NEWS > 08 February 2007

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International Herald Tribune -
08 February 2007

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British police arrest outspoke

The British police arrested an outspoken advocate of fiery Islamic views Thursday just as the government closed ranks against an accusation that the country had become a "police state for Muslims."

The charge was leveled by Abu Bakr, a postgraduate student of political Islam from Birmingham, who was held for a week under counterterrorism laws then released without charge. "It's not a police state for everybody else, because these terror laws are designed specifically for Muslims and that's quite an open fact," he told the BBC.

Abu Bakr was one of nine people seized last week when the police scooped up suspects in a purported conspiracy to capture an off-duty British Muslim solider and broadcast images of his beheading on the Internet. Two of the detainees, including Abu Bakr, were released without charge on Wednesday, and a judge gave the police just 72 hours to present evidence against the other seven.

Abu Bakr's accusations stirred a familiar unease among those who maintain that Britain's 1.6 million Islamic minority has been unfairly singled out and stigmatized since and before the bombings of July 2005, when 4 Muslim suicide bombers killed 52 travelers on London's transit system.

Those sentiments resurfaced anew with word on Thursday that, in an apparently separate operation, the police in London had arrested Abu Izzadeen, a 31- year-old former spokesman for the radical and outlawed Al-Ghurabaa group.

One of his allies, Anjem Choudhury, said of the arrest: "The Muslim community are subject to a witch-hunt, and I see this as a continuation of that witch hunt by the Blair regime."

Abu Izzadeen, who was born with the name Trevor Brooks to a Christian family from Jamaica, seized headlines last September when he confronted Home Secretary John Reid at a meeting in east London, accusing him loudly of being "an enemy of Islam and Muslims."

"How dare you come to a Muslim area," he shouted at Reid before security guards bundled him out of the meeting room. At that time, Reid had publicly suggested that Muslim parents watch their children closely for any sign of radicalism.

Abu Izzadeen also achieved prominence after the 2005 bombings by refusing to condemn the attacks, calling them "praiseworthy."

Earlier this week, a British television report said Internet images showed Abu Izzadeen saying in 2004 that Muslims who joined the British Army should be beheaded under Islamic law,or Sharia.

His arrest Thursday, however, was related to a speech in Birmingham last summer, the police said, and was carried out under counterterrorism laws, which forbid the encouragement of terrorism.

Muslims who project themselves as moderate distanced themselves Thursday from Abu Izzadeen. Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, an umbrella organization, called him "a character who has made some incendiary remarks in the past."

But Bunglawala went on to say that there would be "some cynicism" among Muslims about the fact that the arrest came so soon after the release without charge of the two men in Birmingham.

Government officials seemed to line up to protest any suggestion that Britain's counterterrorism laws might constitute an infringement of democratic principles. The procession of political heavyweights suggested that Abu Bakr's remark had touched a nerve or, at least, that British ministers did not wish to allow his comment to go unchallenged.

"It is a gross caricature of the political process in this country," said Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman, who customarily speaks without being identified by name.

Jack Straw, the leader of the House of Commons, declared: "We should not give excuse or quarter to those who claim this country is a police state � that is absolute, utter nonsense."

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Article sourced from

International Herald Tribune -08 February 2007

British police arrest outspoke

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International Herald Tribune -
08 February 2007