Julian Assange’s bail conditions were varied today, to enable him to stay at the Frontline Club. The Frontline Club is owned by Vaughan Smith, a retired Colonel in the Grenadier Guards, and Assange is a house guest at his country pile.
I know little about Vaughan Smith and the Frontline Club, and so I don’t really have an opinion on them. They seem to be a broadly liberal institution, which provides a platform – among many others – to those involved in fringe politics. A few events over the past couple of years have caught my attention.
The Frontline Club is the venue of choice for the Salafi Jihadi organisation, CagePrisoners. Here are a few of the events hosted there:
- Cageprisoners release report on remaining Yemeni Guantanamo detainees
- Asim Qureshi discussing Moscow Metro bombings at the Frontline Club
- UK authorities spy on and recruit young Muslims – new cases and report launch.
- Former Prisoners Launch the Guantanamo Justice Centre in London
They also hosted Azzam “Kaboom” Tamimi. Alistair Crooke of the pro-Islamist lobby group, Conflicts Forum appeared on a panel. It also held an event in which Avi Shlaim interviewed Shlomo Sands.
On their “What We Are Reading” page, they list an article by the neo Nazi and Holocaust denier, “Israel Shamir” in Counterpunch, which spins a wild conspiracy involving the Guardian, the NYT and the CIA.
Here is an article by CagePrisoners’ Asim Qureshi on the Frontline site.
They also appear to have a blog, which is written by Hodan Yusuf-Pankhurst. She is the wife of the Hizb ut Tahrir extremist, Reza Pankhurst.
I know little more about Vaughan Smith and the Frontline Club. I’m interested in the impressions of anybody else who has followed this institution more closely.
