Category Archives: State Oppression

London mayor attacks extradition treaty

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ashfaq AhmadPress Association report, 14 February 2006

Ken Livingstone today blasted a controversial extradition treaty being used to send a British Muslim to face terror charges in the US as “offensive”.

It will also guarantee that Babar Ahmad, a computer expert from Tooting, south London, accused of running websites inciting murder and urging Muslims to fight a holy war, will never get a fair hearing.

“The reality is that anybody who has seen the condition of the American prisons or nature of the the US justice system can not have any confidence that anyone of a Muslim background extradited from Britain can have a fair trial,” Labour’s London Mayor said. “It is offensive.”

His opinion clashes with that of Home Secretary Charles Clarke who approved the extradition under the 2003 Extraditon Act last year.

Mr Ahmad, currently in Woodhill Prison, Milton Keynes, is appealing the decision at the High Court on February 20 as civil rights leaders and former Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzem Begg step up their campaign for the treaty to be overhauled. They are holding a cross-party meeting at the House of Commons on Thursday.

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Muslim woman kicked out of US court over hijab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Tacoma judge is under fire for kicking a Muslim woman out of his courtroom after she refused to remove her head-scarf. “I felt humiliated,” said 37-year old Mujaahidah Sayfullah, who has worn her head-scarf in court before.

She says she couldn’t believe it when first the bailiff and then Tacoma Municipal Court Judge David Ladenburg told her as she sat in the audience that either her head-scarf could go – or she could. “He said, ‘well, if you’re not gonna do it then I’m going to have to ask you to remove yourself from the courtroom,'” she said.

She left, fearing the judge would take it out on the relative who was on trial.

Judge Ladenburg stands by his decision. “It’s my understanding and belief that the Muslim religion does not prohibit the removal of head-coverings either for males of for females,” he says…noting that unless he learns that an exception should be made, there’s a courtroom standard that must be upheld.

Ladenburg says it wasn’t religious discrimination…but Mujaahidah says it sure felt like it, and that’s why she’s telling her story. “Just for it to be exposed, and the public be aware that people are able to blatantly discriminate based upon their position of power,” she said.

The Council on American-Islamic relations has sent a note to Ladenburg, notifying him of the allegations against him. Ladenburg says he plans to respond.

KOMO 1000 News, 30 January 2006

Were we held at airport because we are Muslims?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Muslim couple are threatening to take action against the police after they were held by Special Branch detectives at Cardiff Airport – missing their flight as their luggage and identities were checked. Aisha Pritchard and her Palestinian husband Sadi Eihaloul claim their detention was racist and are now considering bringing a test case against South Wales Police.

The couple, from Pentwyn, Cardiff, were due to fly to Dubai via Amsterdam for a four-day break on December 14 but they never made the trip after being stopped by security at the boarding gate. Ms Pritchard, 40, said: “We understand that there have to be security measures at all airports. It is the way we were treated we cannot accept. We feel we were deliberately stopped from boarding the plane, that it was racist and because we are Muslims.”

By the time they had been given the all-clear by the detectives, the couple’s flight had already left. And because their tickets were non-transferable, they were faced with having to pay out £1,500 if they wanted the next flight. Instead, they caught a taxi home.

Wales Online, 28 December 2006

See also the Independent, 29 December 2006

AWL explains the veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Over at the Workers’ Liberty website, Mark Sandell tells us that the veil is just “the public expression of women and girls being oppressed and owned by ‘their’ men”.

Opposition to the headscarf ban in French schools, according to Sandell, was restricted to a “motley crew of cultural relativists, numskull ‘anti-imperialists’, and assorted religious bigots”.

Solidarity, 26 January 2006

Banning Hizb ut-Tahrir

Posted on by Bob Pitt

HizbOsama Saeed and Yusuf Smith comment on leaked official emails from August 2005, relating to the government’s anti-terror measures, that have been published by the New Statesman. The material provides some useful insights into the proposal to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir.

One of the emails (from Foreign Office official Robert Tinline, head of the multilateral and terrorist financing section of the counter-terrorism department) points out that “there is no apparent case to proscribe HuT” and notes that “much of their literature explicitly rejects the use of violence”.

But home secretary Charles Clarke did not reject a ban. Rather, he is reported as arguing that “he would prefer putting off proscription of HuT until after the proposed amendments to the current legislation: it would, for example, be much easier to argue that HuT met the criteria of ‘justifying and glorifying violence’. Clarke said that his fear was that the Government would lose the case for proscription and so wanted to act cautiously”.

There could hardly be a better illustration of the way the “glorification” clause in the Terrorism Bill (rejected by the Lords) would be used to ban organisations that pose no terrorist threat at all.

The leaked emails can be downloaded (in pdf format) here.

Lawsuit filed in support of Muslim scholar barred from US

Posted on by Bob Pitt

tariq-ramadan2Citing the case of a prominent Muslim scholar who has been barred from the United States, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit yesterday seeking to strike down a clause of the USA Patriot Act that bars foreigners who endorse terrorism from entering to this country.

The suit was filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan on behalf of the scholar, Tariq Ramadan, and three national organizations of academics or writers who have invited him to speak to their members. The groups, including the American Academy of Religion, the leading American organization of scholars of religion, say Mr. Ramadan has never expressed support for terrorism. They also argue that the Patriot Act clause has been applied to stifle academic debate in the United States.

New York Times, 26 January 2006

Dutch MPs to decide on burqa ban

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Dutch government will announce over the next few weeks whether it will make it a crime to wear traditional Islamic dress which covers the face apart from the eyes.

The Dutch parliament has already voted in favour of a proposal to ban the burqa outside the home, and some in the government have thrown their weight behind it. There are only about 50 women in all of the Netherlands who do cover up entirely – but soon they could be breaking the law.

Dutch MP Geert Wilders is the man who first suggested the idea of a ban. “It’s a medieval symbol, a symbol against women,” he says.

“We don’t want women to be ashamed to show who they are. Even if you have decided yourself to do that, you should not do it in Holland, because we want you to be integrated, assimilated into Dutch society. If people cannot see who you are, or see one inch of your body or your face, I believe this is not the way to integrate into our society.”

Mr Wilders has explicitly linked his wish for a burqa ban with terrorism. “We have problems with a growing minority of Muslims who tend to have sympathy with the Islamo-fascistic concept of radical Islam,” says Mr Wilders.

BBC News, 16 January 2006

Race, terror and civil society

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Race & ClassAfter the London bombings of 7 July, new anti-terrorist legislation has been brought forward; multiculturalism has come under attack; anti-Muslim racism has increased at every level of British society. Political and public debate are threaded through with the politics of fear.

This wide-ranging analysis, by the founding editor of Race & Class, provides a framework for understanding the dynamic interconnections between the new racism thrown up by the processes of globalisation and modern empire, the increasing threat to civil liberties and the alienation felt by many young Muslims.

“Race, terror and civil society”, by A. Sivanandan, in the January 2006 issue of Race & Class.

See IRR website.

March for Omar Deghayes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Supporters of Omar Deghayes and six other British detainees being held in Guantánamo Bay have called a demonstration to demand that the US authorities release them and shut down its network of secret detention centres. The march will take place on Saturday 21 January in London.

Meanwhile, lawyers for Omar and the other detainees have launched a court challenge aimed at forcing the British government to do more to help free them. Omar’s family came to Britain in the early 1980s as refugees from Libya. His father, a trade union activist and lawyer, was murdered by Colonel Gadaffi’s regime.

Demand justice for the British residents in Guantánamo Bay, Saturday 21 January. Assemble 12 noon, Tothill Street, central London, nearest tube St James’s Park.

Go to www.save-omar.org.uk for more information.

Socialist Worker, 7 January 2006

Terror suspect facing US extradition

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Terror suspect faces US extraditionPeace campaigners condemned a court ruling yesterday allowing the extradition of a British-born terror suspect to the US, where he risks an unfair trial and even torture.

District Judge Timothy Workman ruled at Bow Street magistrates court that Yorkshire-born Haroon Rashid Aswat, who is accused of trying to set up al-Qaida training camps in the state of Oregon between 1999 and 2000, can be extradited to the US.

Home Secretary Charles Clarke has up to two months to approve the extradition of Mr Aswat, who denies the charges. His lawyers have expressed grave concern that he could end up in the notorious Guantánamo Bay detention centre if extradited.

Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs chairman John McDonnell said that he was “appalled” by the court’s decision and agreed that “no-one can be sure that this British-born man will receive a fair trial in the US.”

Morning Star, 6 January 2006