Fakh. Fakh. Fakhreydeen,
Asia's greatest love-machine.
Nursery Playground song overheard by Bachchoo
The United States of America holds seven of my countrymen captive in a prison on the coast of Cuba in Guantanamo Bay. They have recently been moved from a place of detention called Camp X-Ray, an array of cages and sheds open on several of the six sides of a cuboid, to rain and the wind. The winds may have been a blessing as Camp X-Ray was at the foot of a still valley in tropical Cuba.
The prisoners have now been moved to a new facility called Camp Delta on the coast, where several perfectly enclosed cells have meshes which open to views of, and breezes from, the sea. In each cell the US Army has painted an arrow pointing in the direction of Mecca so that the Muslim prisoners know which way to face when praying.
The US official in charge of their welfare has told the British press that the prisoners are well fed and anyone who likes American food shouldn't doubt it. There is even an attempt at political correctness in their diet, supplying the prisoners halal meat in curry recipes with rice and pitta bread, a reasonable substitute for the Arab naans they presumably favour.
In my household, pitta always serves as a substitute for real roti as it comes in packets from the supermarket. One avoids the wrestle with the dough and their softness and elasticity are guaranteed, which one cannot safely say for the rotis I make.
Nevertheless, prisoners do not live by bread and sea breezes alone. They need hope. It has now been seven months since they were brought to Guantanamo Bay from Afghanistan where they were all apprehended fighting for the Taliban or Al Qaeda.
A friend of mine, sensible in other circumstances, takes the attitude that these guys may simply have been selling ice-cream on the streets of Kunduz or Kandahar, been caught up in cross fire and arrested by handcuff-happy US troops. I think this is stuff from the back end of a bull. US troops would never be that diligent about protecting Ben and Jerry's franchise.
So let's get real. These fellow citizens of mine were caught fighting for Al Qaeda or the Taliban, whether they and their relatives and supporters want to acknowledge it or not. I harp on the fact that they are my fellow citizens, because if I was taken captive by any malevolent force in the world I would expect the Limey government, whatever my views on Cherie Blair, to step forward to defend my human rights - innocent until proved guilty etc.
There are lawyers in Britain lobbying, petitioning and doing the other things lawyers do, to bring the Brits in Delta under some recognisable jurisdiction. This is laudably correct. The war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda was fought by the West in the name of "civilisation." I believe that the rule of law is part of the "civilisation" that Talibanic ideology traduced.
The Geneva Convention (though I have never read it) says that prisoners of war should be treated decently and be allowed to go home once hostilities are over. Aye, but there's the rub. Where is home for these seven? Britain?
If it is, as their families rush to claim and their passports show, they should certainly be allowed to return here forthwith. Unless of course they choose to go to Somalia, tribal Pakistan or some other outpost where they may find sympathy for their maintained stance.
I don't for a moment believe they do. They are eaters of cake who want it back. They went out to destroy this civilisation and now cry to return to it.
Still, the nasty fact remains that the US hasn't charged or tried them and is holding them illegally.
The US has proposed alternatives. These men can all be released to their "native" countries if these countries agree to put them on trial. Or they can be tried by an American Military Tribunal. This latter course smacks of police justice, where the people who capture you arrogate to themselves the right to try you, punish you and execute you. That doctrine may work for people misguided into following some medieval religious notion of jurisprudence, but is not the sort of civilised legality for which the US should be fighting.
My seven fellow Brits ought to be returned to Britain. They are clearly not terrorists. They weren't apprehended with bombs in the heels of their shoes or with plans to blow up the British high commission in Chanakyapuri. They were caught as defeated combatants after exhausting battles with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. They were willing soldiers fighting for a declared enemy of Britain.
They shouldn't be tried for terrorism. They should be thought of as traitors and tried for treason!
Such a trial is necessary for the future of Britain. I do not mean that these are the modern Oliver Cromwells, the leading Roundheads who should be tried by victorious Cavaliers. No such romance and import attend these miserable, misled, stupid boys. And yet a trial for treason is the only possible alternative to letting them go free in the land of their birth and citizenship and spread the poison with which they are allegedly infected.
They should be tried principally because Islam is a fact that will endure in Britain. (In the few square miles of the Borough of Tower Hamlets alone there are 36 mosques.) If Britain is to live with Islam it must publicly resolve the role Muslims are to play in the society.
The trials for treason of the seven are a unique opportunity. Treason is the only charge under which a serious ideological example can be made of these victims of a tragic and dangerous heresy.
The seven must be brought back and tried with the whole panoply of Britain's media in attendance. Apart from the people who fought and apprehended these fellows, the Queen should produce the best Islamic theologians in the world to testify that the notions which have led these bums to alleged treason are un-Islamic, unsupported by interpretations of the Quran and heresies which will carry them to hell.
Let the trial of the seven be a widely reported and debated show trial of the future of Islam in this country. Treason should be the occasion, reason the aim. If they persist in the view that Britain and its civilisation ought to be destroyed by force, let them bring witnesses to morally substantiate the charge. Let Britain decide, through a jury, whether it wants this venom loose in our society.
The accused should spare the country's intelligence and refrain from wasting the court's time on improbable alibis: of being ice-cream vendors caught in cross-fire, innocent students of Arabic in Pakistan (Like going to Belfast to learn German!), aid agency helpers who mistook the machine gun they were manning in the Taliban fort for a dildo etc. These are lies which betray and disgrace their own cause and convictions. If Britain is the little Satan, say so and say why.
The penalty for treason is death, but the liberal state of Britain knows in its gut that this form of treason is not as serious as the IRA bombings that claimed British victims. So let it be understood, though it cannot be pronounced, that when the seven lose their argument as they inevitably will, that Queen E II will be standing by to forgive them their trespass against her and declare mercy against their act of treason.
They could be made to ride naked facing away from the direction of motion (as one says when reserving a BR ticket), on a painted donkey through the streets of Burnley. They could be given assurances of unemployment benefits and set loose in the region of a mosque in Tipton. They could even get rich by being pursued for their stories like the stars of Big Brother. And like them, soon twinkle out.
Of infinitely greater importance is the substance of their trial for treason. It is the one opportunity the British State has for purging this poison in the well, an opportunity to demonstrate that, despite the penalty for treason being death, modern considerations have overridden this society's need for public vengeance. We are for values our enemies dare not match.
(Farrukh Dhondy is a writer and
columnist. Write to him at farrukhdhondy@aol.com)