Terrorism Act | ukwatch.net

This kind of terror prevention constrains us all

Ellie Keen — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:10:16 +0000

Aabid Khan, Sultan Muhammed and Hammad Munshi were all found guilty under the Terrorism Act this week. Between them they had what’s been described as a ‘terrorist library’: manuals on weapons, explosives and poisons, as well as video clips of mujahideen fighting and information about transport systems in the US and UK.

Their online conversations included discussing how to smuggle a sword through airport security. The dominant figure in the group — Aabid Khan — wrote chillingly of wanting to ‘cause trouble for the kuffar…cause fear and panic in their countries’ and aimed to recruit ‘a group of at least 12’. Khan received a 12-year sentence; Muhammad was sentenced to 10 years and Munshi — the youngest person to be convicted under the Terrorism Act — is still to receive his sentence.

Yet the main evidence against them was the documents in their possession. There does not appear to have been a plot. As far as the Crown Prosecution Service is concerned, there doesn’t have to be a plot. The men were prosecuted under Section 57 of the Terrorism Act 2000 — possessing an article for a purpose connected with terrorism. ‘The purpose of this legislation is to enable the police and the prosecuting authorities to act early against people who possess articles for a terrorist purpose, before a plan or conspiracy to commit a particular act has necessarily been formed.’

It’s worth comparing these convictions with a case that was quashed earlier this year in the Court of Appeal. A group of young men were convicted under the Section 57 of the Terrorism Act in similar circumstances (although less well connected than Aabid Khan to other extremists). They too had downloaded huge quantities of material and they too were excitedly discussing potentially violent ideas (the group also included a schoolboy). Yet the Court of Appeal found that possession of an article in itself was not an offence — what mattered was if was there an intention to use the material for terrorism.

It’s possible on this basis that there might be grounds for appeal.

The problem with this kind of terrorism prevention is that it constrains us all. There is no room for intellectual curiosity, for flirting with unfashionable ideology or even for engaging in serious research on the topic: Rizwaan Sabir and Hicham Yezza were reported to the police by their own university and detained for six days last May. Sabir had been studying extremism and had asked Yezza to print out a document for him.

Such is the culture of fear and confusion that he was not even safe to do his research in a centre of academic freedom. There can be no better example of how counter terrorism has pervaded our culture — and of the damage caused by such a broadly defined offence.

Britain's terror laws have left me and my family shattered

Ellie Keen — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:48:21 +0000

The UN’s committee on human rights has just published a report criticising Britain’s anti-terror laws and the resulting curbs on civil liberties. For many commentators the issues raised are mostly a matter of academic abstractions and speculative meanderings. For me, it is anything but. These laws have destroyed my life.

On May 14 I was arrested under section 41 of the Terrorism Act – on suspicion of the “instigation, preparation and commission of acts of terrorism”: an absurdly nebulous formulation that told me nothing about the sin I had apparently committed. Once in custody, almost 48 hours passed before it was confirmed that the entire operation (involving dozens of officers, police cars, vans, and scientific support agents) was triggered by the presence on my University of Nottingham office computer of an equally absurd document called the “al-Qaida Training Manual”, a declassified open-source document that I had never read and had completely forgotten about since it had been sent to me months before.

Rizwaan Sabir, a politics student friend of mine (who was also arrested), had downloaded the file from the US justice department website while conducting research on terrorism for his upcoming PhD. An extended version of the same document (which figures on the politics department’s official reading list) was also available on Amazon. I edit a political magazine; Rizwaan regularly sent me copies of research materials he was using, and this document was one.

Within hours of my incarceration I had lost track of time. I often awoke thinking I had been asleep for days only to discover it wasn’t midnight yet. My confidence in the competence (and motives) of the police ebbed away. I found myself shifting my energies from remaining cheerful to remaining sane. In the early hours, I was often startled by the metallic toilet seat, crouched in the corner like some sinister beast.

For days on end, I drew cartoons and wrote diary entries in the margins of Mills and Boon novellas. I spent hours reciting things to myself: names of Saul Bellow characters, physics Nobel prize winners, John Coltrane albums, anything to keep the numbness away.

I’m constantly coming across efforts being made to give detention without charge the Walt Disney treatment: the crushing weight of solitary confinement is painted as a non-issue; the soul-sapping nothingness of the claustrophobic, cold cell is portrayed as a mild inconvenience. Make no mistake: the feeling that one’s fate is in the hands of the very people who are apparently trying to convict you is, without doubt, one of the most devastating horrors a human being can ever be subjected to. It is (to misquote Carl von Clausewitz) the continuation of torture by other means.

“Those who have nothing to hide, have nothing to fear,” goes the tautological reasoning of the paranoia merchants calling for harsher, ever more draconian “security” measures – as we saw throughout the 42-days debate. They should read Kafka: nothing is more terrifying than being arrested for something you know you haven’t done. Indeed, it is the innocent who suffers the most because it is the innocent who is tormented the most. The guilty calculates, triangulates, anticipates. The innocent doesn’t know where to start. The answers and the questions are absolute, unbreachable, towering conundrums.

I underwent 20 hours of vigorous interrogation while entire days were being completely wasted by the police micro-examining every detail of my life: my political activism, my writings, my work in theatre and dance, my love life, my photography, my cartooning, my magazine subscriptions, my bus tickets.

Aspects of my life that would have been seen as commendable in others were suddenly viewed as suspect in my case for no apparent reason other than my religious and ethnic background. I was guilty of being that strangest of creatures: a Muslim who reads; who studied engineering yet writes about Bob Dylan; was a vocal opponent of the Iraq war yet owns all of Christopher Hitchens’ writings; admires Terry Eagleton yet defends Martin Amis; interviews Kazuo Ishiguro, listens to Leonard Cohen, goes to Radiohead concerts, all of which became the subject of rather bizarre questioning.

This is not all: outside, lives are shattered, jobs are lost, marriages are destroyed, minds are damaged, friends and families are traumatised – often irrevocably so. My parents, whom I wasn’t allowed to call, could barely get any sleep throughout the ordeal. Many of my Muslim university friends were, and still are, worried about being targeted themselves. For most of my loved ones, despite my innocence, nothing will ever be the same again. I’m now jobless, facing destitution and threatened with deportation from the country I’ve called home for nearly half my life.

Immense pressure is exerted on law enforcement agencies by their political mandarins to produce “results”: pressure to produce a higher number of arrests but also the corollary, more dangerous, impulse to justify them at any cost. Naturally, through a perverted but pervasive circularity in the logic, lack of evidence becomes the very justification for requesting “more time”. The government claims that checks and balances will ensure extensions to detention periods are based on verifiable and compelling arguments. I beg to differ: in my case, the judge was simply bullied by streams of technospeak until she had no option but to grant extra time.

Fighting terrorism is a serious matter and needs to be tackled in a serious way – not through empty gimmicks sustained by fear-mongering and alarmist rhetoric. The real danger is that we are witnessing a slide from the essential purity of habeas corpus into a Britain where the innocent are detained until proven guilty.

Hicham Yezza, an activist and writer, was released without charge after six days in custody, immediately rearrested on immigration charges and issued with a removal order to Algeria, after which he was held for a further 27 days; he is still awaiting a conclusion to his deportation case
www.freehicham.co.uk

Academic Freedom

Ellie Keen — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 22:21:59 +0000

AS NOTTINGHAM POST-GRAD FACES DEPORTATION AFTER FAILED TERROR ARREST

The story of the two Nottingham Uni students who were arrested on bogus terror charges two weeks ago has turned into a victimisation campaign against one of the arrestees. Hicham Yezza, one of two men arrested for downloading information about Al Qaeda from a US government website, is currently languishing in the Dover Immigration Removal Centre, where he is being threatened with deportation to Algeria. Originally he was booked on a BA flight on Sunday the 31st, before he had a chance to launch an appeal or work on a defence for himself. It was only when the students and staff at Notts Uni launched a full scale campaign for his release that the deportation order was delayed (one day before his deportation date).

Once Hich’s six day stint of interrogation under Terrorism laws was over, he was promptly re-arrested by immigration officials, accusing him of living and working illegally in the UK. Despite the fact that he’s been here, living, working & studying here for 13 years. And he hasn’t really kept a low profile, much of this time working as a magazine editor and popular on-campus activist.

A large part of Hich’s initial interrogation at the hands of anti-terror cops concerned his involvement with the Nottingham students’ peace magazine ‘Ceasefire.’ Cops are notoriously devoid of irony, otherwise it might have occurred to them to question the rationale behind busting peaceniks for terrorism. Police questioned Hich and his co-arrestee Riswan in detail about the funding for the mag (no doubt straight from Bin Laden’s Jihadi billions).

The cops have excelled at dubious and underhand methods. Confiscating 20 computers from the uni, they told the press that they extended the pair’s detentions because they had ‘further potential evidence.’ With the implication that there was something on the pair, what this meant in reality was that they hadn’t got the staff to search through all the computers.

It was the university staff that dobbed Hich in. Being the kind of guy who would go out of his way to help a mate, he offered to print out the (US government approved) Al Qaeda training manual because his friend Riswan hadn’t got enough credit on his university printing card.

Having initially stitched them up, Notts Uni have bent over backwards to help the police and repress freedom of speech on campus. A statement from the uni said that the AQ manual is ‘contentious,’ and ‘sensitive,’ and that only approved academics and students should have access to it. The idea that information that is legally and freely available should be restricted on campus seems to fly in the face of the traditional role of universities as places that encourage academic freedoms. (Fortunately, given the shitstorm that this case has produced, that doesn’t seem likely).

The Free Hich campaign isn’t planning on going away once they’ve have secured their man’s release. They’re already widening its scope to to become a broad-based civil liberties and anti-deportation campaign. Even as they campaign for Hich another Nottingham campaigner has been targeted by immigration authorities. Amdani Juma, a Burundian HIV-AIDS campaigner who has been involved in the free Hich campaign was picked up two days after he made an appearance at the free Hich demo on the 28th of May.

Hich’s case has turned into a ‘perfect storm’ of the state’s use of anti-terror and immigration laws used to repress a dedicated peace activist and critical writer. Many inside the campaign claim that Hich’s detention under immigration law is a last gasp attempt to claw back something after the terror arrests turned out to be nothing of the sort. However, whilst shying away from any suggestion of shapeshifting paedophile lizards (out of fear probably) us at SchNEWS sense the hand of conspiracy against an effective and popular critic of the Neo-Con/Neo-Labour ruling ideology.

www.freehichamyezza.wordpress.com

The Crazy Politics of 42 days

Ellie Keen — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 17:33:32 +0000

Who would be a Labour MP this week? After brutal whipping and endless spin about “toughing it out” while “offering concessions”, it still boils down to this. Is it right, or necessary, or productive to our safety, to detain a suspected person for six weeks without charge – without knowing what they are accused of?

Some view this as a trial of political machismo. Liberty does not. Political parties play a part in democracy, but I respect the conscience, courage and conviction of individual parliamentarians more. I will always regret the crazy politics that “42 days” has become and our inability – despite endless efforts – to persuade the Brown government towards a break with the recent past.

Liberty colleagues have had discussions with Labour MPs who have been thoughtful in their engagement. My confidence is such that I believe on a free vote in the Commons, the 42-day measure would be easily defeated. But at the fag end of the misnamed, misjudged “war on terror”, abortion time limits are left to the conscience and detention time limits are not. The margin will be tight.

Some MPs have expressed fears that this issue might become a running sore for their party. As Europe split the Conservatives in the 1990s, so civil liberties might create a fault line through Labour. Government admissions that there is no need for an extension have left many angry about being forced to revisit this issue so soon after the vote in 2005.

In democracies where people are presumed innocent, we arrest on suspicion, charge with evidence and convict after proof. These principles were built on centuries of struggle. Even this tradition risks hundreds or thousands of people being plucked from their beds and detained under terror laws. A smaller number will be charged with something, and some eventually convicted.

Humans – including policemen – are imperfect. Hence the age-old wisdom of prompt charging following arrest, so even the most heinous murders must result in charge within four days. Hence the one-day limit in Canada, two in the US, and periods of a week or less all over the free world. Ministers have been quick to try to rubbish my organisation’s extensive research into comparisons but have produced none of their own. The Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, Thomas Hammarberg, is in no doubt where the UK stands. He says the “British government’s suggestion to allow terrorism suspects to be detained for 42 days without charge would be way out of line with equivalent detention limits elsewhere in Europe”.

After charge, innocents may still be held for months pending trial for a complex conspiracy, but at least they know why. At least they and their family and lawyers can prepare a defence in the hope of vindication in court. Contrast the nightmare of a thousand hours in custody followed by unceremonious release back into the community. How will that help social cohesion and national unity? Ministers claim to have consulted “senior Muslims”. My concern is with the junior ones who become alienated and radicalised.

The security minister Admiral Lord West was both provocative and practical when he said people should “snitch” on those they suspect of involvement in terrorist activity. How much intelligence might be lost in the anxiety that providing information risks an innocent neighbour disappearing for six weeks? I debated this on the radio with a government loyalist. “Six weeks’ detention is not so long,” he said, “a school holiday”. Before I could react, the Irish-born broadcaster cut in: “I was detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.” It clearly hadn’t felt like a holiday to him.

So, on the government’s own case, there is no need for this power; but they wheel out selected policemen who say there may be a need one day. They are slow to explore a range of less sexy alternatives to the constant escalation of the detention arms race.

Serving police officers have also told Liberty of their opposition to the government’s plans. But most fear recrimination if they go public. The former chief constable of the West Midlands, Lord Dear, is no stranger to terrorist threats. He was personally targeted by the IRA and yet calls extended detention a “propaganda coup for al-Qaida”. In his experience the “best course for a terrorist was to provoke a government to overreact to a threat by eroding civil liberties, increasing executive powers and diminishing due process by the denial of justice”.

One week from the vote, we are told ministers can have their authoritarian cake and eat it with sugar-free “concessions”. The home secretary even says her last-minute amendments transform the 42-day power into a liberal enhancement of existing emergency powers. The joint parliamentary committee on human rights disagrees: “The safeguards in the bill, even after the potential government amendments, are inadequate to protect individuals against the risk of arbitrary detention.”

Confidence tricks catch only those unwilling to look beyond the smoke and mirrors. First, the “grave and exceptional terror threat” is broad enough to catch any suspected terror plot anywhere in the world, rather than a genuine emergency in Britain.

Second, the threat is a phrase for a statement to the Commons, not a legal precondition for detention. That means that the power to extend detention is still triggered by individual cases rather than general emergencies. Parliament becomes a farcical star chamber charged with discussing individual cases without prejudicing potential trials.

Finally, there is no judicial review of the decision to turn on the power. The only role left to a judge would be to authorise detention week on week without evidence or charges to examine.

On morning radio Jacqui Smith asked for our trust. Since when was trust in today’s home secretary a basis for suspending the rule of law? It is part of her job to plan for horrific scenarios. It is the job of her parliamentary colleagues to consider her proposals in future home secretaries’ hands. This is not a vote of confidence in this government, but about confidence in parliament’s ability to hold all governments to account.

Who would be a Labour MP next week? Vote against this posture and face the whips in the morning. Or vote for it and face your grandchildren forever.

Shami Chakrabarti is director of Liberty

Nottingham ‘terror arrests’

Ellie Keen — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 23:45:30 +0000

‘The clampdown is about trying to depoliticise us’

The harrowing story of Rizwaan Sabir – a postgraduate student studying terrorism who was arrested for downloading an Al Qaida training manual – is testimony to the Islamaphobia that has been whipped up by politicians and the media.

Rizwaan, a student at Nottingham university, was held for almost a week without charge. He says his case shows where the steady erosion of academic freedom and civil liberties can lead.

It also shows why the government’s plans to further extend anti-terror legislation are dangerous and wrong-headed.

Rizwaan spoke to Socialist Worker about what happened and his fears for the future.

“At first when I was arrested I thought it was a joke,” he said. “I was taken to a cell and kept there all day. I kept asking why I’d been arrested but nobody would tell me.

“Later in the afternoon I was told that my house would be searched. I was photographed, fingerprinted, footprinted and a DNA swab was taken.”

The police held Rizwaan in their cells for six days and repeatedly questioned him.

“My family were trying to find out what had happened but the police wouldn’t tell them anything. The police just kept asking me the same questions. They asked me if I’d been to Pakistan, if I’d been to the North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan, if I’d been to Iraq. They asked me if I was planning on going camping.”

Rizwaan says he thinks that the police knew he was a genuine researcher after his first interview and that they knew they had no reason to hold him.

“They said that they had to go through all the papers they had seized – this becomes a reason for detaining people for ever longer periods of time,” he said.

“When I was released I was given a statement saying that the university had confirmed that the manual wasn’t relevant to my course. I don’t know where that came from.”

Some 500 students and university staff held a protest in support of Rizwaan and his friend and university employee Hicham Yezza, who had helped Rizwaan by printing the manual.

“People read bits of the manual out in front of the media to show solidarity,” said Rizwaan. “They can do that but if I read the manual again I could be investigated further.

Connection

“I think that the clampdown is about trying to depoliticise people, but treating people like this can further radicalise them.”

Maria Ryan is a lecturer at the university who was interviewed by the police in connection with Rizwaan. She told Socialist Worker, “The police told me Rizwaan had been arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Initially I just laughed. I told them he had downloaded the manual because he was researching radical Islam.

“I explained that the manual is in the public domain. They responded that if it gets into the ‘wrong hands’ there could be problems.

“They asked me various questions about Rizwaan – what he thinks of the US and US foreign policy and what he thinks of Israel and suicide bombing.

“They also asked me some personal questions about him. How many friends does he have? Does he pray? Does he drink alcohol? Does he go to pubs?

“I had another visit from a police officer a few days later. It was clear that they had realised he was a genuine researcher.

“But there is a problem – what do you do if the law prohibits possession of certain material?

“It’s worrying that the police have such wide-ranging powers to arrest people without charge. They arrest first and investigate after. And when they realise they’ve made a mistake they don’t know what to do.”

After being released without charge, Hicham was threatened with deportation to Algeria until a last-minute reprieve last week. He now faces a judicial review.

A Source for Concern

Ellie Keen — Mon, 19 May 2008 11:12:41 +0000

What protection from the law do journalists have when the police demand to see their notes, their footage, their source material? That is the question that will be asked this week in what is being seen as a precedent-setting case for the rights of reporters covering terrorism and security affairs.

On Wednesday, the 27-year-old freelance journalist Shiv Malik will be in the high court for a judicial review of attempts by the Greater Manchester police to obtain his source material relating to the former Islamist radical Hassan Butt, whom he had interviewed at length for his as-yet unpublished book, Leaving al-Qaida. Butt, 28, who had claimed in the past to have been a spokesman for the Islamist group al-Muhajiroun, but says he is now opposed to violence and extremism, was arrested under the Terrorism Act at Manchester airport on May 9 as he was about to leave for Lahore, Pakistan. He is still in custody and police have been given an extension until Wednesday to question him.

In March, Malik was visited at his home in London by officers from Greater Manchester police, who demanded access to the material for the book he was working on for the publisher Constable & Robinson. The book was due to come out this spring but publication has been delayed, pending the result of the court case.

Since the initial disclosure order, GMP have issued similar orders to the BBC, CBS, Prospect magazine and the Sunday Times, regarding related material. Those organisations were all due in court in Manchester this week but the case has been put back to May 23 in light of this week’s judicial review.

“I think what was surprising was that the police appeared at my door without any warning,” said Malik of the visit. “It seems as though they are handing out those production orders very readily, like sweets. They said that what prompted it [the visit] was the imminent publication of the book.”

Perilous state

Malik added that he believed the case had major implications for any journalist working in the area. “The issue for all journalists is their freedom to operate in the field of terrorism,” he said. “It puts this field of journalism in a perilous state.”

Greater Manchester police are not being specific about why they are seeking the material from so many sources. A GMP spokesperson said: “This is part of an ongoing investigation and we are unable to provide further details. However, as with all criminal investigations, the police require assistance from people who may have relevant information.”

Malik, who has worked on a freelance basis for the New Statesman, the BBC and the Independent on Sunday – for whom he wrote about the former Guardian trainee Dilpazier Aslam’s membership of the radical group Hizb ut-Tahrir – is being supported in his challenge to the order by the National Union of Journalists. The union will be picking up the bill, estimated at around £100,000, as Malik is a freelancer.

“We feel that this [the disclosure order] is a fundamental threat to the media and it has implications for all journalists and for investigative journalism in particular,” said Jeremy Dear, the NUJ general secretary. “It is an attempt to turn journalists into informers and is part of an increasing intolerance towards dissent. Our real fear is the chilling impact it could have on coverage of this area.” He said that it was the first such case to be brought under the 2000 Terrorism Act and was “unique”. Such cases were previously brought under the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act (Pace).

Butt has been a controversial figure for several years, making inflammatory statements in media interviews. In one interview with Prospect, he said: “I would agree to being called a radical and one day I may even be called a terrorist, if Allah permits me. That is something it would be an honour to be called.” But he has renounced this and now claims to be anxious to make amends for his past statements.

Others issued with orders by GMP have expressed their bemusement. David Goodhart, editor of Prospect magazine, says: “I don’t know anything about the rights and wrongs of the Hassan Butt case but the silly thing about this is they [the police] seemed to have reached for a production order as a first resort. They clearly had no idea what sort of an organisation we are and they appeared to have done absolutely no research.”

Goodhart said that the police appeared to have contacted Prospect after they had read an article by the journalist Aatish Taseer on the internet and discovered that, if they wanted to read more, they would have to subscribe. He said that a phone call to his office would have told them that the magazine retained no source material. “We are entirely written by freelancers and the chances that we have anything of value here is zero,” he says. “I am happy to give them anything that is in the public domain, and I am prepared to help [the police] provided that it does not conflict with protecting sources, but they are jumping in far too quickly with these production orders. This is meant to be a last resort.”

The 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act provided some protection for journalistic material held in confidence and stipulated that an order could only be granted if certain conditions were met: that the material was likely to be “of substantial value” and that there were “reasonable grounds for believing that it is in the public interest that the material should be produced”. This was aimed at preventing the police from engaging in fishing expeditions whereby they would seek the notebooks, tapes or film footage of any journalist interviewing anyone suspected of having links with terrorism, however tangential.

Journalists are covered to a certain extent by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to freedom of expression. With the incorporation of the convention into domestic law, under the Human Rights Act of 1998, the right is now expressly guaranteed. However, that right is not absolute: interferences with the right to freedom of expression may be permitted “if they are prescribed by law, pursue a legitimate aim and are necessary in a democratic society, that is, satisfy a pressing social need”.

The grounds for such interference include “national security, territorial integrity, public safety, the prevention of disorder or crime, the protection of health or morals, the protection of the reputation or rights of others, the prevention of the disclosure of information received in confidence, and maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary”. It is the vague nature of those exceptions which are likely to be the subject of debate during this week’s case and over the coming weeks.

The NUJ has backed other reporters in similar court cases in the past, including Robin Ackroyd, who last year won a seven-year legal battle with the Mersey Care NHS Trust which had been trying to get him to name the source who leaked him confidential medical records about Moors murderer Ian Brady’s hunger strike for a Daily Mirror article in 1999. Ackroyd refused to reveal his source and was eventually backed by the courts. But it can be an expensive business. On that occasion, the bill would have been around £500,000 but costs were paid by the trust because Ackroyd was vindicated.

In another similar case, in 2000, the appeal court dismissed attempts by the police and state prosecutors to order the Guardian and the Observer to hand over information they might possess relating to the former MI5 officer, David Shayler, including a plot to assassinate the Libyan leader, Colonel Gadafy. On that occasion, Lord Justice Judge told the court: “Inconvenient or embarrassing revelations, whether for the security services or for public authorities, should not be suppressed”. Otherwise, he added, “legitimate inquiry and discussion” and the “safety valve of effective investigative journalism” would be “discouraged, perhaps stifled”.

He criticised the failure of the police special branch to explain convincingly why they needed an emailed letter sent to the Guardian and any notes in the possession of Martin Bright, then an Observer journalist, relating to Shayler’s allegations about the Gadafy plot. Journalists and media lawyers will be watching with interest to see what rulings are made as a result of this week’s case.

There is clearly tension between the police and the media over this sort of coverage. Last week, the makers of Channel 4’s Dispatches investigation, Undercover Mosque, won a libel action against West Midlands police and the Crown Prosecution Service over false allegations that they had faked aspects of the documentary.

Nick Armstrong, the solicitor for the programme makers, said that he believed it was the first time the CPS had been sued for libel.

The programme, about Islamic preachers, was made by Hardcash Productions and went undercover in several mosques in the Midlands. It showed preachers calling for homosexuals to be killed, espousing male supremacy, condemning non-Muslims and predicting jihad. The police referred the case to Ofcom after investigating 56 hours of rushes from the documentary for evidence against the preachers.

Then, to the surprise of the programme makers and C4, the West Midlands police issued a press release eight months after the programme had been transmitted accusing its producers of selective editing and distortion. That led to the libel action, the proceeds of which have been donated to charity. It certainly looks as though this area will continue to be a legal minefield.

Short Cuts

Ellie Keen — Fri, 02 May 2008 21:16:23 +0000

The trial of eight men charged with conspiracy to murder and ‘conspiracy to commit an act of violence likely to endanger the safety of an aircraft’ is underway at Woolwich Crown Court, an enclave of Belmarsh prison in South-East London. You remember the scenario: the components of liquid bombs to be carried in shampoo containers or contact lens solution or drinks cans or bottles of baby milk, to be assembled onboard in the loos and detonated with laptops, mobiles, camera flashes, iPods; there would be three exploding airliners, or six, or nine, or 12; they would be blown up mid-Atlantic, or over Miami, San Francisco, Chicago, New York. On successive days in the summer of 2006 newspaper billboards blared out how close we were to disaster: the attacks were set for 16 August; no, 22 August; no, the fifth anniversary of 9/11. Back then, you could take your pick.

But there was no question about the consequences. Flights were cancelled, carry-on allowances restricted and liquids banned; British Airways claimed they had lost £100 million in revenue; Ryanair threatened to sue the government over the security measures it was forced to put in place. The police operation that culminated in the arrest of 24 people, mostly Pakistani Muslims, on the night of 9 August – in Walthamstow in East London, Birmingham and High Wycombe – cost the Met alone more than £23 million. It was called Operation Overt. Although they made rather less noise about it in public than the feisty Michael O’Leary of Ryanair, the Met too tried to get the government to compensate them for some of the money they had spent. Their complaints are available online.

Apart from the first few days – in which the prosecution laid out its most incendiary evidence – the trial hasn’t been much reported in the press. This is normal, of course, for a long and detailed trial; and R. v. Abdulla Ahmed Ali et al is expected to last eight months. The pace of revelations can be nail-gnawingly slow, as members of the jury are asked to reinsert pages 140a and 140b behind Tab 4 of Volume 3 of their box files, but only – mark you – ‘once the staples have been removed’. A Portakabin has been laid on as a media annexe: no mobile phones, no cameras. It is fitted out with 70 seats; on the day I visited, only one of them was occupied, by the laptop of a journalist who spent part of the morning session out looking for a sandwich, a thing not easy to find in the wastelands near Belmarsh. But the press gallery will never be entirely empty. At least one person has to be there, a reporter from the Press Association, since the stories that appear in the papers under various bylines are mildly reorganised versions of PA releases. Sometimes this is acknowledged; often it isn’t.

On the day in question, the key witness was a shop assistant from a pharmacy near Harley Street where one of the accused, Arafat Waheed Khan, had been caught shopping on CCTV. He appeared to have bought four 500 ml glass jars at £38 a piece. That this wasn’t big news, or particularly illegal, explains why on this occasion the daily PA report made only a handful of papers, among them the Worthing Herald. The national press is above printing trivia, which is why no mention was made, in the Worthing Herald or anywhere else, of the uncertainty during cross-examination as to whether Khan, hesitating over his purchases and apparently wanting plastic jars rather than glass, had said ‘I’m not sure he wants that’ or – more mysteriously, and as the witness maintained – ‘I’m not sure she wants that.’ Who was he or she? Maybe the journalists will return to the court when the defendants start taking the stand; but since that isn’t expected to happen until the summer they may well – who knows? – be on holiday by then.

But the particular reason this trial hasn’t been worth reporting is that all the main elements of the prosecution’s case were widely known long before it began, were known, in fact, before the suspects were even charged. Despite the contradictory and lurid claims that ran in British papers under the banner ‘terror in the skies’, US media and officials seem in retrospect to have had an uncanny insight into what the case against these men would be. On 10 August 2006, the day after the arrests, while the Home Office continued to play its cards close to its chest, Michael Chertoff, the US secretary of homeland security, told PBS News that the explosives would be hidden ‘in ordinary-looking things like beverage containers’ – the prosecution now alleges that the accused were experimenting with injecting explosives into bottles of Lucozade and Oasis – and that the plan ‘could have, in fact, been executed within a matter of a week or two’: there was no mention of precisely when, and the prosecution at Woolwich Crown Court doesn’t contend that the plotters had selected a date, however imminent it could in theory have been. By the standards of the British papers and the BBC, Chertoff was positively sober.

Much more detail was given in a piece published a couple of weeks later in the New York Times, a piece that was immediately subject to a special order that prohibited its publication in Britain. It was deemed prejudicial to any subsequent trial and the NYT responded by blocking internet access to it from UK computers. The authors cited ‘five senior British officials’ and a ‘person briefed about the case’ and claimed that ‘several suspects were doing chemical experiments with a sports drink named Lucozade and syringes’; they also gave details of MI5 surveillance of the top-floor flat on Forest Road in Walthamstow that the security services called the ‘bomb factory’. They mentioned the handwritten diary, apparently containing wiring diagrams, that is alleged to have been found in Abdulla Ahmed Ali’s jacket pocket when he was arrested outside Waltham Forest Town Hall at 21.43 on 9 August; they mentioned the USB memory stick onto which he is said to have downloaded UK-US flight schedules three days before his arrest. These last findings now have the status of ‘agreed facts’ in the trial, meaning that they are protested by neither prosecution nor defence, but it’s a mystery how American journalists came to be equally agreed 18 months before the event.

Most remarkably, the NYT’s reporters quoted from the ‘seven martyrdom videos’ that were found in police searches of cars, garages and flats in Walthamstow. Their article was published on 28 August 2006. The transcripts that are now being presented in evidence in South-East London were written up by a police interpreter early in October 2006. Could the Met have saved themselves some money by flying over a few hacks from New York, who managed to glean the contents of the videos before they were transcribed? One thing the hacks also said, which the prosecution hasn’t, was that

while officials and experts familiar with the case say the investigation points to a serious and determined group of plotters, they add that questions about the immediacy and difficulty of the suspected bombing plot cast doubt on the accuracy of some of the public statements made at the time.

‘In retrospect,’ said Michael A. Sheehan, the former deputy commissioner of counterterrorism in the New York Police Department, ‘there may have been too much hyperventilating going on.’

A fair amount of hyperventilating is still being encouraged outside the courtroom. An excerpt from one of the ‘martyrdom videos’, made by Umar Islam, was released last week to Sky News, which has also made it available on its website. In February, Andrew Gilligan – veteran of the sexy dossier and scourge of Red Ken – was dispatched by Channel 4 to an airfield near Basingstoke where he detonated an undisclosed liquid explosive inside the fuselage of a decommissioned passenger jet. It ‘caused a large fireball, a massive hole in the side of the aircraft and blew seats out of the cabin’. Best of all (though this wasn’t mentioned in Gilligan’s dispatch: the trial had after all yet to start), the explosive had been carried in the same sort of container – a 500 ml plastic bottle – that the prosecution, as of April, alleges the men in the dock used for their experiments. What the prosecution doesn’t so far allege is that the plotters tested their bombs; but then they didn’t have a TV-size budget.

The government’s determination to extend again the period for which ‘terror suspects’ may be held without charge has as much to do with the desire to placate what it sees as Middle England – a desire that has been at the core of its philosophy since 1997 – as any imperative of national security. The eight men now in court were charged on 20 August 2006, ten days after their arrest. The police have cited the vast amount of material that has to be sifted through in cases like this – four hundred computers, two hundred mobile phones and eight thousand memory sticks, CDs and DVDs were seized – as a reason for the time needed before a charge can be made. But high-tech forensics are only a small part of the evidence being presented in R. v. Abdulla Ahmed Ali et al. Much of the evidence was gathered well before the arrests through old-school surveillance: subject was seen entering T&I Communications in Wood Street, Walthamstow, and speaking on a mobile phone ‘in hushed tones in a foreign language’. Perhaps when wiretap evidence is made fully admissible in court – it isn’t yet – surveillance reports will sound less like the work of PC Plod, who loiters on street corners with his pencil stub. But whatever the result of this particular case, even the current provision for 28 days’ detention is unnecessary, given the breadth of new legislation. A suspect can in theory be charged under the 2006 Terrorism Act if evidence suggests that he was associating with the wrong kind of people and having the wrong conversations. It’s nearly thought-crime. Talking in ‘hushed tones in a foreign language’ is a very bad thing to do.

Daniel Soar is an editor at the London Review.

You Don't Have the Right to Silence

Ellie Keen — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 10:56:52 +0000

Yes, that’s what officer 0801 from West Midlands Police told me today at Birmingham Airport when I said “No comment” to his surprising question: “Have you been involved in organising any protests in this country?” And since I was held for one and a half hours to be asked such silly questions, I thought I would waste another hour and a half writing about it.,

It is well known that the “right to silence” is a legal protection given to people undergoing police interrogation or trial. The right is recognised in many of the world’s legal systems. In the UK, it was first codified in the Judges’ Rules in 1912 (see Wikipedia’s entry).

In 1996, the European Court of Human Rights held that “the right to remain silent under police questioning and the privilege against self-incrimination are generally recognised international standards which lie at the heart of the notion of a fair procedure under Article 6 [of the European Convention on Human Rights].” (see these interesting cases 1 | 2 ).

Under the Terrorism Act 2000, however, this right, along with many others, was eroded. Schedule 7 (Port and Border Controls) states that “a person who is questioned under paragraph 2 or 3 must give the examining officer any information in his possession which the officer requests.” The purpose of this is supposed to be “determining whether he appears to be a person falling within section 40(1)(b).” That is, whether he “has been concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.” But Article 2.4. of the mentioned Schedule goes on to say that “an examining officer may exercise his powers under this paragraph whether or not he has grounds for suspecting that a person falls within section 40(1)(b).”

The ‘examining officer’ also has the power to “search anything which [the person] has with him, or which belongs to him”, and to hold him for up to 9 hours for the purpose of “examination”. Should the person not comply with any of the above, including “wilfully obstructing, or seeking to frustrate, a search or examination”, then he or she is deemed to have committed an offence punishable by imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months, or a fine not exceeding level 4 on the standard scale, or both.

Of course, officer 0801 did not read me my rights or mention that, under the same law, I had the right to consult a solicitor and inform someone that I am being held for questioning. It was only after my detention exceeded an hour that a senior police officer came in and explained the procedures for me. In fact, I have been told, in previous incidents, that I could not make any phone calls when I asked to let my friend, who was waiting for me outside with his car, know that I was going to be delayed a bit.

Police State?

Now my theory is that police are using these ‘examinations’ at ports and airports to build a huge database, not only about migrants and ‘potential terrorists’ but also about dissent groups and activists. The other goal could well be to recruit spies, as I argued here. I do not have any evidence to support my allegations but, from personal experience, I can assure you that they are as interested in leftist and anarchist ‘stuff’ as they are in Muslim extremists, Islamic terrorism and all that.

In July 2006, Lib Dem MP Norman Baker (who was himself a target of MI5 surveillance in the 1980’s because of his activities as an environmental protester) accused the government of “hoarding information about people who pose no danger to this country”, after it emerged that MI5 holds secret files on 272,000 individuals – equivalent to one in 160 adults. In a Parliamentary Answers, it was revealed that 10% of those files were active, or coded Green. 46% were coded Orange, for which inquiries are prohibited but further information may be added, while 44% were coded Red, where inquiries are prohibited and no substantial information may be added. So, it follows that one in every 1,600 people pose a ‘real threat to the country’ – 27,200 terrorists and criminals! Back in July 1998, the then Home Secretary Jack Straw revealed in Parliament that, in 1972, MI5 had an estimated 535,000 files on individuals and organisations. From mid 1992 to mid 1998, 110,000 were allegedly earmarked for destruction (for more details, see this Indymedia feature).

Needless to say, the Terrorism Act, particularly Section 44 (Power to stop and search), has been repeatedly abused by cops and used against protesters and activists to stop or deter them from going about their once-legal business (see here, for example).

My other theory is that the Special Branch, dubbed sometimes as the “political police” and whom I used to get at airports, are not coping with the amount of work they are being asked to do. And that’s why I got a normal cop this time (that’s what I think anyway).

In 2003, StateWatch published a special report on the role of Special Branch in conducting surveillance operations for MI5. It revealed that the number of police Special Branch officers had more than doubled, from 1,638 in 1978 to 4,247 in 2002. In addition, it now has far more civilian staff and means for mass surveillance of telecommunications and the payment of informers, which it never had in those days. But still, they probably need an open recruitment campaign, similar to what the MI6 did last year: a website and a P.O. Box where people can apply for jobs as.. err, Special Branch officers.

First Woman Convicted Under Terrorism Act

Tim Holmes — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 16:29:19 +0000

On December 6, Samina Malik, a 23-year-old from Southall, West London, became the first woman in the UK to be sentenced under the Terrorism Act 2000. Malik was sentenced to 9 months, suspended for 18 months, with the condition that she be supervised for the whole period and undertake unpaid work. She has already spent 5 months in custody and 1 month under house arrest after her conviction.

Passing sentence, Judge Peter Beaumont said that Malik’s offence was “on the margins of what this crime concerns” and said he was taking into account her family background. “You are 23, of good character till now and from a supportive and law-abiding family who are appalled by the trouble you are in,” he said.

Following her trial in November, the jury at the Old Bailey found Malik guilty, by a majority of 10 to 1, of “possessing records” likely to be used for terrorism. She was convicted of having articles “likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.”

Malik, who worked airside at a WH Smith newsagent at Heathrow Airport until her arrest in October last year, had written and posted poems on the Internet that the court deemed extremist. She had earlier been found not guilty, under Section 57 of the Act, of possessing an article for a terrorist purpose. Malik denied the charges.

The jury was told that Malik, who dubbed herself the “Lyrical Terrorist,” had written “extremist poems” praising Osama Bin Laden, in support of martyrdom and beheading.

One of her poems, “How to Behead,” was extensively quoted in the media and used by the prosecution to arouse a sense of repugnance in the jury. It states, “It’s not as messy or as hard as some may think/ It’s all about the flow of the wrist. No doubt that the punk will twitch and scream/ But ignore the donkey’s ass/ And continue to slice back and forth/ You’ll feel the knife hit the wind and food pipe/ But don’t stop/ Continue with all your might.”

The court also heard she had written on the back of a shop till receipt; “The desire within me increases every day to go for martyrdom.”

Court prosecutor Jonathan Sharp said, “These communications strongly indicate Samina Malik was deeply involved with terrorist related groups.” Police said they had found a “library” of extreme Islamist literature in her bedroom including The Al-Qaeda Manual and The Mujahideen Poisons Handbook. Deputy Assistant Commissioner and head of the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command Peter Clarke said, “Malik held violent extremist views which she shared with other like-minded people over the Internet. She also tried to donate money to a terrorist group.

“She had the ideology, ability and determination to access and download material, which could have been useful to terrorists. Merely possessing this material is a serious criminal offence.”

Following the verdict, Judge Peter Beaumont QC, the Recorder of London, told Malik, “You have been in many respects a complete enigma to me.”

In her defence, Malik said the poems had been “meaningless,” and that she had only called herself the “Lyrical Terrorist” “because it sounded cool,” explaining that it did not mean she was actually a terrorist or wanted to be one.

During the hearing, Malik explained that she started writing love poetry under the name “Lyrical Babe” while at Villiers High School in Southall. She then began writing rap poems in the style of artists Tupac Shakur and 50 Cent. Of one of her many poems, she said: “This does not mean I wanted to convert my words into actions. This is a meaningless poem and that is all it ever was. To partake in something and to write about something are two different things.”

Malik was prosecuted for a thought crime, and her conviction represents a grave threat to democratic rights. As offensive as her poems may be, they were the thoughts of a troubled individual and not a terrorist.

The decision by the jury was taken against the background of a hysterical media barrage around the so-called terrorist threat, while the ink was still drying on the Queen’s Speech in which the government made clear its intent to deepen the assault on democratic rights and civil liberties. In the same week, Jonathan Evans, the head of the secret service MI5, gave his first speech in which he spoke of Al Qaeda targeting young teenagers in particular.

It was clear from the evidence presented in court that Malik’s interest in Islamist fundamentalist publications never amounted to any actual plans to cause injury or a conspiracy to commit a terrorist attack. She did not possess any explosives or weapons, nor was any evidence presented that she attempted to procure them.

The attraction to Islamic fundamentalism of a section of Muslim youth is a political problem, not a criminal issue. It is a politically confused response to the actions of the imperialist powers in the Middle East and Africa, exacerbated by the social difficulties and racism faced by young Asians in Britain and throughout Europe.

In the absence of a socialist political movement of working people against war, social inequality and racism, and with a nominal Labour government instrumental in all of these attacks, it has been possible for Islamist reactionaries to portray themselves as a genuine anti-imperialist force. Far from combating Islamism, the anti-terror laws not only undermine the democratic rights of everyone but also help push a layer of young people towards it.

This situation is exacerbated by the failure of many civil rights groups to strenuously defend the democratic rights of Muslim youth and the growing closeness of the most high-profile, Liberty, to the government. Protest against Malik’s sentencing was generally subdued and came from only a small number of writers and journalists.

The fact that downloading Internet material is a “criminal offence in itself” means that millions of people throughout Britain could potentially be tried and convicted on the basis of what they or someone else entirely might do with it.

See Also:
Britain: Queen’s Speech signals attack on civil liberties
[14 November 2007]
Britain: Youth convicted under antidemocratic terrorism acts
[25 September 2007]