Defend Aamer Anwar!
The threatened
prosecution of Scottish solicitor Aamer Anwar for contempt of court is a
grotesque assault on the right to effective legal counsel. It is also aimed at
intimidating those who oppose the government’s “war on terror”, a racist
campaign stigmatising Muslims as a pretext for sweeping attacks on the legal
rights of the entire population. Now awaiting a High Court hearing, if
convicted Anwar could be barred from practising law and possibly jailed. We
demand: Hands off Aamer Anwar!
The contempt charges are threatened
in response to a statement made by Anwar following the conviction of his
client, Mohammed Atif Siddique, who has been jailed for eight years on bogus
“terrorism” charges. Denouncing the trial and verdict as unjust, Anwar said
Siddique was found guilty “of doing what millions of young people do every
day, looking for answers on the internet”. Siddique was convicted for
possessing CDs and computer files, and for distributing links to websites. It
is outrageous that Siddique was convicted not for any acts, but
for “thought crimes”, as was Samina Malik, a young Muslim woman in London convicted on terrorism charges for poetry she wrote and literature she possessed. Free
Mohammed Atif Siddique!
As for Aamer Anwar, his crime
according to Lord Carloway, the trial judge, was to publicly criticise not only
the court and the jury but the state itself. Indeed, Anwar’s statement
correctly noted that the “anti-terror” laws are an attack on civil liberties
and that “the prosecution was driven by the state” in an “atmosphere
of hostility after the Glasgow Airport attack and ending on the anniversary of
9/11”. Young Muslims, Anwar stated, “live in a climate of fear no
different to that experienced by the Irish community in the last century”.
Criminalising such a statement
of protest on behalf of his client is a green light for the state to
witch hunt lawyers defending unpopular cases. In Northern Ireland, Rosemary
Nelson and Pat Finucane, lawyers who defended Republicans, were murdered by
Loyalists with the collusion of British state forces.
Since 9/11, with the blood-soaked
British and US imperialists up to their necks in barbaric wars and occupations
in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is open season on Muslims at home – and their
defenders.
Down with the racist “war on terror”! Hands off Aamer Anwar!
(Reproduced with thanks
from Partisan Defence Committee)