LONDON, Feb 4: Weekend reports that police bugged private conversation between Pakistani origin British Labour whip Sadiq Khan and Babar Ahmad, who is facing extradition to the US for trial over allegedly running a website to raise funds for Chechen separatists and Afghanistan’s Taliban, have kicked up a new controversy here with potential to cause heavy political damage to the Labour government.
Ahmad is said to be a childhood friend of the 37-year-old MP for Tooting, south London.
The Metropolitan police would not discuss the case and refused to say whether the alleged interception was authorised by the former head of counter-terrorism, Andy Hayman, who stood down in December, or Sir Ian Blair, the Met’s commissioner.
The Guardian on Monday quoted Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, the human rights group, saying that there would be a case for bugging an MP if that MP was a suspect.
Otherwise, an MP’s meetings with constituents ought to be confidential. If Khan was bugged, she said it was important to find out who had authorised it.
“There must be a file. It can’t be that complicated,” she told GMTV. “We would expect an answer within days, not weeks.”
Khan said on Sunday: “Clearly I’m concerned. That’s why I’m keen ... to find out whether the allegations are true because the implications clearly are quite serious.”
Khan added: “For people to feel confident in the police and security service we need to know whether this has happened.”
The Sunday Times reported that Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist squad eavesdropped on conversations between Khan and Ahmad at Woodhill prison, Milton Keynes, in 2005 and 2006 using a microphone hidden in a table.
The shadow home secretary, David Davis, said that the inquiry would need to find out who made the decision to eavesdrop on Khan.
Meanwhile, the Muslim News on Monday warned that the alleged bugging puts the credibility of the British government at stake in its aim to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the country’s 2 million Muslims.
The bugging is a breach of parliamentary regulations since 1966 when the ‘Wilson Doctrine’ came into being which states that the telephones of MPs would not be bugged.
Justice Secretary Jack Straw told MPs later Monday afternoon in a statement that the former Court of Appeal judge, now the chief surveillance commissioner, would seek to establish under whose authority any bugging was carried out.
He said Sir Christopher had pledged to do his best to complete his task within two weeks and would report back the results to the prime minister, home secretary and Mr Straw.
“This is the first time I can recall such an allegation being made,” he told MPs.
The decision to bug Mr Khan was allegedly taken by Thames Valley Police, but that the MP “was not the target of the bugging.”
The Commons home affairs select committee said it would investigate the allegations as part of its inquiry into the “surveillance society”.
