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UK police set to hand over personal data of 1,000 British Muslim students to CIA | In the wake of the Detroit flight bombing bid by Nigerian-origin British student, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, police in Britain are set to share personal information concerning the private lives of almost 1,000 British Muslim university students with America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The decision has sparked off outrage among British Muslims, who feel that
they are being targeted without any mistake. They are also concerned that their
names will appear on international terrorist watch lists, The Independent reports.
Police got the personal information of members of the University College of London's
Islamic Society from the student union. "At another meeting with the Metropolitan
Police, they told us they would keep it for seven years and would share the data
with other intelligence agencies if requested. Obviously, I'm very concerned with
what they plan to do with this information," Mojeed Adams-Mogaji, the president
of UCL's Islamic Society, said. So far, the homes of over 50 of the students have
been visited by police officers, but nobody has been arrested. "I feel frustrated
and outraged. To pass on 900 student details because they were members of UCL
Islamic Society is ridiculous. The reason I joined the society was for socio-cultural
reasons. I've never seen the guy [Abdulmutallab]. I wasn't here when he was at
university," Zubair Idris, 21, an international medical student at UCL, said.
Prominent human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce, who advised the Islamic Society during
the affair, described the police's actions as "completely inappropriate". "You
wonder if he (Abdulmutallab) had been a member of a society without the name Islamic
on it, then would there have been such an appetite to grab the information. The
whole concept of data protection was meant to nail down absolute privacy, which
is being breached without a legal reason being imposed on the university to comply,"
she said. |
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