UK Muslim officer removed from diplomatic protection unit
Regional-UK, Local, 11/7/2006

An experienced Muslim firearms officer was reported today to have begun discrimination proceedings against the UK Metropolitan Police after he was removed from a close-protection unit guarding senior dignitaries, including UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Amjad Farooq, aged 39, was told he was a threat to national security because his children had attended a mosque associated with a Muslim cleric linked to a suspected terrorist group.

The police officer was also told that his presence might upset the American secret service which worked closely with the Diplomatic Protection Group, British dailies reported.

His suspension comes after another officer, Alexander Basha, was taken off duty from guarding the Israeli regimes's mission in London last month because of concern about his family links with Lebanon.

In the latest case, it was reported that Farooq had failed a counter-terrorism clearance check because two of his sons, aged 9 and 11, had attended their local mosque when it was associated with an imam police suspected of having links with an alleged terrorist group.

The officer is expected to challenge the secrecy surrounding vetting appeals so that he can be allowed to be represented by a special advocate at a tribunal next year.

His solicitor, Lawrence Davies, criticized the way Muslims in Britain were becoming a target of a witchhunt in Britain and being "labeled as guilty by association." "We live in a society where it is possible to point a finger at a Muslim abroad and say that they have WMDs and are a threat to national security and no questions are asked," Davies said.

He told the Independent newspaper that the same forces point a finger at British Muslims and that these are being "assumed guilty before being proven innocent." Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said details of Farooq's case would "not come as a great surprise to many British Muslims." "Smear and innuendo appear increasingly to have taken the place of hard evidence when it comes to finding Muslims guilty of misdemeanours." There is no suggestion that Amjad Farooq himself represented any kind of security risk, he said.

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