Khader Adnan, a 33-year-old Palestinian baker detained without charge by Israel since December 2011, ended his 66-day hunger strike on February 21, which had taken him to the verge of death. Adnan ended his strike only after Israel agreed to release him after serving another two months of “administrative detention”, under which a suspect can be held without charge for six-month periods, renewable indefinitely.
The officers involved here stand accused of holding the heads of victims inside a toilet and repeatedly flushing it, as part of their interrogation.
On September 8, a jury at Woolwich Crown Court found three Muslim men, Abdulla Ahmed Ali, Assad Sarwar and Tanvir Hussain, guilty of conspiracy to murder using home-made bombs. Four of their co-defendants, Arafat Khan, Waheed Zaman, Ibrahim Savant and Umar Islam, had earlier pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit a public nuisance.
What was described as the biggest terrorism-related case in Canada is gradually unraveling: four more Muslims have walked free after the prosecution “stayed” charges against them on April 15. Qayum Abdul Jamal, Ibrahim Aboud, Ahmad Ghany and Yasin Abdi Mohamed joined three others against whom charges were dropped a year ago.
The “silly season” is an annual feature of British life: the period every summer when the country’s politicians depart the Westminster village for their holidays and the newspapers have to scrabble around for something else to write about in order to keep readers interested.
The case of the 17 Muslims arrested on terrorism-related charges in Toronto took a bizarre turn on July 13 when the police informant who had infiltrated the group went public with his role. Although it was already known to the Muslim community that he was a police plant, Mubin Shaikh went on CBC television to claim that he did it "to protect Canada".
Muslims in Canada were startled by the arrest on June 3 of 15 individuals, all of them Muslims, on charges related to terrorism. Two other alleged suspects were already in jail for gun-smuggling. Five of the 17 are under 18 years of age, so their names cannot be divulged, but that has not prevented the police or intelligence agencies from leaking damaging information about them.
As soon as it became clear that the chaos on London’s public transport on the morning of July 7 was the result of something rather more than the usual maintenance problems, Muslims inBritain knew that they would come under immense pressure if it was confirmed that Muslims were responsible, as most observers immediately suspected.
The conviction on February 10 of Lynne Stewart, a leading civil-rights lawyer, on five counts of conspiring to aid “terrorists” and lying to the government has shocked the American legal profession. Others, too, have expressed concern about civil liberties and see fascism on the march in the US under George W. Bush and his army of “neo-cons”.
