Gita Sahgal: A Statement

Richard

Well it is hard to have sympathy with such self-righteous ignorance. There is no evidence of widespread torture in Guantanmo Bay, apart from former prisoners' claims; most of them were trained to claim torture after imprisonment. The imprisonment is not illegal under any sane reading of any law. Following such a ridiculous justification of her opposition to justified US detention lead this poor naif eventually to the point she could tolerate no more. It was an inevitable result.

Yvonne Ridley

What a pity Gita didn’t feel able to raise this issue direct with Moazzam Begg. If she had instead of briefing against him, she would have discovered that he’s a great supporter of women and a promoter of their rights.
There is a campaign underway to demonise him and I would have thought, coming from such an excellent human rights background, Gita would have stopped and asked questions first from the man himself instead of joining in the witch-hunt.
I am a committed feminist and a Muslim as well as being a patron of Cageprisoners which is an excellent human rights organisation and global resource used and respected by international lawyers, journalists, human rights organisations and activists.
The very last thing Cageprisoners wants to do is silence Gita – but she should now take the opportunity to meet with Moazzam Begg and air her concerns – real or imagined – face-to-face. I am sure he would welcome the opportunity for some real transparency.
But at the moment he is the victim in all of this not the person who went briefing the media with wild allegations … allegations which I note are now repeated in this forum without any reference to facts. Are we dispensing with the whole concept of innocent until proven otherwise?
The US and the UK have had a chance to charge him but they didn’t – ask yourself why? Or are we opting for trial by media these days?
Moazzam has, at last, been able to give his initial response through the Cageprisoners website – if you want to make a more informed judgment I suggest you go to http://www.cageprisoners.com

Sterence

What is the "Islamic Right"?

NJM

"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’."

Moazzam Begg is a unrepentant jihadist who wasn't tortured at all. His false allegations are blatant lies & straight out the Al-Qaeda training manual:

http://tinyurl.com/ya9zvgk
http://tinyurl.com/y94rpqd
http://tinyurl.com/le3ofv

Vulture

Would that be Yvonne Ridley - Britain's leading sufferer from Stockholm Syndrome?

Voltaire's Priest

Also now at Shiraz Socialist. I'd urge other bloggers to cross-post Gita's statement.

Alexandrovich

Yvonne Ridley: "I am a committed feminist and a Muslim..."

Make your mind up love, you can't be both.

J H Holloway

Excellent.

The nasty-Left disintegrates before our eyes. Campbell and Brown weeping on TV, Ali Desai finally caught bang to rights and Amnesty International exposing itself as nothing more than a anti-West one-stop shop.

Even the Global Warming 'world government' scam has come off the rails....

NJM

@Yvonne Ridley
"If she had instead of briefing against him, she would have discovered that he’s a great supporter of women and a promoter of their rights."
"I am a committed feminist and a Muslim"

Really? So, Begg supporting the Taliban rule in Afghanistan - "the Taliban were better than anything Afghanistan has had in the past twenty-five years" – is a sign of supporting womens' rights? Everyone (who isn’t an apologist for Islam) knows exactly the situation of Muslim women in Islamic countries, especially those which are totalitarian theocracies like Taliban Afghanistan. But that doesn't bother jihadists like Begg or apologists like Ridley. Especially since Yvonne made her views on womens' rights perfectly clear in an interview in 2008:

"I was in Iran last year. I know the hijab is a pain for them, but they will get no sympathy from me. It is clear that the hijab is an obligation, not a choice. ... I don't have any sympathy at all with women who don't want to wear the hijab."

What a feminist liberator you are Yvonne!

@Yvonne Ridley
"There is a campaign underway to demonise him and I would have thought, coming from such an excellent human rights background, Gita would have stopped and asked questions first from the man himself instead of joining in the witch-hunt."

No, there is no campaign or demonization. All people are doing is looking at Begg’s actions, his speeches, his statements, his support for Islamist causes, and exposing his blatant lies & propaganda for what they are. And of course, hoping that those who are genuinely concerned about human-rights & freedom are able to tell fact from (his & your) fiction.

@Yvonne Ridley
"Cageprisoners which is an excellent human rights organisation"

No, it is not. It is a front for unrepentant jihadists & radical leftists - who style themselves as human rights lawyers or victims of torture - but whose obvious intentions are to exculpate convicted terrorists on their website, spread lies about the United States of America & its military/intelligence agencies, promote jihadist hate-preachers (like Anwar al-Awlaki) and generally undermine the West’s attempts to defend itself from their jihadist friends.

@Yvonne Ridley
"But at the moment he (Begg) is the victim in all of this not the person who went briefing the media with wild allegations … allegations which I note are now repeated in this forum without any reference to facts."

Begg is not a victim of anything. He is (as I’ve said before)is an unrepentant Islamic-jihadist who was caught red-handed by the authorities; who admitted to training in Al-Qaeda training camps; who lied about his "torture" at the hands of the U.S. government; and was only released by Bush (against all U.S. governmental department advice) as a personal favour to his friend & ally Tony Blair. The fact that his story is a complete lie - swallowed by the anti-American liberal/Left & so-called human rights groups - is an absolute travesty of truth and justice.

But what would I expect from someone like Yvonne Ridley, eh?

The same Yvonne Ridley who is a member of the pro-jihad RESPECT Coalition & the pro-jihad Stop The War Coalition; who works for the propaganda arm of the Iranian theocracy (PRESS TV); who shamefully defended her employers (the Mullahs) in their sham election & repression in Iran in 2009; who defended the jihadist Aafia Siddiqui as she tried to murder US soldiers in Afghanistan; who called for Muslims to stop co-operating with the police because of their "terrorization"; who chanted "Victory to Hamas" and "Victory to the third Intifada" at a rally in London; who defended Al-Qaeda mass-murdering jihadist Zarqarwi & called those Muslim victims of terror "collaborators"; who eulogized the Butcher of Beslan, Shamil Basayev, as a "martyr" & resistance fighter; who calls suicide bombers "martyrs" and "commendable and we should salute them"; who has defended killing Jewish children because of Israeli conscription in its armed forces "There are no innocents in this war".

Yvonne, you are a truly revolting & vicious human being – like your pro-jihad friends Galloway, Tammimi & Yaqoob - and principled leftists & liberals should say so too.

Craig

I would characterise Yvonne's relationship with Mr Begg as being similar to that which exists between a prostitute and her client. The actions and words of these two individuals have clearly demonstrated their complete rejection of human rights and democracy. For her to use them to attack Gita Sahgal is a transparent act of hypocrisy that is profoundly insulting.

I have noted that Miss Ridley has also attempted to defend another of her clients, George Galloway, within the talkback section of a similar article written by David Aaronovitch. The public denouncement of the Green / Red alliance by Gita Sahgal clearly has her concerned.

Whatever crimes were perpetrated against detainees at Guantanamo, let's not allow Yvonne and similar propagandists to whitewash violent supremacists such as Moazzam Begg into the souls of liberalism.

some indian

She is a indian lady..she is trying to get the support of some terrorist..cause she getss ome money..not only shoudl she banned all her intentions shoudl be exposed..

David Guy

Amnesty International lost all credibility with me, years ago, when they began defending prisoners who were guilty of violence in pursuit of their aims as 'political prisoners'.

hopes

AlezandrovichYvonne Ridley: "I am a committed feminist and a Muslim..."

Make your mind up love, you can't be both.'
Oh yes you can! You would be surprised Alexandrovich.

stevenfryup

Re: how you can be a feminist and a muslim...I must be a misunderstander of feminism...so please go ahead...surprise me with a rational explanation reconciling the basic premise of equality for men and women with the Sharia.

Paul UK

This is an extract from the cageprisoners website in an article Defending Moazzam Begg and Amnesty International. "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?"
It would seem that this statement does not apply to Muslims employed by the Met Police.

1. Ali Dizaei: employer. The Metropolitan Police
2. Unnamed female Muslim police officer refused to shake hands with Ian Blair on religious grounds
3. Tarique Ghaffur: employer. The Metropolitan Police
4. Commander Shabir Hussain: employer. The Metropolitan Police
5. Muslim Chef Hasanali Khoja: employer. The Metropolitan Police
6.PCSO Asad Saeed: employer. The Metropolitan Police
to name just a very few. I do not have to read any more into this website to see that itis a propaganda site and what is written in it should be taken with a pinch of salt, as should Ms Ridley who had she been living in Iran would not be allowed to write on the blog, because she is a female an as such has no opinion on matters.

Andy Gill

@YvonneRidley

Given your record of supporting jihadist murderers and terrorist organizations, your defence of Moazzam Begg is doubtless highly unwelcome in Amnesty circles, who wish to portray him as a guileless innocent.

I'd keep out of it if I were you. CagePrisoners has been rumbled, and Amnesty are in a blind panic.

Christianity4Mecca

Schadenfreude

Carrie Ng

I'm sorry, Ms. Ridley, that you have to deal with such hatred toward you based on no other fact that you are muslim and speak out for those muslims you have been imprisoned and tortured based on no other reason that they are muslims. It is reminicent of 1940s Germany...

NJM

@CarrieNg
"I'm sorry, Ms. Ridley, that you have to deal with such hatred toward you based on no other fact that you are muslim"

No one has any hatred towards Yvonne Ridley. The reasons I, and others, hold her in contempt has nothing to do with her being "muslim" but everything to do with FACTS such as her anti-womens' rights statements regarding Iranian women; her support for racist anti-semitic fascists who murder Jewish people; her defense of suicide bombers; & her support for Islamic terrorists in general. So don’t try & play the pathetic Islamophobia card, ok?

Her record on the above issues are a disgrace & it has nothing to do with her being a "muslim".

@CarrieNg
"speak out for those muslims you have been imprisoned and tortured based on no other reason that they are muslims."

Moazzam Begg wasn’t tortured by anyone. His story is a complete fabrication, as I’ve already explained on this blog. His allegations were investigated and found to be without any evidence at all. And the reasons he was imprisoned in the first place has nothing to do with being a "“muslim" – again, nice try with the Islamophobia smear. The reasons he was arrested & questioned & held in Gitmo is because he was a trained Al-Qaeda jihadist who admitted (in his own book) to supporting the Taliban & wanting to fight a jihad against the Americans after 9/11. He trained in Al-Qaeda camps with Ak-47’s & explosives, and the only reason he was released was as a personal favour to Tony Blair – as he was under pressure politically & from the "human-rights" brigade who swallowed Begg’s fairytale about FBI torture.

So, if you’re going to debate this issue, then you should do the most basic research into the facts of the Begg case, and Yvonne Ridley’s vicious & hate-filled Islamist politics.

@CarrieNg
"It is reminicent of 1940s Germany..."

I think, the metaphor you are looking for is 1930’s Germany…and even that one is risible as a comparison. The only Nazi analogies to made on this subject are growing racism towards Jews in Europe which come Muslims & from the pro-jihadist liberal-left like Ridley and her friends. Also, the nature of Islamism itself which is racist, expansionist, anti-democratic & totalitarian is more akin to Nazism than anything the West has done since 9/11.

But, I guess you (like Ridley) not interested in that threat, eh? Probably because you support it.