Newspaper admits Muslim terror story was wrong, but offers no apology
A NATIONAL newspaper which ran a front page story claiming leading British Jews were being targeted by Islamic extremists have admitted they were duped by a ‘phoney terrorism expert’.
The Sun newspaper today admitted the story, which carried the headline “Terror Target Sugar” was wrong – but did not offer an apology.
The article, which was published in January, quoted from the papers ‘anti-terrorism expert’ Glen Jenvey who claimed online Muslim forum Ummah.com was being used by extremists to target leading British Jews in revenge for Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
It named figures such as Lord Alan Sugar and singer Amy Winehouse as targets in the terrorist plot.
But just days after the Sun published the story, internet forums were abuzz over claims that Jenvey was responsible himself for the comments made on the website.
Today the Sun finally admitted their story was false after Jenvey confessed he had posted the extremist comments on Ummah.com in an interview with BBC reporter Tom Mangold, aired on Sunday’s edition of Donal MacIntyre’s Radio Five Live show.
“Glen Jenvey has admitted making up stories about Islamic fundamentalism, including a faked list of prominent Jewish “targets”, which included Lord Alan Sugar,” the paper wrote.
“Jenvey told how he fabricated the list of Jewish targets by posing as a fundamentalist on an extremist website where he urged others to suggest names.
“He then leaked the made-up list to a trusted news agency, used by The Sun, and online forum Ummah.com was wrongly accused of being used to prepare a backlash against UK Jews.”
When the story was published, Ummah.com hit out at the accusations saying: “It is extremely difficult to believe that The Sun has not deliberately set out to deceive its readers into thinking that British Muslims on our website pose a physical threat to prominent British Jews, whilst knowing full well that this is an outright lie.”
The forum added it had evidence to show that the user ‘Abuislam’ who had posted the comments was in fact Jenvey whose aims were to “twist” the original intent of the forum discussion and to “make Muslims look bad”.
