A Year Later and Rashid is Nowhere To Be Seen
“On Tuesday, it will be exactly a year since Rashid Khalid was abducted in Estcourt, never to be seen again.
It was an event that had all the hallmarks of a spy thriller.
On October 31, members of the town’s small Muslim community, who were observing Ramadan, were preparing to have supper after breaking their daily fast.
It was about 10pm and they had just returned from their evening prayers at the mosque.
Suddenly the silence of the night was broken. Several luxury vehicles screeched to a halt in front of a home in Canna Avenue, Forderville. About 10 heavily armed men jumped out of the cars, which had false number plates.
They kicked open the door of an outbuilding and barged in. Inside two men screamed as the raiders turned the place upside down.
A small crowd gathered outside as the owner, Mohammed Bayat, plucked up the courage to ask what was happening. The men, some with a British accent, pointed a rifle at him. He was told if he knew what was good for him, he would go back into his house.
A police van stopped to make inquiries. They, too, were told by the mystery men to move on.
Two hooded men were then dragged out of the building and pushed into two vehicles and driven away.
Pakistani national Khalid Mehmood Rashid and his room-mate, Moulana Mohammed Ebrahim Jeebhai, 29, were driven to an unknown destination.”
“Many times I had my dinner in front of me, and Daddy came to my mind and then I could not eat..”
(Aisha, daughter of ghost prisoner, Masood Janjua)
“We want to find rest. This is worse than killing. You’re killing us slowly day by day.”
(Husnah Al Mashtouli, wife of Mahmoud Jaballah, one of Canada’s secret trial five)
“When all of his brothers and sisters sit together, there is still one person missing, and this is Juma. My mother, every time she sits for Iftar to break her fast, prays to God, so hard, to free Juma from there.”
(Brother of Juma Al Dossary, Bahraini detainee in Guantanamo)
“It doesn’t feel like Ramadan and Eid in prison. It is not a celebration. You are totally isolated – you suffer in another world.”
(‘P’, detained under electronic bail in the UK,
awaiting deportation to torture)
“It seems there is no law to protect me from the injustices I am experiencing.”
“I am in this prison crippled and shackled by the manacles of injustice and I am languishing in the corners of the British dungeon Belmarsh.”
Amar Makhlulif Shackled by the Manacles of Justice
Makhlulif FF8180, HMP Belmarsh
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..and these are just a few excerpts.. how many more will it take to pinch our conscience? may Allaah help us.
❁ طالبة الجنان ❁ 