FANATIC’S PARIS INSULT
Just days after jihadi killing spree that claimed 130 lives, Islamist group’s leader tells students outrage in the West was an over-reaction
He admitted going to Al Qaeda
training camps
THE controversial leader of CAGE told students days after the Paris attacks that ‘as terrible as Paris was, there were no children reported killed’.
Moazzam Begg told a university event that the public were ‘hypocrites’ for focusing on Western victims of terrorism – and what he called ‘a handful’ of beheadings of Western hostages by Islamic State.
He suggested that the West’s reaction to the Paris atrocities was disproportionate because no children were reported dead among the 130 people slaughtered – whereas many youngsters had died in Syria.
Despite the sensitive timing, Mr Begg was allowed to speak at the event at King’s College London on October 15 unchallenged.
It was just one of 11 events at which the CAGE frontman was permitted to lecture to students in the UK last term, with no-one to counter his views.
He told students at King’s College: ‘We’re hypocrites. As terrible as Paris was – and it was terrible – there were no children reported killed. Why are Syrian children not even worth a mention?’
In relation to the IS beheadings, he said: ‘Islamic State is not a threat to the West like it is a threat to the Muslim world.
‘They may have killed a handful of Western hostages. And we know the names of all of those Western hostages. But does anybody know the names of the Muslim hostages?’
He then went on to bizarrely criticise the media for not reporting on the deaths of fighters from the terror group Al Nusra – even though this is a proscribed organisation linked to Al Qaeda.
‘Does anybody know the numbers of the groups of the people – from Ahrar al-Sham, or from Al Nusra, or from every single group that they have targeted from the Syrian opposition?’ he asked. ‘Nobody knows because nobody cares.’
Mr Begg – a former Guantanamo Bay detainee who has admitted attending terrorist training camps in Afghanistan – used his platform at universities last term to repeatedly tell students to sabotage the Government’s anti-radicalisation programme, Prevent. In less than three months, he spoke four times at University of London’s SOAS, as well as once at Birmingham, Manchester, Bradford and East London universities.
He also spoke twice at King’s College London. During the events he has also encouraged students to sympathise with jihadi groups.
Mr Begg, 47, was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and spent nearly three years at Guantanamo Bay where he claimed to have been interrogated 300 times.
He admitted having attended three separate Al Qaeda terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, but was awarded £1million compensation by the Government in 2010, after successfully claiming that Britain was complicit in his original abduction by US intelligence services, and then his mistreatment at Bagram camp in Afghanistan.
He used the money to buy a large five-bedroom house – complete with three reception rooms, garage and large garden – in an affluent street in Hall Green, Birmingham, and lives there with his wife, Sally, 44, and their four children.
It is thought to be worth nearly £500,000.
Mr Begg now spends much of his time travelling across the country giving i mpassioned speeches against the war on terror at universities and other locations on behalf of CAGE.
Most of his recent events have been part of the so-called Students Not Suspects tour, an NUS-led campaign against the Government’s Prevent programme.
Mr Begg – and his fellow CAGE directors – appear to be in direct contact on social media with NUS figures such as Shelly Asquith, vicepresident for welfare, who arranged some of the events at which he spoke. This is despite the NUS declaring in May that it ‘will not work with CAGE in any capacity’.
The NUS said at the time that claims the NUS had agreed to lobby with CAGE against government counter-terrorism laws were ‘highly misleading’.
It also accepted that CAGE was a ‘deeply problematic’ organisation.
Mr Begg has long been a controversial figure. In 2010, he spoke of his desire for a Caliphate- style regime in Britain, and the same year, Gita Sahgal, then head of Amnesty’s gender unit, described Mr Begg as ‘Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban’ and publicly condemned her organisation for working with him.
Mr Begg has always strenuously denied being involved in terrorism, although this is at odds with a signed statement he gave to US security service agents after his capture in Pakistan. He said, among other things, that when living in Britain and running his Islamic bookshop in Birmingham, he acted as a ‘communications link’ between radical Muslims in the UK and others living abroad.
Last year Mr Begg was arrested over alleged links to terrorism training and funding in Syria, to which he had previously travelled. As a result, CAGE’s bank accounts were frozen after intervention from the Treasury. The charges were later dropped. Last night Mr Begg said he had repeatedly condemned the actions of IS, including the Paris terror attack.
When asked to clarify his comments about Al Nusra and the beheading of Western hostages by IS, Mr Begg said: ‘The point being made was that IS was responsible for beheading
both innocent Western hostages and local Muslims opposing them. I can’t see why this point would be objectionable.’
Regarding his comments about Paris, he said he was simply ‘expressing outrage about innocent children killed in war’.
When contacted by the Mail, all of the universities involved denied that events involving Mr Begg had breached the Prevent legislation. Shelly Asquith declined to comment but the NUS insisted it was not working with CAGE.