Author: Rashmee Z. Ahmed
Publication: The Times of India
Date: October 12, 2001
A Manchester-based cleric, Shafiq-ur
Rahman, is accused of recruiting and funding the Lashkar-e-Toiba. He has
finally been deemed a threat to Britain's national security, four years
after his deportation was first ordered by the then British home secretary,
Jack Straw. Rahman's case, which analysts say will have wide implications
for British immigration policy, has dragged on for years because he always
contested the charges as interference in legitimate religious activity.
On Thursday, The Law Lords, the
British equivalent of India's supreme court, decided it was important not
to have too narrow a definition of what constitutes a threat to national
security. Rahman's lawyers are now reported to be considering appealing
to the European Court of Human Rights.
Analysts say Rahman is the first
British test case in the altered atmosphere after September 11, when the
government has displayed greater receptiveness to concerns raised by India
and others that Britain is harbouring those who sponsor terrorism in their
countries.
Rahman, who worked as an Iman in
a mosque, always acknowledged that he raised money for the Markaz-e Dawa
Irshad, or MDI, the political wing of the Lashkar e-Toiba, and even suggested
that most of the funds he collected were used to buy sheep for the Eid
sacrifice. He arrived in Britain eight years ago and accused the government
of wanting to deport him because he had refused to spy for Britain as part
of its MI5 intelligence agency.
Meanwhile, the British government
confirmed Thursday that it was willing to plough a lone furrow in Afghanistan,
unfazed by any American desertion in the task of nation-building, along
the lines Prime Minister Tony Blair had agreed with India, Pakistan and
Russia last week. "The United States must speak for itself, but the Prime
Minister has committed his government to helping re-build Afghanistan,"
Mr Blair's official spokesman told this paper on Thursday, when asked about
the obvious dissonance in long-term war aims between Washington and London.
He said that Britain had already
begun the process of long-term nation-building, with foreign secretary
Jack Straw meeting Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN Special Envoy to Afghanistan,
in London on Tuesday. Unlike their White House counterparts, Downing Street
insisted on multilateralism, the importance of the "remarkable existing
coalition" and collective decision-making about the war on terrorism.
Foreign policy pundits say British
multilateralism, of which the most public face is Mr Blair on his diplomatic
missions in West Asia, may be helping to convince the Muslim world at least
of good intentions, if not the virtues of military action.
