Detention

 

Yet in May 2002, with scarcely a month having passed since his arrival in Britain, Hassan found his movements being shadowed.

 

Not long after, officers from Scotland Yard’s Special Unit and their immigration official colleagues paid Hassan an unexpected dawn visit at his brother’s home. Despite Hassan displaying the Home Office papers as proof that he was not an illegal immigrant as alleged, he was given the option of going to the police station freely or in chains. He chose the former, and his journey through the injustices of false accusations of terrorism began.

 

After the discovery of the Italian passport that had at the time been Hassan’s only hope of survival, immigration officials decided to transfer Hassan to a correctional facility in Leicester some 115 miles away, while they looked into his asylum claims.

 

After repeated protestations of innocence to the antiterrorism officers who interrogated him, Hassan was tempted with the promise of residency for himself, his wife and daughter, if he would comply with demands to supply the names of those he knew – something which he refused to do.

 

After two months, Hassan was returned to London and sentenced to two months (of which he had already served one) on account of the passport he had used to save his life. Being shuttled between prisons and having repeat bail demands refused, Hassan faced racism and prejudice.

 

After 15 months of detention, he was charged under the Terrorism Act in June 2003 and faced extradition to Italy. Despite being found not guilty of terrorism related crimes by the Court of Milan, Hassan’s solicitor informed him that the Home Office were to extradite him to Italy by force.

 

At the very last minute, the extradition order was suspended and he was faced with the new drama of SIAC (Special Immigration Appeals Commission). Following a period of incarceration in HMP Long Lartin, after more than four years of humiliation, Hassan was reunited with his wife and daughter in 2007.

 

“For this country to sign this memorandum of understanding with Libya that I would not be harmed means Libya practice torture against its people otherwise why would a Memorandum be needed? By seeking this so called “Memorandum of Understanding’’ the UK acknowledges that Libya does carry out torture. You can go and search yourself in the Human Rights.org website and read about the prisoners in Libya. More than 12,000 Muslim brothers were shot in the Prison of Abu-Salem in Tripoli by the same person who signed this memorandum! And they wanted me to be in the same prison where the blood of those innocent Muslims is still not dry yet. Britain simply forgot who Gaddaffi is; the Dictator who ordered to kill more than 258 people by bombing the Pan-Am aeroplane in Lockerbie in Scotland and his bad reputation is well known to everyone in this country. The funny thing is, the European who signed this Memorandum was himself expelled from Britain to Libya in the past decade as he was thought to be a threat to the national security for the UK and he is currently wanted by the French authorities for bombing the French plane in the desert of Niger, which killed 140 passengers on board at the time. What I am trying to say is this so called “Memorandum’’ was being dealt by a very big mafia in Libya, by people who themselves should be in prison for the crimes they have committed against humanity. By signing this so called “Memorandum of Understanding’’ the UK government was willing sign our life away to these people who would not even ensure the rights of animals let alone human beings. It makes a mockery of the so-called civilised democracy and human rights the UK professes to uphold and uses as an excuse to invade countries like Iraq and Afghanistan claiming to be bring democracy and human rights to these countries and removing dictatorship, when the UK itself deals with these very dictators as and when it suits it.

 

“The irony is how the UK government is courting Libya now and in particular Gaddafi when only less than twenty years ago Libya was denounced by the West as the country which harboured terrorists and Gaddafi was reviled as an enemy of the West in the same way Osama Bin Laden is today. Most recently Tony Blair himself visited Libya and announced Gaddafi as the West’s ally against terrorism and resumed diplomatic relations with Libya! This is the same way the USA and UK courted and allied itself with Iraq in the 1980’s when Saddam Hussein was murdering innocent people and any political opponents using weapons supplied by the UK and the UK government now uses those same crimes against Saddam Hussein to invade Iraq claiming it had a moral obligation to the world and the Iraqi people to remove a dictator! The double standards and the blatant hypocrisy of the UK government towards countries which torture is clear for everyone to see and the UK government wonders why Muslims feel angry?”

 

Faraj Hassan was subjected to a control order after his deportation order to Libya was deemed unlawful. He was also placed under a UN sanction order which denies him the ability to earn any money or support his family.

 

Faraj later died in a motorcycle accident. May Allaah have mercy on him.  

 

Condition

 

Near the gates of Jannah. Inshaa Allaah.