Independent report.

Personal information concerning the private lives of almost 1,000 British Muslim university students is to be shared with US intelligence agencies in the wake of the Detroit bomb scare.

The disclosure has outraged Muslim groups and students who are not involved in extremism but have been targeted by police and now fear that their names will appear on international terrorist watch lists. So far, the homes of more than 50 of the students have been visited by police officers, but nobody has been arrested. The case has raised concerns about how the police use the data of innocent people and calls into question the heavy-handed treatment of Muslim students by UK security agencies.

Independent report.

A key government policy on countering extremism in Britain has "stigmatised and alienated" Muslims and undermined community relations, a Commons report says today.

Many Muslims told the cross-party committee of MPs that they believed the purpose of the Prevent programme was to "spy" on Asian communities, and that the Government was using funding to engineer a moderate form of acceptable Islam.

Times article.

Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, has been given 28 days to decide whether a pilot wrongly accused of training the 9/11 hijackers should be exonerated and compensated.

[...]

Mr Raissi was eventually freed in February 2002 but has been unable to resume his career as a pilot because neither the British nor US authorities have been prepared to apologise for falsely accusing him.

Independent leading article.

No one disputes that the threat from terrorism in Britain is real. But hysterical official assertions about the scale of that threat do nothing to make us safer. And the trading of ancient liberties for a thin blanket of security is the very worst way for Britain, as a nation, to respond.

Guardian article.

Last year, during protests against the attack on Gaza, a mixed group of demonstrators clashed with police. But when the alleged culprits were arrested in dawn raids, nearly all those taken were young Muslims.

[...] "I woke up and tried to get out of bed. The next thing is three police officers jump on top of me with their knees, and they handcuffed me so hard I screamed. That's when I really woke up." Hamza had been sleeping in shorts. When he asked if he could put a shirt on the police said no and opened the window. "It was freezing. I was shaking."

Three months earlier, in January last year, Yahia had been outside the Israeli embassy on a fractious demonstration against Israel's sustained bombing of Gaza.

Guardian report.

Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour MP for Islington North who chaired the meeting, said that the sentences amounted to an attack on the Muslim community and the right to protest.

He said: "Some of the sentences that have been handed down to these young demonstrators are extraordinary and out of all proportion to the crimes committed. What possible justification can there be for handing down a year in prison for a 19-year-old lad, studying dentistry, who threw a plastic bottle in the direction of the Israeli Embassy?"

Ed Pilkington in the Guardian.

Abdulrahman Zeitoun is the real-life hero of Dave Eggers's new book. In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina he paddled from house to house in a canoe, offering help to his neighbours. For his trouble, he was arrested as a suspected terrorist.

Article on the Register.

[...] as Reg readers have pointed out, by forcing ID exchange into more and more transactions - buying booze, getting into clubs, getting cops to leave you alone - the government appears to be relying putting the squeeze on youngsters and simply grinding down the rest of us.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the Independent.

at Isleworth Crown Court, Judge John Denniss is industriously sentencing demonstrators who gathered near the Israeli embassy to rail against that state's attack on Gaza, one of the worst acts of state terrorism in recent history. Our government said nothing then, and were therefore complicit. Protesters came from all backgrounds but the vast majority of those arrested were young Muslim men. Dozens are being sent down for insignificant acts of bravado. Some were about to go to university, to train as dentists and the like. Their homes were raided, families cowed and terrified. Joanna Gilmore, an academic expert on public demonstrations, says never before have such disproportionate sentences been handed out, not even with the volatile anti-globalisation protests. Denniss intends his punishments to be a deterrent. To deter us from what? Having the temerity to believe we live in a democracy and are free to march?

And then the crypto-fascist, Aryan Geert Wilders, is invited into the Lords by UKIP and crossbench peers to show his vile anti-Islam film in the name of freedom of expression. Freedom my arse. It is just another entertaining episode of Muslim-baiting. I dare the same peers to now invite David Irving, the Holocaust denier, to share his thoughts freely in the Lords, and get Omar Bakri over from the Lebanon with films of himself making fiery speeches on what to do with infidels. Again Muslims are made to understand that different standards apply to others. We are on trial, always, and always must expect to lose.

Guardian report.

The government will attempt today to have a case about torture heard entirely behind closed doors in a move that some lawyers say would extend secrecy to a new area of hearings, overriding ancient principles of English law.

[...]

"This would set a very serious precedent," said Louise Christian, a partner at Christian Khan who represents Martin Mubanga, one of the claimants, who was also detained at Guantánamo Bay. "If you allow evidence in ordinary civil cases to be kept secret, there is no doubt it will be endlessly used by the government. As the Binyam Mohamed case illustrated, this is really about the government avoiding embarrassment for the reality of their collaboration with the US and all that happened, rather than any real national security issues."

Letter in the Guardian.

Today, the House of Commons will debate whether the control order system will be renewed from another year. We wish to express serious concerns about its renewal. Control orders constitute permanent punishment without trial, whereby the innocent can be placed under house arrest on the basis of suspicion and secret intelligence. Control orders also fail to protect the public from individuals who may be genuinely dangerous.

Guardian report.

Police questioned an amateur photographer under anti-terrorist legislation and later arrested him, claiming pictures he was taking in a Lancashire town were "suspicious" and constituted "antisocial behaviour".

[...]

He and his friend were taking photographs of Christmas festivities on 19 December, after attending a photography exhibition. The last images on his camera before he was stopped show a picture of a Santa Claus, people in fancy dress and a pipe band marching through the town.

He turned on his video camera the moment he was approached by a police community support officer (PCSO). In the footage, she said: "Because of the Terrorism Act and everything in the country, we need to get everyone's details who is taking pictures of the town."

Form Raw Story.

Nick George, a student at Pomona College in California, was grilled by the TSA on "who did 9/11" and asked by FBI agents whether he was a communist after airport security officers found Arabic-English language learning cards in his luggage last summer, according to news reports and the ACLU.

Wired report.

Police forces all over the UK will soon be able to draw on unmanned aircraft from a national fleet, according to Home Office plans. Last month it was revealed that modified military aircraft drones will carry out surveillance on everyone from protesters and antisocial motorists to fly-tippers, and will be in place in time for the 2012 Olympics.

Herald report.

A Scottish Muslim accused of being a "wannabe suicide bomber" has attacked the justice system for criminalising "thought crime" and destroying his family's reputation.

Mohammed Atif Siddique, a student from Alva in Clackmannanshire, spoke out as he walked free from court yesterday after judges overturned his conviction on a terrorism charge.

Guardian article.

Three of Britain's most senior judges have ordered the government to reveal evidence of MI5 and MI6 complicity in the torture of British resident Binyam Mohamed -- unanimously dismissing objections by David Miliband, the foreign secretary.