UK UK Newswire Archive
Islamophobia and the Nottingham Two
27-04-2011 17:23
Rod Thornton, a University of Nottingham lecturer who became embroiled in the struggle for justice for Rizwaan Sabir and Hicham Yezza, has published his extensive account of the case of the Nottingham Two. Pieced together from heavily redacted Freedom of Information requests, Rizwaan's Data Protection Access requests and even meetings with Special Branch officers, it paints a damning picture of the University of Nottingham's management. For those who don't have the time to read the entire paper, this is an attempt to summarise what I thought were some of the most interesting sections.
Thornton is a lecturer in the School of Politics with interests in terrorism and counter-insurgency. He could be described as being the University's expert on terrorism, although his judgement was never sought by the management in assessing the legitimacy of the documents in Yezza's possession that led to the terror arrests. It is a pity because this expert knowledge could have saved a lot of suffering for the two innocent men who were wrongfully arrested and could have avoided the management embarking on an apparent crusade to see them convicted. Thornton was Postgraduate Tutor in the department and so had responsibility for the well-being of students like Rizwaan, something he seems to have done admirably whilst senior managers colluded to get rid of him.
For readers who aren't familiar with the case, I should briefly explain the series of events that led to two innocent men being arrested and questioned by police for 6 days (not to mention triggering harassment of them by police and security agencies that continues to this day). Documents were discovered by a colleague on Yezza's computer that alarmed that colleague. They included two journal articles and a document known as the Al Qaeda Training Manual (more on that later). The University authorities were alerted and it seems that the Registrar himself made the decision to involve the police. Yezza's office was sealed off whilst police made extensive searches. Sabir and Yezza were both arrested after trying to find out what was going on at Yezza's office. It emerged that Sabir, whilst researching material for his PhD on radical Islam, had emailed Yezza the documents to print on his work computer. Neither were charged in relation to the incident.
The crux of Thornton's argument is that, rather than make a thorough risk assessment to determine whether to call in anti-terrorist police, the University's Registrar and Security pre-judged Yezza and Sabir. Because they were young Muslim men, they were automatically assumed to be involved in terrorism and the possibility of their innocence was never entertained. It is not hard to find racist assumptions in the released emails and documents that Thornton has uncovered. (Take for example the assumption of Gary Stevens, Head of Security, that using the word 'brother' in an email was 'Jihadist-speak'!) The men were presumed guilty by the university, something revealed in the fact that management had drawn up a suspension notice for Sabir, signed by the Vice-Chancellor, on the day after the arrests.
There is a very interesting discussion of the Al Qaeda Training Manual contained in Thornton's paper that makes it perfectly clear that, had any expert on the document been consulted by the University authorities, a lot of misunderstanding could have been avoided. To start with it has nothing to do with Al Qaeda and is most likely the work of a radical offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Much of it seems to date from the 1950s with some additions in the 1980s. Interestingly, it's real name is Military Studies in the Jihad against the Tyrants (referring to the Presidents of Egypt) and was renamed by the US Department of Justice in order to 'sex it up' and increase the likelihood that its possession would lead to convictions! Thornton describes it as an 'insurgent/guerilla/freedom-fighter manual' with contents that 'are not actually aimed at activists who want to spread fear or "terror" – i.e. "terrorists".' Indeed, the version which Yezza was in possession of was not the full version, although Thornton helpfully points out that the full version is freely available from the University's library! It is clear from Thornton's investigations that no one from the University' senior management ever bothered to read the document in question, although they did not let that stop them from making false statements about it and judgements about those in possession of it.
After Sabir and Yezza were released, the University had to go on the defensive and protect its image which had, understandably, been damaged by its rash and destructive actions. Via a number of public statements, the senior management sought to assert its own version of events. As Thornton reveals, much of this was outright lying. The events were reconstructed to portray the University as a supportive and responsible institution and dispel the reality that senior managers had attempted to wash their hands of Sabir and Yezza as soon as possible. Indeed, the decision of the Registrar was now reimagined as a 'collective decision':
'The University had to make a risk assessment - no panic, no hysteria, just a straightforward risk assessment...Our concerns were conveyed to the police as the appropriate body to investigate (no judgement was made by us)' - Campbell, Freedom Still Reigns
Of course there had been no risk assessment, no collective decision and plenty of rash judgements.
The senior management closed ranks to protect one of their own. Once very public lies have been told they have to keep being told to maintain the fictions that they give rise to. Thornton goes into considerable depth exposing the lies that were disseminated to students and staff via the University's portal. In the meantime, staff who were critical of the management's handling of the affair were persecuted and subjected to disciplinary action, whilst those who actively colluded with management, such as Drs Macdonald Daly and Sean Matthews, were rewarded with access to what should have been confidential personal information about Sabir.
The lengths that the University went to to kick Sabir out once he had completed his Masters were extreme. Once he had got the message and realised that his interests would be best served studying elsewhere, disgusting emails were sent by his Head of Department, expressing delight at the 'good news'.
One of the most interesting revelations for myself, as a former student activist at the University, was that the university had drawn up a list of 'Events on Campus' during 2008 that, according to Thornton, included 'protests, film showings, seminars, stalls, "cultural days", meetings or presentations that related to "Muslim issues": Gaza, Palestine, talks by ex-Guantanamo prisoners, etc.' This looks like racial/religious profiling and is further evidence that the University's security were operating with islamophobic prejudice, something not helped by the fact that all of the security department are white. Thornton describes the situation at the University as one where 'any activity that is seen as pro-Muslim automatically comes to be seen by management as anti-Semitic.' A Security Report, prepared by the University, linked a silent march held in protest against attacks on academic freedom with claims that anti-Semitism was on the increase at the University.
Perhaps the most worrying sequence of events described in this paper, however, is that which led to the Home Office describing the events in Nottingham as a 'major Islamist Plot'. Vice-Chancellor of the University at the time, Colin Campbell, wrote to Universities Minister, Bill Rammell, erroneously referring to the document in Yezza's possession as an Al Qaeda Training Manual as opposed to the Al Qaeda Training Manual. Given that one is the 'sexed up' title of a relatively outdated document, unrelated to terrorism, and the other would be something useful to training an Al Qaeda recruit, this error is quite inexcusable. Campbell also lied by saying that the manual 'WAS NOT the version you can purchase from Amazon' (it was). This led to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) repeating these errors/lies and others including the 'fact' that Sabir was arrested for trying to interfere with the police removal of Yezza's computer (pure fiction). Soon, the story was not one of a terrible mistake which led to two innocent people being wrongfully arrested, but what the Home Office described as a 'major Islamist plot'. Like many other events that have been described as such, it was nothing of the sort.
Thanks to Rod Thornton's sense of justice and refusal to give in, the Kafkaesque twists of the Nottingham Two's story are now in the public domain. The full paper is well worth reading for those interested in corruption and racism in public bodies. It serves as a perfect illustration of the damage that the 'war on terror' has unleashed in our society.
Palestine Today 04 27 2011
27-04-2011 16:41
State Assessments of Strategic Prospects for the Anti-Cuts Movement
27-04-2011 14:56
Barnardo's Detention Centre Flyer
27-04-2011 13:22
A double-sided A5 flyer in opposition to Barnardo's complicity in the Pease Pottage family detention centre.
On March 9th Barnardo's announced that it had signed a contract to help run the Pease Pottage(close to London Gatwick Airport) 'pre-departure accommodation' unit near Gatwick. Barnardo's staff will be working alongside the UKBA to rebrand the detention and deportation of children who have been rejected asylum. The Pease Pottage prison will be a detention centre with a 2.3m high palisade fence, electric gates and security staff authorised to use violent restraint techniques on detainees.No Borders groups is calling for widespread resistance to this plan, with the aim of forcing Barnardo's to pull out of the Pease Pottage contract.
Download and distribute.
BARNARDON'T!
see also: http://london.indymedia.org/videos/8674
Kennedy (et al): German Greens Threaten Govt With Lawsuit
27-04-2011 12:28
Recently there was an article in the lefty German daily TAZ about German Greens in Parliament threatening to sue the government, largely because the Government consistenly fails to answer parliamentary questions adequately, or at all.It would be good to have some coordination on these issues between activists across europe.
See bad google translation below.
London's revolution
27-04-2011 12:23
On the 9th of December 2010 thousands filled the streets of london to protest against the Bullshit, the warmongers, The Cleggs, The Camerons, The milbands , all the crap called politics and politicians This is the Dokumentarie - hope you enjoy.
An awesome personal account of the 9th december demonstration in London, posted in small snippets on youtube by "bekosmo".
Genoa Diaz G8 2001 - Supreme Court of Appeal
27-04-2011 12:23
One of the most important court cases in Italian history is the legal process for the raid on the Diaz school during the G8 in 2001. So far, this infamous event has convicted 25 Diaz police commanders and enlisted men when the Ligurian appeal verdict was announced on May 18th 2010.
Despite most of the original charges being spent, two charges of false arrest and false statement have statute of limitations of 12 1/2 years so they still carry a prison sentence. Most of the 25 are convicted of these two offences and have received sentences of three to four years.
However, the Diaz trial has one final hurdle to clear. The Supreme court of Appeal in Rome. Both defendants and victims have appealed to this court. for the defendants, it is an automatic right but this court only studies whether there has been any breach of process or law broken. The Court of appeal cannot question the evidence in any way whatsoever. The victims have appealed to the court over the question of statute of limitations law which was changed by Berlusconi and the constitutional court a few years ago so he could avoid being convicted for tax and fraud charges.
If the case does not start soon (held up by so-called 'office' delays), the final appeal could miss the final date to see the convicted police go to jail.
If the statute of limitations law is not changed back to 15 years and the Supreme Court of Appeal take too long to pass the final verdict in the Diaz case, all is lost for the victims.
It would the greatest and a most final tragedy of justice for the victims to see none of the Diaz police sent to jail for their crimes. It would be of further insult to see the same men stay in their posts and continue with their careers of hate and fascism against other italian citizens.
This is a raid that has been described as a Mexican butchers shop and as Italy's darkest page of history for its police force. If you want a story telling what the dark side of Italy looks like, you need to follow the history of the Diaz raid and its sister case Bolzaneto.
If the Diaz raid is not settled, the lash back could be another Genoa somewhere else present day in 2011, almost ten years to the day since the original event happened. It is certainly not forgotten by many people and youth in Italy who have already lost trust and confidence in the police.
Barnardo's Detention Centre Flyer
27-04-2011 12:12
rotherham remembers chernobyl
27-04-2011 11:33
Big changes are coming to Indymedia UK
27-04-2011 11:25
On 1st May 2011 Indymedia UK will give birth to two new projects. The Indymedia UK website will be archived, it will stay were it is now, but you won’t be able to publish news. In its place there will be two distinct projects: Mayday will provide a non-regional site with open publishing and Be The Media will present the best of radical news across the regions, including Bristol, Northern, Nottingham and London.BeTheMedia | Find out more about the history of Indymedia: article | video | pics | i - the film
MET raid squats in Brighton and Hove and arrest student protest suspects
27-04-2011 11:00
morning raids in brighton and hoveA Matter of Life and Death - Mutual Aid against NHS reforms
27-04-2011 10:45
No-one can fully predict what political strategies might or might not work best, but if the NHS is privatised we'll never get it back. Radical strategies can be pursued alongside liberal strategies. The protest movement is working. Sign the 38 Degrees NHS Petition...Assad, Stop killing your people!!!
27-04-2011 10:36
Internet Action against the Syrian atrocitiesA right royal cock-up
27-04-2011 10:30
The anarchists, the press and the provocateurs ...
The wedding of a future king of England, and heir to the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, is always going to attract a frenzy of speculation and hyperbole, especially during a period of political uncertainty and social unrest. At a time where a weakened government needs to divert attention away from the failings of a crumbling economy, a royal wedding provides the ideal spectacle. It also serves to reinforce traditional class dynamics and a sense of social entitlement – the forthcoming pageantry and protocol is the elite comfortable with its own position. But the wedding of the year is also providing a convenient backdrop to the real royal marriage between media provocateurs and the Met Police intelligence units.
There has been a constant stream of headlines exploding across the tabloid press recently such as ‘Anarchists target Wills and Kate’, ‘Anarchists plotting to cause chaos at the Royal Wedding with smoke bombs and roadblocks’, ‘Royal Wedding: Anarchists Plan Sex Protest’ and ‘Anarchists plot to wreck Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding celebration’ which is accompanied by a posed photograph of an anonymous ‘anarchist organiser’, who is quoted throughout the article, in a gas mask kneeling in front of an assortment of equipment and weaponry to be used to disrupt the wedding. The two common features of all these articles are the word ‘anarchist’ and the name Chris Knight.
Knight, who is not an anarchist but an eccentric and outspoken academic, has been feeding the press these stories; making media pronouncements about what ‘we’ are going to do on April 29th. Given that no legitimate anarchist group has offered any information concerning their activities for the royal wedding we have to ask whose agenda is being followed and to what end?
Freedom has reliable information as to the identity of the people involved in the posed photograph – the person in the gas mask and the person who took the photo. Neither of them are anarchists, and the photographer has links with the English Defence League, although he denies any active involvement, as well as Chris Knight. We do not know how much they were paid for their story. What is clear is that Knight along with the other provocateurs are in the business of making claims to the press (as he did during the G20 protests in 2009 – see P4 of this issue) about anarchists which are picked up by the police as ‘legitimate intelligence’.
This intelligence is then used to target genuine known anarchists. At the Home Affairs Committee hearing on policing, Assistant Commissioner with the Metropolitan Police Service Lynne Owens said of the royal wedding “It is a security event, which will give us different powers under terrorism and other legislation, and we now have a much broader intelligence picture about the sort of protest activity that we can expect” and went to hint at the suspension of certain legal rights adding “the application of the Human Rights Act, might be different for the royal wedding”. We have all been warned.
http://www.freedompress.org.uk/news/2011/04/27/a-right-royal-cock-up/
London remembers Chernobyl 25 years on - pics
27-04-2011 10:30
London CND and Medact staged a vigil and parliamentary meeting at Portcullis House in Westminster to mark the 25th anniversary of Chernobyl, the world's worst ever civil nuclear disaster.
The accident at reactor 4 took place in Ukraine on 26th April 1986, with the fallout spreading across Europe and beyond. Commemorative events were being staged all around the UK and worldwide on Monday and Tuesday to mark the occasion. The Chernobyl sarcophagus, built to contain the further escape of radioactive material from the crippled reactor, is reported to be breaking up, and the international community is being asked to contribute billions of pounds towards the constuction of a new containment structure. It is likely that similar structures will need to be built at all four of the affected reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Japan, crippled by a failure of the reactor cooling systems in the wake of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
Speakers at the vigil on Victoria Embankment, opposite Portcullis House, included Sophie Bolt from London Region CND, Marion Birch from Medact, Linda Walker from the Chernobyl Children's Project UK and Susie Greaves from Independent WHO. The latter is an international campaign for a World Health Organisation independent of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), part of whose remit is to promote nuclear power worldwide, and who report to the UN Security Council. The two organisations have an agreement since 1959 which effectively gags the WHO from conducting independent investigations and producing independent reports into the health effects of atomic radiation. A Japanese student also circulated a petition regarding the Fukushima disaster and nuclear power in Japan.
The parliamentary meeting which took place afterwards, chaired by Green Party leader Caroline Lucas MP, was addressed by Labour MP and former Minister of State for the Environment, Michael Meacher, a long-term opponent of nuclear power, Professor Dillwyn Williams (University of Cambridge) and Dr Paul Dorfman (University of Warwick, Nuclear Consultation Group).
All images are Copyright (c) 2011 Stop Nuclear Power Network, but may be reproduced free of charge if credited. For high resolution versions, please e-mail.
WE Make Radical Media, You Make Adverts
27-04-2011 10:16
A corporate media group has trade-marked the phrase "Radical Media" and is trying to ban Peace News, New Internationalist, Red Pepper and others from using it in the title of a conference...Rebellious Media Conference, London, 8-9 October 2011
http://www.radicalmediaconference.org
The Gullible Board (Save Hayward House Daycare)
27-04-2011 09:24
NHS Board hears why shutting down first rate service for cancer patients is a good thing.
On April 26th, I sat through a couple of the longest hours of my life, and heard the words "quality" and "going forward" droned more times than I would have thought possible. Yes, I went to the first part of the NHS Nottingham Board Meeting (open to the public).
Even though I couldn't spot it on the agenda, Hayward House was discussed quite early in the meeting - "in view of the media attention it had been receiving". So we've achieved something! Dawn Smith, Director of Delivery and Performance, delivered a fine performance. She explained to the Board (who did not seem to know very much about it) that it was not a closure, but a "transfer" of services.
Dawn Smith explained to the Board that Hayward House patients were not going to lose their service; it was just going to be transferred "into the community" and "specialist services will continue to be available to all
patients". She was concerned about maintaining a "drop-in". (What drop-in??) The new centres in the community (she mentioned Notts Hospice on Woodborogh Rd, and Treetops, which is nearly in Derbyshire) would provide complementary therapies, nursing support and some medical support. Existing patients could continue to receive specialist care at Hayward House, but daycare will be provided elsewhere. This is not about decreasing investment, but changes are driven by the need to extend the range of specialist services to a wider group of patients.
The Board swallowed this wholesale.
This is not a "transfer", it is a cut made by outsourcing. Patients will not receive the same service:
* There is nowhere else within reach that can supply the same services that Hayward House daycare now does. At Hayward House, patients receive a total care package – their physical, personal, emotional and social needs are treated. But mainly, there is an expert team of highly experienced palliative care doctors and nurses to treat daycare patients on the spot. This will not be available in any other centre. People will be in pain for longer as they have to make travelling arrangements to get help elsewhere. "Medical support" at Notts Hospice is not equivalent to the expert palliative care team who are currently looking after patients.
* Hayward House is in the grounds of the City Hospital, which means that it’s easy for daycare patients to attend appointments in other departments. Again, this will be lost if daycare takes place elsewhere.
* Daycare patients are very sick and often frail. They need all their services in one place. They do not have the energy to travel about to separate appointments. If they lose Hayward House Daycare, they will have to drag themselves from one location to another.
* Inpatients also benefit from Daycare being in the same building, as they can use these resources too when they are well enough to get out of bed. Moving Daycare will be a loss to inpatients too.
* As Hayward House has units for both daycare and inpatients, people needing hospital admission – perhaps for a few days, or perhaps as their lives end – can be admitted into a familiar environment. This is a great help at a tremendously difficult time. Of course, this will be lost if daycare takes place elsewhere.
* The deep distress and the adverse effect on their health caused by the announcement to close on current patients has not been considered. The PCT don't seem to grasp that human suffering is being caused to those near the end of their lives.
I would not doubt that more wards are needed for patients with other terminal illnesses, (which is what Dawn Smith claims the space is needed for). The Hayward House model works so well for cancer patients; instead of destroying it, why not create more sanctuaries on the same lines in new buildings or closed-down wards?
Perhaps it is time that individual directors and Patient Representative Dennis Bancroft (no voting rights) received plenty of individual letters pointing out that it is a cut not a transfer, that the new daycare services won't be equivalent in the most fundamental way to what Hayward House currently provides, and that patients' health, emotional well-being and lives will be put at risk. Board members' names and the PCT address (Standard Court, Park Row) can all be downloaded from the Save Hayward House Daycare website.
(One other comment from a different part of the meeting that I recorded is:"The voluntary sector is a very cost-effective method of delivering services." Is there any connection, we wonder?)
How to support Dale Farm
27-04-2011 09:22
An update on Dale Farm and how you can support us: With cuts in social housing, the homeless are getting a rough deal from the present Coalition Government, and none more so than Travellers. They were told a while back to buy their own land and settle themselves and now Eric Pickles is encouraging councils to evict them from the places they bought.
This is causing a crisis for many thousands of families and matters have come to a head at Dale Farm, in Essex. The largest Traveller community in the UK, Dale Farm is under threat of bulldozing. Some hundred families face the largest eviction of its kind in recent memory, a nightmare which will force its residents to camp again on roadsides and car-parks.
Most of Dale Farm lies on a former scrap-yard about 30 minutes by train from London. Ignoring pleas from UN bodies, and more recently Amnesty International, Basildon District Council has set aside 9.2 million pounds for the eviction operation (more than 1/3 of it's budget). Essex police have requested another 10 million pounds from the Home Office to cover what they expect to be a three week battle with resisting residents and supporters.
This is an act of ethnic cleansing comparable to what has been seen in France and Italy - and together we aim to stop it.
Dale Farm residents are expecting to receive 28 day notice of eviction in May. They are asking people of goodwill to come and spend a night in Dale Farm when the notice expires. Please join us, by signing up at https://smsalerts.tachanka.org/dalefarm/ (this website may give you a “certificate warning” but pay no mind). If you're on facebook, you can also invite your friends to https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=170414852985935
We'll need people to act as human rights monitors and come to Dale Farm in the event of an eviction. See http://dalefarm.wordpress.com/hrm/ for details. Many of us will be resisting the eviction through civil disobedience, and there will be training workshops for this. Before the 28 days notice expires (now likely in June), a supporting camp within Dale Farm will be set up, and accommodation arranged in family homes. Camping space will also be available. Sign up to our email bulletins to get the latest news: http://lists.ucrony.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dalefarm-solidarity
Dale Farm Solidarity meets every Sunday in London or by skype. Email us at savedalefarm@gmail.com if you'd like to help organise with us, or if you're part of a group which can add it's name to our pledge to spend a night at Dale Farm. We also have leaflets, films and speaker lists if you'd like to put on an infonight in your community.
No Pasaran! They shall not pass!
http://dalefarm.wordpress.com
https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=124229427082