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ARCHIVE
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11/06/2009
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Tariq Ur Rehman, one of the North West 10 returned to Pakistan yesterday, the 11th of June. He was forced to do so by his family circumstances – he is a widower with three young children - to accept what is in effect a voluntary deportation. This is not a victory for him or his legal representatives.
Tariq had to choose between 18 months in a Category A prison or going back to Pakistan giving up his postgraduate studies and hopes for the future and losing the savings he had invested in his education.
As he has said in an interview on the plane, he had not been involved with or associated with any activity which was in any way suspicious. He said, he knew 3 or 4 of the others arrested with him and they also had ‘ normal lives ' not involved in or associated with extremism. ‘ I have been arrested just because I am a Muslim and I belong to Pakistan. They have destroyed my life, my future. I came to UK for a better future ' .
He also said he was returning as a protest over the fact that he was held as a Category A prisoner in Belmarsh, where he was very disturbed by the humiliating strip searches and searches of cells with dogs.
There is no guarantee that he will not be tortured or treated as a terrorist in Pakistan. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has already said that he is likely to be ‘ debriefed ' , or interrogated.
The other 9 students arrested in the case are still in Category A prisons, challenging the deportation orders on them. Tariq Mehmood for the Justice for the North West 10 Campaign (j4nw10) said: ‘ This is a travesty of justice, it is just to save the face of Gordon Brown and the Labour government – they know there was never any terror plot! The case is a disgrace to the British establishment! ' .
Tariq Ur Rehman ' s return to Pakistan came on the same day that nine Law Lords, in a major challenge to the use of secret evidence, unanimously ruled that it was unfair that individuals should be kept in ignorance of the case against them in cases of people subject to control orders.
This raises some important questions for the case of the North West 10, The Home Office uses control orders against terror suspects who cannot be tried because the intelligence being used against them is kept secret. In the case of these Pakistani students the control order is replaced by a deportation order. They cannot be tried because not a shred of evidence against was found. But they are to be deported because the Home Office considers them a threat to national security on the basis presumably of secret evidence. They have been given no information whatsoever as to the reasons why they are being deported and why they were refused bail. Yet the High Court was prepared to keep them in prison without them being given reasons at all. No wonder Tariq Ur Rehman believes there is no possibility of justice here.
In course of the new ruling on secret evidence, the senior Law Lord Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers said: “ A trial procedure can never be considered fair if a party to it is kept in ignorance of the case against him.
“ If the wider public are to have confidence in the justice system, they need to be able to see that justice is done rather than being asked to take it on trust.
“ The best way of producing a fair trial is to ensure that a party to it has the fullest information of both the allegations that are made against him and the evidence relied upon in support of those allegations. ”
As Justice (a legal group supported by many of the UK's most eminent lawyers) put it “Secret evidence is unreliable, unfair, undemocratic, unnecessary and damaging to both national security and the integrity of Britain's courts.”