Amnesty International, Moazzam Begg and the Bravery of Gita Sahgal

It is not often that my cynical jaw drops open at a story in the papers. But the piece on page 13 of the Sunday Times provoked just such a reaction. Congratulations to Richard Kerbaj for blowing the lid on Amnesty International’s relationship with former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg and his organisation Cage Prisoners, who act as apologists for Islamist totalitarianism.
Gita Sahgal, the head of the gender unit at Amnesty International’s international secretariat has been campaigning on women’s issues for decades. She is rightly sick of the lazy alliance between some in the human rights world and radical Islamists. She has therefore blown the whistle on the disgraceful arrangement between her own organisation and Begg, who has visited Downing Street as a guest of Amnesty, but refuses to condemn the Taliban. Begg is now an integral part of an Amnesty campaign entitled Counter Terror with Justice.
In an email to her colleagues at Amnesty on January 30 she wrote: 
“I believe the campaign fundamentally damages Amnesty International’s integrity and, more importantly, constitutes a threat to human rights.