| June
22, 2006
Mind-Forg'd Manacles in the War
on Terror
The Forest Gate Raid
By MIKE
MARQUSEE
At
4 AM on June 2nd, another grim episode in the war on terror was
played out on a quiet residential street in east London. In what
the media initially hailed as a major anti-terrorist triumph, 250
heavily armed police descended on a house where, it was alleged,
Muslim terrorists were manufacturing chemical weapons to unleash
on innocent Londoners.
In
the course of the pre-dawn raid, 23-year old Mohammed Abdul Kahar
was shot. He and his brother, 20 year old Abul Koyair, were arrested
and subjected to seven days intensive interrogation, after which
both men were freed without charge. No evidence of chemical weapons
or indeed illegal or suspicious activity of any kind had been found.
At
a press conference after their release, the brothers described their
ordeal. They seemed patently sincere and painfully bewildered. When
Kahar heard the front door being smashed down, he assumed it was
a burglary and left his bedroom to come down stairs, where, at a
distance of “two or three feet”, a policeman opened
fire without issuing a warning or identifying himself. “We
had eye contact and he shot me straight away,” recalled Kahar.
The bullet entered his chest and exited through his shoulder, sparing
his life by inches. “I was begging him, 'Please, please, I
can’t breathe,' and he just kicked me in my face. He kept
on saying, 'Shut the fuck up'.... one of the officers slapped me
on the face ... I thought that they’re going to either shoot
me again, or they’re going to start shooting my brother.”
Koyair,
the brother, was also sworn at and beaten. Their elderly mother
was dragged out in handcuffs. Their sister, Humeya Kalam, told the
BBC, “I heard doors being smashed, windows being broken. I
woke up, opened my door and saw a person dressed all in black, gun
pointing towards me." Meanwhile, the police raided the house
next door, where the residents received similar rough treatment.
Compounding
the error and terror of the raid has been the police attempt to
smear the victims. Newspapers reported, first, that Kahar had been
shot after he had struggled with officers, then that he had actually
been shot by his brother during a scuffle, and then that a police
officer had “accidentally” discharged his gun as a result
of wearing thick gloves. It was also stated that the brothers had
attended militant Islamist demonstrations and that Kahar's wound
was superficial. It is now acknowledged that there was not a shred
of truth in any of these claims - as the police officers who made
them must have known.
It
has emerged that this massive and aggressive police operation was
based on an uncorroborated tip-off from a single informant, a young
man serving a prison sentence with a purported IQ of 69. According
to reports in the press, the government insisted the raid go ahead
despite warnings from Scotland Yard that there were “serious
reservations about the credibility” of the source.
Given
the feebleness of the intelligence, the scale and timing of the
raid, the publicity that accompanied it, and the subsequent revelations,
it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the government was over-eager
to stage a high-profile action that would vindicate the war on terror,
which can only be sustained if the fears of the public are regularly
fanned.
The
police have issued an ambiguous, half-hearted apology for “any
hurt that may have been caused”. Even that is more than the
politicians have offered. Tony Blair's response to the shooting
was to assert: "I don't want them [the police] to be under
any inhibition at all in going after those people who are engaged
in terrorism.” Ken Livingstone, the London mayor, accused
critics of trying to "smear" the Metropolitan Police Commissioner,
who, along with the government, bears ultimate responsibility for
the raid.
Kahar
works for the post office, Koyair for a supermarket. Neither has
any record of criminal activity. Indeed. Koyair had recently sent
off for an application to join the police. They are hard-working,
law-abiding British citizens who happen also to be devout Muslims.
As Kahar said at the press conference, "I believe the only
crime I had done was being Asian with a long beard."
The
raid was an extreme example of a broader policy. In the two months
after the July 7th 2005 bombings, some 10,000 people were stopped
and searched in the London streets under the anti-terrorism law;
27% were Asians, who make up only 12% of London's population. Not
one of the searches resulted in an arrest or a charge related to
terrorism. The statistics reflect more than the racism of individual
police officers.
The
Home Office's guidance states that: 'It is appropriate for officers
to take account of a person's ethnic background when they decide
who to stop in response to a specific terrorist threat (for example,
some international terrorist groups are associated with particular
ethnic groups, such as Muslims).' In March 2005, a senior government
minister told Muslims that they should accept as a “reality”
that they will be stopped and searched more often than others.
It
has become commonplace for politicians (including the Prime Minister)
and columnists to suggest that 'British tolerance' has permitted
terrorism to flourish. We are told we are under threat not because
of the backlash against British involvement in brutal, unjust foreign
wars but because the ideology of multiculturalism and a concern
for human rights have blunted our willingness to defend ourselves
against the Islamist menace. The fact that an innocent, unarmed
Londoner was shot by police, at nearly point blank range, without
warning, has done nothing to make these people think again. Rather,
they see in the complaints by Muslims – remarkably restrained
under the circumstances - an unwillingness to collaborate with the
war on terror. Some have suggested that the bogus tip-off must have
come from Al Qaeda.
The
Observer, in bygone years a bastion of British liberalism, headlined
its editorial on the affair: “Better a bungled raid than another
terrorist outrage.” That lofty, callous calculus never adds
up. The raid has done nothing to deter terrorism. It's likely to
make it even more difficult for the police to gather meaningful
information about real threats to public safety. Formulations like
The Observer's do nothing but sanctify violent police racism, which
poses a threat to Londoners as dangerous as any terrorrist.
More
than two hundred years ago, during a fiercer period of repression
(the putative menace in those days coming from the French revolution
and its English sympathisers), William Blake wandered the streets
of London and found evidence wherever he looked of “mind-forg'd
manacles” - the fears and prejudices that keep people in thrall
to an unjust social system. But he also imagined another London,
a meeting-place for all humanity:
In
the Exchanges of London every Nation walk'd,
And London walk'd in every Nation, mutual in love & harmony
That
democratic vision is profoundly at odds with the ideology being
preached and practiced in Britain these days. London is often cited
as the most harmoniously multi-ethnic city in the world, and there's
some truth in the boast. But that's no thanks whatsoever to its
police, its newspapers or its politicians.
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