Detention without charge through the eyes of the innocent, Guy Aitchison

Guy Aitchison — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:05:53 +0000

Guy Aitchison (London, OK): There is a moving piece on Comment is Free today written by Hicham Yezza, the University of Nottingham employee arrested and held under the Terrorism Act for having an al-Quaida manual on his PC that had been downloaded from a US government website by his friend, Rizwaan Sabir, for use in postgraduate research. Yezza describes in powerful terms the fear and anguish he felt held in solitary confinement for days on end not knowing why. It's essential reading for those who would dismiss detention without charge as a minor inconvenience, nothing that a bit of compensation won't solve. Yezza's entire life has been devastated. Perhaps the worst part of the experience for Yezza was the feeling that his whole existence was now under question:

"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.

Yezza was eventually released without charge after six days, immediately re-arrested on immigration charges and issued with a removal order to Algeria, after which he was held for a further 27 days. He now awaits the conclusion to his deportation case (which, one can only assume, was only brought by the police to cover up for the earlier intelligence failing). You can read Yezza's full article here. And there is an interesting piece on oD looking at what the case means for academic freedom and democratic values written by Yezza's friend Dejan Djokic

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Detention without charge through the eyes of the innocent, Guy Aitchison