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CAGE International’s October 26 launch of a new report on the U.S. national-security system brought together speakers whose backgrounds include work supporting an effort to remove Hamas from Britain’s terrorism list, public praise for cooperation among Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the PFLP and Hezbollah, and attendance at a Tehran conference run by an organization later sanctioned by the United States for supporting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force.
The online event, chaired by CAGE Research Director Asim Qureshi, featured Raja Abdulhaq, Cyrus McGoldrick and researcher David Chmielewski. CAGE International is a UK-based advocacy organization focused on counterterrorism policies, detention and what it describes as abuses stemming from the post-9/11 “War on Terror.” The event launched CAGE’s report, The Spiralling War of Terror: How Trump Inherited the National Security Machine He Now Wields.
In an accompanying October 26 release, CAGE quoted Qureshi arguing that the national-security powers examined in the report should not simply be reformed. “These powers cannot be reformed, only abolished,” he said. Qureshi also linked opposition to ICE with the campaign against Guantánamo, saying activists were confronting “the same system” and calling for the movements to stand together.
Qureshi Backed Hamas Delistment Effort
One of the event’s speakers, CAGE Research Director Asim Qureshi, personally prepared expert reports for a legal application seeking to remove Hamas from Britain’s list of proscribed terrorist organizations. One report states that he was instructed by Riverway Law to provide evidence “in support of the application” to deproscribe Hamas. A second report argued that Palestinian violence should be understood within a history of anti-colonial resistance and described such violence as involving “legitimate reciprocity.”
Qureshi states in the reports that he prepared them in his personal capacity. CAGE, however, has separately said that it and Riverway Law submitted applications seeking Hamas’s removal from Britain’s proscription list.
At a 2006 Hizb ut-Tahrir rally in London, he praised Hezbollah’s performance against Israel and said Muslims had an obligation to support jihad in Chechnya, Iraq, Palestine, Kashmir and Afghanistan. When CNN later confronted him with footage of the speech, Qureshi confirmed that he was the speaker. The British government outlawed the organization in January 2024.
CAGE also acknowledges that its predecessor, Cageprisoners, repeatedly invited Anwar al-Awlaki, who later became a senior leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, to address fundraising dinners by video. CAGE’s own account says that by its 2009 fundraiser it knew of Awlaki’s 44 Ways to Support the Jihad.
More recently, written evidence submitted to Parliament by the Community Security Trust cited Qureshi saying at a January 2025 event that he would “want to join Palestine Action” if he were young. Palestine Action was subsequently proscribed in July 2025. Qureshi’s remarks preceded the ban.
Abdulhaq Praised The “Axis Of Resistance”
Another speaker at the October 26 event, Raja Abdulhaq, is president of the Tamkeen Movement, a former executive director of New York’s Islamic Leadership Council and a co-founder of Quds News Network, according to a published biography.
At the 2024 People’s Conference for Palestine, Abdulhaq delivered a presentation on the development of the “Axis of Resistance.” According to an Anti-Defamation League account, he praised the “amazing” cooperation among Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Hezbollah. All four are U.S.-designated terrorist organizations.
Abdulhaq returned to the conference in 2025, where the ADL reported that he described the actions of Hamas, Hezbollah and PIJ as an “authentic indigenous response to a violent, colonial project.” He argued that “resistance” was necessary to overturn what he described as regional subjugation.
McGoldrick Spoke At Conference Run By Group Later Sanctioned Over IRGC Ties
A third speaker at the October 26 event, Cyrus McGoldrick, has a documented connection to a Tehran conference later tied by the U.S. Treasury to the IRGC-Quds Force. A curriculum vitae hosted by Istanbul’s Ibn Haldun University lists him as a presenter at the New Horizons Conference in Tehran in September 2014. McGoldrick later moved to Istanbul and studied at Ibn Haldun University.
In February 2019, more than four years after McGoldrick’s appearance, the U.S. Treasury designated the Iran-based New Horizon Organization under Executive Order 13224 for supporting the IRGC-Quds Force. Treasury said New Horizon’s international conferences provided Iranian intelligence officers with a platform to recruit and collect intelligence from foreign attendees and that organizers facilitated contact between IRGC-QF personnel and U.S. persons. Treasury also accused the organization of using its conferences to propagate antisemitism and Holocaust denial.
McGoldrick’s own biography says he previously worked as a director for CAIR-New York, the Coalition for Civil Freedoms and the Islamic Leadership Council of Metropolitan New York, and served in an advisory role with the Aafia Foundation. A current speakers’ profile says he continues “advising Islamic movements across the US and abroad” from Istanbul.
His background also overlaps institutionally with Abdulhaq’s. Both men have held positions with New York’s Islamic Leadership Council before appearing together on the October 26 CAGE panel.
Fourth Speaker Moved From Princeton Protests To CAGE
The fourth participant, David Chmielewski, was identified by CAGE as a researcher and author of the new report. Chmielewski graduated from Princeton in 2024 and participated in the university’s Gaza encampment and hunger strike. He later wrote that the protest had placed “Palestinian liberation” at the center of campus discourse.
The October 26 event therefore brought a relatively new U.S.-focused CAGE researcher together with three figures whose records intersect with legal efforts challenging terrorism designations, Palestinian “resistance” advocacy, older Islamist networks and, in McGoldrick’s case, a Tehran conference organization later sanctioned by the United States for supporting IRGC-Quds Force operations.