CAMPACC:

www.campacc.org.uk

'CAMPACC fully supports all the demands of Justice for NW10 for the revocation of the deportation order, release of the students, compensation for damage inflicted and arrangements for them to continue their studies here.  We condemn the government policy whereby foreign nationals suspected of terrorism are targeted for deportation even when they have not been convicted of any terrorism offence.  The Home Secretary can expel someone as a ‘threat to national security’ even though they have been acquitted by a jury, and even if the state has insufficient evidence to bring them to trial.  SIAC, which allows secret evidence and hearings, as a rule rubber stamps these decisions. Over 50 individuals have faced deportation orders since 2001.  Some of these individuals who were largely asylum seekers and refugees were driven to return to their country of origin voluntarily to face torture rather than to live under house arrest or immigration detention in this country. The NW10 are victims of this vindictive policy, now extended to people on student visas.  We oppose all the terrorism laws since 2000 which have enacted unjust police and executive powers under the guise of the ‘war on terror’. For more information, please go to  www.campacc.org.uk.

South Asia Solidarity Campaign

This a travesty of any notion of justice, where innocent people have been incarcerated, denied legal aid and threatened with deportation even though all charges against them have been dropped due to lack of any evidence. It is clear that these students have been targeted purely because they are young Muslims and because they are from a country – Pakistan – which is increasing being described by the US and British governments as the central hub of terrorism, even as civilians there are facing intensive bombing in the name of a ‘war on terror’, leading to a massive humanitarian crisis.

We are extremely concerned that as the South Asian region becomes the main arena for US aggression, South Asian Muslim communities in Britain are being increasingly terrorized by the State. This case demonstrates that the government can simply disappear people, who then have no access to basic legal rights or any system of accountability. We feel it is crucial to support these young men and their families in their fight for justice and to resist this new extension of state terror.

Manchester No Borders statement of support:

It is testimony to the Orwellian nature of this state of fear, that the Pakistani students were 'released' into Strangeways and Belmarsh prisons, after no evidence of their wrong-doing was found. To brush over the embarrassing mistakes of police and Home Office, there will now be attempts to deport them alongside thousands of other innocent people. Jacqui Smith and Phil Woolas together preside over a system where people can be arbitrarily arrested and disappeared into prisons, immigration detention centres and onto deportation flights.

www.manchesternoborders.org.uk

British Libyan Solidarity Campaign:

If we allow these innocent young men to be deported without charges against them we are setting the most dangerous precedent for UK Law to be used by the Government to remove whoever they want, whenever they want.   The BLSC has fears that Libyan Oppositionists to Gaddafi's regime will be removed in this way at the request of Gaddafi under the terms of rapprochement with Libya and we must act now in solidarity to prevent this happening.