21/05/2008
For five years the government attempted to detain Mouloud Sihali through various measures. Initially he was detained indefinitely without charge during the Ricin case of which he was acquitted. Months after his release he was rearrested for not being conducive to the public good and placed in detention, after which time he was placed under a control order. Recently he has once again been acquitted of any involvement with international terrorism and now speaks to Cageprisoners about his case and its implications on the people of the UK.
CAGEPRISONERS: Could you please introduce yourself?
MOULOUD SIHALI: My name is Mouloud Sihali and I am 32 years old.
CP: Are you a British citizen or resident?
MS: I’m neither of those, I am an asylum seeker.
CP: When did you come to the UK?
MS: I came in the summer of 1997, 11 years ago.
CP: What brought you to the UK?
MS: Back then I was 20, and so I had the military at my neck in Algeria who obliged me to do military service; and back then in 1997, it was not the right place to do military service. There were big problems there with fighting, bombings, killings and all of those kinds of things unfortunately. The people who used to do this were the military people, guys like me who do their two year service. You are sent on skirmishes where you end up killing someone or being killed. If you refuse to shoot, they were there, so you were forced to shoot the terrorists, the opposition party or whoever they told you to shoot, they were always there though. It is like a gun pointed at your head, they say to you shoot and save your life, or we will shoot you. We had no choice, so we ended up being criminals or killers. You understand that it takes only one bullet to become a murderer.
In principle, I refused to do that, so I took my chances and walked away. Like many other Algerians, I came here, claimed asylum, but it was a shame that the government did not see it that way. Britain and the rest of the world said that many countries have military service as part of their conditions, and so stated that this was no reason under the UN mandate for us to be given asylum status. Many Algerians were thus forced to return to Algeria and ended up being punished as well as being forced to do double the military service.
Due to this reason, I decided not to claim asylum and began to live illegally in the UK. This continued for five years until I was arrested in 2002.
CP: Why did they arrest you in 2002?
MS: They arrested me actually quite by mistake – they had not thought of arresting me at all. What happened is that I had a couple of Muslim Algerians staying with me as you do in our community, if you have a bit of space you would rather let someone stay in your room under the radiator than under a bridge when they come new to this country. I came here new to this country with one of the other guys, Omar Jadeed, who has now returned to Algeria. He was staying in my place without my even asking him about any questions of his past; it is not the done thing to ask such questions when someone is asking for help. I didn’t know, but he had absconded from an immigration detention centre and was pending deportation. He didn’t tell me these things and I had not asked. He had nowhere to go so he asked if he could stay for a few days or weeks in my place to which I said no problem.
Back then there was the first Iraq dossier being introduced before the House of Commons and Tony Blair had told the security services to arrest anyone who might be a threat to Britain going to war. That was back in September 2002, so they started to pick up people who were fundraising or gathering money or collecting charity money, or anyone. They didn’t however go after any British citizens or residents, they only went after the asylum seekers or the ones living illegally. They started picking such people up.
I have my own suspicions about this operation. They called it Operation Spring Born – and yet it was taking place in September. They do not name these operations randomly, I don’t think so. They called our ricin operation, Spring Born; we were picked up in September, and they went into Iraq in Spring of the following year. We were the first ones ever to be picked up; we were the first ever to picked up on terrorism charges. They didn’t know what to do with us, what to charge us with.
They simply held us and then started trying to make links to us through our phones and other means. They went through everyone I called and know. They found one guy who allegedly had some papers in his possession which had a print out of some chemical processes which I don’t know what he would be doing with those anyway, but he said he was holding them for a friend. They linked me to him because they said that previously we had shared the same room in the same place. The link was there, and they linked me to Omar Jadeed and they linked me to another guy who was Meguerba and because I may have come across the men in various ways, they assumed I knew other people as well. This is how they linked all of us in the ricin case, it was a technical link rather than a physical one and it was all to show that there was some kind of cell.
CP: When were you taken to Belmarsh?
MS: I spent three months in Belmarsh under Section 57, which is the possession of an item that could be used for the instigation or preparation of an act of terrorism. This could be anything including a shoe! I was taken there at the end of September 2002 – this was the first time I have ever spent in prison in my life. For three months, I was held under these allegations and in the first week of January, they picked me up from Belmarsh after Meguerba had confessed in Algeria to there being a plot, that there was ricin, there was poison and whatever else he said there. They started to raid all of our homes and linked us all together and made it a big case – the ricin case. They charged us with ricin – it took two and half years to go through the judicial process.
CP: During the time you were held for the ricin trials, how many times were you questioned about ricin or your involvement with this plot?
MS: Never – I was never questioned. That is the funny thing. I was never asked anything. The ricin case was begun three months after I was already in prison.
CP: What about your supposed co-conspirators, were they not questioned about ricin?
MS: One of them wasn’t – Khalif, the one that was picked up with me. There was never a ricin case you see; that was created three months after we had been picked up. They couldn’t question us because they knew that there was no ricin and that this had nothing to do with us. The only plot that existed was that we are all Algerian, and so because of that we must know one another. They didn’t need any proof - as long as we were asylum seekers in this country, the law does not protect us.
CP: What happened with your case?
MS: We spent two and half years in detention and we started to slowly get more and more information about the government in terms of the case that they were bringing against us. They began to show us where they got their information from, where it came from, and we saw that there were papers with ‘top secret’ written at the top. These top secret papers were coming from Algeria and specifically from Meguerba – so we had a very long fight to get them published by the court. The court forced the government, and that is why they could not prosecute anyone.
CP: What was the problem with the evidence from Meguerba?
MS: The evidence was not reliable – it cannot be relied upon because he changed his story so many times. In the same interview he would change his mind many times. He would say something about one of us, and by the next hour, he would change his entire story, and then in the next interview again he would change his story – that is how it went. Due to this, even the court decided that the testimony was unreliable. Unfortunately it was these interviews though which were used to arrest us and then put together the ricin case. They have no other intelligence, they made that clear. Due to the confessions of Mguerba, they raided all of our homes and arrested us.
CP: Do you think Meguerba was tortured in Algeria?
MS: I’m afraid I cannot answer that as there was a law that was introduced in August 2006 as part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Algeria, that Bouteflika decided to give an amnesty and forgive everyone – so as part of that Commission, the law was made that if any Algerian in Algeria or abroad says that the Algerian regime commits torture, then they will be imprisoned for five years automatically as soon as they land in the country without even a trial. I cannot say that the Algerians torture, but what I can say, and this is not from me, this is from the court, as I do not have any proof that the Algerians torture, that there are many people out there, many human rights organisations who say that there was torture and claimed to have even seen Meguerba in such a state. As for me, I have no evidence of this and so cannot make that allegation.
CP: How did the trial proceed?
MS: There was a jury selection, and they sat there for seven or eight months hearing all the evidence and all the details and they decided themselves that we were innocent. The jury decided this on their own - a unanimous decision that we were innocent. This really hurt the security services; the fact that the verdict was unanimous really hurt them.
For six months I was completely free, like I am now with only the conditions that I had to reside the in a given residence and to sign in twice a week at an immigration centre like any asylum seeker. Right now I have no status in the UK, I am an unrecognised individual. My days were spent waiting for the Home Office to interview me. That whole time I did not realise that they were cooking up something for me.
After the 7th July bombings – the famous speech of Tony Blair declared that “the rules of the game have changed” – it is like the whole thing for him is a game for which he can change the rules as he pleases. I found this very funny, for a man to play with the lives of others as if it were a game. It is a very funny statement from such a big politician – a game!
When the rules of the game changed, they picked up the first batch of people who were all Algerians – they were on control orders. They were picked up on 15th August 2005 and this was issued by Charles Clarke back then. He stated that the men were a threat to national security and should thus be deported – however the reasoning for being able to do this was because he was negotiating a memorandum of understanding. That memorandum of understanding is that if we do send them back to their country, they will not be tortured or ill treated. The returned men will have their full rights and if the Algerian government wishes to charge them, then they are free to do so. Previously the UK used to be very careful about these things, meaning that they would not accept the system of justice in Algeria because they thought it was flawed – it was not independent. If the security services in Algeria decide they want to prosecute someone, they can do it just like that. Now the UK has completely shifted its position saying that it is totally fine as long as the person is not hit, burned, sliced or killed, but it is fine to detain the individual indefinitely without trial. The British softened their own rules. That is what a memorandum of understanding means.
CP: How did you challenge this deportation?
MS: I came clean. I have never done anything wrong and so I decided to challenge the deportation. The claim that I was a threat to national security was completely wrong and so I campaigned and went to court. The whole process was a nightmare as I was the last to have my case heard out of all the Libyans, Jordanians, Tunisians and Algerians – I was the last person of all of them to have my chance to defend myself. I kept on wondering why did they keep me as the last through SIAC.
CP: What is SIAC?
MS: Once it is claimed you a threat to national security, automatically you will be dealt with through the Special Immigration Appeals Commission or SIAC as this is how you appeal. SIAC is a commission, it is not a court. It is a commission chosen by the Home Office; the judges have to be approved by the Home Office, they are not independent. I asked the lawyers who are the panel at SIAC, who are the three judges, they said to me that one is a High Court judge, another is a normal immigration judge and the final one is an expert on terrorism and usually someone with a background in the security services. This is the panel that is supposed to judge me on evidence that I am not allowed to see or challenge or even know where it comes from. When it comes to the closed sessions that they have, everyone is thrown out and they sit by themselves and they cook up whatever they want. Even with all of this, I won my case, and this committee of three judges have ruled that I am no threat to national security and the reason deport me on those grounds is wrong. Now I am cleared through SIAC.
CP: How difficult was it to go through SIAC?
MS: It was like fighting in a dark room. Your opponent has night vision goggles and you are in the dark room which is sealed. You walk into that room without anything while the other side walk in with the night vision goggles and big guns. You don’t know where the punch is going to come from and how big it will be – that is what it is like. You have to guess what the secret evidence was, it is like a game, you have to guess. To counteract the secret evidence, we had to go through my entire life with my lawyer. It is funny, we used to laugh because we would sit down and think about every person that I met and under what circumstances and what they might have or have not said to me. What could it be? Who did I meet 10 years ago? Maybe I shook hands with someone 10 years ago who turned out to be a bad guy. I don’t know the evidence against me so I have to guess what they might be thinking or bringing against me. We went to court and then I started guessing, I kept on instructing my lawyers to mention things as I remembered them on the chance that I might guess a defence correctly. I literally had to remember my entire 11 years in the UK in absolute detail in order to show that I am not a danger.
I have been on national TV on all the major news channels and programmes and I have challenged everyone to prove that I have any connection to anything that is to do with Afghanistan, Chechnya, Pakistan or the Taliban or anything at all or anywhere in the world. There is nothing, they had nothing and yet they still came after me.
After two years of trying to build a case against me, they still had nothing. The defence of the Home Office was in SIAC was that they claimed they were not calling me a terrorist, or that I was a terrorism suspect, or that I was contributing to terrorism directly or indirectly – what they said was that I was too generous in helping people with asylum applications, translating and in other ways, and because of that I might end up accidentally helping someone unknowingly because of this generosity and so that means I must be a threat to national security. If people ask you for your help with something, of course as a good human being you will try and help them, but they used this in order to say that maybe I might accidentally help terrorism. This is the entirety of the case against me.
I had Michael Mansfield as my QC, Gareth Peirce and Natalia Garcia and they were all sitting there and they were completely stunned by this. We had been preparing for that day calling it the ‘big day’ when I would be giving my evidence – but even they were truly stunned by the argument brought by the Home Office. The government’s case against me was wrapped up in ten minutes after claiming that it would take three days to present arguments. Just like that, someone decided I was a terrorist and because of that decision I lost five years of my life. That is my case.
CP: You were then held under a control order, what was it like being held under such conditions?
MS: The only way that I can describe it is that it is a living nightmare – that is the closest way to describe it. You are living a nightmare, living in fear, 24/7. They can come and pick you up anytime they want, they can come and put you in prison any time they want. They can come and search you any time they want or even pick up anything from your house – day or night. The funny bit of it is, that you are locked up behind your own door – there is nowhere you can go. When they come and knock on your door, you get that nervous feeling and your heart starts beating fast and anxious because you think to yourself, maybe this is the time, this is the time they come to take me away. It is worse than prison – at least when you are in prison you do not think of these things, you do not have that pressure, you are locked up and you forget about your life and deal with what you are given. However, when you are out, you always have the constant fear of being placed in prison and you live with that.
You also have to sign at the police station every single day, so every time you walk into that station, you think to yourself, this is it, this is when they take me. I live an unimaginable life – I go to the shops to buy myself a jumper or shoes or even socks and I pick the thing up and then start thinking why should I waste any money paying for that. They might take me tonight and I won’t even enjoy wearing that. What is the point of buying it and wasting money? This happens over and over, the same thought crosses my mind each time I attempt to buy a piece of clothing. There is no certainty, you don’t know when you are going to be picked up, and when you are, all your possessions are gone as they will be thrown out by your landlord as soon as you are arrested. The next time you come out of prison, you have to buy everything new. It already happened to me twice, once for the ricin and the other time for deportation, both times I was picked up twice, beaten up twice, last all my belongings twice. What is preventing it happening a third time – nothing!
It is a nightmare, I managed to forget a lot of it, praise be to God – I am happier now that I have been able to forget my time under control orders. I still have nightmares though, and I still sit on my bed, watching the door expecting it to be broken any moment. Every morning, around 5:30 when I wake up I start staring at the door and I feel like the door has broken, I literally hallucinate that the door is being broken for a few seconds and then realise that it has not. What can you do, I have to live with this and there are people in a worse situation – others are still behind bars. I am single, others have families with children.
CP: Would you like to share any thoughts with the general public regarding your situation?
MS: I would say something to the Muslims living in the UK – if they think they are safe, then they should think again. If they think that they won’t be touched or that they are untouchable then they should think again, because I used to think the same way. I never thought that something like this could ever happen to me. Why would it happen to me? I hardly even prayed from 1997 to 2002 – to be honest I hardly prayed, I was going out and doing all of the forbidden things which I am not proud of and may God forgive me, but I was a regular person and I did things like anyone else would.
I never thought I could ever be accused of such things, but look at the mess I have been left in. Nobody is safe. It can happen at any time, you can be mistakenly taken for any reason. Once they accuse you of something, they will never back down and will haunt you for the rest of your days. Once they put a black mark on your name and you get linked somehow mistakenly in your community, that is it, you are done. First they used to pick up the asylum seekers and residents, now they are picking up full British citizens born here.
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