The Forgotten Pakistani Students
Courtesy of Stop the Deportation of Pakistani Students
Haji Hazrat Ali shows a photo of his son Muhammed who was arrested on terrorism charges in the UK many moons ago. Unfortunately the Pakistani students issue and their continued incarceration in the UK is yesterday’s news. In a Pakistan bedevilled daily by death and destruction, the Pakistani students who were accused of terrorism in the UK and their plight is a story forgotten by many.
Eight out of the ten students who were arrested were forced to leave the UK, deported with their dignity and reputation in tatters irrespective of the fact that all eight were released without a single charge of terrorism. The blundering British Prime Minister Gordon Brown who had warned of ‘ a very big terrorist plot’ was made to eat his words, yet his government showed a disdain for justice and fairplay in deporting the innocent students back to Pakistan on national security grounds even after their release.
Today, two students remain incarcerated in the UK as they have decided to fight their deportation and we at OP support their cause and pledge to continue our campaign to secure their release. The full details of the scandal have been shared by an investigative report by Declan Walsh in The Guardian and I share it below:
Pakistani Students Fight To Clear Their Names After Arrest In Anti-Terror Raids
A group of Pakistani students arrested but not charged after anti-terrorist raids last April are fighting to clear their names after MI5 claims that they belong to al-Qaida or are a threat to national security.
The 10 students were released without charge after the raids in Manchester, Liverpool and Lancashire, but eight have been forced to leave Britain and two remain in jail fighting deportation.
The Guardian has interviewed seven of those sent to Pakistan, who say their lives have been ruined – their studies over, money lost and little prospect of being able to travel to the west again – because of thin and speculative evidence.
Their accounts, corroborated by Home Office papers and police interview notes, raise questions about the basis of the raids. No evidence of bomb-making equipment or a specific plot emerged. Photographs used by police as evidence of “commando” training in north Wales were on Facebook, the students say, and innocent dinners were misconstrued as terrorist planning meetings.
Recently a young London woman has emerged whose testimony, lawyers say, challenges an email at the heart of the case against the students.
“The whole thing is rubbish. There was no bomb factory, no link to al-Qaida and they know it,” said Janas Khan, 25, a business student now back in Peshawar. “They just wanted to get us out of the country to avoid embarrassment.” Khan said his life had been ruined by the experience.
The case has strained relations between Britain and Pakistan, whose prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani met Brown in London today. Pakistani officials have insisted the students are innocent and disputed Brown’s description of the case as a “very big terrorist plot”.
Gilani said he had discussed the students with the foreign secretary, David Miliband, after his meeting with Brown and Miliband had promised him he would facilitate British visas for the students.
Pakistan’s high commissioner to the UK, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, said of the men: “They have been clean-slated. Two of them are testing their cases here.”
Papers lodged with the special immigration appeals commission show the case hinges on their association with a Peshawar student, Abid Naseer, 23, a computer student at Liverpool John Moores University, seen as the “central figure” behind the alleged plot, with supposed links to al-Qaida and a foreign-based terror cell.
Home Office papers relating to the other Pakistanis contain an MI5 assessment that Naseer “acted in support of AQ attack planning activities within the UK. The security service assesses that the network co-ordinated by Abid Naseer is engaged in operational activity with the most likely explanation being that it is attack planning against unspecified UK targets. The security service assesses that [name of student] has acted in support of Naseer’s terrorism related activities in the UK … given the likely attack plans the network are assessed to have been involved in at the time of their arrest, they may seek to re-embark on their planned activity if permitted to remain in the UK.”
The eight who returned to Pakistan did so rather than stay in maximum security jail for months awaiting an appeal against deportation.
Lord Carlile, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, supported the arrests in a report last week but said police should have taken advice from the crown prosecution service and had they done so fewer might have been held.
Ten Pakistani students and one British-Pakistani man were arrested. As the students were questioned the press linked them to plots, including attacks on Old Trafford, home of Manchester United, the city’s Arndale shopping centre and a nightclub. Police searched 25 houses, examined dozens of laptops and mobile phones and recorded 222 interview tapes. But after 14 days they were released without charge. The British citizen, Hamza Shinwari, walked free. But the Home Office moved to deport the Pakistanis, describing them as a threat to national security. The Home Office case relies partly on secret evidence – believed to be MI5 intercepts and informant statements – which it has refused to disclose to the students or their lawyers.
In interviews with the Guardian in three Pakistani cities, seven of the men said their al-Qaida reputations were hurting their ability to find jobs or even reconnect with friends. All challenged the Home Office to disclose the secret evidence. “If there is something, let it come into the open. We will happily face a trial,” said accountancy student Shoaib Khan.
The British government is of course left disgraced and degraded after the scandal. On the Pakistani side, the Pakistan government has as usual performed miracles in doing nothing except for arranging visas for the deported students which is not an achievement but proof of how concerned the rulers of Pakistan are with the state of Pakistani citizens abroad.
The Pakistani public in the UK and elswhere have largely been apathetic at best in following let alone in agitating on the issue. All in all the Pakistan students and their forgotten story represent a glimpse of what is wrong with Pakistan today, with a government impotent to act on behalf of her citizens whilst the Pakistani people remain forever-ready to act as silent spectators watching from the sidelines only to bemoan all manner of problems.
Inertia turns to action only when another Yousaf from Multan faces the problem himself, until then he will sit and tell the story of a problem in this case the arrest and deportation of Pakistani students to others. Just imagine what would have happened if one of the Pakistani students arrested and deported was from our ruling elite, imagine the Yousaf from Multan is not a poor labourer or a middle-class government official but the Yousaf who resides in PM House.
Imagine if Mr Gilani found his son to be caught up on allegations of terrorism, or worse our future saviour Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was arrested on terrorism charges and deported. I wonder how the Pakistani government would act then?, the answer is sadly so obvious it need not be stated nor written. It is this truth that it is an indictment on us as Pakistanis and on Pakistan as a whole for we care only when we are affected in person.
