In 2010 Amnesty, Liberty and a number of other campaigning organisations formed a coalition with the Salafi Jihadi campaign group, CagePrisoners. The coalition was to work together in relation to the Government’s Torture Inquiry.
CagePrisoners is an organisation which is run by Moazzam Begg, a man who was arrested following a stint in Afghanistan, where he had been helping an Al Qaeda activist, Abu Rideh, build schools. Abu Rideh’s schools were created to educate the children of Arabic speakers: whose father’s were “some of the world’s most wanted men”. Its Executive Director, Asim Qureshi, was filmed on a Hizb ut Tahrir demonstration, exhorting British Muslims to support “jihad” against British troops. CagePrisoners campaigns exclusively for those arrested and convicted in relation to terrorist offences, and had a close relationship with the Al Qaeda recruiter, Anwar Al Awlaki.
You will remember that Amnesty hounded out the veteran South Asian feminist, Gita Sahgal, when she raised concerns about Amnesty’s partnership with CagePrisoners.
The coalition of disgrace is in the news again today. It has decided to “boycott” the Torture Inquiry. You can read their letter here and CagePrisoners’ reaction here. The BBC also reports that a letter of complaint has been sent to the inquiry by solicitor, Tayyab Ali, who is also the lawyer for the antisemite, Raed Salah, and is standing counsel to Hizb ut Tahrir.
