Must be time to set out for greener pastures, eh?Abu Bakr, one of nine people arrested, also said he believed his arrest was aimed at diverting attention from the “cash-for-honours” investigation which was threatening to taint Prime Minister Tony Blair’s final months in office.
Me, too. I question the timing.
“It’s just so draconian that somebody can be picked up, not told why they are being arrested, then detained for seven days,” Bakr, who was one of two of the nine men released without charge this week, told ITV television. Police, who detained the nine Britons of Pakistani origin under anti-terrorism laws, have not detailed allegations against them, but security sources said the raids were over an alleged “Iraq-style” plot to kidnap and behead a British Muslim soldier, and show the execution on the Internet.
Well, poo. What's the fuss about that?
Bakr, who is working for a doctorate in Political Islam in Birmingham, first voiced his anger in an interview with the BBC’s Newsnight programme on Wednesday evening. “It’s a police state for Muslims,” Bakr, who did not show his face for fear of attracting attention to him and his family. “It’s not a police state for anybody else ... These terror laws are designed specifically for Muslims. We are feeling the brunt of it all.”
On ITV on Thursday he linked his detention to a police inquiry into claims that political parties, including Blair’s Labour, offered seats in Britain’s un-elected upper chamber, the House of Lords, in return for financial support. Bakr was detained the day after it emerged that Lord Michael Levy, Labour’s chief fundraiser, had been arrested for a second time, and the day before officials said Blair was questioned, also for the second time. “With Lord Levy being arrested, and Tony Blair being questioned, to take attention away from that, away from Blair, this was leaked to the press, that there’s some big plot,” he said. Seven men are still being questioned by police.
According to Bakr, police burst into his house at 4:00 am and “hand-cuffed me ... I wasn’t told why I was being arrested, or what the allegations against me were. Only when the solicitor (lawyer) came did they inform me that there was some crazy plot about someone trying to behead people of the British army or what not. I just thought, maybe they’re just rounding people up, and they want to question people with regard to other individuals.”
He also criticised the authorities for thinking he could just get back to his life as usual, saying: “I am scared for myself, and my family, because I’ve been picked up, I’ve been told to go back home.”
“This is going to affect me for the rest of my life.” He added that his parents had “aged 10 years in one week” because of his arrest.
Lord Brian Mackenzie of Framwellgate, a Labour peer, ex-police chief superintendent and former president of the Police Superintendents’ Association of England and Wales, told BBC radio that claims of a police state for Muslims were “absolute nonsense”. He suggested that Bakr should sue police for wrongful arrest if he had a grievance.