“It is with utmost distress and pain that we approach your kind office to plead the case of 10 Pakistani students, who are being held by British authorities despite absence of any charges or evidence. Our kids are in prison, thousand of miles away from us having no contact with them for the last 43 days. Agonies, stresses which we are experiencing at the moment cannot be simply explained, what to speak of the mothers of these unfortunate students. UK has long history of fair play and justice and we are sure that justice coupled with compassion will also prevail in this case.”

Socialist Unity reproduces the letter to Gordon Brown from parents of three of the Pakistani students who are awaiting deportation, under the pretext that they pose a “threat to national security” but without any evidence being presented to substantiate that charge.

A lawyer representing three Pakistani students detained for 13 days then released without charge has said it is the worst case of its kind since new legislation extended detention periods in 2000.

Mohammed Ayub lambasted the government on Friday for its treatment of his clients who were detained after high-profile police raids in the north-west last month and then released without charge.

The men were subsequently redetained pending possible deportation to Pakistan where, he argued, their safety was not certain.

Referring to the Home Office figures on the poor conviction rate in terror cases in general, he said: “It signifies that the security services are acting on poor or misleading intelligence and the continuation of such operations is likely to lead to a lack of public confidence in the security services.”

Mr Ayub, from Chambers Solicitors in Bradford, also said that he had concerns over the report into the operation which led to his clients’ arrests being compiled by Lord Carlile, the government’s independent reviewer of terror legislation.

“We call for an independent inquiry into Operation Pathway, so that lessons can be learned as to how this investigation could have got it so terribly wrong and so that no other innocent person should have to face the continuing ordeal that our clients are suffering.”

Morning Star, 16 May 2009

Seven out of eight people arrested under Britain’s terror laws since the al-Qa’ida attacks on America in 2001 were not convicted of a terrorism offence, figures released yesterday show.

More than three-quarters of those imprisoned were given sentences of less than 10 years and a half will be released in less than five years.

Between 11 September 2001 and 31 March 2008, there were 1,471 arrests under terrorism offences in Britain. Of these, 521 resulted in a charge of some form, with 222 people charged with terror offences, and 118 people charged with terror-related offences, such as conspiracy to murder.

Civil rights campaigners last night seized on the figures as more evidence to support concerns that police were using tough terror powers indiscriminately against mostly innocent people. Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty, said:

“In free societies we arrest on suspicion, charge with evidence and convict when there is proof. These figures remind us that the overwhelming majority of those arrested for terrorism were not guilty of any charge and half weren’t charged at all. All the more worrying that wholly innocent people may be held for a month without charge or indefinitely without charge under control orders – based on secret suspicions and intelligence alone.”

The statistical report, the first of its kind, follows a series of high-profile cases in which suspects arrested and detained under the Terrorism Act have been released without charge. Last month it emerged that the case against 12 Muslim men involved in what Gordon Brown had described as a “major terrorist plot” amounted to one email and a handful of ambiguous telephone conversations. Eleven Pakistani students and one British man were freed after extensive searches of 14 addresses in north-west England failed to locate evidence of terrorist activity, according to security sources.

The new figures will also support concern that police use of anti-terror stop-and-search powers is alienating Muslim communities. Last year searches under the terror laws trebled. Officers in England and Wales used Terrorism Act powers to search 124,687 people in 2007-08, up from 41,924 in 2006-07, separate figures released this month revealed. Of the subsequent 1,271 arrests, only 73 of those were for terror offences.

Independent, 14 May 2009

Ten Pakistani men released without charge after an investigation into an alleged plot to bomb shopping centres in Manchester were part of an al-Qaeda network planning attacks in Britain and should be deported, a tribunal has heard.

Robin Tam QC for the Home Secretary told the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) in London: “All the applicants were members of a UK based network linked to al-Qaeda involved in attack planning. Each therefore poses a risk to national security and deportation would be considered in the national good.”

Three of the men, Abdul Wahab Khan, Shoaib Khan and Tariq ur-Rehman, waived their rights to anonymity at the hearing. The SIAC panel considered evidence behind closed doors before refusing bail for the three named men, along with a fourth, “XC.”

Sibghat Kadri QC for Abdul Wahab Khan, 26, said: “Other than what he was told upon arrest, that he was suspected to be a terrorist, he has never been informed of the substance of any allegations against him.” He added that despite the police seizing computers, a TV and clothing which were subjected to forensic examination, “not a shred of evidence was found.”

He added: “This case does not involve the liberty of the applicant but the wider question of trust that the community can repose in the security services in a multi-racial society and the subsequent faith in the Secretary of State to make a decision based on justice rather than fear of political failure.”

Daily Telegraph, 13 May 2009

See also the Times, 13 May 2009