As anti-terrorism police raided houses in Birmingham, Tayib Rauf said memories flooded back from the August morning when police kicked down his door, smashed his windows and accused him of plotting to blow up a trans-Atlantic airliner.

He lives blocks from where nine men were arrested last week in connection with an alleged plot to kidnap, torture and behead a British Muslim soldier. Two of the men were released without charge Wednesday, and one of them, Abu Bakr, declared Britain a "police state" for Muslims.

On Friday, five men were charged in the case — one of them specifically accused of plotting to kidnap and kill a soldier.

Rauf, tall and thin with a neatly trimmed beard, is among a growing number of British Muslims arrested since the 2005 suicide bombings in London that killed 52 people — detentions that many say have fueled anger and radicalism. Many British Muslims say they are being unfairly targeted in the government's hunt for homegrown terrorists, feeding their humiliation, hatred and the sense that they are unwelcome in their own country.

They say the feelings are hard to shake after their release — and the near-monthly raids make it even harder.

"It brought back all the memories I had tried to forget," Rauf told The Associated Press.

Rauf said police smashed his windows at 3 a.m. and dragged him out of the house. For the first three days in jail, he said, there were no interviews.

"Then they began asking me loads of stupid questions: 'What do you do? Who do you associate with?'" the 22-year-old said. "The most embarrassing question was when they asked me what kind of a Muslim I am. How do you answer that?"

After two weeks in custody, Rauf said police did not say why he was arrested but he believes it was because his brother, Rashid, in Pakistan was suspected of masterminding the plot and another man in London — also later released without charge — once worked for his family's confectionary business in Birmingham.

Police arrested 25 suspects in the airline plot investigation; 15 were charged and are expected to go on trial next year.

"It's like a chain," Rauf said. "You are arrested because of who you are friendly with."

The scale and indiscriminate nature of al-Qaida-inspired attacks prompts authorities to act earlier and with less information than during the Irish Republican Army's campaign to force Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom, said Peter Power, a security analyst and former member of Scotland Yard's Anti-Terrorist Branch.

"They have to intervene very early," Power said. "Because of the tremendous risks, they sometimes have to go in with minimal intelligence because they simply cannot wait."

And "these activities are going to increase rather than decrease," he said.

Sweeps such as the one in Birmingham concern civil rights activists such as Shami Chakrabarti, director of the rights group Liberty.

"It is, of course, very worrying that these men who were detained by the police were never questioned about the infamous plot, and are none the wiser as to the reasons for their arrest," she said.

Of the 1,140 people arrested under terrorism legislation established since 2001, 631 have been freed without charge, the Home Office says.

House of Commons Leader Jack Straw dismissed Bakr's allegation — made in a British Broadcasting Corp. interview — that British Muslims were living in a police state. He defended the arrest figures.

"The ratio of arrest to charge — not just under the Terrorism Act but under other, more substantial offenses as well — is higher than we expect of many categories of offense," he said.

Venture capitalist Mustafa al-Mansur says he was shocked when plainclothes officers arrested him at dawn in December in connection with the airline plot — a week after he met with anti-terrorism officers to discuss ways to combat radicalism.

"I thought it was bizarre — and hilarious to some extent. Then came the shock: I was confused why," the 30-year-old Londoner said.

It was more than three days before police told him his fingerprints were on a book about improvised explosives found in a suspect's attic — the result he said of merely looking at it more than 10 years ago while visiting the apartment of a man involved in a Bosnian humanitarian organization. He said his mobile phone contained numbers which also appeared in the phones of other suspects, such as that of a Muslim charitable organization.

After a week in custody, two intelligence officers told him he was free to go.

"The problem is the police are under pressure to produce results for the government, and the way they are doing it is pretty reckless," al-Mansur said.

Usman Ali, a religious counselor at London's Queen Elizabeth Hospital, was visiting a friend in East London when police surrounded him.

"I heard cars screeching and skidding, followed quickly by thumping footsteps," the 30-year-old recalled of the June evening. "I just froze as two guys grabbed me on each arm and said they were arresting me for the preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism."

Ali was released after six days — and police tried to recruit him as an informer.

"Even if I had evidence, after the way you treated me do you think I'd give it to you?" he said he told them.

Rauf says he has been offered no compensation and feels like an outsider. His brother was arrested in Pakistan in August and is still being held by authorities there, but not on terrorism charges.

"The way it's going, it's uncomfortable to stay in this country," he said. "I believe a lot of people are being forced out. I was born here, but according to the Labour government, it's not my country."


SOURCE: International Herald Tribune
BIRMINGHAM, England
10/02/2007