Theresa May, your new Islamophobic Prime Minister - TruePublica
Theresa May, your new Islamophobic Prime Minister
By Craig Murray
– A quick Google
news search for “Theresa May and “Abu Qatada” reveals over 2,000
mainstream media articles in the last three days combining both. This is
hardly surprising, as in her speech announcing her candidacy for Tory
leader (and thus PM) May dwelt on her deportation of Abu Qatada as
evidence she was qualified for the job. The May supporting Tory MP who
was put up for Sky to interview immediately afterwards managed to say
“Abu Qatada” three times in a two minute interview.
Abu Qatada should indeed be a powerful symbol – but not the symbol he
has become, a hate figure. He should rather be a symbol of the
hate-filled and intolerant place Britain has become, and the dreadful
injustice meted out to individuals both by the state and the media.
Abu Qatada spent, over a thirteen year period, a total of
nine years in jail in England despite never being charged with any
crime. It is not just that he was not convicted. He was never charged.
Nine years, think about it. In all that time, neither he nor his lawyers
were ever permitted to see the accusations or evidence against him.
Britain has draconian anti-terrorism laws that would make a
dictatorship blush. It is an offence to “glorify” terrorism. It is
specifically “terrorism” for me to write, here and now, that Nelson
Mandela was justified in supporting the bombing campaign that got him
arrested. I just knowingly committed “glorifying terrorism” under
British law. It is specifically “terrorism” to deface the property in
the UK of a foreign state with a political motive. If I spray “Gay
Pride” on the Saudi embassy, that is terrorism. We also have secret
courts, where “terrorists” can be convicted without ever seeing the
“intelligence-based” evidence against them. We have convicted young
idiots for discussing terror fantasies online. We have convicted a wife
who “must have known” what her husband was doing (at least that one was
overturned on appeal).
Yet even with the bar so low it is resting on the ground, from his
first arrest in 2001 to his deportation in 2013, through innumerable
arrests, police interviews, wiretaps, computer seizures and searches, no
evidence against Abu Qatada was ever found which would stand up in
court. It is worth noting that if almost any of the vast number of
accusations the tabloids made against him had been true, for example if
he had actually said in sermons the things he was stated to have said in
the UK press, he could have been charged and convicted. But
investigation by the police and security services found every single one
of these claims to be false.
