The terror of Babar Ahmad | Victoria Brittain
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/02/terror-babar-ahmad-extradition?CMP=twt_iph
Ahmad’s ordeal has had particular resonance in part because of the saga of the 73 injuries he received during his arrest, and his subsequent court case against the officers involved. In 2009 the Metropolitan police made an unprecedented admission that officers subjected Ahmad to a brutal beating causing multiple injuries, and offered him £60,000 compensation. The case exposed shocking behaviour by some officers, in which racism and islamophobia were overt; and incompetence, or worse, lay behind the curious disappearance of many sacks of vital evidence.
Two years later, in a criminal case against the officers, the jury was not told of the Met’s admissions, or the payment it had offered, and the four officers concerned were found not guilty.
The stigma of terrorism is behind this story of abuse and corner-cutting by police, compounded by an attempted cover-up in court – which failed once and succeeded the second time. Only last week it was revealed that the police, with extraordinary laxity, in 2003 sent material gathered from his house to the US, without showing it to the Crown Prosecution Service. Along the way, the Home Office, and regrettably some MPs, have failed to see the huge resonance of this case for Britain.