Glen Jenvey Saga: Who is Zaidi234?

Soon after Tim Ireland first noted the evidence which suggested that “freelance anti-terrorist investigator” Glen Jenvey had made bogus postings to a Muslim website with the intention of stirring up a panic over an extremist plot against British Jews, several bloggers rooted around the internet looking for extra information about Jenvey and his associates. I had a bit of a head-start, having written about Jenvey and the “VIGIL Network” back in 2006, but some other interesting sites also came to light. One of these was an an old thread on the Muslim Public Affairs Committee’s (MPACUK) discussion forum in which a certain “Zaidi234” – who made only a few posts between April and July 2007 before disappearing – claims to have been passed private emails from Dominic Whiteman in which Whiteman suggests encouraging Muslim extremists to use elderly women as suicide bombers, as this will create a more generalised fear of Muslims. “Zaidi234” also claims to know some personal information about Whiteman. As I blogged a couple of weeks ago, Whiteman is a former associate of Jenvey, and he recently issued a statement at his Westminster Journal in which he seemed keen to put a bit of distance between himself and his one-time collaborator.

However, there’s a very weird twist in the tale: the alleged private emails are all written in good English (although the British Whiteman asks for a “favor” rather than a “favour”), but I’ve just noticed that “zaidi234” himself writes like this:

A friend in Jordan past on his concern’s about Dominic Whiteman who real name is in fact spelt wightman.my friend sent me copy’s of email’s and serveral county court case number with people who are concerned about this whiteman.
In the email’s he sent me it show’s the police were informed that vigil was making up lie’s about muslim’s, but the lie’s would of led to targetting of OAP’s in the muslim community.
I was then sent the above story, my friend in Jordan wrote but no British newspapers would print it as the government or the tory’s control them all.
so if anyone can pass on the story in exposing vigil and Dominic Whiteman it will help stop attack’s on the muslim community.

This bears all the hallmarks of Jenvey’s dyslexic punctuation – redundant apostrophes, missing capital letters, and missing gaps before the beginning of sentences. I collected some other examples in a blog entry here; and emails sent directly from Jenvey to Tim Ireland confirm that this is indeed his style.

In another thread “Zaidi234” warns readers that

Several non Muslim forums are advertising a Book called War Of The Web see http://www.bookfinder4u.com/IsbnSear…70&mode=direct

The book tells a story about how for twenty years MI5 knew British muslims were going abroad killing civillians in many countrys like Chechnys Kashmir Isreal Yemen and so on…..

It also claims British muslims killed Serb civillians in their hundreds during the Bosnian war,
It goes on to disclose the inside story about Abu Hamza’s arrest and Abu Izadeen and others arrested under the anti terror laws for incitement.

It then goes on to compare terrorist crimes with written passages from the Quran calling Islam a Evil faith and made up faith which was invented as a means to control earth at gun point and ok,ed the killing of civllians.

Can you all be aware of this book’s evil message and ask shops not to stock it.

And further down:

looking at author’s back ground notes on internet.he was born in the UK seem’s He has written many story’s mocking muslims.

The author of War of the Web is Jeremy Reynalds, who writes articles for the American evangelical newssite ASSIST – recently he wrote a piece promoting the bizarre suggestion that Jenvey was being set up by the editor of the Guardian newspaper.

So, Zaidi234’s postings were all about either Dominic Whiteman or Jeremy Reynalds; he claims that someone passed him emails written by Whiteman; he claims to know about Whiteman’s financial affairs and his “real” surname; and he appears to know the contents of War of the Web in some detail. He also writes just like Glen Jenvey, who has (or had) links with both men. And after nine posts, he vanishes from the scene. Very curious.

Did someone copy Jenvey’s style to try and create a rift with Whiteman and Reynalds, or has Jenvey been playing a double game of some sort?

Whiteman has emailed me with this short statement, which he has also given me permission to publicise:

 Richard,

 I refer you to my statement published on Westminster Journal on the second of March this year. I am happy to remain in splendid isolation of your ongoing investigations into people I do not work with or have not worked with for over two years. I have nothing further to add to my statement except to say that in my writings and in my work I stand up to blabbermouth Islamist extremists and multifarious other cowards and they are most often the authors of anonymous/false ID slurs against me on the web. If I wanted to, I have the capability to investigate these slurs, find their authors and involve the authorities. As it is, I’ve always found that those who use the poison pen – whichever side they are on – are usually so lacking in grey matter that they almost always have their ink poison themselves in the end. Such muppets can write as much about me as they like because quite frankly I don’t give a damn; that does not mean I won’t come to their aid when they stop choking.

6 Responses

  1. Oh, bloody hell.

    Serial offender. End of conversation.

  2. Recent writings about an imposter masqueraded as ‘independent investigator’ on primetime television in UK calls for a closer scrutiny as to on what grounds such dubious elements are repeatedly accorded currency at the expense of credibility.

    There have been a number of occasions where one Glen Jenvey figures rather prominently on Newsnight reports by Richard Watson. http://tinyurl.com/seejenvey
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/14_11_06_fo4_islam.pdf

    Now a search on the BBC web site does not show even a single reference to Jenvey. Did this happen in the wake of excellent spin busting by Tim Ireland, Richard Bartholomew and Patrick Ward?

    Given the spotlight adulated on a pet list of ‘terror experts’ for defining terror risks and ‘threats’ in recent years, the place of such figures in the representation of security and terror deserves closer scrutiny to detect if there are any gaping holes in the sum of their parts.

    Academics who closely monitor the priming and framing of news items on potential but mostly perceived terror will take interest in a statement made by Dame Stella Remington. As someone who had first hand exposure to such matters, Dame Stella raises the question if some Labour Ministers cite terror to stir fear and press for stricter legislations. Some interesting scholarship on the link between use of fear for posing more restrictions is provided by Indiana University Law professor Steven Chermak.

    The implications of Dame Stella’s statement can be well understood through the writings of Dr. Steven Chermak who offers a threadbare analysis of how some opinion makers, writers and media experts take full advantage of the propaganda opportunity by creating a symbolic threat, structuring the response to eradicate the threat, and declaring symbolic victories.
    Steven Chermak author of Searching for a Demon: the Media’s Construction of the Militia Movement, suspects that “Celebrated cases, and often the moral panics that flow from such cases, provide dramatic lessons and an opportunity to reshape society.
    Sensational cases startle the public into accepting a new understanding by opening gateways to the public’s fears and frustrations, and igniting processes that illuminate the boundaries of a community. The media defines these events, relying primarily on representatives from institutions typically used in the construction of news.

    Do any reporters at times exploit some incidents in an emphasis-added, over blown fashion for gaining advantage, claiming scoops, competing for ratings and score one-upmanship? Those seeking for a link showcasing abundantly clear examples need only visit a web page populated by despatches grouped as “Richard Watson On Extremism” http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/uk

    In this backdrop, is it a coincidence that at least once every quarter, stories of lurking (but mostly unfounded and at times unproved) dangers appear on some news outlets?

    Think tanks and the media, which advance “form over substance, celebrity over ideas” plague the public discourse, warn Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke adding: At times of crisis, the nuanced and expert advice of — “career professionals, scholars, analysts and others working in government and at universities and think tanks — is sidelined or ignored, while emotional sloganeering is amplified by 24/7 cable news and Internet chatter.”

    There have been a litany of so-called “terrorism experts” travelling the world, peddling oft outrageous, encouraging fear and distrust, and
    campaigning to have civil liberties curtailed in the name of “fighting terror”.

    David Small, a human rights advocate and academic at New Zealand’s University of Canterbury has called for taking note of comments that are made to heighten people’s sense of fear and suspicion, particularly in relation to Islamic groups and migrant communities.
    http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0408/S00236.htm

    Tim Shorrock, a freelance journalist based in Washington, notes that in recent years a new industry of terrorism experts has spawned who have made their mark by explaining their theories to the media and advising governments and corporations on security issues. http://www.antiwar.com/ips/shorrock1.html

    It is pertinent that British media outlets and investigative journalists begin to size up the quality of ‘intelligence’ delivered by self-acclaimed experts. Journalist Gary Hughes who produced an expose for the Melbourne Age, reveals puts under scrutiny the tendency by one such expert for (a) social climbing, (b) academic imposturing (c) name dropping and (d) vita forgery, by puffing his vita with non-existing positions.

  3. […] writing on an obscure Pravda forum – and, for reasons I have explained here, there is reason to think this name is another Jenvey […]

  4. […] intention was that the public should see this as the words of a Muslim. One bit of follow-up that I did concerned “Zaidi234″, who had written posts in Jenvey’s distinctive dyslexic […]

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