By Mary Jordan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, February 14, 2007

LONDON, Feb. 13 -- London police should publicly apologize to two Muslim families caught up in a mistaken anti-terrorist raid in which a man was shot, an independent oversight panel said Tuesday.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission was investigating the dramatic dawn raid of two homes in East London last June by about 250 officers, some in chemical protective suits. Police officials later said they believed that "a highly dangerous explosive device that could be set off remotely" was being made there.

Two men, Mohammed Abdul Kahar, 23, and his brother Abul Koyair, 20, were arrested, and Abdul Kahar was accidentally shot in the shoulder during the scuffle. A week later, after an extensive search of the houses, both men were released without charge.

Nine family members, including children and elderly, were also hauled into the police station, where DNA samples and fingerprints where taken, actions the panel called "insensitive and unnecessary."

Although it admonished the police for some of their procedures, the panel did not recommend disciplinary action in connection with the raid, which soured relations between police and many Muslims.

Alf Hitchcock, a deputy assistant police commissioner, told reporters that police had already apologized three times for the raid and would do so again.

The so-called Forest Gate raid, named for the neighborhood where it occurred, is frequently cited by Muslim leaders, who say that many of the nearly 2 million Muslims in Britain feel under siege and presumed guilty by police.

Between Sept. 11, 2001, and the end of last September, police arrested 1,140 people for alleged terror-related offenses and released 631 without charge, according to Home Office statistics. Only 38 have been convicted of terrorism offenses, and 98 are currently on trial, according to the government.

Police say they have been under extraordinary pressure to stop attacks that could kill large numbers of people, especially after suicide bombers killed themselves and 52 other passengers on London trains and a bus in July 2005.

Last August, police arrested 25 people in an alleged plot to blow up transatlantic jets; eight were later released without charge. Last month, nine Muslim men were arrested in an alleged plot to kidnap and behead a Muslim serving in the British army; three have been released without charge.

Muslim leaders are increasingly calling police intelligence faulty and say officers are routinely picking up the wrong people. Also, they say, the whole Muslim community is tarred when police swoop in with massive force rather than quietly pulling people in for questioning.

Massoud Shadjareh, chairman of the London-based Islamic Human Rights Commission, said in an interview that the huge numbers of arrests of Muslims that result in no charges "are devastating individuals" and making many Muslims "extremely angry."

He said cases such as the Forest Gate raid are becoming typical, citing the lasting damage done to the Muslim community by publicity about Abdul Kahar and Koyair making a chemical bomb, even though they turned out to be innocent.

Shadjareh called Tuesday's official finding that police should apologize to the families "too little, too late."

Abdul Kahar told the BBC he was disappointed by the commission's findings. He said nothing justified the way police officers handled members of his family, including his 60-year-old father. "He was half naked, and they were beating him on the floor," Abdul Kahar said.

In all, the two families filed more than 150 complaints against the police. Deborah Glass, the panel's commissioner, dismissed nearly all of them but agreed that police should have handled the family members and the two men's accommodation in detention better.

"I've concluded that the police were right to take no chances with public safety," Glass said. But she added, "They must also plan more realistically for the possibility that their intelligence is wrong."