It is rare for a small campaign group to gain world wide attention. On Thursday Cage, formerly Caged Prisoners, achieved that.



In 2010 when Mohammed Emwazi, now revealed to be the man dubbed “Jihadi John”, needed someone to listen to his claims of harassment by the British authorities, he went to Cage.

The emails it received from Emwazi gave an insight into a man linked to Islamic State’s murders of journalists and aid workers. It also justified to Cage the group’s long-held view that jihadi violence is driven by the actions of the west.



The emails from Emwazi left Cage with a thin and dangerous line to walk between pinning the blame on the security services for harassing Emwazi so much that he became a butcher who sickened even those who despise western policy, and giving ammunition to those who will accuse Cage of excusing his actions to make a political point.

The spokesman Amandla Thomas-Johnson says he accepts that Cage’s decision to take aim at the security services and British foreign policy as factors driving Emwazi’s atrocities will open it up to criticism: “We have our views on foreign policy and domestic policy; it may be unpopular to the powers that be. We have been on the ground speaking to the people who have been through this … We’re not offering excuses, we’re offering an explanation.”

Cage has specialised for more than a decade in representing and listening to those who have been most reviled during the west’s campaign against terrorism. It has had some success in taking on the state.

The organisation describes itself as “an independent advocacy organisation working to empower communities impacted by the war on terror. The organisation highlights and campaigns against state policies, striving for a world free from oppression and injustice.”

One of its key figures is Moazzam Begg, the former Guantánamo Bay detainee who suffered torture and ill treatment at the hands of the Americans and was never charged. This year he walked free from court after a case alleging that he helped terrorists in Syria was dropped. His freedom came as an embarrassment to the security services, who had failed to reveal to the prosecution potentially crucial information favourable to Begg’s claims of innocence.

Cage also represented the family of Michael Adebolajo, the man who butchered Lee Rigby in a London street in May 2013. After the terrorist atrocity Cage revealed that Adebolajo, seemingly like Emwazi, hadbeen harassed by the security services prior to his violent action.

Some may have dismissed the claims, especially those that Adebolajo had been ill-treated overseas with British complicity. But parliament’s intelligence and security committee in a report last year found that the British government may have been complicit in that treatment.

Cage says it has suffered for its outspokenness and doggedly sticking to its world view in the face of government denials that foreign policy plays a role in terrorist violence. It says its bank accounts were closed, making it hard for it to continue its work.

Cage is run from a modern-looking set of modest offices, situated behind the East London mosque.

At its press conference the main speaker was the executive director, Asim Qureshi, an experienced researcher into the effects of the west’s efforts against terrorism, which Cage says criminalises whole communities.

Critics will claim the group and its main figures have an agenda. Cage claims its conclusions are based on evidence, from those it has advised and from the experience of its key figures.



Alongside Qureshi was Cerie Bullivant, who is the only person in Britain to have escaped from a special terrorism order restricting his freedom, and to be recaptured. In his case Bullivant handed himself in, and in 2008 the high court decided there was no “reasonable suspicion” that Bullivant intended to take part in terrorism abroad, despite MI5 claims to the contrary.