'Muslim patrol enforcer' told he will not have £9,000 returned

Facing Jail: Michael Coe, 35, was acting as a "self-appointed enforcer"
Metropolitan Police
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A judge has ruled £9,000 belonging to a “self-appointed” Muslim patrol enforcer should not be returned because he intended to use it to fund terrorism.

Michael Coe, 36, knocked out a 16-year-old boy after spotting him hugging his girlfriend near Upton Park Tube station in East Ham.

Coe, who once acted as a bodyguard for hate preacher Anjem Choudary, was jailed for two years and four months last December for the assault.

In 2015 he was cleared by an Old Bailey jury, with Muslim convert Simon Keeler, of preparing for terrorism acts. It was alleged the pair planned to fight for Islamic State in Syria when they were caught in the back of a lorry at Dover. Coe denied the claim and said he was visiting his wife in Sweden.

District Judge Vanessa Baraitser said she “did not accept his account in relation to his reasons for travel”.

Prosecutors applied to keep £4,000 in cash seized from Coe on this occasion and another £5,000 seized in July of that year when he was arrested at Heathrow Airport.

The confiscation hearing to seize cash under the Proceeds of Crime Act was held at Westminster magistrates’ court.

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