British Muslim Advocacy Group Says Killing of Al-Qaida Leader “Threatens Peace”

British Mus­lim advo­ca­cy group CAGE has pub­lished a state­ment that the recent drone killing of Al-Qai­da leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri by US forces in Afghanistan was “a clear vio­la­tion of the US-Islam­ic Emi­rate of Afghanistan Doha peace deal” and brought back to cen­ter stage the US’ “unlaw­ful drone pro­gramme.” Accord­ing to a  CAGE post :

August 2, 2022 Past years have shown lit­tle evi­dence that 71 year old Ayman al-Zawahiri was capa­ble or even intend­ed to tar­get the USA – espe­cial­ly in light of the Doha accords. How­ev­er, instead of being mag­nan­i­mous in defeat it the US lead­er­ship con­tin­ues to inflict suf­fer­ing on the peo­ple of Afghanistan by freez­ing their hard earned mon­ey and forc­ing pover­ty and star­va­tion on the pop­u­la­tion while claim­ing to bring “clo­sure” to the nev­er-end­ing War on Ter­ror with anoth­er extra­ju­di­cial killing.

Read the rest here.

In the state­ment, CAGE said that the Tal­iban had reas­sured the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that they would not allow any per­son or group to threat­en any nation’s secu­ri­ty from their soil, a claim refut­ed by Al-Zawahir­i’s pres­ence in the Afghani cap­i­tal. CAGE also alleged that the killing cement­ed the US’ “per­pet­u­al war doc­trine, pri­mar­i­ly dri­ven by the mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al complex.”

CAGE was found­ed in 2003 by British-Pak­istani activist Moaz­zam Begg as an advo­ca­cy body and plat­form for Mus­lims affect­ed by the US War on Ter­ror. Its lead­ers have ties to the British Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB) net­work. CAGE has a his­to­ry of cam­paign­ing against glob­al anti-ter­ror­ism efforts and mea­sures against Islamist rad­i­cal­iza­tion, claim­ing these mea­sures unfair­ly tar­get­ed Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties and under­mined the rule of law. Accord­ing to British media, dur­ing a 2006 protest, CAGE Research Direc­tor Asim Qureshi advo­cat­ed sup­port­ing vio­lent Jihad over­seas in con­flict zones involv­ing Muslims.

In April 2022, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed CAGE had pub­lished a report alleg­ing sys­tem­at­ic state-spon­sored per­se­cu­tion of Mus­lims in France, demand­ing the French gov­ern­ment reverse its dis­so­lu­tion of Islamist orga­ni­za­tions and remove the exec­u­tive pow­er to dis­solve such orga­ni­za­tions alto­geth­er. In June 2022, the GIOR report­ed that the UK Labour par­ty had sus­pend­ed a new­ly elect­ed Lon­don bor­ough coun­cilor over his past involve­ment in CAGE.