In a report by investigative journalist, Nafeez Ahmed, “’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.”
A few years ago a debate was hosted by BBC Newsnight between Maajid Nawaz, director of the Quilliam Foundation, and Anjem Choudary, head of the Islamist group formerly known as al-Muhajiroun. The Islamist group has reincarnated itself quite a few times since its ban, one of its more recent and well-known incarnations being “Islam4UK”.
One thing these two men have in common is Britain’s security services, and according to Ahmed, this “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.”
With support from the British government, Maajid Nawaz, after renouncing his affiliation with the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), was able to co-find the Quilliam Foundation with his fellow ex-Hizb member, Ed Husain. Husain’s memoirs, The Islamist, gave the establishment a large PR boost after becoming an international bestseller and receiving a tremendous amount of attention.
Nawaz also wrote a book entitled Radical, and between the two accounts, they offer provocative and genuine insights. However, it would seem that the British government has played a direct role in crafting those accounts, though none of the parties involved will admit it.
Government ghostwriters
Nafeez Ahmed states that in late 2013 he “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.”
According to the source, the draft had been manipulated in a clearly political and pro-government manner. Included in the committee that had input into Husain’s manuscript before its publication are 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’s book was being written for him, Nawaz was initially in prison in Egypt. After Nawaz’s release in 2006, he declared his departure from HT a month before the publication of Husain’s book. Husain took credit for Nawaz’s choice, and by November of 2007, Nawaz become the director of Quilliam. Husain claims Nawaz played a role in determining parts of The Islamist at the same time it was being edited by government officials.
In Nawaz’s book, Radical, he claims he had rejected HT’s Islamist ideology while in prison in Egypt, yet he 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.” He didn’t decide to renounce HT until after his release from prison and return to Britain.
According to Nafeez Ahmed:
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.
At the same time Nawaz, by his book’s account, was rejecting the ideology of HT, he was attending, and even speaking, at HT protests. In January of 2007 he delivered a speech during a protest at the US embassy in London demanding an end to “colonial intervention in the Muslim world”.
Ahmed concludes that “the British government’s intimate, and secret, relationship with Husain in the year before the publication of this 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?”
Sources:
Ahmed, Nafeez. Mint Press News. Feb 28, 2015. (http://www.mintpressnews.com/m15s-jihadi-john-how-british-intelligence-primed-both-sides-of-the-terror-war/202632/)
Mekhennet, Souad and Goldman, Adam. The Washington Post. Feb 26, 2015. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/jihadi-john-the-islamic-state-killer-behind-the-mask-is-a-young-londoner/2015/02/25/d6dbab16-bc43-11e4-bdfa-b8e8f594e6ee_story.html)
We were asked to assist Birmingham Gun Co to provide Weapons for the Sierra Leone Police force by Robin Cook back in 1997. There were sanctions in place preventing this. I suggested to my business partner on advice from another industry major that it was best to side step this as it was likely to backfire.
Sandline took over the job and it nearly bankrupted Spicer when his rented cargo plane was hijacked at Freetown. A political storm ensued. He is though now the major supplier of off balance sheet personel to the UK abroard.
Ghost writing I am told is and has been a favorite of political parties etc for a while.
Islam advises breeding within families, so we are dealing with inbreeds, literally. Nothing more to say. People with down syndrome have better grounded views.