A group with undeclared links to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and the terror group Hamas has been holding meetings at the Houses of Parliament.
Separately, it can also be revealed that one of the Government’s police and crime commissioners will this week speak on the same platform as a man who has justified the killing of British troops and called for democracy to be replaced by Sharia.
The Commons events — held in March and September — involving the group with links to Hamas were organised by the Emirates Centre for Human Rights (ECHR), which says it is a moderate campaign against rights abuses in the Gulf. However, part of its agenda appears to be anticipating the end of the regimes in the region.
The main speaker at the meeting was Christopher Davidson, author of a book about the “coming collapse of the Gulf monarchies”.
The ECHR is fronted by a young white British man, Rori Donaghy. It makes no mention on its website or in any other publicity of its close links with the Islamist Cordoba Foundation, described by the Prime Minister, David Cameron, as a “political front for the Muslim Brotherhood”.
However, The Telegraph has established that the ECHR’s website is registered to Malath Skahir, a former director of the Cordoba Foundation.
Its agenda, discussing the collapse of existing regimes, has similarities with that of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Cordoba Foundation works closely with other British extremist groups which seek the creation of an Islamic dictatorship, or caliphate, in Europe.
Mr Altikriti has also been spokesman for the British Muslim Initiative, closely linked to the banned Hamas terrorist group. The BMI’s director, Mohammed Sawalha, is a senior figure in Hamas who is said by the BBC to have “masterminded much of Hamas’s political and military strategy”.
Mr Donaghy said last night: “Anas Altikriti helped set up the Emirates Centre for Human Rights, but now has nothing to do with it. I work with Human Rights Watch, Amnesty and others on a range of issues from migrant workers to the treatment of rape victims and foreign expats. It is not a front for anyone.”
The March meeting was jointly organised with the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Human Rights. MPs involved with the event last night said they had no idea about the ECHR’s Islamist links.
“I was asked to chair the meeting in my capacity as an officer of the all-party parliamentary human rights group,” said Mark Durkan, the SDLP MP for Foyle. “I was unaware of the group’s links and it is a matter that I will be discussing with the group.”
It is not the first time Islamists have attempted to secure a foothold in Parliament. In 2010 The Sunday Telegraph revealed how iEngage, the group organising the PCC meeting in Leeds, had secured appointment as the secretariat to the new All-Party Parliamentary Group on Islamophobia. iEngage is another body with links to Mr Altikriti, the Cordoba Foundation and the IFE. iEngage was sacked as the secretariat soon after The Sunday Telegraph’s article.
Meanwhile at a meeting, to be held in Leeds on Wednesday, Mark Burns-Williamson, Labour PCC for West Yorkshire, will speak alongside Azad Ali, a senior figure in the extremist Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE).
Mr Ali has said that “democracy, if it means not implementing the Sharia, of course no-one agrees with that”. He has approvingly quoted the son of a senior al-Qaeda leader as saying that “if I saw an American or British man wearing a soldier’s uniform inside Iraq I would kill him because that is my obligation.”
The meeting has been organised by the hardline group iEngage, which has repeatedly defended extremists and attacked Muslim moderates and for which Mr Ali also works.
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