Taxpayers face huge legal bill as hate preacher Anjem Choudary appeals to the Supreme Court after being jailed for running a terror group

Hate preacher Anjem Choudary has appealed his life sentence, which could cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal fees.

Firebrand Choudary, 57, who radicalized dozens of Islamist extremists including the killers of soldier Lee Rigby, was sentenced to at least 28 years in prison in July for secretly leading a banned terror group.

He was expected to die in prison, but he has appealed to the Supreme Court to try to overturn the verdict and conviction.

His latest legal battle could drag on for years through the Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights.

Last night Anthony Glees, a terrorism expert at Buckingham University, said: ‘This call is a terrible waste of taxpayers’ money.

“There is no doubt in anyone’s mind, whether a lowly juror or a Supreme Court judge, that Choudary is an extremely dangerous fanatic and that this country must be protected from the poison he spews.”

Last night the Criminal Appeal Office of the High Court in London confirmed it had received Choudary’s appeal.

Choudary, from Ilford, east London, was convicted of leading the terrorist organization Al-Muhajiroun (ALM), which was banned in 2006. Woolwich Crown Court heard he gave online lectures to the Islamic Thinkers Society (ITS), the US arm of ALM, which was trying to recruit members in the US and Canada.

The court was told Choudary began redeveloping ITS in North America after being released from a five-and-a-half-year prison sentence for inviting support for Islamic State.

Sentencing him in the ITS case, Judge Mark Wall said Choudary was “front and center in directing a terrorist organisation”.

His reasons for appeal were not disclosed last night. But his former bodyguard Abu Izzadeen, who was jailed for four and a half years in 2008 for inciting terrorism, said Choudary believed his sentence was “astronomically high”.

Izzadeen, born Trevor Brooks, added: “I know people in prison who committed a double murder and got less than that – a minimum of 28 years for something that isn’t murder.

They convicted him based on his personality in the media.” Choudary has been a leading member of ALM since its founding in the late 1990s.

Although the group officially disbanded in 2004, it survived in secret, taking names such as the Saved Sect. He took control of ALM from 2005 after then-leader Omar Bakri Muhammed fled the UK for his native Lebanon.

Trained lawyer Choudary is accused of radicalizing a generation of terrorists through ALM, including Michael Adebolajo, 39, and Michael Adebowale, 33, who beheaded Fusilier Lee Rigby, 25, outside London’s Woolwich Barracks in 2013.

Choudary also radicalized more than a dozen terrorists who went to Syria to join ISIS, including Siddhartha Dhar, 32, who filmed himself in a propaganda video shooting dead a victim in 2016.