An Algerian academic is awaiting deportation from Britain after he was arrested for downloading and printing out an Al Qaeda handbook from a U.S. government Web site, The Independent, a British newspaper, reported.

Hicham Yezza, a 30-year-old former Ph.D. student who is now a staff member at the University of Nottingham, was detained for six days and questioned along with Rizwaan Sabir, a student who was writing about the American approach to Al Qaeda in Iraq, a militant group blamed for many attacks on U.S.-led forces there.

“Sabir’s supporters say he downloaded and sent the Al Qaeda training document to Yezza, an acquaintance, because he didn’t want to pay the printing fee,” the Associated Press reported. “Someone then alerted police, who swooped in and arrested them both on May 14.”

Both men were released without charge after it was determined that the document was freely available from the U.S. government. But Mr. Yezza, who has lived in Britain for 13 years, was soon rearrested, served with a deportation notice, and taken to a deportation center.

Academics at Nottingham have raised serious questions about just how deeply British authorities have penetrated campuses and what that means for academic freedom at British universities.

“If I was researching the subject, very likely I would have looked at this myself,” said Bettina Renz, Mr. Sabir’s academic adviser, according to the Associated Press. “The severity of the reaction is just mind-boggling to me, to be honest.”

Others have also raised concerns about just how swiftly the order to deport Mr. Yezza was issued by the Home Office.

“I can see no reason for an emergency deportation of Mr. Hicham [Yezza] other than to cover the embarrassment of police and intelligence services,” a Labour member of Parliament, Alan Simpson, wrote in a letter to Liam Byrne, Britain’s borders and immigration minister. —Andrew Mills