No rights for terrorists

A senior official at Amnesty International, Gita Sahgal, has gone public and has openly accused the human rights organization of collaborating with terrorist suspects. In the Sunday Times, Richard Kerbaj writes that Sahgal has taken this step because she feels that Amnesty has ignored warnings about the involvement of a prominent British Islamist, Moazzam Begg, in Amnesty's "Counter Terror with Justice" campaign:

“I believe the campaign fundamentally damages Amnesty International’s integrity and, more importantly, constitutes a threat to human rights,” Sahgal wrote in an email to the organisation’s leaders on January 30. “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.”

Gita Sahgal has been suspended from her post at Amnesty.

The Islamist tactic of embarrassing and isolating human rights organizations by methods that include infiltration and false propaganda is not a new one. In Eastern Europe organizations like Prague Watchdog, which monitors human rights in Russia's North Caucasus, have long tolerated the unauthorized appropriation of their material by jihadist websites which republish it without attribution, and try forcibly to establish an association in this way. While Prague Watchdog has not yet been infiltrated, it is the object of virulent attacks by sites like Kavkaz Center, which seek to weaken its influence and harm its reputation.