Click:Poly bag making machine
In “part of a worsening campaign of intimidation,” UK officials have again made a controversial use of the country’s anti-terrorism legislation to detain someone at an airport.
On Monday, human rights activist and member of Yemen’s National Dialogue Baraa Shiban was detained at Gatwick Airport and held under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act.
Just over a month ago, David Miranda, the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, was detained for 9 hours at London’s Heathrow Aiport under the same law.
Shiban also works for Reprieve, a UK charity that “delivers justice and saves lives, from death row to Guantánamo Bay.” In a press release reporting the news of Shiban’s detention, the group also explains that it “works to support the relatives of civilian victims of drone strikes who are seeking legal redress.”
Shiban has also been an outspoken critic of the U.S. drone war. At a May 8 congressional hearing on the U.S. drone program, Shiban said that the strikes not only cause civilian casualties, but that “Every lethal mistake the U.S. makes is kerosene for an insurgency.”
At Gatwick, officials threatened to detain Shiban for 9 hours, and was told, “Your organization has obviously been causing a lot of problems to your country. The relations between your government and the UK are vital for us.”
Following his one-and-a-half hour detention, Shiban stated, “I was stunned when the border agent said I was being held simply because I came from Yemen. It was even more shocking when he spent the entire time asking me about my human rights work and Reprieve, the charity I work for. Is the UK the kind of place that human rights activists are fair game for detention, intimidation, and interrogation?”
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT
Intimidation is exactly what it is, stated Reprieve.
“This is part of a worsening campaign of intimidation of human rights workers going on at the UK border – especially if they are critical of the so-called ‘war on terror,’” stated Cori Crider, Strategic Director at Reprieve. “If there were any doubt the UK were abusing its counter-terrorism powers to silence critics, this ends it.”
In an op-ed in Al Jazeera earlier this month, Shiban wrote:
_______________________
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
Click Here: cheap Cowboys jersey