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The Suspect: Counterterrorism, Islam, and the Security State
'An instant classic. Sabir is an inspiration' Arun Kundnani, author of The Muslims are Coming!
What impact has two decades' worth of policing and counterterrorism had on the state of mind of Muslims in Britain? The Suspect draws on the author's lived experiences of being suspected of terrorism to take the reader on a journey through British counterterrorism practices and the policing of Muslims.
Rizwaan Sabir describes what led to his arrest for suspected terrorism, his time in detention, and the surveillance he was subjected to on release from custody, including stop and frisk on the roadside, detentions at the border, and monitoring by police and government departments throughout his research.
Writing publicly for the first time about the traumatizing mental health effects of these experiences, he argues that these harmful outcomes are not the result of errors in government planning, but the consequences of using a counterinsurgency warfare approach to surveillance. If we are to break this injustice, we need to resist counterterrorism policy and practice.
What impact has two decades' worth of policing and counterterrorism had on the state of mind of Muslims in Britain? The Suspect draws on the author's lived experiences of being suspected of terrorism to take the reader on a journey through British counterterrorism practices and the policing of Muslims.
Rizwaan Sabir describes what led to his arrest for suspected terrorism, his time in detention, and the surveillance he was subjected to on release from custody, including stop and frisk on the roadside, detentions at the border, and monitoring by police and government departments throughout his research.
Writing publicly for the first time about the traumatizing mental health effects of these experiences, he argues that these harmful outcomes are not the result of errors in government planning, but the consequences of using a counterinsurgency warfare approach to surveillance. If we are to break this injustice, we need to resist counterterrorism policy and practice.
256 pages, Hardcover
Published March 20, 2022
131 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 13, 2023
What I’m not going to do in this review of Rizwaan Sabir’s book The Suspect is go through the details of why he was arrested and released.
While it is not unimportant, as far as I’m concerned, it is the least important aspect of the difficulties he has been forced to endure.
Rizwaan, like thousands of Muslims in the UK, was arrested under terrorism legislation and released without charge. For the majority of British society, that is the end of the story – the police suspected someone and released that person, so the justice system worked in the way that it is supposed to.
Except, that really isn’t the story at all. The story is of how a system of violence haunted Rizwaan for decades after his arrest and interrogations. One that he found the courage to recount in a straightforward and eloquent recounting of his story.
What needs to be understood, is that in the litany of accounts of injustice within the global 'War on Terror', a sliding scale of injustice might indicate to us that Rizwaan’s experience does not equate to the torture of Muslim detainees by the CIA in Black Sites, or the way that Uyghur Muslims are being treated in concentration camps by the Chinese state.
This book, perhaps more than any other, reminds us of how crucial it is that we avoid establishing a sliding scale. Rizwaan was not arrested alone, but alongside his colleague and friend Hicham Yezza who writes the foreword to the book. Hicham’s eloquent introduction to the book reminds us of how brave Rizwaan has been to put this story down:
"More than a decade after our wrongful arrests on that beautiful morning of May 2008, I still find it very difficult to think and talk about ‘the events’. There is both too much and too little to say. I have especially struggled to convey to others the extent to which such an event can have repercussions far beyond its immediate and obvious confines, to explain just how deep this sort of wound goes."
Full review on the New Arab: https://www.newarab.com/features/susp...
While it is not unimportant, as far as I’m concerned, it is the least important aspect of the difficulties he has been forced to endure.
Rizwaan, like thousands of Muslims in the UK, was arrested under terrorism legislation and released without charge. For the majority of British society, that is the end of the story – the police suspected someone and released that person, so the justice system worked in the way that it is supposed to.
Except, that really isn’t the story at all. The story is of how a system of violence haunted Rizwaan for decades after his arrest and interrogations. One that he found the courage to recount in a straightforward and eloquent recounting of his story.
What needs to be understood, is that in the litany of accounts of injustice within the global 'War on Terror', a sliding scale of injustice might indicate to us that Rizwaan’s experience does not equate to the torture of Muslim detainees by the CIA in Black Sites, or the way that Uyghur Muslims are being treated in concentration camps by the Chinese state.
This book, perhaps more than any other, reminds us of how crucial it is that we avoid establishing a sliding scale. Rizwaan was not arrested alone, but alongside his colleague and friend Hicham Yezza who writes the foreword to the book. Hicham’s eloquent introduction to the book reminds us of how brave Rizwaan has been to put this story down:
"More than a decade after our wrongful arrests on that beautiful morning of May 2008, I still find it very difficult to think and talk about ‘the events’. There is both too much and too little to say. I have especially struggled to convey to others the extent to which such an event can have repercussions far beyond its immediate and obvious confines, to explain just how deep this sort of wound goes."
Full review on the New Arab: https://www.newarab.com/features/susp...
June 30, 2022
This is one of the most important books on the effects of the so called Global War on Terror in recent years. The war have gone about for over two decades, and have both direct and indirect, both explicit and implicit effects on its victims. Sabir brings the complex web of effects into the light. By showing the psychological consequences of the war in the "mouth of the lion", Sabir exposes the extreme mental and emotional work targeted communities and individuals have to put in to cope with being part of a suspect community. Having myself been working with issues pertaining to Islamophobia and Racism for the lasy decade, I have yet to see these processes be articulated in a contemporary light as Sabir does.
July 19, 2022
The wrongful arrests of Rizwaan Sabir and Hitcham Yezza occurred nearly 15 years ago, but Sabir's new account of his experience and his analysis of what happened remain highly pertinent. The two men were suspected of involvement in Islamic terrorism because Sabir, a postgraduate student at the University of Nottingham, had downloaded a document popularly known as the "Al Qaeda Training Manual" and forwarded it on to Yezza, an administrator at the university. A university manager who had access to Yezza's computer alerted the head of security, who through informal channels went directly to Special Branch. The West Midlands Counter-Terrorism Unit and Nottinghamshire Police then launched "Operation Minerva", and as the arrests took place briefings were provided to "the Senior Coordinator for Counter-Terrorism at New Scotland Yard in London, as well as the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT) at the Home Office".
Sabir had downloaded the document as a primary source relevant to his postgraduate studies, and he had found it not in the dark recesses of the "Dark Web" but on the website of the US Department of Justice, which hosted a freely available abridged version. The University of Nottingham Library also held a copy. Sabir had forwarded it to Yezza because of Yezza's own interest in geopolitics, which included being editor-in-chief of a magazine Ceasefire. The two men spent several days in police custody, during which Sabir was subjected to seven interviews and warned that he faced 15 years in prison. Sabir began from a position of trusting that the police "wholeheartedly" to eventually "having no trust whatsoever" as "the questions became more irrelevant and the words from my first interview were being recycled, distorted, and read back to me".
Meanwhile, the police were seeking out witnesses, who were falsely told that the men had downloaded "illegal material". One lecturer, Rod Thornton (who later made his own criticisms of the university and the police) was even incorrectly informed that the two men had downloaded a completely different document called the Encyclopaedia of Afghan Jihad, which contained practical information for terrorists. It appears that the investigating officers had very little idea what postgraduate research involved and were scrambling for a post hoc justification for the arrests – eventually, they found a lecturer named Bernard McGuirk who was willing to say that the so-called manual was "not legitimate research material", but this was someone Sabir had never heard of and he was based in a different department. McGuirk's motive for inserting himself into the story remains a mystery.
Sabir and Yezza were eventually released without charge, and thanks to pro bono legal support in due course were able to secure a financial settlement for wrongful arrest in 2011. This was not just a matter compensation: it meant that he "would no longer be a subject of interest for the police and authorities" as he had been up until then, being "routinely stopped, searched, and detained at the roadside and the UK border whilst travelling". Sabir eventually took to "cautioning" police officers using the form of words used by police themselves when making arrests or starting formal interviews.
Sabir eventually managed to get hold of police intelligence files (formally denied him, but then dropped off at his lawyers' office under mysterious circumstances), from which he discovered how police and the Prevent programme "use relationships with members of the Muslim community to collect intelligence". The files also show "how the police use pejorative and sweeping language to misrepresent their targets, which in turn influences the kind of treatment they are subjected to". He also discovered that he was already on MI5's "radar" prior to his arrest, perhaps due to a brief encounter with Moazzam Begg or due to involvement with a pro-Palestinian protest at the university in 2006.
Sabir continued with his studies after his release; his research involved interviewing police officers about Prevent, which generated more discussion about him behind the scenes. In 2015 he also had a strange encounter at SOAS after giving a paper on counterinsurgency and psy-ops with someone who presented themselves as being from the military's "77th Brigade". At a subsequent meeting, this person (given the pseudonym "Major Hussein") apparently attempted to recruit him.
Sabir's experiences had a negative effect on his mental health, and the book includes some brave self-disclosure as he became prey to paranoid delusions about surveillance and secret messages. In the later parts of the book, he also puts what happened to him into wider contexts of counterinsurgency theory, in particular drawing on and critiquing the work of David Kilcullen and challenging "the violence and coercion of the security state" over "entire communities".
This is certainly an important lens through which to make sense of Sabir’s experience, although I don't think it's the full picture when it comes to understanding police motives. It should be remembered that following the 7/7 London bombings police forces were under great pressure to show that they were on top of potential terrorist threats, especially after public confidence was shattered by the police shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in the weeks after the attack. Tabloids were awash with scare stories, perhaps most notoriously the bogus "Terror Target Sugar" front-page Sun splash of early 2009, which falsely claimed that Muslims were plotting online to target Alan Sugar as a prominent British Jew. The fact that Nottingham Police turned to Bernard McGuirk suggests to me that there was an element of moral panic in the initial police response, however this may have fed into broader strategies. The "Al Qaeda Training Manual" here served a function comparable to "occult literature" and paraphernalia during the Satanic Panic, with McGuirk playing the role of supposed "expert".
Sabir had downloaded the document as a primary source relevant to his postgraduate studies, and he had found it not in the dark recesses of the "Dark Web" but on the website of the US Department of Justice, which hosted a freely available abridged version. The University of Nottingham Library also held a copy. Sabir had forwarded it to Yezza because of Yezza's own interest in geopolitics, which included being editor-in-chief of a magazine Ceasefire. The two men spent several days in police custody, during which Sabir was subjected to seven interviews and warned that he faced 15 years in prison. Sabir began from a position of trusting that the police "wholeheartedly" to eventually "having no trust whatsoever" as "the questions became more irrelevant and the words from my first interview were being recycled, distorted, and read back to me".
Meanwhile, the police were seeking out witnesses, who were falsely told that the men had downloaded "illegal material". One lecturer, Rod Thornton (who later made his own criticisms of the university and the police) was even incorrectly informed that the two men had downloaded a completely different document called the Encyclopaedia of Afghan Jihad, which contained practical information for terrorists. It appears that the investigating officers had very little idea what postgraduate research involved and were scrambling for a post hoc justification for the arrests – eventually, they found a lecturer named Bernard McGuirk who was willing to say that the so-called manual was "not legitimate research material", but this was someone Sabir had never heard of and he was based in a different department. McGuirk's motive for inserting himself into the story remains a mystery.
Sabir and Yezza were eventually released without charge, and thanks to pro bono legal support in due course were able to secure a financial settlement for wrongful arrest in 2011. This was not just a matter compensation: it meant that he "would no longer be a subject of interest for the police and authorities" as he had been up until then, being "routinely stopped, searched, and detained at the roadside and the UK border whilst travelling". Sabir eventually took to "cautioning" police officers using the form of words used by police themselves when making arrests or starting formal interviews.
Sabir eventually managed to get hold of police intelligence files (formally denied him, but then dropped off at his lawyers' office under mysterious circumstances), from which he discovered how police and the Prevent programme "use relationships with members of the Muslim community to collect intelligence". The files also show "how the police use pejorative and sweeping language to misrepresent their targets, which in turn influences the kind of treatment they are subjected to". He also discovered that he was already on MI5's "radar" prior to his arrest, perhaps due to a brief encounter with Moazzam Begg or due to involvement with a pro-Palestinian protest at the university in 2006.
Sabir continued with his studies after his release; his research involved interviewing police officers about Prevent, which generated more discussion about him behind the scenes. In 2015 he also had a strange encounter at SOAS after giving a paper on counterinsurgency and psy-ops with someone who presented themselves as being from the military's "77th Brigade". At a subsequent meeting, this person (given the pseudonym "Major Hussein") apparently attempted to recruit him.
Sabir's experiences had a negative effect on his mental health, and the book includes some brave self-disclosure as he became prey to paranoid delusions about surveillance and secret messages. In the later parts of the book, he also puts what happened to him into wider contexts of counterinsurgency theory, in particular drawing on and critiquing the work of David Kilcullen and challenging "the violence and coercion of the security state" over "entire communities".
This is certainly an important lens through which to make sense of Sabir’s experience, although I don't think it's the full picture when it comes to understanding police motives. It should be remembered that following the 7/7 London bombings police forces were under great pressure to show that they were on top of potential terrorist threats, especially after public confidence was shattered by the police shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in the weeks after the attack. Tabloids were awash with scare stories, perhaps most notoriously the bogus "Terror Target Sugar" front-page Sun splash of early 2009, which falsely claimed that Muslims were plotting online to target Alan Sugar as a prominent British Jew. The fact that Nottingham Police turned to Bernard McGuirk suggests to me that there was an element of moral panic in the initial police response, however this may have fed into broader strategies. The "Al Qaeda Training Manual" here served a function comparable to "occult literature" and paraphernalia during the Satanic Panic, with McGuirk playing the role of supposed "expert".
May 4, 2023
I haven’t read a book this well written and thought provoking in such a long while. While I am not in the UK, reading this book mirrors what happens all the time in the US as well. My heart sinks and waves of emotions come over me as I read this book. Sabir has a way of drawing you in with his words and it feels as if a friend is telling you his traumatic story. I love how you feel Sabir’s youth and then as he gets older, he speaks of how people of color and Muslims feel the need to censor themselves before speaking. I could feel his anxiety when he spoke about how he felt he was being watched by MI-5 and believed the police were against him. Getting stopped incessantly by cops whilst he was driving and at airports. I applaud Sabir’s bravery for letting us; the readers in on his real life experiences, insight into what it can mean to be a person of color and/or Muslim. How unfairly you can be treated just on the basis of skin tone and/or religion. I also pay much respect to Sabir for continuously educating himself and finding the right mental health advocates for himself.
The afterward written by a lawyer named Aamer Anwar, was yet another powerful inclusion and proof on how banding together and showing solidarity- which Sabir attests to, shows how powerful humanity can be in unison. Excellent read that I highly recommend.
The afterward written by a lawyer named Aamer Anwar, was yet another powerful inclusion and proof on how banding together and showing solidarity- which Sabir attests to, shows how powerful humanity can be in unison. Excellent read that I highly recommend.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 14, 2022
a compelling and affective read. The author utilises writing both as a modality for healing and political resistance. He makes visible the often invisible power structures of counterterrorism policing and surveillance and their social and psychological impact. A unique contribution to the field that combines lived experience with political analysis of counterinsurgency, connecting the local to the national and global struggles against systemic racism.
August 22, 2023
Got anxiety for this dude throughout this whole book. Interesting learnt a lot about security measures perpetuating and sustaining institutional racism, Islamophobia and negative discourses surrounding British Muslims - really depressing will now read something cute and romantic to uplift my mood
January 11, 2024
I advice anyone to read this book
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews