Muslim peer claims phone was bugged

Lucy Ward and Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday December 17, 2001
The Guardian

A Muslim Labour peer will today make an official complaint to surveillance watchdogs over his claim that his telephone was bugged and he was followed on the orders of the government.

Lord Ahmed, who has publicly opposed the government's position on the military campaign in Afghanistan, will call for an investigation by the investigatory powers tribunal into allegations that transcripts of his phone conversations were given to ministers.

The phone tapping claims were rejected yesterday by government sources, who - in a departure from policy of "neither confirm nor deny" phone tap allegations - insisted that Lord Ahmed was not under surveillance.

His claims rest on inferences drawn from his account - printed in yesterday's Mail on Sunday - of a meeting in late October with foreign office minister Denis MacShane, when Lord Ahmed says the minister challenged him over his opposition to the war.

He claims Mr MacShane told him: "We know what you have been saying, who you have been talking to. Everything you say is circulated to ministers," before waving a sheaf of papers, which Lord Ahmed believes to be transcripts of his phone conversations.

Yesterday, the peer said Mr MacShane had known details of his reservations over the military campaign which he had disclosed only in a private mobile phone call with a journalist at Pakistan's Daily Jang newspaper. He added the minister had known he had met a particular diplomat whom he had encountered on the green opposite parliament. "Unless people are following me around, how should they know that?" he said.

He was "horrified" at the implications. "It must be not only an abuse of my rights, but my parliamentary privilege. I am either a British parliamentarian or a second class enemy within."

When Lord Ahmed asked Mr MacShane: "Are you saying MI5 have been bugging my phone, that people are watching me?" he claims the minister said: "They are probably listening here for all I know. Don't think that nobody fucking knows what is going on."

Nazir Ahmed, a councillor and property dealer who was ennobled in 1998, comes from Rotherham, the south Yorkshire town represented by Mr MacShane, and the two know each other.

The claims about surveillance were dismissed by one government source as "bollocks on stilts". "Denis probably read about Ahmed's reservations in the Daily Jang," the source said.

Bugging the phone of a member of the Commons or Lords requires the consent of the prime minister and the home secretary, and could never be authorised by a foreign office minister.

At the time of the meeting, Lord Ahmed was growing increasingly concerned about the military action in Afghanistan, amid reports that UNHCR, Red Cross and Red Crescent premises had been accidentally bombed and indications that the military strand of the war on terror appeared far more active than the political and diplomatic ones.

The government was anxious to keep the British Muslim community on board over the action, and was keen to find leading Muslim figures speaking out in support.

However, one government source yesterday suggested Lord Ahmed had hinted he would like some kind of reward, in terms of a job, for playing such a role, which the government would not provide.

 http://politics.guardian.co.uk/attacks/story/0,1320,619761,00.html