ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES 55 being late to the airport before a flight, having encryption software on a USB stick that he was carrying, previously attempting to go on an aid convoy to Syria and displaying “bad character” – a judgement based upon hesitant responses during a schedule 7 stop and providing a business email address rather than his personal email address. His lawyers had countered these assertions by stating that the DLR had been suspended on the day he was travelling to the airport, that the Police had returned the USB to him which was an indication that they were not concerned with material on there, and that his intentions to go on an aid convoy were entirely legitimate. In an initial court hearing to contest the process and recover his personal belongings, the judge noted that while each of the points made only raised a minor suspicion, collectively they amounted to something more serious, and so approved the retention of his passport. The interviewees revealed a range of acts that were cited by authorities for justification of suspicion, including carrying a sizeable amount of cash before a trip abroad. Participation, or attempts to participate, in aid convoys to Syria was frequently cited as a reason for suspicion. Shamim explained that proof of his voluntary work at a refugee camp in Turkey had been disregarded. Some connection or association, even tangential, with an individual deemed to be suspicious or engaged in “extremist activities” was also mentioned as a prompt for state intervention, a practice that others have also discussed to be a frequent habit in the policing of terrorism (Kundnani 2014), and one that in invoking guilt by association draws upon racial governmentalities used in policing gang-related crime, sanctioning collective punishment (Williams and Clarke 2016). In Haydar’s case, when his lawyers queried the decision to remove his passport, the Home Office replied, that he was “assessed to have an extremist mind-set”, to have “published via social media a body of Islamist extremist material”, and that his brother was suspected of fighting with ISIS. Perhaps the starkest illustrations of racial profiling are apparent in the charges based on character grounds where assessments of “bad character” were sufficiently all-encompassing to allow for an array of behaviours to be criminalized. During interrogations by the security services, the interviewees reported being asked questions relating to their Islamic beliefs and practices, as well as their associated political views, provoking a sense that commitment to Islamic faith was enough to be considered as “sufficiently predisposed” to violence (Kumar 2012, 147). They reported being asked questions such as “do you believe in democracy” (Ibrahim), “what do you think of Lee Rigby?” (Amir) as well as their general views on issues such as Osama bin Laden, and the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. One interviewee had her favourite hoodie taken by police because it had “Pray for Syria” written on the front: “I saw them packing the top, I thought: what are you for real?” (Ayesha). Pointing to the inflection of cultural pathologization within the criminalization process,