Britain: Special Branch detain documentary actors and former Guantánamo prisoners

Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul were part of the “Tipton Three” (the other was Asif Iqbal), British citizens who were held at the base in Cuba for more than two years before they were released in March of 2004. They were never charged by their American jailers with any crime. The young men were all from Tipton in the West Midlands.

Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul were returning from the Berlin Film Festival with Rizwan Ahmed and Farhad Harun, two actors who play them in a new documentary The Road to Guantánamo, when they were stopped and questioned for more than an hour at London’s Luton Airport.

The documentary by director Michael Winterbottom had won the prestigious Silver Bear award at the festival.

The detention of the four men was a flagrant violation of democratic rights, underscoring the extent to which Prime Minister Tony Blair’s anti-terror laws are leading in the direction of a police state.

The detaining officer told the actor Rizwan Ahmed that he and the others had been stopped at immigration because anyone with “terror links” had to be questioned. But the two ex-Guantánamo prisoners have never been charged, let alone convicted, of any terrorist-related crime, and must therefore be considered, as a legal matter, to have no more “terror links” than any other person entering the country.

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/feb2006/uk-f27.shtml