Downing Street has dismissed as a "gross caricature" claims that Britain was now a police state as far as Muslims were concerned.
Abu Bakr, one of nine men arrested under anti-terror laws and then released by West Midlands Police, said he was "taken aback" when he learned of an alleged plot to behead a Muslim soldier.
"It's a police state for Muslims, it's not a police state for everyone else, because these terror laws are designed specifically for Muslims," he told BBC2's Newsnight.
"That's quite an open fact because the people who have been arrested under terrorism laws, the groups for example that have been banned under the terrorism laws, the people that have been affected by terrorism legislation, have been Muslims.
"So we are feeling the brunt of it all. We are the ones that are being locked up, detained, and then told go back to our lives."
But the Prime Minister's official spokesman said: "In a police state a court would not have been able to release someone who was being questioned by the police.
"In a police state that person would not have been able to go on national radio and be interviewed."
The spokesman added that the police had an "absolute duty and responsibility" to act if they received information which they believed would enable them to protect the public from a threat.
Mr Bakr was among eight suspects picked up in a series of dawn raids in Birmingham on Wednesday last week. A ninth was stopped on a motorway in the city several hours later.
He and another were released without charge from Coventry's Chace Avenue police station. In a statement, the men said there had been no mention to them by police of a plot to kidnap or behead any soldier.
1 comment:
So... where are the Downing Street lies?
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