Police must be taken to task for manufacturing evidence against Muslims on terrorism

Police must be taken to task for manufacturing evidence against Muslims on terrorism

The outreach of offences under Britain’s terrorism laws have very elongated arms, extending much further than previously thought. In any event, it seems that the police have no scruples in fabricating evidence where none exists or changing it to ensure it meets pre-set criteria required to lay charges. Such are the alarming findings of the long drawn-out saga relating to the arrest of a Muslim student at the University of Nottingham back in 2008. Even worse is that no officer is being subjected to any misconduct investigation.

Under Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000, the collection or possession of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism is an offence with the prospect of facing up to 10 years in jail. This includes written, photographic or electronic record of the information.

Masters’ student Rizwaan Sabir was arrested after downloading an edited version of terrorism manual from a US Government website as part of his research and was held for seven days before being released without charge. Last year he received £20,000 in an out of court settlement from Nottinghamshire Police after launching proceedings for false imprisonment and breaches of the Race Relations Act 1976 and the Human Rights Act 1998.

It has now emerged that Sabir was detained without charge as a terror suspect after police “made up” evidence against him, according to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

In another document exclusively obtained by The Muslim News, the former Head of West Midlands Counter-Terrorism Unit admits that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) did not charge Sabir at the time due to a now defunct technicality.

Det Chief Supt Matt Sawers told a University of Warwick researcher that Sabir was not charged because “at the time there was significant uncertainty due to other cases” involving Section 58 but that these issues have since been resolved and “were the incident to occur again, charges would be brought under similar circumstances.”

The shocking revelations are yet another damning indictment of the country’s counter-terrorism laws and their arbitrary use. How many other Muslims have been subjected to fabricated evidence and are languishing in British jails?

Britain’s longest-serving detained prisoner without charge, Babar Ahmad, has no doubt that evidence was made up against him in his 8-year battle against being extradited to the US. He tweeted to Sabir: “they [the police] made it up for you & in my case, sent it to US. We are both British Muslims detained w/o charge, you for 1wk, me for 8yrs.”

There are already fears about Muslims being targeted in the run-up to the Olympic Games leading to a spate of wrongful arrests. Police may be arresting marginal terror suspects with the threshold lowered for assessing potential risks, reports have suggested. Several arrested have been charged with what have been dubbed ‘thought’ offences under Section 58.

The first of many recent arrests included two Muslim men who had been seen near the Olympic canoeing venue in Hertfordshire. They were questioned for 48 hours before being released without charge earlier this month.

A worrying aspect is that the police appear to be acting with impunity. A West Midlands police’s internal investigation into Sabir’s case concluded that that officers made-up key parts of the evidence but said that none would be investigated for misconduct. The Independent Police Complaint Commission has also clarified that their role would be restricted to reviewing “the manner in which the police carried out the investigation to consider whether it was done appropriately, rather than re-investigate the complaint itself.”

There are hundreds of publications that could fall foul under Section 58. The decision seems arbitrary on whether the police and the CPS press ahead with charges on what publications anyone may hold or have traces on their computers and smart phones of websites visited, deemed as suspects. Even if they are not charged, simply being arrested could lead to the humiliation of being fingerprinted and DNA sampled, with the result of being tagged as a “suspected terrorist” for the rest of their life and put on intelligence databases which are secretly shared with foreign governments, without the full context of the incident being recorded.

Like many of the excesses of the terrorism laws, Section 58 needs to be repealed. No one should be prosecuted for ‘thought’ crimes or for scientific or engineering knowledge, but only for actual possession of weapons, explosives, firearms or money with a clear terrorist intent. Those at risk include not only academics and students but any member of the public, even by simply browsing the internet. And the police need to be more accountable for their misconduct.