I don't get the whole big deal with ole Jihadi John - all he is doing is EXACTLY what the Quran tells him to do
Read that 26 pages short novel on what ISIS wants - the Quran tells Muslims they must keep slaves, they must have cruxifications, beheadings, etc. - they must always fight - never stopping for more than a year - best part is most of the killing is supposed to be done against other Muslims - and then, when they are down to their last 5,000 soldiers in that field of nothing in Syria and it looks like the Iranians are going to finish them off - the second great prophet behind Muhammed - Jesus Chris will come to save them as the world ends
Read that 26 pages short novel on what ISIS wants - the Quran tells Muslims they must keep slaves, they must have cruxifications, beheadings, etc. - they must always fight - never stopping for more than a year - best part is most of the killing is supposed to be done against other Muslims - and then, when they are down to their last 5,000 soldiers in that field of nothing in Syria and it looks like the Iranians are going to finish them off - the second great prophet behind Muhammed - Jesus Chris will come to save them as the world ends
[h=1]Nauseating! An odious press conference, apologists for terror and the do-gooders who fund them[/h]
Held at an 'art gallery' near London's Euston station, it was one of the most extraordinary and nauseating press conferences of recent times.
It had been convened at 3pm on Thursday by the 'human rights' organisation Cage following the identification of masked killer Jihadi John as the Kuwaiti-born Londoner Mohammed Emwazi.
For three years, the campaign group had been in close contact with and offered support to Emwazi before he left Britain to fight in Syria in 2012.
But rather than express an apology – or even a smidgen of regret – for having failed to turn him away from the path to barbarism, what we witnessed was almost an hour of excuses, accusation and invective against Britain, British society and the British state.
Broadcast live for 52 minutes on the BBC and 58 on Sky News, the men from Cage described Jihadi John as an 'extremely kind' and 'beautiful young man'.
+3
For three years Cage had been in contact with and supported Mohammed Emwazi before he escaped to Syria, but rather than offer an apology or regret at a press conference yesterday, they defended him
The lachrymose assessment of his character was made by the organisation's 'research director' Asim Qureshi, who spoke uninterrupted for 18 minutes about the iniquities of British policy on the 'war on terror' and the unfair 'harassment' that men such as Jihadi John experience.
The heavily-bearded Qureshi is a very middle-class radical, who lives with his partner in a £500,000 house in suburban Surrey.
Despite these trappings of infidel decadence, he has advocated jihad and the creation of an 8th-century-style Islamic Caliphate in Britain, similar to that which has been imposed in Syria and Iraq by the terror group IS.
In 2006, Qureshi was filmed outside the US embassy in London addressing a rally organised by the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.
He said: 'When we see the example of our brothers and sisters fighting in Chechnya, Iraq, Palestine, Kashmir, Afghanistan, then we know where the example lies.
'We know that it is incumbent upon all of us, to support the jihad of our brothers and sisters in these countries when they are facing the oppression of the West. Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!'
In a subsequent interview with the pro-Putin broadcaster Russia Today, Qureshi supported the imposition of Sharia law, including the stoning to death of adulterers and other brutal capital punishments.
This week, his opening harangue at the press conference was followed by Cage's 'media officer' Cerie Bullivant, a British convert to Islam.
He railed for another eight minutes about the treatment he had received at the hands of the security services 'in very similar circumstances' to those of Emwazi.
Bullivant, a 32-year-old former mental health nurse once married to a Kuwaiti-born woman, went on the run for two months in 2006 after being placed under a control order when it was suspected he was planning to go to Iraq to fight for insurgents.
He was later cleared of breaching the condition by a jury which accepted he had a 'reasonable excuse' for flouting the order because it was making his life miserable.
The civil rights organisation Liberty was sufficiently 'impressed' by his subsequent campaigning to award him a 'human rights young person of the year' award in 2011.
- Cage held a press conference yesterday to discuss identity of Jihadi John
- The group had been in contact with Mohammed Emwazi for three years
- Its bosses did not express any regret for failing to prevent his barbarism
- Instead, they called him an 'extremely kind' and 'beautiful young man'
Held at an 'art gallery' near London's Euston station, it was one of the most extraordinary and nauseating press conferences of recent times.
It had been convened at 3pm on Thursday by the 'human rights' organisation Cage following the identification of masked killer Jihadi John as the Kuwaiti-born Londoner Mohammed Emwazi.
For three years, the campaign group had been in close contact with and offered support to Emwazi before he left Britain to fight in Syria in 2012.
But rather than express an apology – or even a smidgen of regret – for having failed to turn him away from the path to barbarism, what we witnessed was almost an hour of excuses, accusation and invective against Britain, British society and the British state.
Broadcast live for 52 minutes on the BBC and 58 on Sky News, the men from Cage described Jihadi John as an 'extremely kind' and 'beautiful young man'.
+3
For three years Cage had been in contact with and supported Mohammed Emwazi before he escaped to Syria, but rather than offer an apology or regret at a press conference yesterday, they defended him
The lachrymose assessment of his character was made by the organisation's 'research director' Asim Qureshi, who spoke uninterrupted for 18 minutes about the iniquities of British policy on the 'war on terror' and the unfair 'harassment' that men such as Jihadi John experience.
The heavily-bearded Qureshi is a very middle-class radical, who lives with his partner in a £500,000 house in suburban Surrey.
Despite these trappings of infidel decadence, he has advocated jihad and the creation of an 8th-century-style Islamic Caliphate in Britain, similar to that which has been imposed in Syria and Iraq by the terror group IS.
In 2006, Qureshi was filmed outside the US embassy in London addressing a rally organised by the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.
He said: 'When we see the example of our brothers and sisters fighting in Chechnya, Iraq, Palestine, Kashmir, Afghanistan, then we know where the example lies.
'We know that it is incumbent upon all of us, to support the jihad of our brothers and sisters in these countries when they are facing the oppression of the West. Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!'
In a subsequent interview with the pro-Putin broadcaster Russia Today, Qureshi supported the imposition of Sharia law, including the stoning to death of adulterers and other brutal capital punishments.
This week, his opening harangue at the press conference was followed by Cage's 'media officer' Cerie Bullivant, a British convert to Islam.
He railed for another eight minutes about the treatment he had received at the hands of the security services 'in very similar circumstances' to those of Emwazi.
Bullivant, a 32-year-old former mental health nurse once married to a Kuwaiti-born woman, went on the run for two months in 2006 after being placed under a control order when it was suspected he was planning to go to Iraq to fight for insurgents.
He was later cleared of breaching the condition by a jury which accepted he had a 'reasonable excuse' for flouting the order because it was making his life miserable.
The civil rights organisation Liberty was sufficiently 'impressed' by his subsequent campaigning to award him a 'human rights young person of the year' award in 2011.
The third member and 'moderator' of the press conference panel was John Rees, a former leading activist of the Socialist Workers' Party.
His position is a good example of how the hard-Left has aligned itself with radical Islam.
Rees is national officer of the Stop the War Coalition and presenter on the Islam Channel, through which he fostered close links with Cage.
The group first appeared in 2003, when it was known as CagePrisoners. It was founded to oppose official Western policy on the 'war on terror' and to stand up for Muslims who were arrested, captured or killed in security operations.
Critics say it was – as we witnessed on Thursday – a sophisticated organisation that knows how to exploit a democratic system which enshrines free speech and human rights in order to support terrorists.
This is not a view, though, taken by two of Britain's largest left-of-centre charitable foundations, which saw CagePrisoners as a human rights cause worth supporting and donating hundreds of thousands of pounds to.
Some £120,000 was given by the Anita Roddick Foundation, which is run by the late Body Shop owner's husband and their children.
Funds from her estimated £100million estate have been given to a range of bodies that 'want to change the world'. This definition would seem to include an organisation that wants Britain to become a medieval caliphate.
A further £305,000 was given to CagePrisoners/Cage over a period of six years by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, a Quaker-run fund set up by the York-based chocolate maker and philanthropist.
Quite why the trustees support such a body is a question for their consciences. Probably, it is also a question for the Charity Commission to look into.
Sources at the Commission believe officials at the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust may have been 'duped' when they agreed to make donations to Cage. One said: 'They were conned after it re-branded itself as a human rights group.'
He said Cage (and its previous entity CagePrisoners) had been well-known to the security services for some years because of its support for terrorists.
Cage has also worked closely with two other UK-based organisations that have reported ties to Islamic extremists – the Cordoba Foundation and the Emirates Centre for Human Rights (ECHR).
Following the Cage press conference, ECHR's media spokesman Rori Donaghy – who has given lectures on media handling to Hamas officials in Gaza – tweeted support for his 'measured and intelligent' Cage counterpart Cerie Bullivant after he called Sky TV's Kay Burley an 'Islamophobe' and stormed out of an interview with her.
Cage came to wider attention in 2006 when Birmingham-born Moazzam Begg joined it as 'outreach director'. He had been arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and spent three years at Guantanamo Bay where he claimed to have been interrogated 300 times.
He admitted having visited terror training camps in Afghanistan but was awarded £1million compensation by the British Government.
+3
Cage's research director Asim Qureshi lives in a £500,000 house in Surrey with his wife, but once took part in a demonstration calling for Jihad
+3
Moazzam Begg, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, joined Cage in 2006 as 'outreach director' and began campaigning for the release of Al-Qaeda cheerleader Anwar al-Awlaki
After his release without charge, he has since become a columnist for the Guardian.
Through Begg, Cage developed links with the radical preacher and Al Qaeda cheerleader Anwar al-Awlaki and campaigned for his release from detention in Yemen.
He was later killed in an American drone strike. In 2010, Begg also spoke of his desire for a Caliphate-style regime in Britain.
As for Cage, it is a mystery why it has escaped scrutiny for so long. Significantly in 2010, a director of the campaign group Amnesty International was suspended by the organisation for talking out of turn.
Gita Sahgal had criticised its close ties with Cage – which she described as 'jihadis' – and with Begg, who she called 'Britain's most famous supporter of the Taliban'.
Last year Begg was arrested over alleged links to terrorism training and funding in Syria, to which he had previously travelled.
As a result, Cage's bank accounts were frozen after intervention from the Treasury.
Although the charges against Begg were later dropped, it seems from the organisation's website that its accounts are still frozen.
A sophisticated organisation that knows how to exploit a free speech and human rights to support terrorists
In the meantime, Cage asks for donors to send money online to a website more often used for receiving charitable sponsorship – or to send cash by recorded delivery to an address in Bloomsbury, central London.
It also advises: 'We can arrange for someone to pick up the cash donation from you.'
Cage continues to have a phlegmatic view of British jihadis fighting in Syria.
One article posted on its website last year was headed 'British fighters in Syria should not concern us', which undoubtedly could be seen as encouraging or justifying terrorism.
Indeed, the 'human rights' outfit described the first British suicide bomber in Syria, Abdul Waheed Majid, from Crawley, as 'giving his life for a just cause, and it would be shameful of us were we to tarnish him and other Syrian fighters as terrorists for doing that'.
Omar Deghayes, a Libyan citizen who was a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, has also been listed as a director of Cage.
Two of his nephews were killed after travelling from their Sussex homes to fight in Syria. For their part, British security services fear the rise of an Islamic State terrorist threat in Britain is helped by the sympathetic campaigning of 'human rights' groups such as Cage.
As an eminent former counter terrorism officer says: 'The outlook is very, very gloomy – far worse than it was after 9/11. And it is not helped by organisations such as Cage being basically apologists for slaughter.'
His position is a good example of how the hard-Left has aligned itself with radical Islam.
Rees is national officer of the Stop the War Coalition and presenter on the Islam Channel, through which he fostered close links with Cage.
The group first appeared in 2003, when it was known as CagePrisoners. It was founded to oppose official Western policy on the 'war on terror' and to stand up for Muslims who were arrested, captured or killed in security operations.
Critics say it was – as we witnessed on Thursday – a sophisticated organisation that knows how to exploit a democratic system which enshrines free speech and human rights in order to support terrorists.
This is not a view, though, taken by two of Britain's largest left-of-centre charitable foundations, which saw CagePrisoners as a human rights cause worth supporting and donating hundreds of thousands of pounds to.
Some £120,000 was given by the Anita Roddick Foundation, which is run by the late Body Shop owner's husband and their children.
Funds from her estimated £100million estate have been given to a range of bodies that 'want to change the world'. This definition would seem to include an organisation that wants Britain to become a medieval caliphate.
A further £305,000 was given to CagePrisoners/Cage over a period of six years by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, a Quaker-run fund set up by the York-based chocolate maker and philanthropist.
Quite why the trustees support such a body is a question for their consciences. Probably, it is also a question for the Charity Commission to look into.
Sources at the Commission believe officials at the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust may have been 'duped' when they agreed to make donations to Cage. One said: 'They were conned after it re-branded itself as a human rights group.'
He said Cage (and its previous entity CagePrisoners) had been well-known to the security services for some years because of its support for terrorists.
Cage has also worked closely with two other UK-based organisations that have reported ties to Islamic extremists – the Cordoba Foundation and the Emirates Centre for Human Rights (ECHR).
Following the Cage press conference, ECHR's media spokesman Rori Donaghy – who has given lectures on media handling to Hamas officials in Gaza – tweeted support for his 'measured and intelligent' Cage counterpart Cerie Bullivant after he called Sky TV's Kay Burley an 'Islamophobe' and stormed out of an interview with her.
Cage came to wider attention in 2006 when Birmingham-born Moazzam Begg joined it as 'outreach director'. He had been arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and spent three years at Guantanamo Bay where he claimed to have been interrogated 300 times.
He admitted having visited terror training camps in Afghanistan but was awarded £1million compensation by the British Government.
+3
Cage's research director Asim Qureshi lives in a £500,000 house in Surrey with his wife, but once took part in a demonstration calling for Jihad
+3
Moazzam Begg, a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, joined Cage in 2006 as 'outreach director' and began campaigning for the release of Al-Qaeda cheerleader Anwar al-Awlaki
After his release without charge, he has since become a columnist for the Guardian.
Through Begg, Cage developed links with the radical preacher and Al Qaeda cheerleader Anwar al-Awlaki and campaigned for his release from detention in Yemen.
He was later killed in an American drone strike. In 2010, Begg also spoke of his desire for a Caliphate-style regime in Britain.
As for Cage, it is a mystery why it has escaped scrutiny for so long. Significantly in 2010, a director of the campaign group Amnesty International was suspended by the organisation for talking out of turn.
Gita Sahgal had criticised its close ties with Cage – which she described as 'jihadis' – and with Begg, who she called 'Britain's most famous supporter of the Taliban'.
Last year Begg was arrested over alleged links to terrorism training and funding in Syria, to which he had previously travelled.
As a result, Cage's bank accounts were frozen after intervention from the Treasury.
Although the charges against Begg were later dropped, it seems from the organisation's website that its accounts are still frozen.
A sophisticated organisation that knows how to exploit a free speech and human rights to support terrorists
In the meantime, Cage asks for donors to send money online to a website more often used for receiving charitable sponsorship – or to send cash by recorded delivery to an address in Bloomsbury, central London.
It also advises: 'We can arrange for someone to pick up the cash donation from you.'
Cage continues to have a phlegmatic view of British jihadis fighting in Syria.
One article posted on its website last year was headed 'British fighters in Syria should not concern us', which undoubtedly could be seen as encouraging or justifying terrorism.
Indeed, the 'human rights' outfit described the first British suicide bomber in Syria, Abdul Waheed Majid, from Crawley, as 'giving his life for a just cause, and it would be shameful of us were we to tarnish him and other Syrian fighters as terrorists for doing that'.
Omar Deghayes, a Libyan citizen who was a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, has also been listed as a director of Cage.
Two of his nephews were killed after travelling from their Sussex homes to fight in Syria. For their part, British security services fear the rise of an Islamic State terrorist threat in Britain is helped by the sympathetic campaigning of 'human rights' groups such as Cage.
As an eminent former counter terrorism officer says: 'The outlook is very, very gloomy – far worse than it was after 9/11. And it is not helped by organisations such as Cage being basically apologists for slaughter.'
[h=1]Jihadi John's relatives flee home and want new identities as friends insist: 'They are an innocent family who've done nothing wrong'[/h]
Terrified relatives of Mohammed Emwazi want to change their identities over fears of revenge at tacks, friends said yesterday.
The jihadi’s parents have gone into hiding and are ‘living in fear’ that they and their children could be targeted by those demanding revenge.
Friends spoke out to defend the family – said to be moderate Muslims who had never supported extremism – fled their home in affluent Maida Vale, West London, before he was revealed to be the terrorist killer Jihadi John, and have not been seen since.
His Kuwaiti parents and their five other children – who the Mail has decided not to name – plan to change their identities to escape his notoriety and believe they will have to start new lives, away from London.
A close friend said: ‘I spoke to his sister and she is devastated. They are having to move, to change their identities. They are going through a very hard time.
‘This [revealing Emwazi’s identity] puts them at risk – they could be attacked by racists – and they have done nothing wrong. It’s not fair.
‘They are a good innocent family. This is not their fault, this [extremism] is not something the family would support in any way.
'But this is London – you can’t control what your kid does when they are an adult and go out and do their own thing.’
Emwazi was born in Kuwait, where he and his family belonged to the stateless Bidoun group of people of Iraqi origin, who complain they are denied citizenship and full access to education, work and healthcare in the emirate.
His parents decided to move in 1993 when he was six and their two eldest daughters only toddlers, suggesting they were seeking a better education and future for their children in Britain.
At St Mary Magdalene Church of England primary school he was the only Muslim pupil in his class.
At secondary school, Quintin Kynaston in St John’s Wood, Emwazi was nicknamed ‘Little Mo’ because of his thin frame and was targeted by bullies from another school.
+2
The family are asking to be given new identities after leaving their home in Maida Vale, west London (pictured), after their son was unmasked as killer Jihadi John
A former school friend said the gang of 15 and 16-year-olds would wait outside Quintin Kynaston for Emwazi, then 14.
‘They would steal his lunch money and push him around a bit,’ the friend said. ‘He was very quiet and a bit scrawny back then.
'It must have been terrifying for him to have four or five guys ganging up on him like that. He used to be a pretty normal kid, he was religious but in no way radical.
‘Whatever caused him to be what he has become happened after he left school.’
The football-mad youngster was said to have become increasingly strict about observing his Muslim faith as he reached his teens, when his younger sisters also began to wear the hijab.
Yesterday it was claimed Emwazi also featured in the video of the Jordanian pilot Mouath al- Kasaesbeh being burnt alive in a cage by IS last month.
He is said to have been one of the masked IS fighters cradling their weapons behind the pilot
- Parents and five siblings have fled home in Maida Vale, west London
- They are protesting their innocence and say they fear reprisal attacks
- Family friend said: 'you can’t control what your kid does as an adult'
Terrified relatives of Mohammed Emwazi want to change their identities over fears of revenge at tacks, friends said yesterday.
The jihadi’s parents have gone into hiding and are ‘living in fear’ that they and their children could be targeted by those demanding revenge.
Friends spoke out to defend the family – said to be moderate Muslims who had never supported extremism – fled their home in affluent Maida Vale, West London, before he was revealed to be the terrorist killer Jihadi John, and have not been seen since.
His Kuwaiti parents and their five other children – who the Mail has decided not to name – plan to change their identities to escape his notoriety and believe they will have to start new lives, away from London.
A close friend said: ‘I spoke to his sister and she is devastated. They are having to move, to change their identities. They are going through a very hard time.
‘This [revealing Emwazi’s identity] puts them at risk – they could be attacked by racists – and they have done nothing wrong. It’s not fair.
‘They are a good innocent family. This is not their fault, this [extremism] is not something the family would support in any way.
'But this is London – you can’t control what your kid does when they are an adult and go out and do their own thing.’
Emwazi was born in Kuwait, where he and his family belonged to the stateless Bidoun group of people of Iraqi origin, who complain they are denied citizenship and full access to education, work and healthcare in the emirate.
His parents decided to move in 1993 when he was six and their two eldest daughters only toddlers, suggesting they were seeking a better education and future for their children in Britain.
At St Mary Magdalene Church of England primary school he was the only Muslim pupil in his class.
At secondary school, Quintin Kynaston in St John’s Wood, Emwazi was nicknamed ‘Little Mo’ because of his thin frame and was targeted by bullies from another school.
+2
The family are asking to be given new identities after leaving their home in Maida Vale, west London (pictured), after their son was unmasked as killer Jihadi John
A former school friend said the gang of 15 and 16-year-olds would wait outside Quintin Kynaston for Emwazi, then 14.
‘They would steal his lunch money and push him around a bit,’ the friend said. ‘He was very quiet and a bit scrawny back then.
'It must have been terrifying for him to have four or five guys ganging up on him like that. He used to be a pretty normal kid, he was religious but in no way radical.
‘Whatever caused him to be what he has become happened after he left school.’
The football-mad youngster was said to have become increasingly strict about observing his Muslim faith as he reached his teens, when his younger sisters also began to wear the hijab.
Yesterday it was claimed Emwazi also featured in the video of the Jordanian pilot Mouath al- Kasaesbeh being burnt alive in a cage by IS last month.
He is said to have been one of the masked IS fighters cradling their weapons behind the pilot
[h=1]The shocking movie made by Jihadi John's sister: a dead schoolgirl, bloodied footsteps and a hooded maniac brandishing a knife[/h]
Jihadi John's younger sister produced a short film about a hooded serial killer chasing a schoolgirl as part of her A-level coursework, it has emerged.
The 19-year-old is now a media student at Middlesex University while the pair's brother, now 21, is a small-time criminal with hardline and outspoken Islamist views.
The masked Islamic State executioner, known as Jihadi John, was yesterday named as Mohammed Emwazi, a Westminster University graduate from West London.
His 19-year-old sister, like Emwazi, went to Quintin Kynaston school where she was a prefect and studied cinematography at A-Level.
Her film called 'The Killer's Footsteps', which depicted a dead schoolgirl, bloodied footsteps and a hooded maniac brandishing a knife, was made as part of her school coursework and contained themes about bullying.
The 19-year-old, whom MailOnline has decided not to identify, described the film as representing 'a dangerous, shocking criminal who is a serial killer.'
But she said the film teaches the audience that 'revenge is never the right answer.'
In her description of the short film, she said: 'We showed and represented this killer by hiding this person under a hoodies, in dark or very dim light to create a mysterious atmosphere throughout the film.
'By doing this we are able to play with the audiences mid a bit, and show them that the fact this killer can be anyone...But who?
+8
Jihadi John's 19-year-old sister, whom MailOnline has decided not to identify, produced a short film about a hooded serial killer for her coursework
'This killer can be a friend, family member, teacher, or in fact someone they have never meet before. However, the killer knows the protagonist and has been watching the protagonist.'
'The representation gives out a hidden message about how bullying is wrong, how we humans shouldn't stereotype people and pick on them because for what background they come from or the colour of their skin nor what they believe in.'
+8
The 19-year-old media student's short film showed a young woman lying dead on the floor
Emwazi’s brother, whom the Mail had decided not to name, is a member of the Woolwich Dawah group, which was also attended by the men convicted of Lee Rigby's killing.
The university graduate, who like his sibling has taken a keen interest in computer networks, listens to the teachings of radical preacher Khalid Yasin, according to reports.
Several of his friends use images similar to those used by extremists online and last night at least one of his 68 friends on Facebook was displaying the black flag of Islamic State.
He has also commented on videos, supporting one in which a woman is mocked for praying in a clumsy manner.
Her film, a 'thriller' depicting a hooded man chasing a girl through a school, was made as part of her coursework
+8
She described the short film as representing 'a dangerous, shocking criminal who is a serial killer'
He has at least two convictions, for handling a stolen police bicycle and a string of thefts at a shopping village - and has twice been hauled back for repeated breaches of community orders.
In 1996 the family moved to a three-bedroomed first floor flat in Warwick Crescent.
From there they moved to a run-down terrace in nearby Desborough Close, surrounded by council blocks.
Emwazi lived with his family at this small house for four years until 2002, the year his youngest sibling was born.
While Mohammed was at school his family moved again, this time to a flat near Lord’s cricket ground, where they remained until 2005.
+8
The media student said the film teaches the audience that 'revenge is never the right answer', pictured is a still from the video which shows a woman lying on the floor
- Jihadi John's younger sister is a media student at Middlesex University
- She produced a short film about a hooded serial killer as coursework
- 'The Killer's Footsteps' depicted dead schoolgirl and a maniac with a knife
- She said film teaches the audience that 'revenge is never the right answer'
- Islamic State executioner was yesterday revealed to be Mohammed Emwazi
- Emwazi's brother is a small-time criminal with hardline Islamist views
Jihadi John's younger sister produced a short film about a hooded serial killer chasing a schoolgirl as part of her A-level coursework, it has emerged.
The 19-year-old is now a media student at Middlesex University while the pair's brother, now 21, is a small-time criminal with hardline and outspoken Islamist views.
The masked Islamic State executioner, known as Jihadi John, was yesterday named as Mohammed Emwazi, a Westminster University graduate from West London.
His 19-year-old sister, like Emwazi, went to Quintin Kynaston school where she was a prefect and studied cinematography at A-Level.
Her film called 'The Killer's Footsteps', which depicted a dead schoolgirl, bloodied footsteps and a hooded maniac brandishing a knife, was made as part of her school coursework and contained themes about bullying.
The 19-year-old, whom MailOnline has decided not to identify, described the film as representing 'a dangerous, shocking criminal who is a serial killer.'
But she said the film teaches the audience that 'revenge is never the right answer.'
In her description of the short film, she said: 'We showed and represented this killer by hiding this person under a hoodies, in dark or very dim light to create a mysterious atmosphere throughout the film.
'By doing this we are able to play with the audiences mid a bit, and show them that the fact this killer can be anyone...But who?
+8
Jihadi John's 19-year-old sister, whom MailOnline has decided not to identify, produced a short film about a hooded serial killer for her coursework
'This killer can be a friend, family member, teacher, or in fact someone they have never meet before. However, the killer knows the protagonist and has been watching the protagonist.'
'The representation gives out a hidden message about how bullying is wrong, how we humans shouldn't stereotype people and pick on them because for what background they come from or the colour of their skin nor what they believe in.'
+8
The 19-year-old media student's short film showed a young woman lying dead on the floor
Emwazi’s brother, whom the Mail had decided not to name, is a member of the Woolwich Dawah group, which was also attended by the men convicted of Lee Rigby's killing.
The university graduate, who like his sibling has taken a keen interest in computer networks, listens to the teachings of radical preacher Khalid Yasin, according to reports.
Several of his friends use images similar to those used by extremists online and last night at least one of his 68 friends on Facebook was displaying the black flag of Islamic State.
He has also commented on videos, supporting one in which a woman is mocked for praying in a clumsy manner.
Her film, a 'thriller' depicting a hooded man chasing a girl through a school, was made as part of her coursework
+8
She described the short film as representing 'a dangerous, shocking criminal who is a serial killer'
He has at least two convictions, for handling a stolen police bicycle and a string of thefts at a shopping village - and has twice been hauled back for repeated breaches of community orders.
In 1996 the family moved to a three-bedroomed first floor flat in Warwick Crescent.
From there they moved to a run-down terrace in nearby Desborough Close, surrounded by council blocks.
Emwazi lived with his family at this small house for four years until 2002, the year his youngest sibling was born.
While Mohammed was at school his family moved again, this time to a flat near Lord’s cricket ground, where they remained until 2005.
+8
The media student said the film teaches the audience that 'revenge is never the right answer', pictured is a still from the video which shows a woman lying on the floor
[h=1]Jihadi John's unrequited love: ISIS fanatic 'borderline stalked' girl he had crush on at school as friends say he dressed like a gangster rapper, smoked cannabis and drank vodka despite being Muslim[/h]
- Jihadi John smoked cannabis and dressed like a gangster rapper at school
- ISIS executioner has been unmasked as Londoner Mohammed Emwazi
- He had an obsessive crush on classmate Ahlam Ajjot, 27, and 'stalked her'
- She has spoken of horror that world's most wanted terrorist lusted after her
-
- He was part of a gang and was violent towards boys at London school
[URL="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jihadi-john-jilted-high-school-5251392"][h=1]Jihadi John was jilted by high school sweetheart because of his BAD BREATH[/h]
[/URL]
Now this is funny.
In short, he was a skinny loser who got no pussy because he had zero game with women...and he also got picked on by other high school bullies, so he probably feels what he's doing today is some modicum of revenge on society as a whole. Pretty much the same reason a lot of kids join gangs (or the DNC, actually) today.
[/URL]
Now this is funny.
In short, he was a skinny loser who got no pussy because he had zero game with women...and he also got picked on by other high school bullies, so he probably feels what he's doing today is some modicum of revenge on society as a whole. Pretty much the same reason a lot of kids join gangs (or the DNC, actually) today.
[h=1]Jihadi John's father 'a bully and a collaborator with Saddam': Family fled to Britain from Kuwait after he was accused of helping forces during Iraqi invasion[/h]
The father of Jihadi John moved his family to Britain from their native Kuwait after being accused of collaborating with Saddam Hussein’s forces during Iraq’s invasion of the country, it was claimed yesterday.
A picture of Jasem Emwazi has emerged which suggests he is a conservative Muslim who shielded his children from Western culture.
Meanwhile his daughter’s former boss revealed how he had been aggressively confronted by Mr Emwazi after he was forced to sack her.
Mr Emwazi is now believed to be in hiding in Kuwait after his 26-year-old son Mohammed was last week identified as the masked Islamic State butcher who has fronted horrific hostage execution videos.
Aggressive: Jaseem Emwazi, father of Jihadi John, is back in Kuwait
Details of his 25-year-old daughter were revealed by her former employer who said she was forced to move from Britain back to Kuwait against her will and made to wear an Islamic headscarf.
Despite growing up in London, she ‘knew nothing about life’ and did not understand references to celebrities, such as reality TV star Kim Kardashian, popular films, cars and brands of alcohol, he said.
Mr Emwazi, 51, said by a family friend to be a former Kuwaiti police officer, was a member of the ‘Bidoun’ group of stateless people denied citizenship by countries in the Gulf.
Because he was originally from southern Iraq, he found his loyalties questioned after Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990.
He and his family applied to become Kuwaiti citizens but were turned down after facing allegations that they collaborated with the Iraqi army during the seven-month occupation, Kuwait’s Al Qabas newspaper reported.
Mr Emwazi then took his wife and his children, including Mohammed, to live in Britain in 1993. They settled in the north-west London suburbs of Maida Vale and Queens Park.
Last night it was revealed that Mohammed Emwazi worked as a top salesman for a Kuwaiti IT company aged 21. His former boss told the Guardian that he was ‘the best employee we ever had’.
‘He was very good with people. Calm and decent. He came to our door and gave us his CV,’ he added.
Emwazi earned 300 Kuwaiti dinars (£657) per month, plus 50 dinars (£109) expenses, and was promised 5 per cent commission on business he brought in.
During his time at the company in Kuwait City he requested time off to travel to London on two separate occasions. He left for good in April 2010.
Soon after, counter-terrorism officials in London detained him and prevented him from returning to Kuwait.
His father is now understood to be in Kuwait with other members of the family. The Kuwaiti security services are said to be monitoring them around the clock.
They spoke to Mr Emwazi on Saturday night, Channel 4 News reported. Contacted by phone yesterday, he said in a troubled voice: ‘Yes, I am Mohammed’s father.
'I am sorry but I don’t want to talk to the media.’
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The property in north west London where Emwazi is thought to have been brought up. His family fleed Kuwait when he was a young child
It seems his 25-year-old daughter unwillingly went to live in Kuwait after graduating from the University of Greenwich with a degree in architecture in June 2010.
She worked for HZ+P architects in the Gulf State from February to September 2011, earning £900 a month.
The firm’s owner Hamed Zubaid, 49, recalled that she was a ‘troubled girl’ who would burst into tears in the office.
‘Sometimes she used to cry. I remember she complained she didn’t want to be in Kuwait but her father was forcing her to be in Kuwait,’ he said.
‘She said she never felt at home here. She wanted to be in London. She was staying in her uncle’s house. She was saying that her uncle’s house didn’t make her feel comfortable.’
Mr Zubaid added: ‘She didn’t know the simplest things like which movie won an Oscar this year, or what car that was.
‘She didn’t know famous actors, or even what a bottle of Johnnie Walker whisky was. One time she asked, “Who’s Kim Kardashian?” She was sheltered in that way.
‘This is not what you would expect from someone who has grown up in London. Maybe the family forced her to lead quite a sheltered life.
'I definitely got that impression.’ After eight months, Mr Zubaid decided to end her employment because she was struggling with the work.
Two weeks later, he learned she had complained to the Kuwaiti Ministry of Labour about her treatment.
Then she turned up at the offices with her father, who demanded that she should be paid three months’ salary as compensation for losing her job.
Mr Zubaid said: ‘The father said, “I will not let her work for a man like you”. He was such a rude person. I almost hit him – I pushed him out.
'We let her on to our staff and gave her a chance.
'We even bought her an airline ticket for England. We went through a lot of trouble for her.'
- Jasem Emwazi is the father of infamous ISIS executioner Jihadi John
- He fled Kuwait with his family for Britain when extremist was a child
- He returned to the country after his son's identity was revealed last week
- Mr Emwazi has been described by sources in Kuwait as 'aggressive'
- He was accused of colluding with Saddam Hussein during Iraqi invasion
- One of his daughters was described by former bosses as 'sheltered'
The father of Jihadi John moved his family to Britain from their native Kuwait after being accused of collaborating with Saddam Hussein’s forces during Iraq’s invasion of the country, it was claimed yesterday.
A picture of Jasem Emwazi has emerged which suggests he is a conservative Muslim who shielded his children from Western culture.
Meanwhile his daughter’s former boss revealed how he had been aggressively confronted by Mr Emwazi after he was forced to sack her.
Mr Emwazi is now believed to be in hiding in Kuwait after his 26-year-old son Mohammed was last week identified as the masked Islamic State butcher who has fronted horrific hostage execution videos.
Aggressive: Jaseem Emwazi, father of Jihadi John, is back in Kuwait
Details of his 25-year-old daughter were revealed by her former employer who said she was forced to move from Britain back to Kuwait against her will and made to wear an Islamic headscarf.
Despite growing up in London, she ‘knew nothing about life’ and did not understand references to celebrities, such as reality TV star Kim Kardashian, popular films, cars and brands of alcohol, he said.
Mr Emwazi, 51, said by a family friend to be a former Kuwaiti police officer, was a member of the ‘Bidoun’ group of stateless people denied citizenship by countries in the Gulf.
Because he was originally from southern Iraq, he found his loyalties questioned after Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990.
He and his family applied to become Kuwaiti citizens but were turned down after facing allegations that they collaborated with the Iraqi army during the seven-month occupation, Kuwait’s Al Qabas newspaper reported.
Mr Emwazi then took his wife and his children, including Mohammed, to live in Britain in 1993. They settled in the north-west London suburbs of Maida Vale and Queens Park.
Last night it was revealed that Mohammed Emwazi worked as a top salesman for a Kuwaiti IT company aged 21. His former boss told the Guardian that he was ‘the best employee we ever had’.
‘He was very good with people. Calm and decent. He came to our door and gave us his CV,’ he added.
Emwazi earned 300 Kuwaiti dinars (£657) per month, plus 50 dinars (£109) expenses, and was promised 5 per cent commission on business he brought in.
During his time at the company in Kuwait City he requested time off to travel to London on two separate occasions. He left for good in April 2010.
Soon after, counter-terrorism officials in London detained him and prevented him from returning to Kuwait.
His father is now understood to be in Kuwait with other members of the family. The Kuwaiti security services are said to be monitoring them around the clock.
They spoke to Mr Emwazi on Saturday night, Channel 4 News reported. Contacted by phone yesterday, he said in a troubled voice: ‘Yes, I am Mohammed’s father.
'I am sorry but I don’t want to talk to the media.’
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The property in north west London where Emwazi is thought to have been brought up. His family fleed Kuwait when he was a young child
It seems his 25-year-old daughter unwillingly went to live in Kuwait after graduating from the University of Greenwich with a degree in architecture in June 2010.
She worked for HZ+P architects in the Gulf State from February to September 2011, earning £900 a month.
The firm’s owner Hamed Zubaid, 49, recalled that she was a ‘troubled girl’ who would burst into tears in the office.
‘Sometimes she used to cry. I remember she complained she didn’t want to be in Kuwait but her father was forcing her to be in Kuwait,’ he said.
‘She said she never felt at home here. She wanted to be in London. She was staying in her uncle’s house. She was saying that her uncle’s house didn’t make her feel comfortable.’
Mr Zubaid added: ‘She didn’t know the simplest things like which movie won an Oscar this year, or what car that was.
‘She didn’t know famous actors, or even what a bottle of Johnnie Walker whisky was. One time she asked, “Who’s Kim Kardashian?” She was sheltered in that way.
‘This is not what you would expect from someone who has grown up in London. Maybe the family forced her to lead quite a sheltered life.
'I definitely got that impression.’ After eight months, Mr Zubaid decided to end her employment because she was struggling with the work.
Two weeks later, he learned she had complained to the Kuwaiti Ministry of Labour about her treatment.
Then she turned up at the offices with her father, who demanded that she should be paid three months’ salary as compensation for losing her job.
Mr Zubaid said: ‘The father said, “I will not let her work for a man like you”. He was such a rude person. I almost hit him – I pushed him out.
'We let her on to our staff and gave her a chance.
'We even bought her an airline ticket for England. We went through a lot of trouble for her.'
Killer's links to London stun-gun robbers
by Vanessa Allen and Duncan Gardham
Mohammed Emwazi mixed with a violent street gang who used stun guns to target wealthy victims in London’s Mayfair, it has emerged.
He also had childhood links to other Islamic extremists who went on to join terror groups in Syria and Somalia.
Emwazi was known to associate with Choukri Ellekhlifi – a member of a masked gang which preyed on rich targets in a series of violent attacks.
The Moroccan-born criminal was thought to have been two years below the IS killer at Quintin Kynaston academy in St John’s Wood, North West London.
Choukri Elleklifi
But he fled to join an Al Qaeda group in Syria before he could be brought to justice, and was killed by government forces near Aleppo in August 2013.
He and Emwazi were both said to have fallen under the sway of extremists while they were at secondary school, before Emwazi was further radicalised by hate preachers he encountered at Westminster University.
School contemporaries claimed the older boy was involved in regular fights and the ‘borderline stalking’ of a female classmate.
He was said to have dressed like a ‘gangster rapper’ as a teenager and to have experimented with alcohol and cannabis, before being radicalised by fanatical Islamists in his late teens.
It is thought the toxic combination of their preaching and the violence he was exposed to through his association with Ellekhlifi may have fuelled his own descent into hate-filled brutality.
Ellekhlifi and two friends committed eight robberies against wealthy victims in Mayfair, central London, in the space of a few days in July 2012 – not long before Emwazi travelled to Syria and joined Islamic State.
Wearing masks, they threatened their victims with a stun gun and demanded they hand over possessions including wallets, watches and mobile phones.
Two of their victims ended up in hospital with minor injuries after the stun gun was fired directly at them, and a sub-machine gun was later found at the home of one gang member.
Ellekhlifi was charged but fled to Syria. He was found guilty in his absence and sentenced to six years for conspiracy to rob.
Before his death, he was pictured in the country wearing paramilitary equipment and clutching an AK-47. Emwazi was never accused of taking part in the robberies carried out by the gang. In a separate case, he was charged with possessing stolen bicycles, but was later acquitted by a jury.
He has also been linked to a network of British-based jihadists who have avoided deportation by using the Human Rights Act to block moves to force them to leave Britain.
They include an Al Qaeda suspect with known connections to the failed July 21 London bomb plot and a second London-based man accused of attending an Al Shabaab training camp in Somalia.
Emwazi has also been linked to radical hate preachers who taught ‘white widow’ Samantha Lewthwaite and the Woolwich killers Michael Adebowale and Michael Adebolajo.
Britain’s security services have faced criticism that he was able to travel to Syria undetected, despite his many links to known terror suspects.
This is despite emails sent by the militant in 2010 and 2011 claiming that MI5 was harassing him.
by Vanessa Allen and Duncan Gardham
Mohammed Emwazi mixed with a violent street gang who used stun guns to target wealthy victims in London’s Mayfair, it has emerged.
He also had childhood links to other Islamic extremists who went on to join terror groups in Syria and Somalia.
Emwazi was known to associate with Choukri Ellekhlifi – a member of a masked gang which preyed on rich targets in a series of violent attacks.
The Moroccan-born criminal was thought to have been two years below the IS killer at Quintin Kynaston academy in St John’s Wood, North West London.
Choukri Elleklifi
But he fled to join an Al Qaeda group in Syria before he could be brought to justice, and was killed by government forces near Aleppo in August 2013.
He and Emwazi were both said to have fallen under the sway of extremists while they were at secondary school, before Emwazi was further radicalised by hate preachers he encountered at Westminster University.
School contemporaries claimed the older boy was involved in regular fights and the ‘borderline stalking’ of a female classmate.
He was said to have dressed like a ‘gangster rapper’ as a teenager and to have experimented with alcohol and cannabis, before being radicalised by fanatical Islamists in his late teens.
It is thought the toxic combination of their preaching and the violence he was exposed to through his association with Ellekhlifi may have fuelled his own descent into hate-filled brutality.
Ellekhlifi and two friends committed eight robberies against wealthy victims in Mayfair, central London, in the space of a few days in July 2012 – not long before Emwazi travelled to Syria and joined Islamic State.
Wearing masks, they threatened their victims with a stun gun and demanded they hand over possessions including wallets, watches and mobile phones.
Two of their victims ended up in hospital with minor injuries after the stun gun was fired directly at them, and a sub-machine gun was later found at the home of one gang member.
Ellekhlifi was charged but fled to Syria. He was found guilty in his absence and sentenced to six years for conspiracy to rob.
Before his death, he was pictured in the country wearing paramilitary equipment and clutching an AK-47. Emwazi was never accused of taking part in the robberies carried out by the gang. In a separate case, he was charged with possessing stolen bicycles, but was later acquitted by a jury.
He has also been linked to a network of British-based jihadists who have avoided deportation by using the Human Rights Act to block moves to force them to leave Britain.
They include an Al Qaeda suspect with known connections to the failed July 21 London bomb plot and a second London-based man accused of attending an Al Shabaab training camp in Somalia.
Emwazi has also been linked to radical hate preachers who taught ‘white widow’ Samantha Lewthwaite and the Woolwich killers Michael Adebowale and Michael Adebolajo.
Britain’s security services have faced criticism that he was able to travel to Syria undetected, despite his many links to known terror suspects.
This is despite emails sent by the militant in 2010 and 2011 claiming that MI5 was harassing him.
[h=3]THE SCHOOL THAT PRODUCED THREE ISLAMIC EXTREMISTS: JIHADI JOHN'S ACADEMY UNDER INVESTIGATION[/h]Up to five schools are being investigated by the Department for Education which is worried about the radicalisation of pupils, it was reported last night.
The department’s counter-extremism unit has been called in after it emerged that former pupils had joined extremist groups.
The review includes Mohammed Emwazi’s former school – Quintin Kynaston academy in London – which is known to have had at least three ex-pupils join Islamic terror organisations.
As well as Emwazi and gangster Choukri Ellekhlifi, former pupil Mohammed Sakr left Britain to join Somalia-based Al Shabaab before being killed in a US air strike in early 2012.
Questions have now been raised about whether enough was done to prevent teenagers at the school being brainwashed by extremists.
Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has ordered officials to investigate the academy’s records to examine what measures were in place to tackle radicalisation.
A spokesman for the department said that the academy is ‘clearly a different school today’ than it was when Emwazi attended, but said they were reviewing records to ‘see if there are any lessons we can learn for the future’.
The school insists it is not a terrorist breeding ground and that it has been ‘proactive’ in working with the Government’s counter-terrorism strategy. Current headteacher Alex Atherton said: ‘Students that may have attended nine years ago are not a reflection of the students we are proud of having at Quintin Kynaston.’
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Emwazi's former school, Quintin Kayston Academy in north London, is being investigated amid fears over the radicalisation of pupils
The department’s counter-extremism unit has been called in after it emerged that former pupils had joined extremist groups.
The review includes Mohammed Emwazi’s former school – Quintin Kynaston academy in London – which is known to have had at least three ex-pupils join Islamic terror organisations.
As well as Emwazi and gangster Choukri Ellekhlifi, former pupil Mohammed Sakr left Britain to join Somalia-based Al Shabaab before being killed in a US air strike in early 2012.
Questions have now been raised about whether enough was done to prevent teenagers at the school being brainwashed by extremists.
Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has ordered officials to investigate the academy’s records to examine what measures were in place to tackle radicalisation.
A spokesman for the department said that the academy is ‘clearly a different school today’ than it was when Emwazi attended, but said they were reviewing records to ‘see if there are any lessons we can learn for the future’.
The school insists it is not a terrorist breeding ground and that it has been ‘proactive’ in working with the Government’s counter-terrorism strategy. Current headteacher Alex Atherton said: ‘Students that may have attended nine years ago are not a reflection of the students we are proud of having at Quintin Kynaston.’
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Emwazi's former school, Quintin Kayston Academy in north London, is being investigated amid fears over the radicalisation of pupils
Liberal elite are helping spread of extremism: Commentary by Professor Anthony Glees
Universities are meant to advance human understanding, expand our knowledge and serve as a platform for debate.
But tragically, through their failure to confront and root out Islamist radicalism, some British institutions are achieving the very opposite.
Instead of deepening the liberal roots of our civilisation, they are helping to allow intolerance to flourish through their unwillingness to confront extremism in their midst.
That insidious process has been graphically demonstrated by the case of Mohammed Emwazi, the Islamic State butcher nicknamed ‘Jihadi John’.
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Emwazi took off to join the murderous jihadi group Al-Shabaab within a few weeks of graduating in computer programming from Westminster University in London (pictured above)
As was revealed last week, Emwazi took off to join the murderous jihadi group Al-Shabaab within a few weeks of graduating in computer programming from Westminster University in London in 2009.
Having failed to sign up with Al-Shabaab in Somalia — he was arrested en route — he came back here.
MI5 approached him to try to make him see reason. Despite their best efforts, they could not dissuade him from violent fundamentalism. In 2013, Emwazi travelled to Syria. He is now the most repugnant terrorist in the world.
It is wrong to blame MI5 for the failure to keep him here. There were no laws to hold him in Britain nor was there hard evidence against him. So, we need new legislation to uncover and deal with potential recruits, and stronger intelligence services.
But the recent criticism of MI5 echoes, unwisely, the mindless and offensive drivel put out by ‘human rights’ campaign group Cage: that Emazi became a jihadist because of harassment by the security services. We should support our security community — only our enemies want to undermine it.
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Recent criticism of MI5 echoes, unwisely, the mindless and offensive drivel put out by ‘human rights’ campaign group Cage. Its research director Asim Qureshi is pictured
And, just as importantly, we must address the urgent question of Muslim radicalisation on British university campuses, especially through the influence of Islamic societies, which are often in thrall to a hardline agenda.
The roll call of student terrorists is long, indeed. James Brokenshire, the Security minister, has said that from 1999 to 2009, at least 45 per cent of those convicted of Al Qaeda-related terrorism in the UK had attended university or higher education colleges.
Yet neither the university system, dominated by the liberal Left, nor even important elements of the Coalition Government are willing to face up to this reality.
Only yesterday, it was revealed that the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary Vince Cable is trying to thwart Conservative plans to ban hate preachers from English universities.
‘Speakers who voice extreme views that are not aligned with British values of democracy and freedom should have the freedom to speak,’ said an aide to Cable, adding that even those who ‘want a caliphate’ should be heard in the public arena, because they could cause more damage by being ‘driven underground’.
This ultra-libertarian argument has long been the refuge of those unwilling to tackle radicalisation on campuses.
Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of Universities UK, has publicly stated that ‘clamping down on speakers is just not the way forward’ and even claimed ‘the whole point of university is to listen to these things’. It is an argument that is echoed by many other key figures in the sector.
In January — before the identity of ‘Jihadi John’ was revealed — 24 such figures wrote to the Government, demanding universities be exempt from the provisions of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill, which required them to keep an eye on their students and report extremist activity to the authorities.
One of the signatories was none other than Bill Rammell, head of Bedfordshire University, but from 2005 to 2008 a Labour Universities minister who insisted they work with government anti-terror plans.
How utterly depressing that he was supported not just by 500 professors, but by Baroness Manningham-Buller, once a doughty chief of MI5, but now head of Imperial College, and Lord (Ken) MacDonald, once a compelling Director of Public Prosecutions, but now reincarnated as a Oxford college head. The gamekeepers have become poachers.
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Mohammad Sidique Khan (left) began his terror training within a few years of graduating from Leeds Metropolitan University while Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (right) the so-called ‘underpants bombers’, was a student at University College London
But their stance could hardly be more wrong-headed. Freedom of speech cannot be a licence to attack non-Muslims, liberated women, Jews or gays.
Nor can it be a platform to demand the stoning of adulterers or the celebration of theocratic barbarism.
The claim from Nicola Dandridge that there is ‘no evidence’ to link ‘student radicals with violent extremism’ is just absurd. The opposite is true. Emwazi’s name is to be added to the chilling list of students from Britain who have turned to terror.
Within a couple of years of graduating from Leeds Metropolitan University, the leader of the group responsible for the 2005 London bombings, Mohammad Sidique Khan, began his terror training.
In 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called ‘underpants bombers’, a student at University College London from 2005 to 2008, tried to kill 289 people on a U.S. plane. The third member of UCL to be involved in terrorism, he had run its Islamic Society.
The following year, Roshonara Choudhry, a 21-year-old student at King’s College, London, almost succeeded in killing MP Stephen Timms with a kitchen knife. Receiving a life sentence, she was the third terrorist from that stable.
The 2010 ‘Stockholm bomber’ Taimur al-Abdaly, meanwhile, was a graduate of Luton University.
Michael Adebolajo, who murdered Lee Rigby on the streets of London in 2013, was a student at the University of Greenwich, where he converted to Islam.
The time has come to monitor every Islamic society in English universities, with a view to banning them if they have supported extremism. Vince Cable could not be more wrong when he says that only those who directly incite violence should be silenced. Sooner or later, extremism leads to violence. It must be stamped out.
Universities are meant to advance human understanding, expand our knowledge and serve as a platform for debate.
But tragically, through their failure to confront and root out Islamist radicalism, some British institutions are achieving the very opposite.
Instead of deepening the liberal roots of our civilisation, they are helping to allow intolerance to flourish through their unwillingness to confront extremism in their midst.
That insidious process has been graphically demonstrated by the case of Mohammed Emwazi, the Islamic State butcher nicknamed ‘Jihadi John’.
+10
Emwazi took off to join the murderous jihadi group Al-Shabaab within a few weeks of graduating in computer programming from Westminster University in London (pictured above)
As was revealed last week, Emwazi took off to join the murderous jihadi group Al-Shabaab within a few weeks of graduating in computer programming from Westminster University in London in 2009.
Having failed to sign up with Al-Shabaab in Somalia — he was arrested en route — he came back here.
MI5 approached him to try to make him see reason. Despite their best efforts, they could not dissuade him from violent fundamentalism. In 2013, Emwazi travelled to Syria. He is now the most repugnant terrorist in the world.
It is wrong to blame MI5 for the failure to keep him here. There were no laws to hold him in Britain nor was there hard evidence against him. So, we need new legislation to uncover and deal with potential recruits, and stronger intelligence services.
But the recent criticism of MI5 echoes, unwisely, the mindless and offensive drivel put out by ‘human rights’ campaign group Cage: that Emazi became a jihadist because of harassment by the security services. We should support our security community — only our enemies want to undermine it.
+10
Recent criticism of MI5 echoes, unwisely, the mindless and offensive drivel put out by ‘human rights’ campaign group Cage. Its research director Asim Qureshi is pictured
And, just as importantly, we must address the urgent question of Muslim radicalisation on British university campuses, especially through the influence of Islamic societies, which are often in thrall to a hardline agenda.
The roll call of student terrorists is long, indeed. James Brokenshire, the Security minister, has said that from 1999 to 2009, at least 45 per cent of those convicted of Al Qaeda-related terrorism in the UK had attended university or higher education colleges.
Yet neither the university system, dominated by the liberal Left, nor even important elements of the Coalition Government are willing to face up to this reality.
Only yesterday, it was revealed that the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary Vince Cable is trying to thwart Conservative plans to ban hate preachers from English universities.
‘Speakers who voice extreme views that are not aligned with British values of democracy and freedom should have the freedom to speak,’ said an aide to Cable, adding that even those who ‘want a caliphate’ should be heard in the public arena, because they could cause more damage by being ‘driven underground’.
This ultra-libertarian argument has long been the refuge of those unwilling to tackle radicalisation on campuses.
Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of Universities UK, has publicly stated that ‘clamping down on speakers is just not the way forward’ and even claimed ‘the whole point of university is to listen to these things’. It is an argument that is echoed by many other key figures in the sector.
In January — before the identity of ‘Jihadi John’ was revealed — 24 such figures wrote to the Government, demanding universities be exempt from the provisions of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill, which required them to keep an eye on their students and report extremist activity to the authorities.
One of the signatories was none other than Bill Rammell, head of Bedfordshire University, but from 2005 to 2008 a Labour Universities minister who insisted they work with government anti-terror plans.
How utterly depressing that he was supported not just by 500 professors, but by Baroness Manningham-Buller, once a doughty chief of MI5, but now head of Imperial College, and Lord (Ken) MacDonald, once a compelling Director of Public Prosecutions, but now reincarnated as a Oxford college head. The gamekeepers have become poachers.
+10
+10
Mohammad Sidique Khan (left) began his terror training within a few years of graduating from Leeds Metropolitan University while Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (right) the so-called ‘underpants bombers’, was a student at University College London
But their stance could hardly be more wrong-headed. Freedom of speech cannot be a licence to attack non-Muslims, liberated women, Jews or gays.
Nor can it be a platform to demand the stoning of adulterers or the celebration of theocratic barbarism.
The claim from Nicola Dandridge that there is ‘no evidence’ to link ‘student radicals with violent extremism’ is just absurd. The opposite is true. Emwazi’s name is to be added to the chilling list of students from Britain who have turned to terror.
Within a couple of years of graduating from Leeds Metropolitan University, the leader of the group responsible for the 2005 London bombings, Mohammad Sidique Khan, began his terror training.
In 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called ‘underpants bombers’, a student at University College London from 2005 to 2008, tried to kill 289 people on a U.S. plane. The third member of UCL to be involved in terrorism, he had run its Islamic Society.
The following year, Roshonara Choudhry, a 21-year-old student at King’s College, London, almost succeeded in killing MP Stephen Timms with a kitchen knife. Receiving a life sentence, she was the third terrorist from that stable.
The 2010 ‘Stockholm bomber’ Taimur al-Abdaly, meanwhile, was a graduate of Luton University.
Michael Adebolajo, who murdered Lee Rigby on the streets of London in 2013, was a student at the University of Greenwich, where he converted to Islam.
The time has come to monitor every Islamic society in English universities, with a view to banning them if they have supported extremism. Vince Cable could not be more wrong when he says that only those who directly incite violence should be silenced. Sooner or later, extremism leads to violence. It must be stamped out.
- Professor Anthony Glees is director of the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingham.
We pay the price for open door immigration. The whole family have a dark history and shouldn't of been let into the country whatsoever.
A person who mixed with violent street thugs and yet that ridiculous Asim Qureshi from Cage insists he was a lovely gentle person!!! How stupid can one be? As for trying to bring in to question the security services for radicalising him - I imagine that was started off in his own home!
And good old Britain lets anybody and everybody come and live here, especially if they hate Britain.
So, as usual he, and the whole family of course, fled 'straight to Britain'.....not the first 'safe' country, not the first 'tolerant' one...no, the most gullible one and we let him in, as bloody usual.
A person who mixed with violent street thugs and yet that ridiculous Asim Qureshi from Cage insists he was a lovely gentle person!!! How stupid can one be? As for trying to bring in to question the security services for radicalising him - I imagine that was started off in his own home!
And good old Britain lets anybody and everybody come and live here, especially if they hate Britain.
So, as usual he, and the whole family of course, fled 'straight to Britain'.....not the first 'safe' country, not the first 'tolerant' one...no, the most gullible one and we let him in, as bloody usual.
Cage is no collection of isolated loonies. As The Telegraph will describe here, it is part of a closely connected network of extremists relentlessly — and successfully — lying to young British Muslims that they are hated and persecuted by their fellow citizens in order to make them into supporters of terror. Cage has an active outreach programme in mosques, universities and community groups. Even more disturbingly, it continues to be treated as a credible partner by respected and respectable organisations, including Liberty and Amnesty International.
[h=1]Cage: the extremists peddling lies to British Muslims to turn them into supporters of terror[/h][h=2]Recent outbursts from advocacy group Cage highlight the problem of militant groups freely propagating the myth of Muslim persecution[/h]
Asim Qureshi talks during a press conference held by the CAGE human rights charity in London
As Asim Qureshi, of the campaign group Cage, took to the airwaves toexplain how Mohammed Emwazi, “Jihadi John”, was the real victim of recent events in Syria, you could almost hear the nation’s collective intake of breath.
Being turned back on his travels and questioned by the security services had, it seemed, left Emwazi with no alternative but to join Islamic State and behead seven innocent people. Further oppression by the UK’s apparatus of government terror included giving him a university education, his family a council flat and not actually arresting or detaining him for anything.
In most of Britain, these messages from Cage’s parallel universe were received with shock and contempt. But the unfortunate truth is that they have significant traction with parts of its target audience.
For Cage is no collection of isolated loonies. As The Telegraph will describe here, it is part of a closely connected network of extremists relentlessly — and successfully — lying to young British Muslims that they are hated and persecuted by their fellow citizens in order to make them into supporters of terror. Cage has an active outreach programme in mosques, universities and community groups. Even more disturbingly, it continues to be treated as a credible partner by respected and respectable organisations, including Liberty and Amnesty International.
Cage’s first lie — or at least partial truth — is that it is a “human rights advocacy group”, working with communities unjustly affected by the “war on terror”. It does work with people who have been tortured, or held without proper legal process, such as Shaker Aamer, the last British prisoner in Guantánamo Bay.
But long before its whitewashing of Jihadi John, Cage was also, quite clearly, a terrorism advocacy group. It campaigns for actual terrorists convicted not by kangaroo courts but by juries, on strong evidence, in properly conducted trials. It even campaigns for some terrorists who actually pleaded guilty — such as Mohammed Ahmed and Yusuf Sarwar, two friends from Birmingham sentenced to more than 12 years each last December after travelling to Syria.
Moazzam Begg, Cage’s outreach director, said that the pair “never joined Islamic State nor expressed intention to do so”, unfortunately neglecting to mention that they had joined a group affiliated to those well-known moderates, al-Qaeda. Begg also said Ahmed and Sarwar had “no intention of harming anyone” — not a view shared by the police, who found traces of military-grade explosives on their clothes, or the trial judge, who declared them “clearly dangerous”.
[SUP]Mohammed Nahin Ahmed (L) and Yusuf Zubair Sarwar, both 22, who have admitted preparing to carry out terrorist acts after they travelled to Syria from the UK to join rebel fighters[/SUP]
Cage, however, has used the case of the two men to bang its drum that “there is a dual system of law” for Muslims and non-Muslims in the UK, since “even what Muslims regard as legitimate jihad abroad… now constitutes ‘terrorism’”, while “non-Muslim Britons going to fight in Syria for private security companies… are untouched by current terrorism legislation”. This is untrue and in any case no non-Muslim Britons have gone to fight in Syria (a few have gone to Iraqi Kurdistan).
On Sept 25, a few months before protesting about the treatment of Ahmed and Sarwar, Cage issued a press release attacking that day’s “cynically timed police raids” against “a group that is well known for its outspoken views on UK foreign policy”. It said the raids were part of a “coordinated campaign orchestrated by the government” to promote its “hawkish stance” on Syria.
It unfortunately forgot to mention the name of the “outspoken” group which had been raided. It was al-Muhajiroun — a banned organisation formerly headed in the UK by Anjem Choudary and now linked to about a fifth of all terrorism convictions in Britain, including the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby. On Remembrance Sunday, Cage’s patron, Yvonne Ridley, wrote a touching piece for its website about how she’d be setting aside time to commemorate “those Brits who have sacrificed their lives, not for their country but for the plight of the oppressed. I really can’t think of anything nobler.” These fallen soldiers were Abdullah and Jaffar Deghayes, teenage al-Qaeda recruits from Brighton who died in Syria, she said, “as heroes”.
Other Cage favourites include Abu Qatada, the al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki — linked to at least a dozen terrorist attacks — and Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamist group which abducted 275 schoolgirls (the Bring Back Our Girls campaign is a “colonial trope” and criticism of Boko Haram is about “demonising Islam”, according to the Cage website.)
Last week, as well as claiming that Mohammed Emwazi had been “radicalised by Britain”, the Jihadi John story gave the group what it saw as an ideal chance to push its inflammatory broader agenda. “The UK has multiplied its military intervention in Muslim countries,” it claimed.
The number of British troops in Muslim countries is in fact nil, compared with more than 30,000 at the peak. “The culture of abuse [of Muslims] now runs so deep in the UK that there are virtually entire communities which, due to security services acting outside the rule of law, no longer have access to due process,” Cage claimed.
“Individuals are… in the worst cases tortured, rendered or killed, seemingly on the whim of security agents.” The Telegraph asked Cage for the names of those individuals in the UK who have been tortured, rendered or killed on the whim of security agents. It has been unable to come up with any since there is none.
We also asked for the names of anyone in the UK jailed without due process, again drawing a blank. Far from “deepening”, anti-terrorism powers have in fact been cut in the past five years with the abolition of control orders, the end of blanket stop-and-search and the halving of the pre-charge detention period from 28 days to 14.
In his notorious press conference, Mr Qureshi claimed that Britain had “created an environment where the security agencies can destroy the lives of young people without any recourse”.
[SUP]Cerie Bullivant, spokesman for Cage[/SUP]
This claim is disproved by the cases of the group’s own leaders. Mr Qureshi himself can have little complaint about the hand dealt him by Britain. He is a public-school jihadist, educated at the elite fee-paying Whitgift School in Croydon, a squash fanatic who once played for Surrey and the proud owner of a £530,000 home in that comfortable county. “I was extremely fortunate growing up,” he once confessed.
Both Mr Begg, Cage’s head of outreach, and Cerie Bullivant, its spokesman, had slightly rougher rides. They suffered from security service overreach — but they did have recourse, and they successfully used it.
Mr Begg was charged with terrorist offences — but had the case thrown out for lack of evidence. Mr Bullivant, Cage’s spokesman, spent two years on a control order — but was acquitted by a jury of breaching the order, which was itself later quashed by the High Court after the evidence behind it was revealed to be paper thin.
Justice should have been quicker in both their cases, but it was done. The problem, however, is that the facts — and the scorn of the mainstream media — matter little. Polling shows that Cage’s fantasies are widely believed among younger British Muslims. Most of Cage’s audience does not trust, or even read, the mainstream media. In Cage’s parallel universe, they are targeted online and through the group’s close links to many other extremist groups, above all some university Islamic societies.
Another Cage spokesman, Amandla Thomas-Johnson, was previously press officer for Fosis, the Federation of Student Islamic Societies. Fosis works closely with Cage, organising joint events, and is itself a highly problematic organisation, condemned by Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, for its “failure to fully challenge terrorist and extremist ideology”. It has hosted many of the Cage roster of favourites at its conferences, and a number of convicted terrorists have been officers of societies affiliated to Fosis.
[SUP]Mohammed Emwazi is 'extremely gentle', says British advocacy group Cage director[/SUP]
Emwazi was a student at the University of Westminster – and it is there that he may have been radicalised. The university, a hotbed of Islamist extremism in the past, has hosted at least 50 radical speakers in the past eight years, including Awlaki and Begg.
Only last week, it was due to receive Haitham al-Haddad, one of the country’s most notorious non-violent extremists, with whom Cage also has links.
Haddad, who has called Jews the “brethren of swine and pigs”, runs the Muslim Research and Development Foundation, based in the same East London street as Cage. The two organisations recently ran a joint campaign against the new Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill, now passed into law.
Other partners in the campaign are the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, which believes that voting is forbidden, and the Islamic Education and Research Academy (IERA), which has links to some Syrian jihadis and sends extremist speakers around the country. Two weeks ago, IERA and Cage held a joint event on “the limits of free speech” at which large sections of the audience applauded a call for apostates to be executed, according to Dan Hodges, one of the participants.
Non-student young people are targeted, too. Cage’s managing director, Muhammad Rabbani, is a former senior activist in the extremist Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE), based at the East London Mosque. Cage has held events at the mosque. Mr Rabbani was responsible for training young recruits to the IFE and told them: “Our goal is to create the True Believer, [and] to then mobilise these believers into an organised force for change who will carry out dawah [preaching], hisbah [enforcement of Islamic law] and jihad. This will lead to social change and Iqamatud-Deen [an Islamic social and political order].”
Mr Rabbani was also the gang outreach co-ordinator at the Osmani Trust, another IFE front which is accused of recruiting gang members to the IFE. Cage is based in the same building as Claystone, a new Islamist group closely linked to Haddad which pushes the same themes as Cage — that extremist Muslim organisations are unfairly demonised; that Muslims generally (rather than individuals holding extreme views) are under attack; that the authorities are acting without evidence; and that the threats of extremism and terrorism from non-Muslims are greater than the threats from Islamist extremism and terrorism.
But perhaps its most interesting links are with the mainstream liberal-left. Amnesty International, the human rights group, claims it has stopped working with Mr Begg after one of its key activists resigned in 2010 in protest at its links with Cage. But it is still working with Cage.
As recently as Oct 30, Amnesty, Liberty, Justice and five other mainstream human rights groups joined with Cage in a “collective” to make representations to the then inquiry into the treatment of British Army detainees. Amnesty’s director for Europe and central Asia, John Dalhuisen, and Liberty’s director, Shami Chakrabarti, signed the collective’s letter alongside Mr Rabbani. Cage also has close links with Universities UK (UUK), the collective body for British universities, which has taken a notably weak stance on campus extremism and strongly resisted attempts to ban Muslim bigots.
UUK also works closely with Fosis. After the Emwazi revelations, mainstream politics has settled into the usual groove, with calls for more powers for the security services. That would be a mistake. The security establishment already has more than enough powers. The issue, as case after case proves, is deciding which of the hundreds of potential suspects to apply them to.
What’s really lacking and badly needed is a counter-narrative to the story of victimisation and grievance peddled by Cage and its allies, a story that says Britain may not actually be that bad a place to be a Muslim.
Perhaps Mr Qureshi could be used as an example? The Government is supposed to be launching something like this in its new counter-extremism strategy, but any narrative that comes in an official wrapping is probably destined to fail.
Still, to the joy of some in the counter-terror world, Cage’s embrace of Jihadi John is a huge own goal. “They have finally stuffed themselves,” said one senior figure. “Making Emwazi their poster-boy of persecution is ridiculous and will show them up for what they really are.” Whether it’s a permanent problem for the terrorist lobby, or just a blip, remains to be seen.
[h=1]Cage: the extremists peddling lies to British Muslims to turn them into supporters of terror[/h][h=2]Recent outbursts from advocacy group Cage highlight the problem of militant groups freely propagating the myth of Muslim persecution[/h]
As Asim Qureshi, of the campaign group Cage, took to the airwaves toexplain how Mohammed Emwazi, “Jihadi John”, was the real victim of recent events in Syria, you could almost hear the nation’s collective intake of breath.
Being turned back on his travels and questioned by the security services had, it seemed, left Emwazi with no alternative but to join Islamic State and behead seven innocent people. Further oppression by the UK’s apparatus of government terror included giving him a university education, his family a council flat and not actually arresting or detaining him for anything.
In most of Britain, these messages from Cage’s parallel universe were received with shock and contempt. But the unfortunate truth is that they have significant traction with parts of its target audience.
For Cage is no collection of isolated loonies. As The Telegraph will describe here, it is part of a closely connected network of extremists relentlessly — and successfully — lying to young British Muslims that they are hated and persecuted by their fellow citizens in order to make them into supporters of terror. Cage has an active outreach programme in mosques, universities and community groups. Even more disturbingly, it continues to be treated as a credible partner by respected and respectable organisations, including Liberty and Amnesty International.
Cage’s first lie — or at least partial truth — is that it is a “human rights advocacy group”, working with communities unjustly affected by the “war on terror”. It does work with people who have been tortured, or held without proper legal process, such as Shaker Aamer, the last British prisoner in Guantánamo Bay.
But long before its whitewashing of Jihadi John, Cage was also, quite clearly, a terrorism advocacy group. It campaigns for actual terrorists convicted not by kangaroo courts but by juries, on strong evidence, in properly conducted trials. It even campaigns for some terrorists who actually pleaded guilty — such as Mohammed Ahmed and Yusuf Sarwar, two friends from Birmingham sentenced to more than 12 years each last December after travelling to Syria.
Moazzam Begg, Cage’s outreach director, said that the pair “never joined Islamic State nor expressed intention to do so”, unfortunately neglecting to mention that they had joined a group affiliated to those well-known moderates, al-Qaeda. Begg also said Ahmed and Sarwar had “no intention of harming anyone” — not a view shared by the police, who found traces of military-grade explosives on their clothes, or the trial judge, who declared them “clearly dangerous”.
[SUP]Mohammed Nahin Ahmed (L) and Yusuf Zubair Sarwar, both 22, who have admitted preparing to carry out terrorist acts after they travelled to Syria from the UK to join rebel fighters[/SUP]
Cage, however, has used the case of the two men to bang its drum that “there is a dual system of law” for Muslims and non-Muslims in the UK, since “even what Muslims regard as legitimate jihad abroad… now constitutes ‘terrorism’”, while “non-Muslim Britons going to fight in Syria for private security companies… are untouched by current terrorism legislation”. This is untrue and in any case no non-Muslim Britons have gone to fight in Syria (a few have gone to Iraqi Kurdistan).
On Sept 25, a few months before protesting about the treatment of Ahmed and Sarwar, Cage issued a press release attacking that day’s “cynically timed police raids” against “a group that is well known for its outspoken views on UK foreign policy”. It said the raids were part of a “coordinated campaign orchestrated by the government” to promote its “hawkish stance” on Syria.
It unfortunately forgot to mention the name of the “outspoken” group which had been raided. It was al-Muhajiroun — a banned organisation formerly headed in the UK by Anjem Choudary and now linked to about a fifth of all terrorism convictions in Britain, including the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby. On Remembrance Sunday, Cage’s patron, Yvonne Ridley, wrote a touching piece for its website about how she’d be setting aside time to commemorate “those Brits who have sacrificed their lives, not for their country but for the plight of the oppressed. I really can’t think of anything nobler.” These fallen soldiers were Abdullah and Jaffar Deghayes, teenage al-Qaeda recruits from Brighton who died in Syria, she said, “as heroes”.
Other Cage favourites include Abu Qatada, the al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki — linked to at least a dozen terrorist attacks — and Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamist group which abducted 275 schoolgirls (the Bring Back Our Girls campaign is a “colonial trope” and criticism of Boko Haram is about “demonising Islam”, according to the Cage website.)
Last week, as well as claiming that Mohammed Emwazi had been “radicalised by Britain”, the Jihadi John story gave the group what it saw as an ideal chance to push its inflammatory broader agenda. “The UK has multiplied its military intervention in Muslim countries,” it claimed.
The number of British troops in Muslim countries is in fact nil, compared with more than 30,000 at the peak. “The culture of abuse [of Muslims] now runs so deep in the UK that there are virtually entire communities which, due to security services acting outside the rule of law, no longer have access to due process,” Cage claimed.
“Individuals are… in the worst cases tortured, rendered or killed, seemingly on the whim of security agents.” The Telegraph asked Cage for the names of those individuals in the UK who have been tortured, rendered or killed on the whim of security agents. It has been unable to come up with any since there is none.
We also asked for the names of anyone in the UK jailed without due process, again drawing a blank. Far from “deepening”, anti-terrorism powers have in fact been cut in the past five years with the abolition of control orders, the end of blanket stop-and-search and the halving of the pre-charge detention period from 28 days to 14.
In his notorious press conference, Mr Qureshi claimed that Britain had “created an environment where the security agencies can destroy the lives of young people without any recourse”.
[SUP]Cerie Bullivant, spokesman for Cage[/SUP]
This claim is disproved by the cases of the group’s own leaders. Mr Qureshi himself can have little complaint about the hand dealt him by Britain. He is a public-school jihadist, educated at the elite fee-paying Whitgift School in Croydon, a squash fanatic who once played for Surrey and the proud owner of a £530,000 home in that comfortable county. “I was extremely fortunate growing up,” he once confessed.
Both Mr Begg, Cage’s head of outreach, and Cerie Bullivant, its spokesman, had slightly rougher rides. They suffered from security service overreach — but they did have recourse, and they successfully used it.
Mr Begg was charged with terrorist offences — but had the case thrown out for lack of evidence. Mr Bullivant, Cage’s spokesman, spent two years on a control order — but was acquitted by a jury of breaching the order, which was itself later quashed by the High Court after the evidence behind it was revealed to be paper thin.
Justice should have been quicker in both their cases, but it was done. The problem, however, is that the facts — and the scorn of the mainstream media — matter little. Polling shows that Cage’s fantasies are widely believed among younger British Muslims. Most of Cage’s audience does not trust, or even read, the mainstream media. In Cage’s parallel universe, they are targeted online and through the group’s close links to many other extremist groups, above all some university Islamic societies.
Another Cage spokesman, Amandla Thomas-Johnson, was previously press officer for Fosis, the Federation of Student Islamic Societies. Fosis works closely with Cage, organising joint events, and is itself a highly problematic organisation, condemned by Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, for its “failure to fully challenge terrorist and extremist ideology”. It has hosted many of the Cage roster of favourites at its conferences, and a number of convicted terrorists have been officers of societies affiliated to Fosis.
[SUP]Mohammed Emwazi is 'extremely gentle', says British advocacy group Cage director[/SUP]
Emwazi was a student at the University of Westminster – and it is there that he may have been radicalised. The university, a hotbed of Islamist extremism in the past, has hosted at least 50 radical speakers in the past eight years, including Awlaki and Begg.
Only last week, it was due to receive Haitham al-Haddad, one of the country’s most notorious non-violent extremists, with whom Cage also has links.
Haddad, who has called Jews the “brethren of swine and pigs”, runs the Muslim Research and Development Foundation, based in the same East London street as Cage. The two organisations recently ran a joint campaign against the new Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill, now passed into law.
Other partners in the campaign are the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, which believes that voting is forbidden, and the Islamic Education and Research Academy (IERA), which has links to some Syrian jihadis and sends extremist speakers around the country. Two weeks ago, IERA and Cage held a joint event on “the limits of free speech” at which large sections of the audience applauded a call for apostates to be executed, according to Dan Hodges, one of the participants.
Non-student young people are targeted, too. Cage’s managing director, Muhammad Rabbani, is a former senior activist in the extremist Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE), based at the East London Mosque. Cage has held events at the mosque. Mr Rabbani was responsible for training young recruits to the IFE and told them: “Our goal is to create the True Believer, [and] to then mobilise these believers into an organised force for change who will carry out dawah [preaching], hisbah [enforcement of Islamic law] and jihad. This will lead to social change and Iqamatud-Deen [an Islamic social and political order].”
Mr Rabbani was also the gang outreach co-ordinator at the Osmani Trust, another IFE front which is accused of recruiting gang members to the IFE. Cage is based in the same building as Claystone, a new Islamist group closely linked to Haddad which pushes the same themes as Cage — that extremist Muslim organisations are unfairly demonised; that Muslims generally (rather than individuals holding extreme views) are under attack; that the authorities are acting without evidence; and that the threats of extremism and terrorism from non-Muslims are greater than the threats from Islamist extremism and terrorism.
But perhaps its most interesting links are with the mainstream liberal-left. Amnesty International, the human rights group, claims it has stopped working with Mr Begg after one of its key activists resigned in 2010 in protest at its links with Cage. But it is still working with Cage.
As recently as Oct 30, Amnesty, Liberty, Justice and five other mainstream human rights groups joined with Cage in a “collective” to make representations to the then inquiry into the treatment of British Army detainees. Amnesty’s director for Europe and central Asia, John Dalhuisen, and Liberty’s director, Shami Chakrabarti, signed the collective’s letter alongside Mr Rabbani. Cage also has close links with Universities UK (UUK), the collective body for British universities, which has taken a notably weak stance on campus extremism and strongly resisted attempts to ban Muslim bigots.
UUK also works closely with Fosis. After the Emwazi revelations, mainstream politics has settled into the usual groove, with calls for more powers for the security services. That would be a mistake. The security establishment already has more than enough powers. The issue, as case after case proves, is deciding which of the hundreds of potential suspects to apply them to.
What’s really lacking and badly needed is a counter-narrative to the story of victimisation and grievance peddled by Cage and its allies, a story that says Britain may not actually be that bad a place to be a Muslim.
Perhaps Mr Qureshi could be used as an example? The Government is supposed to be launching something like this in its new counter-extremism strategy, but any narrative that comes in an official wrapping is probably destined to fail.
Still, to the joy of some in the counter-terror world, Cage’s embrace of Jihadi John is a huge own goal. “They have finally stuffed themselves,” said one senior figure. “Making Emwazi their poster-boy of persecution is ridiculous and will show them up for what they really are.” Whether it’s a permanent problem for the terrorist lobby, or just a blip, remains to be seen.
Nice start to the weekend...where's the White Sox announcer to say "He Gone!"
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...laim-British-ISIS-fanatic-targeted-Raqqa.html
Jihadi John is 'evaporated' at ISIS' 'crucifixion' clocktower: US drone strike takes out British executioner at site of fanatics' worst crimes - but victims' families say they wanted 'coward to suffer'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...laim-British-ISIS-fanatic-targeted-Raqqa.html
Jihadi John is 'evaporated' at ISIS' 'crucifixion' clocktower: US drone strike takes out British executioner at site of fanatics' worst crimes - but victims' families say they wanted 'coward to suffer'
