De de verschrikkingswetten hebben van Groot-Brittannië me en mijn familie verbrijzeld verlaten
Houd de Coalitie van de Oorlog tegen | De commissie van de V.N. voor rechten van de mens heeft net een rapport kritiserend de anti-verschrikkingswetten van Groot-Brittannië en de resulterende randen over burgerlijke vrijheden gepubliceerd. Voor vele commentators zijn de besproken kwesties meestal een kwestie van academische abstracties en speculatieve kronkelen. Voor me, is het om het even wat maar. Deze wetten hebben mijn leven vernietigd.
Op 14 Mei werd ik gearresteerd in het kader van sectie 41 van het Akte van het Terrorisme - op verdenking van de „aansporing, de voorbereiding en de commissie van handelingen van terrorisme“: een absurd nevelige formulering die me niets over de zonde vertelde die ik blijkbaar had begaan. Eens in bewaring, gingen over bijna 48 uren alvorens men dat bevestigde de volledige verrichting die (dozens ambtenaren impliceert, politieauto's, bestelwagens, en wetenschappelijke steunagenten) door de aanwezigheid op mijn Universiteit van het bureaucomputer van Nottingham van een even absurd document genoemd het „Handboek van de Opleiding al-Qaida“ werd teweeggebracht, een vrijgegeven open-brondocument dat ik nooit volledig ongeveer en vergeten had gelezen aangezien het was verzonden naar me voordien maanden.
Rizwaan Sabir, een vriend van de politiekstudent van mijn (die ook) werd gearresteerd had, het dossier van de website van de de rechtvaardigheidsafdeling van de V.S. terwijl het leiden van onderzoek naar terrorisme voor zijn aanstaande PhD gedownload. Een uitgebreide versie van het zelfde document (dat de cijfers aangaande de officiële de lezingslijst van de politiekafdeling) ook beschikbaar op Amazonië waren. Ik geef een politiek tijdschrift uit; Rizwaan verzond me regelmatig exemplaren van onderzoekmaterialen hij gebruikte, en dit document was één.
Binnen uren na mijn opsluiting had ik spoor van tijd verloren. I awoke vaak denkend was ik in slaap voor dagen slechts geweest te ontdekken om het nog geen middernacht was. Mijn vertrouwen in de bekwaamheid (en motieven) van de politie ebde weg weg. Ik vond me verplaatsend mijn energieën van vrolijk het blijven aan gezond het blijven. In de vroege uren, werd ik vaak opgeschrokken door de metaaltoiletzetel, die in de hoek zoals één of ander sinister dier wordt gebogen.
Voor dagen op eind, trok ik beeldverhalen en schreef agendaingangen in de marges Molens en novellas van de Zegen. Ik bracht uren door reciterend dingen aan mij: namen van de karakters van de Blaasbalg Saul, de prijswinnaars van fysicaNobel, John Coltrane albums, om het even wat om de verdoofdheid weg te houden.
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
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One Response to “Britain’s terror laws have left me and my family shattered”
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Ivor Hughes
Posted: Aug 22nd, 2008 at 12:09 pm
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Those people .. the participants and enablers of this vicious behavior are criminals of the first water. How did it get to this?
Look at the long list of corporate and banking toadies that have been running the nation for the past 30 years. They are like caterpillars munching the cabbage to death.
To you Hicham Yezza, I can only hang my head in shame.