Prevent strategy? 'Jihadi John' Emwazi radicalised by MI5/6

[TonyGosling]

Why Britain won’t talk about crucial elements of Jihadi John’s story
BEN HAYES 28 February 2015
The role of our security services in the actions of 'Jihadi John' needs grown up discussion - we must not forget the lessons of Northern Ireland.
https://opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/ben-hayes/why-britain-won’t-tal k-about-crucial-elements-of-jihadi-john’s-story

In “Suspect Community: People’s Experience of the Prevention of Terrorism Acts in Britain”, professor Paddy Hillyard produced what remains the world’s most detailed ethnographic study of the impact of repressive laws and state policies on what we now call “radicalisation”. That was 1993. Hillyard, a former chair of the National Council of Civil Liberties (now Liberty), had interviewed more than 100 people of Irish catholic descent and provided unequivocal evidence that their everyday treatment at the hands of the British state had boosted support for Irish republicanism, acted as a recruiting sergeant for the IRA and fuelled “the Troubles”. Of course it wasn’t the only “radicalising” factor: Bloody Sunday, a shoot-to-kill policy and state collusion with Loyalist paramilitaries also played their part. As of course did the violence, propaganda and popularity of organisations like the IRA.

We could learn a lot from people like Paddy Hillyard and the incremental moves toward truth and reconciliation in the north of Ireland. Instead, this valuable insight is being steadily exorcised from public debate – as are the similar experiences of Muslim communities at the hands of the British state.

Yesterday the identity of “Jihadi John”, the ISIS executioner-in-chief, was revealed to belong to British citizen Mohammed Emwazi. The human rights group CAGE – the only organisation in Britain who offers legal support to Muslims who have been interrogated or harassed by the security services (support which is readily available to most others questioned by the UK authorities) – produced a 3,000 word dossier detailing his treatment between 2009 and 2013. This included, inter alia, the surveillance of his movements, the interception of his telecommunications, the orchestration of his arrest in Tanzania and transfer to the Netherlands where he was interrogated by MI5, attempts to coerce him into becoming an MI5 informer, harassment of his family and fiancé, and the prevention of his resettlement in Kuwait – all in the absence of any formal allegation, charge or prospect of official recourse.

Since this occurred well before Mohammed Emwazi’s departure from the UK and appearance in Syria as “Jihadi John”, one might have thought our media duty bound to ask whether this and other encounters played any part in his decision to go there. Indeed the most revealing exchange, which should surely have been on the lips of any journalist worth their salt, is the following, spoken by MI5 agent “Nick”: “Listen Mohammed: You’ve got the whole world in front of you; you’re 21 years old; you just finished Uni – why don’t you work for us?” When Mohammed declines, he is told: “You’re going to have a lot of trouble... You’re going to be known... you’re going to be followed... life will be harder for you.”

Let us be clear that whatever else may have transpired since this exchange, here is a credible allegation of state-sanctioned blackmail of one of our citizens upon pain of having his life ruined by unaccountable security forces. When things like this happen to Muslims in Arab dictatorships, we talk about “secret police” and “fearsome security apparatuses”. When they happen here, we put our fingers in our ears and demand that Muslims “get over themselves” and condemn acts of terrorism.

And so it was that Kay Burley of Sky News duly began her interview with a CAGE spokesman by asking “What level of harassment by the security services here in the United Kingdom justifies beheadings?” – a plainly preposterous straw man argument that literally no-one was making. Liberal pin-up Jon Snow also glossed over the evidence produced by CAGE, before getting down to the most important business of the day: demanding that their spokespeople condemn terrorism, and seeking to belittle them when they question why this demand is only ever made of Muslims, or worse still, refuse to participate in the ridiculous spectacle.

It was already a nailed-on certainty that the government and the media would turn the “extremist” spotlight onto CAGE and its supporters in a witch hunt that would make McCarthy blush. But having anointed Peter Oborne the Supreme Ruler of Media Integrity for taking on the Telegraph, perhaps they should ask him what he thinks about CAGE’s treatment at the hands of the establishment. Or reflect on CAGE’s founder and director’s own experience at the hands of MI5, or his three-and-a-half years of illegal detention in Guantanamo Bay and Belmarsh prisons. Nope: they’re just “apologists for terrorism”, guilty until proven innocent.

Human rights and social justice groups should be supporting CAGE in its endeavours to uncover the extra-judicial prosecution of the “war on terror” in this country. They won’t because they’re scared of the “public perception”. Much easier to support free expression from behind the comfort of a “Je Suis Charlie” banner. The country should be having a serious conversation about the way “intelligence-led policing” has undermined our national security and human rights by linking the treatment of Mohammed Emwazi to the discredited use of informants and double agents in Northern Ireland, to the links between MI5 and extremist groups, and to an undercover culture that has perverted the pursuit of social and legal justice in this country. It won’t, because we’ll turn a blind eye to anything at the drop of the T-word.

Something fundamental has to change if we’re to have the grown-up conversations that can inform these policies, and that can temper the appeal of extremism and violence in all quarters.

[TonyGosling]

‘Jihadi John’ Driven to ISIS by British Spy Harassment, Group Says
Megan Gibson @MeganJGibson Feb. 26, 2015
http://time.com/3723666/mohammed-emwazi-radicalization/

Mohammed Emwazi complained about his treatment to an advocacy group before he traveled to Syria

Masked ISIS Executioner Is Identified
U.S. Military Plan For Looming ISIS Offensive Takes Shape
The Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) executioner who is believed to have killed several Western hostages in Syria was harassed by British security forces and prevented from moving to his native Kuwait to marry and start a new life in the months before he went to Syria, according to an advocacy organization he was in contact with.

edia reported that Emwazi, who was brought up in London, was known to British security agencies and had been questioned and detained on a number of occasions since 2009. In 2010, however, he contacted CAGE, a London-based organization that supports people victimized by security agencies, to complain that he was being made to feel “like a prisoner” in the U.K.

MORE: Inside ISIS, a TIME Special Report

According to CAGE, Emwazi found himself the victim of harassment and abuse by U.K. authorities, which left him “greatly distressed.” In a statement about Emwazi, released on Thursday, CAGE research director Asim Qureshi said, “We now have evidence that there are several young Britons whose lives were not only ruined by security agencies, but who became disenfranchised and turned to violence because of British counter-terrorism policies coupled with long standing grievances over Western foreign policy.”

Emwazi’s first run-in with security officials took place in 2009, when he traveled to Tanzania with two friends, according to his testimony to CAGE. They were detained there and deported to Amsterdam, where he was interrogated by an officer of Britain’s domestic security agency MI5 who accused him of trying to travel to Somalia to join al-Shabab, an Islamist group. The officer then tried to persuade him to work for MI5.

During this time, M15 visited his fiancée in London who later broke off their engagement. Soon after, Emwazi moved to Kuwait, where he worked for a computer company and got engaged to a Kuwaiti woman. He visited London twice during this time, but when he attempted to return to Kuwait after his second visit, in 2010, Emwazi was detained and then barred from leaving the U.K. According to the BBC, Emwazi was being investigated by MI5 “as a suspected core member of an extremist network” operating in London.


In an email sent to CAGE in 2010, after he was prevented from traveling back to Kuwait, Emwazi wrote, “I never got onto the flight, what was the point, I said to myself: I’ll just get rejected. I had a job waiting for me and marriage to get started. But now I feel like a prisoner, only not in a cage, in London. A person imprisoned and controlled by security service men, stopping me from living my new life in my birthplace and my country, Kuwait.”

His message continued: “I have been trying to find out the reason for my refused visa issue from my home country Kuwait, and a way to solve the issue. So through my friends in Kuwait, it has been said to me that Kuwait has no problem with me entering, and the reason for my refusal is simply because the U.K. agents have told them to not let me in!!”

CAGE has claimed that MI5 also interviewed Emwazi’s fiancée in Kuwait and knew he was planning to “start a life” there.

GO INSIDE AN ISIS GIFT SHOP
A mug with a militant commander's portrait on the side, found in a Islamic clothing and accessory shop in the Bagcilar district of Istanbul, Turkey.
A keyring with the iconography of the seal of the prophet, the iconography is also being used by the Islamic State IS.
found in a Islamic clothing and accessory shop in the Bagcilar district of Istanbul, Turkey.
A head band featuring the islamic iconography of Jihad, found in a Islamic clothing and accessory shop in the Bagcilar district of Istanbul, Turkey.
A scarf found in a Islamic clothing and accessory shop in the Bagcilar district of Istanbul, Turkey.
Guy Martin—Panos
A mug with a militant commander's portrait on the side, found in a Islamic clothing and accessory shop in the Bagcilar district of Istanbul, Turkey.


Friends of Emwazi’s, who spoke to the Washington Post, said that it was after these incidents that the young man became more radicalized. CAGE’s Qureshi also noted in his statement that “suffocating domestic policies aimed at turning a person into an informant but which prevent a person from fulfilling their basic life needs would have left a lasting impression on Emwazi. He desperately wanted to use the system to change his situation, but the system ultimately rejected him.”

It’s unclear exactly when or how Emwazi left Britain and joined ISIS, though a former hostage told authorities after being released that “Jihadi John” was one of several militants guarding Western captives at a prison in Idlib, Syria, in 2013. Two other militants reportedly had British accents, along with Jihadi John, and the trio became known as “the Beatles.”

British authorities have estimated that as many as 600 Britons have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join groups like ISIS. Yet while the U.K.’s antiterrorism policies have many critics beyond CAGE, there are others who say that they’re not the cause of radicalization. Jonathan Russell, of the Quilliam Foundation, a counterterrorism think tank, told TIME in November, “I wouldn’t say that counterterrorism legislation makes people radical. It is a grievance that is exploited by radicalizers.”

[TonyGosling]

Is this a genuine interview?
'Jihadi John': Extremists 'not radicalised by MI5'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31663988

Here's Sir John Sawyers - he of MI6 firestarting fame
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31669195

[TonyGosling]

Second hour: Investigative reports: [AUDIO]
Prof. Stephen Dorril on... Prevent? MI5 turn Mohammed Emwazi from gentle Muslim into crazed killer
https://politicsthisweek.wordpress.com/2015/03/06/36095/
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/79643
Interview with professor Stephen Dorril from Huddersfield university, author of MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations, Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service. He discusses some of the ways MI6 work and mentions his forthcoming book on NATO ‘stay behind’ Gladio forces: clip of Mohammed Emwazi (Jihadi John) recorded in 2009 about MI5 coming to see him – explains how against 9/11 and 7/7 he was and annoyed MI5 were not very persuasive – more like bullying him – the police and secret services’ ‘prevent’ strategy totally failed – ex MI6 Director General Sir John Sawers gets 25 minute interview on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme last Saturday playing the role of the clergy or theologians in deciding whether Islam is compatible with 21st century capitalism – compared to cults changing peoples views, brainwashing; scrutiny of security services as Sir Malcolm Rifkind resigns the chair of Intelligence and Security Committee – secret service budget is going up; surveillance of people who go on to carry out terror attacks – Adebolajo, 7/7; IRA; clip from BBC Today Programme of Sir John Sawyers, former head of MI6; state terrorists – Gaddafi; SAS – Iraq killing on industrial scale from MI6, GCHQ information. Interview with Kevin Phillips, Chair of Avon and Somerset Police Federation: Prevent Strategy not working – preventing Muslim extremism; police discipline; PMQs Diana Johnson – 16,000 job cuts to police preventing proper policing; Chief Constable Nick Gargan suspended with full pay – court hearing in April; custody suites; Crown Prosecution Service. Assassination of Russian neoliberal politician Boris Nemtsov in Moscow, Russia: with Ukrainian model girlfriend; was being followed the whole day; the assassin’s getaway car was from private security firm used by the Russian Finance ministry; happened just as world’s journalists were knocking off for the weekend and only skeleton staff left to analyse the killing while prepared campaign run in Western media pinning the blame on Putin? Putin actually has 85% popularity; was attack a NATO false flag; Ukraine coup snipers; Progress Party; evidence Yabloko Party took $2.5m from US Nemtsov progress party disagreed with Yabloko. Editor of Conspiracy Theory Research List (CTRL) and publisher at TrineDay Kris Milligan discusses Colonel Landsdale’s ‘lose scenario on Vietnam war which was all about drug-running. The history of Dutch, Scottish and US HSBC and opium smuggling in Vietnam war – also Afghanistan, CIA and drug smuggling.
http://www.ctrl.org/graphicHome/CTRLhome.html

[TonyGosling]

Who is “Jihadi John”? What the Mainstream Media Won’t Tell You
By Shawn Helton
Global Research, March 13, 2015
21st Century Wire
http://www.globalresearch.ca/who-is-jihadi-john-what-the-mainstream-me dia-wont-tell-you/5436287


As the Jihadi John narrative continues to evolve, there are pressing questions concerning British security services, Mohammad Emwazi and his family…

Over the past couple of weeks, British security services, along with the FBI, revealed that they had ‘unmasked’ the ISIS terror video persona known as ‘Jihadi John’, and had even known his identity for the last 6 months. While this news stunned the international community - it was quickly revealed that the man suspected of being the ISIS front-man was known by MI5 for the past 6 years.

The man purported to be the infamous ISIS executioner by Western media, is former computer programmer, 27-year-old Mohammad Emwazi. According to reports, Emwazi is believed to have left the UK to join ISIS militants in Syria sometime in 2013.

However, some reports have stated that Emwazi was headed to do aid work in Turkey in 2013. Emwazi’s parents reported him missing in August of 2013 and were told that he was in Syria by authorities some four months later.

Scripted Terror

Following the alleged unveiling of Jihadi John’s identity, Kuwaiti government officials disclosed that Mohammad Emwazi’s parents recognized him in the propagandized ISIS ‘beheading’ videosand that they knew of their son’s alleged extremist views before he headed to Syria, according tothe UK’s Telegraph.

In the news release for the Telegraph entitled, “Jihadi John: Father accuses Mohammed Emwazi of being a dog and terrorist,” written by Robert Tait, discussed a controversial interview with an apparent colleague of 51-year-old Jassem Emwazi, Mohammad’s father. The colleague was stated as being 40-year-old Abu Meshaal and he along with Jassem, are said to work together at a ‘Cooperative supermarket depot’ near the Kuwaiti-Iraqi border. Meshaal gave a stirring account of the elder Emwazi’s emotional state regarding his estranged son, seemingly paraphrasing a personal conversation that both men had about Mohammad and his suspected involvement with militants.

Here’s a portion of the Telegraph report for review:

“The father of Mohammed Emwazi described his son as a “dog, an animal and a terrorist” and revealed he begged his parents for forgiveness before joining Isil and becoming Jihadi John, the Daily Telegraph can disclose.”
“The colleague, Abu Meshaal, 40, said Mr Emwazi was in tears during Monday’s conversation, in which he described the identification of his son as the hooded executioner filmed beheading seven British, American and Japanese hostages as a “catastrophe” for his family.

He was very emotional and crying the whole time,” said Mr Meshaal. “He said, ‘my son is a dog, he is an animal, a terrorist. He said he had talked to him a lot trying to persuade him to return to his personal life but that the son didn’t listen to him. He said, ‘To hell with my son’.”

The report goes on to state that Emwazi’s father, Jassem, was ‘interrogated’ by Kuwaiti investigators last week and that he received a phone call in 2013 from Turkey, where Mohammad asked his parents’ blessing before heading to Syria to fight alongside ISIS and other militants.

Additionally, Kuwait’s Qabbas newspaper apparently spoke to another unnamed colleague which claimed that Jassem Emwazi had been ‘concerned’ long before his son was charged with being an internationally known terrorist.

The controversial report echoed across Western media outlets, with many citing the alleged quotes from Jassem Emwazi and other colleagues as being more evidence of Mohammad Emwazi’s descent into terror.

However, just one day later, Jassem Emwazi hired an attorney to stifle what he called ‘false rumours’ concerning his son and family in media. In fact, two of the first news releases to push the apparently false narrative, appeared to come from an ABC news story which claimed Emwazi’s mother knew her son was Jihadi John and the Telegraph story that was mentioned above from March 3rd.

The apparently ginned-up story involving Emwazi’s family garnered heavy circulation for 24-48 hour period, but was quickly buried in the news cycle following the conflicting account of Emwazi’s father.

In a report featured by The Guardian, it was disclosed that Jassem Emwazi, had indeed sought legal council regarding the apparently fabricated tales about his son and family:

“Jassem Emwazi told the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Qabas: “There is nothing that proves what is being circulated in the media, especially through video clips and footage, that the accused is my son Mohammed, who is being referred to as the alleged executioner of Daesh (Isis).”

“I have a message to the Kuwaiti people that many of the rumours are false,” he said. “Because I felt that some people have believed it, I have assigned a lawyer to defend me and to prove … that what is being said is untrue.”

The report continues:

“when asked directly by the Guardian on Monday, he (Jassem Emwazi) said this was untrue, adding that the information was an outright “lie, lie, lie.”

After reviewing this information, we’re left to consider the strong possibility that the Emwazi family quotes were likely planted in order to sensationalize and further distort public opinion over the ‘reality’ of Jihadi John’s alleged identity.

The current deception concerning the Emwazi story, appears to have been influenced by Western interests and reminds me of another fabled Kuwaiti tale that was used to sway public opinion in 1990. On October 10th, 1990, Nayirah al-Ṣabaḥ, the daughter of Kuwaiti ambassador for the United States, Saud Al-Sabah, provided a tearful testimony that turned out to be false, as she claimed to have witnessed Iraqi soldiers taking babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital during the Iraq invasion of Kuwait. This was the lie that Washington and its PR strategists used as a pretext for the Gulf War in 1990, pre-dating the WMD lie that was used to invade Iraq in 2003.

Like in 2002-2003, similar pressure by US military interests to mount a renewed war in the Middle East is clearly underway again – and again, Kuwait is playing a central role in ramping-up the drama.

There are many moving parts in the Emwazi story and we should first examine all angles before adopting any of the many assumptions currently being passed to the public via mainstream media and their government ‘sources’…


IMAGE: ‘The SITE of Terror’ – ISIS terror video presenter Jihadi John propagandized by the terror watchdog group SITE. (Photo link dailymail.co.uk)

Tale of the Tape

Following graduation from the University of Westminster, Emwazi is said to have been scrutinized and targeted for recruitment by Britain’s main intelligence agency MI5 after a planned safari with friends in Tanzania in May of 2009. After Emwazi’s treatment by authorities, he was said to have reached out to the human rights group CAGE.

Strangely, new reports have emerged stating that the reason for Emwazi’s detention and expulsion from Tanzania, according to local authorities, was because he had been drunk and disorderly while insulting immigration staff upon his arrival.

According to the home affairs minister in Tanzania, a document names Emwazi, Ally Adorus and Marcel Schrodel as having been drunk and displaying misconduct after their arrival in Tanzania. However, it should be mentioned that Tanzania authorities have close ties to Britain and this information should be examined more thoroughly.

Mohammad Emwazi’s relationship with the advocacy group CAGE and its research director Asim Qureshi, has stirred up a wave of controversy, along with the timed release of Emwazi information. CAGE’s dissemination of Emwazi material seemed to be simultaneously tied to the ‘official’ release of Emwazi’s identity by authorities. This is a key aspect to consider when looking at the many ‘moving parts’ in this case.

Recently, CAGE released an eye-opening tape recorded session with Mohammad Emwazi, and it was disclosed that MI5 agents had been tracking Emwazi and had confronted him, accusing him of having extremist views while actively seeking to recruit him to spy, or ‘inform’, presumably on other Muslims. The newly released material from CAGE depicts a man who appears to have been harassed, and one could even consider the very real scenario where Emwazi was coerced into alleged violent activity and joining to terror group ISIS.

Most shockingly however, were the recent audio recordings provided by CAGE, that displayed Emwazi’s condemnation for extremism, as he apparently stated that the attacks on 9/11 and London’s 7/7 bombings “were wrong.”

Here’s the short clip on YouTube from CAGE…



The recent Emwazi revelations have only added to the confusion, as security services also have a close relationship to CAGE and given the overall impact of this story - any information released from either entity should be closely examined for its authenticity.



IMAGE: Coerced Operative? – Was Mohammad Emwazi forced to participate, and ‘play a role’ in the fraudulent ISIS terror videos? (Photo link 24matins.fr)

Revisiting the Past

Another element to scrutinize in the Emwazi story, is that shortly after Mohammad was named as being Jihadi John, conveniently an “unnamed former school friend” is claimed to have recognized Emwazi as the terror presenter.

The friend explained that he first met Emwazi in 1999 when both had attended the recently scandal plagued institution Quintin Kynaston Secondary School in St John’s Wood, North London.

There have been at least two other former pupils at Quintin, that have also been implicated in terrorism, prompting some to be concerned about the institution.

Is it possible that this school was being used the groom future subjects in clandestine operations?

Back in 2009, UK intelligence services in partnership with Metropolitan Police, announced the existence of a covert social engineering effort known as the The Channel Project, which was being run in hopes to target children with traits which may indicate an attraction to “extreme” views and a susceptibility to being groomed by “radicalisers” in the future. It goes without saying, that a secret program of this kind could just as easily be used to groom future ‘radicals’ and informants too.

Here’s a video provided by Britain’s Channel 4, that depicts a camera shy Emwazi in his teenage years…





IMAGE: ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ – Mohammad Emwazi at Mary Magdalene Church of England primary school
in Maida Vale, West London. (Photo link Mirror.co.uk)

Emwazi relocated back to UK in 2010 after having worked as salesman for a Kuwaiti IT company, where he was regarded by his boss as being, “the best employee we ever had.” Emwazi’s former boss also noted in a Guardian report from March 1st that, “How could someone as calm and quiet as him become like the man who we saw on the news? It’s just not logical that he could be this guy.”

Emwazi is said to have been recruited to an unnamed ‘international terror gang’ sometime in 2012 by Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed who lived just a couple of miles from Emwazi’s Queen’s Park, West London home.

According to the Mirror, those on the periphery of Emwazi, appear to be affiliated to those involved in the 1998 US Embassy bombing in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, as well as those “said to be linked” to the 7/7 London bombings. One could argue that the 1998 Embassy bombing was a clear shift in operations with the US-backed Mujahideen proxy fighters, as they quickly became a ‘sworn’ enemy of the West after being linked to the 1998 bombing as “al-Qaeda” for the first time. The late 1990′s marked the ramp up to the War on Terror:

“Emwazi’s network spreads even further. A file seen by The Mirror shows a direct link between Ahmed Mohammed and two al-Qaeda killers.

One of the men, Saleh Nabhan, was behind the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 250 and the 2002 attempt to bring down an Israeli airline with Stinger missiles.

Together with Harun Fazul he also trained and guarded British terror suspect Samantha Lewthwaite – the White Widow.”

The same Mirror report from February 27th continued by explaining how Ahmed Mohamed met Mohammad Emwazi at a mosque, prior to Emwazi’s apparent radicalization some 3 years later.

Curiously, in the very same report by the UK’s Mirror, the unnamed former school friend who is said to have identified Emwazi, stated that Emwazi never went to a mosque and he never seemed that religious:

“Today security sources revealed that Emwazi, 26, and burkha disguise jihadi Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed met in 2006 at a West London mosque before Emwazi began a computer programming course at Westminster University.”

Is it possible that Ahmed Mohamed worked as a security services asset and that MI5, in conjunction with other groups, sought to recruit Emwazi at least 3 years prior to his detention in May of 2009?

Interestingly, is was reported that Ahmed Mohamed’s control order was quashed in the Court of Appeal in May of 2014, while Mohamed was still seemingly absent from the UK.


IMAGE: ‘The al-Qaeda & al-Shabaab link’ – Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed allegedly ‘averted MI5′
while pretending to be a woman cloaked in burka in 2013. (Photo link celebnew.com)

The Relationship of Terror & Security

In November of 2013, according to security officials, Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed was suspected to have been linked to a plot to bomb the London Olympics and another alleged Westgate-like attack on Eton College. Ahmed Mohamed was named as being a member of an“Al Shabaab sleeper cell known as the London Boys.”

As we reported last week here at 21WIRE, Emwazi’s longtime West London associate, former UK rapper Abdel Bary, the initial ‘Jihadi John’ suspect, had also been linked to the ‘London Boys’network, along with Emwazi.

We were told that Emwazi had “fled the gaze of MI5” in early 2013 to head for Syria, around the same time Bary disappeared from London – also near the same time that ‘burkha wearing’ Ahmed Mohamed gave the security agency the slip, escaping after being implicated in several terror plots.

How would it be possible for all three of these men to thwart MI5 and escape undetected from the UK, as they would have mostly certainly been closely watched considering their connection to theLondon Boys sleeper cell and the apparent affiliation to al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab?

Western political leaders and their media will publicly discuss the idea of so-called terror ‘sleeper cells’ ad nauseam, hiding in a nation near you, but none of them will acknowledge the historical fact that they themselves help to harbor, grow, foment and radicalize individuals through secret counter-terrorism operations. Allied nations of course, will bring up the fact that Western intelligence regularly uses double agents and informants, under the banner of ‘security’ to obfuscate the true intentions of such programs - always careful as to how they paint Western foreign policy aims.

According to reports, the London Boys were connected to “planned attacks” at top London hotels as well as several other locations. It was previously released that a Somali cell was active in Britain and had been trained by Al Qaeda’s former leader in Africa, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the same associate of ‘White Widow’ Samantha Lewthwaite, at a camp in Mogadishu in 2006.

Rather conveniently, there were blueprints that specified certain British targets found with Fazul, when he was killed during a gunfight at a police checkpoint in Mogadishu in 2011.

In excerpt that 21WIRE previously linked to from the Daily Mail, an as of yet unnamed source, stated that Emwazi had joined up with other militant groups prior joining ISIS:

“The son of a minicab driver, he was reported to have occasionally prayed at a mosque in Greenwich, south-east London.”

“A source who claims to have met with Emwazi in Syria told Channel 4 news that they believed Emwazi initially joined the Migrants Brigade or Mujahideen in 2012.”

“Emwazi was believed to have been based in Syria’s Idlib Province and then outside Aleppo, before going on to join Al-Nusra and finally ISIS.”

Problem, Reaction, Solution?

Other reports suggest that security services were not able keep track of Emwazi when he relocated to Syria, because of the recently abolished anti-terror control orders in the UK. Will the latest Emwazi drama be used to tighten terror control orders?

In revealing article by investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed, appearing on Middle East Eye, once again British security is shown to be inextricably tied to known radicals:

“According to Dr Noman Hanif, a lecturer in international terrorism and political Islam at Birkbeck College, University of London, and an expert on Hizb ut-Tahrir, the group’s presence in Britain likely provided many opportunities for Western intelligence to “penetrate or influence” the movement.

Dr Hanif, whose doctoral thesis was about the group, points out that Husain’s tenure inside HT by his own account occurred “under the leadership of Omar Bakri Mohammed,” the controversial cleric who left the group in 1996 to found al-Muhajiroun, a militant network which to this day has been linked to every major terrorist plot in Britain.

Bakri’s leadership of HT, said Dr Hanif, formed “the most conceptually deviant period of HT’s existence in the UK, diverting quite sharply away from its core ideas,” due to Bakri’s advocacy of violence and his focus on establishing an Islamic state in the UK, goals contrary to HT doctrines.”

It has been documented that Anjem Choudary and Omar Bakri the founders of Al-Muhajiroun, a terror labeled organization that was banned, are linked to British intelligence.

‘The Jihadi Rewrite’

In a recent BBC report, an alleged former ISIS fighter was said to have defected from the terror group. A man calling himself Abu Ayman, has come forward claiming to have met Emwazi in Syria. The is the media’s key link which closes the Emwazi circle. The report was splashed across media outlets worldwide, with most treating the alleged fighter’s word as being 100% truthful, even though his identity was not confirmed.

However, one should consider Ayman’s role in all of this and why he would come forward to support the Western narrative of Jihadi John – without any hard evidence to prove Emwazi is Jihadi John.

Something else to consider: If Ayman has actually defected from ISIS and presumably returned to a Western nation, why wouldn’t he be arrested for his involvement with the terror group?

In another, almost buried report, we were told the unlikely scenario – that Jihadi John allegedly ‘reached out’ to Western media outlets via a third party in Syria, to apologize for the trouble his identity has caused. While the report attempts to be a serious piece of journalism, the story reeks of PR strategist’s attempting to validate the unmasking of Jihad John as Mohammad Emwazi, through a cheap parlor trick (planted story) directed at Western audiences.

Over the last 24 hours the terrible Jihadi John scripting continues, as Sky News reports the reason that hostages were seen calm before their alleged executions in the ISIS ‘beheading’ videos was because often, “they were routinely subjected to mock executions with their captors telling them they would not be killed as it was a show for the camera.”

This newly cooked-up report claimed that a masked ISIS militant known only as “Saleh”, provided the otherwise unverifiable execution details.

Below is an interview conducted by Sky News with ‘Saleh’. The interview appears tobe another attempt to humanize the ISIS cause, while continuing to deceive the public about the character known as Jhadi John…



The questions concerning Emwazi, his family, security services, and his purported identity continue to persist – as origin of the ‘Jihadi John’ avatar is unravelling as time goes on…

[Iftikhar]

When a native Brit goes to Middle East, he is called a voluntary fighter. When a Muslim goes there he is called a terrorist. Double standard by the British society. Also lot of British Jews went to Israel to fight but on their return no action was taken against them.

The three Jihadi Muslim girls and the Jihadi John were in a wrong place at a wrong time in a non-Muslim school with non-Muslim teachers during their developmental periods. They suffer from identity crises. They are unable to enjoy the beauty of their literature and poetry. They were not radicalised at a non-Muslim school, says principal. But the school with non-Muslim teachers are responsible to create identity crises. Muslim children must be in state funded Muslim schools with Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. There is no place for a non-Muslim child or a teacher in a Muslim school. Why should we be surprised? They have gone through a rotten education system where there is no consequences for anything and they have grown up in a rather pathetic, wet nation with a liberal criminal justice system which actually seems to view law upholding people with pure contempt. Jihadi John has been identified, tried and convicted by the media. Surely this would prejudice any criminal case against him. In my opinion, he was also radicalised by MI5. To stop radicalisation of teens we need to find out the cause. We will get no where if all we do is just condemn but to actually stop this we need to find the cause and stop immediately, that includes All the way from extremist imams to extremist family members AND the pressure and the factor some of the security forces have upon teens.

A teacher claims Jihadi John had anger management therapy because of fighting and bullying. Muslim children in state schools have been victim of racism and bullying, All schools tried their best to hide such incidents under the carpet. Native teachers are chicken racist and they do nothing. When a Muslim child take the law in his hand by attacking the culprit, he is referred to anger management therapy by the teacher or punished by the school. Because of such treatment, Muslim children are unable to develop self-respect, self-confidence and self-esteem. In my opinion, it is a crime against humanity to send Muslim Muslim children to non-Muslim schools with non-Muslim teachers. Muslim children need state funded Muslim schools with Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. There is no place for a non-Muslim child or a teacher in a Muslim. I have been campaigning for state funded Muslim school since early 70s because of racism and bullying. I set up the first Muslim school in 1981 in London, now there are 188 Muslim schools and only 18 are state funded. I would like to see each and every Muslim child in a Muslim school with Muslim teachers, otherwise, the number of Jihadi John would be on the increase.In Islam there is no commandment to kill people by making such allegations against them.

Now a Muslim teacher was sent to jail for 6 years because he has decided to go to Syria. He is also a product of western education system. He was mis-educated and de-educated by state school with non-Muslim teachers. None of 7/7 bombers and British Muslim youths who are in Syria and Iraq are the product of Muslim schools. They are the product of British schooling which is the home of institutional racism with chicken racist native teachers. It is absurd to believe that Muslim schools, Imams and Masajid teach Muslim children anti-Semitic, homophobic and anti-western views. It is dangerously deceptive and misleading to address text books and discuss them out of their historical, cultural and linguistic context.

No one has any problem when: Jews keep beards and wear their traditional caps Christian priests and nuns wear their religious outfits Buddhist monks wear orange robes Sikhs keep beards and wear turbans Indian aunties wear Sarees (cross streets and hang out in Wal-Mart) Yeah but if any Muslim male keeps beard or if any Muslim girl wears hijab then everyone has problem. It's Freedom when you go naked but it's extremism when you wear hijab - just plain hypocrisy! Looking at the case of France, a major secular nation, I believe it is also not allowing women freedom by not letting her to wear her choice of clothing as it supposedly "clashes with French secular values".

Stop treating foreigners like garbage and they will stop ruining your precious country. Why did you let them in in the first place if you didn't want them here? They left everything in their countries because of your promises. Are you so anxious to please that you can't say "no"? I would love to see you go to a foreign land where you don't have any friends, you don't even know anyone and you don't speak the language, and start from scratch.

The British establishment is wrong in thinking that Imams are to blame for extremism. Imams are not solution to the problem for extremism. Extremism is nothing to do with Imams. Extremism is not created from abroad, it is coming from within. Britain fails to help Muslim communities feel part of British society. Race trouble is being predicted by the Daily Express, because of an ethnic boom in UK major cities. Muslim communities need imams for the solutions of their needs and demands in their own native languages. Muslim parents would like to see their children well versed in Standard English and to go for higher studies and research to serve humanity. The fact is that majority of Muslim children leave schools with low grades because monolingual teachers are not capable to teach Standard English to bilingual Muslim children. A Muslim is a citizen of this tiny global village. He/she does not want to become notoriously monolingual Brit.

None of 7/7 bombers and British Muslim youths who are in Syria and Iraq are the product of Muslim schools. They are the product of British schooling which is the home of institutional racism with chicken racist native teachers. It is absurd to believe that Muslim schools, Imams and Masajid teach Muslim children anti-Semitic, homophobic and anti-western views. It is dangerously deceptive and misleading to address text books and discuss them out of their historical, cultural and linguistic context.

Bilingual Muslims children have a right, as much as any other faith group, to be taught their culture, languages and faith alongside a mainstream curriculum. More faith schools will be opened under sweeping reforms of the education system in England. There is a dire need for the growth of state funded Muslim schools to meet the growing needs and demands of the Muslim parents and children. Now the time has come that parents and community should take over the running of their local schools. Parent-run schools will give the diversity, the choice and the competition that the wealthy have in the private sector.

There are hundreds of state primary and secondary schools where Muslim pupils are in majority. In my opinion all such schools may be opted out to become Muslim Academies. This mean the Muslim children will get a decent education. Muslim schools turned out balanced citizens, more tolerant of others and less likely to succumb to criminality or extremism. Muslim schools give young people confidence in who they are and an understanding of Islam’s teaching of tolerance and respect which prepares them for a positive and fulfilling role in society.
IA
http://www.lononschoolofislamics.org.uk

[TonyGosling]

this article falls into the mantrap of assuming anybody much in Britain but the elite institutions, Mason run media and Universities etc, buy into the official racist garbage

[fish5133]

[TonyGosling]

School questioned Muslim pupil about Isis after discussion on eco-activism
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/sep/22/school-questioned-mus lim-pupil-about-isis-after-discussion-on-eco-activism

Parents of 14-year-old at north London’s Central Foundation school take legal action after he was left ‘scared and nervous’ by experience
The incident gives an insight into how schools and teachers are
Vikram Dodd Tuesday 22 September 2015 17.46 BSTLast modified on Wednesday 23 September 201501.10 BST

A Muslim schoolboy was questioned about Islamic State after a classroom discussion about environmental activism, the Guardian has learned.

The parents of the 14-year-old are taking legal action after the boy said he was left “scared and nervous” by his experience with school officials in north London, and was left reluctant to join in class discussions for fear of being suspected of extremism.

The incident gives an insight into how schools and teachers are dealing with the pressures of the government’s new anti-extremism initiatives amid mounting concern about British youngsters being lured by Isis propaganda.

According to court documents, the boy was in a French class at the Central Foundation school in May 2015 and took part in a discussion, conducted mostly in French, about the environment. The teacher and pupils were said to have discussed those who use violence to protect the planet.

The teenager mentioned that some people use the term “ecoterrorist” to describe those who take action such as spiking trees with nails to prevent chainsaws from chopping them down.

A few days later he was pulled out of class and taken to an “inclusion centre” elsewhere in the school. During this meeting the schoolboy said one adult sat behind him, and another in front of him, whom he had not seen before. That person was a child protection officer, the Guardian has learned, who had been called in to establish if concerns about terrorism were legitimate.

The boy who wishes not to be named, told the Guardian: “I didn’t know what was going on. They said there had been safety concerns raised. If you are taken out of French class and asked about Isis, it is quite scary. My heart skipped a beat.”

He said he was baffled how mentioning the phrases “L’ecoterrorisme”, which he had learned from an earlier session of the school debating society, led to him being asked whether he supported Isis.

The boy and his parents say he was asked if he was “affiliated” with Isis. The school said he was asked if he had heard of the terrorist group, according to legal papers filed by his mother. The boy’s mother said her son came home from school “visibly distressed”.

The school said it was protecting the “welfare of the child in line with statutory and non-statutory guidance including the ’prevent duty’”, the government initiative that aims to stop people turning to extremism and terrorist violence, according to the legal documents.

His parents are seeking a judicial review, arguing the child was discriminated against and was singled him out because of his Muslim heritage. They also described the prevent policy as unfair. Recently, new laws placed a “positive duty” on schools to implement it.

The school and Islington council, which controls it, declined to answer questions about the incident. However, a spokesperson for Central Foundation Boys’ school said: “The safeguarding and the wellbeing of our young people is our primary concern.

“The school is confident that its safeguarding policies and the work of the professionals in the operation of these policies are proportionate, justified and place the wellbeing of the child to the fore. We do not comment on confidential matters relating to individual young people.”

The teenager said school friends have been supportive, especially white ones, viewing it as an injustice suffered because he is Muslim.

In the end no action was taken and the teenager has been attending the school, which is highly rated. He has been student of the week three times in last two years and said teachers were usually nice and took time to get to know the students. He has since dropped French, and ultimately wants to be a software engineer.

Last week David Anderson, the government-appointed independent reviewer of terrorism, said ”prevent” caused widespread anger among Muslim communities. “While good work is undoubtedly done under prevent, it is also the focus of considerably more resentment among Muslims than either the criminally-focused prohibitions,” he said.

In a sworn statement as part of the legal action, the teenager said he was in a morning French class when the discussion occurred. He said: “I had recently learned about eco-warriors and the demonstrations that they organise in the context of an extracurricular debating club in which I take part called Debate Mate.

“When I said this, I thought that [the teacher] looked concerned. I therefore explained what eco-warriors are, and that sometimes people who call themselves eco-warriors take action such as spiking trees with nails to prevent chainsaws from chopping them down, as the metal nails blunt the blades of the saw. I then said that some people refer to this as ‘eco­ terrorism’.”

Around one week later the teenager was in another French class when he was taken out to an “inclusion centre”. Describing what happened there, he said in his statement: “The lady behind the desk told me that she was a child protection officer. She then said to me that there had been “a safety concern raised”. I did not understand why she was talking about a safety concern and what this had to do with me. She went on to say: ‘Your French teacher … I think, mentioned you used the word terrorism.’

“I remembered the lesson and explained that I had mentioned the phrase eco-terrorism in relation to eco-warriors and protecting the environment. I explained again what they were, and that they put nails in trees to blunt the blade of a chainsaw which is why people sometimes call them terrorists. The member of staff behind the desk looked at the member of staff behind me and said: ‘Told you, he is a tree-hugger.’

“She made a hugging gesture with her arms and, looking at me, asked me if I ‘went around hugging trees’ like one of her relatives. She then asked me: ’Do you have any affiliation with Isis?’

“When she said the word Isis I immediately felt alarmed and extremely scared. I knew what Isis was as I have seen reports about them in the media. I knew that they behead and kill people. I could not think why she was asking me this or how it followed on from my French lesson ... and replied no.

“The member of staff sitting behind me, who had brought me to the inclusion centre, then asked me: ‘Do the chainsaws explode?’. Before I could answer the member of staff sitting behind the desk asked: ’Do you understand why there could be a misunderstanding?’”

The boy’s mother said: “He was presumed guilty because he was Muslim. As parents we are doing the right thing but still our son is accused. There was nothing in what he said that warranted him being taken out of class and treated as a criminal.”

She said she thought prevent was causing damage and stifling discussions that could stop extremism. “If the three girls from Bethnal Green who went to Syria, if they had said in class: ‘My dream is to marry a jihadi’, their peer group would probably have slapped them down,” she said

In a response to the legal action, Central Foundation school said it should be dismissed. According to legal documents related to the case it added: “It is unarguable that at the relevant time (May 2015) the school was required as part of its safeguarding responsibilities to be aware of the dangers of radicalisation.

“The approach of alerting the designated child protection officer by email regarding inappropriate references to terrorism and for [her] to have short 10-minute conversation with the claimant was a reasonable and proportionate response.”

The school added: “This safeguarding step can not be criticised, as the school had due regard to its overarching duty to safeguard pupils and the need to prevent them being drawn into terrorism.”

[ian neal]

Don't just keep posting the same post over and over. It's annoying and using this site to just promote your particular one-man vision for British education is boring and borderline spam. When the path that jihadi john has followed is known I'm sure you will find the hidden hand of UK state intelligence has played a bigger roll than his schooling

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

Dead men tell no tales
As soon as dupes begin to realise how they're being used...
Boom!
A wonder drone blows them to kingdom come!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11992668/jihad i-john-targeted-by-US-drone-strike-in-Syria.html

Jihadi John 'dead': David Cameron says drone attack was 'act of self defence' and a strike 'at the heart of Islamic State'


Mohammed Emwazi: The road to radicalisation and Jihadi John - in 90 seconds

By Barney Henderson, and Leon Watson
11:02AM GMT 13 Nov 2015
US officials are now "99 per cent sure" the Islamic State jihadi has been killed as he left a building in Raqqa as Pentagon try to get confirmation Mohammed Emwazi is dead - follow latest updates

This page will automatically update every 90 seconds. ON OFF
• Jihadi John target of US drone strike
• David Cameron says it was act of 'self defence'
• Military source 99% sure he was killed
• Pentagon seeking to confirm if he is dead
• Reports suggest Jihadi John hit near 'Islamic court'
• Second Briton also believed to have died
• Observers say 'important British jihadi' lying in hospital
• Britain worked 'hand in glove' over the strike
• Meanwhile, Kurdish forces retake Sinjar
• Briton symbolises Isil brutality

Latest
11:15
All quiet on the Labour front
Labour has so far been slow to react.
Here's Ben Riley-Smith with the latest on his attempts to get a comment:
Quote
No word yet from Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, on the American strike against Jihadi John.
Labour sources say a statement from Mr Corbyn is "on the way", as is a reaction from Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign secretary.

Have deleted IfTick's ridiculous repeat spam

[TonyGosling]

Focus on Islamist terror plots overlooks threat from far right – report
Most extensive survey yet of ‘lone actors’ in Europe warns that rightwing extremists are more lethal and much harder to detect
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/feb/29/focus-on-islamist-terro r-plots-overlooks-threat-from-far-right-report?CMP=fb_gu

Anders Breivik, who carried out the single most deadly attack analysed by the survey – in all 77 people were killed and 242 injured.
Ben Quinn and Shiv Malik
Monday 29 February 2016 00.01 GMT

The threat from far-right terrorists is being neglected by governments and law enforcement, according to the most extensive survey yet of “lone actors” in Europe.

While Islamist plotters are given full attention, the authors of the 98-page report warn that in comparison, individuals and small groups of rightwing extremists in the mould of Norway’s Anders Breivik are in fact more lethal, almost as numerous, and much harder to detect by security services.

Britain leads any other European country for the sheer number of attacks or plots over the past 15 years that have been planned by individuals or self-starting cells, according to the analysis conducted jointly by four research institutes.

It also finds that almost half of rightwing attacks in Britain over recent years were partly motivated by the murder of Lee Rigby – a wave of violence that ranges from arson attacks through to bombings of Islamic centres.

Analysing 31 European countries, researchers found there had been 124 individuals involved in 98 attacks or plots over a 15-year period.

After the UK’s 38 planned attacks, France came second with 11. Germany and Sweden both had five. The report’s authors concluded that while such attacks have been rare in Europe – 10 countries had no documented attacks in 15 years – there has been an increase in the frequency of attacks after 2011.

High profile perpetrators in the UK include Lee Rigby’s killers: Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale. Others include Pavlo Lapshyn, a white supremacist terrorist who stabbed a Muslim grandfather to death and bombed mosques in an effort to trigger a racial war.

Lapshyn’s bombing campaign started after the murder of Rigby, with his final explosive detonating weeks later on the day of the soldier’s funeral – although police have said they do not believe he was motivated by the murder in London.

The joint report by experts from Royal United Services Institute, Chatham House, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and the University of Leiden in the Netherlands deemed such attacks “lone” even if they involved up to three people, as long as the individual or group was acting without either an order to act from outside or “direct support in the planning, preparation and execution of the attack”.

Out of the 124 perpetrators in the database, 38% were religiously inspired and 33% were branded right-wing extremists. The authors of the report said they were surprised by the finding, given the focus on Islamic extremism.

“Given the intense public focus on religiously inspired terrorism, the finding that rightwing extremists account for a similar proportion of perpetrators within the database is particularly significant.”

Melanie Smith, one of the co-authors of the report, said that the researchers were surprised at the high proportion of far-right, lone-actor terrorists recorded across Europe. This perception might also explain the allocation of resources by authorities.

“When we looked into where resources were going, it became clear that actually the vast majority were going to looking for religiously inspired terrorists … which kind of made sense to us because that’s what we were expecting too, but that’s not the case,” she added.

By European standards, she said the relatively high number of far-right attacks in the UK could be due to the ease of collecting data, but also due to inspiration by some organisations.

Analysts also identified distinctive differences in the profile of far-right perpetrators and their religiously motivated counterparts, who include self-styled jihadis.

Rightwing perpetrators – those who were motivated by an “emphasis on immigration policy, a wish to inspire patriotism and to defend their country from what they term ‘Islamisation’” – tended to be older: the majority of them were about 40 years old. They were also more likely to be socially isolated.

Plotters and attackers from the religiously-inspired cohort were far younger – most often less than twenty-five years old – as well as being less socially isolated. They tended to have the lowest indication of mental health issues.

From the 72 successfully launched attacks within the database, religiously inspired attacks caused only 8% of deaths. By contrast, rightwing terror attacks accounted for fewer executed attacks in total but just under half of deaths.

“The most frequent targets were civilians, in particular ethnic and religious minorities, asylum seekers and immigrants. A large majority of religious targets were Muslim,” the report found.

The single most deadly attack in the set was carried out by rightwing anti-Islamist fanatic Anders Breivik. On 22 July 2011, Breivik detonated explosive devices targeting government buildings in Oslo’s city centre, then made his way to a summer camp on the island of Utøya, where leftwing youth were having their annual retreat. Dressed as a policeman, Breivik then set about gunning down as many teenagers as possible. In all 77 people were killed and 242 injured.

Yet despite the horror of that day researchers found that just over three-quarters of attacks failed to cause any fatalities, and 58% caused no injuries.

“While lone-actor terrorist attacks can be devastating, a high proportion of plots fail to materialise in this manner,” the authors said.

The challenge to the security services in Britain and elsewhere was also underlined by a lack of discerning or “typical” traits of lone-actor terrorists, who often evaded the “tripwires” of intelligence services and police monitoring of established terror networks. The one outstanding common feature was that 96% of the perpetrators were male.

The challenges of identifying them were apparently deepened by the fact that two-thirds of lone actors had never been active within an extremist group. At the same time, the researchers stated that far-right groups such as Pegida, which has recently launched a British wing, might provide “moral oxygen” for some violent plotters.

Adding that their research suggested a need for increased coordination among EU member states, in particular when it comes to far-right movements operating across national boundaries, the report highlighted that no far-right organisations were currently listed as terror groups.

Information sharing between states must be improved to avoid the “internationalising” of certain movements who are able to move from one state where they are banned to another where they are not.

“A concrete example of existing imbalance is the group Combat 18 and its associated Blood and Honour organisation, to which numerous lone actors across different countries in the dataset have exhibited a link,” it states, citing a movement which originated in the UK.

In terms of how plotters were detected, it found that of the religiously-inspired perpetrators that exhibited “leakage” of their intentions, 45% “leaked” to friends or family, in contrast with only 18% of leakage by rightwing perpetrators. Rightwing lone-actor terrorists were more likely to post telling indicators online, where 41% of their leakage occurred.

A key recommendation was aimed at social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter, who currently offer users the opportunity to report content posted by individuals or a page on their site.

Calling for mechanisms to be developed to give users the option of lodging reports that would identify potential lone actors, it added: “This option could perhaps read: ‘[this post] suggests this person is going to commit a violent attack.’”

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

'Jihadi John' biographer @RobertVerkaik1 pulls out of University of Westminster speaking event over 'gagging' fears http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/jihadi-john-mohammed-em wazi-isis-biographer-speaking-event-gagging-a6926381.html

Jihadi John biographer pulls out of speaking event over 'gagging' fears

Exclusive: Robert Verkaik refused to sign the University of Westminster's 'code of practice' for external speakers
Paul Peachey Crime Correspondent

A writer who charted Mohammed Emwazi’s passage from misfit schoolboy to the Isis executioner known as Jihadi John has pulled out of a speaking event at the extremist’s former university, claiming that he is being gagged.

Robert Verkaik was told he could not talk unless he signed the University of Westminster’s “code of practice” for external speakers. The code is inspired by the Government’s controversial counter-radicalisation policy Prevent – the very subject he was meant to be critically debating.

Mr Verkaik refused to sign the document, for fear that it would leave him unable to raise difficult issues, such as complaints by young Muslim men that they have been radicalised because of MI5 harassment. Such opinions have previously been criticised as extremist by the authorities.


“When Islamic advocacy groups like Cage tried to argue this point, the Prime Minister called them apologists for terrorists,” said Mr Verkaik. “I don’t see how I can take part in a debate when the issues I wish to raise may end up with the university and me falling foul of counter-terrorism policy.


READ MORE
Jihadi John's recruiter reveals location by creating LinkedIn profile
“It seems to me if I sign the University of Westminster guidance then I will be gagging myself,” said Mr Verkaik, a former journalist at The Independent.

The Government’s Prevent strategy sets out to stop people being drawn into terrorism. It includes warnings to institutions about the threat from speakers expressing “non-violent extremism” that could be exploited by terrorists. A university speaker’s code was introduced because of concerns that students were being exploited by hate preachers.

Mr Verkaik also expressed astonishment at being told by the university that it had a policy of not confirming that its former student Emwazi was indeed Jihadi John.

The university said in an email to the writer that it did not want to be “distracted” by the issue. The university said that inviting Mr Verkaik and other guests to discuss counter-terrorism had been a “courageous” step given the focus on the institution.

Westminster also declined to discuss the potential significance of Emwazi’s years at university in his radicalisation with Mr Verkaik while he was researching his book, saying that it would “technically” be in breach of its data protection rules, the writer said.

READ MORE
Jihadi John: The Making of a Terrorist by Robert Verkaik; book review
Isis releases new pictures of 'Jihadi John'
'Jihadi John' warned younger brother not to follow in his footsteps
Sister of ‘new Jihadi John’ suspect ‘still believes he is a good man'
The university commissioned its own report into campus extremism, which reported in September that its Islamic students’ society was dominated by ultra-conservative elements who had refused to speak to female Muslim staff members. Following the identification of Emwazi, who appeared masked in Isis videos depicting the murder of Western hostages, the university cancelled a planned address by a radical preacher who had described homosexuality as a criminal act.

Index on Censorship’s chief executive Jodie Ginsberg said she was concerned that aspects of the government’s anti-extremism strategy meant that discussion of the issue was being stopped.

“Increasingly, people can’t even talk about extremism without being accused of being extremists themselves or of encouraging extremism,” she said. “That’s leading to a ridiculously high level of caution that in turn leads to censorship – in arts, in academia, and in the media.”

Raffaello Pantucci, director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute, who has written his own book on domestic extremism, said the universities had to weigh free speech against its duty to students.

“It’s a very difficult space,” he said. “Individuals have to make their own decisions about this. But part of the issue is that it hasn’t always been clearly indicated by Government who it is that schools are meant to be keeping out.”

A University of Westminster spokesperson said that no other speakers had declined to sign the code before speaking.

“We are working hard to counter any form of extremist narrative through the Prevent duty, but we are also striving to maintain freedom of speech and open dialogue with events and debates that demonstrate a balanced approach, however challenging that may be.”

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

Prevent programme is the indoctrination of an Islamaphobic religion.

When my school received Prevent counter-terrorism training, the only objectors were white. That says it all
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/when-my-school-received-counter-te rrorism-prevent-training-the-only-objectors-were-white-that-says-a6957 916.html

How could Muslim employees feel comfortable opening their mouths when conversation seemed to have become criminal?
Rob Price 3 hours ago6 comments

'We're playing into the hands of terrorists' Getty
Like many schools, mine recently trained its staff on implementing the Prevent counter-terrorism strategy. As he left that house to go to school that day, one of my colleagues, non-coincidentally a Muslim, was stopped by his wife as he finished his toast.

“Don’t you dare say a word today.”

Can you blame her? For that matter can you blame him, for keeping silent?


I can imagine what’s going through their heads: if I speak up now, next thing I know my bags are halfway to Florida and I’m stuck at the UK Border.

The brand of “Prevent” is a byword for spying in many sections of society. That’s how it’s seen, and that’s how it always will be. Children are told at home by fearful parents to keep silent on controversial issues of all kinds. Self-censorship is rampant. Reassurance is little use.


READ MORE
Why I left my job in mental health
The police officer who delivered our training tried to assure us that nobody was going to be “added to a register”, and I’m sure he said it in good faith, the damage of the policy itself has been done.

In part this is because of the policy’s toxic reputation. As a strategy it involves reporting children for suspected extremist views. The language of “pre-criminal space” is used to describe this. 80 per cent of these referrals are rejected, and 90 per cent are of Muslims. Each of these groundless referrals, if handled badly, sends a message: speak unwisely, naively or too honestly, and if you look a certain way, you will be reported to the authorities.

Handling this matter in private is like delivering sex education in private, in a back room, because a child draws obscene graffiti on their book.

On the day of our training, the only people who questioned or raised concerns about the strategy we were being trained to implement were white. Some in the profession have claimed that they “have no problem raising these issues with their classes”. Respectfully, I call this unexamined privilege.

This week in Brighton my union, the NUT, unanimously decided to implore the government to reconsider its Prevent strategy.

When we did this, we did it in the knowledge that our views would be misinterpreted and misrepresented. This began immediately. In the un-moderated wilds of social media, people accused us of being terrorist sympathisers and protecting extremists.


READ MORE
Why I dropped out of teaching after six months
Many also wondered why, when faced with other threats such as he “forced academies” policy, we decided to pick another fight.

The answer is because they are the same fight. An alternative to Prevent, like an alternative to forced academisation, is needed to protect education and our children.

The reason is simple: evidence is emerging that Prevent, as many of us have feared for some time, plays directly into the hands of those who would prey on our young people.

Terrorists rely on feelings of alienation and isolation from our society. It is their most potent recruiting tool. If they can convince the young people we educate that they are outsiders, their work becomes easy. Why help them?

David Anderson QC, the UK terror watchdog, has raised serious concerns about the strategy that we share. He has called it “perverse” that Prevent has become itself a huge source of grievance in many quarters.

An immediate review of the policy would be an easy way for the government to demonstrate that it is interested in addressing these grievances. They must not let pride prevent such a review.

Rob Price is a teacher in a central London school

More about: preventeducationAnti-terrorism lawsCounter-terrorismTerrorism



3 hours ago
oldwease
This only ever was a half-baked PC exercise designed to further the indoctrination.

I would expect any white kid who voiced concerns about what might be going on in the local mosque to be sent for re-education immediately.

Meanwhile, as the article states, the good Muslim is told, 'don't you dare say a word......'.

'Prevent', preventing anything not in compliance with the official narrative.
ReplyShare-2

3 hours ago
rawhead_wrecker
"80 per cent of these referrals are rejected"
An interesting stat to lead with, that makes 2 points :
20% were not rejected - so 1 in 5 were worth looking into, that's quite a high rate considering we are talking about terrorism.
If 80% were rejected, surely that reflects a lack of understanding on the teachers part as to what does and does not fall under Prevent.
ReplyShare0

3 hours ago
julia.london
Prevent is an excellent idea but as usual it is being hijacked by those who dont see protecting our society as part of their role in life. These youths who went to Syria were radicalized and there must have been signs at school. If we all refuse to take responsibility for preventing terrorism,how will it ever happen.?These teachers seem to live in a "safe" separate universe,whereas the reality is we are on the brink of disaster. How would WW2 have gone if people like this were around then. Anyone can contact the terrorist hotline with suspicions.
ReplyShare0

3 hours ago
Apocalypse Now
And of course the fact that two thirds of those reported under Prevent were white passes straight over your head. Like the lefties in the BMA you refuse to "police" the abuse by foreigners of our "free" services. Why?
ReplyShare1 reply-2


1 hour ago
Runesmith
Did you not read the article, or did you just not believe the figure "90 per cent are of Muslims"?
ReplyShare0
Follow us:

User Policies
Privacy Policy
Cookie Policy
Code of Conduct
Complaint Form
Contact Us
Contributors
All Topics
Archive
Newsletters
iJobs
Subscriptions
Advertising Guide
Syndication
Evening Standard
Novaya Gazeta
Install our Apps

[TonyGosling]

Why the Prevent strategy is harming integration rather than helping it in Bristol's communities
By Michael_Yong | Posted: December 07, 2016

This week, the Casey Review showed segregation in Britain is at "worrying levels".

Integration is an important part of any society, but are we going about it the wrong way? Education reporter Michael Yong argues why the Prevent Strategy actually splits a community, rather than brings it together.

There have been many reports – including in this newspaper – about the increase in hate crime after the Brexit vote.

I think most people would agree with me that it came as no surprise, and that's sad.

The Casey Review – ordered by then Prime Minister David Cameron and Home Secretary Theresa May – showed the high levels of segregation in many parts of the country.

Read more: Counter extremism plans by Government is making segregation worse - Bristol lecturer

As part of the review, experts from Bristol were asked their opinions about the Government's counter-extremism strategy, and it was damning.

Dr Saffron Karlsen, from Bristol University, said it had been ineffective and could make things worse by "exacerbating isolation" and "reducing cooperation".

Those are not words you want to hear when you are trying to bring together a community of people from different backgrounds.

Part of the Government's counter-extremism strategy was the Prevent agenda – which was set up after the September 11 attacks.

But in its early days, there was a lack of direction with regards to the strategy. Was it about al-Qaeda? Is it about having more intelligence experts? Or was it actually about education?

Read more: Blind boy in wheelchair 'forced' by Drayton Manor theme park staff to stand up before using rides

In the last few years, that was where funding went – education. Millions were pumped into schools for them to hold Prevent sessions, where police officers talk to children about the dangers of radicalisation.

Schools are a microcosm of the community they serve – what parents do, children nearly always copy.

Things came to a head two years ago, when a young girl named Yusra Hussien ran away from her Bristol home and went to Turkey. Police intelligence suggested she might have then moved to Syria to become a terror bride, after promises of a glamorous life.

Education about extremism and radicalisation is important, but not this way.

There are huge problems with the Prevent agenda in schools, mostly because it stigmatises Muslims.

Last year, teachers were told to alert the authorities if students portrayed signs of extremism. While it was good intentioned, that move by the Government became widely ridiculed by education experts and teaching groups.

I have been given the opportunity to sit in Prevent classes. Make no mistake – the officers who lead the sessions and teachers who support them are fantastic.

But these classes can also be highly divisive. How are you supposed to tell a child they have to attend a Prevent class because they are from an ethnic minority, or because they are Muslim?

Read more: Bristol councils stand firm on rules about taking pupils out of school during term time for holidays

What are they supposed to tell their friends?

Why are British Muslims – who were born and grew up here – having to learn about British values?

And why does nearly every conversation we have about integration centred only around Muslims?

If anything, the Prevent strategy stigmatises Muslims. It makes them out to be potential terrorists and violent. In the worst cases, it segregates them, making them feel isolated and different.

That is very wrong. Most Muslims are kind hearted, peace-loving and incredibly selfless people.

Read the Casey Review, and I would challenge you to think she was talking about any other groups of people.

These strategies – to use the Government's jargon – that are based on assumptions there is a lack of integration will make things worse.

Dame Casey talks about educating immigrant children, making sure they take an 'integration oath' – what the hell is that?! – and be taught British values in schools.

Maybe it's time we stopped talking about educating those who are different to us, so they can be like us. That is such a narrow-minded way of thinking.

Let's instead educate ourselves – so we can better understand our neighbours and the diversity they bring – and then maybe, we can truly have integration in our communities.

Read more at http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/why-the-prevent-strategy-is-harming-integ ration-rather-than-helping-it-in-bristol-s-communities/story-29966219- detail/story.html

[TonyGosling]

The circus: How British intelligence primed both sides of the ‘terror war’
#Religion

‘Jihadi John’ was able to join IS for one simple reason: from Quilliam to al-Muhajiroun, Britain’s loudest extremists have been groomed by the security services

http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/circus-how-british-intelligence-p rimed-both-sides-terror-war-55293733

Nafeez Ahmed's picture
Nafeez Ahmed
Friday 27 February 2015 14:35 UTC
Monday 2 March 2015 13:57 UTC
reddit googleplus 17K
Topics:
Religion
Tags:
UK Intelligence, Think-Tanks, Ghostwriters
Show comments

Every time there’s a terrorist attack that makes national headlines, the same talking heads seem to pop up like an obscene game of “whack-a-mole”. Often they appear one after the other across the media circuit, bobbing from celebrity television pundit to erudite newspaper outlet.

A few years ago, BBC Newsnight proudly hosted a “debate” between Maajid Nawaz, director of counter-extremism think-tank, the Quilliam Foundation, and Anjem Choudary, head of the banned Islamist group formerly known as al-Muhajiroun, which has, since its proscription, repeatedly reincarnated itself. One of its more well-known recent incarnations was "Islam4UK".

Both Nawaz and Choudary have received huge mainstream media attention, generating press headlines, and contributing to major TV news and current affairs shows. But unbeknown to most, they have one thing in common: Britain’s security services. And believe it or not, that bizarre fact explains why the Islamic State’s (IS) celebrity beheader, former west Londoner Mohammed Emwazi – aka “Jihadi John” - got to where he is now.
A tale of two extremists

After renouncing his affiliation with the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), Maajid Nawaz co-founded the Quilliam Foundation with his fellow ex-Hizb member, Ed Husain.

The Quilliam Foundation was set-up by Husain and Nawaz in 2008 with significant British government financial support. Its establishment received a massive PR boost from the release of Ed Husain’s memoirs, The Islamist, which rapidly became an international bestseller, generating hundreds of reviews, interviews and articles.

In Ed Husain’s book - much like Maajid Nawaz’s tome Radical released more recently to similar fanfare - Husain recounts his journey from aggrieved young Muslim into Islamist activist, and eventually his total rejection of Islamist ideology.

Both accounts of their journeys of transformation offer provocative and genuine insights. But the British government has played a much more direct role in crafting those accounts than either they, or the government, officially admit.
Government ghostwriters

In late 2013, I interviewed a former senior researcher at the Home Office who revealed that Husain’s The Islamist was “effectively ghostwritten in Whitehall”.

The official told me that in 2006, he was informed by a government colleague “with close ties” to Jack Straw and Gordon Brown that “the draft was written by Ed but then ‘peppered’ by government input”. The civil servant told him “he had seen ‘at least five drafts of the book, and the last one was dramatically different from the first.’”

The draft had, the source said, been manipulated in an explicitly political, pro-government manner. The committee that had input into Ed Husain’s manuscript prior to its official publication included senior government officials from No. 10 Downing Street, the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, the intelligence services, Foreign & Commonwealth Office and the Home Office.

When I put the question, repeatedly, to Ed Husain as to the veracity of these allegations, he did not respond. I also asked Nawaz whether he was aware of the government’s role in “ghostwriting” Husain’s prose, and whether he underwent a similar experience in the production of Radical. He did not respond either.

While Husain was liaising with British government and intelligence officials over The Islamist from 2006 until the book’s publication in May 2007, his friend Nawaz was at first in prison in Egypt. Nawaz was eventually released in March 2006, declaring his departure from HT just a month before the publication of Husain’s book. Husain took credit for being the prime influence on Nawaz’s decision, and by November 2007, had joined with him becoming Quilliam’s director with Husain as his deputy.

Yet according to Husain, Nawaz played a role in determining parts of the text of The Islamist in the same year it was being edited by government officials. “Before publication, I discussed with my friend and brother-in-faith Maajid the passages in the book,” wrote Husain about the need to verify details of their time in HT.

This is where the chronology of Husain’s and Nawaz’s accounts begin to break down. In Radical, and repeatedly in interviews about his own deradicalisation process, Nawaz says that he firmly and decisively rejected HT’s Islamist ideology while in prison in Egypt. Yet upon his release and return to Britain, Nawaz showed no sign of having reached that decision. Instead, he did the opposite. In April 2006, Nawaz told Sarah Montague on BBC Hardtalk that his detention in Egypt had “convinced [him] even more… that there is a need to establish this Caliphate as soon as possible.” From then on, Nawaz, who was now on HT’s executive committee, participated in dozens of talks and interviews in which he vehemently promoted the Hizb.

I first met Nawaz at a conference on 2 December 2006 organised by the Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC) on the theme of “reclaiming our rights”. I had spoken on a panel about the findings of my book, The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry, on how British state collusion with Islamist extremists had facilitated the 7/7 attacks. Nawaz had attended the event as an audience member with two other senior HT activists, and in our brief conversation, he spoke of his ongoing work with HT in glowing terms.

By January 2007, Nawaz was at the front of a HT protest at the US embassy in London, condemning US military operations in Iraq and Somalia. He delivered a rousing speech at the protest, demanding an end to “colonial intervention in the Muslim world,” and calling for the establishment of an Islamic caliphate to stand up to such imperialism and end Western support for dictators.

Yet by his own account, throughout this very public agitation on behalf of HT from mid-2006 onwards, Nawaz had in fact rejected the very ideology he was preaching so adamantly. Indeed, in the same period, he was liaising with his friend, Ed Husain – who at that time was still in Jeddah – and helping him with the text of his anti-HT manifesto, The Islamist, which was also being vetted at the highest levels of government.

The British government’s intimate, and secret, relationship with Husain in the year before the publication of his book in 2007 shows that, contrary to his official biography, the Quilliam Foundation founder was embedded in Whitehall long before he was on the public radar. How did he establish connections at this level?
MI5’s Islamist

According to Dr Noman Hanif, a lecturer in international terrorism and political Islam at Birkbeck College, University of London, and an expert on Hizb ut-Tahrir, the group’s presence in Britain likely provided many opportunities for Western intelligence to “penetrate or influence” the movement.

Dr Hanif, whose doctoral thesis was about the group, points out that Husain’s tenure inside HT by his own account occurred “under the leadership of Omar Bakri Mohammed,” the controversial cleric who left the group in 1996 to found al-Muhajiroun, a militant network which to this day has been linked to every major terrorist plot in Britain.

Bakri’s leadership of HT, said Dr Hanif, formed “the most conceptually deviant period of HT’s existence in the UK, diverting quite sharply away from its core ideas,” due to Bakri’s advocacy of violence and his focus on establishing an Islamic state in the UK, goals contrary to HT doctrines.

When Bakri left HT and set-up al-Muhajiroun in 1996, according to John Loftus, a former US Army intelligence officer and Justice Department prosecutor, Bakri was immediately recruited by MI6 to facilitate Islamist activities in the Balkans. And not just Bakri, but also Abu Hamza al-Masri, who was recently convicted in the US on terrorism charges.

When Bakri founded al-Muhajiroun in 1996 with the blessings of Britain’s security services, his co-founder was Anjem Choudary. Choudary was intimately involved in the programme to train and send Britons to fight abroad, and three years later, would boast to the Sunday Telegraph that “some of the training does involve guns and live ammunition”.

Historian Mark Curtis, in his seminal work, Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam, documents how under this arrangement, Bakri trained hundreds of Britons at camps in the UK and the US, and dispatched them to join al-Qaeda affiliated fighters in Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya.

Shortly before the 2005 London bombings, Ron Suskind, a Wall Street Journal Pulitizer Prize winning investigative reporter, was told by a senior MI5 official that Bakri was a longtime informant for the secret service who “had helped MI5 on several of its investigations”. Bakri, Suskind adds in his book, The Way of the World, reluctantly conceded the relationship in an interview in Beirut - but Suskind gives no indication that the relationship ever ended.

A senior terrorism lawyer in London who has represented clients in several high-profile terrorism cases told me that both Bakri and Choudary had regular meetings with MI5 officers in the 1990s. The lawyer, who works for a leading firm of solicitors and has regularly liaised with MI5 in the administration of closed court hearings involving secret evidence, said: “Omar Bakri had well over 20 meetings with MI5 from around 1993 to the late 1990s. Anjem Choudary apparently participated in such meetings toward the latter part of the decade. This was actually well-known amongst several senior Islamist leaders in Britain at the time.”

According to Dr Hanif of Birkbeck College, Bakri’s relationship with the intelligence services likely began during his “six-year reign as HT leader in Britain,” which would have “provided British intelligence ample opportunity” to “widely infiltrate the group”. HT had already been a subject of MI6 surveillance abroad “because of its core level of support in Jordan and the consistent level of activity in other areas of the Middle East for over five decades."

At least some HT members appear to have been aware of Bakri’s intelligence connections, including, it seems, Ed Husain himself. In one passage in The Islamist (p. 116), Husain recounts: “We were also concerned about Omar’s application for political asylum… I raised this with Bernie [another HT member] too. ‘Oh no’, he said, ‘On the contrary. The British are like snakes; they manoeuvre carefully. They need Omar in Britain. More likely, Omar will be the ambassador for the khilafah here or leave to reside in the Islamic state. The kuffar know that - allowing Omar to stay in Britain will give them a good start, a diplomatic advantage, when they have to deal with the Islamic state. Having Omar serves them well for the future. MI5 knows exactly what we’re doing, what we’re about, and yet they have in effect, given us the green light to operate in Britain.”

Husain left HT after Bakri in August 1997. According to Faisal Haque, a British government civil servant and former HT member who knew Ed Husain during his time in the group, Husain had a strong “personal relationship” with Bakri. He did not leave HT for “ideological reasons,” said Haque. “It was more to do with his close personal relationship with Omar Bakri (he left when Bakri was kicked out), pressure from his father and other personal reasons which I don’t want to mention.”

Husain later went on to work for the British Council in the Middle East. From 2003 to 2005, he was in Damascus. During that period, by his own admission, he informed on other British members of HT for agitating against Bashar al-Assad’s regime, resulting in them being deported by Syrian authorities back to Britain. At this time, the CIA and MI6 routinely cooperated with Assad on extraordinary rendition programmes.

Husain then worked for the British Council in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, from late 2005 to the end of 2006.

Throughout that year, according to the former Home Office official I spoke to, Husain was in direct contact with senior Whitehall officials who were vetting his manuscript for The Islamist. By November, Husain posted on DeenPort, an online discussion forum, a now deleted comment referring off-hand to the work of “the secret services” inside HT: “Even within HT in Britain today, there is a huge division between modernisers and more radical elements. The secret services are hopeful that the modernisers can tame the radicals… I foresee another split. And God knows best. I have said more than I should on this subject! Henceforth, my lips are sealed!”

Shortly after, Maajid Nawaz would declare his departure from HT, and would eventually be joined at Quilliam by several others from the group, many of whom according to Nawaz had worked with him and Husain as “a team” behind the scenes at this time.
The ‘ex-jihadists’ who weren’t

Perhaps the biggest problem with Husain’s and Nawaz’s claim to expertise on terrorism was that they were never jihadists. Hizb ut-Tahrir is a non-violent movement for the establishment of a global “caliphate” through social struggle, focusing on the need for political activism in the Muslim world. Whatever the demerits of this rigid political ideology, it had no relationship to the phenomenon of al-Qaeda terrorism.

Nevertheless, Husain and Nawaz, along with their government benefactors, were convinced that those personal experiences of “radicalisation” and “deradicalisation” could by transplanted into the ongoing “war on terror” - even though, in reality neither of them had any idea about the dynamics of an actual terrorist network, and the radicalisation process leading to violent extremism. The result was an utterly misguided and evidence-devoid obsession with rejecting non-violent extremist ideologies as the primary means to prevent terrorism.

Through the Quilliam Foundation, Husain’s and Nawaz’s fundamentalist ideas about non-violent extremism went on to heavily influence official counter-terrorism discourses across the Western world. This was thanks to its million pounds worth of government seed-funding, intensive media coverage, as well as the government pushing Quilliam’s directors and staff to provide “deradicalisation training” to government and security officials in the US and Europe.

In the UK, Quilliam’s approach was taken up by various centre-right and right-wing think-tanks, such as the Centre for Social Cohesion (CCS) and Policy Exchange, all of which played a big role in influencing the government’s Preventing Violent Extremism programme (Prevent).

Exactly how bankrupt this approach is, however, can be determined from Prime Minister David Cameron’s efforts to express his understanding of the risk from non-violent extremism, a major feature of the coalition government’s Orwellian new Counter-Terrorism and Security Act. The latter establishes unprecedented powers of electronic surveillance and the basis for the “Prevent duty,” which calls for all public sector institutions to develop “risk-assessment” profiles of individuals deemed to be “at-risk” of being drawn into non-violent extremism.

In his speech at the UN last year, Cameron explained that counter-terrorism measures must target people who may not “encourage violence, but whose worldview can be used as a justification for it.” As examples of dangerous ideas at the “root cause” of terrorism, Cameron pinpointed “conspiracy theories,” and most outrageously, “The idea that Muslims are persecuted all over the world as a deliberate act of Western policy.”

In other words, if you believe, for instance, that US and British forces have deliberately conducted brutal military operations across the Muslim world resulting in the foreseeable deaths of countless innocent civilians, you are a non-violent extremist.

In an eye-opening academic paper published last year, French terrorism expert and Interior Ministry policy officer Dr Claire Arenes, noted that: “By definition, one may know if radicalisation has been violent only once the point of violence has been reached, at the end of the process. Therefore, since the end-term of radicalisation cannot be determined in advance, a policy intended to fight violent radicalisation entails a structural tendency to fight any form of radicalisation.”

It is precisely this moronic obsession with trying to detect and stop “any form of radicalisation,” however non-violent, that is hampering police and security investigations and overloading them with nonsense “risks”.
Double game

At this point, the memorable vision of Nawaz and Choudary facing off on BBC Newsnight appears not just farcical, but emblematic of how today’s national security crisis has been fuelled and exploited by the bowels of the British secret state.

Over the last decade or so - the very same period that the British state was grooming the “former jihadists who weren’t” so they could be paraded around the media-security-industrial complex bigging up the non-threat of “non-violent extremism” - the CIA and MI6 were coordinating Saudi-led funding to al-Qaeda affiliated extremists across the Middle East and Central Asia to counter Iranian Shiite influence.

From 2005 onwards, US and British intelligence services encouraged a range of covert operations to support Islamist opposition groups, including militants linked to al-Qaeda, to undermine regional Iranian and Syrian influence. By 2009, the focus of these operations shifted to Syria.

As I documented in written evidence to a UK Parliamentary inquiry into Prevent in 2010, one of the recipients of such funding was none other than Omar Bakri, who at the time told one journalist: “Today, angry Lebanese Sunnis ask me to organise their jihad against the Shiites… Al-Qaeda in Lebanon… are the only ones who can defeat Hezbollah.” Simultaneously, Bakri was regularly in touch with his deputy, Anjem Choudary, over the internet and even delivered online speeches to his followers in Britain instructing them to join IS and murder civilians. He has now been detained and charged by Lebanese authorities for establishing terror cells in the country.

Bakri was also deeply involved “with training the mujahideen [fighters] in camps on the Syrian borders and also on the Palestine side." The trainees included four British Islamists “with professional backgrounds” who would go on to join the war in Syria. Bakri also claimed to have trained “many fighters,” including people from Germany and France, since arriving in Lebanon. Was Mohammed Emwazi among them? Last year, Bakri disciple Mizanur Rahman confirmed that at least five European Muslims who had died fighting under IS in Syria had been Bakri acolytes.

Nevertheless in 2013, it was David Cameron who lifted the arms embargo to support Syria's rebels. We now know that most of our military aid went to al-Qaeda affiliated Islamists, many with links to extremists at home. The British government itself acknowledged that a “substantial number” of Britons were fighting in Syria, who “will seek to carry out attacks against Western interests... or in Western states”.

Yet according to former British counterterrorism intelligence officer Charles Shoebridge, despite this risk, authorities “turned a blind eye to the travelling of its own jihadists to Syria, notwithstanding ample video etc. evidence of their crimes there,” because it “suited the US and UK’s anti-Assad foreign policy”.

This terror-funnel is what enabled people like Emwazi to travel to Syria and join up with IS - despite being on an MI5 terror watch-list. He had been blocked by the security services from traveling to Kuwait in 2010: why not Syria? Shoebridge, who was a British Army officer before joining the Metropolitan Police, told me that although such overseas terrorism has been illegal in the UK since 2006, “it’s notable that only towards the end of 2013 when IS turned against the West’s preferred rebels, and perhaps also when the tipping point between foreign policy usefulness and MI5 fears of domestic terrorist blowback was reached, did the UK authorities begin to take serious steps to tackle the flow of UK jihadists.”

The US-UK direct and tacit support for jihadists, Shoebridge said, had made Syria the safest place for regional terrorists fearing drone strikes “for more than two years”. Syria was “the only place British jihadists could fight without fear of US drones or arrest back home… likely because, unlike if similar numbers of UK jihadists had been travelling to for example Yemen or Afghanistan, this suited the anti-Assad policy.”

Having watched its own self-fulfilling prophecy unfold with horrifying precision in a string of IS-linked terrorist atrocities against Western hostages and targets, the government now exploits the resulting mayhem to vindicate its bankrupt “counter-extremism” narrative, promoted by hand-picked state-groomed “experts” like Husain and Nawaz.

Their prescription, predictably, is to expand the powers of the police state to identify and “deradicalise” anyone who thinks British foreign policy in the Muslim world is callous, self-serving and indifferent to civilian deaths. Government sources confirm that Nawaz’s input played a key role in David Cameron’s thinking on non-violent extremism, and the latest incarnation of the Prevent strategy; while last year, Husain was, ironically, appointed to the Foreign Office advisory group on freedom of religion or belief.

Meanwhile, Bakri’s deputy Choudary continues to inexplicably run around as Britain’s resident “terror cleric” media darling. His passport belatedly confiscated after a recent pointless police arrest that avoided charging him, he remains free to radicalise thick-headed British Muslims into joining IS, in the comfort that his hate speech will be broadcast widely, no doubt fueling widespread generic suspicion of British Muslims.

If only we could round up the Quilliam and al-Muhajiroun fanatics together, shove them onto a boat, and send them all off cruising to the middle of nowhere, they could have all the fun they want “radicalising” and “deradicalising” each other to their hearts content. And we might get a little peace. And perhaps we could send their handlers with them, too.

- Nafeez Ahmed PhD, is an investigative journalist, international security scholar and bestselling author who tracks what he calls the 'crisis of civilization.' He is a winner of the Project Censored Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for his Guardian reporting on the intersection of global ecological, energy and economic crises with regional geopolitics and conflicts. He has also written for The Independent, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Scotsman, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, Prospect, New Statesman, Le Monde diplomatique, New Internationalist. His work on the root causes and covert operations linked to international terrorism officially contributed to the 9/11 Commission and the 7/7 Coroner’s Inquest.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Photo: Abu Hamza al-Masri speaks at a rally in Trafalgar Square in London 25 August, 2002 (AFP)