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Refugees: a political threat (1)

01 January 1991

Refugees: a political threat
artdoc May=1993

With the passing of the Cold War Europe's security services have
begun targeting refugee and asylum groups as the new `enemy
within'. The current issue of CARF magazine documents this
development in a special survey: `The making of terrorists and
dissidents: Europe's new war on the Third World'.
Among the cases cited is that of the `Mucadele 5' in Berne,
Switzerland. On 14 January 1992 riot police raided the offices
of the socialist, Turkish-Kurdish journal `Mucadele' and arrested
26 people including women and children. Five were charged, and
the public prosecutor said that they were suspected of
blackmailing people to give money to Dev-Sol (Kurdish communists)
and implied they were involved in drug trafficking. At their
trial, in December 1992, the case collapsed for lack of evidence
after police witnesses cited rightwing paper as sources and the
Federal Attorney's Office admitted they had no information on
Mucadele or Dev-Sol activists. Observers suspected that the
Turkish secret service, MIT, had a hand in the press coverage,
raid and charges.
Abdennacer Ben Yussef, a metal worker, resident with his wife
and children in Parma, Italy disappeared without trace. He had
gone to the police station to renew his residence permit and
never returned. Weeks later his wife found out that he had been
expelled from Italy to Tunisia on grounds of national security.
Ben Yussef had no criminal record and had never been a member of
a Tunisian opposition group - he was a member of the legal Union
of Tunisian Immigrant Workers. In Tunisia he was imprisoned and
tortured. He has since escaped and his case has been taken up by
Amnesty International and the civil rights group, Senza Confine.


Statewatch vol 3 no 2 March-April 1993