It is July 19, 2006, and a stiflingly hot day in London, England. Most parts of South London are calmer than just ten days earlier, when Federer and Nadal met for the first time in the men’s Wimbledon tennis championship final. The Guardian reports that the New Labour Environment Minister, David Miliband, has unveiled a radical plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by charging individuals for the amount of carbon they use[i] and that the unusually hot weather is a reflection on climate change.[ii]
This year has been productive thus far. You have decided to apply to do the Philosophy M.A. programme at Birkbeck. You have listed the attributes you would most like to see in your wife and life partner (“good listener, intense and articulate, good at arguing,” “must be a practicing Muslim . . . [but] if you weren’t a practicing Muslim you would probably be a bohemian writer, peace activist or goth”). You have taken walks around St. Paul’s Cathedral in London to add details to your story idea for “The Impossible Bride” on the tensions between faith and passion that second generation Muslim immigrants in London face. You penned the sound of the Thames running under the Millenium Bridge at night. You have asked Monica Ali, author of the novel Brick Lane, for tips on submitting short stories for publication. All while helping out at your father’s shipping business in Tooting, London.
You are preparing for a job interview, to be a librarian, when the Metropolitan Police – at the request of U.S. authorities – enter your home to arrest you for providing “material support” to terrorist organizations. Earlier that year, in February, they entered your home and seized two computers, along with hundreds of CDs, DVDs (including the cartoons your nephew loves to watch), a PlayStation memory card, camera, college submissions, lecture notes, diary, mobile phone, and other countless documents.
July 19, 2006 marks the beginning of an eight-year ordeal through high security British and U.S. prisons and European and U.S. “justice” systems. The beginning of the end does not arrive until June 16, 2014 when a U.S. District Court of Connecticut judge agrees with your defence attorney: you are a highly intelligent, sensitive, inquisitive, creative man, who does not subscribe to violence as a means to solving problems. And, that you are a threat to no one.[iii] Eventually, it is unknown when, you will return to Tooting, to your home, family, friends and supporters. Your name is Talha Ahsan.
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Talha Ahsan is a young, intelligent British man. His parents are Bangladeshi. Talha has been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. In 2006, Talha Ahsan faced allegations that, in acting as a mail-man for a website providing information about atrocities committed against Muslims around the world, he provided “material support” to terrorist organizations. Unlike Gary McKinnon, however, Talha was extradited to the U.S. in October 2012.[iv] Gary McKinnon has also been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. U.S. authorities have described Glasgow-born Gary McKinnon’s actions as the “biggest military computer hack of all time” and demanded he face charges in the U.S. However on October 16, 2012, given McKinnon’s vulnerability (which increased the likelihood that he may take his own life in U.S. prisons), Theresa May (UK Home Secretary and member of the Conservative party) blocked the extradition.[v] The same month Talha Ahsan and five others were extradited to the U.S.
The extradition took place under the 2003 Extradition Treaty between the UK and U.S. The Treaty does not require the U.S. to provide basic evidence of wrong-doing when requesting the extradition of people from the UK; but maintains the requirement on the UK to do so when seeking the extradition of people in the U.S. to the UK. The Treaty did not require the U.S. to provide any evidence for the hyped-up charge of “providing material support” to terrorist organizations, which they levied against Talha Ahsan.[vi]
Further, the reality is that the U.S. “material support” charge is extraordinarily broad, sweeping within its reach actions like posting materials on a website just as it does the provision of weapons to terrorists or engaging in terrorist acts. Its scope has drawn concern from academics, researchers and journalists, who fear that their work – interviewing individuals who may be proscribed terrorists, translating their ideas into English, or placing them on a website – could be considered criminal.[vii] In its recent report “The Illusion of Justice” Human Rights Watch states that the “material support” charge, broadened in 2002 under the U.S. PATRIOT Act criminalizes conduct that might seem otherwise, innocuous—translating books and publishing them online, or even storing ponchos and socks. Human Rights Watch research suggested that “the breadth of the material support laws has led federal prosecutors to levy criminal charges for religious or political conduct itself, or as the primary evidence of criminal activity.”[viii]
Prior to his extradition, between July 2006 and October 2012, Talha Ahsan was held in high security prisons in the UK. Hamja Ahsan, Talha’s younger brother and dedicated campaigner for Talha’s release, says that Talha and his family entered a Kafkaesque nightmare. “There was no light at the end of the tunnel, and we didn’t know when the nightmare would end. To detain a person without trial, charge or prima-facie evidence for so long is just unbelievably wrong and a dangerous precedent for a democratic society.”
At the UK Detainee Unit in HMP Long Lartin, where he was held between 2008 and 2012, Talha Ahsan developed a “history of British poetry” course for himself and worked to complete a collection of poems “This Be the Answer.” Shortly before Talha Ahsan’s extradition in October 2012, his poem entitled “Grieving,” was awarded the Koestler Trust’s Leopold de Rothschild Charitable Trust Platinum Award. Several of the poems in his collection have been translated into Italian, German, and Arabic, and have been republished.
“it is not that the world isn’t full of beautiful things, only that some are rare …”[ix]
Talha Ahsan’s friends and supporters resisted his extradition from the UK to the U.S., where they said he would likely be held in solitary confinement for up to twenty-three hours a day, and potentially for a lengthy period of time pre-trial—as well as face harsher conditions if convicted. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan E. Méndez, has found that solitary confinement could amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and even torture. Of particular concern is prolonged solitary confinement, which the Rapporteur defines as any period of solitary confinement in excess of 15 days because at that point, some of the harmful psychological effects of isolation can become irreversible.[x] The American Civil Liberties Union, the National Litigation Project at Yale Law School, and the NGOs Interights and Reprieve raised concerns as to the level of safeguards and protection available in the U.S. against—in particular—psychological ill-treatment. Yet, the European Court of Human Rights,—relying predominantly on statistics provided by UK and U.S. government officials -approved the extradition of Talha Ahsan and others to the U.S.[xi] The decision revealed the Court’s lack of understanding about the conditions of detention—and the particular use of solitary confinement—in U.S. supermax facilities.
Following extradition, Talha Ahsan was indeed housed in a Conneticut supermax facility, in isolation, in the same wing containing those sentenced to death. He was located more than 3,000 miles from his family. His brother, Hamja Ahsan, was able to visit him twice at a cost of over £2,000 (approximately USD$3,300). Hamja Ahsan reported similarities between the detention conditions at the Conneticut supermax facility his brother was held in and the conditions and processes at the U.S. military prison within the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Hamja Ahsan said about theConneticut supermax facility: “The prison was so extreme and brutal—nothing like the most secure of British prisons—inmates would be shackled up even when showered. Strip-searches and cavity searches took place often.” The campaign for Talha Ahsan’s release has gained support from leading figures and Hajma Ahsan reports that “the prayers and warm-wishes of Talha’s supporters flew in like butterflies in his prison cell.”
In 2013, Talha Ahsan struck a plea bargain, accepting the charges against him. How had he provided “material support” to terrorist organizations? Talha Ahsan briefly played a minor role in the operation of the website Azzam.com. He was one of the website’s “mailmen” for six months, between March and August 2001. The website offered books and videos for purchase. Some of the books—like those written by Abdullah Azzam—were widely available in libraries and bookstores, including the library of the School of Oriental and African Studies. Some of the videos provided a perspective on the Second Chechen War that was not featured in mainstream media. Those accessing the website could print out an order form and mail it to a Post Office box. Talha Ahsan’s sole job was filling the orders. He was provided with a box of Azzam Publications materials, envelopes, and postage, and provided instructions on how to proceed: send the customers what they ordered and save an electronic copy of any written correspondence sent to the mailbox.
The websites had multiple administrators. Talha Ahsan was never an administrator of the website. The U.S. government sought a sentence of fifteen years for Talha Ahsan. However, the sentencing judge felt that Talha Ahsan’s role was so minor, he had already served more than sufficient time behind bars.[xii] Indeed, in U.S. cases, where defendants provided support to the Tamil Tigers, or the LTTE, a proscribed Sri Lankan terrorist organization—and support that was substantial (millions of dollars, oftentimes illegally laundered, and directly provided)—the defendants received sentences between 1 year and 9 nine years. For conduct far more serious than that of Talha Ahsan’s. Talha has already spent eight years behind bars.
In a late 2005 journal entry, Talha Ahsan criticizes the U.S. for killing innocent civilians around the world. It also criticizes the perpetrators of terrorism and condemns the 7/7/05 London Underground bombings. Talha Ahsan’s defense attorney sought to remind the U.S. District Court that the meaning of websites such as Azzam.com had to be contextualised in the context of:
1) the brutal treatment of minority Muslim populations, like those in Bosnia and Chechnya;
2) the pre-9/11 dominant understanding of the term “jihad.”
Karen Armstrong, one of the world’s leading experts in the history of religion and contemporary religious affairs, submitted a report in the context of Talha Ahsan’s sentencing. In the report, she reminds us all that the term “jihad” refers to a “core Islamic concept” and religious principle, one that requires of Muslims a commitment to struggle: an internal struggle to further spiritual progress, and an external struggle to create a more just society. The struggle to create a just society can take as many forms as there are strategies for social change; participation in a democratic process to correct intolerant laws or prevent discrimination; legal advocacy to protect the rights of the incarcerated and detained; and speaking out against injustice. According to Karen Armstrong all of these acts can constitute “jihad.” When Talha Ahsan was a teenager in the 1990s and first learning about Islam, the concept of jihad as armed struggle in defense of others had taken on a very real meaning in light of the Bosnian genocide. In 1992, Serb military commanders introduced the world to the term “ethnic cleansing” as they executed a program of extermination against Bosnian Muslims. However, Talha Ahsan was also deeply troubled by the use of violence—and warring factions—in Afghanistan. After a trip to Syria in 2003, Talha Ahsan volunteered with the legal action charity Cage Prisoners (an organization committed to legal advocacy on behalf of individuals detained at Guantánamo Bay) and his personal contributions to the struggle for social justice took the form of campaigning and advocacy.
The history and ideal of international volunteerism—crossing borders to defend the rights and lives of others – is deeply ingrained in the moral fabric of all societies. Actions taken by Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell in the Spanish Civil War and the struggle against Franco’s oppressive regime, is justly celebrated. Likewise, the ideal of humanitarian work abroad, in locations ravaged by war, as embodied in organizations like Doctors Without Borders, has resulted in such organizations being honored with the Nobel Peace Prize. Such contributions to human rights and solidarity across national borders forge a language expressed in journalism, literature, and poetry. The support shown for Talha Ahsan’s release is a contribution to that narrative. However, systemic problems remain, the lack of understanding about the conditions of solitary confinement in U.S. supermax prisons is disturbing; the “material support” statue has not been amended but its application accepted as valid by the U.S. Supreme Court; the Extradition Treaty (2003) between the U.S. and UK must be amended to require prima facie evidence prior to extradition; and vast so-called “anti-terrorism legislation” continues to eat away at civil liberties.[xiii] While we take a moment to celebrate Talha Ahsan’s impending return to his home in London, the struggle for justice continues.
Notes:
[i] Miliband unveils carbon swipe card plan, David Adam and David Batty
Wednesday 19 July 2006 15.25 BST; http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2006/jul/19/greenpolitics.travelnews
[ii] Heatwaves Reflect Climate Change, Wednesday 19 July 2006 14.47 BST;http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2006/jul/19/weather.climatechange
[iii] Syed Talha Ahsan’s Memorandum in Aid of Sentencing; 16 June 2014http://www.sacc.org.uk/sacc/docs/ta_sentencing.pdf
[iv] The impossible injustice of Talha Ahsan’s extradition and detention”, New Statesman, Ian Patel, 21 February 2013, 14:53 http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/02/impossible-injustice-talha-ahsan’s-extradition-and-detention
[v] BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19957138
[vi] New UK-US Extradition Treaty (Special report no 2), Statewatch;
www.statewatch.org/news/2003/jul/25ukus.htm
[vii] Center for Constitutional Rights, http://ccrjustice.org/learn-more/faqs/factsheet%3A-material-support
[viii] Human Rights Watch “Illusion of Justice: Human Rights Abuses in US Terrorism Prosecutions”, 21 July 2014, p.61.
[ix] “The impossible injustice of Talha Ahsan’s extradition and detention”, New Statesman, Ian Patel, 21 February 2013, 14:53 http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/02/impossible-injustice-talha-ahsan’s-extradition-and-detention
[x] Interim Report of the Special Rapporteur on Torture, 5 August 2011, A/66/268,http://solitaryconfinement.org/uploads/SpecRapTortureAug2011.pdf
[xi] European Court of Human Rights decision; http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/pages/search.aspx?i=001-110267
[xii] Syed Talha Ahsan’s Memorandum in Aid of Sentencing; 16 June 2014http://www.sacc.org.uk/sacc/docs/ta_sentencing.pdf
[xiii] See for example, Human Rights Watch “Illusion of Justice: Human Rights Abuses in US Terrorism Prosecutions”, 21 July 2014, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2014/07/21/illusion-justice-0; Human Rights Watch, “In the Name of Security Counterterrorism Laws Worldwide since September 11”, 29 June 2012,http://www.hrw.org/reports/2012/06/29/name-security-0; Cage Prisoners Schedule 7 Project; http://www.cageprisoners.com/our-work/focus-campaigns/item/6905-schedule-7-project
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