Iranian media is reporting that the U.K. Muslim Brotherhood has organized a protest outside the British Prime Minister’s office against the continued detention in Britain of Sheikh Raed Salah, the leader of the Israeli Muslim Brotherhood. According to the report:
Peace campaigners were joining Palestinian supporters in a silent protest outside Prime Minister David Cameron’s office against the continued detention in Britain of Sheikh Raed Salah, the leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel. “The silent protest will symbolise both the British government’s attempt to silence Sheikh Raed Salah, and the government’s prevention of him speaking to his legal team.” the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) said. Salah was arrested last Tuesday, three days after arriving in London, amid belated claims that he was subjected to an exclusion order, banning him from entry in the UK even though he was not stopped at the border and had attended several meetings, including with MPs. The PSC said that last Friday he was transferred from an Immigration Detention Centre to a formal prison, which was jeopardising his appeal against his arrest. “No good reason for this transfer has been given. The transfer to prison will significantly interfere with the preparation of Mr Salah’s appeal against the Deportation Order,” it said. The deadline for his appeal is Wednesday but the prison have informed his lawyer that his legal team will not be able to visit him until next Monday, five days after the deadline is due to pass. As well as PSC, the protest was being organised by Stop the War Coalition, British Muslim Initiative, Palestinian Forum in Britain, and Friends of Al-Aqsa. Attempts to deport Salah is being linked with a campaign to discredit him as being anti-Semitic in certain sections of the media, which his lawyers started to challenge at the British High Court before he arrived. Last Wednesday, he was due to attend the launch in the UK parliament of a new Jerusalem campaign to keep the holy city united in the face of growing illegal Israeli settlements, but which still went ahead despite his arrest.
The British Muslim Initiative, Palestinian Forum in Britain, and Friends of Al-Aqsa are all part of the U.K. Muslim Brotherhood while the Stop The War Coalition is a far-left group that frequently acts in coalition with the U.K. Brotherhood. A previous post discussed comments by the leader of a Muslim Brotherhood funded U.K. research center asserting that Salah had been “unfairly targeted by British authorities.
Previous posts have discussed the arrest of Mr. Salah in the U.K. and the support offered to him by the Global Muslim Brotherhood. A BBC producer and MEMRI have both covered the anti-Semitic and extremist views of Mr. Salah. In 2010, the Jerusalem Post profiled Mr. Salah who leads the Northern branch of the Islamic Movement, essentially the Israeli Muslim Brotherhood.