In the days when airport security checks were still a novelty, the ageing poet, WH Auden, wrote of his astonishment that "myopic, middle class me" had been searched by the police for weapons. As a middle class, middle aged and even more myopic person, I too have had a startling encounter with the police. On 18th September, my office at Med-TV, the Kurdish language satellite broadcaster operating under licence from London, was raided by police from Scotland Yard's special branch. They came in plain clothes, but in force. The three stunned employees present in the office, myself and two colleagues, were confronted by 14 policemen. No arrests were made but they seized all files and computers and searched handbags and briefcases. In fairness, I should record that their conduct was professional: we were not mistreated or abused. The officers said they were in search of financial information in connection with suspicions of money laundering; their warrant issued under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA).
Terrorism? Med-TV is a good cause enterprise, a shoestring operation relying heavily on volunteers. It is valuable because it is the sole Kurdish language broadcaster. Its objective is the promotion of the Kurdish language; it has no political or financial connection to any organisation making use of violence for political purposes. Med's audience embraces all shades of Kurdish political opinion. Its programmes have included interviews with the leader of the armed separatist movement, the Kurdistan Workers party (PKK), but no channel seeking to reflect the range of Kurdish opinion could fulfil its mandate and exclude the PKK. Some of Med's programmes may be fairly characterised as amateurish and, for some tastes, over-reliant on tapes of Kurdish folk dancing; but there is nothing sinister about them.
Med is funded by donations from Kurdish businessmen; Scotland Yard has always been in full possession of information about Med funders and finances. Even assuming that an investigation was justified, how could the PTA be the proper instrument?
Most people, I suppose, believe as I used to, that a warrant under the PTA for a raid would require some evidence of plans for violence on British soil. This is no longer true. The 1993 Criminal Justice Act extended the powers of the PTA to financial investigation. Judges are now willing to sign warrants under the PTA to trawl for financial information about any suspects.
Critics of closer union between Britain and the EU have long feared the civil liberties implications of "harmonisation" of immigration and police matters under the Maastricht treaty. Will the British tradition of policing be undermined by the different, continental approach to state security? The raid on Med convinces me that such fears need to be taken seriously. The co-operation of police forces involves trusting judgements which might not be made on the same evidence as in Britain. This becomes even more problematic when police co-operation extends beyond the EU to an associated country, such as Turkey.
The Turkish government views all expressions of Kurdish cultural identity as a threat. Advocating separatism in Turkey is a crime, and the Turkish government makes no distinction between peaceful and violent proponents of autonomy. It has also been seeking and getting support from some EU police forces in its battle against the Kurds. In July 1996, the Turkish Daily News reported the signing, in Ankara, of an accord between De Ridder, the Belgian police chief, and Alaaddin Yuksel, the Turkish head of internal security. On 27th October, the Turkish paper, Hurriyet, gloated that raids on Med offices were the result of this agreement.
For it was not only the London office which was hit. On the same day the Brussels office was raided, too. The Belgian raid lacked the restraint of Scotland Yard; it was conducted by police with machine guns; dozens of terrified employees and visitors were made to lie on the floor, before being handcuffed and arrested. (Med's other office in Stockholm was untouched, suggesting that Swedish police rejected requests for a raid on the grounds that there was no evidence.)
Most of those arrested in Brussels were released the next day but four were detained throughout October for an investigation which would have been impossible under the US and UK common law systems. For over a month, human rights activists watched in frustration as the procedures of the Belgian legal system unfolded; every time the court of three judges ordered the release of the detainees, the prosecution secured their further detention, alleging the need for the investigation of new charges. The endless round of judicial investigation turned up no evidence. But Med-TV cannot properly scrutinise the police file which was supposedly the basis for the raids.
There is a more encouraging European dimension to this story, too. The day after the raids on Med-TV, on 19th September, the European parliament passed a resolution containing strong condemnation of Turkish human rights violations and froze millions of ecus of aid to Turkey. The parliament may still be considered a risible institution by the British press but some people evidently take it quite seriously.
