CAGE (organisation)

Aims

CAGE is an advocacy organisation whose stated aim is "to highlight and campaign against state policies developed as part of the War on Terror". It has run campaigns in support of freeing all detainees who continue to be held without charges.

Background

In October 2003, CAGE's website was launched to highlight the plight of detainees held as part of the war on terror. It published names, photos and other information about detainees which the United States had kept secret, much of which was obtained from detainees' families.

CAGE's outreach director, Moazzam Begg, is a Briton from Birmingham who was held for a total of three years by the United States in extrajudicial detention as a suspected enemy combatant in Bagram and the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp in Cuba by the U.S. government. He was released without charge in 2005. He has worked to represent detainees still held at Guantanamo, as well as to help former detainees become re-integrated into society. He has also been working with governments to persuade them to accept non-national former detainees, some of whom have needed refuges other than their countries of origin.

In November 2010, The Guardian reported that US embassy cables in the Wikileaks showed then-U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg, Cynthia Stroum, praising Begg for his campaign to persuade European nations to take in Guantanamo detainees for resettlement.

Qur'an Desecration Report

In May 2005, CAGE released The Qur'an Desecration Report, which contained accounts from former Guantánamo prisoners who said they suffered religious abuse.

Controversies and criticisms

The journalist Terry Glavin in The National Post described the organisation as "a front for Taliban enthusiasts and al Qaida devotees that fraudulently presents itself a human rights group".

Anwar al-Awlaki

After Anwar al-Awlaki's release from Yemeni detention in 2007, Begg was the first person to interview him. CAGE invited the cleric to address their Ramadan fundraising dinners in August 2008 (at Wandsworth Civic Centre, South London - by videolink, as he was banned from entering the U.K.) and August 2009 at Kensington Town Hall.

CAGE was criticised by Gita Saghal for championing al-Awlaki, which "should have rung alarm bells", because he had been linked to al-Qaeda and various terrorists. In November 2010 CAGE issued a press release to clarify their position on al-Awlaki. They noted that, before his 18-month detention, al-Awlaki had been known as a cleric of moderate views. In that period, he had been invited to speak at the Pentagon and had served as a chaplain at an American university. They defended their support of him as a prisoner held by Yemen without charge for 18 months and said that at their events he had only spoken of his experiences as a former prisoner. Adding that they strongly opposed his newly espoused radical positions, but at the same time, they opposed the United States' plan to target him for assassination in a missile strike. Awlaki was later killed by the US in a drone strike in 2011.

The World Tomorrow controversy

In an Episode 5 of Julian Assange's World Tomorrow broadcast by RT on 15 May 2012, representatives of CAGE (Moazzam Begg and Asim Qureshi) expressed support for the principle of creating an Islamic caliphate including precise implementation of Sharia law. Begg suggested that full implementation of Sharia has not occurred since before the fall of the Ottoman Caliphate. During the interview Asim Qureshi expressed personal support for the principle of death by stoning for adultery and other death penalties prescribed by Islamic law "as long as all due process elements are met", and in 2015 again refused to condemn stoning for adultery.

Amnesty International controversy

In February 2010, Amnesty International suspended Gita Sahgal, its gender unit head, after she criticised Amnesty for its links with Begg. She said it was "a gross error of judgment" to work with "Britain's most famous supporter of the Taliban". Salman Rushdie supported her, saying: "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. The journalist Nick Cohen wrote in The Observer: "Amnesty ... thinks that liberals are free to form alliances with defenders of clerical fascists who want to do everything in their power to suppress liberals, most notably liberal-minded Muslims."

After Osama bin Laden was killed in an American raid in May 2011, CAGE published an editorial written as news satire. Dated 15 May 2021, it announced "American War Criminal Barack Obama has been killed by Pakistani security forces in the UK." Michael Weiss, who is a research director for The Henry Jackson Society criticised the satire, calling it "a sick joke".

Mohamed Emwazi or 'Jihadi John'

Mohamed Emwazi was the 27-year-old Briton identified as the masked beheader of civilian captives of ISIS in Syria. CAGE's research director, Asim Qureshi, called Emwazi "a beautiful young man" and "extremely kind, gentle and soft-spoken, the most humble young person I knew." He explained how, in his view, Emwazi's contact with the UK security services had transformed him into a brutal killer, "Individuals are prevented from travelling, placed under house arrest and in the worst cases tortured, rendered or killed, seemingly on the whim of security agents." Following Emwazi's reported death in a drone strike in the Syrian Civil War, CAGE expressed dissatisfaction that he had not been brought to trial.

Prime Minister David Cameron condemned the suggestion that this radicalisation was the fault of British authorities as "reprehensible", whilst Mayor of London Boris Johnson called it an "apology for terror". John Spellar, said that CAGE were "very clearly coming out as apologists for terrorism." The counter-extremist Quilliam Foundation called CAGE "part of the problem and not part of the solution." The Quilliam Foundation have also expressed concern regarding the sympathies of Asim Qureshi, after video emerged of his calling for jihad at a Hizb ut-Tahrir rally.

Partly as a result of this statement, the Charity Commission asked charities that had funded CAGE to cease doing so; they complied. Amnesty International, which had previously campaigned with the organisation on issues relating to Guantanamo and torture, said, “We are reviewing whether any future association with the group would now be appropriate.”

Moussa Zemmouri

Mosa Zi Zemmori is a Belgian former Guantanamo Bay detainee. Zemmori was arrested in Pakistan after allegedly attending an Al-Qaeda training camp in the village of Khowst, Afghanistan, and transferred to Guantanamo Bay on February 15, 2002, from where he was eventually released in 2005. He was suspected of being a member of the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group. Following his release, Zemmori was invited to events hosted by CAGE as a reciter of Surah. After being placed under surveillance by the Belgian government, Zemmouri was arrested on July 24, 2015, alongside 3 others in Hoboken, Antwerp, Belgium, for attempted burglary, allegedly trying to use the stolen funds for the Al-Qaeda linked Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group.

Funding

CAGE have said that the majority of their income comes from private individuals. Between 2007 and 2014, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust has given grants to CAGE totaling £271,250. The Roddick Foundation, an organisation founded by Anita Roddick, paid grants totaling £120,000 between 2009 and 2014. Both entities agreed to cease funding CAGE at the request of the Charity Commission, which has expressed concern that funding CAGE risked damaging public confidence in charity. The Network for Social Change gave a non-charitable grant of £15,000 in 2008.

Lord Carlile, formerly the British Government’s independent reviewer of anti-terrorism legislation, said: "I would never advise anybody to give money to CagePrisoners. I have concerns about the group. There are civil liberty organisations which I do give money to but CagePrisoners is most certainly not one of them."

In October 2015, following an application for judicial review by CAGE, the Charity Commission changed its position and said it would not interfere in the discretion of charities to choose to fund CAGE.