Belmarsh, control orders, deportation and extradition

Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist and commentator.   What strange, and almost unbelievably infuriating times we live in, as Donald Trump somehow remains president in the US, and Britain continues to be bludgeoned by a phoney demonstration of democracy. The latest example is the General Election on June 8, which follows […]

Please support my work as a freelance investigative journalist and commentator.   OK, I admit it: I’m thoroughly fed up with the Left in Britain, which largely supported the campaign to leave the EU, and is now facilitating Theresa May’s efforts to destroy our economy by following through on the outcome of the ludicrous referendum […]

Please support my work as a freelance investigative journalist and commentator.   Last week, I took part in a fascinating event, the Brockley Festival of Ideas for Change, just a few minutes’ walk from my home in south east London, which was organised by two local organisations, the Brockley Society and the St. John’s Society. […]

The “war on terror” declared by the Bush administration after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 has, primarily, been an American obsession, with the prison at Guantánamo Bay operating as its most well-known icon. Other notable aspects of the US’s cruel and disproportionate response to 9/11 are Bagram in Afghanistan, eventually handed over to […]

My friends, If you’re around on Sunday, between 3pm and 5pm GMT, you can listen to me reading from my books and playing some of my favourite music with human rights activist and arts curator Hamja Ahsan (DIY Cultures), who has a show, DIY Sunday Radio, every Sunday afternoon (UK time) on One Harmony Radio, […]

Sometimes the stench of hypocrisy is so overpowering that one wonders how those mired in it can avoid gagging while they deliver their outrageous lies. That was the case today in Runnymede, west of London, where, 800 years ago today, the barons of England forced King John to sign Magna Carta (the Grand Charter), a […]

After last Thursday’s General Election, as the Tories entrench themselves in power, without even the need of Lib Dem stooges to prop them up, we hear that the Cabinet spent a whole minute thumping the table at their first meeting, demonstrating a gracelessness and arrogance that is typical of the bullies, sociopaths and misfits who […]

This morning, at the Old Bailey, the Crown Prosecution Service dropped all charges against Moazzam Begg, the former Guantánamo prisoner, who had been arrested in February on the basis of an alleged involvement in terrorism relating to visits he had made to Syria in 2012. As I explained in an article at the time, “The […]

Last Wednesday, in Amman, Jordan, 12 years of British hysteria about terrorism was thoroughly undermined when the radical cleric Abu Qatada, who was returned to Jordan from the UK in July 2013, was acquitted of terrorism charges and freed. Abu Qatada (real name Omar Mahmoud Othman) was arrested in October 2002 — as were a […]

Dear friends and supporters, I’ve been away since last Wednesday, but I hope that you have time to read my latest article for Al-Jazeera, “Britain’s Latest Counter-Terrorism Disasters,” if you didn’t see it when it was published on the day of my departure (to the WOMAD festival in Wiltshire) and to like it, share it […]