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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (17503)	1/29/2002 11:53:03 AM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Re Britons detained in Cuba, There was the predictable outcry in the press about the conditions of the detainees in Cuba. Of course it was also predictable that all efforts should be made to skew the real picture of what the conditions were like. It sounds as if they are getting fair treatment to me. Then there were all the TV interviews of former friends of the detainees. They were shocked and amazed such nice guys were even in Afghanistan in the first place...surely a mistake. That was not what we were hearing from the extremists a few months ago before the USA gave them a severe beating in the field. No, then the were super tough freedom fighters and Britain was going to be persuaded to become a muslim country. Well, please send my message to their USA guards... don't be too nice to them, they may mis interpret the USA good nature as a weakness. The authorities are still cracking down on the terrorists here thetimes.co.uk snip Six arrested in anti-terror swoop BY PA NEWS Six men were arrested today by after dawn swoops on properties in the north east of England in connection with alleged terrorism, police said. The men, aged between 29 and 46, were detained during raids by more than 150 officers from the Durham and Cleveland forces, some of them armed. They are suspected of raising funds and providing logistical support for international Islamic terrorism. But they are not being directly linked to the events of September 11 and are not thought to be members of al-Qaeda. endsnip Some more news on detainees thetimes.co.uk Two Britons held by US forces have violent past BY STEVE BIRD, DOMINIC KENNEDY AND MICHAEL EVANS TWO of the Britons being held by US forces have criminal convictions for violence. Asif Iqbal and Ruhal Ahmed were convicted after a 16-year-old Asian was attacked with hammers and bottles. Ahmed is the third man from the West Midlands town of Tipton to be detained by American forces in Afghanistan, the Foreign Office said. He left his home soon after the September 11 terrorist attacks and is now being held at the US military detention centre at Kandahar airfield in southern Afghanistan. Another Briton is also being held in Kandahar. The Foreign Office would not identify him, but said that it was not Munir Ali, the fourth member of a group of young Muslim men from Tipton who went to Afghanistan. “He is still unaccounted for,” a Foreign Office official said. The other two Tipton men, Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul, are being held at Camp X-Ray, the US military facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Ahmed and Iqbal were fined £500 at Wolverhampton Crown Court in 1998 and had to do 150 hours community service after Rahim Rashid, now 19, of Dudley, was scarred for life in an attack in which he was kicked in the head and beaten. The court was told that Mr Rashid was caught up in a pitched battle involving two gangs in Dudley’s Churchill precinct. It is also reported that Iqbal told friends that he wanted to “die a suicide bomber”. Today’s Sun quotes an unnamed 21-year-old friend saying: “He was fascinated by Arab suicide bombers. He talked about how brave they were and he said he thought he had the guts to be one.” The man said that Iqbal had told him: “I want to be a somebody not die a nobody in a dump like this (referring to Tipton).” The paper also says that his fellow suspect, Rasul, had tried to recruit friends to fight with him in Afghanistan. One neighbour was quoted: “It is ridiculous to suggest that he was brainwashed after going to Pakistan. He was preaching jihad while still in the West.” The unnamed man said that Rasul told him shortly after the September 11 attacks that the “Americans deserved what they got because of US support for Israel”. He added: “He (Rasul) had a poster of bin Laden, but I thought he was just talking big. A couple of weeks later I saw a relative of Shafiq who told me he had gone to fight in Afghanistan.” The paper said that the man had been given two cassette tapes at Rasul’s home, including one called “Declaration of War”, by Osama bin Laden. The Times has learnt that Islamic fundamentalists have been concentrating recruiting efforts on the toughest members of Asian street gangs. West Midlands suburbs have been a hotbed of a movement to encourage gang members to abandon drug and prostitution rackets and get involved in Muslim extremism. A security expert who has studied the threat of Islam in the West Midlands, said: “Islamists moved into the areas to get gang members off drugs. The police said some radical groups were recruiting very violent Asian street gangs and shifting them along the path of Islamic fundamentalism. I had the impression that youngsters were being toughened up in street crime.” Ahmed lived a few hundred yards from Rasul, 24, and Iqbal, 20. All three went to Alexandra High School in Tipton and played in a local football team. Ahmed’s mother, Shalehah Begum, speaking to the local newspaper from her home in Tipton, said that her son was visiting relatives in Bangladesh. According to security sources, Ahmed has been in American hands for several weeks. Victoria Clarke, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said that the US wanted to return Camp X-Ray prisoners to their home states provided they were dealt with appropriately. She said: “We want to make sure that these people are not back on the streets doing what they have done. They are part of an organisation who planned for a long time to kill thousands and thousands of innocent civilians on September 11.” The family of Mr Rasul insisted that he was not an al-Qaeda member and had been shocked by the September 11 terrorist attacks. Habib Rasul, 30, said that his brother could have been kidnapped and held as a “human shield”. He had gone to Pakistan on October 20 to take up a Microsoft computer course in Lahore after dropping out of a law course at the University of Central England, the family said. A similar course was too expensive in Britain. Mr Rasul denied reports that his brother had been a member of an Asian group called the Tipton Asian Squad or had links with extremist Muslim organisations in the area. Hassan Butt, spokesman for the fundamentalist group al-Muhajiroun, said that the men from Tipton had gone to Afghanistan as aid workers and described them as heroes. =========================================================== On second thoughts, if they give you any problems at all just shoot the SOB's. It will save a lot of prison expenses all round.