Wife of alleged mentor of Charlie Hebdo terrorists lives in UK on the benefit

The UK media including the Daily Mail and The Telegraph are reporting on a convicted terrorist's wife who is living in the UK on the benefit. Bill Gardner from The Telegraph explains.

The wife of an al-Qaeda lynchpin who mentored the Charlie Hebdo murderers is living on in Britain after deciding France was too strict against Muslims.

Sylvie Beghal, a French citizen, lives rent free in a four bedroomed house in Leicester after she came to the UK with her children in search of a more “Islamic environment”.

She is married to Djamel Beghal, a former London-based lieutenant of Abu Hamza whose teachings are thought to have inspired the Paris attacks. At least two of the suspected gunmen responsible for the killings were Beghal's disciples, it has emerged.

On Friday Beghal's wife revealed that prison guards had thrown him into solitary confinement in retaliation for his links to the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

The Telegraph has previously disclosed that one of the Kouachi brothers, 32-year-old Cherid, was recruited by Beghal in prison ten years ago while both were serving sentences for offences.

Note that Abu Hamza was given a life sentence in the US courts last  week for terrorism offences. See this article from the BBC for more details.

The Telegraph article goes onto document Beghal's activities that investigators found related to terrorist activities.

Posing as a businessman importing clothing from Germany, Beghal had been able to across the world unchallenged. But the authorities decided his movements had been connected to terrorist activities. Three men mentored by Beghal were later jailed for their part in the plots.

Beghal was discovered to have had links with the GSPC, the hardline Algerian group, and Takfir Wal Hirja, an extremist faction founded in Egypt and led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden's deputy. He was also alleged to have helped recruit Richard Reid, the shoebomber, and possibly Zacarias Moussaoui, the suspected 20th hijacker, to al-Qaeda.

When detained, Beghal was returning to Paris from Afghanistan after meeting Abu Zubaydah, a senior al-Qaeda figure who allocated missions to terrorist cells around the world.

Under interrogation in Dubai, Beghal admitted plotting to destroy the United States embassy in Paris in a suicide attack. He admitted to investigators he had travelled around British mosques in the late 1990s, recruiting young Muslims for jihad.

I would love to know what the ‘official' reason for putting this wife of a terrorist on the benefit actually was. It defies all common sense.

Note that the Daily Mail article cited has photos of Baghel with one of the Kouachi brothers.

[UPDATE:]

Thanks to Stephieboy for drawing to my attention to Anjelm Choudary.

The UK media has given Choudary a lot of coverage both for his inflammatory comments and his lifestyle of living on the benefit in the UK.

The Daily Mail in February 2013 published a piece on Choudary.

He also maintained that Osama Bin Laden was his ‘hero'.

The father-of-four takes home more than £25,000 a year in benefits and lives in a £320,000 house in Leytonstone, East London.

He told a crowd of around 30 fanatics: ‘People will say, ‘Ah, but you are not working'. But the normal situation is for you to take money from the kuffar (non-Muslim).

‘So we take Jihadseeker's Allowance. You need to get support.'

In another video a grinning Choudary is recorded telling his disciples that it is justifiable to take money from non-believers.

He said: ‘The normal situation is to take money from the kuffar. You work, give us the money, Allahu Akhbar (God is great).

Is any proof necessary to prove what radicals like this guy are really up to in the UK? There is a video of him spouting off at the end of the Daily Mail article.

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