The detention of Sami Hamdi exposes the incineration of due process

London - The detention of British journalist Sami Hamdi by U.S. authorities lays bare the collapse of due process under the shadow of the war on terror. To hold a journalist for two weeks without access to a judge is not an administrative delay - it is the intentional normalisation of internment. What began with Guantánamo and other secret prisons has evolved into a system of arbitrary detention cloaked in legal procedure, using Muslims and refugees as testing grounds for how far western governments can erode fundamental rights while maintaining the façade of the rule of law. Hamdi is yet another victim of the militarised policing infrastructure of authoritarian laws enabled by the complicity of liberals in remaining silent against the War on Terror.  

Britain cannot wash its hands of this. When one of its citizens is treated as a political enemy for exercising free expression, the British state has a duty to intervene out of principle. The measure of a nation is not how it defends those it agrees with, but how it protects those it does not. Silence from the Foreign Office will signal what many already know: that some citizens are deemed less worthy of defence, their rights suspended the moment they challenge Western power or speak up for Palestine.

Sami’s case is not an aberration; it is the logical outcome of three decades of authoritarian laws forged in the name of security. These powers, first justified against a faceless “terrorist threat,” have long since been repurposed to criminalise dissent and punish Muslim's for their political consciousness. The ease with which a journalist can be detained abroad should alarm every person who still believes in liberty. What is at stake here is not only Sami’s freedom and right to expression, but the steady dismantling of the very principles that claim to distinguish democracy from despotism.

Image Credit: Council on American-Islamic Relations