Aug. 12: Four Met police officers will face prosecution for alleged physical and verbal assault of a terror suspect in 2003. Thirty-six-year-old Babar Ahmad, an IT worker, had alleged that he was beaten up and verbally abused by the police officers when he was arrested at Tooting in London on December 2, 2003.
“Babar Ahmad was arrested by the officers on suspicion of terrorism offences. Mr Ahmad suffered a number of injuries during that arrest, including heavy bruising to the head, neck, wrists and feet,” Simon Clements, head of the crown prosecution service’s special crime division, said on Thursday.
Mr Babar Ahmad is not being prosecuted for any terrorism offences in the UK, but he is in prison awaiting deportation to the United States for allegedly running a website to raise funds for Taliban and Chechen terrorists in the 1990s. In July this year, Europe’s human rights court halted Ahmad’s extradition proceedings, but UK home secretary Theresa May has ruled that he must remain in custody until a final ruling is made next year.
In March last year, Met police commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson admitted in court that Ahmad was attacked and abused and the Met police agreed to pay him £60,000 in compensation and damages. In 2008, Mr Ahmad made headlines in Britain after it was revealed that Labour MP Sadiq Khan had allegedly been bugged by the police while meeting Mr Ahmad in prison. In Britain, tapping or bugging the communications of MPs by the government is banned since 1966 under the Wilson Doctrine.
The CPS has decided that four of the five officers involved in Ahmad’s arrest — police constables Nigel Cowley (32), John Donohue, Roderick James-Bowen (39) and Mark Jones (43) — should be prosecuted and they will summoned to appear at City of Westminster magistrates’ court on September 22.