School teachers are to force Muslim children to take sides with lessons involving imaginary terrorist plots. Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly wants to change the national curriculum so that pupils will be asked where they stand if a friend wanted to launch a “holy war” attack on a local supermarket.

Community leaders are outraged by ministers plans to target Muslim schools with questions to kids about what they would do if Islamic extremists sought to buy fertilizer for a bomb plot. The proposals raised fears of a creeping surviellance culture in which teachers could come under pressure to reveal the identities of Muslims children who sympathised with terrorism.

Critics pointed out that the government did not seek to “educate” Catholic children in Northern Ireland about the dangers of sectarian violence but instead moved to achieve a political settlement. The government needed to deal with real causes of terrorism, such as the war on Iraq and Afghanistan and segregation caused by economic policies, rather than brand young kids as terrorist sympathisers. Muslim organisations voiced concerns that the plans are based on an assumption that Muslim schools are teeming with budding terrorists.

Lester Holloway reports: BLINK, 23 May 2007

Police investigating the 7 July attacks on London have been criticised by the lawyer for Hasina Patel, the widow of suicide bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan. Imran Khan, who represents Ms Patel, spoke after she and two other men had been questioned over eight days and were released without being charged.

Mr Khan told BBC News 24 that police relations with the Muslim community have been further damaged. “Those in her community are incredibly angry at the way the police have approached this,” he said. “In my view, if their intention in this case was to destroy what relations they had with the Muslim community, then they have done that.”

He said he was “relieved” at Ms Patel’s release, but remained “shocked” at the police’s handling of her arrest. He did not reveal specific details but said police had been for some time in possession of evidence that “unequivocally” proved she had known nothing about what her husband was planning two years ago.

He added: “To arrest her in these circumstances – a woman who lost her husband, who has been accused of the most atrocious events that have taken place in this country, has now spent seven days in isolation in Paddington Green – I wonder what she must be feeling. She’s quite clearly innocent of anything, because she’s been released by police having trawled through her life and possessions and caused her a tremendous amount of grief.”

BBC News, 16 May 2007

Civil rights campaigners condemned Home Secretary John Reid on Sunday after he claimed that current human rights laws are no longer acceptable and must be “modernised.”

At a summit in Venice of interior and home affairs ministers from the six largest EU countries, Mr Reid urged ministers across Europe to begin a major rethink of how human rights legislation works in practice. In a controversial speech, Mr Reid said that politicians who followed existing case law “to the letter” were failing to do everything they could to guard against terror attacks.

Human rights legislation has caused problems for new Labour, including the defeat in the House of Lords of emergency laws passed in 2001 to detain terror suspects indefinitely without charge or trial. Enforcing its replacement system – known as “control orders” – has also been fraught with difficulties because of human rights legislation. The government is also unable to deport foreign suspects because the European Convention on Human Rights prevents people being sent back to countries where they may face torture or ill-treatment.

Human rights group Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti said that it is clear to all observers that Mr Reid is no friend of the post-war human rights framework. “He would like to rip it all up and start again, casting aside an international framework that was agreed by democrats all over the world in the wake of the Holocaust and the Blitz,” Ms Chakrabarti said. “In particular, he would like to lock people up for long periods without due process and deport foreign nationals to places of torture.”

Morning Star, 14 May 2007