Trial by Jeory

This is not the most earth shattering post, but I have something of a tradition of publishing legal threats and other warnings against this blog.

Four days ago in a post about Lutfur Rahman’s latest legal developments I mentioned that he had hired eminent QC Ben Emmerson to fight his proposed judicial review against the Election Court judgment.

In the following two paragraphs I wrote this:

He has also engaged another lawyer of (a slightly different) note to help him fight the cost and freezing order: Saghir Hussain (right). He’s also a lawyer specialising in human rights and is based in Whitechapel. He’s also listed as a board member of Cage (formerly Cage Prisoners) and among his former clients was a certain Mohammed Emwazi, aka “Jihadi John”.

He represented Emwazi from 2009 and before he became one of the world’s most wanted. The full details are here. You’ll remember from the controversy earlier this year that Cage claimed that MI5’s hounding of Emwazi was a catalyst in him becoming Islamic State’s poster boy executioner.

Alongside those paragraphs I published this photograph:

That’s Saghir Hussain.

Yesterday, I received the following email from Cage:

Dear Sirs
We are writing in relation to a blog post recently uploaded to your site, the post in question can be seen here.

We note that you have used an image from our site, which contains our logo on it, without seeking permission prior to posting. Furthermore, the source of the image has not been adequately referenced, if at all. In any event, we have not and do not authorise the use of said image on your site.

We therefore request that you immediately take down the image and refrain from using our images in the future without seeking our express written permission beforehand.

We hope that this matter can be resolved amicably, without further escalation.

Kind regards

CAGE

I emailed back to ask which image they were referring. I followed this up a few minutes later with this:

Further to the below, I presume you’re referring to the image of Saghir Hussain.

If so, that’s a screen grab I took personally from a video already posted/published on YouTube. I’m not aware of any permissions I need from you for that.

If I hear no more from you, I’ll consider that the end of the matter.

Many thanks.
Ted Jeory

There was a clue to the source of the image in the URL for the photo (https://trialbyjeory.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/screen-shot-2015-07-19-at-21-58-55.png) but for Cage’s benefit, it was from this YouTube video published last year of a public event at which they had unfurled their banner.

I haven’t heard back. Perhaps they have more important things to do.

As they were busy writing to me yesterday, they were also reportedly considering defamation action against David Cameron for branding them ‘extremist’ in his speech on Monday.

Bigger fish to fry.

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