Britain: Details of hundreds of students handed to CIA

[Hannah Bell]

The details of up to one thousand Muslim students at University College London (UCL) have been made available to the CIA jointly by the university and the Students Union...

An article appeared in the Independent on April 1 confirming that the Metropolitan Police had, on behalf of the CIA, approached UCL’s Islamic Society for details of its members between 2005 and 2008. The request was in connection with the investigations into the failed Detroit bomb plot on Christmas day last year. After being told by police that the data of the entire membership would be kept on file for at least seven years, the Islamic Society president Mojeed Adams-Mogaji refused to disclose the information.

The police then approached the Students Union, which provided names and email addresses of all members of the Islamic Society at the university between September 2005 and summer 2009. Subsequently after discussions, the university’s registry divulged the home addresses and telephone numbers of these individuals to the police, which were then passed to the CIA.

The main suspect of the failed Detroit bomb plot, Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, studied at UCL between 2005 and 2008. He was president of the Islamic society between 2006 and 2007. There was no proven connection between Abdulmutallab and any of the students whose details were obtained by the CIA, with many confirming that they had never seen, let alone met him...That has not stopped the stepping up of intimidation against the students, with at least 50 addresses on the list having been visited by police...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/isla-a22.shtml