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Entitled to be a Radical? Counter-Terrorism and Travesty of Human Rights in the Case of Babar Ahmad
Abstract
This article asserts that the construction of the prevailing notion of “radicalisation” in pursuit of counter-terrorism under US-led hegemony sustains practices of “empire crime” that systematically undercut the rights of Muslim populations in countries such as the UK and the US. This argument is advanced through the case study of Babar Ahmad, who was detained without trial for eight years in the UK, before being sent, under a new and lopsided extradition treaty, to the US to face terrorism charges over his expression of support for the Taliban on his web pages in 2002. Mr Ahmad suffered torture and racist humiliation at the hands of the London Metropolitan Police (Met) after the raid in 2003 on his home by counter-terrorism officers, acting on advice from the US. Ahmad eventually won compensation for the “sustained and gratuitous violence” admitted by the Met. Nevertheless, he was held at Long Lartin high-security prison for eight years, and then extradited to the US where he spent four years on remand, under abusive conditions. The civil and political rights, as expressed in the international covenant of that name, were notably missing in the case of Mr Ahmad. His indictment in Connecticut was shown to be error-ridden and invalid. The judge whom he finally faced after a plea bargain was struck, described him as a “good person”, who had never been interested in terrorism.
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Notes
It is true that Abu Qatada was detained for a somewhat longer amount of time, in total, before he was extradited to Jordan in 2013, where in fact he was eventually acquitted of terrorism charges. This incarceration was not continuous, however, since Abu Qatada was released, as mandated by courts, albeit for brief periods and under control orders.
Though this article only has space to deal with “the Ahmad case”, we should at least note here the case of his co-defendant in the US trial, and co-appellant to the European Court of Human Rights, against extradition to the US: that of British poet Syed Talha Ahsan. His treatment, and in particular the threatened virtually indefinite solitary confinement, is made even more egregious by the fact of his suffering from Asperger syndrome. Much more was made of the injustice of such circumstances in the public advocacy over the far higher profile case of (white) British citizen, Gary McKinnon.