Piers Mostyn

Respect Hits Back Against Police Terror Tactics

250 police officers, many of them armed, raided a house in Forest Gate in East London, on 2nd June. Mohammed Abdul Kahar and his brother, Abdul Koyair, were arrested. One of them was shot.

Both were held for a week and then released without charge. Others were seriously assaulted and arrested, to be released later without charge.

Careful orchestration ensured that initial media coverage emphasised police claims of “chemical weapons” based on “credible intelligence”, the suggestion of long term surveillance and a search for a “suicide vest” that would pump out poison gas.

If the Met really believed their own claims, they were guilty of astonishing negligence. While police were photographed by an obedient media clad for chemical warfare in protective suits, they made no moves to evacuate neighbouring houses, and throughout the week-long search of the house local children were allowed to play in the street within feet of the barricades erected around it.

All this suggests that the “device” they claimed to be searching for and the vague claims about its lethal qualities were taken less than seriously, and that there was no concern whatever for the safety of local residents.

From the beginning there was community outrage. The newly-elected secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, warned that Muslim community relations with the police would be damaged, saying the community was angry, confused and frustrated at what happened.

Concern centred on flawed “intelligence”, the process of police decision making and the excessive use of force, in particular the danger of a repetition of the killing of innocent Jean Charles de Menenez last year.

Police response to this anger was typified by a “senior source” quoted as saying “the public may have to get used to this sort of incident, with the police having to be safe rather than sorry”.

But as time passed and nothing incriminating was found, it was admitted that the intelligence was wrong – apparently relying solely on one uncorroborated police informant.

Repeated attempts were then made to cloud the issues at the heart of the community anger.

There was a refusal to acknowledge that Moham-med Abdul Kahar was shot by the police. Yet the suggestion that an unarmed man subject to a raid by highly trained armed police in the early hours was shot by anyone else seems difficult to countenance.

And the police and government as usual relied on false logic and unsubstantiated propositions: you are either for or against terrorism; if you are against it you have to support the police; the police may occasionally make mistakes but this is a small price to pay and they can be trusted.

The community was united against terrorism. Respect has clearly indicated its support for that view. But your position on that does not automatically determine support for or co-operation with everything the police does.

Many people view police and state action in recent years as massively increasing the threat of terrorism – not just due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but through a string of repressive and counterproductive policies.

The state and the police have demonstrated time and again that they cannot be trusted. Thousands of ‘stop and searches’ of Muslims and hundreds of arrests have only led to a handful of convictions – suggesting a completely disproportionate and racist targeting.

British involvement in CIA rendition flights has been described by the European Council’s recent report as “intentional or grossly negligent collusion”.

It follows complicity with Guantanamo Bay, denounced by the UN at the highest levels. De Menezes was executed either in the knowledge that he was innocent or, at the very least, without any reasonable grounds to believe he wasn’t.

All these policies involved the same MI5, police anti-terrorist section and other state forces that would be intimately linked to the decision making behind the Forest Gate raid.

Why should the community trust them not to make mistakes, not to lie, not to run roughshod over the rights of the innocent, not to terrorise neighbourhoods unnecessarily, and not to engage in Islamophobic harassment?

Similar issues arose, a week later, when the Dewsbury house of internationally renowned Islamic scholar Maulana Yakub Qasmi was raided. His vocal opposition to terrorism is a matter of record.

Local businessman Tahir Zaman described his family as “very very very respected”, stating the people were shocked and angry. Local Labour MP Shahid Malik accepted the community standing of the family but added, “people have to accept the police are acting in good faith and have a job to do”. 300 members of the local community clearly didn’t think so, as they protested outside the house.

The comment that the public would have to get used to this sort of incident suggests that, for the state, neither trust nor the credibility of the “threat” really enter into the equation.

As with the mobilisation of tanks at Heathrow Airport in the run up to the mammoth anti-war mobilisation of two million in March 2003, it is impossible to exclude the possibility as a motive that this is state muscle-flexing in a community radically opposed to the “war on terror” .

Newham Respect – with three councillors and fresh from winning thousands of votes in the recent borough election and tens of thousands of across East London – responded promptly to the Forest Gate raids with a statement and a public meeting.

A demonstration was called by Stop Political Terror, backed by the Muslim Council of Britain, the Muslim association of Britain and Newham Respect.

Respect member Yvonne Ridley called for a boycott by the community of the police, later clarifying that she was not talking about day to day relations but more organised liaison.

Respect MP George Galloway also made clear on Question Time that there had been no consultation inside Respect on Ridley’s intervention, which did not represent the view of the organisation.

At any rate measures such as a boycott of police consultative bodies is nothing new. A similar stance was taken by the black community, backed by many left Labour councils in the 1980s.

For too long the police have used “community leaders” to provide them with political cover. Regrettably the Metropolitan Police Auth-ority and Ken Livingstone’s uncritical backing for police chief Ian Blair over the Menezes shooting and other aspects of repressive policing have shown where this can lead.

And the affair raises questions over the recent extension of police powers to detain suspects from the present 14 days, to 28.

Liberal Democrats and Tories both supported the latter – Labour still wants it to be 90!

This type of raid followed by the lengthy detention of people without charge in circumstances where there may be no evidence against them may become the norm unless broad opposition is built.