Dehiwela suicide bomber radicalised by hate preacher in UK

The Dehiwela suicide bomber had allegedly been radicalised by hate preacher Anjem Choudary while he was in London, UK, the Daily Mail reported today.

A security official has told the BBC that suicide bomber Abdul Lathief Jameel Mohamed, was completely radicalised and supported the extremist ideology. 

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

Choudary is considered one of the UK's most notorious hate preachers and father of five spent three years of a five-and-a-half year sentence in prison. He was detained in 2016 under terror laws for his encouragement to Muslims to join ISIS.

The Choudary-led extremist group, al-Muhajiroun, was outlawed by the government following the 2005 7/7 attacks on London but it has 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, as well as Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, who murdered Fusilier Lee Rigby in Woolwich, South-East London.

Mohamed tried to blow up the Taj Samudra Hotel in Colombo on Easter Sunday. But he is believed to have botched his attempt to detonate his bomb at the five-star hotel and is thought to have blown himself up at a much smaller guest house in Dehiwela.

UK counter-terrorism investigators believe he attended Kingston University in South-West London from 2006-07, before studying for a postgraduate degree in Melbourne, Australia. 

In a previous interview with MailOnline, his sister Samsul Hidaya said Abdul Lathief Jameel Mohamed had been educated to the highest level but became increasingly withdrawn and intense as he descended into extremism.

'My brother became deeply, deeply religious while he was in Australia,' she said. 'He was normal when he went to study in Britain, and normal when he came back. But after he did his postgraduate in Australia, he came back to Sri Lanka a different man. He had a long beard and had lost his sense of humour. He became serious and withdrawn and would not even smile at anyone he didn't know, let alone laugh.' she said.