Representing 'terrorists'

The latest terrorism bill holds that you will be a criminal if you 'glorify' acts of terrorism -as one of the actors in Michael Winterbottom's award-winning film discovered at Luton Airport.

Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul were dubbed the “Tipton Three,” and they spent more than two years in Guantanamo Bay before being released without charge. Michael Winterbottom’s new film The Road to Guantanamo, fresh from winning a Silver Bear at the Berlin Festival, traces the tribulations of the Tipton Three from their initial trip to Pakistan for Asif’s wedding, through Afghanistan, to Guantanamo Bay.

The Tipton Three will never be proven innocent at a trial, because no government will be foolish enough to charge them with any offense. They are unlikely to be exonerated in a civil lawsuit, because the American courts dismissed their torture claims two weeks ago, based on the ‘immunity’ enjoyed by the officials who abused them.

Actor Rizwan Ahmed represented Shafiq in the film, and joined the three lads at the Berlin Festival. “It was an emotional experience,” Riz told me later. “The film had an amazing reception and on some levels it felt like the Tipton boys had been vindicated.”

The atmosphere changed very suddenly when they returned to the UK through Luton Airport. “Shafiq was stopped at the Immigration Desk,” Riz said. “Soon after, I was detained and questioned by the Special Branch. A female officer questioned me extensively by the baggage claim, taking notes. When I asked what all these questions were for, she took me to a small room.”

The officer told Riz that she had no reason to doubt his account of the Berlin trip. “She said they need to stop us and the Tipton boys as anyone with ‘terror links’ must be questioned – not, she said, that I necessarily had any. I told her that the Tipton Three didn’t either, as has been widely documented. She then asked to go through the contents of my wallet. I felt uncomfortable about this, and asked to speak to a lawyer.”

At this point, things got more adversarial. The officer told Riz that he had no right to legal advice. She gave him a blank copy of what was styled a “Section 7 of the Terrorism Act Detention Form.” The form stated that a superintendent could up to 48 hours of detention without contact with anyone, even a lawyer. Riz is an Oxford graduate, and is no fool. He asked whether she was a superintendent. She retreated: He was not in fact being held under this form, and he would only be denied legal advice for the first hour of questioning. 

She then left the room. Riz took the opportunity to call a friend on his mobile, and the friend called me. When she returned, Riz allowed her to go through his wallet under threat of “continued detention.” She took notes on all its contents – his bankcard details, along with the business cards he had been given.

During the search, she asked Riz whether he intended to do more documentary films, specifically more political ones like The Road to Guantanamo. “Did you become an actor mainly to do films like this, you know, to publicise the struggles of Muslims?” she demanded. She asked Riz about his political views, what he thought about “the Iraq war and everything else that was going on”.

“She then asked me whether I would mind officers contacting me regularly in the future, ‘in case, for example, you might be in a café, and you overhear someone discussing illegal activities.’”

At this point, I called Riz on his mobile phone. I told him to inform the officer that a solicitor from Gareth Peirce’s office would be calling in a few moments.

The officer said that this would not be permitted. She raised her voice, and called in a male colleague, who ordered Riz to give up the phone. Riz refused, and the man wrestled it away from him, then sat on a table, smirked, and started going through the numbers in the memory.

Another officer came in, and the three of them threatened to take Riz to a police station. The officer with Riz’ phone called him a “fucker”. Riz objected to the language. The officer smiled at him and said, “Now you’re making things up, no one called you that.”

Riz argued that if he had no legal right to a lawyer, then a lawyer would advise him as much. He insisted on calling Gareth’s office, and the female officer eventually complied, on condition that if he tried to ask any further questions the phone would be taken away. The bluff was called, and as soon as Riz got through, the officer said, “We’re done with you, you can go.”

She then said that Riz was prolonging his own detention by insisting on talking with lawyers.

He was keen to leave, but first he asked for any notes from the interview, and for the names of the officers. He was refused both, but they handed him a small pink search record sheet, specifying that the purpose of the search was “intelligence”. The reverse of the sheet -- which admonished that “officers must also complete” it -- was blank.

When I spoke with Riz again later that day, he was shaken up. “It was humiliating, intimidating,” he said, but he was concerned about going public. He is not just an actor, but an Asian actor. “I’m nobody of note, but being tagged as some kind of political activist could make it hard to get work.”

Riz encouraged me to write about it instead, if I thought it might help someone in the future. So I am. Six months ago I saw my former hometown of New Orleans washed away because the levee that was supposed to protect had not been maintained. Political opportunism is undermining the levee of legal rights in this country, and to remain silent is to risk a similar disaster.

The very foundations of our justice system are under threat. Britain has a 400 year tradition barring the use of torture evidence, yet in 2005 the Government argued strongly for its admission in court. The House of Lords sensibly excluded it, yet the Government pays lip-service to the ruling, and continues on its charted course. Consider my client, Jamal Kiyemba, who lived with his mother in Britain from the age of fourteen. He was recently released from Guantanamo Bay, but far from welcoming him home, Charles Clarke insisted he go to Uganda, where he was born 26 years ago.

Before the plane even touched down, Clarke issued an order permanently barring Jamal from Britain on “grounds of national security.” The government now asserts the right to designate someone as an “international terrorist” under British law if Clarke “suspects” the person “has links with a person who is a member of, or belongs to, an international terrorist group.” Clearly I fit the bill, because I have “links,” through my attorney-client relationships, with such people as Omar Deghayes, a British refugee who the Americans are holding in Guantanamo Bay. The American authorities say (wrongly, as it turns out) that Omar belongs to a group that opposes the dictatorship of Col. Gaddafi, a group that the U.S. has designated as “terrorist.” This makes Jamal guilty too, since he has “links” with Omar – they were both illegally held in Guantanamo.

In banning Jamal, the basis for Clarke’s “suspicion” was almost certainly evidence coerced out of Jamal and others in Guantanamo Bay. Does Clarke care that the House of Lords barred the use of torture evidence? Apparently not. And did Clarke bother to warn Jamal that he was going to ban him, or give him the right to reply? Not at all.

Last week the government pressed through its latest terrorism bill, which holds that you will be a criminal if you “glorify” acts of terrorism. While the detention of actor Rizwan Ahmed at Luton was illegal when it happened, it may not be when this law hits the statute books. Riz acted in a film that arguably ‘glorified’ the acts of the Tipton Three, by portraying their side of the story. Presumably, the Berlin jury that awarded the film a Silver Bear are guilty of ‘glorification’ themselves.

We cannot afford to be silent. Riz’ experience proves that these are dangerous times to be an actor representing terrorists. And, perhaps, even a lawyer.