Is this what it is going to be like? When simple possession of a proscribed document will be enough to see you clapped in irons and whisked down to the local police station?
About two weeks ago (May 16), Nottingham University campus was agog as police arrived to interview former student Hicham Yezza. After some ten years' study, first as undergraduate, then graduate, Hicham was a non-academic member of staff in one of the University departments.
His mistake was to agree to help Rizwaan Sabir, a friend in the Politics faculty, who needed a document downloaded from the web and printed off. This was all part of legitimate study: the document itself was on the Politics Faculty reading list. Unfortunately, the document in question also happened to be an al-Qaeda Training Manual.
Someone noticed. They informed their superiors, who in turn referred the matter on upward. Eventually, the issue reached the very top. The Vice-Chancellor, Registrar and senior management of the University decided it was beyond them. They owed a duty of care to all their students. The implications behind the download were too large. So they handed the matter over to the local Police.
Which is where we came in. Rizwaan Sabir and Hicham Yezza were arrested. Their homes were searched, laptops confiscated, friends interviewed. They were subjected to six days of questioning - and then released. Or at least, Sabir was released. Hicham’s story now takes a turn for the decidedly worse. He is – he was – in the process of applying for indefinite leave to remain in the UK. The focus of the inquiry shifted to the possibility that he had been less than truthful in his application to stay.
So he was re-arrested under the Immigration Act and moved directly to a detention centre. From there, he is due to be deported back to Algeria this Sunday.
According to the Nottingham University Students’ Union, the deportation was originally scheduled for mid-July, but it has been brought forward as an “emergency”. As the Police appear not to have wished to charge Hicham with anything in connection with the original investigation, it is not clear what the emergency could be.
