Simon Foster, Labour’s candidate for one of the highest profile Police and Crime Commissioner posts – the West Midlands – is seeking to oversee policing in an area covering the UK’s second largest city from May. Which is why Guido’s eyebrows were raised when Foster agreed to join an event hosted by the notorious ‘Muslim Engagement and Development’ (MEND) group. The week the UK’s terror threat level increased to ‘severe’…
The head of counter-terrorism at the Met called out MEND two years ago as an extremist linked group, noting that “one of MEND’s former leading figures lost a libel case labelling him as “a hard-line Islamic extremist” in the context of comments he made supporting the killing of British soldiers in Iraq.” At the time of the 2017 attack on Parliament, MEND’s director of engagement Azad Ali claimed that the terrorist attack, which killed five including PC Keith Palmer, was “not terrorism”. The organisation has a reputation so troubling that even then Chair of the the APPG on British Muslims Anna Soubry ditched a meeting with them in 2017…
Senior police officers and parliamentarians have called out this organisation, yet Corbynista Foster thought it was a good idea to accept their invitation to meet with them in the aftermath of a spate terrorist attacks in France and Austria. Worrying.
Tory MP and DCMS Committee Chair Damian Collins was photographed over the weekend speaking in front of a banner for the Islamist sympathising group CAGE at a left wing festival.
Other banners appearing on stage at the festival included those for MEND, an organisation that MPs such as Anna Soubry have publicly distanced themselves from over claims that it engages in “dismissing terrorism” and promoting hostility towards Jews. CAGE are famed for calling Jihadi John “a beautiful, gentle young man”. Counter-extremist foundation Quilliam says both of these groups “clearly fall within the government’s definition of extremism.” Over compensating for allegations of Tory Islamaphobia?
Last week Guido told how Jeremy Corbyn, Wes Streeting, Stephen Kinnock, Naz Shah and Afzal Khan hosted MEND in parliament. MEND is an extremist-linked group whose senior figures have praised Al-Qaeda, attended speeches by al-Qaeda hate preachers, and justified the murder of British troops. The latest politician to fall for their scam is Vince Cable, who has appeared in a video for the group name-checking them and praising their work. Presumably Vince doesn’t know what they’re really like – he can click on the links above and see for himself. Corbyn and Sayeeda Warsi also appeared in the video. Why do politicians keep palling up to this sinister bunch of wrong ‘uns?
When he wasn’t busy suspending the whip from sex pest MPs, Jeremy Corbyn found time to attend a MEND event in Parliament last week. MEND brands itself as an ‘anti-Islamophobia think tank’, but has been described as a group of “Islamists posing as civil libertarians”. The evidence for this? The litany of hate spewed by senior MEND figures, who have praised Al-Qaeda, attended speeches by al-Qaeda hate preachers, and attempted to justify the murder of British troops. Despite this, and notwithstanding the fact that other MPs pulled out of the event, Corbyn turned up and gave the keynote speech. How deep are the connections between Corbyn and MEND?
Meet Azad Ali, formerly a director of MEND and now the group’s Head of Community Engagement. Ali denied the Westminster Bridge attack was an act of terror, calling it a “lone wolf” event. He has written of his “love” of Al-Qaeda operative Anwar Al-Awlaki (a terrorist connected to a string of plots and attacks including 9/11, the Fort Hood shooting, the underwear bomb plot). He was suspended from his civil service job at the Treasury after he attempted to justify the murder of British troops. He has also admitted attending speeches by Al-Qaeda hate preacher Abu Qatada (spiritual guide to 9/11 hijack leader Mohamed Atta). Quite a CV, and the sort of person you’d think a party leader would run a mile from…
But check out this speech Ali gave in praise of Jeremy Corbyn just this summer. Ali hints that Corbyn’s own views are more extreme than the Labour leader owns up to in public:
“I actually applaud Jeremy Corbyn for giving a break to the Muslim community, you know he took a lot of the blame and flack. You know when he got called a ‘terrorist sympathiser’ and all of this kind of stuff I was thinking, you know, I’ve known Jeremy from before he became leader and I was thinking you know what, wait until they find other things about him.
“And they tried to smear him day in, day out… but not only that, recently after Manchester, what did he say? ‘We need to talk about foreign policy’. So the opening is there for us.”
“Wait until they find other things about him”…
