No names, no charges, no explanations: the plight of Britain's interned 'terrorists'

Audrey Gillan September 9, 2002 The Guardian

They started knocking at 7am. Police cars lined the streets and curtains began to twitch as neighbours became aware that something serious was afoot. The officers had a warrant for arrest and deportation and so the man was handcuffed and taken away, leaving behind a wife and 10-month-old baby. At roughly the same time last December 19, the same thing was happening in each of nine homes in London, Luton and Birmingham as men said to be "international terrorists" with links to extremist organisations were detained.

None of the men - all of them Muslim - was alleged to be a member of al-Qaida, none was involved in the September 11 events or even directly involved in supporting al-Qaida, yet all were taken to high security prisons and classified as the highest risk.

There, they claim, they were refused access to lawyers or telephones and locked in cells measuring 3m by 1.8m for 22 hours a day. Their families were not informed where they had been taken and they were initially refused all contact with the outside world.

Later a further two men were arrested in similar circumstances, bringing the total accused to 11, none has been charged with any offence and none has been officially interviewed.

It was not until March that the men heard the nature of some of the allegations against them and even now much of it is kept secret in what the government says is the interests of national security. Even their own lawyers have been forbidden from knowing the contents of the files.

Welcome to Britain post-September 11, a panicked place where foreign nationals can be detained without charge indefinitely on suspicion of being international terrorists; a place where the evidence against alleged terrorists is kept secret; a place that rushed emergency legislation through parliament in order to intern foreigners who could not immediately be deported. The Anti-terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001 was introduced with the express purpose of detaining such men.

This internment has led to claims from Liberty and Amnesty International that the government has dispensed with civil liberties in a knee-jerk reaction to what it sees as a national emergency.

John Wadham, director of civil rights group Liberty, said: "Is there such an imminent and extreme national emergency as to justify locking people up without charge or trial, not for anything they have done but for something someone thinks they might do? The Home Office says there is, but it refuses to tell either the people it is imprisoning or the general public why."

Campaigners point to the fact that "suspected terrorists" can be detained without being charged with any criminal offence; that they can be held indefinitely; are confined in the highest security prisons and treated as highly dangerous and a security risk; were initially denied access to legal representation; and cannot have a fair trial because they do not know the evidence against them.

The human rights QC Ben Emmerson has described the government's actions as "an unprecedented and drastic interference with a range of basic fundamental rights, including the right to liberty and the right to a fair trial". David Blunkett, the home secretary, responds that this is an "airy, fairy libertarian" view of the world and that his responsibility is to ensure public safety and national security. He says: "Extremists in the UK have the skills, opportunity and intent to further and provide material support to al-Qaida's campaign against the US and its allies. The presence of such extremists here at this time, and for the foreseeable future, creates a situation of public emergency threatening the life of the nation."

But the courts have ruled that the way the Home Office has tried to protect the nation from this threat has been unlawful. At the end of July, a panel of the special immigration appeals commission ruled that Mr Blunkett had acted unlawfully by discriminating against foreign nationals. Despite the ruling the men are still interned and their individual appeals will not be heard until later in the year. The new act allows those accused to leave the country rather than remain in custody and two of the 11 men have since returned home.

The public is not allowed to know who all but two of these men are. What the Guardian can tell you is that they are mostly Algerian, Moroccan, Egyptian and Tunisian and that the majority have been rounded up on previous occasions. Some have had cases against them dropped for lack of evidence but have been rearrested on that same evidence. One was acquitted at the Old Bailey in March 2000, after being accused of being a supporter of the Armed Islamic Group.

Some are accused of having contact with Abu Qatada, the Muslim cleric who has been accused by European investigators as being the "spiritual leader" of al-Qaida. Others have been in touch with Abu Hamza, the controversial cleric at Finsbury Park mosque.

Two of the detainees have received compensation from the Metropolitan police for wrongful arrest and false imprisonment. Some are taking anti-depressants and two have been classed as a suicide risk. Two have become fathers while in prison and have yet to see their new children.

What seems clear is that none of these men is a senior grade terrorist or has any firm connection to al-Qaida. The secrecy of the evidence against them makes it difficult for any real assessment of the threat they pose to be made.

Bitterness

According to the solicitor Gareth Peirce: "All express ... their bitterness at both the unfairness of the accusation, their frustration at their inability to combat such vague allegations and their hopelessness exacerbated by the open-ended uncertainty of their respective positions."

For the first time, one has spoken to the Guardian by letter from prison and said: "I am not a criminal and I have not committed any crime. These allegations against me are unjust and they don't depend on any evidence and I think this constitutes a miscarriage of justice."

In spite of attempts to hinder inquiries about their detention, a Guardian investigation has found that the men were called "bin men" by prison warders and that their cells were dubbed "Bin Laden's corner". The detainees' lawyers claim they were denied medical treatment for weeks.

According to Amnesty International, one was disciplined for cutting his hair, one for refusing to stop in the middle of a prayer when interrupted by a guard. One could not call his mother abroad, even though his father had just died. Another had letters from his wife confiscated because they were in French and another's request to have a female officer sit in on a prison visit so his wife could remove her veil was denied. Those who were held in Belmarsh's high security unit in south-east London have been moved into the mainstream prison but are still strip searched before and after every visit.

What we do know about the cases of the two named men illustrates how tenuous some of the evidence against the detainees can be. They have been named as Djamel Ajouaou and Mahmoud Abu Rideh. The case against Mr Ajouaou was that he was an associate of two men already being held in Belmarsh, Abu Doha, who is fighting extradition to the US on charges that he conspired to bomb Los Angeles airport, and Yasser al-Siri, who has had the charges against him dropped.

Mr Ajouaou, a former catering manager who had lived in Britain for 15 years, was in fact an interpreter working for Mrs Peirce and had been given security clearance by Belmarsh. Mr Abu Rideh is an asylum seeker who came to Britain in 1995 and was being treated for severe post-traumatic stress disorder following torture at the hands of the Israelis. His detention in Belmarsh caused flashbacks and he frequently banged his head on his cell wall. In June, a judge decided that he was so seriously mentally ill that he should be moved to a low-level secure psychiatric unit. Instead, he was transferred to Broadmoor high security hospital. Mr Abu Rideh's lawyers say he is too mentally unbalanced to be involved in terrorist activity. The arbitrary nature of some of the allegations against Muslims that followed September 11 is illustrated by the cases of other men wrongfully imprisoned in Britain. These include:

• Lotfi Raissi, detained in Belmarsh for five months after being accused by American authorities of training the pilots in the September 11 attacks. He was released in April when a British judge decided there was not enough evidence on which he could be extradited.
• Yasser al-Siri, accused of conspiring to kill Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Northern Alliance leader, two days before September 11. All charges were dropped and an extradition request from the US was refused.
• Suleyman Zainulabidin, a chef from south-east London, was acquitted by a jury of running a website recruiting potential fighters for a holy war against "enemies of Islam".

In spite of seeing several key cases against alleged terrorists fall apart, the home secretary says the detentions are justified, and that each man will have the opportunity to appeal in court. If the decision is made that there is not enough evidence against them, they will be released without charge. In the meantime the nine anonymous men can only wait, still not knowing what the evidence against them might be.