Lives were being ruined and few hands were raised in help. Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?

 Lilian Hellman on the McCarthy years in America.
 

 
We were arrested in December 2001 and taken straight to Belmarsh prison. We know that the police in this country have enormous powers to investigate suspected terrorists. Why did no one ever speak to us? Why were we never asked a single question before being locked up as terrorists? We have never had a trial. We were found guilty without one. We are imprisoned indefinitely and probably forever. We have no idea why. We have not been told what the evidence is against us. We are here. Speak to us. Listen to us. Tell us what you think and why. If you did, you would no longer believe we were a threat to this country. You would think perhaps that there was not the emergency you have imagined here. Everyone is giving their opinion about us. Why not think of coming to us first, rather than locking us up and never speaking to us?

The Forgotten Detainees, 26.0204

 

The unique experiences of a small group of Arab and Algerian men and their families living in Britain, mostly since the 1990s, show an unseen side of British racism and islamophobia at the official level, encouraged across the media, and which has served as a form of social control of the muslim community in general. Fear of these people has been deliberately stoked, by bracketing them together and by their branding as terrorists. Myths about them have mushroomed, as they have remained unknown, shadowy "others". It is symbolic of their "unknown" status that they are almost all referred to only by an initial, such as Mr X, by court order. With the well-founded fear of guilt by association in the post 9/11 atmosphere, it is not surprising that few people from the muslim community have wanted to break through the isolation imposed on these families by the British authorities.

This paper is based on the experiences of a dozen muslim families and several single men, all living in Britain, and where the men are either subject to house arrest, or prison, under anti-terrorism legislation, but without them knowing what they are alleged to have done. Some are fighting deportation to Jordan or Algeria, where they originally came from, or extradition to the US.

The arbitrary arrests, secret evidence against them, the shock of injustice, humiliation, and sudden loss of control over their lives in Britain, have caused deep and lasting trauma, and, by re-running old experiences of arbitrary violence by authorities elsewhere, reawakened old Post Traumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD) symptoms. The failure of UK law to protect them, or help them to challenge successfully many aspects of what British authorities have done to them, despite many dozens of court appeals and Judicial Reviews on behalf of many of these individuals, has been one of the most painful and difficult psychological burdens they have had to try to adjust to.

Most came to the UK as refugees, or married refugees already in the UK. Some details from other families and individuals in similar situations in the UK -- notably some Guantanamo Bay families - are also included. In most cases the identities are disguised to safeguard their privacy. All have been visited and/or interviewed by me repeatedly over periods of between one and six years.

These men and their families were caught up on the fringes of some of the great political currents in the late twentieth century, which proved impossible to navigate for them as individuals, and which brought them to Britain, hurriedly, and in many cases without the background or language skills to cope with it.

For a decade or so they lived peacefully, raised families, felt safe, and had little to do with the host country, remaining in rather restricted arab muslim circles. But, the political and social aftermath in the West of September 11 2001, and then of the London and Madrid bombings, brought changes in the Anti-Terrorism law in Britain, and a dramatic rise in islamophobia in the host community -- clearly visible in the media, and frequently underlined in public statements. Fear of muslims became a widespread attitude. And muslims in general began to suffer casual hostility in every kind of  routine encounters from shopping and bus journeys, to dealing with bureaucracy and officialdom.

But for this group the change in life was dramatic and terrifying. In a fundamental misconception of British foreign and domestic policy, muslim opponents and victims of repressive and corrupt Arab regimes allied to the West -- who had sought and found sanctuary in Britain -  became targeted as terrorist threats to Britain. Many of these men were previously well known to British intelligence officials who had found them useful sources and go-betweens. But, in the changed climate, that was over-ridden by new allegations about these people, and demands for their return, from the intelligence services of the regimes they opposed -- regimes like Egypt and Jordan whose leaders were close to the UK, and anxious to be seen as allies in the "war on terror".

The truth was that these people had sought only safety in the UK, and their political focus (if they had it) was in the countries they had fled. They posed no threat to Britain. They lived parallel lives to the rest of the country, rarely intersecting socially, politically, linguistically. But in a climate of fear stoked by the authorities, these families became convenient scapegoats -- unknown, and easily demonised.

Among psychological patterns observable among these families in Britain in this new period are:

 *The experiences of these families in the UK have made them feel extremely isolated, very fearful, and above all powerless. Under Control Orders or deportation bail whole families began to live under virtual house arrest, a life of strict rules designed to punish them -- and to impel them towards leaving Britain -- as some of them did, voluntarily. Prime Minister Blair himself wrote a scribbled note, "get them back" on a Home Office letter dated April 1 1999 about a deportation case of an Egyptian, Hani el Sayed Sabaei Youssef, which the government then incidentally lost.[i] Mr Blair's personal involvement in this case, laid out in the judgement, and his wish reported there to "narrow down" the list of assurances required from the Eygptians before the four men in question could be extradited from Britain, illustrate how, from the top in Britain, the tone was set that these people were utterly expendable.

*All have experienced a state of personal siege, which mirrors the psychological impact of the siege in Gaza and the closures in the OPT - which are an important part of the mental landscape of most of these people, though their everyday lives in the UK painfully lack the reinforcement of the lived communal experience of Palestine. Bail and Control order conditions which prohibit virtually all social interaction reinforce both feelings of fear about breaking the rules inadvertently by speaking to people met on the street or in the mosque, and feelings of isolation.

 *All, including children, have lost the ability to trust. All feel betrayed by authorities, and many know they have also been betrayed by former friends and colleagues.

*One measure of the interior drama that transformed these men at the hands of the British authorities is that, of the 12 men arrested on 19 december 2001, eight were driven into mental illness and four into florid psychosis.[ii] More than half of them were assessed as already suffering mental health problems associated with their torture and/or prison experience at home.[iii] Other muslim men of foreign origin were arrested as early as 1998 and as late as 2005 and have also suffered mental breakdowns leading to stays in Broadmoor Secure Mental Hospital, and subsequent dependence on medication to function. They come from backgrounds where such mental illness is a real stigma and therefore almost impossible to acknowledge, not as in Britain, seen as a common problem to be dealt with as a matter of course.

*Mental illness manifestations have gone across the spectrum from repeated suicide attempts and mental breakdowns, to depression and acute anxiety, including among their wives, and their children where bed-wetting and withdrawn behaviour are common. Children are also frequently re-traumatised by the constant reminder of their father's vulnerability, through repeated court appearances, or unannounced home visits from police, often while they are sleeping. Such visits may last as long as four or five hours of thorough searching. This is a routine condition of their bail. Control Orders and deportation bail conditions also mean unannounced visits from the private company responsible for their electronic tag and the special telephone which they have to use to confirm their presence up to five times a day, including during the night, and whenever they leave the house or return. Acute anxiety never lets up as the tags malfunction repeatedly and fail to register at the company's central control. So, a man sleeping quietly, or playing with his children, can be arrested, taken to court and accused of having broken his bail conditions. A breach of the conditions can mean a five year jail sentence.

*Media also plays a role in re-traumatising both adults, and, significantly, children -- they watch and re-watch videos in which their fathers, or men they know of, feature as victims. They strongly identify with children like Mohamed Durra, shot by Israeli soldiers as his father tried to shield him with his body, or the two ten year old girls, Ghadeer Jaber Mokheimer and Raghda Adnan Al-Assar, who were shot in school in Gaza in separate incidents in 2004. The families' television diet tends to be Al Jazeera and other Arabic channels on which they watch the daily violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine, and feel even more alienated from Britain, which is their home in name, but not in giving a sense of safety.

*Physical symptoms in many women have also been very serious, and often go untreated, partly because anxiety and depression sap the mother's energy as well as self-esteem, so she does not want to go to the doctor, Additionally, the overwhelming logistical difficulties of organising family life as a single woman with a lot of children in an unfamiliar environment, means going to the doctor for herself is too low on the list of priorities, while the language barrier is often another disincentive.

*Stronger psychological coping mechanisms are noticeable in the Palestinian and Jordanian families, compared with those from India, Iraq, Libya, Egypt. This is partly manifested in impeccably clean and tidy homes, extremely close family relations, and high achieving children, especially girls. The families are in constant touch with their extended families, by telephone to Jordan and the OPT, and even those who are not allowed internet are abreast of events there.

*Better coping, and more capacity for joy appear in the women than in the men.

*Fathers/husbands suffer a huge psychological burden from feeling their place as the provider and the head of the household undermined by their situation, which has robbed them of dignity in front of their wife and children. Acute depression, suicide attempts, violence against family members, attempts to control minutiae in the home, mirror earlier findings of GCMHP work on the psychological problems of fathers in Gaza humiliated in arrests by Israeli Defence Forces.[iv] In some cases this comes to be coupled with the classic self- centred focus of an invalid.

*A heavy psychological burden lies on the children, especially the boys who must take a responsibility they are not mentally or emotionally equipped for, far too early and with long term consequences yet to emerge, but not difficult to imagine from the anger they express. The children often express mistrust of everyone, in even quite trivial situations. Boys report having been bullied at school, and being told their fathers are terrorists. The response can be fear, tears, incomprehension and withdrawal, but also can be rage hidden behind a boastful, "yes, he is and he can strike you all down so you'd better be careful of me." Other children report teachers' being unwilling to help them, or excluding them from courses they want to take. "Do you think it is because of my Dad?"

*Older children, especially boys, are frequently casualties in UK society. They are "lost" to drugs, gambling on machines, petty stealing, to the despair of their mothers. The loss of the father's influence has been catastrophic, leaving them undisciplined and without role models, and this is probably irreversible, as they have done so poorly in school that their chances of employment are slim. There is no intervention from nearby mosques, nor, in these cases, from the absent father's friends.

*Girls are sometimes married early and without finishing studies, as their parents seek at all costs to prevent them from becoming part of the dominant teenage culture in UK and risking dishonour to the family. Mothers speak of the ease of organising "benefits marriages" for such girls who may have british passports, but for many they bring another layer of depression and feelings of powerlessness about the future.

*Alienation from the host community is more or less complete, and reinforced by a rejection of the society they are living in. For the men, acute disappointment with their choice of base for their family brings them to blame themselves. "How was I such an idiot?", and "I was so stupid to believe your stories about your respect for democracy, human rights etc." The rejection now of British society has a significant cultural aspect, ranging from open disgust at the portrayal of women in advertisements on billboards, to avoiding virtually all British media and entertainment. This leaves the families to find Islam as the only source of identity (except for the Palestinians, who do have a distinct Palestinian identity). The rejection also leads to difficult intra-generational negotiations, and to another layer of disappointment when the vast majority of the muslim community has no interest in helping them or being associated with them. The fear of guilt by association within the muslim community is well understood, but serves to make the families feel even more stigmatised.

Helen Bamber, co-founder and director of the Helen Bamber Foundation for survivors of torture and human rights violations, has decades of working with people in the UK with experiences similar to these families. She has also treated several of the men who returned from Guantanamo and has noted impressive recoveries from suffering "incredible injustice" and torture. "It is striking how strong their sense of solidarity was, they were simply not going to show pain in front of the US guards, who they considered stupid. There is a parallel to what I found working with survivors of torture under the Pinochet regime in Chile, they saw their torturers as animals, and were contemptuous of them."

Ms Bamber also concurs from her experience with the general findings above: the widespread serious PTSD; the stronger coping abilities of women to men; the extra sense of resistance of Palestinian families; the extremely serious stress on children, often from other children's bullying; the failure of the host community to even begin to meet these psychological needs. [v]
 

Family A -- Control Order[vi]

The home in West London is in a short row of small houses, overshadowed by large blocks of flats. In the little patio in front there are artificial flowers, and a barbecue, lines of clothes drying, and children's bikes.

Just inside the front door is a neat row of shoes along the side of the small porch, which leads into the sitting room -- impeccably neat too.

Three girls sit in a row on the sofa, but rise politely to greet a female visitor with kisses. Two younger boys are bent over the new baby in his chair on the floor, laughing, kissing him, and rocking his chair.

While their mother fetches tea and fruit, the two oldest girls, in their early teens, volunteer that they want to be doctors, the third says she wants to be a writer. They give off an air of careful old-fashioned manners, close siblings, high aspiration.

So far, so reassuringly normal.

But this family's London life is so far from normal that few people in Britain could imagine it.

Mrs A's Palestinian family originally came from Hebron, re-established themselves in Jordan, where all are educated professionals, with Jordanian nationality. Mrs A and the five oldest children now hold British passports, the children have attended British schools and speak perfect English, though only Arabic within the family.

The husband and father, Mahmoud, is a stateless Palestinian from a Gaza family, brought up in Jordan. (He is one of two who had their anonymity waived at his own request, but his wife keeps hers for the rest of the family where possible.) As a teenager in Gaza, Mahmoud suffered acute PTSD after arrest by the Israeli Defence Force.

Mahmoud came to Britain as a refugee after some years in Pakistan and Afghanistan doing charity work. After the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan, the US and Saudi funding for such projects dried up, and the Pakistani security services turned against their former prot??. Meanwhile, the political mood at home in Jordan had hardened against anyone suspected of being linked to the Islamic extremism associated with the jihad in Afghanistan, his family in Gaza was out of reach, so he brought his family to Britain where he knew others who had found refuge.

He continued fund raising for his Afghan schools, travelling in Britain and showing his photographs of the projects he had been involved in. But then everything changed when Mahmoud was among the group of a dozen muslim men arrested in Britain after Sept 11 2001 and held under Anti-Terrorism laws without trial in Belmarsh prison. His English is not good and he had lived very much in an arab reality in London even before the British prison experience which reinforced his Arab, Muslim, and victim mentality. Being in Belmarsh in late 2001 without knowing why, or with any idea how long it would last, drove him to despair. He, like others in this muslim group, attempted suicide -- the first of what would become many attempts. He was moved to Broadmoor secure hospital for some time. Medication became essential to controlling his moods and ability to function.

The hearings for him and others in this group of men were held in the Special Immigration Appeals Court (SIAC) where much of the evidence was heard in secret, even the men's lawyers not being allowed to know what was being held against them. The unique system of SIAC special advocates - barristers who can see the state's secret evidence against these men but not disclose it - has been publicly discredited since Ian Macdonald QC resigned as a Special Advocate in 2004, saying that his role was, "to provide a false legitimacy to indefinite detention without knowledge of the accusations being made and without any kind of criminal charge or trial. For me this is untenable." For Mahmoud it was unbearable.

In December 2004 Britain's House of Lords ruled such detention without trial of these foreigners was unlawful, and in 2005 the men were released, though on strict Control Orders, amounting to house arrest. The basic rule remained the same -- they were suspected of terrorism links, but the evidence was kept secret from them and their lawyers.

In the aftermath of the London bombings of July 7 2005 Mahmoud and the others were all rearrested with early morning police raids on their homes, or, in one case in the hospital where he was being treated for depression. All but Mahmoud were then served by the Home Office with deportation orders - to the very places they had left as refugees.

Mahmoud could never be deported, as he is stateless. His Control Order was set with a curfew between 7.00pm and 7.00 am, and five times every 24 hours  he had to use a special phone to check in to the private company which monitors men on Control Orders. Often the phone malfunctioned and he has to repeat the call several times, with frustration visibly rising to fever pitch. Initially he also had to report daily to a police station, though this provision, and his electronic tag, were dropped on appeal as they were causing him such acute anxiety and anger, often expressed in a public drama inside the police station.

No mobile phones, or internet connection, or memory stick are allowed. Noone can visit his home without special clearance from the Home Office -- and most of their friends, often refugees themselves, are afraid to be vetted, in the climate of fear in the muslim community. Worse, the stigma of the Control Order reduced his previous circle of friends dramatically, causing him acute feelings of humiliation as he saw people turn away from him in the street or the mosque. He became paranoid.

Home became a kind of prison for Mahmoud's wife and the children after he returned from the three years of actual prison. At one point it became so unbearable that the Home Office had to find a separate place for him to stay, though he missed the children too much for this to be a viable solution. Their father's rage against the injustice he felt, rose with every passing month, and exploded in many ways, unpredictable and acutely frightening for the children, although they, particularly the boys, have remained extremely attached and loyal to him. They fiercely confront police officers when they visit the house, demanding answers for why they have done so much harm to their father. Mahmoud has had to be in a wheelchair after a struggle with prison guards after he complained violently over their refusal to hurry to the aid of a cell-mate who had fallen into a coma. (He was back in prison for a few months for a breach of his Control Order in 2007.)

 After that injury to his back, he could not go upstairs, and had to sleep in the living room. He rarely went out, except to the mosque on Friday, deeply wounded that even in his own community people shunned him, fearing that they could become suspects if they befriended him. One friend, also a Palestinian, remained always on hand to accompany him to hospital or to court, a model of selfless solidarity. Isolation eroded Mahmoud's identity as the can-do man who built girls' schools in Afghanistan, raised money across Britain for orphanages with his photographs of dirt poor villages, and who, in Belmarsh was the renowned carer for every sick man.

Only at the birth of a new son, in early 2008, celebrating with his male friends, there was again a flicker of the pride and joy of the man he used to be before he was ground down by a society which would not accommodate him.

His wife's words in mid 2007 reveal her strong sense of conflicted loyalties, and the deep anxieties about her children:

My children are my life. As well as ordinary school, I home school my children??..they work hard, we all do. I don't like what I see of english education. It's a poor standard, even in primary school -- its all going out, going on trips.

And English children don't have respect, not even for their parents. Mine, I'm with them all the time, even if they're watching TV I sit with them, so I know what they see.

I'd kept it all very secret and private that my husband was in prison. After he was arrested all those years ago, with all the others, and the media wrote about them being terrorists, we moved from New Malden to west London,??? no one knew about my husband. I never told them at my children's school. I just kept it to myself. Well, I do have two friends.

Two years ago, after I went home for the summer, I left my eldest daughter at home, there in Jordan with my mother. For me to leave her??, for me to be without her??only a mother could know what it means, but it's a better life for her there I thought, a normal life for a child, even if it meant being without her mother. It was such a hard, hard decision.

Then last year I left the second one, she's a very brilliant child, she does so well at school, but here all the restrictions of her life, because of her father, like no Internet, she doesn't do as well as she could, like other children, and the tension, the tension, in the house,??. of course I could see it was holding her back.

The older one, I think she's more emotionally affected by everything that's happened, she needs her mother??.

I'm torn, should I bring her back into all this conflict and difficult life? Should I?

You're supposed to just accept, however hard your life is with your husband -- no man is perfect. Sometimes, I don't even like speaking to my family on the phone. They just don't know what its like living here in my situation, like this, how could they understand, or even imagine it? My two friends here, they tell me, you have to make your family understand how it is here for you.

Last year when I was in Jordan for the summer I really didn't want to come back here. I tried speaking to my mother and explaining, but she always said, "he's a good man, he's having a hard time, you have to go back to him."

Of course I did come back, in fact I was pregnant again, and the baby was coming soon, I brought all the children to see their father, but thinking it was just temporary.  I worried so much about leaving the other five children when I went to the hospital -- very few people have Home Office clearance to visit us. And I worried about whether my husband would get permission to come with me outside his curfew time. Maybe I should just have the baby at home with all of them around. My head was giving me a different answer every five minutes. Its all my responsibility?.. all of them, even my husband, are my responsibility.

When I came back this time the british police they took my passport. Why? They asked me questions about my husband, but they know everything about him -- he has a tag, he rings in five times a day, he's in a wheelchair since the last time in Belmarsh. Where could he go, to do what? 

The tension in the house is palpable. An experienced psychiatrist, called in after a crisis caused by an early morning police raid in spring 2008, supposedly to check that Mahmoud was in fact home, talked to both parents over several hours, and was visibly shaken by the level of family distress. The children then were not in their London schools as they had been in Jordanian schools for two terms, and it took some months to get them re-established in the British system. There was no respite from them seeing the adult pain

Mahmoud had then been on a Control Order for three years. Lord Carlile QC, the government's Independent Reviewer of anti-terrorist legislation, stated in his third report, in February 2008, that Control Orders, which are reviewed on an annual basis, should not be used for longer than two years except in rare cases.[vii]

Numerous court appeals to modify Mahmoud's conditions have been made over the years -- some citing this opinon of Lord Carlile - but without real success, despite many high level reports written by psychiatrists and social workers about his and his family's intolerable stress levels.

One appeal in spring 2008 actually resulted in the conditions being made worse -- with daily reporting to a police station reinstated after a year or more without it. Mahmoud found this beyond bearing, and on day one inside the police station he slashed his wrists and took an overdose. Covered in blood, he was rushed to a secure hospital wing where he went on a hunger strike for more than a month, even refusing water or ice cubes despite appeals from his family, lawyers, friends, and from religious authorities. His desperation in hospital was so acute that he was constantly on the phone to any sympathetic ear, with a litany of complaints -- against his Control Order conditions, against the psychiatrist who was assigned to him, demanding everything be changed, and that a travel document be given him so he could leave Britain for ever. That he could really leave was a fantasy which reflected the fragility of his mind's grip on reality, and the pressure cooker he felt he was living in. Only the patience and kind attention day and night of his solicitors finally saved his life by persuading him to start to take water again.

This new strain on Mrs A and the children over more than a month was acute. Her husband was persistently phoning from the hospital and telling her to go to the media about his case -- something he has done constantly, but which she has wanted to shield the children from, as well as wanting her own privacy. Visits to the hospital with six children were extremely difficult -- a long journey with several changes of bus, and then sometimes the hospital would not allow the baby in, nor would they allow the baby to stay outside with the two older girls. Nor was it an easy decision for her to let the children see their father so weakened and diminished, but still demanding they be brought to him.

Mahmoud was finally released home on a liquid diet, with a badly damaged liver and a serious infection throughout his body. But he collapsed on the way home and had to be readmitted to another hospital as an emergency case. Some days after he returned home a letter from the Home Office informed him of new conditions to his Control Order: he could no longer speak on the phone to Moazzam Begg, the former Guantanamo detainee who had been one of his main sources of support, one of those who Mahmoud constantly telephoned in his most acute times of stress, and also no woman in a burqa could enter the house, in case the robe was actually hiding a man.

The summer holidays loomed as a very difficult period. The six children were unable to go to their family in Jordan because Mrs A had not got her passport back from the British authorities after seven months, but in any event her loyalty meant she would not leave her severely sick husband, even to give the children a breathing space. Mahmoud was just well enough to attend part of a week long hearing in the Court of Appeal in late July 2008, held partly in closed session, but that experience made him feel even more impotent/powerless and angry. (Two concessions were made, allowing him to drop the night phone call, and to receive visits from women without vetting. But for Mrs A this was a desperately disappointing result, "seven years of this life, how can anyone imagine we can bear this continuing.")

Through all these years Mrs A has never told her mother in Jordan the details of how extremely difficult her life in Britain is, because her mother is not strong and she doesn't want to worry her. However, an erroneous article appeared in the arab press about Mahmoud in mid 2008, linking him to serious terrorist accusations, and her brothers in Jordan phoned her when they saw it, and were unable to be convinced that the article was totally inaccurate, bringing a fresh layer of stress on her, and fresh outbursts of anger from her husband which shook the household.

Mrs A takes the whole weight of the family anxiety and sorrow on herself. Her matter-of ?fact acceptance of her family's extraordinary life style is instantly recognisable for anyone who has seen women in Rafah or Khan Yunis still living with their families in the one small part of their house which has not been destroyed by an IDF hit, or others living in tents beside a bombed housing block. And it is typical of Mrs A's lack of self-pity, her strength, her generosity, and her sense of herself, that she and her daughters make beautiful meals for their rare visitors, and that she is able (with her baby) to be the first person to take a meal across London for someone who has just had a baby, or a death in the family. It is just like the women in Gaza who among the ruins of their home send a child out to borrow a chair or fetch a warm soda for a visitor.

SIAC Deportation bail -- the Algerians - Mr B

Mr B has had much of the same experience of Britain since 2001 as Mahmoud. He is marked by prison, by SIAC, and by the years in limbo with his lawyers contesting the attempt to deport him to Algeria. By late 2008 he had been living in a mental hospital with a 22 hour a day curfew for more than two years, and all the usual bans on connection to the outside world -- no internet, no mobile phone, no visitors except cleared by the Home Office. Appeals for an extension of his hours out, so that he could visit the mosque during the special Ramadan prayer hours, have been systematically refused.

Mr B came to Britain in the 1990s, like many young Algerian men fleeing the compulsory military service and the violent Islamic insurgency that gripped much of the country, particularly his home area of Kabylie, after the overturned election of 1991/2 won by the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS). Many of these young men were also fleeing the long-running economic crisis at home that left tens of thousands of young men without jobs, idle on the streets of Algiers. In London many of them -- not including Mr B who is from an educated, secure background and dreamed of going to the US to study, perhaps astronomy - soon found their illusions of making a living faded. They formed a resilient sub-culture of petty criminals, with multiple aliases, a milieu infiltrated by UK, French and Algerian intelligence services which offered money or the regularising of immigration status in return for spying on the community.  It was a harsh environment to survive in, and marked all who knew it, including Mr B, with as great a suspicion of UK authorities as they already had of Algerian intelligence, and with doubts about making a long term, family life in Britain.

However, nothing had prepared any of them for the next phase of their lives. Mr B was arrested at the same time as the dozen other Muslim men, including several Algerians, in December 2001 in the post September 11 security sweep, and taken to Belmarsh. The psychological impact of his time in Belmarsh was devastating enough to his mind to get him taken him out of prison, and into a secure mental hospital. He was still vulnerable enough to be in a normal hospital - after the House of Lords had ordered their release - when he was re-arrested and taken back to prison again after the London bombings, then later released on bail again back into hospital.

His life is reduced to his hospital room, with all his papers and belongings in bags and boxes, and to designated streets between the hospital and his lawyers' offices and the mosque. He rides a bicycle during his two hours out every afternoon, and would like to swim daily as he did in a previous life, but the pool is too far. He is charming and as gregarious as his life permits, making firm friendships with everyone in his daily life, nurses, lawyers, shopkeepers, and the few people cleared to visit him. Noone can visit without being given tea or a meal. He grows pots of basil and mint on his high window sill, and dries mint for tea.

As a single man he is even more isolated than most of the others, and his experience has made him so wary of the authorities' reach over his life that he never phones his former prison colleagues, the people he is closest to because of what they have been through together.  He has chosen, like Mrs A, and others, to keep the reality of his situation hidden from most of his family. Both his parents died while he was in prison. His mother's few letters are his most treasured possession.

Mr B's intellectual link to the wider world is his interest is Palestine, and he reads widely about it, though his concentration is affected by the last years, and by medication. He also keeps well informed on British politics and society's attitudes to asylum seekers, by reading the newspapers in the hospital common room, visiting his lawyer's office which is within his curfew area, and by a network of phone calls, and meeting friends in the mosque. He is an expert on the various complex legal situations of the other Algerian men he was with in Belmarsh and Long Lartin prisons. For several he was then the translator of their legal papers who they relied on. He has seen up close the trajectory of despair at the interminable legal process that drove some, like Mr H and Mr Q to return voluntarily to Algeria.

The deportations of the Algerians were challenged by their lawyers in a torturous process of court hearings which went from SIAC to the Court of Appeal, from where they were remitted to SIAC for reconsideration, then went back to the Court of Appeal for a second time, then to House of Lords.  By the summer of 2008 the Algerian men's complex process ground through the stages from the case of Mr  B, whose appeal was not yet listed in SIAC because of on-going complications about his real identity, through Messrs Y, Z, and G who had got as far as the first Court of Appeal, to Mr U whose case had gone through both Court of  Appeal hearings, and was listed (with Mr BB, an Algerian electronic engineer, with three small children who applied for political asylum in 1995 and is living under a 20 hour curfew) for a three day hearing in the House of Lords in late October 2008. This would be the test case for the future of all the other Algerians, including Mr B. Because of the House of Lords taking this case, and the protracted appeals procedure, all the Algerian men were released from prison in mid 2008 under SIAC bail after prolonged negotiations by their lawyers with the Secretary of State on their conditions, and the addresses where they were to live.

Some of Mr B's Algerian friends, such as Mr H and Mr Q, stifled beyond bearing by their Control Order rules, ended up making the choice to go back voluntarily to Algeria, after they were promised, by the Algerian authorities, that they had nothing against them and no harm would come to them. They did not however have too many illusions about that promise. Before they left in 2007 they said in a letter to a British newspaper, "we are choosing the alternative of a quick death in Algeria to a slow death here." [viii] Several are married to foreign women, which was certainly part of the extremely difficult decision to go, but not to risk taking their families with them. "Britain has broken my family," said one bitterly as he packed his suitcase ready to leave his beloved children.

Mr H and Mr Q ended up in prison in Algeria - for three and eight years respectively - after an extremely rough time in the 12 days of interrogation after arrest. Evidence against them was given by Mohammed Merguerba, a man who had been tortured in Algeria.  Mr H's letters to his wife, and his mother's reports to her by phone from Algeria, show his deep sadness at being parted from his wife and baby, and his despair at having no chance of his English lawyer being allowed to visit him. But, with the resilience that marks so many of these people, he sent for books to teach English to his fellow prisoners and plans to make a new career in Algeria of english teaching when he is released.

All this is part of the fabric of the calculations of Mr B and his friends accepting their long solitary days under curfew in Britain. And another factor is what can happen to their families in Algeria. Mr H's family, for instance, had had privacy and protection by him having had anonymity ordered by SIAC while he was in the UK, but were drawn publicly into his drama when he arrived home to find that all the information about him based on secret evidence had been passed by the British to the Algerian authorities, and that his name was out in public.

In the early days in Belmarsh in 2002/3 Mr B was one of the circle of Algerians who made a series of extraordinary beautiful pots in the prison pottery studio. For a while this provided a lifeline of humanity for the detained men, all of whom were deeply psychologically affected by a media campaign that branded them as terrorists. Three much admired exhibitions of the work have been held in London in recent years. Mr B's large, elaborate, blue pot was the centrepiece of the exhibitions.

But, five or six years on from when he made that, Mr B, isolated in his hospital room, and worn down by the long legal battles against accusations that have never been put to him, is not the man of sustained creative work that he was, and besides, the physical conditions imposed on his life make such work impossible as he could not be in the classroom with other students. It is a sad irony that an excellent pottery workshop is within his curfew area.
 

Mr G, Mr U and Mr Z

Mr G, also an Algerian in his 30s, lives with his wife and two children under a 20 hour curfew and all the other usual conditions. He too passed through the ordeals of the same series of post 9/11 and  post 7/7 arrests, and secret deportation hearings.

In his days in Belmarsh serious depression made him try more than once to take his own life. After his first attempt he was the first of the twelve men to get bail -- on conditions so strict that for eight months he was under total house arrest, with no phone, no visitors, which affected him extremely badly with serious depression controlled by medication. Mr G was once a polio victim who walked with crutches, though strong and very cheerful, but today he is in a wheelchair. He lives in the same limbo without any prospect of what his family's future might be.

His wife described in 2007 the texture of their lives, under the shadow of desperation for a future, any future, for her family:

Our lives can't be balanced because anything that will happen in this country - like when 7/7 happened - he can go back to prison. For what?

He lost all his trust in this country.  Now they even want to send him back to a country that everyone knows has a bad record on human rights. Those who went back to Algeria from here, some are in prison and we hear about their torture, and the informers who tell false stories because they too were tortured. It's too much, he doesn't trust any more.

If he goes to any country now, they will know the label ?terrorist' that the British put on him, it's following him everywhere.

We know we can't stay here, we would like to go to any country that would accept us.  To live freely without any control, that's what we need. We'd be happy to accept any country. But which would accept us?  That's the question.

I'd like very much to be in any country that would have us, where we can have a normal life.  Any country.  Because I think this is very priceless.

Anywhere you can live free, we are happy to go.

The "label of terrorist" that Mr G's wife referred to is a source of deep pain in all these families. Several wives described how they hid their situation not only from their children's school and from neighbours, as Mrs A did, but even from their own doctor. One said she always presented herself as a single mother, another that she feared that she would be refused treatment if the doctor knew her husband was a suspected terrorist.

 

SIAC Deportation bail  - The Jordanians

Three men are under house arrest fighting threatened deportation to Jordan after the same journeys through Belmarsh and Long Lartin prisons as the Algerians, and release to house arrest in mid 2008. Some idea of the incoherence of the British authorities in their dealings with these men can be gauged from the experience of one of them, Mr VV, who was released to an address in an area of a British city where he knew noone. At first sight his wife refused to accept the address, but he was so desperate to get out of jail that he decided to accept anyway. He soon found it was an area which the police considered so dangerous for a muslim that he was urged by them to carry a mobile phone whenever he left the house in order to be able to alert them to any danger. But, of course, the terms of his bail -- like all the others - included a prohibition on the use of a mobile phone.

There are men who became so disturbed by their limbo in Belmarsh prison that admission to the secure mental hospital of Broadmoor was a relief to the family. Mr OO, for instance, was a Jordanian detainee who spent two years in Belmarsh, threatened with deportation to Jordan, never knowing what he was charged with, and ending up paranoid about his lawyers, not phoning his family, and believing he was speaking with djinns and spirits. He had serious brain bleed and was rushed to hospital where he very nearly died. The family were told to say goodbye by the doctors. He was given bail while in hospital, but it was abruptly withdrawn and he was removed without notice back to Belmarsh as he began to recover, though his physical and mental health remained extremely fragile and deteriorating.

Mr OO came to Britain and was accepted as a refugee 15 years before the knock on the door in January 2006. The family built a happy home despite him being chronically ill with diabetes, heart troubles, and various ailments caused by his torture in a Jordanian jail, verified by the Red Cross. His wife managed his care well, and his girls grew up and married.

For the family, the five grown up married daughters, and a younger son, life from 2006 centred round bi-weekly prison visits, and a desperate search for a route to be heard by authorities. "Sometimes I think, perhaps I could visit the mayor of London, or the Prime Minister and just tell him everything -- surely that would end it, if they knew," his wife said once.

Mr OO was moved to Broadmoor Secure Hospital, assured by all that he would be better off there. Initially his wife and lawyers found him happier, but a saga of medication which made him worse ensued, was exacerbated by the Home Office bureaucracy which initially gave permission only for his wife, to visit him. For more than three months  the daughters, who had been used to weekly visits and were consumed with anxiety about his state, boiled with feelings of injustice and victimhood. The grandchildren, used to being constantly in their grandmother's house, with him as a visible fixture in their childhood, missed him badly and openly. The boys in particular spoke as aggressively about the police -- who they blamed for the loss of their grandfather -- as Mrs A's son did.

Mrs OO's own health deteriorated sharply during the two years of extreme anxiety and stress while her husband was in Belmarsh and Broadmoor, and she often suffered sharp migraine, pain in legs and hips, an on-going heart problem, and was hospitalised after an episode of lost consciousness and semi-paralysis. Despite all this she managed to keep her house as a warm, happy refuge for her thirteen grandchildren, and her grown up children never stopped finding new schemes  - repainting rooms, changing curtains, installing singing canaries, to try to raise her low spirits, but this is how she felt in 2007:

Before, I had hope, now I've lost it. We live like over a volcano. Where is our place in this world?  We have made life here. I am British, all my children, my daughters, my thirteen grandchildren -- British. Why is my husband not allowed to be with us here? How can it be that he's supposed to go to Jordan, in his wheelchair, with all his health dramas to cope with? Alone?  Or am I to uproot the five families of my daughters, with their husbands from Germany, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt -- all made lives here?

I'll tell you?..I could never imagine going back to Jordan, Jordan without my mother?I couldn't imagine. She died when I was here, in '97?? just when we were thinking to bring her here. It was, well???. I cant even tell you what it meant to me to be without her??...

Mr OO came home from Broadmoor after six months, but with stringent bail conditions including a 22 hour curfew and restricted visitors. Even his sons-in ?law were not allowed to enter the house, and would stand outside, waiting to take their wives and children home after a visit. Mr OO remained deeply traumatised by his incarceration experience, and by an impending court case contesting the government's attempt to deport him to Jordan. He was too weak to even go to the mosque, and spent most of his time sleeping in the sitting room, surrounded by small children. His fragile health made caring for him a full time job for his wife and daughters.
 

The spectre of extradition to the US

A handful of Eygptian intellectuals, such as the lawyer and newspaper editor, Adel Abdul Bari, have been fighting extradition to the US for almost a decade. As opposition figures they got asylum in Britain on the basis of the torture they had suffered in Egyptian jails, were well known to British intelligence, but overnight became terror suspects after the prominent Eygptian opposition member of  Egyptian Islamic Jihad, Dr Ayman al Zawaheri, joined Osama Bin Laden. The US made a case against them based on the evidence of a man who lived with his family for years on a US witness protection programme.

One of their number, Mr X, died of cancer after years of prison and curfew. Mr Abdul Bari remained in jail, after nearly ten years, still fighting extradition to the US. "I feel like an idiot that I advised him to come," he said in a phone call from prison after his friend died. "Nine years I have been here now, noone can imagine this dark tunnel, the nightmare of not knowing when it will end -- unlike every criminal who knows when his sentence ends - having to depend on pills to keep going. Who could know what it means to make every effort to put on a false face for my children when they visit, but to sense that they can see behind the smile and they know how I really feel? I have noone to speak to but my wife and children now the others ((the Algerians and Jordanians from Long Lartin)) have got bail. We have been living with racism and cruelty from some of the prison officers who show us islamophobia and hatred of muslims every day. We know how muslim prisoners are sent to prisons like Franklin, where they will be punished by the other prisoners -- I wonder, when will it be my turn? If it were not for my religion, I would be dead a long time ago."[ix]

Mr Abdul Bari's sense of safety in Britain for his family during his early years in London was in sharp contrast to the years of being in and out of Egyptian jails where he suffered appalling torture. His good relations with British officials reinforced the feeling of security -- transformed into an anguish at the betrayal. "They know everything, everything." (This experience of betrayal has a direct parallel with one of the Guantanamo men from Britain, Bisher al Rawi, discussed below.)

At home in London for nine years, his wife coped alone with family life including her  oldest daughter's wedding, the birth of her baby, two evictions, which left her daughter sleeping on her mother's living room floor, a plethora of problems with adolescent boys in an inner city school, badly lacking their father's influence, and ending in troubles with the police.

But, as in many of these families, the two little girls did brilliantly at school despite their extreme sadness at missing their father, and tears every time when leaving the prison. One, aged 9, wrote a heart-breaking poem about the teddy bear her father gave her and what it meant to her, which was included in a book of children's poems. Mrs Abdul Bari successfully transformed herself from a homebody who was used to her husband doing everything for her -- even to buying her clothes - fought depression, learned English, fulfilled a childhood dream of studying fashion by going to college. Every day she took the bus, and with her thermos and sandwich sat in the prayer room at lunchtime rather than face a college canteen packed with 18 year olds. The result was a Distinction, and she took the class's top marks.
 

Guantanamo families

The families of British residents held in Guantanamo suffered the same feelings as these other families, of isolation and stigma from being linked to terrorism, as well as the unbearable idea that their separation could go on for ever, especially as there was no logic to the arrests and no idea what charges might lie behind it.

The wife of Jamil el Banna, for instance, who was picked up by the Americans from a business trip in Gambia, and flown to Afghanistan and then to Guantanamo Bay, had only two letters from her husband in three years. His US lawyer, Brent Mickum from one of Washington's most prestigious law firms, finally got to see him in late 2004. To give one small example of the petty cruelty the men suffered, the lawyer was then given 13 letters from Mrs El Banna which the US authorities had withheld from her husband over the years. [x]

Over six years the blackout on knowledge of Guantanamo's reality changed slowly, as the seven British citizens returned home after three and four years, and with new published material in media and books.[xi] Most important was the revelation in academic reports, notably from Seton Hall Law School in the US, of how few of the men were ever involved with Al Qaeda, or with any attacks on US forces.[xii] However,  the information available did little or nothing to change the stigma, and for these wives there was another impact from the new information, which was that they began to know for certain about the torture their husbands were suffering. Mrs El Banna described the impact:

One time my solicitor brought me a report about Guantanamo from the Tipton people.[xiii] It was so bad what they said about my husband's health, and about what happen inside there. What Americans do to men. ?I cant bear it, but I cant show anything in front of the children. I go to sit in the park where the children run and don't see my face. I cant tell my mother, I don't want her to worry, though sometimes she hears from my voice.

I have to be so careful for everyone, the children, my Mum, my husband, his family. Never say a negative word, never show what I feel.

Another wife described being physically sick with horror when someone brought her a cutting from a newspaper describing the hunger strike and force feeding at Guantanamo, and naming her husband as part of it. She was hospitalised for serious depression on several occasions, forcing herself back home for her children's sake with an enormous effort. Her last, heart-breaking, letter from her husband stated simply that he preferred to die.

By 2007, in the months before her husband was released, Mrs El Banna described how she tried to hold what she knew about what had happened to her husband out of her consciousness -- and her childrens'.

I try, I advise myself to try not to watch TV any more, except cartoons for the children, its too much, everywhere blood and pain for Muslims -- Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan.  I tell myself, think of flowers, of trees, of beautiful things, try to relax. But, then??.

My children, even the little one, they see those orange suits on TV, and they say, is it Daddy, I tell them no, no, he's not like that, your Dad.

For years I didn't tell them anything about Guantanamo, just that Dad had a problem with his passport and would come soon.

But now they know. They know too many things.

The oldest, in the last two years he's done so many TV, and reading in meetings letters he wrote to his Dad. He wants to do it- for his Dad as he's the oldest, but also it makes him angry when nothing happen afterwards. He's a child??.but he hasn't had a childhood for half of his little life.

Far removed from these families' lives, in Washington a legal battle of unprecedented complexity was being played out as 600 or so well-known American lawyers took Guantanamo detainees as clients and fought the Bush administration's attempt to make Guantanamo a legal black hole, to use the famous characterisation of the British Law Lord Johan Steyn.[xiv] Landmark cases before the US Supreme Court were fought in 2004, 2006 and 2008 -- Rasul v Bush; Hamdan v Rumsfeld; Boumedienne v Bush - to get habeas corpus rights for the detainees. The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights  coordinated much of these legal initiatives over the years, and a handful of British lawyers worked through them for the British families.[xv]  The lawyers fought cases at every level of the US federal system, and in the influential liberal media, such as the New Yorker, New York Review of Books, New York Times editorials, there was consistent critical coverage of the politicisation of the US judiciary under President Bush and the determination of the White House to keep Guantanamo's prisoners beyond the reach of the law. But, as with the failed legal challenges in Britain on Control Orders, the long drawn out legal challenges which never saw one of their number brought to court, were another intensification of anger and depression at the deep injustice they were suffering, and their powerlessness to contest it.

One Guantanamo experience exemplified this powerlessness of any muslim man caught up in the welter of unexplained US and British terror accusations, and paying the price of torture and five years of separation from family, despite some very considerable advantages over most of his fellows. Bisher Al Rawi, an Iraqi by birth, whose father was killed by Saddam Hussein, had a middle class British upbringing, an easy-going and obliging nature which had made him no enemies, a good relation with the British intelligence agency MI5 for whom he had done valuable interpretation and liaison work in the post 9/11 period? unpaid, and from a natural inclination to be helpful. Notably he had taken messages between them and the Jordanian, Mr Othman. MI5 had always assured him that should anything go wrong they would look after him. In fact, it was they who betrayed him to the Americans, who interrogated him again and again about the Jordanian cleric. And it took five years of pressure and litigation in Britain before he was returned.

What happened to Mr Al Rawi was a terrifying exemplar of the reach of Guantanamo into the British muslim community, courtesy of  British intelligence. The cooperation between the US and British intelligence agencies, and with their colleagues in a range of muslim countries, in particular Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, Libya, was demonstrated in the interrogations in Guantanamo where foreign agencies were present, in the patterns of "extraordinary rendition" of many muslims, and in the handing over by the British of sensitive personal data from asylum applications and even medical records.[xvi]

The psychological impact of the detailed pooled knowledge the men had of these practices was devastating to their ability to feel any sense of safety or continuity for their lives in Britain.

Mrs El Banna's words just weeks before her husband's ordeal was over, could have been from any of the wives of these men:

I don't care for myself, just the children.

Nothing makes me happy any more.

I still say, thanks God for every minute, thanks for everything, but I'm tired and sad.

Nobody can see my heart.

This time will stay in my heart for ever.  Even when my children grow up and have their happy lives, it'll be in my memory. 

I need a small corner of the world with my children and my husband -- to sit and be relaxed, and live a simple life.

I must forget. I must forgive.

 

The lasting impact of British policy, and the myopic officials who have administered the collective punishment of these families, is incalculable. No outsider can convey the depths of grief, the sheer fear of the unknown, the sleepless nights, of these wives left to manage households and children in a hostile society where they had no resource to turn to, and often no English. The terrors they had often fled from came back to haunt them, and health broke down. Britain, which had been the place of safety their husbands chose for them, became a place of mental torture. And for the men, trust disappeared, and they were consumed with guilt at the misjudgement of the country they had made, and the strain on their families paying for it daily. None of them would say, like Mrs el Banna, "I must forget, I must forgive." Quite simply, their lives have been ruined by Britain.

But something miraculously positive happened too in this small community, kept as isolated as British bureaucracy could organise -- people learned each others' stories, wives met waiting for prison visits, or through the prison fellowship of husbands who in the special muslim wing, cooked communal food, helped each other with art work, discussed books and families, forged bonds of intimacy and respect. As in Gaza, self-respect meant finding an internal strength that outsiders could only wonder at.

Many of these men should have been recognised as leaders of the muslim community in Britain, their strong wives, and families' school achievements, role models for others. It is Britain's loss that instead they were rejected.

Many of the wives spoke of their dream of living somewhere, anywhere, where their family would be free, quiet, peaceful -- as they had dreamed Britain would be -- but the twenty first century appeared unlikely to provide any such haven for this handful of victims of the "war on terror", as Britain did for Ugandan Asians, Canada did for thousands of Palestinians, or the US did for Vietnamese boat people or the hundreds of "lost boys" of Southern Sudan.

 

A longer version of this paper will be published in
Race and Class, London, in January 2009  Volume 50, No 3

 

---