Obsession Pundit Glen Jenvey in Meltdown

Blogger threatened with assault, smeared anonymously as paedophile

Boasts of role in James Ujaama conviction

Links to prominent politician explored

Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads has returned to the subject of Glen Jenvey, who appeared on the anti-Islam Obsession DVD as a supposed “Free-lance Terror Investigator“. As I’ve blogged a number of times lately, Tim has found strong circumstantial evidence that Jenvey made anonymous postings to a Muslim discussion forum as “Abuislam”, urging Muslims to “target” prominent British Jews for revenge over Israeli action in Gaza – in particular, he named Sir Alan Sugar, a businessman and star of a TV competition show. Jenvey then presented these postings to the UK Sun as evidence of Muslim extremism, and he was featured in a front-page story headlined “Terror Target Sugar”. However, once Tim publicised his concerns, the story was withdrawn, and the Sun is now fending off an investigation from the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) and legal threats from Alan Sugar. Tim has now uncovered lots more – and there’s a small cameo by me in the unfolding saga.

Jenvey’s responses have been increasingly desperate. He claimed that he could prove that his computer had not been used to post to the Muslim forum – rather unconvincing given that it’s possible to own more than one computer, and to have access to more besides. Jenvey also took the predictable line that because he battles extremists, any criticism of him must be the work of extremists, and he made edits to Wikipedia accusing the PCC of supporting al-Qaeda. When the Guardian ran a short report on the PCC investigation, Jenvey then concocted a bizarre conspiracy theory about the editor of the paper, which was then promoted by his friend Jeremy Reynalds at the evangelical Christian newssite ASSIST. When that flopped, Jenvey then made a complaint to the police, accusing Tim of “hate comments”.

Tim then produced extracts from audio recording of Jenvey talking to an unknown journalist, and asked Jenvey for clarifications on some  points. After prevaricating for a few days, Jenvey came up with:

Is your email a threat? to me. if so i might have to go to the police. grow up you child.tim your a waste of space who supports terrorist at ummah.com as i said for the last time i’m going to sue the Guardian newspaper. and i’m very interested in why you are so interested in certain names? maybe you are the people you keep trying to say others are. i would suggest you stop writting to me as i have past each of your emails to the police already like i have the last one.

Jenvey, it should be noted,  is dyslexic, and his writing style is particularly distinctive. This was followed up with

do you not understand no one is taking any notice of you creep.but yes watch out in the dark you never know who might be around the corner.

Around the same time, a posting was made to a blog about Thailand, in exactly the same style as the above, pretending to be from the Daily Mail and accusing Tim of being a paedophile.

There is now strong reason to believe that Jenvey is a vindictive sociopath who is lashing out wildly and recklessly as the sense of self-worth he derives from his “terror investigator” status crumbles around him, and I doubt even Jeremy Reynalds will be wanting to defend his friend after these developments.

But this is not just an embarrassment for those who made and promoted Obsession or for Reynalds; as well as attempting to stir up hatred between British Jews and Muslims via the Sun, Jenvey’s antics may be a serious threat to countering extremism on both sides of the Atlantic. Tim has released more of the audio, including this:

The Abu Hamza videos led to the actual conviction and.. of… of… James Ujaama, because I uploaded them the day before he went to court. They hadn’t been shared by the FBI and the American Embassy who already had those… um… those tapes. See, it was the first time the Seattle FBI had actually had seen James Ujaama sat on a platform next to Abu Hamza, and they were struggling with the case and even struggling to keep him in prison. So if I hadn’t’ve uploaded the original page of ‘Al-Qaida Exposed’… videos.. um… basically… James Ujaama would’ve got off scot free. Probably, the snowball effect that then led to Abu Hamza extradition and case being built, which Ujaama in his plea-bargaining helped the FBI build, would never have happened… and the police in this country arrested Abu Hamza on an American extradition [“right?” iaudible] and then they tripped over… boxes of [VHS] videos similar to the ones that I uploaded. That I’d given them several years before.”

As Tim notes,

The action he describes above – releasing ‘evidence’ already rejected by authorities to the public a day before a trial – may be legal (just), but I can’t see it pleasing anyone doing the hard work of making a clean conviction stick.

No, all I can see is a yappy pup who continually spooks the game because he wants so much to be in on the hunt.

Tim also gives us some more details about Jenvey’s British friends – the audio also features Jenvey boasting about how when the police don’t take him seriously he goes to a British diplomat named Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, through Cowper-Coles’ cousin, a lecturer named “Mike”. Tim has now publicly identified “Mike” as Michael Starkey, and this was where I was able to help – I found a family tree which shows they have a common ancestor in Captain Cowper Phipps Coles, who drowned when a ship he had designed capsized in 1870 – “Mike” and Sir Sherard are (I think I’ve got this right) third cousins once removed. Someone left a comment on my blog naming Michael Starkey as a possibility for “Mike” from this family tree, but I removed it due to lack of evidence. However, Tim notes that Michael Starkey’s older brother is Sir John Starkey, who sits on the executive committee for his local MP – none other than Patrick Mercer. Mercer was formerly “Shadow Minister for Homeland Security”, but he resigned from this position under a cloud after a gaffe which suggested he did not fully understand that racist name-calling in the Armed Forces should not be tolerated (although he seems generally to be moderate sort of person). Sir John is not much of a fan of Mercer, and he accused him of disloyalty when Mercer agreed to take up an advisory role with Gordon Brown. Facing what the Daily Mail called “grassroots fury“, Mercer was in a tricky situation. Over the past few years Mercer has been in the media many times to highlight specific extremist threats – but how much of his material is now tainted by association with Jenvey?

Tim has also been in contact with Sir Sherard:

Meanwhile, after weeks of radio silence, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles has finally been in touch. We’re still discussing what will or won’t be said on the record, but he’s not standing shoulder to shoulder with Jenvey by any means.

(Psst! Glen! You may want to clutch your archived emails that little bit closer… they could well be the only ‘friends’ you have left.)

32 Responses

  1. […] Barth’s Notes has more on the bizarre story of Glen Jenvey whipping up hysteria in internet chatrooms and the general blogosphere, in which Jenvey allegedly posed as a radical Islamists on a web forum and falsely created a story about British Jews being targeted. […]

  2. Meltdown sounds about right; he doesn’t appear to know what ‘blowback’ means. See also:

    http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2009/03/how_nice.asp

  3. Whoops – meant to say ‘see also newest version of’. Sorry….

  4. Hi,

    There was a article on The Times website that had a similar ring to Jenvey’s story, Police warn British Jews of revenge attacks:

    Prominent British Jews have been advised to review their security arrangements after several were identified on Islamist websites as “financial supporters of Israel”.

    As the Gaza death toll rises, police are increasingly concerned about the possibility of “reprisal” attacks on Jewish people and buildings. One post on an Islamic discussion forum, referring to an anti-Israel demonstration this weekend, said: “We need to take some weapons with us, preferably sub-machineguns.”

    Do you think they could be connected?

  5. […] Obsession Pundit Glen Jenvey in Meltdown (via Boing […]

  6. Wodge – thanks for spotting that. Yes, it’s the same story, but less sensationalised.

  7. I did a search on that phrase “We need to take some weapons with us, preferably sub-machineguns” on Google and it came up with a post on the MPACUK forum. The user who posted it only had one other post to their name. It all sounds a bit fishy.

    I notified the forum admin and they took the post down but I’ve not heard back from them. I did send them a follow email yesterday. If I get anymore info I post it here.

  8. Cheers.

  9. […] here’s one unusually crazy wingnut. Meanwhile, I cannot comprehend the mentally exhibited by the quoted writers here. How does one […]

  10. […] Posts Obsession Pundit Glen Jenvey in MeltdownGlen Jenvey, Richard Tims, and “abuislam”WND Clarifies: God Didn’t Tell David Wilkerson to Make 2000 […]

  11. […] Butter SandwichesB. Hussein X: New MOG ScandalArchbishop Duncan Williams Marries US BusinesswomanObsession Pundit Glen Jenvey in MeltdownFriends House and Islamic […]

  12. […] blog entry, Tim Ireland has had further communication with Jeremy Reynalds, whose article about Glen Jenvey was recently removed from the ASSIST News Service: I’ve just been in touch with Jeremy […]

  13. […] kind of nonsense off sometimes, like when The Sun gets caught with its pants round its ankles for believing any old alarmist cobblers about Islamic terrorists in the UK rather than investigating whether their sole source for a front page story was, in fact, making it […]

  14. […] Posts Protest in Luton over St. George’s Day Event DecisionObsession Pundit Glen Jenvey in MeltdownPrivate Eye Review Slams OUP Book on ScientologyArchbishop Duncan Williams Marries US […]

  15. […] evangelical journalist named Jeremy Reynalds, of Dan Wooding’s ASSIST News Service; and his private responses – a physical threat against Tim, and fake comments to blogs supposedly from the Daily Mail […]

  16. […] as for Glen Jenvey: it’s a long story, but the guts of it are here. In fact, there is overwhelming circumstantial evidence that Jenvey (a pundit on the controversial […]

  17. […] thought of Glen Jenvey taking the stand  as victim of mispresentation is a laugh, given his recent activities. And the complaint is back-to-front: the Mail suggested that being linked to Glen Jenvey makes the […]

  18. Hamza Case Falls Apart

    Due to personal unfounded attack’s by the Daily Mail newspaper calling me an unmasked football hooligan and personal attacks on myself and family by bloggers from the far left and supporters of the failing Labour Government, I wish to withdraw my police statement taken by the anti-terrorist squad for the FBI.

    The 6-page statement lists a number of video tapes to be used in the extradition case of Abu Hamza and one video links James Ujaama to Abu Hamza. Without these tapes, which kick-started the case in America, it will be hard to present a valid case against Abu Hamza now that I’m withdrawing all evidence due to personal attacks and lies by the Daily Mail.

    Sheikh Abu Hamza is alot of things, but Ican’t, due to my own safety as a witness, be part of any American show trial as the same newspaper Daily Mail has spread many lies about him as well.

    I feel a victim of lack of police protection and feel the Abu Hamza case has many things that are lies written into it.

    I will be asking the FBI to return all 6 video tapes and rip up my police statement as I wish no part in this show trial on a disabled man.

    Bloggers have threaten to chop my head off and this came not from Muslims but the far left. I receive phone calls day and night waking me up in my sleep.

    Death threats, lack sleep, damage to a contacts car, misquoted in a national newspaper, the Guardian and Daily Mail, all lead me to withdrawing my police/FBI statement.

    In terrorists-related cases witnesses should not be attacked. My pulling out in the Hamza case may lead to the collapse of the whole case which would allow Abu Hamza to live in the UK. Which if it does, the government and police should review how they support police witnesses.

    I have already witnessed lies being told in a British court in the case of Abu Izzadeen, with police statements going missing and officers lying about receiving evidence.

    And I know the full history of secret evidence on Abu Qatada and where it came from and what was said behind closed doors which led to him being placed back in prison.

    Having part-time in the past worked for the NIBS/SIS and adviser to a military attache in London, I know how intelligence services work. MI5 and the police, who I have both given some of my work to, have a lot to lose if witnesses can’t rely on protection by the state in terrorist trials.

    I believe that Sheikh Abu Hamza and Sheikh Abu Qatada should in good faith both be allowed out of prison on a control order as soon as possible and I ask thugs at the Daily Mail to leave my friends and family alone. It made me feel sick the Daily Mail’s claims that I was a Nazi.

    Glen Jenvey

  19. […] and he was recently angered by an unflattering passing reference in the Daily Mail. He has also acted erratically since the Sun withdrew an article sourced from him in […]

  20. […] and other aliases to generate stories of Islamic extremism, nor has he said anything about his acts of harrassment against Tim Ireland, the blogger who first drew attention to all this. Indeed, it seems that the […]

  21. […] at the same door of the amateur terror fighter. Allegedly, God knows, it’s all summarised HERE. Anyway, Tim then gets involved with some more outing of tricks on the web where political […]

  22. […] that followed Tim’s blog post, Jenvey made a number of anonymous postings to various websites accusing Tim of being a paedophile – could it be that Jenvey justified this to himself because of […]

  23. […] bizarre. First, he sought revenge on Tim by making anonymous postings to various sites accusing him of being a paedophile. Second, he threw around other accusations, telling an associate named Jeremy […]

  24. […] also posted his home address widely, even though this was only months after Glen Jenvey had made bogus postings on-line accusing Tim of being a […]

  25. […] I note that Tim Ireland of Bloggrheads has continued asking some sensible questions (initial post) about Glen Jenvey, and is being targetted himself with paedophile smears rather than receiving sensible anwers. Tim’s investigative style is like a pre-Twitter version of Twitter, so the best summary to read is probably that written by Richard Bartholomew. […]

  26. […] evidence planted on an Islamic forum by Glen Jenvey, who took revenge for the exposure by making anonymous postings accusing Tim of being a wanted paedophile; whether this was his own idea or was fed to him by […]

  27. […] this does not make clear is that this refers to one incident: Tim was being smeared on-line as a paedophile by a man with mental health problems, and this man had previously been endorsed by […]

  28. […] of harassment began (the “terror-tracker” had himself earlier reacted to exposure by writing anonymous comments accusing Tim of being a paedophile, but that was eventually sorted out). The harassment has mostly […]

  29. […] He had also threatened suicide, which had some bearing on how police treated the fact he had posted paedophile smears about Tim Ireland out of spite after Tim’s discovered that “Abu […]

  30. […] 2: Tabloid Troll is now interacting with Glen Jenvey, who in 2009 sent Tim Ireland threats of violence and made anonymous postings accusing him of paedophilia. […]

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