Muslims in the UK have complained that the British MI5 secret service has been blackmailing them into spying on other Muslims, threatening to put them on the list of terror suspects if they refused, reports said on 17 April. Speaking to The Independent, a group of Muslim men said that had been harassed at airports while travelling abroad and then interrogated by MI5 on being sent back to the UK. MI5 agents were then said to have offered to remove travel restrictions on the men in return for their co-operation. When the men refused, they started receiving threatening phone calls.
Adydarus Elmi, a 25-year-old cinema worker from north London, told the newspaper that he had received a phone call by one agent who gave her name as Katherine to congratulate him on the birth of his daughter while his wife was still seven months pregnant, even though he himself did not know the sex of his unborn child. And during our last conversation she explained: ‘If you do not want anything to happen to your family you will co-operate,’“ Elmi said. The group, who are all community workers and are British citizens who originate from Somalia, have never in the past been arrested over links to terrorism. They all complained to the police and their local MP before going to the media.