Interesting R5 Live interview with Mohammed Atif Siddique

This post has been cross-posted at Harry's Place

See this interview by Victoria Derbyshire with newly released "very silly boy" Mohammed Atif Siddique on BBC R5 Live this morning.

Some highlights :

At 00:16:00 and 00:18:15 she asks Atif what "youthful curiosity" of his was being satisfied by looking at jihadi bomb making videos and other "propaganda", Atif can't answer and his mouthpiece lawyer Aamer Anwar has to butt in.

At 00:23:05 Victoria quotes a text from someone claiming his girl friend had to drop out of a class she was in with Atif because she genuinely thought Atif was a suicide bomber after he showed her a video of beheadings and said he was going to blow himself up in Glasgow. Again Anwar has to butt in gabbling about hearsay.

At the end (01:49:00) some guy from the Muslim council of Scotland comes on and says "every young Muslim with a beard was suspected" after Atif was sent to jail. Victoria is somewhat speechless.

You could almost feel sorry for Atif until you realise what he was up to. It is a bit inexplicable seeing how unarticulate and shifty he sounds that he wanted to be interviewed. I reckon it was his lawyer Anwar who put him up to it, thinking he'd get the kid glove treatment that the BBC is sometimes guilty of.