Did Haringey’s new Labour leader once defend Jihadi John?

It’s not just the Greens who attract people with shameful records of extremism. In the London borough of Haringey, Labour has appointed a former spokesman for the terrorist-sympathising group Cage as its new group leader. Cllr Ibrahim Ali, also known as Ibrahim Mohamoud, was for at least two years communications officer at Cage. The organisation became notorious after its research director, Asim Qureshi, described Britain’s Islamic State executioner and former Cage client Mohammed Emwazi – otherwise known as ‘Jihadi John’ – as a ‘beautiful young man’.

Qureshi said Emwazi’s transition to sadistic murderer was a search for ‘belonging’ triggered by Britain’s ‘alienating’ national security policy. As Qureshi put it: When are we going to finally learn that when we treat people as if they’re outsiders, they will inevitably feel like outsiders and they will look for belonging elsewhere? Our entire national security strategy for the last 13 years has only increased alienation… And when somebody [i.e., the Islamic State] is giving them a message, come, we will give you a sense of belonging, then how can we argue against that?

As Cage spokesman, the future Cllr Ali defended these comments to a parliamentary committee. Asked what he thought of them, he replied : Given Ali’s record, I think it’s fair to assume that this ‘sensitive’ job of his is not with MI5 [Emwazi’s] teacher called him… hard-working, a lovely boy. Another member of staff, a former headteacher, said he was a very hard-working, aspirational young man. He claimed Qureshi’s comments did not refer to ‘the person [Emwazi] became and the acts he committed’.

Asked why Cage had not condemned the Paris terror attacks, which killed 130 people the week before the committee hearing, Ali replied: ‘On the Friday of the attacks, we were very busy.’ Ali’s other contributions to community harmony include describing the UK as an ‘Orwellian police state’ and claiming that the Prevent counter-extremism programme fosters ‘an environment of hate’. He also amplified a claim that Prevent ‘openly targeted…normal Muslim religious practice’; praised the Cordoba Foundation, linked to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood; and described the Muslim anti-extremism group, Quilliam, as ‘scum’.

Ali served as the vice president of student affairs for the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, which hosted numerous extremist speakers and was condemned by the government for its failure to ‘fully challenge terrorist and extremist ideology’. In this capacity, he claimed that intimidation was used to silence Muslim students, who were also being surveilled in their prayer rooms and that they felt threatened by the security services’ attempts to blackmail them into spying on their fellow students.

When he was first elected to Haringey council in May 2022, his comments about Jihadi John got Ali suspended from the Labour party. By September that year, he was back, though his statement announcing the fact contained no expression of regret or apology for his ealier words, or any sense that he’d repudiated them. He spent the next four years as a backbencher and was briefly appointed to the council’s cabinet this year until Labour lost power at last month’s local elections.

He’s now leader of the opposition, though the ruling Greens are one seat short of a majority, meaning that a return to power is not completely out of the question. One other fascinating thing about Cllr Ali is that he declares he has another job – but withholds all details about what it is from his official council declaration of interest on the grounds that it’s ‘sensitive’. It’s quite common and understandable for councillors to withhold their home addresses from such declarations – but it surely defeats the entire object of registers of interest if they’re allowed not to tell us what other activities they carry out for money.

Given Ali’s record, I think it’s fair to assume that this ‘sensitive’ job of his is not with, for instance, MI5. Could he still be working for Cage, or another Islamist organisation, in some capacity? The Spectator contacted Cllr Ali to ask whether he had changed his views since working for Cage or whether he would now apologise for them. We have received no reply.