The case of Mohommod and Hamza Nawaz raises profound questions about British justice (London brothers first to be jailed for joining Syrian jihad, 27 November). The two young men were given long sentences, of four and a half and three years in prison respectively, the prosecution claiming that it was “beyond question” that they shared an extremist ideology and that they had travelled to Syria for the purposes of jihad.
However, the judge accepted that “there was no evidence that [they] planned any terrorist activity in this country” or that they had engaged in fighting against Syrian forces. Does this mean that people are being imprisoned now simply for thought crimes, for sharing an extremist ideology, rather than for what they do, or plan to do? And does this apply only to Muslims, or is anyone liable to be had up for what the state cares to describe as “extremist”? Truly, we seem to be entering the world of 1984, and it is very ugly.
Dr Richard Carter
London
• So, the government implements charges of terrorism against its citizens who are otherwise free to discuss, vote and debate these issues at home but also have a right to move freely around the globe wheresoever they might choose.
Tomorrow I shall visit old friends in Halifax, a multicultural town, and will stand in Bull Green, where there was formerly a bench dedicated to a young man, Ralph Fox, who made his own decision to become a terrorist. He had decided, with thousands of others, to oppose, by his own means, the fascists of Spain. Would he have been freely admitted back into our country today? No, he would have been imprisoned. Likewise the supporters of Ian Smith’s regime who travelled in the 1960s to fight in southern Rhodesia.
Ralph Fox died for a cause that he thought right. Unfortunately, he was killed, like scores of our young men and women in Syria and Iraq. Should we distinguish such men and women from each other? Surely we can all morally unite and condemn the government’s position as deeply shameful.
Michael Leeder
Norwich
• It’s shocking that the UN has been compelled to curtail its food programme for 1.7m Syrian refugees for want of funding (Report, 2 December). How much are the wealthy regimes in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states contributing to the relief of misery on such a massive scale?
Jeremy Beecham
Labour, House of Lords
