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FORMER Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg revealed yesterday that his offer to help the government free murdered Brit Alan Henning from Isis extremists was turned down.
Mr Begg claimed on Radio 4’s Today programme to know the identity of the group holding Mr Henning.
He said he could have helped to secure the release of the taxi driver-turned-aid worker by delivering a “heartfelt” message to his captors in Arabic.
“I know the people who may have been holding him,” he said.
“I don’t think he’s [Jihadi John] responsible for holding him, I think there’s people much higher up the ladder within Isis.”
Mr Begg, who spent two years in Guantanamo without charge, said the Manchester man’s friends had appealed to him for help in December 2013.
He then made contact with former Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt — but his help was turned down and was arrested a few weeks later.
He said: “The message that I was going to deliver could probably not have been delivered by anybody else because of the language — the terminology, the understanding, the connection that I could have made to that world was very specific and exclusive to me.”
The Birmingham man was arrested by British police officers in February on seven terror charges connected to the conflict in Syria.
All charges against him have now been dropped and he spoke yesterday after being released from Belmarsh Prison on October 1.
A video released by Isis at the weekend showed Mr Henning had been beheaded, making him the second British Isis victim.
In the wake of the murder, Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman has said she will refused to call the extremists “Islamic State.”
She said: “I will never call them Islamic State because so many Muslims are suffering at the hands of Isis or Isil or whatever.”
Ms Harman made the pledge at a Muslim Friends of Labour eid celebration at the party’s London headquarters on Monday evening.
Labour Ealing Central and Acton candidate Rupa Huq added: “The actions of Islamic State are barbaric and medieval — they’re not Islamic and they’re not a state.”
