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| Interview with Cerie Bullivant |
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16/04/2008
Despite having absconded from a control order, Cerie Bullivant decided to return to face the legal system in the UK, and in doing so managed to overturn false allegations that he was involved with international terrorism. Cerie speaks to Cageprisoners about his experience of being targeted by the UK security services, detained unlawfully, and the effect this had on his physical and psychological wellbeing.
CAGEPRISONERS: Could you please introduce yourself?
CERIE BULLIVANT: My name is Kaleem Bullivant, but I was born Cerie Bullivant and I converted to Islam about four years ago.
CP: How old are you and what is your nationality?
CB: I’m 25 years old and I’m a British national.
CP: What was your occupation prior to arrest?
CB: Prior to arrest I was doing a nursing degree.
CP: Do you have any family in the UK?
CB: I’ve got some aunts and uncles up in Yorkshire, but in London, it’s just me and my mum.
CP: When were you first placed on a control order?
CB: The first time I was put on a control order was July 2006.
CP: Why were you placed under a control order?
CB: They alleged that I was going to be involved with Islamic extremist activity. They said that I was a threat to the national troops abroad and that I was likely to go to Iraq because I was on my way to Syria and that was supposedly a staging post to carry out operations or fight coalition troops.
CP: Why were you going to Syria?
CB: I was going to Syria primarily to learn Arabic; but also to do charity work and work with orphans. Even in my bag at the time I had a number of toys including flat footballs which are pretty useful for jihad and rubbish for kids.
CP: What were the series of events that led to you being placed under a control order?
CB: I was travelling with a couple of other brothers and they were placed on a control order straight away. With me, they waited two months. I thought that there was no problem as they had stopped me, realised there was nothing wrong and that I wasn’t going to do anything. They had given me back my passport and had not said anything to me again. What I then did was to make plans to go to Bangladesh with some friends instead. Bangladesh being again another poor country that could do with help; and my friends’ family owned an orphanage out there. However, the security services assessed that this was a staging post to enter into Pakistan and into Waziristan – forgetting of course that there was a large land mass called India in between.
I had picked Bangladesh specifically because it was out of the way – it was not a known forwarding post, there were no links to anything that could be misconstrued. They still said that it was a staging post; I think though that by this stage, had I chosen to go to France, they would have said it was a staging post.
CP: When you were first stopped, where you abused in any way?
CB: No, not the first time we were stopped. We were questioned for about nine hours at Heathrow and then they said we were free to go. They said I could go through the exit showing me the way, except they had in fact taken me to another small room. I went inside and there was someone from MI5 who proceeded to ask me all the same questions again. He told me that they had taken us away from the flight in order to protect us, as the Syrian authorities had made it clear that they were going to detain us. He further warned me that I should not travel anywhere that might be misconstrued. Why was I going to Syria when it was a well known staging post for people going into Iraq? I explained that I was not going to fight but to learn Arabic, they teach fus’ha (classical Arabic) there and it is one of the best places to learn from. I asked if there was a list of do’s and don’ts countries and she just said use your common sense – hence why I chose Bangladesh.
CP: What law was used to detain you in such a way?
CB: Section 5 of the 2005 Terrorism Act. This allows them to use secret evidence and to place virtually any restriction they want on you. At the first step, it is purely rubber stamp by a judge and the grounds are vaguely just reasonable grounds for suspicion that the individual may be involved with terrorism.
CP: What were conditions like under a control order, how did it feel?
CB: As far as I am aware, my control order was one of the most relaxed. I think that is because, at the time, my control order and the others with me were the first British citizens to be placed under such conditions. I also think that I was the first convert to be placed under a control order. The restrictions for me were signing in everyday at the police station, forced residence, admitting entry to police officers at any time, no travelling, passports or documentation. Those restrictions lasted for about eight months at which point they added more restrictions which included not being able to work or be educated.
CP: What affect did that have on both physically and mentally?
CB: Control orders – I guess the reason that they are such a good tool for the government is that when you see the restrictions on paper, it doesn’t sound like much at all, but the way they use the powers it gives them, means that they take away every single part of your life one piece at a time. For example, it is just my mum and I – I couldn’t tell her about the order but when she did find out, the police would often search the house from top to bottom; at times the police would tell her blatant untruths about me about so-called evidence they had. One time they raided my house, alleging that I had been trying to acquire false documentation, they said they found my pictures at a passport forging factory that they had broken down. Praise be to God, my solicitors forced them to accept that I had never tried to obtain false documentation and that I had never had any involvement or plans to do that. They were lying to her in order to drive a wedge between us in the hope she may give up some information.
I had gotten married at the time. As soon as they found out about that they would consistently search my wife’s house on a regular basis. Once every two or three weeks they would be over there. They took her younger sister’s CDs, even Western music ones. They would go into the bedrooms while the sisters were not fully covered. My wife was originally born in Iraq and had left there due to oppression her family had faced, then coming here to get away from an oppressive government; she has been forced to leave the country again because of the exact same oppression. To be honest, that is one of the things that plays on my conscience the most, the fact that, because of me, because of this, her family and even her younger sisters who were in school and starting to get settled had had to uproot their lives and start up in a whole new country all over again.
I also was not able to continue with my nursing degree – they would not change my signing in times. The signing in times were originally between 9am and 11am – we wanted them changed to the evening so that I could go to university and come back in the evening and sign on – they refused to do that. They said that I could sign in between 7am and 9am in the morning. That means I would have to get up in the morning, sign in at the police station and make my way to university which was on the other side of London at South Bank University. It forced me to be late on a number of occasions. When you are doing a nursing degree, punctuality is extremely important because in a ward/medical environment punctuality places an important role; if you are late for your shift, people may die. They were not going to let me sign on during different times during my work placements which meant that I would have to leave in the middle of a shift or turn up half way through a shift.
All of this forced me to leave my course and all of these pressures together meant that complete dismantling of me. On every aspect of my life there was a huge strain, I lost a lot of weight physically and was not coping well mentally. Later the doctors said that it was a reactive depressive episode to a severe degree which I guess is what later led to me absconding.
CP: Eventually you absconded, why did you choose to do so?
CB: To be honest, I couldn’t see any future here with the control orders and with the life I was being forced to live under the control orders. In the case in the Old Bailey, one of the liaison officers said that he felt that it would have been good for me to get out and go and get a job doing something else, as the control order completely dominated my life. The irony is that I could not get a job without Home Office permission and I would have to find an employer who would not mind the Home Office calling him and asking if he knew I was a terrorist. With the security vetting, it made it altogether impossible to get work. Even the police officers recognised that this was my life and that it controlled and dominated everything and it was those pressures and that stress that led me to leave; in that contextual moment when a door opened up and there seemed to be an opportunity to escape, I took it. It was not the best decision of my life, but it was a decision taken in the moment and it has to be considered within the context that it was taken.
CP: During your absence, you made the decision to return, why so?
CB: About five weeks after I absconded, I decided to return. Basically I had an anonymity order, so we were not expecting a big press reaction to our disappearance. The government however lifted the anonymity order without consulting our solicitors or giving them any chance to argue our case, and within a day we were the most wanted men in Britain. We were the lead item on both the 6 and 10 o’clock news and on the front page of every national newspaper. I could see on the news that the press were camped outside my mum’s front door step and to be honest, two things occurred to me; I was very concerned with my mum’s health and how she would be coping without me and also I realised that by absconding I was not solving the problem, only running away from it – it was a false euphoria, a false dawn. I came to the decision that I had to come back.
CP: How were your treated on your return?
CB: By now, the precedent had already been set. The police had given up being nice a long time ago, especially SO15 – they were just rude with me all the time, couple of them were ok. When I came back it was exactly what I expected – long sessions of interviews. Praise be to God that my solicitor helped me prepare a statement, after which time I was sent to prison. Initially I was sent to Wandsworth after which time I was sent to Belmarsh.
CP: What were the conditions like in Belmarsh?
CB: In Belmarsh, there are two sets of rules – there are the really strict rules which apply to the Muslims only, and then there are the relaxed rules which apply to everyone else. The clearest example of this is during the holy month of Ramadan. It is from God that we had just had a little bit to eat and praying our post-sunset prayer, just two people praying in a cell. Officers came into the cell and told the brother I was praying with, get out, you are not allowed to be in here, get out – this was all while we were praying. The brother who was leading the prayer kept on reciting and ignored them, Praise be to God. Despite threats that he would be reported, he kept on praying. One of the large officers actually came in to the cell to grab him but one of the other officers held him back – the thing is, this was during our association time, the only time we get out of our cells in the day. The officers reported us for spending time in the same cell, but the thing is that for non-Muslim prisoners, you would see 7/8 of them sitting together, smoking drugs and generally just doing what they want. It was no problem for the non-Muslims, but for two Muslims to be praying together in the middle of their holy month was a problem. They all knew it was Ramadan, because we were getting special food.
This is Belmarsh – but Praise be to God, before I went to prison I went to the talk of a brother who said that his time in prison was the best of times and the worst of times. Although he explained it and I understood what he was saying, I didn’t truly get it until I went to prison. When I was in there, you feel how oppressive the environment is, but at the same time you gain so much solace from the brothers and the people around you, from their solidarity and mostly from your Islam and the Qur’an – now I understand what the brother meant by the best of times and the worst of times. In prison, I would often think back to that talk and ponder over it – it is only from God that I later truly understood what he was saying.
CP: You were in Belmarsh for some time, what were the circumstances of your release?
CB: I had my trial; not based on whether or not I was a terrorist - the trial was for absconding. The jury were asked to assess whether my absconding had been legitimate with a reasonable excuse or a criminal one. They were told that they had to accept that I was a terrorist because the control order itself was not in question or allowed to be questioned. They had to accept that the control order was meant to be there and that it was correct for being there. I was going into a court room already branded a terrorist and not being allowed to defend that accusation. It is from God that we won an impossible case. I had previously spoken to my solicitor and asked him what our chances were, and he said that it was one of those impossible cases that we might just win. By the will of Allah, we won.
I was up for seven counts including not living at the address I was supposed to be living. During that time I had been living with my mum because she was ill, so it was a criminal charge in front of the court that I had been taking care of my mother. Praise be to God, I was found not guilty of all the charges.
When I was released, I was placed under a more strict control order. Interestingly though, the High Court judge in my second case said explicitly that it was stupid to place me under a more strict control order, having been released from prison, considering the reason for running away in the first place. He said surely you are giving a stronger excuse to run away next time?
The next control order only lasted a few months because praise be to God we managed to get it overturned in the High Court. We were excluded from more than half the trial while they examined secret evidence behind closed doors. The government said it had secret evidence that I was involved in plots and they discussed this evidence without my presence or that of my solicitor for three days. Even after all of that and two years of various types of detention, they could not prove that I was involved with any form of terrorist plot. They could not even prove reasonable grounds of suspicion which is a low threshold of proof – even with secret evidence.
These cases are weighted so heavily against you and the emphasis is so much on you proving your innocence rather than them proving your guilt that it is only from God that we won both our cases the first time around.
CP: How does it make you feel knowing that the government is trying so many cases in the same way they are trying yours?
CB: Because of my close involvement in all of this I have found out a lot more about control orders and SIAC and how many cases there are. I didn’t realise how wide reaching these measures they are putting me in are. There are people in prison on trial cases where the evidence is so flimsy or whimsical that it is unbelievable. For example they might say something like, we think that you knew about something that might take place before it happened, and that will be the extent of the evidence.
So many of the cases today, are due to people being considered guilty, simply because of association. It shocks me that in our free and just society that we can have secret hearings and secret trials for people, some of whom have come to this country to escape injustices; now they face systems akin to those countries they escaped. We might not use physical torture ourselves; I saw cases of people in Belmarsh who had been tortured in countries abroad with the knowledge and approval of the British security services through behind the scenes participation.
I just feel that the government has no basis for the moral high ground anymore, that they have completely lost that in their handling of everything at the moment. The other day I went to pick up my mother from the airport as she had come back from holiday and as soon as I entered the airport the police came up to me and did a ‘random security check’. We were there for about two and half hours as the police searched us, searched our car, took swabs from the car, all under the Terrorism Act, all because I went to pick up my mum. They were with me when I went into the arrivals lounge to pick up my mum as she came through with her bags, so they saw that I had genuinely come to receive her with her friend. There was no doubt that I was there for any other reason. I am now being harassed everywhere I go.
CP: Do you have any message for the public?
CB: One thing I will say – although I am very happy about getting off and proving my innocence, there are so many people who are still going through this that need help and support and we shouldn’t be coward into not helping or supporting those people who literally are the most desperate people in our locality.
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