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Mouloud Sihali

When he arrived in Britain, Mouloud Sihali knew no one. He walked around London until he met some other Algerians, who eventually helped him to find somewhere to stay. He hoped to get a job, earn some money and make a life for himself. He shared a room with another Algerian, an asylum seeker he’d met called David Khalef. Other refugees and asylum seekers with nowhere to go would sometimes come back to the flat, including a man called Mohammed Meguerba. In the summer of 2002, Mouloud managed to get his own room, and as Meguerba was becoming an unwelcome guest in Khalef’s overcrowded bedroom, Mouloud said he could stay at his place until he found somewhere else. But the weeks progressed and Meguerba wasn’t leaving...and, as they weren’t the best of friends, Mouloud started to get irritated. Eventually, after an argument, Mouloud kicked Meguerba out of his flat and he left, leaving behind some bags.

On 17 September 2002, Meguerba was arrested in Tottenham, and when he was asked for his ID told the police it was at Mouloud’s flat. Two days later Mouloud was arrested and taken to Belmarsh Prison. Meanwhile Meguerba suffered an epileptic fit and was released on bail. He fled the country and went back to Algeria, where he was immediately arrested, imprisoned and tortured. Meguerba told the Algerian police the names of all the people he had met while he was in the Europe, including Mouloud. The Algerian police passed this ‘intelligence’ on to their British counterparts, who were under intense political pressure to prove a link between terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

In January 2003, ‘terror raids’ took place up and down the country; anyone unfortunate enough to have met Meguerba was arrested and branded a terrorist. One of the suspects, Kamel Bourgass, who was completely unknown to Mouloud, stabbed a policeman to death as they tried to arrest him. Mouloud had been in Belmarsh for three months at this time, and was unaware of the chain of events that had been set in motion.

5 January 2003. A flat in North London is raided. Twenty- two castor seeds, some apple pips and a coffee grinder are discovered.

6 January 2003. Press release from Scotland Yard states categorically that Ricin has been found in Wood Green

7 January 2003. Tests are carried out at government facility Porton Down. These would prove that there was no Ricin. Tony Blair publicly announces the exact opposite: ‘The arrests which were made show this danger is present and real and with us now. Its potential is huge.’

5 February 2003. Colin Powell goes even further. On the eve of war he tells the UN that he has found a link between ‘the Ricin Plot’, al-Qaeda and Iraq: ‘The Ricin that is bouncing around Europe now originated in Iraq – not in the part of Iraq that is under Saddam Hussein’s control, but his security forces know all about it’.

6 February 2003. On Newsnight, Blair backs him up to justify the impending Iraq invasion: ‘What Colin Powell was talking about yesterday is correct...it would not be correct to say there is no evidence linking al-Qaeda and Iraq.’

30 March 2003. Head of US forces in Iraq announces, ‘And it’s from this site where people were trained and poisons were developed that migrated into Europe. We think that’s probably where the Ricin found in London came from.’

Meanwhile Mouloud, and the other alleged plotters, sat in Belmarsh Prison awaiting trial, and would remain there for over two and a half years.

13 September 2004. ‘The Ricin Trial’ finally starts.

8 April 2005. The jury finds Mouloud and the other supposed plotters innocent. Mouloud and seven other men were cleared of any wrongdoing, and set free.

Mouloud had come into the country on a false passport so he had to report to the police station twice a week, but apart from that he was a free man again. The only day he didn’t do this was on 7 July 2005, when the attacks on the Underground prevented him from travelling.

Two months later Mouloud’s life was shattered for the second time. At 5.30a.m. on 15 September, over thirty police, some armed and wearing riot gear, broke down Mouloud’s door. This time the Government had detained him under the vague accusation that he was ‘considered a threat to national security’. Mouloud has seen no evidence, apart from what appeared in ‘the Ricin Trial’. The fact that he was found completely innocent of all charges in that case seems to be irrelevant.

After four months he was released again, under very strict bail conditions identical to control orders, which amounts to virtual house arrest.

• He has been put in a one-room bedsit in an arbitrary area of London.
• He has no access to the internet.
• He has an eight-hour curfew.
• He has a one square mile area in which he can walk (this area initially did not include a mosque).
• He is not allowed to work, and has to live in central London on £40 a week.
• He has to report to the police station twice a day.
• He has to wear an electronic tag.

There is in fact very little that Mouloud can do, and he spends his days wandering the streets.

He has the open invitation to return to Algeria. As he fled National Service the best he can hope for is a jail sentence, but as he has been branded a terrorist, it is likely he will suffer worse.

To find out more about Mouloud and others under control orders please watch Taking Liberties and read the accompanying book.

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