So now we know that Chris Nineham thinks demonstrating outside the Russian embassy “wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference”.
The “Stop the War Coalition” vice chair and his fellows make very different calculations when it comes to other diplomatic missions in London.
The High Commission for Pakistan, for example.
Here is Nineham speaking outside the Commission in November 2010. His cause – championed with “the support and the solidarity of the Stop the War Coalition” – is Aafia Siddiqui, a citizen of Pakistan. The demonstration’s demand is that Pakistan ask the United States to send Siddiqui home.
And what a cause Aafia Siddiqui is. In 2004, the Director of the FBI named her as an “an al Qaeda operative and facilitator” among the Bureau’s most wanted. This is how she became known as “Lady al-Qaeda”.
In 2008 Siddiqui was arrested in Afghanistan by Afghan police officers. This is what they found:
…a number of items in her possession, including handwritten notes that referred to a “mass casualty attack” and that listed various locations in the United States, including Plum Island, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, and the Brooklyn Bridge. Other notes in SIDDIQUI’s possession referred to the construction of “dirty bombs,” and discussed various ways to attack “enemies,” including by destroying reconnaissance drones, using underwater bombs, and deploying gliders.
American personnel were alerted and came to interview her. She managed to grab an unattended rifle and tried to kill the American team and Afghan officers. She was subsequently taken to New York and charged with attempted murder. She was found guilty by a jury in open court in February 2010.
Siddiqui used the New York court as a stage for gross antisemitic outbursts. Here she is during jury selection:
On the second day of jury selection at her attempted murder trial in federal court in Manhattan, Aafia Siddiqui demanded genetic testing for jurors. “If they have a Zionist or Israeli background . . . they are all mad at me,” she told the judge. “I have a feeling everyone here is them [sic] – subject to genetic testing. They should be excluded if you want to be fair,” she said according to media reports. She told the judge that she had nothing to do with the attacks and suggested Israel was behind them, but insisted she’s not an anti-Semite.
Meanwhile, as Federal Judge Richard Berman quizzed the jury panel whether their 9/11 experiences would influence their deliberations, Aafia stood up from the defence table. “The next question will be on anti-Semitism, Israel was behind 9/11. That’s not anti-Semitic,” she said.
This was her reaction when she was convicted:
Aafia Siddiqui threw up her arms after the jury found her guilty of attempted murder and heckled the jurors as they left the court room, shouting “This is a verdict coming from Israel, not America.”
She had some lovely support at the trial:
…two jurors were excused from duty after they told the judge that a man in the visitors’ gallery made a hand motion as if he were firing a gun at them and mouthed an obscenity.
One of the jurors told the judge he was “really freaked out” by the incident and another said he could not remain impartial “anytime anyone makes what I view as a death threat.”
All of this disturbing information and more was widely reported during the trial. None of it moved Mr Nineham. Apart from spurring him to speak up for Siddiqui, of course, nine months after her conviction. His message included a set of barefaced lies spread by Islamist extremists at the time.
Indeed, extremists who were already notorious in 2010 spoke alongside Nineham at this demonstration. They included the nasty Khomeinist Massoud Shadjareh, Jamal Harwood of Hizb ut-Tahrir, Abdullah Hasan of the Islamic Forum of Europe, Salafist preacher Wasim Kempson, and Uthman Lateef, one of the worst terrorist supporters in the country.
Keep in mind that this demonstration was but one episode in Mr Nineham’s own extremist career. In this post you will see him spell out the key stopper message – the far left and “the resistance” in the Middle East are a team. He’s also good at tearing down the banners of Iranians for freedom, cheered on by Mr Corbyn.
Remember that Mr Corbyn, former chairman of the “Stop the War Coalition”, proudly attended a stopper rally just a week ago. It is one of his favourite causes and his praise for the stoppers last weekend was effusive.
I’ll tell you what won’t make “a blind bit of difference” to me – any protestations from Corbyn and his camp that they really do oppose antisemitism and terrorism.
