Where’s the outcry over Pope arrests?

Morning Star Online, September 24, 2010
Paddy McGuffin

What the hell has happened to the tradition of questioning authority and and holding the state to account in this country?

Last week six cleaners in Westminster were arrested in dawn raids, detained and smeared as would-be assassins of the Pope with the willing connivance of the fourth estate.

Twenty-four hours later all six were – in now time-honoured fashion – quietly released without charge, the Met having found no evidence of a plot, weapons, explosives, fundamentalist materials or anything incriminating whatsoever in fact.

It was like arresting someone for a murder that hadn’t happened and where the “victim” kept appearing on prime-time TV every day for a week giving live addresses.

These six men, all of north African origin conveniently enough, who I repeat have been charged with no crime and against whom there is apparently not a shred of evidence have had their rights massively infringed by the state.

They have been labelled terrorists and extremists involved in a plot to assassinate the leader of one of the world’s largest religious institutions. It has been reported that a shared joke in a staff canteen may have led to this scandalous situation, something the Met strenuously deny.

Well they would wouldn’t they?

The other claim was that they were arrested because they were in “a position to do something” due to their jobs.

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