Is it just me or is there a strange silence in Holyrood over the conviction of Atif Siddique? A week after MSPs decided they could call into question the abilities of a High Court judge who rejected the World’s End murder case, they say nothing about the circumstances surrounding Siddique’s guilt and his billing as “Scotland’s first home-grown terrorist’. Why is that? Is it because they feel uncomfortable that on the anniversary of 9/11 and with the Glasgow Airport terrorist attack still fresh in our minds it is wrong to question the conviction of a young Muslim? Siddique is guilty of breaking a law enacted by the Blair Government in the wake of 9/11. The previous Prime Minister’s unflagging mission to increase the power of the state with a raft of reactionary laws which passed through a stunned parliament and a public shell shocked by the brutal reality of terrorism is only now becoming apparent. A series of laws which impinge on our freedom to speak, think and act were passed without serious dissent. The argument for social control goes something like this: if you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear - but tell that to the Birmingham six or any other victims of miscarriages of justice, where the justification for banging them to rights on scant evidence was that they were a bad lot anyway. Are our MSPs shifting in their expensive Holyrood seats and questioning whether they should speak out about the erosion of our rights to freedom of speech and wondering whether Scotland might have a small role in showing the rest of the UK to question that? Here is a bored and not too bright Scottish teenager who surfed the net and found material that most would find offensive. He sent distasteful images and words to others, boasted to college friends that he was going to blow up Glasgow, chop the Canadian Prime Minister’s head off and shared images of beheadings with fellow students that quite rightly, alarmed them. None of this makes him a terrorist. He was not a member of a terrorist organisation, did not enact a terrorist plot, there were no co-conspirators, he had no bomb or bomb-making equipment, no gun, in fact, no weapons of any kind, just his fantasies and a computer. None of this is said to belittle the people who have been sacrificed to Bin Laden’s quest, but, equally, we should guard against fear and political opportunism being used as an excuse to create a police state. There is no government in the Western alliance, not even America, which has taken such a lurch to the authoritarian right since September 11 and met with so little opposition, either in the media or in parliament. The Siddique case raises a very uncomfortable issue. The 21-year-old was, according to his lawyer, Aamer Anwar, guilty only of doing what millions of young people do every day - “looking for answers on the internet”. He said that it was not yet a crime to be a young Muslim angry at what you perceive as global injustice. He is right and we have to take great care that it does not become one. The reality is that conspiracy to commit criminal acts already exists as a crime. The internet, however, brings a new dimension. Can looking at terrorist websites be a crime in its own right? When do we consider the line crossed and when does an act of foolishness become criminal? Siddique is guilty in the eyes of the law but he is guiltier of being a daft wee laddie who could learn to become an angrier man behind bars for 15 years and that is much more dangerous.
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Holyrood magazine is the fortnightly insiders guide to understanding the complexity of Scottish politics and policy developments and is widely regarded as being the leading publication for political news and information in Scotland.
