Exodus

After successfully creating a health care app for doctors to view medical records, Diego Fasano, an Italian entrepreneur, got some well-timed advice from a police officer friend: Go into the surveillance business because law enforcement desperately needs technological help.

In 2014, he founded a company that creates surveillance technology, including powerful spyware for police and intelligence agencies, at a time when easy-to-use encrypted chat apps such as WhatsApp and Signal were making it possible for criminal suspects to protect phone calls and data from government scrutiny.

The concept behind the company’s product was simple: With the help of Italy’s telecom companies, suspects would be duped into downloading a harmless-seeming app, ostensibly to fix network errors on their phone. The app would also allow Fasano’s company, eSurv, to give law enforcement access to a device’s microphone, camera, stored files and encrypted messages.

Fasano christened the spyware “Exodus.”

“I started to go to all the Italian prosecutors’ offices to sell it,” explained Fasano, a 46-year-old with short, dark-brown hair and graying stubble. “The software was good. And within three years, it was used across Italy. In Rome, Naples, Milan.”

Even the country’s foreign intelligence agency, L’Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Esterna, came calling for Exodus’s services, Fasano said.

But Fasano’s success was short lived, done in by a technical glitch that alerted investigators that something could be amiss. They followed a digital trail between Italy and the U.S. before unearthing a stunning discovery.

Authorities found that eSurv employees allegedly used the company’s spyware to illegally hack the phones of hundreds of innocent Italians—playing back phone conversations of secretly recorded calls aloud in the office, according to legal documents. The company also struck a deal with a company with alleged links to the Mafia, authorities said.

The discovery prompted a criminal inquiry involving four Italian prosecutor’s offices. Fasano and another eSurv executive, Salvatore Ansani, were charged with fraud, unauthorized access to a computer system, illicit interception and illicit data processing.

Already, the unfolding story of eSurv has renewed questions about the growing use of spyware. It has also brought attention to the largely unregulated companies that develop the spyware technology, which is capable of hacking into a device that nearly everyone carries in a pocket or purse, often storing their most sensitive information.

The demand for such technology has been driven in part by the rise in popularity of encrypted mobile phone apps and the reality that it is getting harder for law enforcement to glean evidence without the assistance of Silicon Valley giants such as Apple Inc., which is currently at loggerheads with the FBI over access to an iPhone used by an accused terrorist.

In recent years, spyware developers such as Israel’s NSO Group and Italy’s Hacking Team have been criticized for selling their products to repressive governments, which have used the technology to, among other things, track activists and journalists. (Both companies have said they sell their equipment to law enforcement and intelligence agencies to fight crime and terrorism.)

What makes the allegations against eSurv so astounding is that, if true, the company became involved in the spying itself—and did so right in the heart of Europe.

Giovanni Melillo, the chief prosecutor in Naples who is overseeing the case, has worked on some of the country’s highest-profile investigations, from the feared Camorra organized crime group to international money laundering and drug trafficking schemes. But he said the allegations against eSurv are unusual, even for a veteran prosecutor like him.

“I think that no prosecutors in Western countries have ever worked on a case like this,” Melillo said in a recent interview at his Naples office. This story is based on interviews with Italian authorities and a review of 170 pages of documents outlining the evidence collected, much of it never before reported.

To Syria and Back

It was a quiet night until the bombs began crashing out of the sky. Only a few minutes earlier, on the roof of a gray, single-story building not far from the city of Manbij in northern Syria, Josh Walker had been peacefully sleeping. Now the walls were collapsing beneath him, he was surrounded by fire, and his friends were dead.

Walker, a 26-year-old university student from Wales in the United Kingdom, was in Syria volunteering with the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, a Kurdish-led militia that has been a leading force in the ground battle against the Islamic State. He had made the long journey to Syria after flying out of a London airport on a one-way ticket to Istanbul, appalled by the Islamic State’s brutal fascism and inspired by the YPG’s democratic socialist ideals.

Over the course of six months last year, Walker learned to speak Kurdish and shoot AK-47 assault rifles. He trained and fought alongside militia units made up of Kurds, Arabs, and young American, Canadian, and European volunteers. He faced Islamic State suicide bombers in battle and helped the YPG as it advanced toward Raqqa, the capital of the extremist group’s self-declared “caliphate.”

In late December, Walker returned to London. There was no welcome home party waiting to greet him. Instead, there were three police officers at the airport who swiftly arrested him. The officers took him into custody, interrogated him, searched his apartment, and confiscated his laptop and notebooks. After risking his life to fight against the Islamic State, Walker was charged under British counterterrorism laws — not directly because of his activities in Syria, but because the police had found in a drawer under his bed a partial copy of the infamous “Anarchist Cookbook,” a DIY explosives guide published in 1971 that has sold more than 2 million copies worldwide.

The case against Walker is highly unusual. He is the first anti-Islamic State fighter to be prosecuted by British authorities under terrorism laws after returning to the U.K., and he appears to be the only person in the country who has ever faced a terror charge merely for owning extracts of the “Anarchist Cookbook.” The authorities have not alleged that he was involved in any kind of terror plot; rather, they claim that because he obtained parts of the “Cookbook” — which is freely available in its entirety on the internet — he collected information “of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.”

Walker is due to go to trial in October, where in the worst-case scenario he could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison. Until then, he is free on bail, living with his mother and working part time as a kitchen porter in a restaurant. In an interview with The Intercept, he talked in-depth about his experiences in Syria and shared stories about the harrowing scenes he witnessed on the front line, which have profoundly affected his life. He also discussed for the first time the British government’s charges against him, which have not previously been publicized due to court-ordered reporting restrictions that have prevented news organizations in the U.K. from disclosing information about the background of his case. A judge lifted the restrictions late last month.

**

The sun is beating down on a hot summer’s day in Bristol, the largest city in southwest England, with a population of about 449,000. Outside a derelict former electronics store on a busy residential street in the St. Werburgh’s area of the city, Josh Walker is waiting. He is thin, about 5 foot 9 with a thick head of wavy, dark brown hair, wearing a faded green T-shirt, black trousers, and sneakers, and carrying a white plastic bag. We walk to a nearby park, where Walker pulls out two cans of cold beer from his bag, lights a cigarette, and begins explaining how he wound up on a journey to fight the Islamic State in Syria.

After leaving high school at age 18 in 2009, Walker had a variety of temporary jobs — he worked in construction, in gardening, and in an office as a volunteer for a politician who would later become the mayor of Bristol. In 2014, he decided to enroll at a university in Aberystwyth in Wales, about 130 miles west of Bristol, and he began studying for a degree in international politics and strategic studies.

As an avid follower of global affairs, Walker had been keeping a close eye on the fallout from the Arab Spring — the democratic uprisings that in late 2010 spread across the Middle East and North Africa. By 2016, the major unrest in most of the countries — like Tunisia, Yemen, Bahrain, and Egypt — had largely petered out. In Syria, however, the demonstrations evolved into a full-blown civil war and led to the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II.

What began as protests against the tyrannical leadership of Bashar al-Assad morphed into something far more complex, with a multitude of warring militias fighting one another to gain control of territory across the country. Islamist extremists were quick to capitalize on the chaos. The Islamic State group, which had previously been active primarily in Iraq, entered into the fray and took control of large swaths of Syria through 2013 and 2014, imposing strict Islamic rules and draconian punishments for anyone who disobeyed.

At university, Walker had watched it all unfold and discussed the events with his friends and professors. But he was not content to view the crisis on television as a passive observer. He wanted to help.

“I had enough of talking about history while it was being made,” he recalls. “I couldn’t just let it play out without being involved somehow and without seeing it for myself.”

So he hatched a secret plan to travel to Syria.

Objective Peckham

As he walked through the busy streets of London, Bilal el-Berjawi was glancing over his shoulder. Everywhere he went, he suspected he was being followed. Within a few years — 4,000 miles away in remote Somalia — he would be dead, killed by a secret U.S. drone strike.

A small and stocky British-Lebanese citizen with a head of thick dark hair, Berjawi had grown up much like any other young boy in the United Kingdom’s capital city, attending school during the day and playing soccer with friends in his free time. But by his early 20s he was leading no ordinary life. He was suspected of having cultivated ties with senior al Qaeda militants in East Africa, his British citizenship was abruptly revoked, and he was placed on a U.S. kill list.

In January 2012, Berjawi met his sudden end, about 10 miles northwest of Mogadishu, when a missile crashed into his white car and blasted it beyond recognition.

At the time of Berjawi’s death, the Associated Press reported that the missile strike targeting him had been carried out by a drone, citing an anonymous U.S. official. The Economist criticized the secrecy surrounding the attack and questioned whether it had amounted to a “very British execution.”

Now, a classified U.S. document obtained by The Intercept shines new light on the circumstances surrounding Berjawi’s death. It reveals that the U.S. government was monitoring him for at least five years as he traveled between London and Somalia; that he was targeted by a covert special operations unit running a fleet of more than two dozen drones, fighter jets, and other aircraft out of East Africa; and that cellphone surveillance facilitated the strike that killed him.

The document, a case study included in a secret 2013 report by the Pentagon’s Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Task Force, does not mention Berjawi by name, instead referring to a target code-named “Objective Peckham.” But it contains enough specific details about the target’s movements and the time and place of the attack that killed him to confirm his identity beyond doubt.

The Intercept has pieced together the final years of Berjawi’s life based on the Pentagon case study, public records, interviews with individuals who knew him, and a transcript of a long conversation Berjawi had in April 2009 with members of Cage, a London-based rights group, in which he discussed his encounters with security agencies in the U.K. and Kenya.

The story of Berjawi’s life and death raises new questions about the British government’s role in the targeted assassination of its own citizens — also providing unique insight into covert U.S. military actions in the Horn of Africa and their impact on al Qaeda and its affiliate in the region, al Shabaab.

Secret Justice

Alarming links between British spy agencies and torture, unlawful abductions and dealings with dictators have been exposed in recent years, prompting investigations and major court cases. But now, in a historic move that could erode centuries-old principles of open justice, the government wants to limit sensitive material being disclosed publicly – enabling complicity in human rights abuses to be kept secret.

The controversial plans are set to be included in the Justice and Security Bill, formally announced earlier this month in the Queen’s Speech. The Ministry of Justice says “common-sense” change is needed to protect national security and better equip courts to pass judgment in cases involving classified information. Because the new legislation would enable the government to present evidence to a judge without having to disclose it to the whole court, however, there are major concerns it could lead to cover-ups and put the government and other public bodies above the law.

“The simple fact is that closed courts are inherently unfair,” says Clare Algar, executive director of human rights group Reprieve. “What the government is proposing is a system in which they can use whatever evidence they like against the citizen, but the citizen is unable to challenge or even to see that evidence. This is unacceptable in any circumstances.

"Our current system is working well, and judges have always been extremely deferential to the government on matters of national security. Yet it appears that our security services are attempting to undermine our justice system because they are unwilling to be held accountable in a court of law."

Justice secretary Ken Clarke argues that the government will have to reveal “damaging” secret security information or settle out of court unless ministers can order some cases to be conducted behind closed doors. Clarke says that Britain’s intelligence-sharing relationship with America was dented after a ruling in 2010 forcing ministers to reveal a document showing British complicity in the torture of West London resident Binyam Mohamed, who was held at US-run prison Guantanamo Bay over alleged links to terror groups.

But last month the government’s claims that US authorities have withdrawn or reduced the amount of intelligence it shares with Britain were attacked by the joint parliamentary committee on human rights as being based on “spurious assertions”. And former officers from the US Central Intelligence Agency told the Daily Mail the US would “never hold back” information from British spies if it was “important to their domestic security.”

Prominent critics argue that the reform, far from being motivated by a desire to protect national security, has more to do with preventing politically damaging details from being made public.

“We should not sacrifice Britain’s open and transparent justice system simply to protect politicians and their officials from embarrassment,” said former director of public prosecutions Ken MacDonald in February. “After a decade in which we have seen our politicians and officials caught up in the woeful abuses of the War on Terror, the last thing the government should be seeking is to sweep all of this under the carpet. However, that is exactly what their disastrous secret justice proposals are likely to do.”

Macdonald’s scathing remarks took on added significance last month, when it emerged spy agency MI6 had tried to avoid having to appear in open court by offering a payment of £1 million to Abdelhakim Belhadj, a Libyan dissident it helped hand over to Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2004 as part of America’s extraordinary rendition programme. Belhadj and his pregnant wife were abducted by US authorities in Bangkok after a tip-off from MI6. They were forced on a plane to Libya where they were mistreated by Gaddafi’s secret police – and are now suing Sir Mark Allen, an ex-senior member of MI6, for “complicity in torture" and "misfeasance in public office."

If the Bill were to become law by the time Belhadj’s case makes it to a British courtroom, a government minister could sign off a “closed material procedure” (CMP) certificate vetoing sensitive information about MI6’s role being publicly disclosed. CMPs were first established by Labour in 1997 to be used mainly in a small number of immigration cases concerning the deportation of terror suspects. In 2010, for instance, alleged extremists based in Manchester and Liverpool were accused of having links to al-Qaida – but in subsequent deportation hearings CMPs were applied to keep evidence against them secret.

Crucially, aside from cases involving terror suspects and torture, the newly proposed Bill has far wider ramifications. It would apply across all civil court cases or inquests and could potentially be used not only to protect the security services – but also to halt sensitive information involving the police, the army and other public bodies from being revealed. (The definition of “sensitive” information is broad, encompassing the disclosure of anything deemed contrary to the interests of national security, the international relations of the United Kingdom, or the detection and prevention of crime.)

Inquest, a charity that provides support to bereaved people affected by contentious deaths, such as deaths in custody and police shootings, believes the government’s proposals “seriously undermine fundamental legal principles of natural justice and open justice.” The group, whose members number lawyers involved in high-profile cases including the Hillsborough disaster and the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, has warned that the Bill, if legislated, would “fuel fears that the state is attempting to deliberately prevent information about its own culpability in deaths becoming publicly known.”

“It is deeply regrettable that the government is pursuing proposals to extend the use of closed material procedures,” says Helen Shaw, Inquest’s co-director. “It is abundantly clear that there is no need for such sweeping changes to the law.”

But not all elements of the Bill have been subject to such intense criticism. While many argue it would be particularly detrimental to the accountability of the secret services in the courtroom, others point out that at the same time, in stark contrast, it also contains a proposal to enhance their accountability to parliament. Currently spy agencies MI6, MI5 and GCHQ are overseen by the intelligence and security committee (ISC), an executive-appointed group of nine parliamentarians, which reports directly to the prime minister. The government wants to improve the ISC by having it report formally to parliament for the first time.

“I see this as a measure of making them more accountable,” says Anthony Glees, an expert in security and counter-terrorism at the University of Buckingham. “There is a problem with accountability in our secret agencies; too much secrecy fuels speculation and it leads to a lack of responsible behaviour. But we can’t expect that they can’t have full accountability because then they wouldn’t be secret agencies.”

By enhancing parliamentary accountability while simultaneously planning to radically reduce judicial accountability, though, it is ultimately the overall impact that is of most significance, according to Hugh Bochel, professor of public policy at the University of Lincoln.

“The proposals give greater parliamentary oversight but they reduce the amount of judicial oversight and to some extent civil society and the media,” Bochel says, adding that this is a “negative step.”

“What you need is overlap between all those different forms of oversight and that should give you a good view as you can and accountability in all sorts of different ways.”

Campaigners point out that the Ministry of Justice’s own impact assessment of its plans for secret court proceedings warned of a “reduction in confidence in court processes” and a “higher risk of potential security breaches,” costing up to £11 million every year. This was compounded last month by condemnation from the joint parliamentary committee on human rights, chaired by Dr Hywel Francis, which said in a report that the court plans were a “radical departure from our longstanding traditions of open justice” and “inherently unfair.”

“The government has now tested the parliamentary waters and its proposal to expand secret evidence has been condemned as unfair and unjustified,” says Angela Patrick, director of human rights policy at campaign group Justice. “Proceeding in the face of these conclusions would undermine the coalition’s commitment to civil liberties and could damage public confidence in the justice system irreparably.”

Work Elsewhere

Hello all. Been rather busy recently and have not had the time to update this website very frequently. However, the good news is I'm currently building a new section for 'reports' & 'clippings', as I predominantly only post features, interviews and other longer pieces here... so lots more content is in the pipeline. In the meantime, find below links to work I produced last month (more on the agenda in September):

Banks urged to end loans for cluster bomb makers, Big Issue in the North, August 29 2011.

University staff asked to inform on 'vulnerable' Muslim students, the Guardian, August 29 2011.

Facebook faces up to new privacy row, Big Issue in the North, August 22 2011.

Phone hacking survey & the role of investigative journalism, Frontline Club, August 19 2011.

New police riot powers would be 'unenforcable', Big Issue in the North, August 15 2011.

UK authorities should not be given a communication 'killswitch', openDemocracy, August 11 2011.

Campaigners gear up to oppose fracking in the UK, Big Issue in the North issue, August 8 2011.

Police forces come together to create new regional surveillance units, the Guardian, July 25 2011.

Behind the Security Lines at the Counter-Terror Exhibition

Of the men in suits queuing to gain access to the Olympia Conference Centre in London recently, some were from the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the Ministry of Defence, others government intelligence agents from America, Japan, India and Pakistan.

Security guards lined the walls looking anxious. Inside the hall was the largest counter terrorism exhibition in the world, with some of the latest tools used by governments in the so-called war on terror on display. “Four men in a white transit van have just gathered by the bridge at the south of the car park,” came a call over one guard’s radio. “Surveillance is required.”

In the exhibition hall beyond the lines of security, 400 companies showcased their products to government officials and decision makers in the multi-billion pound terrorism industry, which has boomed since the Twin Towers attacks in 2001.

Many exhibitors had been criticised for supplying arms and surveillance technology to repressive dictatorships in the Middle East and North Africa. Outside the hall demonstrators held signs that said “Stop evil trade” and one man was dressed as a Guantánamo Bay inmate with shackles round his wrists.

Only those affiliated with the government or defence industry could gain entry to the exhibition. Members of the public and much of the media were excluded.

After rigorous screening I had managed to gain a pass as an “industry journalist”. During the two-day exhibition I expected at any time to be tapped on the shoulder and ushered out the back door. But it never happened.

Next to a cafeteria in the exhibition hall selling falafel wraps and tuna melt paninis, there was excitement about a suicide bomber detector, flying CCTV cameras and x-ray scanners capable of seeing through walls. Just inside the main entrance, a man dressed in a full bomb disposal outfit was demonstrating how to disarm an improvised explosive device.

Standing by a large contraption named Counter Bomber at one stall, former US Marine JJ Bare explained how the device could detect suicidal terrorists with explosives strapped to their bodies.

“If you’re a human being with clothes on and you have a suicide vest or any sort of vest that explodes or potentially explodes, your radar return is distinctly different,” he said. “We exploit that to determine whether you’re a threat or not.”

Bare said Counter Bomber was being used in Afghanistan and Iraq by American troops and had so far “exceeded all thresholds” in terms of its success. He said there had been much interest from the Ministry of Defence in purchasing the device, which could be used outside airports to detect potential suicide bombers trying to board aeroplanes.

“It’s very timely,” he said. “It’s an unfortunate fact of life that people are willing to blow themselves up to kill other people. If I could have picked a different trade to be in, then I would probably do it. But this is a need.”

At another stall, Canadian developer Oculus was showcasing surveillance software to track movements and relationships between people through the monitoring of mobile phone calls, emails, text messages, financial transactions and social networks. The software, Geotime, is used by the US military and has been purchased by the Metropolitan Police as well as Northumbria University.

“Once I know where you’re at in time, where you’ve come from and how long you were there, I can work out usually what you’re doing,” said Curtis Garton, Oculus product management director. “We can collect data from all sorts of different sources. Your cellphone collects positional data; it could be emails that you’ve sent, instant messages, whatever it is. We show all those different types of data in one place.”

Other exhibitors sold hidden camera devices and CCTV capable of recognising the faces of known suspects or criminals.

Critics say such technology can be used against innocent people and is another example of a “surveillance state”, but others argue it is necessary to protect against the threat of terrorism.

One company, Ultrafine Technology, showcased a covert surveillance device that it claimed could see through walls.

“Sometimes it’s vital to know what’s happening on the other side of a wall,” said Ultrafine’s managing director, John Patterson, in a presentation to potential buyers. “The solution is to drill through and insert tiny cameras and microphones.”

Conferences and workshops at the exhibition focused on preparations for the London Olympics in 2012. Susan Hemming, head of the Crown Prosecution Service’s counter terrorism division, warned of the potential dangers.

“The biggest challenge the UK faces currently is managing the risk in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics,” she said. “We could see the targeting of athletes or spectators from countries that we don’t traditionally deal with.

“The authorities are never going to be 100 per cent successful every time, either in preventing an incident or prosecuting the perpetrators."

She added: “London is arguably the most multicultural and diverse city, with the highest overriding general threat level from an Olympic games in recent times.”

Although there were warnings about the need for increased vigilance in preparation for the Olympics, some exhibitors were concerned about a lack of investment from the government.

Michael McNulty, marketing director of UAVSI, which manufactures remote controlled CCTV devices attached to mini airplanes and helicopters, said hesitance to invest in his technology led him to believe the authorities were more concerned about flying in celebrities than monitoring the capital during the games.

Jenny Mottram, who works with a company specialising in nuclear decontamination, said the government was more interested in contracting out decontamination services than investing in it directly.

“With all the cuts at the moment it has been quite difficult across the industry,” she said. “With the Olympics they really need to think about the potential threat of chemical or nuclear attack.”

Surveillance showcase

The Counter Terror Exhibition (CTE) is an annual event attended by leading experts from government, military, security services, law enforcement and academia.

Showcasing the latest in surveillance technologies, the event’s organisers say it brings “focus and clarity” to the complex task of “protecting people and assets from the threat presented by international terrorism”.

But critics disagree. Protest group Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) claims the CTE is an example of an “encroaching surveillance society”, and earlier this year called for a protest outside the event, saying it hoped to “expose the exploitation of fear for profit”.

Kaye Stearman, a spokesperson for CAAT, said: “There is a definite link between so-called counter-terror and more conventional arms fairs. As military budgets are cut – at least in western countries – both military and governments will be looking to cheaper civilian-type technologies, including electronic and surveillance equipment and services.”

This special report appeared originally in issue no.879 of Big Issue in the North.

Dr Thornton and the University of Nottingham Saga

A professor was suspended earlier this month after calling for a public enquiry into alleged serious malpractice perpetrated by senior management at the University of Nottingham. Dr Rod Thornton, a lecturer in international security and terrorism, presented an 112 page paper at the British International Studies Association Conference in Manchester last month detailing a series of failings and subsequent cover-ups he claims took place at the university three years ago, after the arrest of a postgraduate student and a member of university staff, both Muslim, on "terrorism related charges.”

In response to his suspension, a call for his immediate reinstatement was published in the Guardian by a significant list of influential academics from India to America, headed by Noam Chomsky and including Paul Gilroy, Dr Karma Nabulsi, Charles Tripp and Neera Chandhoke. Meanwhile yesterday around 100 demonstrators gathered in Nottingham to protest against the university's treatment of Thornton, with a campaign around the case now generating national interest.

The saga began in May 2008, when social sciences research student Rizwaan Sabir and his friend, Hicham Yezza, were arrested and detained for six days after a copy of an al-Qaeda Training Manual (AQTM) was found on Yezza’s office computer by a member of the University’s staff. The AQTM is recommended reading on most terrorism courses, and was also available through the University’s library. Sabir, who had obtained it as part of his research for an MA dissertation around the role of al-Qaeda in Iraq, sent the file along with two other articles (from the academic journals Foreign Affairs and the Middle East Policy Council Journal) to Yezza by email.

Yezza worked in the University’s modern languages department as the principal school administrator, and in order to avoid paying print costs Sabir had sent his friend the articles and asked if he would print them from his office for free. Several months later, a member of staff used Yezza’s computer and discovered the dubiously titled AQTM (which was incidentally given its name by the US Department of Justice; it was originally titled, Military Studies in the Jihad against the Tyrants). The concerned member of staff promptly reported the find to senior members within the department; the university’s Registrar, Dr Paul Greatrix, was informed, and the police were subsequently called in to investigate.

Greatrix was later quoted in a police statement as saying that there was no “valid reason whatsoever for the documents [found on Yezza’s computer] to exist” and that the AQTM was “illegal”. It was also apparent from a document given by police to Sabir’s lawyers that comments made by Bernard McGuirk, a Professor of Romance Literatures and Literary Theory at the university, were integral to the investigation. According to a police note released under the Freedom of Information Act, McGuirk had told police the AQTM was not a “legitimate document”. Thornton claims that on this basis alone police arrested both Yezza and Sabir, who were detained under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act on suspicion of being involved in the commission, preparation and instigation of an act of terrorism. During their six days of incarceration, the university did not contact the two men or offer them any support.

The day after the arrests, the university prepared an exclusion letter for Sabir which set out to ban him “from all parts of the university with immediate effect”. When Sabir was released without charge, however, the expulsion was never issued. Specialist counter terror police had conducted a meticulous search of Sabir’s family home, which involved all of his family – including his elderly grandmother – being forced to vacate for 24 hours. But after a "bag and tag" search, all that the police discovered was an array of academic texts including works on Nietzsche, postmodernism and educational research. They had failed to find any connection between Sabir and Yezza and terrorism.

Even two months after the arrest of the pair, though, Greatrix continued to reiterate that the AQTM was “illegal”. In one letter to Sabir, dated August 4th 2008, he conflated the downloading of the AQTM with the downloading of child pornography. Both, he said, were available on the internet but were “still nevertheless illegal”.

This clearly frustrated Thornton, an expert on terrorism studies. He knew that the AQTM was available through the university's own library and was considered “required reading” on any terrorism course; to compare it to child porn was “unconscionable” and “malevolent”, he wrote in his paper. Thorton also felt part of the problem stemmed from the fact that the AQTM was misleadingly titled – by the US government – as it contains no information about how to build bombs or other weapons. “The al-Qaeda Training Manual is a mainstream student source,” he wrote. “It is in no way illegal, illegitimate, seditious or extremist.”

But he was most disturbed at how quickly the university’s management had gone to the police. Despite what the university would later claim, Thornton alleges that the Registrar, Greatrix, did not carry out a "risk assessment" in accordance with university guidelines. Greatrix should have – but ostensibly did not – consult first with senior academic staff and with experts in the field of terrorism before going to the police.

Thornton also suggests that a culture of Islamophobia was a key factor in the arrests. At one point in his paper he recounts the comments of a police officer, made during one lengthy interview about the suspicions surrounding Sabir and Yezza. Thornton writes that, seemingly exasperated, the officer let out a sigh and said: “This would not be happening if the student had been blonde, Swedish and at Oxford University”.

In the aftermath of the incident, Thornton tried to raise the issues he had with the handling of the case internally. He claims that he “stopped stories running in the media” and that he “[gave] senior management at the University of Nottingham every chance to carry out their own investigations and to take the necessary actions.” He also says that he wrote to the government minister then responsible for universities; went to the English universities funding body, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE); and appealed to the Parliamentary Ombudsman, whose role it is to oversee the activities of public institutions. But all of this yielded no response. Unless universities are engaged in financial impropriety, he concluded, they are “allowed to be completely autonomous and accountable to no-one.”

With no other avenue to pursue, Thornton decided to “go public”. Shortly after he did so, by releasing his paper in late April, he was suspended from his post at the University of Nottingham with immediate effect. In the days following his suspension, Sabir, now a doctoral researcher at the University of Strathclyde, helped organise the open letter in support of his former lecturer, and is working actively with a campaign group to raise the profile of the case.

Sabir, speaking on the phone from Nottingham, described Thornton as "talented, brave and courageous" and said his suspension was "totally absurd".

He added: “Because the university has failed to investigate these matters internally over the last three years, no other option exists now but to have a public, independent enquiry through which the issues can be resolved. Until a public enquiry is undertaken we can’t ever bring closure to this.

“They have failed in their duty of care to me. They have failed in their duty of care to Hitcham [Yezza], and they are now failing in their duty of care to all other staff and students that have spoken up for justice to be done at this university.”

A spokesperson for the University of Nottingham refused on policy grounds to confirm or deny whether Thornton had been suspended, and stated that at all times the University has acted in an ethical, transparent and fair manner.

“The fact remains that the article produced by Dr Thornton is highly defamatory of a number of his colleagues," the spokesperson said. "Academic freedom is a cornerstone of this University, but it is not the freedom to defame your co-workers and attempt to destroy their reputations as honest, fair and reasonable individuals. The University rejects utterly the baseless accusations Dr Thornton makes about members of staff.

“It is important to remember that the original incident, almost three years ago, was triggered by the discovery of an al-Qaeda Training Manual on the computer of an individual who was neither an academic member of staff, nor a student, and in a School where one would not expect to find such material being used for research purposes. The individual concerned was an administrative member of staff with no academic reason to possess such a document. The University became concerned and decided, after a risk assessment, that those concerns should be conveyed to the police as the appropriate body to investigate.”

Abuse of process?

It seems clear that with each side accusing the other of wrongdoing, the only way forward can now be an independent public enquiry into Thornton's allegations. If the university believes it has conducted itself in an ethical, transparent and fair manner, then it should encourage a full and thorough investigation into not only its handling of the original Sabir and Yezza incident, but also its dismissal of Thornton, which in itself raises serious questions. What cannot be in dispute at this point is that two wholly innocent individuals were arrested three years ago on spurious grounds, and a highly regarded lecturer has now been suspended for citing numerous significant, evidence-based instances of alleged malpractice at the highest levels of the institution. If in either of these cases there has been a cover-up, or an abuse of process and power, it is paramount that we find out about it. No publicly funded institution should be permitted to function behind closed doors, and the University of Nottingham is no exception.

This article originally appeared at: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/ryan-gallagher/two-arrests-suspension-accusations-of-islamophobia-nottingham-university-m