Vowing to fight on

A radical challenges Britain's plan to expel him.

Yasser Al Sirri is no stranger to British courtrooms.

Since he sought asylum here 11 years ago the Egyptian radical has been in and out of jail, and has successfully fought off attempts to extradite him on terrorism charges to both the United States and Egypt.

As European governments lower their traditional levels of tolerance for radicalism, they are redrawing the lines between civil liberties and national security in the face of terrorist violence.

"Anything can happen," Sirri says, with a shrug of his shoulders. "I am expecting something to happen."

Recently, the Italian authorities summarily expelled a Moroccan imam and two other Middle Eastern men, giving them no chance to appeal under powers introduced since the London bombings that killed 52 people on July 7.

European human rights activists are up in arms, complaining that those sent back to their countries of origin, mostly Middle Eastern nations, face torture.

"It is absolutely scandalous," says Jean-Pierre Dubois, president of the French Human Rights League."

"Are human rights not for all humans, or have we decided that radical imams are monsters?"

The United Nations special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, also condemns the growing trend.

"The risk is very high that these people would be subjected to torture," he warns.

"Most of the Muslim fundamentalists' countries of origin unfortunately do have a clear record of torture."

Collective right

Recognising the dangers, the British interior minister, Charles Clarke, nonetheless insists that "it really is necessary to balance very important rights for individuals against the collective right for security".

Sirri, who runs the "Islamic Observation Centre" in London, (he says it monitors human rights abuses in the Muslim world, but US and British police say it is a conduit for messages among Al Qaida militants), would undoubtedly be arrested if he were sent back to Egypt.

The government there has been seeking his extradition from Britain for 10 years in connection with his alleged role in a 1993 assassination attempt by the "Islamic Group" against the Egyptian prime minister.

Britain, like other European countries, is bound by the European Convention on Human Rights, and by a UN treaty, not to send anyone to a country where he or she runs a serious risk of torture.

The British government, however, is seeking to circumvent this restriction by demanding diplomatic assurances from 10 Middle Eastern and African countries that they would not mistreat any deportees.

So far only Jordan, which has been widely accused of torturing suspects, has agreed to offer an assurance.

Britain says negotiations with Egypt, Algeria, Morocco and other governments are still under way.

But no such understandings would be valid, insists Dr Nowak, an Austrian human rights expert. "Jordan is already a party to the UN Convention against Torture," he argues.

"Why should they suddenly stop torturing? They are already violating a legally binding treaty, so why should they not violate a non-binding diplomatic agreement?"

The Egyptian government broke a similar promise it made to Sweden in 2001, when Stockholm deported Ahmad Agiza only on condition that he be well treated and given a fair trial, Nowak points out.

Stockholm later complained that Agiza had been tried unfairly before a military court, and he complained that he had been tortured.

Sirri trusts British judges not to rubber-stamp government deportation orders.

"If the government gives any judge the political agreement between the UK and Jordan, he will throw it in his rubbish bin," he says confidently.

Clarke, on the other hand, said he hoped that judges reviewing deportation cases would "recast the balance" between individual human rights and national security.

"The right to be protected from torture and ill treatment must be considered side by side with the right to be protected from the death and destruction caused by indiscriminate terrorism," Clarke said.

Bad behaviour list

Clarke issued a list of "unacceptable behaviours" that would prompt deportation orders against foreigners living in Britain.

It includes fomenting, justifying or glorifying terrorist violence; seeking to provoke others to terrorist acts; and fostering hatred that might lead to intercommunity violence.

The move appears to enjoy strong public support. A poll carried out for The Guardian newspaper in August found that 71 per cent of respondents agreed that "foreign Muslims who incite hatred should be excluded or deported from the UK".

That is not how Sirri sees things. "Tony Blair is changing this country from one respected for its human rights to a graveyard of human rights," he charges.

In Egypt, he says, military courts that the British government does not regard as fair have handed down three sentences against him: the death penalty, 25 years' hard labour and 15 years' hard labour.

If he were sent back, he says with a bitter laugh, "I don't know which one they would apply first."

Yasser Al Sirri is exactly the sort of man the British government hopes to be able to expel with its new, tougher deportation policy: He keeps very dubious company and the police are sure he is up to something, but have not been able to pin anything on him or put him on trial.

Sirri was held in Belmarsh prison in London for eight months for providing a letter of journalistic accreditation to the two men who assassinated the Afghan warlord Ahmad Shah Massoud in 2001.

But a British court finally decided he had been an unwitting accomplice in the affair, and let him go.

Sirri insists that "I did nothing illegal in this country and I have not broken any law in this country".

Islamic law, he adds, demands that "anyone who arrives here under asylum cannot do anything against this country. Tony Blair is just using [the London bombings on] 7/7 as an excuse to carry out his agenda".

–The Christian Science Monitor