Category Archives: State Oppression

Raids and reports fuel Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A high-profile counter-terrorism raid, in which 12 Pakistani students were arrested on Wednesday of last week, has raised key issues over civil liberties and the “war on terror”.

Despite days of searches of at least ten properties and the huge resources thrown into the case, at the start of this week the police had still not found any clear evidence of a terrorist plot.

No evidence had been found of bombs, bomb-making parts, chemicals to make explosives, a bomb factory, weapons or ammunition.

Peter Fahy, the chief constable of Greater Manchester police, has admitted that it is possible nobody could be charged with terror offences.

A number of other high-profile raids, including Forest Gate in 2006, have created huge embarrassment for the authorities after innocent people have been arrested.

Fahy said, “There will always be a situation where either we can’t achieve the evidential threshold or as a result of the investigation we find that the threat was not how it appeared to us at the time.”

There is deep concern and anger that the last week’s events will lead to an increase in Islamophobia. The government has attacked Pakistan for its supposed inability to tackle terrorism, and the media has blamed “lax” student visas for the problem.

Socialist Worker, 18 April 2009

Terror plot: ‘they have no evidence whatsoever’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

'Terrorist' arrested 2A spat between British and Pakistani officials has followed the arrest of 11 Pakistani nationals in northern England on Wednesday.

Pakistani intelligence officials and a senior Pakistani government official claimed that there was no evidence against the Pakistanis arrested in Britain.

The government official told The Daily Telegraph that the suspects were likely to be deported from Britain. “They have no evidence whatsoever. They will release them and then repatriate them under anti-terror laws,” said the government official.

Rahimullah Yusufzai, a veteran journalist of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) traced the families of three of the men arrested.

Mr Yusufzai named the three families. He quoted the father of one of the men, who lives in Peshawar, the provincial capital, as saying: “My son has a beard and prays five times a day. Ours is a religious-minded family but this doesn’t mean that my son is part of a terrorist cell.”

In Dera Ismail Khan, also in the NWFP, the father of another student arrested told local reporters that his son was innocent. “I was paying for my son’s education in England for the last two years. He was to complete his studies in six months but his arrest could destroy his career,” he said.

The father of a third student arrested in the UK, speaking from Tank, a southern district of NWFP, said that his 26-year old son had left for UK in the first week of October 2008 to study for a masters’ degree in computer sciences at the Liverpool University. “None of my family members have any link with terrorists.”

Daily Telegraph, 13 April 2009

See also “Terror suspect’s father says Islamophobia to blame for son’s arrest” in the Guardian, 13 April 2009

A new presumption of guilt

Posted on by Bob Pitt

'Terror' arrests in Manchester“We have heard from this government before that ‘we are dealing with a very big terrorist plot’ (Student visa link to raids as PM points finger at Pakistan, 10 April).

“There was the very big ‘ricin plot’ in 2002, with no ricin, plotted by a terrorist ringleader with no ring. (That was just before the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ intervention in Iraq, the WMD being linked by Tony Blair and Colin Powell to the ‘ricin plot’.) There was the plot to bomb Old Trafford in 2004, the evidence apparently being two ticket stubs for different parts of the ground, in the hands of fans of foreign origin.

“Then in February this year there were the high-profile arrests and detentions in the north-west under anti-terrorism laws of nine men on unspecified overseas intelligence linked to a supposed terrorist activities outside Britain. Some were arrested from a convoy taking medicines, computers, toys and such to Gaza – all were innocent. Just as then, on this current occasion no specific plot is identified (despite the wild and denied stories about the Birdcage nightclub and the Trafford Centre).”

“Anyone glancing at your article might suppose that a nasty group of terrorists had already been convicted on the basis of solid evidence. In fact, as I write this, no one has been charged, let alone convicted. It is therefore a matter of serious concern that the prime minister shows such contempt for fair legal process by talking of a ‘very big terrorist plot’.”

Letters in the Guardian, 11 April 2009

Councillor held by Special Branch at Heathrow Airport

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tower Hamlets councilor Oliur Rahman was detained at Heathrow airport today (Wednesday) under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. He has expressed outrage over the incident.

Cllr Rahman was held for more than 30 minutes and quizzed by Special Branch about why he had attended the sixth Cairo international anti-war conference in Egypt. Cllr Rahman told the Advertiser from Heathrow: “A man standing behind the desk at immigration control asked to see my passport and said he was a police officer. He asked why I’d been in Cairo, how long I’d been there, what contacts I’d made and where I lived. I asked what was the purpose of these questions and he said he was from Special Branch and had the right to ask under the Terrorism Act.”

“I’m really shaken about it,” he continued. “They didn’t stop anyone else from that flight and I’m sure it was because of the colour of my skin and because I’m a Muslim.” He is writing a letter of complaint to the Met Police.

East London Advertiser, 2 April 2008

Apology call in M65 ‘terror’ arrest

Posted on by Bob Pitt

M65 'terror' arrest

Police chiefs have been urged to give a public apology to the Muslim community in Lancashire over their handling of recent terror arrests. Nine men, from Burnley and Blackburn, were arrested on the M65 near Preston but later released without charge.

At a meeting attended by 200 people on Sunday in Blackburn, Lancashire Police were asked to apologise. Cmdr Andy Rhodes refused to give a full apology but said the incident was “regrettable”.

Ibrahim Master, a former chairman of the Lancashire Council of Mosques, said there has been disappointment about the way the men were treated.

Two vans and an ambulance were travelling in convoy to London last month when they were stopped by counter-terrorism officers. Although six men were later released, three faced extended questioning and several homes in Burnley were also searched.

BBC News, 30 March 2009

Ban on Muslim scholar angers rights activists

Posted on by Bob Pitt

tariq-ramadan2The lines between the Obama and Bush administrations appeared blurred this week after a lawyer for the government argued a ban should be upheld against the entry of Tariq Ramadan, a leading Muslim scholar.

A group of US civil rights organisations is suing on behalf of Mr Ramadan, the Swiss-born grandson of Hasan al Banna, the man who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928. He has been refused a visa several times since 2004 when he was offered a job at the University of Notre Dame, the renowned Roman Catholic institution in Indiana.

David Jones, assistant US attorney, told a federal appeals court it should uphold the ban or else the government would face a “quagmire” with others seeking reversals. “Consular decisions are not subject to litigation,” he said. When Mr Jones was asked what level of the government had considered Mr Ramadan’s case, he said “upwards in the state department”.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which argued against a judge’s ruling in 2007 that upheld the ban, said foreign scholars should not be excluded because of their political beliefs. “It’s disappointing to come here today and hear Obama administration lawyers argue the same sweeping executive power arguments,” Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU lawyer, said after Tuesday’s hearing. “There should be a clean break of the Bush administration national security policies.”

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What was real reason for banning Tariq Ramadan from U.S.?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tariq Ramadan 5A group of academic and civil rights organisations has written to the Obama administration asking it to end U.S. visa refusals to foreign scholars apparently because of their political leanings.

Probably the best known of these cases is that of Tariq Ramadan, the Swiss-born Islamic scholar who was just about to take up a chair at the University of Notre Dame in 2004 when a visa already issued to him was suddenly revoked. Ramadan is a leading Muslim intellectual in Europe with a strong following among young Muslims who like his message that they can be good European and good Muslims at the same time.

The American Civil Liberties Union will plead his case for lifting the ban before the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York on March 24. Given the way President Barack Obama has rolled back several policies of the preceding Bush administration, there could now be a chance that Washington will simply lift the ban and let Ramadan take up the many invitations to speak that he would probably get from U.S. universities and think tanks. That would be a victory for academic freedom, but it still leaves one question unanswered.

This official explanation has never sounded convincing and it always seemed Ramadan was being punished for his political views, which are left-wing, pro-Palestinian and critical of the Bush administration. I suspect there was something else going on behind the scenes, either a political decision made by administration officials or a direct intervention by someone or some body outside the administration who was opposed to letting him speak freely in the U.S. Ramadan himself has blamed Daniel Pipes, a controversial U.S. commentator on Islam who welcomed the ban. Other suggestions are French government officials or intellectuals who dislike the way he promotes a kind of Muslim pride and ensures religion remains a public issue.

If the Obama administration does lift the ban, let’s hope it goes all the way and publishes any Bush administration paperwork explaining it, so we can see a more convincing explanation for keeping him out of the United States.

Tom Henegan at FaithWorld, 19 March 2009

Babar Ahmad wins £60,000 damages from Met

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Babar Ahmad's fatherThe Metropolitan police today agreed to pay £60,000 damages to a British Muslim after a high court admission that officers had subjected him to “serious, gratuitous and prolonged” attack.

The court was told that Babar Ahmad, who is accused of raising funds for terrorism, had been punched, kicked and throttled during his arrest by officers from the force’s territorial support group in December 2003.

The Met had repeatedly denied the claims, saying officers had used reasonable force during the arrest. However, lawyers for the force’s commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, today admitted at the high court that Ahmad had been the victim of gratuitous and sustained violence at his home in Tooting, south-west London.

“The commissioner has today admitted that his officers subjected Babar Ahmad to grave abuse tantamount to torture during his arrest,” Ahmad’s solicitor, Fiona Murphy, said outside the court.

Outside the court, Ahmad’s brother-in-law, Fahad Ahmad, read out a statement on his behalf in which he said he was pleased the police had finally admitted what had happened.

“This abuse took place not in Guantánamo Bay or a secret torture chamber but in Tooting, south London,” the statement said. “The path to justice is long and difficult but, as long as you remain steadfast upon it, you will get there in the end.”

Ahmad has been in detention since he was rearrested in 2004 after a request from the US government over claims he helped raise money to fund terrorist campaigns. The court heard that no evidence had been produced against Ahmad, and he had never been charged with any offence.

He is now fighting extradition to the US in the European courts.

Guardian, 18 March 2009

See also BBC News, 18 March 2009

Click here for statements by Babar Ahmad, his family and his solicitor.

Update:  See “Met chief orders inquiry on beaten terror suspect” in the Independent, 19 March 2009

Students protest France anti-hijab law

Posted on by Bob Pitt

French+hijab+protestMuslim students have held demonstrations in Paris on the fifth anniversary of the banning of the Muslim headscarf in French schools.

The protesters, mostly Muslim girls with hijab, described the “French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools” as racial discrimination saying people should be free to choose their dress code.

The law, which is an amendment to the French Code of Education separating state and religious activities, bans students from wearing religious symbols in schools. France’s national legislature passed the controversial bill and President Jacques Chirac signed it into law on March 15, 2004 and it came into effect on September 2, 2004, at the beginning of the new school year.

Many say the bill contradicts court decisions that had allowed students to wear religious signs, as long as they did not amount to “proselytizing”. Although the law does not mention any particular symbol, it is widely believed that it targets Muslims’ headscarves.

Press TV, 18 March 2009