Thursday, August 17, 2006
 The story of someone being held by the Crown without trial. From The Guardian Tuesday August 15, 2006: "Waheed Zaman, 22, is a student arrested last week under the Terrorism Act. His best friend tells his story:
Kamran Siddique, 24, student
[...] Contrary to the claims that is a biochemist, he studied biomedical science; he wanted to be a doctor, it was his lifetime ambition. Little did he know that those hopes would be destroyed. In two weeks he was to sit for exams which he had been revising tirelessly.
I'm not surprised some sections of the media have claimed he was a biochemist - it fits with the picture they want to portray. Why should anyone be shocked that the Muslim community does not have faith in the media when they report like that? Despite the British judicial system stating that a person is "innocent until proven guilty", the press seems to have a different stance. Is the innocence of a person not compromised by them being named and shamed?
After 9/11 and 7/7 Waheed was sceptical about whether Muslims could have been responsible. He watched conspiracy videos on the internet. He believed them and thought they made sense. Like most people in the world, he was anti-war. But his solution was: fight the enemies of Islam by showing them the real Islam, a religion of peace.[...]
Do I think there is any possibility in the world Waheed would be involved? Could he have kept a secret? Could there have been a side to him that someone who spent most of the day, every day, with him, could not see? My answer is no. I bet my life on it.
----- From Global Research August 14, 2006: "I have been reading very carefully through all the Sunday newspapers to try and analyse the truth from all the scores of pages claiming to detail the so-called bomb plot. Unlike the great herd of so-called security experts doing the media analysis, I have the advantage of having had the very highest security clearances myself, having done a huge amount of professional intelligence analysis, and having been inside the spin machine.
So this, I believe, is the true story.
None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for quite some time.
In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.
What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year - like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.
Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes - which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn't give is the truth.
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.....| Posted at 03:15 | PERMA-LINK |
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