Terror detention ‘a kind of modern torture’

By Tom Mellen

Morning Star, 8 November 2007

TWO innocent brothers who were locked up for a week under anti-terror laws urged MPs to resist the attack on civil liberties on Wednesday. In a passionate appeal to backbenchers, they described government plans to double the amount of time suspects can be detained as amounting to “modernised torture.”

Mohammed Abdul Kahar, who was shot in the chest during the infamous Forest Gate raid in June last year, urged MPs not to back plans to extend the maximum amount of time that terror suspects can be held from 28 to 58 days. Giving evidence to the home affairs select committee, Mr Kahar told them: “If you give the police more time, they do everything slower. It is just prolonging the time, it’s more modernised torture,” he warned.

His brother Abul Koyair said of his seven days of questioning in Paddington Green high-security police station in west London: “It makes you want to admit to anything they want to hear.”

Mr Kahar said that he did not regard Britain differently after his experiences but he had lost faith in the police. “The police have a difficult job, but they are putting innocent people’s lives at risk. It’s not only Muslims,” Mr Kahar said, noting that Jean Charles de Menezes wasn’t a Muslim. The threat is not only to Muslims – it’s a threat to the whole public.”

Mr Kahar warned that, “if I wasn’t as strong as I was, I could have been turned against this country. I have so much hatred towards the system, someone else could have used it in a bad way.”

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“Pity Samina Malik, the young woman who will live for the rest of her life with the consequences of a terrorism conviction simply for being a suburban shopgirl who expressed her fantasies on the internet.

“Scribbling doggerel in praise of al Qa’eda on the back of WH Smith receipts will do no more to bring about the universal caliphate then a smartarse politics student with a Che Guevara poster in his bedroom does to further guerrilla struggle in South America.

“Malik is just one of many millions of kids in every country around the world wrapped up in a flirtation with any variety of anti-establishment symbolism that comes immediately to hand. Mostly it stops at posting message on online talk boards, as it did in her case….

“Let’s keep a sense of proportion here. Yes, I am in favour of intelligence service surveillance against violent Jihadists. But what is needed is action against real terrorists, not lyrical ones. Just imagine how counter-productive Malik’s conviction is going to prove in the struggle for the hearts and minds of alienated Muslim youth.”

Dave Osler at Dave’s Part, 8 November 2007

To put an end to extremism we should support, rather than demonise, the organisations trying to engage with young people in a positive way, argues Anas Altikriti.

Comment is Free, 7 November 2007

“Monday’s pre-legislation speech by the head of MI5, Jonathan Evans … was a classic ‘frightener’, reminiscent of Alastair Campbell rolling the pitch for a headline-grabbing initiative. ‘As I speak,’ intoned Evans with full dramatic effect, ‘terrorists are methodically and intentionally targeting young people and children in this country, radicalising, indoctrinating and grooming young, vulnerable people to carry out acts of terrorism.’ Note the sexual connotation of ‘grooming’….

“Scaring the public as an act of policy may win a few headlines but it is stupid. It worked short term in 2003 and may prop up yet another terrorism law in yesterday’s Queen’s speech, a law presumably requested by MI5. But it can only damage British liberty in the long term.

“The Blair government ruined Britain’s reputation for fair treatment among the moderate Muslims on whom stopping a tiny number of fanatics now depends. Abroad it declared wars, bombed Muslim capitals, killed civilians, and initiated a crusade for ‘western values’ among people sceptical of their virtues. At home it extended terrorism laws to make every dark-skinned Briton feel he or she is being made a scapegoat. While Britain remains adequately safe from attack, it has been at a wretched cost.”

Simon Jenkins in the Guardian, 7 November 2007