In 2012 five Muslim men—Babar Ahmad, Talha Ahsan, Khalid al-Fawwaz, Adel Abdul Bary, and Abu Hamza—were extradited from Britain to the US to face terrorism-related charges. Fahad Hashmi was deported a few years before. Abid Naseer and Haroon Aswat would follow shortly. They were subject to pre-trial incarceration for up to seventeen years, police brutality, secret trials, secret evidence, long-term detention in solitary confinement, citizenship deprivation and more. Deport, Deprive, Extradite draws on their stories as starting points to explore what they illuminate about the disciplinary features of state power and its securitising conditions. In looking at these stories of Muslim men accused of terrorism-related offences, Nisha Kapoor exposes how these racialised subjects are dehumanised, made non-human, both in terms of how they are represented and via the disciplinary techniques used to expel them. She explores how these cases illuminate and enable intensifying authoritarianism and the diminishment of democratic systems.

Reviews

“Nisha Kapoor has written a searing indictment of the expansive securitizing state and the racially driven authoritarianism out of which it grows and which it reinforces. A book that more than any other details the crippling impacts of politicized extradition on all those directly subjected to it as well as on social justice more generally. A must-read for all concerned about the secretive erosion of civil liberties and democratic life being carried out in the name of the ‘War on Terror.’”

“A monumental study of how the ‘War on Terror’ has allowed states to operate outside the boundaries of reason and decency. This is courageous research, a book that should be read by all citizens of 21st century states that claim to be fighting extremism but have themselves become extremist states.”

“Kapoor gives us a precise, relentless, fearless analysis of a key space within which state racism has been cultivated. Deport, Deprive, Extradite is crucial to grasping a very British style of authoritarianism.”

“Nisha Kapoor’s work is extraordinarily important, shining a torch on the deep structures of racism that infuse the security state. As the rhetoric of the War on Terror recedes, her research reveals the architecture of punitive practices that now link counterterrorism policing to border control. Her investigations into the new state powers to detain and deport are matched by a concern for the families and communities of those who are targeted, giving an eloquent voice to those who are rarely heard.”