Israeli Secret Service

Barred from entry

Sheikh Raed Salah, now in custody as he awaits deportation from the UK, is the latest of several clerics and preachers whom the home secretary has banned from entering the country.

The Israeli-Arab sheikh is the thrice-elected mayor of his hometown Um al-Faham, an Arab enclave within Israel, and is leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement, which is opposed to the 1993 Oslo peace accords advocating a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Although the Islamic Movement is not banned in Israel, it is closely aligned to Hamas, which is designated in the UK and mainland Europe as a terrorist organisation.

However, that would not have been sufficient for Home Secretary Theresa May to ban the sheikh. Some of those due to host him at his various speaking engagements are themselves open supporters of Hamas.

The Home Office has refused to elaborate on exactly why Sheikh Salah's presence has been judged "not conducive to the public good".

However, before becoming prime minister, David Cameron stressed that it was important to challenge the "extremist mindset" and that he thought a lack of understanding about its make up was "more widespread".

Supporters of the sheikh insist he is opposed to all forms of racism.

Sheikh Salah's Islamic Movement is reported to have mourned the death of Osama Bin Laden, calling him a "martyr" and his killers "Satanic".

While British law entitles such a view to be expressed, it could weigh as a factor in denying entry to a non-British citizen.

Another consideration may have been an article that Sheikh Salah wrote three weeks after the 9/11 attacks, in which he said that unlike Muslim workers in the World Trade Center, Jewish workers had been absent on 9/11.

"Were 4,000 Jewish clerks absent by chance, or was there another reason?" he asked, alluding to a conspiracy theory that is still advanced by some extreme groups that the Israeli secret service Mossad - not al-Qaeda - was behind the attack that killed nearly 3,000 people.

Although similar 9/11 conspiracy theories have been found to be not uncommon within some Islamist groups in Britain, this could also have counted against Sheikh Salah.

He is also reported to have made a speech in February 2007 during a protest in East Jerusalem in which he accused Jews of using children's blood to bake bread.

Rights groups challenge Israeli secret service impunity « Aletho News

For Omar Said, the time he spent in the custody of Israeli secret service agents — and the emotional ordeal that accompanied his interrogation and detention — won’t soon be forgotten.

“You can’t imagine how many hours and how many questions. [The secret service agents] were all the time with me. It’s like your shadow, all the time with you,” Said told The Electronic Intifada. “This measure is very, very heavy and very, very effective. Many of the people can be convinced [to confess to anything] just to get some rest.”

A pharmacologist and expert in traditional Arab medicine based in the Galilee region, Said was arrested by agents from Israel’s General Security Service (GSS, also known as the Shin Bet or Shabak, according to its Hebrew acronym) on 24 April 2010 at the King Hussein/Allenby border crossing with Jordan.

Shortly after being stopped at the border, Said explained that Shabak agents searched his car, home and office and seized files and computers, including those of his children. He later learned that he was being accused of having contact with a foreign agent — a man with connections to the Lebanese resistance movement Hizballah — while on vacation in Egypt. He was also accused of endangering the security of the State of Israel.

“They took me to [Shabak prison in] Petach Tikva [for investigation]. They put me in a very small cell. It’s very dirty and it was cold all the time because they used air conditioning. The light was on all the time,” said Said, who is also active in the Balad party, a Palestinian political party in Israel.

After spending several days on virtually no sleep and under continued interrogation, Said explained that he was transferred to another Shabak-run prison facility in Ashkelon. There, the interrogations continued.

“They [held] me 18 or 17 days without meeting my lawyer. I felt it was like two years when you are there alone, you feel isolated and [like] you will be a victim [because they can do anything they want]. This is a very, very, very dangerous situation,” Said said.

Around the time that Said was arrested, Haifa-based Palestinian political activist Ameer Makhoul was also detained by Shabak and interrogated under the same pretenses: that he had made contact with an agent of Hizballah and was a danger to Israeli security.

Makhoul signed a plea deal in his case late last year , and was sentenced to nine years in prison in January 2011. Said, for his part, was charged with “servicing an illegal organization” after agreeing to a plea bargain and sentenced to seven months in prison.

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