While listening to the radio this morning, I heard a debate in Parliament that filled me with despair. I don't think I can remember ever hearing anything that has made me think worse of the politicians who run this country, and that's saying something. Regular readers of this blog will be aware that I don't hold our politicians in high regard, and that in general I consider them to be a useless bunch of shits who are only interested in their own pockets and power bases.
The debate was about a terrorist suspect, Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed, who had recently escaped from the security services. Apparently, he is suspected of being a terrorist, though he has never been convicted of any terrorist offence.
The debate was almost entirely focused on how terrible it was that Mohamed had escaped and what the government was going to do to make sure he was caught. Almost no-one picked up on the fact that this is a man who has not been convicted of any offence, so the government has absolutely no business restricting his movements in the first place.
An honourable mention must go to Julian Huppert and Jeremy Corbyn, the only 2 MPs who spoke in the debate who expressed concern about restricting the liberty of an innocent man. The remaining MPs came up with riduculous authoritarian nonsense such as suggesting that the solution to the problem was to ban wearing burkas or to repeal the Human Rights Act.
But still, he's called Mohammed, and he's brown, so he's bound to be a terrorist, right? I find it really depressing that it seemed to be taken for granted that he was a terrorist, just because he's "not one of us". I can't help thinking that if he were a middle-class white guy, a few more MPs might haved questioned the wisdom of doing away with all that pesky "fair trial" malarkey and just going straight for the punishment.
Presumably the security services had slightly more to go on than simply that he was brown and called Mohammed. Perhaps they had some intelligence that he was involved in terrorism. Yeah, well the security services had intelligence that Jean Charles de Menezes was a terrorist as well. There's a good reason why a civilised society puts people on trial before punishing them.
For all I know, maybe Mohamed is a dangerous terrorist. If he is, then he should be put on trial. You know, one of those things where you have a judge and a jury, and a chance to defend yourself. If he were tried and found guilty of terrorist offences, then sure, lock him up and throw away the key.
But it's a really important principle that we are all innocent until proven guilty. The fact that only 2 of our MPs appear to understand that is something I find deeply scary.