have been linked to both the boy and to Khuram Butt, one of the three men who killed seven and injured scores more on London Bridge and around Borough Market on Saturday night.
And the revelations have raised new questions about the effectiveness of counter-terror policing and government strategy, and the media and social media's role in giving a platform to vile extremists.
Butt, from east London, was reportedly associated with banned terror group al-Muhajiroun, a group co-founded more than two decades ago by Islamic State propagandist Anjem Choudary.
Butt joined Choudary in 2013 at a provocative demonstration outside parliament after the murder of fusilier Lee Rigby in 2013, according to Mohammed Shafiq, the head of the Ramadhan Foundation.
Mr Shafiq said Butt had called him a traitor and government stooge when he confronted Choudary and accused him of supporting terrorism.
Butt also appeared in a 2016 Channel 4 TV documentary called The Jihadis Next Door, which showed him and other alleged members of al-Muhajiroun praying in front of a black Islamist flag in Regent's Park in 2015.
The same documentary featured Abu Haleema, a known associate of Choudary, who was filmed laughing at an Islamic State execution video.
Abu Haleema was banned from social media in 2015, but his inflammatory sermons have continued on YouTube, which admitted this week "we know we can do better" at stopping the spread of extremist material on its services.
In July 2016 Anjem Choudary was found guilty of encouraging support for Islamic State and jailed for five and a half years.
Police said he had been a recruiter and radicaliser for over 20 years, and closely associated with al-Muhajiroun, which they said was the driving force behind the 7/7 bombers and Lee Rigby's murder.
Choudary had pledged allegiance to IS in 2014, police said.
Head of the Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism command Dean Haydon said Choudary and another man convicted with him had "stayed just within the law for many years".
"But there is no one within the counter terrorism world that has any doubts of the influence that they have had, the hate they have spread and the people that they have encouraged to join terrorist organisations," he said.
"Over and over again we have seen people on trial for the most serious offences who have attended lectures or speeches given by these men."
Choudary had talked with the teenage boy who plotted a 2015 Anzac Day terror attack in Melbourne, according to Alexandra Bain, an assistant professor at St Thomas University, cited in sentencing submissions at the boy's trial.
The boy had also been in close, regular contact with Abu Haleema.
The boy was sentenced to life in jail, with a minimum five year term, in October 2015. The then 14-year-old had sent thousands of messages to an Australian accomplice, hatching a plot to behead a police officer at the parade.
The plot was detected just weeks before Anzac Day, after police investigating the boy's increasing, obvious radicalisation found encrypted material on the boy's phone.
Justice Saunders said the boy had been "indoctrinated" into terrorism.
One witness in the trial, who had worked for the government's Channel deradicalisation program, said the boy "had been radicalised to an extent that he had seen in no other intervention".
He said he believed "some other person was taking advantage" of the boy.
According to the prosecution, the boy had admitted he was in touch over the internet with Abu Haleema, who the witness described as a "radical preacher".
The boy's phone revealed Abu Haleema was part of the boy's extremist social networking that had led to and maintained his radicalisation.
After his first arrest, before police discovered the terror plot, the boy had used a Twitter account to warn other extremists, including Abu Haleema, of his arrest, encouraging them to delete evidence of their connection to him.
Professor Bain said the boy had been in touch with other radical preachers in Britain, including Anjem Choudary, Abu Haleema and Mizanur Rahman - who was jailed alongside Choudary in 2016.
Rahman gave an online speech in January 2015 saying "Britain is the enemy of Islam", praising al-Qaeda and defending the Charlie Hebdo terror attack.
Professor Bain said due to family troubles the boy had become isolated and "it was only on the internet, on Twitter, on his phone where he was understood, where he was respected, where he had friends, namely in the extended world of Jihadi Twitter".
Another man who had tried to counsel the boy concluded "he is under the tutelage and pupillage of someone that is taking advantage of his vulnerability".
During an attempted intervention, the boy was in constant contact with Abu Haleema by Twitter and SMS. During the counselling, the witness said, Abu Haleema texted the boy a link to news of a woman being beheaded.
The boy had visited east London months before he began plotting the attack, where he met "an older man who shared his views", according to sentencing submissions.
In 2016 Abu Haleema produced YouTube videos attacking moderate Sydney sheikhs, and counter-terrorism police told Fairfax he had been developing a following among young Australians.
Fairfax is not suggesting that Abu Haleema??? or Choudary were involved in Saturday's terror attack, or the Anzac Day plot.
But The Sunday Times has calculated - before the latest attack - that 25 Britons from Choudary's al-Muhajiroun group had been convicted of terrorist offences since 2010 - including Michael Adebolajo, who murdered fusilier Lee Rigby.
The group also arranged for up to 80 Britons to travel to Syria.
Researcher Hannah Stuart estimates that almost a quarter of all Islamist terrorists convicted in Britain had a direct link to al-Muhajiroun, and at least one in 10 had a proven personal relationship with Anjem Choudary.
For years Choudary was a regular figure on British media, taking every opportunity to publicise extreme views but staying just within the law.
One mainstream Muslim group head told The Sunday Times that "the most dangerous place in London was between Choudary and a TV camera".
He was a regular guest on television programs, despite calling the September 11 terrorists "magnificent martyrs" and declaring that Britain would become an Islamic state.
LBC radio presenter James O'Brien said the media shared the blame for giving a platform to extremists such as Choudary and Butt.
Swathes of "hate-filled" people delighted in the fact that Anjem Choudary "got conflated with every Muslim in the country", he said.
And putting jihadists on TV "made them feel like they were the Kardashians of jihad, like they had some form of celebrity that is being fanned and inflamed and enlarged by all the attention that we, (but not me), we give them," O'Brien said.
"You don't notice how nuts things are, do you, until it's too late?"
One Muslim Twitter user, in a widely-shared thread, complained the media had "a lot to answer for" over Choudary.
"We threw him out of our mosques but the media lapped him up," he said. "Anjem was a regular guest on news panels, discussion shows and given plenty of column inches in the newspapers.
"Young, impressionable Muslim men are drawn in by the well-spoken Choudary, who seems to be the only one speaking up for Muslims!
"How are these young men radicalised? Because media gave Anjem Choudary that platform to draw them in ??? the media radicalised Khuram Butt. They were accomplices."
