PRESS RELEASE JUSTICE FOR THE NORTH WEST 10 July 3 2009 In a packed hall at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London yesterday a meeting of over a hundred people, community organizers, students, trade unionists, lawyers and civil liberties activists demanded the release of the 9 Pakistani students facing deportation and currently held as Category A prisoners as a ‘threat to national security’. Tariq Mehmood founder member of the Justice for the North West 10 campaign described the case as a part of the core of the ‘war on terror’ which was in fact an endless imperialist war focusing on certain communities and countries. In Pakistan three and a half million people had been displaced by this brutal war while in Britain Pakistani families lived increasingly in fear. He had recently returned from Pakistan where he had met the families of the Pakistani students imprisoned in Britain – almost all of them lived in the North West of Pakistan an area ravaged by US attacks. Many of them had sent their sons abroad with high hopes and dreams for their future and had made enormous sacrifices to do so – selling family jewellery and taking hard- to- pay-back loans. Now their dreams had been snatched from them and their lives devastated. As for other innocent Pakistani students in Britain they lived in terror because they knew they could well be targeted next. He spoke also of the harshness of imprisonment as a category A prisoner with humiliating and quite unnecessary strip searches at a time when walking through a machine can detect anything a person is carrying. He said he was glad to see the growing strength of the J4NW10 campaign all over the UK. Gareth Peirce the well-known solicitor who represents some of the students said the case of the North West 10 was already known as an own-goal police operation like the Forest Gate raid and the killing of De menezes. She spoke of these arrests and others like them as ‘a war of attrition by the state. One weapon in the state’s armoury is secret evidence [which is revealed to neither the accused nor their lawyers] another is deportation to a country where you may be tortured…The state is constantly changing the rules’. The use of secret evidence had been ruled by the European Court of Human Rights to be a ‘non-negotiable violation of a fundamental right’ in February this year. Sooner or later the British state would have to stop using it. She said that Abid Naseer whom she was representing had applied for judicial review challenging SIAC [the Special Immigration Appeals Court which hears cases involving secret evidence]. But there were long delays which meant having to endure long periods as a category A prisoner. Abid Naseer had told her ‘I don’t know why I am here. I am with people who committed murder. I shouldn’t be with people who committed murder….I am only going to stay to clear my name…I would love to go home.’ Two family members of the arrested students also addressed the meeting through telephonic interviews. Ejaz Burki described the sacrifices the family had made to send his brother Abdul Wahab Khan to the UK. He stressed the fact that his brother had nearly finished 95 %of his course at Liverpool University and was just to sit his final exams in May when he was arrested. He wanted to be allowed to study, sit the exams and return to Pakistan. Nasrullah Khattak father of Abid Naseer spoke about what his son was going through, he too was due to sit his final exams in September this year. Dorothy Wright representing the UCU (the University lecturers and staff union) pledged her union’s active support for the campaign and spoke about the way university lecturers were being asked by the state to police foreign students. She highlighted the increasing use of secret evidence to accuse innocent people. A Tamil Muslim student at the School of Tropical Hygiene and Medicine where she taught, who had gone for a brief visit home to Sri Lanka only to be told his visa had been cancelled. He too was currently in prison although he has not been told of any charge or evidence against him. He also is due to appear before SIAC . Dorothy highlighted the widespread atmosphere of fear and anti-Muslim racism. Other speakers included Asim Qureshi from Cage prisoners told the meeting of information he had received from a senior Pakistani Security official about how MI5 had contacted the Pakistani Security Services immediately after the arrests of the Pakistani students asking them to take the students back. The meeting closed with a reminder about the next bail hearing of the North West 10 and the protest outside the Royal Courts of Justice, The Strand, on July 27. Further details from Amrit Wilson 07846873341 or wilson_amrit@yahoo.co.uk
Press release, 11th June, 2009
PRESS RELEASE from Justice for the North West 10 Campaign 11th June 2009Tariq Ur Rehman, one of the North West 10 has returned to Pakistan today, the 11th of June. He is being forced by his family circumstances – he is a widower with three young children - to accept what is in effect a voluntary deportation. This is not a victory for him or his legal representatives. Tariq had to choose between 18 months in a Category A prison or going back to Pakistan giving up his postgraduate studies and hopes for the future and losing the savings he had invested in his education.
As he has said in an interview on the plane, he had not been involved with or associated with any activity which was in any way suspicious. He said, he knew 3 or 4 of the others arrested with him and they also had ‘normal lives’not involved in or associated with extremism. ‘I have been arrested just because I am a Muslim and I belong to Pakistan. They have destroyed my life, my future. I came to UK for a better future’.
He also said he was returning as a protest over the fact that he was held as a Category A prisoner in Belmarsh, where he was very disturbed by the humiliating strip searches and searches of cells with dogs. There is no guarantee that he will not be tortured or treated as a terrorist in Pakistan. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has already said that he is likely to be ‘debriefed’, or interrogated.
The other 9 students arrested in the case are still in Category A prisons, challenging the deportation orders on them. Tariq Mehmood for the Justice for the North West 10 Campaign (j4nw10) said: ‘This is a travesty of justice, it is just to save the face of Gordon Brown and the Labour government – they know there was never any terror plot! The case is a disgrace to the British establishment!’. Tariq Ur Rehman’s return to Pakistan comes on the same day that nine Law Lords, in a major challenge to the use of secret evidence, unanimously ruled that it was unfair that individuals should be kept in ignorance of the case against them in cases of people subject to control orders. This raises some important questions for the case of the North West 10, The Home Office uses control orders against terror suspects who cannot be tried because the intelligence being used against them is kept secret. In the case of these Pakistani students the control order is replaced by a deportation order. They cannot be tried because not a shred of evidence against was found. But they are to be deported because the Home Office considers them a threat to national security on the basis presumably of secret evidence. They have been given no information whatsoever as to the reasons why they are being deported and why they were refused bail. Yet the High Court was prepared to keep them in prison without them being given reasons at all. No wonder Tariq Ur Rehman believes there is no possibility of justice here. In course of the new ruling on secret evidence, the senior Law Lord Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers said: "A trial procedure can never be considered fair if a party to it is kept in ignorance of the case against him. FOR FURTHER DETAILS CONTACT Amrit Wilson 07846873341 or wilson_amrit@yahoo.co.uk Website www.j4nw10.org FOR FURTHER DETAILS CONTACT Amrit Wilson 07846873341 or wilson_amrit@yahoo.co.uk Website www.j4nw10.org
Press release, 15th May, 2009 [MS Word original]
|