Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Profiling

From ThisisLondon.

Three British men were arrested in Dubai and held for 10 days before being released without charge, the Foreign Office said.

The trio were reportedly detained in connection with the London bomb attacks on July 7. It is thought they arrived back in Britain on Monday.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "Three British nationals were detained by the Dubai authorities on July 21. All three were released on July 30 without charge. They were given full consular contact to ensure all their needs were met."

The FO spokesman said he had received no reports of them being poorly treated.

But two of the men, Mohammed Rafiq Siddique and Alam Ghafoor, claimed they were threatened and deprived of sleep.


God give me strength. Perhaps the notoriously Islamophobic Dubai regime is using the type of profiling that Home Office Minister Hazel Blears so helpfully discouraged the UK Police from implementing yesterday.

I found her performance incomprehensible.

Its all very well to say that "tackling terrorism is absolutely dependent on the confidence of these communities to feel that they can come forward, give information and be part of the fight against this threat", but how did the meeting she had in Oldham contribute to that?

Who were the "leaders" she met? Who selected them? What right do they have to speak for British Muslims?

How does she know she is not exacerbating the problem by legitimising the unelected representatives with whom she so earnestly consults? My guess is that she has set a process in train that will make the power and authority of the "leaders" effectively dependent on their status as sanctioned grievance mongers and that this will encourage rather than discourage a ghetto mentality.

Worse. If any single one of those she met yesterday is an apologist for criminals she will have made it more difficult not easier for other members of the community to speak out.

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