Police pay Muslim student £20k over wrongful terror arrest

Issue 269, Friday 30 September 2011 - 25 Shawwal 1432

By Elham Asaad Buaras

 Nottinghamshire Police have agreed to pay Rizwaan Sabir has received £20,000 in an out of court settlement

A student who was arrested and held for seven days after downloading an edited version of terrorism manual from a US Government website as part of his research has received £20,000 in an out of court settlement with the police on September 15.

Rizwaan Sabir was arrested three years ago after downloading ‘The Al-Qaeda Training Manual’ available in book form from Amazon for his postgraduate research into terrorist tactics at the University of Nottingham.

Sabir was in the process of preparing his forthcoming PhD proposal and was being advised by his friend and university administrator, Hicham Yezza.

Sabir often sent Yezza copies of documents he was using for his research and the Al-Qa’ida manual was one of them. On May 14, 2008, the document was noticed on Yezza’s computer by a colleague and as a result the university authorities notified the police.

Yezza and Sabir were arrested under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act 2000 on suspicion of being involved in the “commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism.”

Both men were eventually released on May 20, although Yezza was re-arrested on unrelated immigration issues.

Sabir now studying at the University of Strathclyde subsequently brought proceedings against Nottinghamshire Police for false imprisonment and breaches of the Race Relations Act 1976 and the Human Rights Act 1998.

In a statement to The Muslim News Sabir’s solicitor, Michael Oswald, said the case presented “one example of the way in which the War on Terror has been allowed to pervert the rule of law over recent years.

“Clearly, the police have a difficult and important job to do in their counter terrorism role, however, they must nonetheless act within the law and must be held to account when they do not. Through his remarkable effort and fierce determination over the last three years, Mr Sabir has been able to hold the police to account for their failings. This result is nothing more than the clear vindication to which he is entitled.”

But Nottinghamshire Police insisted that the settlements should not be seen as an admission of liability. Instead a spokesman for Nottinghamshire Police told The Muslim News that decision to make an out of court settlement was primarily an economic one.

“This was a matter that was going to go through court proceedings, which whatever the outcome, was would generate costs for both sides. So it was decided rather than go through the lengthy and costly process that a settlement would be agreed as a way of minimising any costs.”

Nottinghamshire’s Chief Constable, Julia Hodson, had issued an apology “for any embarrassment, frustration and distress caused” by a stop and search on Sabir in February 2010.

But Nottinghamshire Police say they “stand by the fact that the arrest, detention and obtaining of a warrant of further detention were all perfectly legal, proportionate and necessary in the circumstances as they were in 2008.”

However, Sabir has hit back at Nottinghamshire Police explanation accusing the force of “spinning” the outcome of the settlement for “political reasons”.

“What they are doing is spinning, because the police don’t pay £20,000 and all my legal fees, clear my intelligence file and apologise for a stop and search if they acted proportionally and reasonably,” he told The Muslim News.

“They can spin what they like. Anybody who knows what happened and has followed what happened will be able to understand quite clearly that this is an admission of guilt by the police,” he said.

Sabir is adamant that he was arrested purely because of his faith, “I don’t think there are any sort of misunderstanding that these terror laws are used for Muslims and in that process, laws, policies and strategies it is the thoughts and actions of Muslims that are criminal.

“So if a non-Muslim had downloaded the Al-Qa’ida training manual from a US Government website, which hundreds of them have for their research and academic purposes, they are not arrested but when a Muslim does it then it becomes a crime. So what we have is the laws being carried out by officers who are quite openly discriminating against Muslims.”

Sabir’s former personal tutor, Dr Bettina Renz, reiterated that view. Speaking to The Muslim News at the time of his arrest she said that Sabir’s Muslim faith “undoubtedly played a part” in him getting arrested.

Nottinghamshire Police also admit they had to amend “some records held on” Sabir, which Sabir says falsely claimed he was a terror convict and led to him “being subject to numerous stops and searches.”

Also under fire in the case is the conduct of officials at the University of Nottingham who Sabir accuses of “washing their hands of any responsibility” despite being “equally complicit” in his and Yezza’s ordeal.

“They reported us [to the police] without carrying out any kind of diligent investigation which they are advised to by Government guidelines, they totally rejected any such guidelines and called in the police and when they did they failed to admit they made a mistake and instead decided to start a campaign against me in trying to remove me from the university despite my innocence,” said Sabir.

He also described the Government’s Prevent strategy which applies pressure on universities to monitor and report extremisms in campuses as “very problematic…it is a Prevent mindset that caused those university managers to call the police because they didn’t want to take a risk. Is it acceptable that non-qualified members of the university who have no idea about security and counter-terrorism are being given such a serious responsibility to counter-terrorism? It’s not appropriate this is really dangerous territory. What you’ll have is more people being arrested, detained and put forward for monitoring programmes when they are entirely innocent,” argued Sabir.

A spokesman for the Home Office refused to comment on the case insisting it is “a matter for the police.”