You can't argue with the above.

Stupidly, you have just verified the authors' comments about idiotic and insulting protest:
"Anyway here it is to laugh at/rip apart."

The above is factually correct, unlike most of the other stuff on here about the University arrests.

Sabir was not acting on a reading list, and he had not sought any permission to have the article, and certainly not to send it to others.
Hitch was not acting legally when he took work, and was unable to show he was entitled to work. Someone ought to ask him why he was arrested, and just what he has been accused of (clue: honesty related).

Talk of sinister campaigns, and incorrect actions are laughably wrong. Your articles here have been factually incorrect, and have made sweeping assumptions. The real facts are that there yet you choose to ignore them. The above letter makes some valid and indisputable claims.

If you want to laugh at it, PLEASE state which bits are untrue and evidence factually why they are untrue. As the authors say... try to avoid just rubbishing it without proper argument!

Personally, I think the university's action of calling the police was inexcusable, but I'm willing to hear reasoned arguments for the other side of the story. Sadly, however, Daly and Matthews' defence of the university seemingly boils down to two claims:

[A] Sabir and Yezza brought the whole terror investigation on themselves by Sabir's attempt to avoid printing costs, and Yezza's illegitimately using his position as an administrator to print a document for a friend. Matthews and Daly further suggest that the fact that Sabir didn't ask anyone in his own School (either his tutor or the administrators) to print out the document for him is 'significant'.

[B] The university was right to call the police because the document Sabir forwarded and Yezza printed 'might appear dangerous or threatening to those outside the School of Politics'.

As pointed out in the comments on the Times Higher website, [A] is laughable. Perhaps it isn't morally acceptable for students to avoid printing costs, and administrators to print out documents that do not relate to their administrative duties. But it's a pretty trivial form of wrongdoing. Certainly not one that warrants six days in police detention and several hours of questioning. Moreover, Matthew and Daly's insinuation that Sabir was up to no good because he didn't ask anyone in his own School to print out the document does not stand up to scrutiny. Generally speaking, tutors and administrators don't print out documents for students, whilst friends do. A better inference would be that Sabir and Yezza were friends - but everybody already knew that.

[B] is similarly problematic. Finding an apparently dangerous or threatening document *might* justify an internal university investigation (personally, I don't even think this is the case, although I won't argue for that here). But such an investigation would quickly have revealed that (i) Yezza was printing the document for Sabir; (ii) Sabir had obtained the document for entirely legitimate research purposes as confirmed by his tutor; (iii) the document was widely available from such respectable places as a US governmental website, and Amazon.com. Given the above, calling the police was entirely inexcusable.

Also, the Goose should note that in general, students are *not* expected to obtain permission every time they want to access a document for their research or send it to others. Moreover, students are encouraged to seek out literature that is *not* on their reading list and awarded credit for doing so. But I imagine the Goose already knows those things.

No matter how you try to repackage events, the very simple fact remains: IT WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED IF THEY HAD BEEN WHITE!

Simply the University would have not involved the police, possibly made some enquiries, maybe even a small bollocking.

"If you want to laugh at it, PLEASE state which bits are untrue and evidence factually why they are untrue. As the authors say... try to avoid just rubbishing it without proper argument!"

comments from the original posting:


• Frank 3 June, 2008
Holy smokescreen, Batman! Are you two (Matthews and Daly) for real? Sounds to me like you're gunning for a promotion. Such a 'sensible' perspective.
What you have done, of course, is to find ways to blame the victims here. If there were, in fact, problems with Yezza's immigration status, then surely the University of Nottingham would not have employed him - or are you accusing your Personnel department of incompetence? In any event, the most plausible story here, even if there are questions about his immigration status, is that the police are trying to save face by not walking away from this one empty-handed.
As for Sabir - if you want to scold him for avoidance of printing costs, then scold him for avoidance of printing costs. Don't defend the police for arresting him and keeping him in jail for six days - that's not what should happen when a student tries to get some printing without paying.
• Concerned 3 June, 2008
A frankly hilarious reaction that flies in the face of all reason and good sense. As Frank asks, my eyes have seen it, but my mind refuses to believe that two sensible individuals could write such a thing. Blaming the victims, as Frank notes, is the oldest and lowest trick in the book. The simple fact is that Mr Yezza was Mr Sabir's friend and this is fairly standard and I think something we have all done from time to time. While not the letter of the law, it is hardly serious.
In short: this open letter seems to support Hicham, but oddly slap him and his supporters simultaneously across the face on a variety of issues. Why didn't you contact them personally with your concerns before writing this?
It appears here that you are claiming that the University has been attacking unfairly and can be found without fault and that there is no issue for academic freedom here. I will deal, for the sake of brevity, with only the former point.
This document might cause alarm outside the school of politics and Hich has already said that this is understandable, in both the Guardian and on the BBC, but it is not the place of the University to decide matters upon alarm, but coolly and rationally make decisions as an institution both the community and, crucially in this case, its individual members. When a document is avaliable on Amazon, is the 16th search result for Al Qaeda on google and is linked from the Wikipedia for Al Qaeda, and is linked to a member of the community who seems to have no links to anything dodgy then the university could have very much been more even handed and reasonable, paritcularly when the government guidelines urge caution in this sort of case so not to disturb the community (as this has done, hugely) and has a large quantity of academics working for it that have great expertise in the areas related to terrorism and international relations. The document provided by the minister for education clearly sees contacting the police as a last resort, the inquiry could therefore have been much for through and worked this out in a few hours.
They have also failed to provide positive support from Hicham, and to my knowledge not at all attempted to respond to the numerous e-mails that have been sent to them. While they have sent a letter, no one knows of the contents and it is highly unlikely they asked for the deportation to be halted or called Hicham a valued member of this community - it is far more likely that they just said I hope you act within the law and act quickly, rather than request that the case be properly heard in a court of law.
• David Herbert 3 June, 2008
Is it really ‘significant’ that Rizwaan Sabir did not ask his tutor or his school to print something for him when he was out of credit? I do not know many students who would do that, regardless of the nature of the research material. Tutors are often busy and office staff are often surly; neither would be obliged to help, anyway. A friend, on the other hand, is a good port of call if you’re looking for a somewhat cheeky favour. Would the material in question have been perceived as so ‘dangerous and threatening’ if it had been found on the computer of a Christian or Jewish PA? I strongly doubt it. Of course the university has shown ‘restraint’. Having already played an integral part in the imprisonment of a postgraduate and a member of staff, why would the institution then go on to bring about further punitive measures relating to the improper use of its computers, phones and fax machines? That would be ludicrous in terms of PR. If this set of guidelines amounts to information on how to avoid being arrested in an academic environment then perhaps it could include a list of red-brick universities which are more liberal than Nottingham. An interesting point of reference is the case of an arrest being made during a peaceful protest by the university’s Palestinian Society in late 2007. Once again, the university authorities appeared to prefer the police-state’s muscle over the option of rational dialogue with those involved.
• student activist 4 June, 2008
Frank has seen straight through Matthews and Daly. I hope others will also be able to reject their misrepresentation of the facts.
It appears as if these two men might be using their position on the UCU to silence real dissent and side instead the with university management.
Which leads me to ask, if you can't take a stand against university management at a time like this, when innocent people’s lives are turned upside down due to a document available on Amazon.com, when will you?
It appears as if these two gentlemen are keen to side with management for their own egotistical reasons, these two “academics” have used their entire intellectual mite to try and discredit a hugely successful international campaign.
Hundreds of people have signed the petition to Free Hich and guarantee academic freedom on campus. Hundreds more stood in torrential rain to demonstrate their anger with the university and their solidarity with the two harassed and detained individuals.
How many people, on the other hand, support Matthews and Daly’s ludicrous attempt to devalue those with real academic and moral integrity? Two.
I think these figures speak for themselves.
• M Jones 4 June, 2008
Matthews and Daly write: "The course of events was unfortunate, and for Mr Yezza catastrophic, but had Mr Sabir not forwarded the material for illegitimate printing, exploiting Mr Yezza's position (in his turn, he was exploiting his own function in the institution), then this situation would never have arisen."
So we are supposed to believe that a drastic police response and arbitrary detention - for Mr Yezza, now over three weeks - was a legitimate reaction to "illegitimate printing"? According to the same reasoning, we could say Steve Biko's death in custody in 1977 "would never have arisen" had he refrained from criticising apartheid. That would be true - but it says nothing at all about the legitimacy of the response, unless we are to believe that the police (and, in this case, university) are infallible institutions.
It is surprising two academics would put their name to such an obviously fallacious argument. Nevertheless, when we look at the hundreds of academics in support of Yezza and Sabir, this type of Stalinist reasoning seems, thankfully, to be subject to more ridicule than acceptance.
• Jon Simons 5 June, 2008
To grasp the significance of Hich's case, to see how the so-called "war on terror" is being waged using immigration legislation on both sides of the Atlantic, I'd suggest reading "Beyond Norm and Exception: Guantánamo" by Nasser Hussain, Critical Inquiry Volume 33, Number 4, Summer 2007.
Irregularities in immigration paper work in this case are being used by the government to give the appearance of a threat deserving incarceration and deportation. And the University's role in this? The informer.

This Daly character is a hardcore Stalinist who is pretty notorious at the university for sabotaging activism in the union, banning people from halls of residence for political activism, and brown-tonguing management - it isn't really surprising he'd come out with this. He's senior enough in the university that he's basically an administration spokesperson (given that he's head of School of Modern Languages I wonder if he's covering up his own role in the arrests with this bluster). And yes his opinion is very much of the minority. Any look through the signatures of the petition for Hich reveals instantly the diversity of backgrounds of the signatories.

Oh yeh, and I would love to see this guy sitting in Nuremberg explaining how his handing over Jews to the Nazis was entirely in line with the law, he seems the sort of anal-fixated law-fetishist who would have ended up there for "just doing his job". Or to see him charged with wasting police time for whatever role he had in these wrongful, unnecessary and abusive arrests.

Old Macdonald had a a farm, ee eye ee eye o
And on that farm he had some PIGS, ee eye ee eye o

With a crap arrest here
And a bogus raid there
Here a fib, there a lie
Everywhere a porky pie

Old Macdonald had no brain, ee eye ee eye o

Even police admitted this wouldn't have happened if they were white.Pigs can be smart & clean creatures, They need to stop following illegal& daft orders

"(by which we mean spokespersons, managers and administrative staff who were caught up in this matter, and faced with awful decisions"

nice wording, I prefer "Had a knee jerk reaction to finding an Al-Quada training manual on a browned-skinned menmber of staffs computer, seeing terroists everywhere phoned the police, instead of asking a couple of pertinant questions which would have avoided all of this happening"

Yes, it was an awful decision.

The childishness of the comments on this page are quite unbelievable and a disgrace to the campaign which they represent. One wonders why this publication even allows them.

I do not know enough to judge whether or not Daly and Matthews are being reasonable in their claims, but I can see that they write in measured language and there is nothing prima facie unreasonable about their position which, it seems to me, is hardly "Stalinist".

But what follows is just sheer abuse - of a personal kind - from people who are not even mature enough to identify themselves. If these are Yezza's and Sabir's friends, who needs enemies? I went as far as to check the claims of some of the writers here. Anyone with a web connection can do some of that. Daly is not at all Head of the School of Modern Languages - he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Cultuiral Studies (the Head of School os a woman, Professor Lesley Milne) and seems to have no managerial role at all - so the suggestion that he was involved in having Yezza arrested is quite simply indefensible. As for the person who thinks it is a contribution to debate to write abusive nursery rhymes about someone's name, I wonder what they would say if someone contributed a childish nursery rhyme using and abusing the names "Yezza" or "Sabir"? They would probably say this was racist. But it's okay to do it to daly, it seems.

It is little wonder the State, the Police, and indeed the University take so little notice of people who conduct themselves with such juvenility.

DG