Was terror detention political revenge?

  

AIRPORT police last Tuesday defended their action under anti-terror laws to arrest and detain under David Miranda, the partner of a Guardian journalist, Glenn Greenwald, involved in reporting the leaked material supplied by Edwin Snowden.

Miranda, a Brazilian national, was held at Heathrow on his way from Berlin to Rio de Janeiro for nine hours without charge. He reportedly had his mobile phone, laptop, memory sticks, DVDs and other items seized before he was released.

The government of Brazil expressed “grave concern” at Miranda’s detention and said it was “unjustified”.

Speculation is high that this was an indirect act of revenge against Greenwald for his role in the leaking of Snowden’s tapes, which revealed the vast extent of the US National Security Agency eavesdropping on electronic mail of US citizens and the citizens of other western countries.

Labour MP Keith Vaz called for the full facts of David Miranda's nine-hour detention at Heathrow to be established quickly.

The Home Office said it was for the police to decide when to use the powers it has to stop people.

The Independent Reviewer of Terrorism legislation, David Anderson QC, said it was very unusual for a passenger to be held for nine hours under schedule Seven of the Terrorism Act 2000 and he wanted to "get to the bottom" of what had happened.

The Guardian said: "We were dismayed that the partner of a Guardian journalist who has been writing about the security services was detained for nearly nine hours while passing through Heathrow airport.

"We are urgently seeking clarification from the British authorities."

Greenwald said the British authorities' actions in holding Miranda amounted to "intimidation and bullying" and linked it to his writing about Edward Snowden's revelations concerning the US NSA.

"They never asked him about a single question at all about terrorism or anything relating to a terrorist organisation," he told the BBC World Service's Newsday programme.

"They spent the entire day asking about the reporting I was doing and other Guardian journalists were doing on the NSA stories.

"The principal point, since they kept him for the full nine hours, is to try to send a message of intimidation and bullying.”

The civil rights movement, Liberty, has long argued that Schedule Seven is overbroad legislation, ripe for misuse and discrimination, and currently has a case pending at the European Court of Human Rights challenging the power.

 Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: "David Miranda's chilling nine-hour detention was possible due to the breathtakingly broad Schedule Seven power, which requires no suspicion and is routinely abused.

“People are held for long periods, subject to strip searches, saliva swabbing and confiscation of property – all without access to a publicly funded lawyer.

“Liberty is already challenging this law in the Court of Human Rights but MPs disturbed by this latest scandal should repeal it without delay.”

Meanwhile the editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, has reported that intelligence officials from the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) ordered the paper to destroy computer hard drives in effort to stop Snowden revelations. The action is unlikely to prevent new materials coming out.

Rusbridger said on the Guardian’s website that the officials told him that he would either have to hand over all the classified documents or have the newspaper’s hard drives destroyed.

He wrote that the officials then watched as computers, which contained classified information passed on by Snowden, were physically destroyed in one of the newspaper building’s basements.

During negotiations with the Government, Rusbridger said that the newspaper could not fulfil its journalistic duty if it satisfied the authorities’ requests.

But GCHQ reportedly responded by telling the Guardian that it had already sparked the debate, which was enough. "You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more," Reuters quoted the unnamed official as saying.

• An outrageous attack on freedom of  speech -- New Worker editorial

Support Assange

AN INTENSE debate has broken out among people who claim to be progressive and “lefties”, on the internet and in the pages of many left-wing publications about Julian Assange, the fugitive founder of Wikileaks.

 He is currently staying put inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London after the Government of Ecuador, after careful consideration, has granted him political asylum. But our Foreign Secretary, William Hague, has categorically refused him safe passage from the embassy to leave Britain for Ecuador.

 A year or so ago most of the Left in Britain and throughout the world were hailing Assange as a hero for publishing on the web details of secret communications between the United States government and its embassies and military bases around the world.

 These were extremely embarrassing to the US and other imperialist powers as their underhanded dealings, machinations and manipulations were revealed – along with the casual cruelties in the various imperialist wars in the Middle East. The revelations also embarrassed other governments to a greater or lesser extent but the countries of the world divided and revealed their real position on human rights as they lined up, either to condemn Assange and the Wikileaks team as shameful traitors who should be tried and shot, and those like Venezuela, who praised him as a great hero and offered him sanctuary.

 Since then we have come to know Assange a little better. He seems to be not particularly left wing, rather something of an anarchist and a bit of an egotist.

 Predictably the imperialist powers reacted at first furiously and then with a campaign to try to discredit him and to get him into a position where the government of the United States could put him on trial.

 He has been accused of rape by two women in Sweden, where he used to live. Sweden has asked for his extradition to face trial and, after several lengthy court battles, the British government has assented and was prepared to send him to Sweden before he took refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy.

 There is little doubt that heavy pressure on both Britain and Sweden is being wielded behind the scenes by the US government and that the ultimate aim, once he is in custody, is to send him to the US, where he could face the death penalty. He has never lived in the US and that country has no jurisdiction over him but that sort of thing never bothered the country that built the concentration camp at Guantánamo or that has secret torture bases – not so secret after Wikileaks – around the world.

  It should be natural for all progressives to support him but the imperialists are using their infiltrators to darken his name and divide the Left in a war of words for and against Assange.

 We cannot prove the rape allegations are untrue but we hold him innocent until proven guilty. And he has publicly declared he would agree to go to Sweden if that government could guarantee he would not then be sent to the US. They will not guarantee that.

 But we do know that the CIA, MI5, MI6 and the rest have a long history of framing and smearing individuals who are bold enough to challenge their power. They seriously want to discourage anyone doing anything like that again by making a horrible example of him – as they are already doing to his alleged source, the former US soldier Bradley Manning.

 Bradley Manning has been incarcerated in the US under the most inhumane conditions and is unlikely to see freedom again unless there is a workers revolution in the US. He as much in need of public support as Assange.

 In the process of traducing Assange, his smearers are also attacking Ecuador, making it out to be some sort of banana republic or petty dictatorship. Ecuador is part of the strong, left-wing Bolivarian Alliance that includes Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Cuba.

 And the imperialists’ desperation is shown by the British government’s attempt to arrest Assange inside the Ecuadorean embassy and threat to breach it by force. This is absolutely contrary to all international law and the diplomatic repercussions against Britain from other countries could be serious. The police forces of Britain do not usually put this much effort into chasing alleged rapists.

 Assange is not a saint but he doesn’t have to be. His work has done a lot of damage to imperialism by exposing its ugly, deceitful, cruel and greedy underbelly. Genuine left-wing workers’ and communist parties around the world recognise this and will rally to defend him and Bradley Manning.

Stop the Wikileaks witch-hunt

JULIAN Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, last week called on the Unites States to end its "witch-hunt" against Wikileaks, in his first public statement since entering Ecuador's London embassy.

 He also called for the release of Bradley Manning, who is awaiting trial in the US accused of leaking classified documents to the Wikileaks site.

 Assange spoke from a balcony at the embassy and thanked Ecuador's president, who has granted him asylum. He faces extradition to Sweden over sexual assault claims, which he denies.

 He said US must also stop its "war on whistleblowers," and added: “The United States must vow that it will not seek to prosecute our staff or our supporters.

 "The United States must pledge before the world that it will not pursue journalists for shining a light on the secret crimes of the powerful.

 Assange also said the United States was facing a choice between re-affirming the "revolutionary values it was founded on" or "dragging us all into a dangerous and oppressive world in which journalists fall silent under the fear of prosecution and citizens must whisper in the dark".

by New Worker correspondent

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange appeared at the High Court in London onTuesday to appeal against his extradition to Sweden over sex allegations. The former computer hacker was arrested in December over the sex assault claims, while WikiLeaks was in the process of releasing another huge cache of leaked US diplomatic cables. Assange says the claims are without basis and that he has no chance of a fair trial in Sweden because of the controversy around the case which followed an earlier massive leak of secret American documents. His lawyers also claim that if Assange was deported to Sweden he could then face extradition to the United States and incarceration in Guantánamo Bay on charges that carry the death penalty.