Vol. 75/No. 45      December 12, 2011

The seven of them, including two children, are threatened with eviction by the government after the father, Munir Farooqi, was framed up and sentenced to four life terms on charges of “preparing terrorist acts, soliciting murder and distributing terrorist literature.”

More than 14,000 people have signed petitions protesting the eviction. Although a number of people have been evicted from council housing in Britain since street disturbances in August, this is the first time the Crown Prosecution Service has threatened eviction using the Counter-Terrorism Act of 2008, adopted under the then Labour government.

A vigil was held Oct. 18 outside the Longsight police station, where local imams were meeting with police to discuss the pending eviction.

Two weeks later 160 people attended a packed local protest meeting. Among the speakers were members of the family, Manchester City Councillor Rabnawaz Akbar, and representatives from the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, Cageprisoners.com, the Somali Men’s Forum, the Madina Mosque, and the Refugee and Asylum Participatory Action Research group.

During the Eid celebrations marking the end of Ramadan, many in the Manchester mosques signed the petition, which was handed over to the Crown Prosecution Service by a picket of 40.

Harris Farooqi, who was charged along with his father and acquitted, is now a leader of the Save the Family Home campaign. “This is not a Muslim case, but a concern for everybody,” he told the Militant, noting this is just the beginning of a long campaign for justice.

“This was an extremely challenging case,” Detective Chief Superintendant Tony Porter, head of the North West Counter-Terrorism Unit, explained, “because we did not recover any blueprint, attack plan or endgame for these men. However what we were able to prove was their ideology.”

Rose-Marie Franton of the Crown Prosecution Service said their case was based on “secretly recorded conversations by two undercover police officers” who claim the defendants were being “groomed to fight abroad against coalition and British troops in Afghanistan.”
 
 
Related articles:
NY ‘counterterrorism’ cops press flimsy frame-up  
 
 
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