Dear Gordon: In two weeks I kill myself
Read the full letter from a control order subject to the prime minister, where Mahmoud Abu Rideh asks for the right to leave the UK.
Dear Mr Brown
I want to tell you you are in charge of the country. I have lived for 15 years in this country. I am from Gaza Strip. I don’t want to stay in your country one second more. I have been in prison, I have been under a Control Order. There is nobody like me. I have been tortured and I have too much problems with psychiatry and psychology. I have been in Broadmoor, I have been in too many psychiatric hospitals. This is not the way you fight the terrorists.
You damage all my family. I have six children and a wife. My wife she has left the country. Scotland Yard pushed my wife to leave the country. You made my wife and children live a dangerous life, a life bad for them. My children, there are too many times police have come to the house to many things the police have taken that were the children’s and too much interference with their lives so that they could not do their school exams properly. Now my family have left the country and gone to Jordan. I tried to go to Jordan but the Embassy in Jordan refused me and now I am stuck I don’t know where I can go. I want you to give me a United Nations travel document.
I give you two weeks notice. After two weeks I kill myself. And I told you this. I go in front of a train, in front of an underground or I go on a big building and I jump off the building. I go on the motorway and I find a way how I will kill myself. I tried before too many times. I swear by Allah my god I will do this again.
Why? I don’t want to stay in your country. Leave me alone. Jacqui Smith gave me a promise last year she would let me leave the country, where is the promise gone that my wife leave and I leave with her? Now I am stuck here. I have lost my family, I have lost everything. Never can I see my family or my family see me again. Is this not torture I ask you Gordon Brown? Enough for people in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and everywhere. If you fight the terrorists like this you make every Muslim a terrorist.
I don’t want to stay in the country even if you have made it no Control Order or if you gave me a British passport or any other good passport I still wouldn’t stay in this country. I hate this country and I go outside this country I am not afraid of the Security. I am dangerous for myself. How many times have I harmed myself? Before, David Blunkett one time and Tony Blair another time promised they would send me back to Gaza and where is the promise gone?
I want to leave this country now please. Give me a travel document and I leave quickly. I won’t do anything for this country after I leave. I will never come back here. Maybe if I had been in Guantanamo it would be better than if I had stayed in this country. Everyone in Guantanamo came back to this country and as a free man. Why am I not free now? Why do you not leave me alone? Now I give you two weeks. After two weeks the media will know that I have died and they will know that I told you now and you ignored what I said and therefore you will take responsibility for my death. Too many letters have gone back and forth for a year from the Home Office and nothing has happened.
In letters you keep coming back asking questions which don’t change anything saying where do you want to go, when do you want to go? It is clear I can’t go anywhere unless I have a proper travel document. It is not the business of the Home Office where I go and to stop me going. I am not British. The Home Office is playing a game with me. The Home Office tells me the deal is my wife leaves (and she has left the country). Give me a travel document and I will leave the country. I am stateless, I don’t have any country that will take me. You have now 2 weeks from today Tuesday May 26th. I wish to make public this letter so that after I die, everyone will know that you play games with people. You deport people who don’t want to go but for someone like me who wants to go you don’t do anything.
Yours
Mahmoud Abu Rideh
