An external independent review of advocacy group CAGE’s handling of the Mohammed Emwazi case has concluded that “mistakes were made” by the organisation.
In July this year, CAGE Directors commissioned an external review of its handling of the Mohammed Emwazi case and the subsequent media coverage.
Communica Limited were appointed to undertake this review. They were provided with all the material including confidential internal paperwork, interviews with key people, including an independent focus group and analysis of media reporting.
The report, published today, concludes: “The Emwazi affair has been a steep learning curve for this young civil society organisation. Mistakes were made but these were due to inexperience and poor planning and communication. This allowed a hostile media to easily label and misrepresent CAGE in the way they did.”
The report however also acknowledged the key role CAGE played: “By and large CAGE did an extraordinary job with limited resources. They managed an exceptional situation which posed high risks. Without CAGE’s input and released information, the public would have been denied a key part of Emwazi’s story.”
Dr Adnan Siddiqui, Director of CAGE, said: “This review was difficult to undertake, however it was important to help us learn and develop.
“We are a relatively young organisation with a small team and a huge challenge but we strive for the highest professional standards. On this occasion we made mistakes and we recognise this. We will be studying the report carefully and looking to implement the recommendations.
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“Despite the mistakes made, we feel our intervention still made an important contribution to the debates around security services’ accountability, and abuses of the rule of law in the War on Terror.
“CAGE will continue to make a contribution to the wider interests of the UK and beyond, despite being hindered by a small section of ideologues operating around Whitehall who still fail to accept that independent Muslim opinion is now part and parcel of our civil society.”
“I would like to thank Communica, staff, volunteers and others involved in this review. I would especially like to thank the many people who gave their time to part take in the focus group.”
