03 July 2019|The Interregnum|Mohamed Elmaazi
The British state has secured a ‘terror’ conviction against two parents for sending £223 to their son in Syria, intended to help bring him home to the UK. Human rights group CAGE lashed out at the ‘absurdity’ of terror laws which require no evidence of actual terrorism, as well as the role that the government-funded Active Change Foundation appears to have played in the conviction.
Featured image via YouTube
On 21 June 2019 John Letts and Sally Lane were convicted under Section 17 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The Oxford based couple sent £223 to their son in September 2015 on the belief that he would use the money to return home from Syria. No evidence was presented to show that their son Jack committed any war crimes. However, UK terror laws don’t require evidence of actual acts of terror in order to secure a conviction for terrorism.
“Reasonable cause to suspect that it will or may be used for…”
Section 17 states:
“A person commits an offence if—
(a)he enters into or becomes concerned in an arrangement as a result of which money or other property is made available or is to be made available to another, and
(b)he knows or has reasonable cause to suspect that it will or may be used for the purposes of terrorism.”
Furthermore, it would appear that the government-funded Active Change Foundation acted in concert with state officials to secure the conviction of the couple. This is despite the fact that authorities led Letts and Lane to believe that the Active Change Foundation are an independent and confidential counter-extremist organisation.
Not guilty, guilty, and undecided
According to the Counter Terror Policing statement:
“[Letts and Lane] were found not guilty by majority verdict on a second count of the same offence, and the jury did not reach a verdict on a third count of the same offence.”
Terrorists who never committed terrorism
Detective Chief Superintendent Kath Barnes, head of Counter Terrorism Policing South East said:
“I am clear when I say that John Letts and Sally Lane are not terrorists and there is no suggestion that they supported the ideology or actions of Daesh in any way.”
Human rights group CAGE blasted the conviction. They said the guilty verdict:
“shows the absurdity of counter-terrorism legislation as well as its inhumanity and openness to abuse by security services intent on making a show of their “success” at the cost of their citizens.”
Barnes: Terror laws don’t care about your “motives”
Barnes also said that:
“The law around this is clear and applies equally to everyone, regardless of their motives”.
The Court heard that police warned the parents against sending any money to their son, but that they felt it was their duty to try and bring him home.
Barnes made clear that from her perspective:
“This couple showed disregard for the law when they decided to send money overseas. […]
“We will continue to work to disrupt and stop the funding of terrorism in the UK and overseas and will always seek to investigate and prosecute those who ignore the law.”
Is the Active Change Foundation a British secret state front?
CAGE and Letts both raised questions about the role played by Hanif Qadir, a former ‘counter-radicalisation expert’ and CEO of the state-funded Active Change Foundation. In a joint statement CAGE and Letts said that Qadir acted as a “confidential” and “independent” adviser to Letts and Lane, before he flipped and testified against them.
In December 2018 this author explained that the Active Change Foundation has received hundreds of thousands of pounds from the Home Office, FCO, local authorities and police forces. But the connections of the Active Change Foundation to the national security state run much deeper. Two former directors of the Active Change Foundation, Dan Lafayeedney and Chris Donnelly, are also long-time members of Specialist Group Military Intelligence (SGMI).
The Integrity Initiative
Lafayeedney and Donnelly are also co-founders and co-directors of the Institute for Statecraft (IfS) and an IfS project known as the Integrity Initiative. The latter being a propaganda network, funded by the FCO, NATO, the US State Department, and other right-leaning militaristic organisations. A leaked trove of documents belonging to the Integrity Initiative exposed its activities in late 2018.
The Integrity Initiative seeks to influence public perception and understanding of domestic and foreign policy issues using civilian cut-outs such as academics and journalists.
Letts: “The depth of betrayal by these ‘counter-extremism experts’ and the police can not be emphasised enough”
Dave Letts expressed his sense of “betrayal” at the hands of Qadir and the Active Change Foundation.
He said:
“I can’t see how anyone can trust the police under the PREVENT programme. The PREVENT-backed organisation they referred us to, the Active Change Foundation, assured us that all our conversations were confidential, but then they reported directly back to counter-terrorism. These “experts” then became prosecution witnesses in our trial, saying we “must have known” Jack would be a fighter even though they never had any evidence of it themselves. The depth of betrayal by these ‘counter-extremism experts’ and the police can not be emphasised enough.”
Cerie Bullivant, CAGE spokesperson, said:
“The fact that Letts’ parents informed police and agreed to cooperate with them, then they were ‘supported’ by a police informant acting as a “counter-extremism” expert amounts to a collective guilt approach which criminalises all and sundry. Families are caught in a “Catch-22″ situation – they are desperate to help but are caught up in the complex spiders web of counter terrorism laws”.
“Publicity at the cost of the well-being of ordinary British people”
Cerie Bullivant, CAGE spokesperson, said:
“That two law-abiding and caring parents can face the full brunt of the state’s counter-terrorism apparatus for trying to get their son to come home from a war zone, is glaring evidence of the inhumanity of the counter-terrorism sector, which is structured on convictions and publicity at the cost of the well-being of ordinary British people.”
Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC sentenced the couple to 15-months imprisonment, suspended for 12 months, and fined them each £140 . Their son Jack remains in a detention centre in Syria.
Par for the course
In February 2019 a Judge imprisoned a 25 year old man for committing the same offence that the Oxford couple were convicted of. According to police Salim Wakil sent £2,557.48:
“to an individual in Lebanon via Western Union, despite a number of warnings from police, following a number of repeated requests from his sister, who is believed to be in Syria having travelled there in 2014 aged 16”.
Once again, the state offered no evidence that the defendant committed or supported any acts of terror in a system that essentially presumes guilt.
Judge Poulet told Wakil:
“I accept that you genuinely wanted to help your sister – you had reasonable and understandable worries about her and your niece.”
The judge proceeded to sentence Wakil to two and a half years in prison.
Related stories by this author:
- Diane Abbott blasts ‘tainted’ Prevent policy during terror bill debate
- New government powers are ‘a serious abuse of civil liberties’, according to rights groups
- Institute for Statecraft slams door in Labour MP’s face
- Inside the Temple of Covert Propaganda: The Integrity Initiative and the UK’s Scandalous Information War