The obvious question: Who is in charge of vetting “charities” on the BBC’s behalf? Worse yet, this is not the first time the BBC has drawn criticism for associated personnel “innocently” aiding jihadists. If nobler sentiments like patriotism are lacking, at the very least a desire to avoid further embarrassment should motivate the Beeb to ensure its left hand does know what its right hand is doing.
By Ben Quinn for the Times Online, August 20:
The BBC”s Children in Need charity donated £20,000 to an organisation that funded the propaganda activities of the July 7 bombers, it has emerged.
The financial support was provided between 1999 and 2002 to the Leeds Community School, which funded and shared premises with an Islamic bookshop where the suicide bombers Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shezhad Tanweer regularly met. Siddique Khan attempted to radicalise youths by showing propaganda films at the bookshop, a focal point at the time for young Muslims.
The school in Beeston also paid for adventure weekends, such as a rafting trip to North Wales a month before the London attacks. Tanweer and Siddique Khan went on the trip, along with Khalid Khaliq, who this year was jailed for terrorism offences.
The disclosure that the school received Children in Need funding was made by the BBC Two programme Newsnight, which was told by a former employee of the school that it received hundreds of thousands of pounds from Leeds City Council and other sources.
Martin Gilbertson, an IT technician who worked at the school and the Iqra centre next door, said that he had been concerned about the activities of Tanweer and Siddique Khan. “It was like living with jihad on a daily basis,” he said of the Iqra centre, which was raided by police investigating the July 7 bombings.
David Ramsden, chief executive of Children in Need, said: “I”m
“I can reassure the public that we are very careful in who we fund and this allegation is a very rare one.”