Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: August 18, 2008 3:53:39 PM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: "Les Miserables" in the Age of the "War on Terror"
"The entire operation --involving dozens of officers, police cars,
vans, and scientific support agents -- was triggered by the presence
on my University office computer of a document entitled the "al-Qaida
Training Manual", a declassified open-source document that had been
sent to me months before. A political science student of mine (who
was also arrested), had downloaded it from the US Department of
Justice website while doing research on terrorism for his poli sci
PhD. That document, which is included on the University's political
science department reading list, is available on Amazon."
Britain's terror laws have left me and my family shattered
I am innocent yet was detained without charge in solitary confinement
for days on end. It was a devastating experience
Hicham Yezza
The Guardian, August 18 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/18/terrorism.civilliberties
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.
ยท 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 freehicham.co.uk
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