Category Archives: State Oppression

FOSIS opposes Blair’s crackdown

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) is very concerned and casts doubt on the potential effectiveness of some of the measures announced by the Prime Minister today.

FOSIS President Wakkas Khan commented: “There’s no question that we, together with the Muslim community and the rest of British society believe that the safety of our country and the security of our people must receive utmost consideration. It is vital that we do not resort to quick-fix measures hoping only new laws and legislation will solve the problem at hand. Anti-terror measures need more consultation and consideration from all parts of society.

“The government’s measures must not infringe upon the rights and freedoms of its citizens. Proscribing groups that are understood to be non-violent is certainly a step in the wrong direction. Hizb-ut-Tahrir is clearly understood to be a non-violent organisation with strong and vocal opinions which Muslim community may agree or disagree with. This does not warrant a ban on this group as such actions will only be counterproductive.

“We are extremely worried by the Prime Minister’s effort to link asylum and immigration with the new anti-terror measures, which might only help racist elements in society.

“Mr. Blair needs to clarify whether he aims to silence the voices that support Palestinians’ struggle for freedom and other peoples’ struggles against brutality and occupation around the world.”

FOSIS press release, 5 August 2005

Ethiopian refugee beaten and humiliated by police during London raid

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Girma Belay was in the wrong place at the wrong time. As he sat in a flat in Stockwell, south London, waiting for a friend to bake Ethiopian bread, he was seized at gunpoint by anti-terror police with laser-sighted weapons, forced to strip naked, punched, beaten and humiliated. With the red laser beam blinding him, he heard someone shout, “Take him out.”

Held for six days at Paddington Green police station, Mr Belay is a shattered man. Tortured by flashbacks and gripped by fear, he clenches his fists and weeps when he describes what happened. He repeats to himself the words of one detective on his release: “Sorry mate – wrong place, wrong time.” But it does not seem to help.

Guardian, 4 August 2005

In this instance, as in the Stockwell tube shooting, the victim wasn’t even a Muslim. But what the heck, he was Ethiopian, he lived in Stockwell – what more do you want?

Melanie Phillips et al will no doubt be pleased to know that there are at least some police officers who refuse to be hamstrung by Ian Blair’s abject capitulation to political correctness

Police seized anti-war material in raid of bookshop

Posted on by Bob Pitt

On Friday 15 July police descended on the Iqra Learning Centre, an Islamic bookshop in Beeston, Leeds. They battered the door down and sealed the shop off, arresting one man who worked there under anti-terrorism laws.

The press was soon full of lurid stories about how the shop was a “unassuming front” used to “recruit youngsters and fill them with anti-West messages”. The Daily Mirror, citing unnamed “insiders”, declared that it was a “bookshop of hate”.

Local people say Iqra is a respected community bookstore, that the “anti-Western” material seized by police was in fact anti-war literature, and that the suspected 7 July bombers have had no links to the shop for several years.

Mohammed Afzal works as a volunteer at Iqra. “They’ve raided a family bookshop, slap bang in the middle of Beeston, and taken anti-war material away,” he told Socialist Worker.

“The police are trying to make out that the material they took was ‘anti-Western’. But there’s nothing like that there. It’s things like Stop the War leaflets and DVDs of George Galloway at the US senate.”

Indymedia, 3 August 2005

Hate crimes soar after bombings

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Religious hate crimes, mostly against Muslims, have risen six-fold in London since the bombings, new figures show.

There were 269 religious hate crimes in the three weeks after 7 July, compared with 40 in the same period of 2004. Most were verbal abuse and minor assaults, but damage to mosques and property with a great “emotional impact” also occurred, police said.

Met Police Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur said he had never seen so much anger among young Muslims.

Communities were particularly frustrated by the increased use of stop-and-search and the new “shoot-to-kill to protect” policy of dealing with suicide bombers, he said. “There is no doubt that incidents impacting on the Muslim community have increased.”

BBC News, 3 August 2005

See also here and here.

Britons tortured as bomb suspects in Dubai

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Two British businessmen, Mohammed Rafiq Siddique and Alam Ghafoor, allege they suffered torture and death threats from secret police in Dubai after British intelligence passed on information that they were suspects in the July 7 London bombings. The two British Muslims from west Yorkshire told the Guardian they were repeatedly threatened with torture, deprived of sleep, subjected to stress positions and told they would be killed and fed to the dogs.

The men believe part of the reason they came under suspicion is because one of them comes from Dewsbury, like one of the suicide bombers, and has a name similar to him. Mr Ghafoor said: “I said I want to phone the British embassy. They said you are here because we were given information by British intelligence, they told us to pick you up.”

Guardian, 3 August 2005

Muslim leaders hit back at terror cell claims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Representatives of Melbourne’s Muslim community have hit back at Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty’s claims of terrorist cells operating in Australia, saying they know nothing of them.

The secretary of Melbourne’s Board of Imams, Sheikh Fehmi el-Naji said he was shocked by Mr Keelty’s estimate that up to 60 suspected Islamic extremists were operating in Australia. “It’s shocking, it’s quite the opposite to what they have been saying,” he said.

After recent ASIO raids in Melbourne and Sydney resulted in no arrests or charges, Sheikh Fehmi said he felt reassured there were no terrorists in Melbourne’s Muslim community. “The raids that have been done on Muslims involved no charges and the police said everything was under control and that they have no fear,” he said.

The Age, 3 August 2005

See also here and here.

Muslim groups condemn stop-and-search policy

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim groups angrily condemned British Transport Police yesterday for suggesting that young men from ethnic minorities were more likely to be stopped and questioned in the wake of the London bombings.

Government ministers appeared to be divided on the issue. While Home Office minister Hazel Blears has backed the BTP, Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland minister, said a stop and search policy of discriminating against Muslims would simply act as recruiting agent for terrorism, as it had done with Irish communities in the past….

Home Office figures show that stop and searches of Asian people have risen steeply since the September 11 attacks.

A spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain said that while it understands the police need to take all necessary actions, it had to avoid “alienating or stigmatising” and an entire section of society. “Otherwise this action will be counterproductive,” said a spokesman. Muslim Association of Britain said such a policy would worsen the situation. “It won’t help in terms of building a relationship or trust between the communities.”

Independent, 1 August 2005

See also ‘Searches of Asians will boost bombers, says Hain’,  Daily Mirror, 2 August 2005

And ‘Blears backs away from racial profiling’, Guardian 2 August 2005

Suspect’s tale of travel and torture

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A former London schoolboy accused of being a dedicated al-Qaida terrorist has given the first full account of the interrogation and alleged torture endured by so-called ghost detainees held at secret prisons around the world. For two and a half years US authorities moved Benyam Mohammed around a series of prisons in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan, before he was sent to Guantánamo Bay in September last year.

Guardian, 2 August 2005

First torture them, then rig their trials

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) obtained two leaked emails from former military prosecutors at Guántanamo Bay over the weekend. The emails both claim that the military committees set up to try detainees at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba are “rigged, fraudulent, and thin on evidence against the accused.”

In the first email obtained by the Australian news organization, Gitmo prosecutor, Major Robert Preston, wrote to his supervisor that the trial process at Guantanamo was perpetrating a fraud on the American public. Preston also wrote that the cases being tried were insignificant at best.

“I consider the insistence on pressing ahead with cases that would be marginal even if properly prepared to be a severe threat to the reputation of the military justice system and even a fraud on the American people,” Preston wrote. “Surely they don’t expect that this fairly half-arsed effort is all that we have been able to put together after all this time … I lie awake worrying about this every night,” he wrote.

“I find it almost impossible to focus on my part of mission … After all, writing a motion saying that the process will be full and fair when you don’t really believe it is kind of hard, particularly when you want to call yourself an officer and lawyer.”

Shortly after Preston sent these emails to his superior he was transferred from his post.

In the second email obtained by the ABC, Captain John Carr, who also left his position after his email claimed that the commissions at the prison appeared to be rigged, wrote, “When I volunteered to assist with this process and was assigned to this office, I expected there would at least be a minimal effort to establish a fair process and diligently prepare cases against significant accused. Instead, I find a half-hearted and disorganized effort by a skeleton group of relatively inexperienced attorneys to prosecute fairly low-level accused in a process that appears to be rigged.”

Carr also wrote that Gitmo prosecutors were continually told by the chief prosecutor that the panel set up to try detainees was specially selected in order to guarantee convictions. “You have repeatedly said to the office that the military panel will be handpicked and will not acquit these detainees and that we only needed to worry about building a record for the review panel,” Carr wrote.

Joshua Frank reports in Counterpunch, 2 August 2005

See also “Leaked emails claim Guantanamo trials rigged”, ABC, 1 August 2005

Police ‘must single out Muslims’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslims are certain to be singled out in police stop-and-search operations in the wake of the bombings, ministers have warned. Home Office Minister Hazel Blears gave her backing to a British Transport Police chief who vowed that his officers will not shy away from targeting Asians because they came from a group most likely to present the gravest threat. Chief constable Ian Johnston told a Sunday newspaper: “We should not bottle out over this. We should not waste our time searching old white ladies.”

Civil liberties groups attacked Mr Johnson, claiming that “racial profiling” could undermine race relations. But the Metropolitan Police and BTP believe that targeted stop and searches are vital at a time of high alert. Ms Blears said: “If your intelligence tells you that you’re looking for somebody of a particular description, perhaps with particular clothing on, then clearly you’re going to exercise that power in that way. That’s absolutely the right thing to do.”

Evening Standard (London), 1 August 2005