War on Terror Gone Wrong

How the War on Terror Backfired

Mathew Carr, FirstPost.co.uk

Any MPs still wavering over the 42-day detention issue should pay attention to the disturbing chain of events that has unfolded at Nottingham University during the last fortnight.

The story begins on May 14, when a postgraduate student at the university named Rizwaan Sabir was arrested in a joint operation by the West Midlands Counter Terrorist Unit and Nottinghamshire police, accused of downloading and printing the 1,500-page 'Al-Qaeda training manual' from a US government website.

Sabir had printed the document as part of his research into Islamic radical movements, with the help of Hicham Yezza, a 30-year-old Algerian national currently employed at the School of Modern Languages.

Despite the fact that the 'manual' was freely available, a member of staff informed the police, both men were arrested on suspicion of possessing 'material useful for terrorism'. Though Sabir's own tutors affirmed that he was using the document for research purposes, the two were held for six days, their houses searched and their computers confiscated.

On May 20 both men were released without charge, but Yezza was handed over to the immigration authorities for unspecified irregularities in his visa status. Yezza was due to challenge these allegations in a legal hearing on July 16. Last Friday however, the Home Office informed his solicitor that he had been taken to the Coinbrook Immigration Removal Centre and was scheduled to be deported to Algeria this Sunday.

The reasons for this decision are not known and both the Home Office and the police have declined to comment, but there is no obvious explanation for the sudden urgency.

Known as 'Hich' to his friends and colleagues, Yezza (pictured right) has lived in Nottingham for 13 years and is a popular figure on the university campus, where he earned his degree and a PhD in mechanical engineering. He is also a member of a popular theatrical dance troupe and a regular visitor to the Hay-On-Wye literary festival, where he would have gone this week had it not been for his arrest.

None of this is obvious al-Qaeda material. But Yezza is also a longtime peace activist and the editor of a student magazine Ceasefire. Did this political activity qualify him for deportation in the eyes of the authorities? Or has Yezza become a suitably suspicious foreigner, whose removal is intended to deflect attention from a botched investigation?

Whatever the answer, the whole affair does no credit to any of the institutions involved, nor are such procedures likely to do much to advance the cause of counter-terrorism. Yesterday, students and members of staff staged a public protest at Yezza's deportation and the threat to academic freedom posed by the original arrests, in which they read extracts from the al-Qaeda manual.

Alf Nielsen, a research fellow at the School of Politics and International Relations, is indignant at the university's role in an investigation which he believes should never have involved the police in the first place.

Yezza's friends and supporters on campus have cause to question the paranoia, xenophobia and authoritarianism that may result in the deportation of an innocent man. They must also be wondering whether the 'war on terror' is doing infinitely more damage to the brittle facade of British democracy than its terrorist enemies could ever have hoped.

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