Britain:The determination of the British authorities to crack down on what they see as Islamic extremism was evident yesterday - regardless of claims that they run a police state - when police arrested Abu Izzadeen, a high-profile radical Muslim who barracked home secretary John Reid last year.
Abu Izzadeen was detained, it is believed, for allegedly encouraging terrorism, an accusation that arises from a speech he gave in the West Midlands area - thought to be Birmingham - last year.
A tall, imposing figure, dressed in white robes, he shouted that Mr Reid was "an enemy of Islam" as the minister tried to deliver a speech calling for Muslims to do more to root out extremism. Mr Reid's address followed suicide bomb attacks in London by four British Islamists on July 7th, 2005, which killed 52 people and injured about 700.
A police source said the suspected offences committed by Mr Izzadeen related to activities in the West Midlands area last year and not to the Reid speech. Mr Izzadeen, who was born in Jamaica, and called Trevor Brooks before converting to Islam, has previously praised the London bombers. The al- Ghurabaa organisation of which he is a member emerged from another organisation, al-Muhajiroun, which called the September 11th attackers "magnificent".
Radical Muslim leader Anjem Choudhury responded to news of his arrest by saying that Muslims were now the subject of a "witchhunt".
But Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "Abu Izzadeen is a character who has made some incendiary remarks in the past. He is someone whom the mainstream Muslim community has kept at a distance because of his attempts to create mischief. This arrest does not come as a surprise to many, I expect. However, he is entitled to a fair trial and if police believe he has broken any laws he is entitled to due process."
Earlier, prime minister Tony Blair and Conservative leader David Cameron strongly rejected claims that Britain's anti-terror laws have produced "a police state for Muslims".
Abu Bakr made the claim after he and another man were released without charge on Wednesday, one week after their arrest in Birmingham in connection with an alleged terrorist plot to target a member of the British armed forces for an Iraqi-style kidnap and execution.
Solicitor Gareth Peirce, who represents the freed Birmingham men, said they both left police custody without any better understanding of why they were there than when they arrived seven days earlier.
"Not a word was ever mentioned to either of them about a plot to kidnap or the grisly suggestion of a beheading or even of a soldier at all," she said.
In interviews following his release Mr Bakr said that at no point during his detention did officers question him about the alleged plot. And he told GMTV he believed the real plot behind last week's arrests of nine men in Birmingham was to draw attention away from the arrest of Lord Levy and the second police interview with Mr Blair over the "cash for honours" affair.
Mr Bakr, an English teacher and bookshop worker who is studying for a PhD in political Islam, had earlier told BBC 2's Newsnight programme that Britain's anti-terror laws were specifically targeted at Muslims. "It's not a police state for everyone else because these terror laws are designed specifically for Muslims.
"That's quite an open fact because the people who have been arrested under terrorism laws, the groups for example that have been banned under the terrorism laws, the people that have been affected by terrorism legislation, have been Muslims."
In a sharp response Mr Blair said the idea that the UK was "a police state for Muslims" was "categorically wrong".
Describing the charge as "a gross caricature of the political process in this country" the prime minister's spokesman said: "In a police state a court would not have been able to release someone who was being questioned by the police. In a police state, that person would not have been able to go on national media and be interviewed."
Conservative leader David Cameron said: "The terror laws apply to everybody, it's not right to say we are a police state. We have very clear laws about how long suspects can be detained. Very clear laws about rules of evidence. Very clear rules about how the police must behave. And as long as the police meet all those laws then people shouldn't complain that this is somehow a police state."
The former president of the police superintendents' association Lord Mackenzie said if Mr Bakr was not told why he had been arrested it was open to him to sue the police for unlawful arrest. However, he said "to talk of a police state for Muslims is absolute nonsense".
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Lord Mackenzie said: "You tell that to the many Muslims that were killed and injured [ in the London bombings] in July 2005. They want these terrorism incidents reduced and stopped. The police have a job to do and it may well be that occasionally they will arrest people they can't charge for various reasons. The purpose of arrest is to collect evidence, to interrogate. The independent judiciary intervened and he [ Mr Bakr] was released, which proves we are quite the opposite of a police state because this is not executive detention, this is the system working."
Labour MP Shahid Malik said: "I can understand Abu Bakr's anger and hurt but it definitely doesn't lead to the conclusion that we're in a police state. It's really important that people do remain patient and let justice take its course."
However, with police still questioning seven suspects, local community leaders have welcomed attempts by human rights group Liberty and the Conservative shadow attorney general, Dominic Grieve, to force freedom-of-information disclosure of the source of media briefings about last week's arrests.