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During the long debate on the use of torture to extract information from prisoners, serious intelligence professionals<\/a> have argued that torture provides unreliable information, as demonstrated<\/a> numerous times at Guantanamo, most recently in the Binyam Mohamed<\/a> case. With the incentive of staving off bodily harm, prisoners have been willing to simply say what their captors have wanted to hear. <\/p>\n These days the media interest in political Islam, driven by the fear of politically motivated violence, is so strong that Muslims marginally involved with Islamist movements must be at least somewhat tempted to sell embellished stories to a cash-laden media on their way out. Britain\u2019s Ed Husain<\/a> and America\u2019s Daveed Gartenstein-Ross<\/a> both wrote notable books outlining their adventures with radical Islam, albeit not without some controversy. Yet both insisted their experiences and activities were genuine, and their opinions valid.<\/p>\n But for Hassan Butt, former spokesman for the (now defunct) extremist group Al-Muhajiroun, the truth of his radicalisation fell a little short. Once interviewed by CBS\u2019s 60 Minutes<\/i> on his return from the dark side, Butt claimed to have sent up to 200 British Muslims to terrorist training camps in Pakistan, met with 7\/7 mastermind Mohammad Sidique Khan and participated in the 2002 attack on the US Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, which killed 12 people. <\/p>\n But speaking in December at a trial of another terrorist suspect in Britain, Butt admitted that he made the whole thing up<\/a>, going as far as cutting himself with a knife to claim attacks against him by Muslim extremists. \u201cIf I wasn\u2019t going to cash up on it, someone else was going to cash up on it,\u201d Butt told the court after spending the last few years consulting with the British government and media as a counter-terrorism expert, telling them what they \u201cwanted to hear.\u201d Sound familiar? Whether coerced by pain or money, people will always say what needs to be said for their own benefit.<\/p>\n Butt was arrested four times by police between 2002 and 2008 after making his claims yet was released each time without charge \u2013 all while consulting British government officials on countering radicalisation. This should have been a clue to someone that something wasn\u2019t right. Butt was by no means a minor player in al-Muhajiroun \u2013 he held enough sway to be accepted<\/a> as a spokesman for the group \u2013 but his admission casts serious doubt over the threat the group posed to Britain as a path to real homegrown violence, and exposes the gullibility of reporters who considered them to be a serious threat. If the 200 British Muslims in Pakistani camps don\u2019t exist, then that phenomenon (which certainly did exist for the 7\/7 bombers) becomes much more of an anomaly. The inner world of jihadism is a seductive one \u2013 for proponents and opponents. But like a lot of similar phenomenon, the secrecy creates its own opportunities beyond religion and politics. <\/p>\n The media\u2019s part to play in this cannot be understated. While a slew of tabloid (and not so tabloid) media rushed to report on Butt\u2019s alleged change of heart years ago, only four newspapers<\/a> (three British, one Pakistani) and a Reuters news feed have reported the story since it broke on February 9. One of the British newspapers even headlined its report \u201cTaxi driver coaxed into becoming al Qaida spy<\/a>,\u201d burying the news about Butt charade in a story that focused instead on a friend\u2019s conviction for collaborating in an al Qaeda plot<\/a>.<\/p>\n While testifying on behalf of his friend Habib Ahmed, Butt revealed his fraudulent past, as well as a plot by the two to sell stories to the media on behalf of al Muhajiroun (one of whose goals was to \u201ccreate as much controversy and to create as much profile through the media as possible\u201d) and peddle, for \u00a3100,000, a behind-the-scenes documentary explaining why young British Muslims ended up in Pakistani terror camps. Whether inside the movement or outside it, Butt\u2019s motivation in the end was nothing more than financial.<\/p>\n In the end \u2013 despite the now plausible scenario of hoodwinking the media instead of actually planning terror \u2013 Ahmed was sentenced to ten years in prison, and Mr. Butt doomed his money-making future with his testimony. More importantly, the alarm raised by Butt\u2019s statements over the years have resulted in deep suspicion \u2013 often without evidence of any sort \u2013 of terrorist activity among Britain\u2019s Muslims. Where such activity can be proven by good intelligence and factual evidence, it should be prosecuted fully. Unfortunately, Butt\u2019s escape-from-extremism story pushed anti-terrorism efforts into the realm of paranoia and clumsiness. The talented Mr. Butt got years of attention from the media, the government, and police. In the process, he also distracted them from the investigations needed to properly protect the public from future terrorist attacks.<\/p>\n Zahed Amanullah is associate editor of altmuslim.com. He is based in London, England.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former Al Muhajiroun activist Hassan Butt sold a compelling story to the media and governments about radicalization. By admitting he made it all up, Butt exposed the weaknesses of systems put in place to protect and inform the public.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":531,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-briefings","category-zahed-amanullah"],"yoast_head":"\n