You will have seen the news today that six men from Birmingham have been charged with terrorism offences. The worst of them reportedly planned a suicide bombing campaign and had travelled to Pakistan to learn the gruesome trade. Others allegedly knew what they were up to and did not report them to the police. This too is a crime.
The plot was disrupted by the police and the security services, who appear once again to have a done good job of keeping Britain safe.
Most of us will cheer them on. But some people are instead very keen to make life as difficult as possible for the police and intelligence officers. Cageprisoners, for example, offers this advice to terrorism suspects:
The goal of MI5 is to gather intelligence and they will try their hardest to extract as much as they can from you with each meeting. Anything they may offer, in terms of monetary incentives/jobs, is solely for their own benefit and not yours – and it is worth remembering that. Again, never think that any question they ask is innocent. Don’t give away any personal details about yourself or anyone else, however harmless they might seem.
That’s because Cageprisoners backs jihadis. Asim Qureshi of the Al Qaeda / Taliban support group has made that as plain as can be at a Hizb ut-Tahrir demonstration in front of the US embassy in London, at a time when British soldiers were being targeted by jihadis in both Iraq and Afghanistan:
We embrace the mercy. We embrace every single thing that is set upon us and we deal with it because we have no fear. So when we see the example of our brothers and sisters fighting in Chechnya, Iraq, Palestine, Kashmir, Afghanistan then we know where the example lies. When we see Hezbollah defeating the armies of Israel, we know what the solution is and where the victory 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.
Asim Qureshi is of course the man who has also told British Muslim students that yes, of course they can go to jihad.
Does the East London Mosque, which insists it opposes extremism, have any problem with Cageprisoners? Apparently not. The mosque’s London Muslim Centre is scheduled to play host to a Cageprisoners fundraising event next month.
Over its last five financial years the East London Mosque has received a total of £2.6 mn in public funding.
