Cage, a group which campaigns on behalf of communities affected by the “war on terror”, has admitted it made mistakes after a report it commissioned castigated its actions following revelations that Isis’s chief executioner had sought its help as a student in London.
The small campaign group gained worldwide attention after it emerged Briton Mohammed Emwazi, unmasked in February as “Jihadi John”, took his claims of harassment by the British authorities first to Cage.
A hastily arranged press conference lasting almost an hour was broadcast live on both Sky and BBC news in which Cage’s research director Asim Qureshi said Emwazi had been a “beautiful young man”.
This contributed to the group being labelled “apologists for terror” by critics and the prime minister’s claim in July that groups should be “ashamed” of associating with Cage.
An external audit commissioned by Cage of its handling of the Emwazi affair is blunt in exposing the shortcomings of campaigners. It describes the press conference as “not planned, not structured, not scripted and too long. It came across as a lecture”.
In opting for a “lengthy argument” rather than a “soundbite” Cage was unsuccessful in “clearly articulat[ing] its distance from Emwazi’s actions to prevent any portrayal of them as ‘apologists for terrorism’ ”, the audit states.
Acknowledging that Cage was overwhelmed by press interest – its single press officer received 300 inquiries in two hours – the report said the group also failed at the press conference to refer to the “suffering of the families of the victims of Emwazi” and also should have “acknowledged the role of Isis and Syria in Emwazi’s trajectory to violent killing of innocent non-combatant civilians”.
The review added: “These two shortcomings, along with a clear distancing from Emwazi’s actions, and the ‘beautiful young man’ comment allowed the media to easily portray Cage as being on the side of [Isis’s executioner].”
The review was undertaken by Communica, an independent consultancy specialising in Muslim public opinion, which was provided with Cage’s confidential internal paperwork and allowed to interview key staff.
It concludes that the campaigners “can no longer just appeal to Muslim communities if it wants wider acceptance” and must prepare to answer questions on key issues such as jihad in “media speak as well as in intellectual arguments”.
The authors say that the chaotic response to the Emwazi story can be partly traced to a lack of resources. Since the arrest and subsequent release last year of Moazzam Begg, Cage’s outreach director in 2014, the organisation has been forced to operate without a bank account.
Cage only had three and a half days to deal with the story and its largely inexperienced staff were working 20-hour days. “Cage staff were stretched and were working outside their comfort zones. They also lacked experience in key areas such as handling the media and risk management. The board needed to provide much more support and direction to staff than they did,” the report says.
In response, Adnan Siddiqui, the director of Cage, said: “This review was difficult to undertake, however it was important to help us learn and develop.
“We are a relatively young organisation with a small team and a huge challenge but we strive for the highest professional standards.
“On this occasion we made mistakes and we recognise this. We will be studying the report carefully and looking to implement the recommendations.
“Despite the mistakes made, we feel our intervention still made an important contribution to the debates around security services’ accountability, and abuses of the rule of law in the war on terror.”
A report in the Sunday People on 18 October said Emwazi is wanted alive by British security chiefs who want to bring him to trial for involvement in the beheading of hostages including David Haines and Alan Henning.