A Muslim extremist who shouted down the former Home Secretary John Reid at a public meeting was convicted yesterday of terrorist fundraising and inciting terrorism overseas.

Abu Izzadeen, a convert to Islam who was born Trevor Brooks, was found guilty by a jury at Kingston upon Thames Crown Court after a trial lasting more than three months.

He was tried for racist, anti-Semitic and violent tirades two years before his interruption of Mr Reid’s speech in 2006. Judge Nicholas Price will hand down a jail sentence today, Abu Izzadeen’s 33rd birthday.

Five other men convicted with him will also be sentenced, including Simon Keeler, 35, believed to be the first white Muslim convert to be convicted under British anti-terrorist legislation.

Shah Jalal Hussain, 24, who absconded after being given permission to attend a hospital while the jury was out, was also convicted of a terrorism offence, as were three men who took part in demonstrations at the Danish Embassy against newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Scotland Yard said last night that a warrant had been issued for Hussain’s arrest.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner John McDowall, head of Scotland Yard’s Counter-terrorism Command, said: “These are extremely serious offences. The overwhelming majority of people totally reject the deeply offensive views peddled by these defendants. They deliberately set out to incite people to carry out terrorist acts.”

The defendants were arrested in April and May last year after police investigating the cartoon protests discovered a DVD containing speeches made by them at the home of the exiled cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed.

The men were disciples of Bakri Mohammed, who now lives in Lebanon, and were members of his al-

Muhajiroun group when they held an impromptu 11-hour demonstration at Regent’s Park Mosque in November 2004 calling on Muslims to support and send money to insurgents in Iraq.

Security staff at the mosque in Central London were alarmed at the tone of the meeting and called police, but a decision was taken not to intervene when the situation became hostile.

Jonathan Laidlaw, for the prosecution, told the trial that the speakers had been inflammatory and insulting.He said that the men had “jointly tried to raise money for terrorist purposes” and several of their speeches were “a clear call to arms”.

The jury saw Abu Izzadeen on film shouting: “Fight the \ with your wealth. Jihad with money, jihad with money. The jihad is to give money for weapons, for tanks, for RPGs, for M16s. The Americans and British only understand one language. It’s the language of blood. Because when they come to Baghdad, they only come with the language of murder and killing Muslims.”

He went on to tell the audience that anybody in Iraq who helped the Americans, even by giving a soldier a glass of water, should be killed, and justified the murder of Kenneth Bigley.

Abu Izzadeen is the son of Jamaican immigrants who came to Britain in the 1960s. He was born in Hackney, East London, changed his name to Omar Brooks after his religious conversion before later adopting Abu Izzadeen and styling himself as a preacher.

When Bakri Mohammed left Britain to live in Lebanon, Abu Izzadeen became more prominent and increasingly vociferous. He achieved notoriety in September 2006 when, as Mr Reid addressed a public meeting near his home in Leyton, East London, he stood up and shouted: “How dare you come to a Muslim area when over 1,000 Muslims have been arrested?

Brooks, Keeler, Hussain and Abdul Muhid, 24, were convicted of fundraising for the purposes of terrorism. On the terrorist incitement charge, the jury returned unanimous guilty verdicts on Brooks, Keeler, Abdul Saleem, 31, and Ibrahim Hassan, 21.

Three defendants were acquitted of the fundraising offence and the jury failed to reach a verdict on another. Brooks was cleared of a charge of encouraging terrorism.

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