Of course, we always hear this. I can’t recall a jihad arrest after which the suspect’s friends and family didn’t say that he was a capital fellow, gentle and kind, and that they were shocked, shocked, that he would get mixed up in this sort of thing. Of course, it’s unlikely in the extreme that Victoria Banks would get into a friendly chat with Ayesha Siddique about the jihad ideology or the idea of Islamic supremacism, so why wouldn’t she go away thinking they were just such sweet people? “Call for counter-terrorism minister after Scots student is arrested,” from The Scotsman, with thanks to all who sent this in:
…Mohammed Atif Siddique, 20, was arrested in Alva, Clackmannanshire. Sixty police officers raided his home after a four-month MI5 and Special Branch surveillance operation. A neighbour said Siddique “seemed to become more radical after 9/11”.
Residents in Alva admitted they were shocked when Siddique was arrested under the Anti-Terrorism Act 2000.
Victoria Banks, daughter of local MP Gordon Banks, said: “The family are the nicest people you could ever meet.”
After his arrest Siddique was taken to the national holding centre at Govan in Glasgow – the most secure police station in Scotland.
The suspect’s parents Mohammed and Parveen, brother Kashif, 23, and sister Ayesha, 17, were also taken away in separate police cars to be interviewed.
Siddique is a computing student who had been studying at a college in Glasgow. The family’s solicitor, Aamer Anwar, said: “He’s a peaceful individual who is not involved in any groups.
“He’s a young man who has a beard. Thousands of young men in Glasgow have beards for religious reasons. That does not make them terrorists.”
True, Aamer. But speaking as a bearded person who has never been arrested for terrorist activity, I think you and I both know that his beard is not the reason why he was arrested.