Sheffield | Defending Moazzam Begg and Amnesty International

Just when it seemed that Republicans in America had a monopoly on Islamophobic hysteria, the Sunday Times prompted a torrent of similar hysteria in the UK by running an article in which an employee of Amnesty International — Gita Sahgal, head of the gender unit at the International Secretariat — criticized the organization that employed her for its association with former Guantánamo prisoner Moazzam Begg.

Before getting into the substance — or lack of it — in Sahgal’s complaints, it should be noted first of all that her immediate suspension by Amnesty was the least that should have been expected. What other organization would put up with an employee badmouthing them to a national newspaper on a Sunday, and then allow them to return to work as usual on Monday morning?

That Sahgal’s many defenders have all chosen to ignore this point suggests that they believe that her allegations were so significant — the actions, indeed, of a self-sacrificing whistleblower — that this blatant unprofessionalism was acceptable, whereas, in fact, it was no such thing.

That Sahgal also chose to air her complaints in the Sunday Times, a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch, is also significant, particularly because the Times first attempted to smear Begg and Cageprisoners a month ago, in connection with the failed plane bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, in an article by the normally reliable Sean O’Neill, entitled, “Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had links with London campaign group.” To me, this suggests that Sahgal may have been used as part of an ongoing attempt to vilify Begg that was part of a specific editorial policy.

It is also significant that Sahgal confided in Richard Kernaj, a reporter who, as Rick B explained at Ten Percent, enjoys his work “specialising in exposing shortcomings, crime and corruption in the Muslim community” to such an extent that, when he exposed child abuse in an Australian Islamic council in 2006, he boasted afterwards — using a distinctly inappropriate analogy — that being handed the documents that led to his scoop “was like a journalist’s wet dream.”

So what of the allegations? According to Kernaj’s article, Sahgal stated her belief that collaborating with Begg “fundamentally damages” Amnesty’s reputation. Kernaj added that, in an email “sent to Amnesty’s top bosses,” she suggested that “the charity has mistakenly allied itself with Begg and his ‘jihadi’ group, Cageprisoners, out of fear of being branded racist and Islamophobic.” He also explained that she described Begg as “Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban.”

Kernaj also claimed that Sahgal had “decided to go public because she feels Amnesty has ignored her warnings for the past two years about the involvement of Begg in the charity’s Counter Terror With Justice campaign,” and quoted more extensively from the email written on January 30, which stated:

I believe the campaign fundamentally damages Amnesty International’s integrity and, more importantly, constitutes a threat to human rights. To be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment.

Right-wingers — and other thinly-disguised right-wingers described, laughably, as the “decent left” — seized on the article with glee, and responded to Sahgal’s inevitable suspension not with recognition of her lamentable lack of professionalism, but by providing her with a platform for further misplaced allegations, and by writing opinion pieces drawing on their rarely submerged hostility towards Islam.

In the Spectator, Martin Bright posted a statement by Sahgal on his blog, David Aaronovitch followed up with an article in the Times, Nick Cohen set up a ridiculous Facebook group, “Amnesty International You Bloody Hypocrites Reinstate Gita Sahgal,” and even the Guardian allowed a friend of Sahgal’s, Rahila Gupta, to write an opinion piece that failed to justify the descriptions of Begg and Cageprisoners, and that also failed to address the question of why Sahgal should keep her job after criticizing her employers in a national newspaper. Gupta also suggested, erroneously, that Amnesty International had “filtered out” negative comments responding to a statement that the organization issued on its website, whereas, in fact, a cursory glance at the comments should convince anyone that Islamophobia is as alive and well in Amnesty’s supporters as it is in the world of Kernaj, Bright, Aaronovitch, Cohen et al.

On Cageprisoners, Begg defended himself admirably, asking Kernaj why, after discussing his planned article with him, and asking him detailed questions, he chose to ignore all his responses. Begg also criticized Sahgal for not talking to him first, noting, “Whilst it gives me no personal pleasure to hear of the suspension of Ms. Sahgal for holding her view, the newspapers were not the right place to air them without first putting them to Cageprisoners or me.”

In key passages addressed to Kernaj, he wrote:

When asked specifically about the Taliban I told you my view: that I have advocated for engagement and dialogue with the Taliban well before our own government took the official position of doing the same — only last week — although I did not say, like the government, we should be giving them lots of money in order to do so.
I also clearly told you, though you deliberately chose to ignore, that I had actually witnessed what I believe were human rights abuses under the Taliban and have detailed them in my book, from which you conveniently and selectively quote. I added that the US administration had perpetrated severe human rights abuses against me for years but that didn’t mean I opposed dialogue with them.
I even told you that Cageprisoners and I have initiated pioneering steps in that regard by organising tours all around the UK with former US guards from Guantánamo and men who were once imprisoned there. Cageprisoners is the only organisation to have done so. One of these soldiers, in response to your article, sent this message to me: “They are attacking you and your causes … don’t forget you have real support by some of us ex-soldiers who have seen the light.” […]
Had you — and Ms Sahgal no doubt — done your homework properly you’d have discovered also that I was involved in the building of, setting up and running of a school for girls in Kabul during the time of the Taliban, but of course, that wouldn’t have sat well with the agenda and nature of your heavily biased and poorly researched article.

Cageprisoners, for whom I write on a regular basis, describes itself, accurately, as an organization that “exists solely to raise awareness of the plight of the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and other detainees held as part of the War on Terror.” In his letter to Kernaj, Begg also mentioned that Cageprisoners would not “be forced into determining a person’s guilt outside a recognised court of law.” This happens to be a view that I share, and it has motivated me for the last four years as I have assiduously chronicled the stories of the men and boys — all Muslims, in case anyone has overlooked this particular point — who have been redefined as a category of human beings without rights in a post-9/11 world of hysteria in which apparently intelligent non-Muslims regard the indefinite detention without charge or trial of Muslim “terror suspects” as somehow appropriate.

I know from personal experience that Moazzam Begg is no extremist. We have met on numerous occasions, have had several long discussions, and have shared platforms together at many events. He also features in the new documentary about Guantánamo, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo,” directed by Polly Nash and myself, talking about Afghanistan, and his hopes, in 2001, that civilized intervention from other Muslims would help the country to engage with the modern world.

Along with other representatives of Cageprisoners, Moazzam and other released prisoners have all welcomed me — a non-Muslim — with nothing less than friendship, support and openness at all times, as they have with numerous other non-Muslim supporters of universal human rights. Is this really what we should expect from extremists or supporters of the Taliban?

I also know, from my conversations with Moazzam, that he is capable of far more open-minded discussions than many of his critics mentioned above (of the kind that sustained him in his conversations with guards throughout his long ordeal in US custody), and that his calm and considered response to the treatment he received is a far more moderating and moderate influence than that of his divisive critics.

It also seems clear to me that the manner in which this story has been stirred up by the media actually has less to do with Moazzam and Cageprisoners than it does with illiberal attempts to smear Amnesty International’s reputation, and to advance an all too prevalent anti-Islamic agenda.

This is supposedly disguised through the purported defense of an Amnesty employee who had no excuse for speaking to the press as she did, but instead, I would suggest, Gita Sahgal is largely being used by those whose only aim is to stir up hostility towards a man who was imprisoned without charge or trial for three years, who has never been charged with a crime, and who dares to defend the rights of other Muslims not to be held without charge or trial.

Note: Moazzam Begg, Omar Deghayes and Andy Worthington will attend a screening of “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” at Amnesty International’s Human Rights Action Centre in London on Tuesday February 16, at 6.30 pm, and will take part in a Q&A session following the screening, moderated by Sara MacNeice, Amnesty’s Campaign Manager for Terrorism, Security and Human Rights. For further details, see here. Tickets are free, but booking is required. Please visit Amnesty’s site for booking details, and see here for details of other UK tour dates for the film.

In the Name of Allah Most Compassionate Most Merciful,

I had not imagined that the poorly researched Sunday Times article last week with the suggestion that it promised to expose a tangible link between Amnesty International, the Taliban and I was actually a prelude to something far more sinister against Cageprisoners and I in the days to come.

What I've found most puzzling about this whole episode is the timing and what the argument claims to be about. So here I wish to point out some glaring facts that have been purposefully neglected by those leading the charge against me, including, I'm afraid, Gita Sahgal, who I'd really hoped would have applied a little more wisdom before she began her crusade.

The first and only time I've ever met Ms. Sahgal was on a BBC Radio 4, Hecklers programme hosted by Mark Easton, in 2006. She made a presentation which alleged that the Blair government was pandering to fundamentalists in its fight against terrorism by engaging with groups like the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) - who she alleged were linked to "some of the most dangerous movements of our time." Responding to her I joined a panel that included Daud Abdullah (MCB), Tariq Ramadan, Tahmina Saleem of the Islamic Society of Britain (ISB) and Nazir Ahmad of the House of Lords.

Ms Sahgal now avers that Amnesty's relationship is damaged through association with me, but her ideas seemed a little more paradoxically amenable when I suggested that her thesis was flawed because the MCB, ISB, Mr. Ramadan and Ahmed - with all due respect - were largely regarded as sell-outs by some of the very people we needed to engage. I gave her the example of the British government's banning the BBC from broadcasting Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams' voice during the Irish "Troubles." I said, based on this experience, that the government should in fact be speaking to people like Abu Qatadah, no matter how unpalatable that sounded. Ms Sahgal responded unexpectedly by saying she had no quarrel with my analysis.

So if Gita Sahgal in fact does not oppose dialogue with "extremists" then why all this fuss now? I have been harking on about engagement for years. This seems even more bizarre because only a couple of weeks ago Gordon Brown met in London with Hamid Karzai and outlined a new policy to engage with the Taliban. How ludicrous it seems therefore that I am described the very next week as "Britain's most famous supporter of the Taliban." Does anyone really believe this? Surely if that was the case I'd have been invited to the discussions with Messrs. Brown and Karzai about talking to the Taliban, being their "most famous supporter"?

If this matter was not so serious I'd be rolling over in laughter. But it is - deadly serious. Over the past few days we have received numerous death threats at Cageprisoners - and this is just the beginning. No doubt, the police will be trawling through the copious hate-mongering posts on right-wing, anti-Muslim blogs but I doubt that will solve anything.

I think much of it can be traced back to when Cageprisoners launched a report on the detention of terrorism suspects in the UK last year entitled "Detention Immorality" (PDF), which was hijacked by a seemingly unhinged lawyer-cum-blogger who has openly stated that he aims to destroy Cageprisoners and me - though I still don't understand why. He regularly blogs and cross-posts attacks against Cageprisoners, Islamic organisations and me - amongst others - in an effort to "expose" us. But that is only a part of the problem.

In a BBC discussion with my colleague Asim Qureshi last week, Ms. Sahgal said, "I feel profoundly unsafe … talking to Asim Qureshi and Moazzam Begg, but I'm more than willing to meet them." This sits very strangely with the fact that Asim was already seated next to her during the discussion and that she expressed no such sentiment when she actually did meet me in 2006. In reality it is we who are and have been living in fear for a very long time. We are afraid not only of Britain's anti-terror measures, which are amongst the most draconian in the world - that would see, for example, a girl convicted of terror offenses for writing poetry - but we have to accept, on a daily basis, the vilification of all things Muslim by certain politicians, a public that increasingly sees Muslims as a "fifth column," fuelled by a media and blogosphere that vilifies us as a matter of routine. Still, I'd be more than happy to sit with Ms. Sahgal, safety permitting, and put to her some of the things I've written here.

I could insist that she first disassociate from the support and association she has from the pro-war lobby as they have cemented and justified, through the media, illegal wars of occupation which have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and created severe human rights abuses for many - not least women - or her status as universal human rights advocate should be publicly called into question. However, it is my code of life that my oppressor does not become my teacher. And guilt by association does not mean moral bankruptcy. I am more interested in the work I do - and I had hoped the same of Ms. Sahgal, a lot of whose work she might be surprised to discover I would support.

In May last year I appeared alongside Colonel Tim Collins (famous for the stirring speech he gave to British soldiers on the eve of the 2003 Iraq invasion) on a televised panel discussion about Barack Obama's attempt to censor the publication of photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which included images of apparent rape and sexual abuse of Iraqi women by US soldiers. Col. Collins opined that these pictures should be made public so that the world becomes aware of the abuses and that the culprits are brought to book. Again, there was a deafening silence on this issue - especially from the journalists who promoted the war, the same ones who now champion Ms. Sahgal's work on women's rights.

Sadly, Ms. Sahgal, and subsequent columnists and bloggers, have wilfully misled people into believing that I am somehow opposed to women's rights. During the mid-90s I took several aid convoys to Bosnia, motivated to help the people there after genocide, ethnic cleansing and mass rape was used as a weapon of war against women. Bizarrely, my decision to go there too has been described as part of a mindless "jihadist" fantasy, overlooking completely that an entire Muslim population, in the heart of Europe, was being systematically put to the sword, under the noses and "protection" of European nations.

It is by now public knowledge that I was involved in the establishing and running of a school for girls in Kabul, Afghanistan, during the rule of the Taliban. The Taliban did not give us a licence to operate but neither did they impede us from having the school - openly - or from having the girls collected to and from the school in buses clearly marked with the name of the girls' school. There is a deliberate attempt by my detractors to neglect this point each time I mention it - and I can only assume why: it doesn't fit the stereotype, or the agenda.

Then there is the repeated allegation that because I went to live in Afghanistan - with my wife and children - I deserve what happened to me because I chose to live under a regime that was known for abusing women's rights - amongst other things. I have never denied the Taliban were guilty of abusing women's rights, but my presence there should not be equated as an endorsement of their views regarding them. A similar charge however is not put to the numerous white, Caucasian and non-Muslim NGO workers who were living there during the time of the Taliban - sometimes with their families - well before I ever arrived. I wonder why?

It might come as a surprise to some that the executive director of Cageprisoners for over six years was a Muslim woman - someone who was regarded as the backbone of the organisation and an immense source of pride for us all. Since my return from Guantánamo, Cageprisoners and I have been very closely involved in organisations which assist the silent victims of anti-terror measures (utilised against men detained without charge): their wives and children. These organisations help to empower women to face the harsh reality of life without a partner. Cageprisoners' patron, Yvonne Ridley, has been the most active and vociferous in this regard whilst I am a patron of one of these support groups for women. But what support, if any, have this section of our population received from the great women's rights defenders who claim to champion their cause?

I'm not sure why, after having spent years in Bagram and Guantánamo and being subjected to innumerable human rights violations and abuses - including witnessing two murders - I might be expected to be an expert on women's issues, especially when almost every single prisoner I encountered was male, even though some of the abuses were carried out by female soldiers. There was, however, one woman whose screams I still hear sometimes in my head. I was led to believe she was my wife being tortured in the next room while photographs of her and my children were waved in front of me as I lay tied to the ground with guns pointing at me and interrogators asking: "What do you think happened to them the night we took you away? Do you think you're going to see them again?"

Several months later I received news via the ICRC that my wife and kids were, thankfully, safe, but I knew the screams had been real, that it had been somebody's wife, sister, daughter or mother I had heard. After my return from Guantánamo I began investigating who that person might have been but have been unsuccessful in my findings. However, through my own investigations I discovered that there was a female prisoner once held in Bagram and her number was 650. After years of denial of the existence of women prisoners the US administration finally admitted that there had indeed been a female held in Bagram - but only after I'd asked a colleague to request the US administration's official policy on detaining women in Afghanistan.

Shortly after his return from Guantánamo Binyam Mohamed told me that he believed prisoner 650 was in fact Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. This is the same Dr. Siddiqui that last week's Times extraordinarily provides as evidence of Cageprisoners' campaigns for convicted terrorists. And while I'm making the point, Cageprisoners has not campaigned for anyone who has received a fair, transparent and appropriate sentence as a result of proper due process. As I've stated previously, Cageprisoners is an information portal which merely carries information and reports on the cases of all held as part of the War on Terror. In no place does Cageprisoners ever claim that some of these convicted prisoners are "innocent" or faced a "miscarriage of justice." Cageprisoners has raised the cases of those held under control orders, deportation, detention without trial, US extradition - making them no different from other human rights organisations that similarly do not face the same accusations as a result. The people we do campaign for are highlighted clearly on our "Campaigns" page on the site. But we also recognise that not everyone who is convicted of terrorism is always necessarily an "embodiment of evil" - Nelson Mandela serves as the greatest reminder of that.

In October last year I attended a conference in Malaysia where I met survivors of the Abu Ghraib prison. Amongst them was a woman who told me about some extremely disturbing experiences she and others had gone through. She now runs a women's refuge in Syria for Iraqi refugees. Cageprisoners intends to do more work on the cases of such women and it is an issue I discussed with some Amnesty UK members who were very keen to bring her over and start highlighting issues related to sexual violence against women during incarceration. In fact, I discussed this issue at the Amnesty Human Rights Action Centre only in November on a panel with Professor Joanna Bourke, who spoke about "Sexual Violence in the War on Terror." Ms. Sahgal, oddly, was nowhere to be seen. After countless events with Amnesty - or any of the 600-plus I've spoken at around the country - I've still never encountered Ms. Sahgal since meeting with her in 2006 when she had "no quarrel with my views."

I may be no expert on women's rights issues but I think I have a little idea and sympathy to some of their causes - as a husband and father. Take Johina Aamer for example, a 12-year old girl whose father, Shaker Aamer, has been held for over eight years without charge or trial in Guantánamo. Johina's mother has undergone repeated psychiatric treatment since her husband's abduction all those years ago. I went with Johina, Vanessa Redgrave, Victoria Brittain, Helena Kennedy, Gareth Peirce, Kate Hudson and Kate Allen to Downing Street so she could deliver a letter to the Prime Minister, asking that her father finally be allowed home. None of those who attack me now were there - from media or otherwise - to show their support for this innocent little girl. That really is shameful, because this is the sort of thing they are opposing when they address my relationship with Amnesty.

There is another charge implicitly laid against me (and Cageprisoners): that I am only concerned with the rights of Muslims. Just a few months after my release from Guantánamo I saw on the television images of four hostages in Iraq, dressed in orange Like-like suits, facing threats of execution. I contacted all the former Guantánamo prisoners I knew and issued a televised and written statement in all our names calling for their release. Sadly, the only American hostage was killed but the others, a Briton, an Australian and a Canadian (all non-Muslims), all lived and are safely back home. All of them have written to me the warmest messages of support I've ever read. I told them it was the orange suits that did it.

I find incredible too that there is a new re-reading of my book, Enemy Combatant - after having been in print for over four years - as some kind of handbook for the propagation of the Taliban, fanaticism and a latent Islamic extremism. That sits very peculiarly with the fact that it has received very positive reviews from the likes of Tony Benn, Jon Snow, David Ignatius (the Washington Post), Yasmin Alibhai-Brown (the Independent) and, ironically, Christina Lamb (the Sunday Times). Did I fool them all? The book - and I - has been scrutinised at every literary festival I can think of, from Hay-on-Wye to Edinburgh and Dartington to Keswick. The common response I get is that it (and I) lacks bitterness, is devastatingly reasonable, conciliatory in nature and, as Desmund Tutu says: "I feel that Enemy Combatant has the capacity to win hearts and minds."

Unfortunately some minds are not accompanied by hearts in order that they can be won. I would have thought that the pioneering work done by Cageprisoners and myself might also have served to create more understanding and less hatred by engaging in dialogue with former US soldiers and interrogators - but I seem to have been proved wrong. Up until now I have spoken all around the country addressing over 50,000 people with a view to educate, debate, understand and be understood so that hatred is eroded through interaction and knowledge.

The numbers of people who have told me they've been inspired to learn more, get involved, join human rights groups like Amnesty International, raise awareness and develop a new and nuanced understanding is countless. But, in spite of all the blatant anti-Muslim feeling and the rise of the far-right Islamophobic sentiments it is only now, after this episode with Ms. Sahgal and her protagonists, that I am reconsidering my entire approach towards engagement and dialogue to create understanding and acceptance. The fact is the climate of fear has just been raised a level - and I am no longer immune. I will continue to campaign for the men suffering in the concentration camps of Bagram, Guantánamo and the secret prisons. But withdrawal to a place of safety, my own Muslim community, seems to be the best option right now. It seems, at least to some, that engagement has its limits.

Before I do though, it is worth noting how we have reached this point.

The Times led the libellous charge straight after the failed Detroit bomb plot by suggesting that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had become radicalised by attending a couple of Cageprisoners' lectures, without offering one shred of evidence, and once again, choosing to completely ignore Cageprisoners' response. This charge was parroted again last week in David Aaronovitch's contribution to the attack.

A quick look at how the Sunday Times has dealt with the latest issue almost beggars belief: an article written by Richard Kerbaj, who quotes almost nothing of what I say and uses language to suggest the Taliban is actually involved in the whole affair as a headline. I write an immediate response, registering a complaint with the Press Complaints Commission, his editor and my lawyers. The following Sunday another two articles appear in the same paper: the first, a more sober one by Margaret Driscoll, which actually uses my responses that Kerbaj had so deliberately omitted the week before. The second, by Kerbaj again, claims that "Second Amnesty chief attacks Islamist links," showing clearly the Sunday Times sees the problem isn't even about the Taliban anymore, rather it's about having Islamic ideals. The only problem is that Sam Zarifi, upon whom the article is based, also says Kerbaj has mischaracterized his views. It is strange that Mr. Kerbaj and the Sunday Times make careers out of this sort of thing, calling it "news."

The fuse, however, had been lit and out came the others, the way they had done before, demonstrating their credentials in supporting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - and everything that came with that. This is what it comes down to in my estimation. The attacks have been very personal, questioning everything I've done in my life in the same way as the US/UK intelligence services had sought to when they colluded in my abduction, false imprisonment, torture and abuse. What no one had bargained for though, not even me, was what would happen after my release. The motto of Cageprisoners is "giving a voice to the voiceless." That voice has echoed across the world and has even reached the ears of some very influential and powerful people, who recognise just how appalling this whole process has been.

Cageprisoners' previous work on reports like "Off the Record" (PDF), which details the cases of "ghost prisoners" and enforced disappearance and the secret detentions network discussed in "Beyond the Law" (PDF) illustrate the levels of criminality we have stooped to in the name of fighting terrorism. The extent to which our own government has been involved in this is quite breathtaking too. Our report last year, "Fabricating Terrorism II" (PDF), highlighted the cases of 29 individuals - one of them before September 11 - who had been tortured and abused with the complicity of British intelligence services, while "Detention Immorality" showed the extent to which prisoners are held without charge or trial in the UK under secret evidence.

The cases we, the former Guantánamo prisoners and torture victims, have against our own government for complicity in torture is so troubling that I have actually been questioned at UK airports if I had travelled abroad in pursuance of my case against the intelligence services.

Last week's revelations that British intelligence was involved in the torture of Binyam Mohamed came as no surprise to me. It is something I've been saying publicly, at Amnesty meetings, in my book and my writings since my return. Cageprisoners and I have also led the campaign for Shaker Aamer who I believe was not only tortured in the presence of MI5 but the government is very worried that revelations of complicity in his torture might be even worse than Binyam's.

Ms. Sahgal has, perhaps unwittingly, become a cause celebre for some of the pro-war hacks in this country - and around the world (who, as a result, are pro-by-products of the wars: targeted assassinations, "collateral damage," refugee crises, secret and military prisons, torture etc.) They are a tool for the intelligence services or people like Paul Rester, the director of the Joint Intelligence Group at Guantánamo, who says, "[Begg] is doing more good for al-Qaeda as a British poster boy than he would ever do carrying an AK-47." I firmly believe this, more than anything else, is the reason why people want my voice and that of Cageprisoners silenced. But it won't be - not as long as I can help it.

It has been my great pleasure to break many a stereotype one would assume of a Guantánamo terrorism suspect who believes in Islam as a way of life. As a child I had studied at a Jewish primary school and as an adult I married a Palestinian woman. Both have given me fond and loving memories. Last week I was walking with a friend in the streets of Berlin, where Adolf Hitler had once created - and ultimately destroyed - the capital of his Nazi wonderland. My friend is an observant Jew whose family had fled the pogroms in Eastern Europe around the same time. The experience was surreal for both of us: for him, the knowledge of the sort of hatred that once spewed out on these very streets so many years ago changed the world; for me, the growing feeling that hatred of a comparable sort, albeit in a subtler guise, is on the march once again. I can't help but to think now, as we passed what was once the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, what Joseph Goebbels once said about the truth: "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."

My God, was he right.

This meeting is probably the best meeting I have ever been to -- the audio is essential listening:

"On Tuesday 20th of January 2009 the Cageprisoners "Two Sides, One Story -- Guantanamo From Boths Sides of the Wire Tour" -- a tour to mark seven years of unlawful detention, abuse and torture, came to Sheffield. Christopher Arendt (former Guantanamo guard, Iraq Veterans Against War,

http://ivaw.org ), Moazzam Begg (former Guantanamo prisoner, spokesperson for Cageprisoners,

http://cageprisoners.com/ ) and Omar Deghayes (former Guantanamo prisoner,

http://www.save-omar.org.uk/ ) were introduced by Jillian Creasy on behalf of the Sheffield Guantanamo Campaign. It was an outstanding and very moving event and the audio of the meeting is attached and some photos follow."

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/sheffield/2009/01/419598.html

Statement by Gita Sahgal Head of Amnesty International’s Gender Unit
Posted on February 7, 2010

Amnesty International and Cageprisoners

This morning the Sunday Times published an article about Amnesty International’s association with groups that support the Taliban and promote Islamic Right ideas. In that article, I was quoted as raising concerns about Amnesty’s very high profile associations with Guantanamo-detainee Moazzam Begg. I felt that Amnesty International was risking its reputation by associating itself with Begg, who heads an organization, Cageprisoners, that actively promotes Islamic Right ideas and individuals.

Within a few hours of the article being published, Amnesty had suspended me from my job.

A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when a great organisation must ask: if it lies to itself, can it demand the truth of others? For in defending the torture standard, one of the strongest and most embedded in international human rights law, Amnesty International has sanitized the history and politics of the ex-Guantanamo detainee, Moazzam Begg and completely failed to recognize the nature of his organisation Cageprisoners.

The tragedy here is that the necessary defence of the torture standard has been inexcusably allied to the political legitimization of individuals and organisations belonging to the Islamic Right.

I have always opposed the illegal detention and torture of Muslim men at Guantanamo Bay and during the so-called War on Terror. I have been horrified and appalled by the treatment of people like Moazzam Begg and I have personally told him so. I have vocally opposed attempts by governments to justify ‘torture lite’.

The issue is not about Moazzam Begg’s freedom of opinion, nor about his right to propound his views: he already exercises these rights fully as he should. The issue is a fundamental one about the importance of the human rights movement maintaining an objective distance from groups and ideas that are committed to systematic discrimination and fundamentally undermine the universality of human rights. I have raised this issue because of my firm belief in human rights for all.

I sent two memos to my management asking a series of questions about what considerations were given to the nature of the relationship with Moazzam Begg and his organisation, Cageprisoners. I have received no answer to my questions. There has been a history of warnings within Amnesty that it is inadvisable to partner with Begg. Amnesty has created the impression that Begg is not only a victim of human rights violations but a defender of human rights. Many of my highly respected colleagues, each well-regarded in their area of expertise has said so. Each has been set aside.

As a result of my speaking to the Sunday Times, Amnesty International has announced that it has launched an internal inquiry. This is the moment to press for public answers, and to demonstrate that there is already a public demand including from Amnesty International members, to restore the integrity of the organisation and remind it of its fundamental principles.

I have been a human rights campaigner for over three decades, defending the rights of women and ethnic minorities, defending religious freedom and the rights of victims of torture, and campaigning against illegal detention and state repression. I have raised the issue of the association of Amnesty International with groups such as Begg’s consistently within the organisation. I have now been suspended for trying to do my job and staying faithful to Amnesty’s mission to protect and defend human rights universally and impartially.

Gita Sahgal 7 February 2010

http://paulstott.typepad.com/i_intend_to_escape_and_co/2010/02/amnesty-international-begins-to-wise-up-to-moazzam-begg.html

Amnesty International Begins To Wise Up To Moazzam Begg
At Amnesty, something stirs.

It is the realisation that upholding concepts of due process and women's rights may not be best served by strolling along to Downing Street hand in hand with Moazzam Begg, a Salafi Islamist who has attended Jihadi training camps in Afghanistan and Bosnia and attempted to enter Chechnya at the height of the conflict there.

Gita Saghal, head of the Gender Unit at Amnesty's International Secretariat has lambasted her own organisation's relationship with Begg, who has joined with Amnesty in the UK in the campaign Counter Terror With Justice. Ms Saghal comments: "As a former Guantanamo detainee it was legitimate to hear his experiences, but as a supporter of the Taliban it was absolutely wrong to legitimise him as a partner,”. As I found when I heard Begg address Norwich Amnesty last year, he was also far from honest about his own background, whilst his Cage Prisoners group circulated very different literature to that which they circulate amongst Islamist audiences. An examination of just who Cage supports in this country should have alerted even the most gullible as to exactly where they are coming from.

Amnesty was correct to support Begg during his period of extraordinary rendition and mis-treatment in US custody. But getting into bed with him afterwards is ludicrous, as Gita Saghal explains. We strengthen Salafi trends and currents in Britain (and elsewhere) at our peril, and certainly at the peril of women's rights. For those useful idiots on the last century left who find excuses for Mr Begg and will wish to refute the accusation that he supports the Taliban, consider these comments from his 2006 autobiography:

"When I went to Afghanistan, I believed the Taliban had made some modest progress - in social justice and in upholding pure, old style Islamic values forgotten in many Islamic countries. After September 11 that life was destroyed" (p.381).

Or this hilariously bad exchange with American interrogators in Guantanamo:

‘I wanted to live in an Islamic state – one that was free from the corruption and despotism of the rest of the Muslim world’.

- ‘So you chose the Taliban?’

‘I chose Afghanistan. I admit I have made mistakes – but had it not been for 9/11, I think I would still be living happily in Afghanistan’

- ‘Probably as a member of Al Qaeda or the Taliban’

‘I knew you wouldn’t understand. The Taliban were better than anything Afghanistan has had in the past twenty-five years. You weren’t in Afghanistan – not before nor during the Taliban. Child sex, rape, looting, robbery, murder and opium production only ended when they took control. ‘

- ‘And in came amputations, floggings and executions..….’ (p.214).

From Gita Sahgal's statement:

"As a result of my speaking to the Sunday Times, Amnesty International has announced that it has launched an internal inquiry. This is the moment to press for public answers, and to demonstrate that there is already a public demand including from Amnesty International members, to restore the integrity of the organisation and remind it of its fundamental principles."

I can't find the questions she wants the answers to. Where is the evidence against cageprisoners? In the Sunday Times? Those defenders of humans rights and journalistic integrity?

"where does moazzam begg stand on women's rights?" asks Paul Stott.

From the original article, quoting Moazzam Begg:

"Had you — and Ms Sahgal no doubt — done your homework properly you’d have discovered also that I was involved in the building of, setting up and running of a school for girls in Kabul during the time of the Taliban, but of course, that wouldn’t have sat well with the agenda and nature of your heavily biased and poorly researched article."

Is he lying about this?

As he notes, the coalition having heaped misery upon the heads of Afghani civilians, is now prepared to negotiate with Taliban members.

"When asked specifically about the Taliban I told you my view: that I have advocated for engagement and dialogue with the Taliban well before our own government took the official position of doing the same — only last week — although I did not say, like the government, we should be giving them lots of money in order to do so."

Perhaps Gita Sahgal thinks Taliban members should be killed? Hmmmm

Amnesty never supported Mandella or Vanunu because the "human rights" organisation was controlled by "non-violence" ideologues. Their support for Begg represents a move towards rights for all. This looks like the right wing backlash. If there are genuine supporters of human rights with complaints against Cageprisoners they should detail them and provide references.
These struggles occur within centralised, authoritarian organisations. Anarchist Black Cross groups are free to decide who to support for themselves.

A poster above comments on the issue of Begg and the girls school in Kabul.

The myth has built up on the left that he travelled to Afghanistan to open a girls school. Certainly his first visit to the country was to a jihadi training camp (p.50-57). He decided to move there AFTER the girls school he supports has been set up, indeed his memoirs mention the headmaster of the school calling from Kabul to thank him after the school was opened.

His autobiography seems to give three main reasons for moving to Taliban controlled Afghanistan

1. People kept coming into the Islamic bookshop he ran in Birmingham and mentioning Afghanistan
2. He was pissed off after being arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act
3. When he looked into the maths, he realised how cheap it would be to live there

I don't rule out the school or similar development work as a background factor, but going on Moazzam Begg's own writing. the idea that he went to Afghanistan to set up a girls school does not hold water.

"the idea that he went to Afghanistan to set up a girls school does not hold water" -- who claimed that he did?

"A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

More on this matter:

Sunday Times witch-hunts Moazzam Begg, tries to discredit Amnesty International

http://www.islamophobia-watch.com/islamophobia-watch/2010/2/7/sunday-times-witch-hunts-moazzam-begg-tries-to-discredit-amn.html

Chris - Don't tell lies please, you weaken your case by doing so, and spoil the debate for everyone else.

The claim that Begg went to Afghanistan to set up a girls school is widespread. Take the example here from the publicity blurb for his own memoirs "Begg grew up in Birmingham and excelled at school before becoming involved with Islamic political causes and later moving to Afghanistan to become a teacher"

http://www.amazon.com/Enemy-Combatant-Imprisonment-Guantanamo-Kandahar/dp/1595582061

Or this claim on Democracy Now:

http://www.democracynow.org/2006/7/31/enemy_combatant_moazzam_begg_on_his

This sympatehtic Belfast blogger:

http://alaninbelfast.blogspot.com/2006/11/moazzam-begg-at-belfast-festival.html

and I can of course also add the various conversations I have had about Begg with Socialist Worker, Respect and Stop the War activists where precisely the same claim has been made time after time. As I show above, it is very far from being the whole truth.

Stott asked where does moazzam begg stand on women's rights?

Troops out now: replied: From the original article, quoting Moazzam Begg:

"Had you — and Ms Sahgal no doubt — done your homework properly you’d have discovered also that I was involved in the building of, setting up and running of a school for girls in Kabul during the time of the Taliban, but of course, that wouldn’t have sat well with the agenda and nature of your heavily biased and poorly researched article."

Stott replied: The myth has built up on the left that he travelled to Afghanistan to open a girls school.

Chris wrote: who claimed that he did?

Stott wrote: The claim that Begg went to Afghanistan to set up a girls school is widespread.

He then provides 3 sources;

Amazon quoting Publishers weekly: "A British Muslim of Pakistani descent, Begg grew up in Birmingham and excelled at school before becoming involved with Islamic political causes and later moving to Afghanistan to become a teacher."

Democracy Now which quotes Moazzam Begg directly: Yes. I had evacuated to Pakistan in Islamabad, where I have family and relatives, with my own wife and children, after we had been living in Afghanistan, where I had worked on a project to build a girls school and to build wells in the drought-stricken regions of the northwest.

Alan in Belfast: Nine visits to Bosnia under his belt before heading out to start a girls school in Afghanistan (where female education wasn’t popular under the Taliban).

Neither of the quotes by Moazzam Begg make the claim that he went to went to Afghanistan to set up a girl's school. In the First quote he says:

"I was involved in the building of, setting up and running of a school for girls in Kabul during the time of the Taliban"

and in the second:

"we had been living in Afghanistan, where I had worked on a project to build a girls school and to build wells in the drought-stricken regions of the northwest."

So, the strawman is the claim that he went to set up the school - it isn't based on his own claims - he says thats what he did when he was there.

"A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

So, if he was involved in a girls school in Afghanistan, where according to Alan in Belfast, "female education wasn’t popular under the Taliban", then it suggests that he was not Taliban, and that he supported education for girls.

Stott says he can "of course also add the various conversations I have had about Begg with Socialist Worker, Respect and Stop the War activists where precisely the same claim has been made time after time"

Which, like Amazon and some bloke in Belfast's blog are not sources that many Indymedia readers are likely to suggest are trustworthy.

The American State failed to pin anything on Begg after years of incarceration with highly suspect methods, and yet Justice Stott finds the man guilty without the need for a trial.

He joins Aaaronovitch, Nick Cohen and the Sunday Times in a hatchet job on Moazzam Begg, Cage Prisoners and Amnesty. Former editor of Class War or not, this is despicable company to keep.

Judging by the comments thread at

http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=5253, there is little point in trying to reason with the man.

Paul Stott said: "Chris - Don't tell lies please, you weaken your case by doing so, and spoil the debate for everyone else."

What "lies" are you referring to?

I asked a question -- who claimed that Moazzam Begg "went to Afghanistan to set up a girls school" -- because nobody on this thread has claimed that.

You were answering a claim that has not been made here -- that Moazzam Begg "went to Afghanistan to set up a girls school" -- this is why your post clearly represents a good example of a strawman -- it's clearly "an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position."

What "Facts Chris Can't Handle" are you talking about?

I laughed at this comment:

"The American State failed to pin anything on Begg after years of incarceration with highly suspect methods, and yet Justice Stott finds the man guilty without the need for a trial.
He joins Aaaronovitch, Nick Cohen and the Sunday Times in a hatchet job on Moazzam Begg, Cage Prisoners and Amnesty. Former editor of Class War or not, this is despicable company to keep."

It is Cage Prisoners which rallies support for Abu Hamza (jailed for inciting murder and race hate) and Omar Khayam (who plotted to blow up the Ministry of Sound nightclub, as it was 'full of slags')

I'd rather be with Nick Cohen and a former editor of Class War than those scumbags.....

"It is Cage Prisoners which rallies support for Abu Hamza (jailed for inciting murder and race hate) and Omar Khayam (who plotted to blow up the Ministry of Sound nightclub, as it was 'full of slags')"

How exactly does Cage Prisoners do this?

Paul Stott has made specific complaints against Cageprisoners on Socialist Unity. He says they distributed literature with calls to write to Abu Hamza and Andrew Rowe at Islam Expo in 2008.

Moazzam Begg "Attended Jihadi training camps in Bosnia and Afghanistan, and tried to enter Chechnya during the jihadi conflict there"

Moazzam Begg wrote: "When I went to Afghanistan, I believed the Taliban had made some modest progress - in social justice and in upholding pure, old style Islamic values forgotten in many Islamic countries. After September 11 that life was destroyed” (p.381 of his autobiography).

Andy Newman wrote: “But when he was there, he reported human rights abuses by the Taliban. He was no cheer leader, buit someone who advoatd critical engagement. That is exactly what should have been done by Western governments with the Taliban, weaning them away from repressive positions through aid and development incentives.”

Paul Stott asked:
"1. Where did Begg report human rights abuses by the Taliban - and to whom?
2. Rather than advocating critical engagement (which he does now) what we see from Begg’s memoirs is that at the time he admired the Taliban.
3. You claim the Taliban could be weaned away from repressive positions. The positions they adopted in power were based on their interpretation of the Qu’ran. How could aid and development offers convice them their study of the Qu’ran was incorrect?
4. What do you think Begg and cage Prisoners would make of aid being dependent on such an approach?"

I think Paul is using the term "Jihadi" here in a strange way. "Jihad" translates as "to struggle" and it's important to defend peoples right to defend themselves. It's also important to oppose those who attack working class targets. I'm not sure what Cageprisoners politics are but I'm not convinced that it's wrong to work with them. I think we can work together on anti war stuff without compromising on other class and human rights issues.

You would side with the pr-war left, well, that says a lot about your "socialism"...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-war_Left

Are these anti-Moazzam Begg people as hyperactive about Creationists and Zionists for example?

Surely the Taliban are a product of their environment, a focus of law, moral and social certainty (brutal, repressive and reactionary) in a country that’s had over 30 years of violent upheaval and this looks set to continue for years to come – and who’s to blame for that? Easy to see why someone disenchanted with the moral and spiritual vacuum of capitalist Britain might be interested to find out about the dynamics of the Taliban movement. Just as many of the most talented Oxbridge madrassa graduates yearly migrate to the Square Mile to find out how to get stinking rich screwing over anyone and everyone.

Evangelical Christianity and Zionism have attracted followers in a similar way to radical Muslim doctrines, offering moral and social certainties to the oppressed and downtrodden. And after all who is higher in the hierarchy, closer to the centres of power + control of high-tech weaponry, convenient villains like Abu Hamza or feted politicians like Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee or Avigdor Lieberman?

When I heard about Binyam Mohamed I felt a certain sense of relief that finally some of the truth was coming out into the public arena. But it's not a revelation to me as it's something I have maintained since my release: that the British intelligence services were present at every stage of my incarceration and knew what was happening to me and to many other British prisoners.

I am a British citizen and the British intelligence services were, as far as I'm concerned, complicit in the torture of their own citizens – the ones they're supposed to protect.

I think that although the government is caught between trying to justify it and trying to deny it, this revelation should cause things to change more than they ever have before. But I don't know if that will be the case. There's been a strong denial from the government and suggestions from them that it's a slur. That's impossible. It's a statement of fact.

The government is trying to hide this under the interests of national security.

I remember very well when I was held – not just in Guantánamo, but also in Bagram and Kandahar – that British intelligence services were present at every leg of that journey. I knew one of them from the UK because he'd visited my house in Birmingham, so we already knew each other when I saw him again at Kandahar and Bagram. It's well-known, especially to all the Guantánamo prisoners, that the British intelligence services were present. The evidence is well-corroborated.

I don't want to see those involved going to prison or suffering the way we did, but I do want the truth to come out and I don't want them to hide behind national security. They need to be open so we can get some reconciliation.

It's hard to describe the conditions in which I first met British intelligence officials when I was in US custody. After running the gauntlet of US soldiers punching and kicking me and dogs barking at me, I was forced to my knees, hooded and in shackles, with a gun pointed towards me.

When the hood was lifted so, metaphorically, was the veil, and in front of me I saw British intelligence agents.

I felt shock and relief. Relief that these people – among them was the man who'd been in my house and who I'd offered a cup of tea to – were British and so must have my interests at heart. And shock that they were British but didn't have my best interests at heart.

http://paulstott.typepad.com/911cultwatch/

Paul Stott's "9/11 CultWatch" blog linking to Harry's Place as "A site with a strong record of uncovering detailed evidence on the activities of UK Islamists, and their apologists." reminds me of the link he had in 2007 on this Blog to Nico Haupt, listed as "essential", see the thread here for more on that sorry affair:

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/11/385261.html?c=on

To Perspective, comment 15

If you are referring to Gita Sahgal as one of the anti-Begg campaigners then the short answer is yes, she is as concerned about 'zionists and creationists' or more accurately perhaps conservative and communalist Jews and Christians as she is about Muslims. As you put it,

"Evangelical Christianity and Zionism have attracted followers in a similar way to radical Muslim doctrines, offering moral and social certainties to the oppressed and downtrodden".

Gita Sahgal has been writing and campaigning about this for 20 years, through Southall Black Sisters and Women against Fundamentalism, in the anti-war movement, and much more. Her book 'Refusing Holy Orders - Women and Fundamentalism in Britain' contains chapters on Jewish and Christian fundamentalism. She has been prominant in the campaign to investigate and bring to justice the Hindu fascists responsible for the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat.

Do not link her to the right wingers and their pro-war or anti-Muslim agendas. The petition to support Gita Sahgal can be found at

http://www.human-rights-for-all.org/

Moazzam Begg's response, above:

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/sheffield/2010/02/445956.html#additions

Contains:

"The attacks have been very personal, questioning everything I've done in my life in the same way as the US/UK intelligence services had sought to when they colluded in my abduction, false imprisonment, torture and abuse.

Ms. Sahgal has, perhaps unwittingly, become a cause celebre for some of the pro-war hacks in this country... They are a tool for the intelligence services..."

Is this a coincidence?

Two weeks ago in Leeds, I gave a peace lecture honouring Olof Palme, which ranged over wars old and new, the bombing of Dresden, Daniel Ellsberg, Wikileaks, Bloody Sunday, and the Turkish flotilla to Gaza. Afterwards I was approached by two young Muslim women. They wanted to discuss the issues raised in the lecture, but also to talk about how isolated they felt and how hard it is for them these days to talk about politics without fearing hostility and feeling that they are being seen as “terrorists”. In the following two days I talked with another young Muslim woman whose husband is on a Control Order, and who in desperation had broken its conditions and faced possible dire consequences. I also went to see a Muslim woman whose husband is in prison accused of terror-related activities, and one of whose sons is in trouble.

Three days… four Muslim women… The Leeds women came to my lecture because Moazzam Begg told them about it; the two London women I know because Moazzam Begg asked me to visit them some years back, to break their isolation; and he and I have visited the Control Order family together, with Home Office clearance.

Since he was released from Guantanamo, this has been his work – campaigning on behalf of those still held without trial or hope of justice, and doing what he can to help distraught wives and families.

At the centre of the bitter, feminist-led recent controversy over him and Amnesty International, is a completely false perception of his attitudes to women, based on the fact that he once worked in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Long-standing, complex and important debates on gender politics and religion have been shoe-horned into a simple demonisation of him.

None of the Muslim women I mention have ever heard of Gita Saghal, former head of the gender department in Amnesty International, but their reality is undeniable. The Britain they live in is one of isolation and fear. Ms Saghal’s recent disagreement with her employer, Amnesty International, and her decision to publicise her views on that in an interview with the Sunday Times, has fed into an existing virulent islamophobia. It should have remained an important internal argument inside Amnesty International. Ms Saghal’s ill-considered words about Moazzam Begg and others at Cageprisoners have caused very serious damage to their reputation, and provoked death threats.

Like many people who work with Cageprisoners and Moazzam Begg, I wrongly assumed that the Amnesty row would have a brief media life in which old enemies of Amnesty on the right would take some pleasure, while the usual metropolitan journalists who resent the celebrity profile of a Muslim man from Birmingham who is both a good writer and public speaker, would follow Ms Saghal’s lead, and recycle old criticisms of Moazzam Begg in the coded islamophobic terms which have become routine in the British media.

However, the “on-line global petition” signed by 2,145 people, Ms Saghal’s statement carried prominently, and unusually, in the influential New York Review of Books, her subsequent call to action in the name of Amnesty’s founder Peter Benenson, show that – whether or not she intended it - she has turned into a celebrity herself. Following her time heading the section of Amnesty International devoted to women’s issues, and previous work with Women Against Fundamentalism, her attack on Amnesty and on Moazzam Begg may prove a career maker. (The Somali-born, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, has prospered as a celebrity for her critique of conservative Islam, earning a job at the conservative US think tank the American Enterprise Institute.)

In her NYRB statement Ms Saghal sets out her stall:

“I am now free to offer my help as an external expert with an intimate knowledge of Amnesty International’s processes and policies. I can explain in public debates… that adherence to violent jihad… is an integral part of a political philosophy that promotes the destruction of human rights generally and contravenes Amnesty International’s specific policies relating to systematic violence, particularly against women…”

At the centre of Ms Saghal’s criticism of Amnesty for working with Moazzam Begg - who can speak on rendition, torture and imprisonment from personal experience - and Cageprisoners, the web-based organisation which campaigns for Muslim prisoners held without trial, are three charges against him:

1. Attitudes to women.
2. Support for the Taliban.
3. Support for “violent jihad”

These have morphed into a generalised and theoretical attack on Amnesty for rejecting a “belief in universalism”, and a call for Amnesty to restore the integrity of human rights, as Ms Saghal puts it. Or, as the petition puts it, “We believe that Gita Sahgal has raised a fundamental point of principle which is about the importance of the human rights movement maintaining an objective distance from groups and ideas that are committed to systematic discrimination”. (This is in tune with the astounding new US Supreme Court 6 – 3 ruling that prevents humanitarian groups from speaking to groups considered by the US to be terrorists, even for legal advice or peace-making.) In reality it would be an awkward stretch to imagine how Cageprisoners could be considered committed to systematic discrimination, but in the vagueness of these repeated slurs, too many people have fallen for that extremely damaging idea. Moazzam Begg’s calm, modest and dignified response to Ms Saghal can be read on the Cageprisoners website.

Ms Saghal first met Moazzam Begg in 2006 , when she was introduced as from, not Amnesty, but the feminist group Southall Black Sisters, in a BBC Radio 4 Hecklers programme. She made a presentation alleging the government was pandering to fundamentalism in the war on terror, by engaging with groups such as the Muslim Council of Britain. She was criticised strongly by a panel which included, Lord Ahmed, Professor Tariq Ramadan, Daud Abdullah of the MCB, and Moazzam Begg. At the end of the programme, one of them went up to her and said he hoped she was alright and had not found the discussion an ordeal – it was Moazzam Begg.

In the years since then, Moazzam Begg opened himself to debate and argument with people of every persuasion. He has addressed hundreds of meetings in the UK [ You can see Begg speaking at the session on torture at the Convention on Modern Liberty, here] , many of them organized by Cageprisoners, or by Amnesty UK, or Amnesty local branches, lawyers groups, and indeed any group in Britain and beyond, on the human rights issues around Guantanamo Bay, and Muslims in Britain detained on secret evidence without trial. (He came to London to speak at the Southbank for my play, Waiting, which was entirely about women affected by the war on terror.) There have also been dozens of delegations to Downing Street on behalf of prisoners and their families. Much of his focus has been on the attempt to get back to Britain from Guantanamo, his friend Shaker Aamer, a British resident with Saudi nationality and a British wife and four children. Moazzam Begg has concentrated, among other things, on averting the threat to send Shaker to Saudi Arabia if he is released, because it would devastate his wife as she would be unlikely to be able to join him, given the Saudis’ authoritarian rules on marrying non-Saudis.

In many of these meetings the wives and families of the detained men have been present, their letters read aloud, their daughters speaking for their fathers. Among the women who have supported some of these events have been Gareth Peirce, Vanessa Redgrave, Helena Kennedy, Caroline Lucas, Sarah Teather, Kate Hudson, Bianca Jagger, Kate Allen of Amnesty UK, Helen Bamber, and myself. Is it likely, if Moazzam Begg and Cageprisoners had the attitudes to women attributed to them by Ms Saghal and her on-line petitioners, they would want to work with women like us, over and over again? Or would we want to work with them?

The current work is, or should be, the central issue, but it has got obscured by a torrent of words. The recent post on openDemocracy from Rahila Gupta, makes parallels between the Amnesty/Cageprisoners issue, and the unwitting support of Oxfam and other UK-based NGOs for various controversial groups, including a women’s group in India whose leader appears to be a member of the BJP. Rahila Gupta writes, “like Begg and Cageprisoners, the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) is chameleon-like when it comes to pinning down its true colours”, and then throws in about Moazzam Begg, “his self-proclaimed Salifism – a highly sectarian strand of Islam which has much in common with Saudi Arabian Wahhabism.”

Ms Gupta is a very experienced journalist and writer, who knows the BJP well enough to judge it. (She is also the editor of a book on Southall Black Sisters.) But her chameleon slur on Moazzam Begg is simply wrong. It could only be said by someone who does not know the person concerned. I worked day in, day out, (weekends excluded) with Mr Begg for eight long months in 2005 to help write his book. And in the following five years I have seen him dozens of times, in circumstances as different as visiting his wife and children, or with families in desperate trouble, or in public meetings. It is not likely that I would have failed to pick up on chameleon behavior and attitudes.

As for his so-called self-proclaimed Salafism, this is also a puzzle, and a red herring, drawing most readers into an intellectual area that they are unfamiliar with, and uneasy, and where Ms Gupta is no expert. It is a journalist’s attempt at easy compartmentalisation, and convenient shorthand for “extremist”. But Salafis come in all shapes and sizes and a range of beliefs and practices - as do Protestants.

Extremism is the message too, when the NYRB statement talks of “areas where jihad supported by Begg’s associates is being waged”. Which areas is Ms Saghal talking about, and who does she mean? Afghanistan, perhaps, where his associate in torture in the US prisons of Bagram and Guantanamo, Abdul Salam Zaeef, the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, is under house arrest from which he has written an historical book, now translated into English, which has had him treated to a respectful 30 minute interview on the BBC? We don’t know. And yet another damaging phrase is there to stigmatise, and stick in people’s minds: “the specific form of violent jihad that Moazzam Begg and others in Cageprisoners assert is the individual obligation of every Muslim.” Violent jihad is a tautology, like violent war. Noone in Cageprisoners calls for killing of civilians, though they might consider the anti-apartheid movement, or the anti-colonial struggles of the Algerians, Vietnamese and South Africans in the 1960s and 70s to have been a secular kind of defensive jihad.

Again, look at the work, and listen to what is said at Cageprisoners’ meetings. They are often chaired by a non-muslim, by a female, addressed by non-muslims, and in a whole series last year, featured former Guantanamo guards, who know better than the petition signatories what took place and why. The meetings’ message is always the same – work for justice for people being denied it.

Ms Gupta writes that Ms Saghal’s attempts to “expose” the dangers of providing a platform for religious and communalist forces, have been highjacked by right wing, illiberal voices using the opportunity to attack Amnesty. In fact Ms Saghal must have been aware, with her choice of paper for one thing, that she was giving ammunition to just the very rightwing illiberal forces Ms Gupta mentions. There was no high-jacking of her campaign. Nor did she “expose” anything – the use of Moazzam Begg at Amnesty functions was entirely public, and gave them useful credibility in an area - the war on terror – in which the organization was considered weak by many of those closely concerned.

The demonising has had a nasty personal tone. Ms Saghal has stated that she feels unsafe in the company of Moazzam Begg and Cageprisoners’ senior researcher, Asim Qureshi. (This is curious, as she made the statement while sitting next to Mr Qureshi in a BBC studio. And, on her second meeting with Moazzam Begg, at a Cageprisoners press conference in The Frontline Club in the aftermath of leaving Amnesty, she asked him to sit down with her afterwards and they had a long conversation. Face to face, incidentally, she was quite unable to clarify what her real difference with him is.)

In print she has gone so far as to pen, in the NYRB, the very offensive sentence, “But the spectre that arises through the continued promotion of Moazzam Begg as the perfect victim is that Amnesty International is operating its own policies of sanitizing the truth.”

Neither Moazzam Begg nor any of the British citizens or residents who returned from Bagram and Guantanamo are victims, so much as survivors of the war on terror which has destroyed the lives of so many others unjustly held and tortured in those and other US prisons. After years of being held beyond the reach of the law, being tortured, being betrayed by Britain, all without a single charge brought against them, they have against extraordinary odds rebuilt their lives with families, education, jobs, in a climate in Britain that was not easy when they returned, and has got worse, partly thanks to Ms Saghal’s initiative. Respect would be the appropriate response to these men, particularly from someone with a background in the human rights industry and no excuse for not knowing the details of what was done to them.

The death threats to Cageprisoners that followed Ms Saghal’s irresponsible words cannot just be shrugged off. For Moazzam Begg in particular - as young British soldiers die in Afghanistan - it cannot be easy to feel safe walking in public after being branded the greatest supporter of the Taliban. He can’t ask everyone he sees to read his book and see what his real position has been. The fact that he actually went, in a joint decision with his wife, with his young family to Afghanistan, to build schools for girls, and dig wells, at least should be a matter of public record by now. The objective was to engage, however difficult it was, in the experiment of an Islamic state, which he by no means accepted blindly – as his book makes clear. That same willingness to engage, has been behind his accepting the responsibility of playing a leading part in the debates on the war and terror and its fallout. He could hardly have foretold this ‘gender politics’ chapter of the consequences.

But even more serious is how Ms Saghal has contributed to the current climate of intolerance and islamophobia in Britain, where the families of Muslim women like those I mentioned at the start, are having their hopes and dreams of a normal life in Britain dashed. Intolerance and confrontation with Muslims is on the rise all over Europe. Parliaments in France, Belgium and Spain are currently trying to pass laws against wearing the full veil in public, and a French MP justifies it by talking of combating “the French Taliban in our midst.” Violent incidents are recorded in Britain’s local papers every week. Human rights lawyer Helena Kennedy QC said on a platform recently, that we should be concerned that hostile and vicious expressions towards Islam have become shockingly respectable in our society – as racism and anti-Semitism once were.

Ms Saghal has been playing a dangerous game, and has got a following - besides the obvious one she would get on the right - that she does not deserve. This row will not destroy Amnesty, nor Cageprisoners, but it has given a push towards further heated polarization, when what we need are cool heads in complex debates on the politics of gender, patriarchy, and of religion, now when religious fundamentalism is on the rise all over the world – including the US.

The only good outcome from this whole unnecessary saga would be a new focus on what those petition signers, so keen to support human rights, can do about the on-going excesses of the war on terror. For a start, they could work to shame the British and American governments into ending the nine year ordeal of a woman like Shaker Aamer’s wife, who has now been deprived of her husband for longer than she was with him. Up to now, her main support, besides her lawyers, has been Cageprisoners.

Rachel

Moazzam Begg's response

24.02.2010 13:12

Dangerous game: a reply to Gita Saghal and her supporters

16.07.2010 14:27

Victoria Brittain
Homepage: http://www.cageprisoners.com/our-work/opinion-editorial/item/287-dangerous-game-a-reply-to-gita-saghal-and-her-supporters

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