MI5 And MI6 Accused Of Abuses.

Moazzam Begg, famous for being detained at Guantanomo Bay by the United States, has been crusing the TV studious to register his disgust that no one in either MI5 or MI6 will be prosecuted for his false arrest. On the surface this appears to be a straightforward case of an innocent man being hounded by evil intelligence forces in cahoots with the even more evil CIA. Until, that is, you look into Mr.Begg's rather colourful background. As a youngster Begg was a member of a well-known street gang in Birmingham known as the Lynx gang. In late 1993, by his won admission, he crossed over the Pakistani border into Afghanistan with the leader of the Lynx gang, Syed Butt, and took training in an Taliban run camp. In 1994 he travelled to Bosnia where he briefly joined the Bosnian army and was, as he admits, involved in the fighting there. What brought him to the attention of the British authorities, however, was not his activities abroad, but a benefits fraud amounting to over £100,000 with his friend Syed Butt. Begg was acquited but Butt served 18 months and then went on to be arrested in the Yemen for planning to plant bombs and served five years. In 1998 Begg, now married, moved to the Pakistani/Afghanistan border where, he admits, he visited Al-Qaeda training camps. In 1998 he returned to Birmingham where, despite having no visible means, he opened an Islamic book store and employed an Algerian illegal immigrant wanted in France for terrorist activities. In the year 2000 the British authorities raided Mr.Begg's shop and seized several illegal books with such catchy titles as "The Virtues of Jihad" and "Declaration of War." In 2001 Mr.Begg moved, with his family, to Kabul in Afghanistan where, in late 2001, he retreated into the Tora Bora mountains with Taliban forces. In 2002 he was arrested by the Pakistani authorities in Islamabad after evidence came from a captured Al-Qaeda training camp that he had received money from that organisation along with a list of targets to be bombed in the west. Pakistan handed Begg over to the US who then took him to Guantanomo Bay where, he admits, he was never actually tortured, though he knows lots of people who were. After his release in January 2005 and subsequent return to Britain, Mr.Begg has lectured and written books about his experiences and shared a platform with Amnesty International. However, his reputation has continued to be problematic as he continues to associate with known terrorists and, in 2010, Gita Sahgal, then the head of Amnesty's gender unit, publicly condemned her organization for its collaboration with Begg, saying that it "constitutes a threat to human rights." In a letter to Amnesty's leadership, she warned: "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." Sahgal argued that by associating itself with Begg "Amnesty is risking its reputation on human rights." In the same vein Salman Rushdie has said: "Amnesty ... has done its reputation incalculable damage by allying itself with Moazzam Begg and his group Cageprisoners, and holding them up as human rights advocates.... Amnesty and Begg have revealed, by their statements and actions, that they deserve our contempt."
Hmmmm.