Appeal forwarded by SACC regarding suspects under "control order" house arrest. See also the speaking tour dates.
Former Guantanamo prisoner Omar Deghayes, currently travelling around the UK as part of the "Two Sides: One Story" speaking tour, writes
"We have been meeting people who are on control orders so that we can report their plight and I am very saddened by what I have seen. They are raided by police on a weekly basis, their wives and chlidren are caught up in this horrible system that punishes the whole family and not just the one on a control order. The police raid them early in the morning on a weekly or more basis and the children get to witness their father being searched and humiliated. Their wives are sometimes shackled in front of their children during these searches and the police have been known to pass sexually abusive comments about them. The children as young as 3-5 years old are dragged out of their bedrooms in the early hours of the morning so that the whole house can searched which makes them psychologically scarred and have trouble at school and fear any policeman on the street. All of the households have had the internet and computers banned which affects their learning at school and further isolates them from the outside world.
Its not enough that these control orders are extra judicial and backward but that these families are raided on a regular basis and have their property confiscated is unacceptable and barbaric - sometimes the police come in with guns to intimidate and throw all their property about or take it away and not return it.
This is a huge disappointment for me by coming back from Guantanamo Bay and then seeing another Guantanamo in our back yard. Chris Arendt, the guard, was very shocked by the way the British government has treated these people and he was a guard at Guantanamo Bay."
Please write to the men under control orders, to the men awaiting deportation to countries where they are likely to be tortured and to the other victims of the Guantanamo in our back yard.
Addresses for some of these men are at the SACC website. Please show them they haven't been forgotten
