Muslim group told to drop ‘terror raid’ film
Counter-terrorism officials say Cage video wrongly accuses police of targeting woman after she gave birth
A HUMAN RIGHTS organisation has been told to remove a “deliberately misleading” online film in which a Muslim woman claims she was “raided” by counter-terrorism officers moments after giving birth.
The controversial group Cage has used the highly emotive video to suggest the Government’s counter-terrorism strategy, Prevent, is leading to children unfairly being removed from Muslim families wrongly thought to be radicalising sons and daughters.
In a three-minute 35-second clip, the woman, who wears a niqab and uses the fake name Sister Maryam, weeps as she says she was targeted while she still had blood on her legs at a London hospital delivery room.
After urging people to donate money to Cage, the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, declares: “They are not killing our children, they are taking our children away. What for? Because we are Muslim, that’s all.” She adds: “Prevent tried everything.”
The Sunday Telegraph can reveal the woman was the wife of convicted Islamist extremist Michael Coe, a Muslim convert who became the bodyguard to jailed hate preacher Anjem Choudary.
Police went to the hospital in 2016 to arrest Coe, a self-appointed Muslim “enforcer”, who had earlier attacked a schoolboy for what he deemed nonIslamic behaviour. Despite the woman and Cage claiming Prevent was behind the “raid” at the hospital, it has emerged no Prevent official was at the hospital.
Only counter-terrorism officers went there with the sole aim of arresting Coe, whom they seized outside the hospital. According to Scotland Yard, police then sought guidance from doctors to find an “appropriate time” to conduct a “brief search” of the delivery room where Coe had been.
Coe, 37, had earlier beaten up a teenager because he saw him cuddling a girl on the street. He kicked the teenager in the head, knocking him to the ground and leaving him bleeding from two wounds, before turning to the schoolgirl and calling her a “whore”.
He was jailed for 28 months for assaulting the child and a school teacher who went to the boy’s aid.
Coe had also been convicted in 2013 for religiously aggravated harassment after he confronted a woman who had been talking to some men. He has a long record of violent crimes and was believed to have been radicalised while jailed for previous offences. After his conversion he adopted a Muslim name.
The year-old clip of “Sister Maryam” posted on Cage’s Facebook page has been seen nearly 400,000 times. However, neither Cage nor the woman explains the real reason police went to the hospital or her links to a violent man enforcing extremist views.
A spokesman for Counter Terrorism Policing said: “We feel that the video deliberately excludes the wider context surrounding the particular case highlighted and is therefore misrepresentative of the facts. A direct request to remove the video was sent on Sept 20. We currently await their response.”
Last night, the film was still online.