Free Talha Ahsan

Syed Talha Ahsan was arrested in London on 19 July 2006 in response to an extradition request from the United States. He has been detained without trial for five years. Tomorrow evening, the Islamic Human Rights Commission is holding an event to mark the anniversary of his arrest at its bookshop in Wembley. One of the speakers will be Gareth Peirce, who mentioned Ahsan's case in a piece for the LRB last year, outlining the case against extraditing suspects to the US:

A number of individuals, arrested in the UK, were astonished to learn that activities they had undertaken years before offended against US law. Two of those individuals, Babar Ahmad and Syed Talha Ahsan, had before 9/11 contributed in the UK to a website which, several years later, came to be construed by US prosecutors as having supported the Taliban; their misfortune was that the service provider for the website was located in Connecticut.