The day terror group leader Anjem Choudary told me he wasn't 'going to kill' me

Anjem Choudary poses for photographs outside the Houses of Parliament in London in 2010 (Picture: Oli Scarff/Getty Images) | Getty Images

I didn’t really know what to expect on turning up for a semi-secret meeting held by Anjem Choudary – jailed today for life for leading a banned Islamist terrorist group – in an art deco conference centre in the East End of London in December 2010.

But as I sat in the audience of about 250, segregated between men and heavily veiled women, I started to get a bit nervous as Choudary spoke about the need to fight against “the oppressor” and the men responded in unison with loud cries of "Allahu Akbar!" and other short, sharp expressions of support. However, on meeting the man himself, who I’d spoken to a number of times on the phone, he was his usual self – mild-mannered, provocative but reasonably friendly, with only the occasional hints of deadly violence. I felt reassured... sort of, anyway. When someone tells you that their beliefs do not mean "I'm going to kill you”, it feels a little double-edged.

As I reported for NBC News’s website at the time, he seemed to relish the idea of violence, saying “the conflict will continue always. I think it's a matter of time before another 9/11 takes place and another 7/7... I think we are on the brink of many more operations in the West. This is going to be very, very nasty... The Muslims engaged in jihad are not going to stop. People will declare jihad in Britain and America. I don't think you can stomach something like that."

People like me, in his eyes, were weak and decadent, while he quite liked the idea he might be the “most hated man in Britain”. That was fine, he seemed to imply, he could take it.

At that time, he was the supposedly former leader of the Islamist organisations, al-Muhajiroun and Islam4UK – as they had been recently banned, he was no longer. However, at Woolwich Crown Court today, he was given a life sentence, with a minimum of 28 years, for directing al-Muhajiroun and encouraging support for it online.

The BBC reported that when his sentence was announced Choudary, previously jailed for five-and-a-half years for supporting Isis, appeared shocked and “rocked on his feet”. And there were some within the Islamist world who regarded him as a joke figure, a pantomime villain, but he was clearly much more than that.

Speaking after sentencing, Commander Dominic Murphy, head of the Metropolitan Police's counter-terrorism command, said: "There are individuals that have conducted terrorist attacks or travelled for terrorist purposes as a result of Anjem Choudary's radicalising impact upon them."

However, perhaps this qualified lawyer had convinced himself he knew how to play the decadent West, to skirt the boundaries of free speech and incitement to carry out terrorist attacks.

In philosopher Hannah Arendt’s book about the 1961 trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, subtitled “a report on the banality of evil”, she described Eichmann as an efficient, bland bureaucrat who was unable to see the world from the perspective of others, including the victims of the Holocaust.

Choudary’s glib manner when talking about the mass murder of people in the 9/11 and 7/7 terrorist attacks displayed the same lack of compassion and empathy, the same inability to put himself in the shoes of a victim of a terrorist attack or their grieving relatives. Britain is a safer place today.