I received the news yesterday that former Guantánamo prisoner Moazzam Begg had been arrested when I was sent an email from Juliet Spare, a journalist working for the Voice of Russia, asking me for a short interview by phone. Once alerted to it, I checked out the coverage (mainly, at that point, the BBC), and spoke to her for a show that was broadcast yesterday, but is not available online, explaining how, to me, it made no sense that, with three other people, he had been “detained on suspicion of attending a terrorist training camp and facilitating terrorism overseas,” as the BBC put it, for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, while Moazzam was held by the US, from January 2002 to January 2005, there was never any credible evidence that he was involved with terrorism in any way, and this is an analysis that I endorse from my reading of his autobiography, Enemy Combatant, and from my own knowledge of Moazzam, based on meeting him on several occasions over the years at events involving Guantánamo.

Secondly, Moazzam must be one of the most scrutinised Muslims in the UK, so — even without the proviso that he has no track record of being a terrorist sympathiser — it seems ridiculous to me that he would get involved with anything that could be construed as terrorism, as it would obviously cause him trouble back in the UK. Moazzam has, on a few occasions since his passport was first returned to him after Guantánamo, spoken to me about his annoyance at being permanently harassed when he left or returned to the UK, but, while this was clearly irritating — and a form of harassment — it also meant that he was aware that he was permanently under scrutiny.

The Moazzam I met was, like many former Guantánamo prisoners, working to expose indefinite detention, “black sites,” “extraordinary rendition” and torture, and, with his background of also sympathising with Muslims struggling against oppression, it was no surprise to me that he had travelled to Syria, where, I presumed, he would be trying to find out about imprisonment and torture, especially as, in the early years of the “war on terror,” Syria had been one of a handful of countries — along with Egypt, Jordan and Morocco — where the US had sent prisoners to be tortured by President Assad’s feared mukhabarat.

In 2010, I reported the stories of nine men held and tortured in Syria — including two Canadian citizens, Maher Arar and Abdullah Almalki — for a major United Nations report on secret detention. Furthermore, since Syria’s horrendous civil war began in March 2011, there have been persistent stories of atrocities — on both sides — although, most recently, the UN has released a report about the “unspeakable” suffering of Syria’s children, and three former war have released a harrowing report suggesting that the government has tortured and executed 11,000 people since the uprising began nearly three years ago.

This evening I recorded an interview about Moazzam with the New York-based journalist Amanda Sears, which will be available soon on her website Left Voices. I’ll make it available as soon as it’s posted, but in the meantime, to add to what I wrote above, I’d also like to point out that Moazzam’s arrest comes one year and two months after his last visit to Syria in December 2012, although it clearly follows on from him having his passport taken away from him on his return to the UK from South Africa just two months ago. This struck me as intimidation, and an attempt to put off any Muslim intending to travel to Syria for any reason, and the arrest seems to be more of the same.

It was significant, I thought, that, as the BBC described it, “West Midlands police said naming Mr. Begg did ‘not imply any guilt,'” and also that Det. Supt. Shaun Edwards said the arrests “were pre-planned and intelligence-led. There was no immediate risk to public safety.” What I also found noteworthy, though, was the fact that “electronic equipment” had been “taken away for forensic analysis.” After the revelations of Edward Snowden, I thought the NSA and GCHQ had spying on our phones and computers sown up, but perhaps the arrests were also a pretext to gain access to contact details — people, for example, that Moazzam may have met who the UK, and presumably US intelligence services think may be of interest to them, even though the “war on terror” has generally demonstrated that the intelligence services don’t always know what they’re doing — reminding me that Moazzam once described them to me as the “not so intelligent intelligence services.”

In addition, as was explained in a press release yesterday by Cerie Bullivant, the Media Officer of CAGE (formerly Cageprisoners), for whom Moazzam is the Outreach Director, “Moazzam has been very open about his international travel and his objectives, including importantly exposing British complicity in rendition and torture. The timing of Moazzam‘s arrest given his travel to Syria took place in December 2012 requires a detailed explanation. The timing coincides with the planned release of a CAGE report on Syria and a major news piece that was due to be televised soon. As with David Miranda it seems those who are engaged in exposing abuse of powers are targeted and smeared to prevent disclosure of vital evidence.”

As CAGE also noted:

This latest action is designed to ensure that any travel to Syria is deemed suspicious. It follows a concerted campaign of harassment against Muslim individuals and charities involved in providing humanitarian aid to the victims of the Syrian crisis. Moazzam Begg is just the latest individual drawn by the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria who has been labelled a terrorist. The purpose is to intimidate and vilify the wider Muslim community so that they are prevented from delivering much needed aid to the Syrian people. Moazzam is an internationally recognised figure on issues relating to due process and human rights. His advocacy on behalf of the Guantanamo Bay detainees has been recognised across the world, resulting in various governments accepting detainees who could not be returned to their countries of origin.

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer and film-maker. He is the co-founder of the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here — or here for the US).

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