Wednesday, March 10, 2010 

Eliza Manningham-Bullshitter.

Becoming a member of the security services is a little like converting to Islam - once you're in, you're in for life, unless you decide to turn whistleblower, ala, Peter Wright or David Shayler, although in the case of the latter it seems to have done little to help his state of mind. Most though stay a spook for the rest of their life, and even after retirement continue to deny reports about the antics of agents which are known to be true, and in the case of Eliza Manningham-Buller, continue to be at the very least economical with the truth.

According to the previous head of MI5, "the Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing". Really? How then does that square with the "seven paragraphs" which very clearly show that the Americans were at the least indulging in "cruel and unusual punishment" when interviewing Binyam Mohamed, and which they were more than prepared to share with their friends in 5/6 back in 2002? How is Buller's claim not contradicted directly by the evidence of Craig Murray, who sent back evidence in 2002 and 03 that showed the CIA was using evidence obtained from the torture of dissidents and others in Uzbekistan, and which the government and security services already knew about in any case? Previously MI5/6 have claimed that they didn't properly realise that the US policy of mistreatment had extended as far as it had until the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, although they knew about the "ghost sites", which even then was stretching the realms of feasibility. Now Manningham-Buller claims that she didn't know why Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had been so talkative until after her retirement when she discovered that he had been "waterboarded" 160 times.

If you were to believe Manningham-Buller, you'd also have to accept that the same people who are meant to be keeping us safe are also some of the most gullible and least inquisitive individuals around. There's plenty of things that you can call the security services, but those that rise to the top are not idiots, nor are they easily led or deceived. Did she really ask her underlings why KSM was talking and not even have an inkling that it might have something to do with the fact that the US was subjecting him to simulated drowning on a frighteningly regular basis? That's of course if this whole recollected conversation actually took place at all, which is itself unlikely. Why else after all were certain "high-value" detainees disappearing if they weren't being taken to "black sites", which MI5 and 6 have said they knew about? Then there's the little matter of Guantanamo Bay, established in December 2001, and where from the very beginning there were allegations of mistreatment. The only reasonable conclusion that can be reached is that Eliza Manningham-Buller is lying, and lying in a feeble attempt to protect both herself and MI5. Then again, why should we be surprised? When lying is what you do for a living, why stop when you retire?

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3/10/2010 09:46:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, February 26, 2010 

Paragraph 168 and all that.

It's been a week of non-denial denials, as well as some especially flagrant lies in the shape of Gordon Brown's curious failure to remember unleashing "the forces of hell" against his chancellor after he made the mistake of being too honest with an interviewer. Kindly, they've saved the best until last, with the trifecta of prime minister, home secretary and foreign secretary all uniting in defending those poor, unable to answer back protectors of the realm in the security services:

"We totally reject any suggestion that the security services have a systemic problem in respecting human rights. We wholly reject too that they have any interest in suppressing or withholding information from ministers or the courts."


"It is the nature of the work of the intelligence services that they cannot defend themselves against many of the allegations that have been made. But I can - and I have every confidence that their work does not undermine the principles and values that are the best guarantee of our future security."


It's instructive that all three of these statements, in response to the full disclosure of paragraph 168 of the "seven paragraphs" ruling, only talk in the present tense. Is anyone actually suggesting that the security services now have a systemic problem in respecting human rights? It's been clear that both MI5 and 6 have somewhat changed their ways as a result of the allegations made against them involving both complicity in torture and rendition, helped along by the fact that to a certain extent the CIA has also moderated its behaviour. Alan Johnson's second sentence is worded equally carefully - while Lord Neuberger suggests that David Miliband was misled by MI5 when he issued the public interest immunity certificates put before the court, the main allegation made by Neuberger is that MI5 lied to the Intelligence and Security Committee when they told it in March 2005 that "they operated a culture that respected human rights and that coercive interrogation techniques were alien to the Services' general ethics, methodology and training" while they also "denied that [they] knew of any ill-treatment of detainees interviewed by them whilst detained by or on behalf of the [US] Government". The ISC contains no serving ministers, and no one has claimed that the security services have suppressed or withheld evidence from the courts.

Likewise, as asinine as Brown's claim is that the security services cannot defend themselves, somewhat contradicted by Jonathan Evans' moon-lighting as a Telegraph columnist, why shouldn't he have "every confidence" that their work doesn't undermine "the principles and values" that keep us safe? After all, the new guidelines under which MI5 and 6 are meant to work, which explicitly forbid any complicity in mistreatment have been in place now for some time, and there's been no indication as yet that they aren't being followed. We aren't talking about the here and now however, we're talking about what the security services did, which Brown, Miliband and Johnson strangely don't seem to want to discuss. It would be nice, for instance, for Miliband to comment on whether he was misled by MI5 as Neuberger suggests he was, something which he inexplicably declined to mention in an otherwise lengthy tête-a-tête with a BBC journalist.

The other defence of the security services, and with it the ISC, is that they weren't lying in 2005 when they told the committee the lines stated above as they didn't then apparently know about all the additional documents and information which were only found at a later date once the courts were involved. This is errant nonsense of the most obfuscatory kind. Two years later the ISC was told by Eliza Manningham-Buller (or Bullshitter, as only I call her), then head of MI5, that it was "regrettable that assurances regarding proper treatment of detainees were not sought from the Americans" in Binyam Mohamed's case, despite knowing full well, as the seven paragraphs show, that he was already being tortured before "Witness B" went to interview him. These documents were withheld for the very reason that they directly contradicted what MI5 had told and continued to tell the committee, right up until it was no longer legally possible to pretend otherwise. Miliband, Brown and Johnson are defending the indefensible, and they know it. The only question remains is whether ministers themselves were kept in the dark by the security services in a similar fashion until plausible deniability was no longer an option. The only way we'll find that out is through a judicial inquiry, something that both ministers and the security services will resist with every fibre of their being.

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2/26/2010 10:23:00 PM | | | links to this post

Friday, February 12, 2010 

The seven paragraphs fallout continues.

It's not very often that you see the British state act in such apparent unison as it has over the last couple of days. It's reminiscent of the behaviour of a dog or a child that knows it's done something wrong but carries on acting belligerently regardless, hoping that by doing so you'll concentrate on the reaction rather than the initial offence. In what was almost certainly a carefully choreographed move, we've had the home and foreign secretaries both writing to newspapers to complain bitterly that they dared to report what their chief legal Rottweiler almost ordered a judge not to write in his ruling, while over in the Telegraph Jonathan Evans himself makes a rare appearance in customary obfuscatory spook fashion, suggesting that not only this could all be part of a propaganda war but that also we seem to be indulging in "conspiracy theories and caricature".

You could be forgiven for thinking that the government and intelligence agencies were worried by such unpleasant but also undeniable insights into how they have in the recent past operated against their own citizens and residents. Surely though, it must all be part of an over active imagination. Clearly, slurs and "ludicrous lies" are being told about the organisations that are working as we speak to keep us safe from those who would do every single one of us harm. When Jonathan Evans says, "[W]e did not practise mistreatment or torture then and do not do so now, nor do we collude in torture or encourage others to torture on our behalf", then who are we to disagree?

It doesn't seem to matter that at every single step of the way, from the first investigations into what has become known as "extraordinary rendition", which were the work of newspapers and investigative journalists, not as Evans seems to claim, "taken from our own records", all the way now up to the allegations made in parliament by David Davis concerning the almost outsourcing of torture in the case of Rangzieb Ahmed, that both the government and the security services have denied being involved either in torture or being complicit in its use. Try to spot the difference between what Jack Straw told the Foreign Affairs committee back in 2005 and the denials of everything that have poured forth today:
Q 23. Unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories and that the officials are lying, that I am lying, that behind this there is some kind of secret state which is in league with some dark forces in the United States, and also let me say, we believe that Secretary Rice is lying, there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition full stop, because we have not been, and so what on earth a judicial inquiry would start to do I have no idea.

I do not think it would be justified. While we are on this point, Chairman, can I say this? Some of the reports which are given credibility, including one this morning on the Today programme, are in the realms of the fantastic.

Since then we've learned of the use of Diego Garcia for rendition, the cases of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna, who were rendered to Guantanamo after MI6 told the CIA that they were carrying bomb parts when they weren't, of the over 100 different flights which passed through this country which were involved in the rendition programme and of the handing over to the Americans of Iraqi prisoners, who were swiftly taken to Bagram airbase, home of an especially notorious "black site" prison.

At the very heart of this is the continued refusal to accept that the security services knew almost from the very beginning that the US was mistreating prisoners held under the auspices of the "war on terror". In one of the few revealing documents given to the Intelligence and Security Committee in their otherwise worthless investigations into rendition and prisoner mistreatment was a memo from the 11th of January 2001, issued to both MI5 and MI6 officers telling them that they "could not engage in inhumane or degrading treatment of prisoners" but they also had no obligation to stop it from happening. This was after one officer had reported back that the detainee he had interviewed had been tortured by US personnel. Despite this, the ISC completely believed the story it was told by both government and the intelligence agencies that they didn't realise properly what the US was doing until the Abu Ghraib scandal came to light, a point repeated by Jonathan Evans today, that it was "slow to detect the emerging pattern". It had detected it all right, it just did nothing about it until it blew up in the Americans' faces, hoping like they did that they could get away with. Likewise, the ISC considered the fact that MI5 had provided questions to the Americans which were subsequently used while Binyam Mohamed was tortured in Morocco as "regrettable", as was the fact that it hadn't sought assurances that he wouldn't be mistreated. As the seven paragraphs have now made clear, MI5 knew full well that Mohamed was already being tortured, yet it still did nothing to help him and sent on the questions for him to be asked regardless. What is that if not active complicity in torture?

Nick Clegg is close to getting somewhere when he suggests that ministers themselves must have known about this policy of non-involvement but also non-condemnation of ill-treatment. This though is where things start getting truly murky: the Guardian has previously reported that Tony Blair knew, but not until after the Abu Ghraib scandal. This would tie in with the claims of the security services that they couldn't possibly have known about the US policy of mistreatment until then. Perhaps the truth of the matter is that the ministers didn't know, or at least only had an inkling and that the security services had kept it a secret from them up until it was no longer possible to. It's plausible and would also explain just why the security services keep up the ridiculous pretence that they didn't know until then, hence also why both were so outraged when Lord Neuberger claimed that MI5 was unaccountable even to the politicians supposedly in charged, having got far too close to the actuality.

Is that letting them off the hook somewhat, if it turns out to be the case? Certainly. We've known for years about the antics of the intelligence agencies, and especially how in the past they reacted to Labour governments, as well as their infiltration of completely harmless leftist organisations throughout the 70s and 80s, and for the current generation to forget about those scandals is unforgivable. Did even they though imagine that they would become complicit in torture in such a way? They're responsible and accountable, but it could well be that the security services remained even more out of control than us "conspiracy theorists and caricaturists" imagined.

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2/12/2010 10:33:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, February 11, 2010 

Scum-watch: Whose side are you on?

BenSix has already had a go at the esteemed Con Coughlin for his response to yesterday's ruling by the Court of Appeal concerning the seven paragraphs, but there's another contender for the prize title of "worst journalist in Britain" in the form of whoever wrote today's Sun leader column:

IN Afghanistan, our troops fight al-Qaeda. Here, the battle against the terrorists is undermined by judges.

Except they're not fighting al-Qaida, they're fighting the Taliban and various other insurgents, but who's being picky?

How, pray tell, is the battle against terrorists being undermined by judges? Yesterday's ruling should in practice affect absolutely nothing, as MI5 and MI6 are meant to have already changed their rules when it comes to handling British detainees held by other authorities. Or have they?

That is the ludicrous position we are in after yesterday's ruling over ex-Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed.

Mohamed claims America's CIA tortured him.

America shared information about Mohamed's interrogation with Britain on terms of strict secrecy.

As a refugee here, he used our courts to force details to be released.


The Sun has belittled Mohamed's account of his torture in the past, as well as said that it didn't want him back, along with other various degrees of heartlessness about his treatment. Unfortunately, considering that the American judge Gladys Kessler backed his account of how he was tortured and rendered (PDF), it now seems to be fact rather than anything approaching fiction. It's true that Mohamed is only a resident here rather than a citizen, but that should have no bearing on his access to the courts, especially when it was our security services that were actively involved in his detention. As for this idea of strict secrecy, or the "control principle", as David Miliband described it, when such information contains details which make clear that even residents of this country are being mistreated and that we are complicit in that mistreatment, it stops being need to know and starts becoming an issue of legality, of our international and indeed national obligations.

The liberal judges who backed him have damaged relations with our greatest ally.

If America now decides we cannot be trusted with security secrets, we will be at greater risk from al-Qaeda.



Yes, the statement from the White House that they were "deeply disappointed" with the ruling is bound to set our relations with "our greatest ally" back years. The Americans don't care a fig about this for the simple reason that they've already willingly released far worse information about what they did at the time; they're just for once prepared to go along with Miliband's attempts to block publication most likely as some obscure favour. Even if the Americans suddenly decided to stop sharing intelligence, which they won't, as we give them just as much as they give us, it's still pooled with other intelligence agencies which would. The idea that this will make us less safe, because we've finally found that our security services are liars and blackguards is absurd. If anything, it's likely to make us safer, not less.

The ruling is also a purely political gesture. Mohamed's claims have already been aired in the US.

A purely political gesture? If the Sun really believes that uncovering the true nature of what our security services have been involving themselves is just a "political gesture", then it's even more jaded and dismissive of any abuses of power than ever before. Mohamed's claims were aired in the US which is exactly why there was no "secrecy" and therefore they could be released, and why the arguments made the paper and the government are so bogus.

Our security services deserve support. The war on terror is not a game of lawn tennis.

Yes, they do, don't they? Because being complicit in torture isn't counter-productive at all, and doesn't undermine our values in the slightest. If only we could truly let rip against these jihadists, then maybe the war on terror really would become a game of lawn tennis. It's the liberals and the mad judges that are holding us back!

Whose side are you on, your Lordships?

You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists.

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2/11/2010 10:09:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, February 10, 2010 

The seven paragraphs.

Reading the seven paragraphs that have finally been released detailing the CIA's treatment of Binyam Mohamed after today's ruling by the Court of Appeal, it's initially difficult to know quite why the government was so determined that they should remain secret. They tell us absolutely nothing that we didn't already know: that the US was systematically mistreating almost anyone that came into their custody in either Afghanistan or Pakistan; that this was just the start of the torture regime which Binyam Mohamed found himself under; that the CIA, despite the claims of our security services, had been letting them know just what they were doing to individuals connected to this country; and that despite knowing full well that what the CIA was doing to Mohamed at this early stage would breach our obligations under the European Convention of Human Rights, as found during the 1970s when the "five techniques" were outlawed in Northern Ireland, they did absolutely nothing to intervene to stop his mistreatment.

Why then did they appeal, time and again until finally giving up at some point last week to stop these already widely known facts from entering into the public domain? The claims, repeated ad nauseam today that this was all about the "control" principle, that one country does not publish intelligence provided by another without its express permission is wholly unconvincing. Even if it does annoy the CIA and the US that more of their dirty secrets are being thoroughly examined and released by the courts of another country, it's nothing as to what they themselves have already admitted that they did and authorised, such as the Bybee memos and the waterboarding of the few top al-Qaida members whom they managed to capture. Indeed, the only reason why the Court of Appeal decided that seven paragraphs could today be published was that far more gruesome evidence of the torture which Mohamed underwent was released by a US court in a judgement in November of last year. Lord Neuberger quotes from it in his section of today's ruling (paragraph 126):

[Mr Mohamed's] trauma lasted for two long years. During that time, he was physically and psychologically tortured. His genitals were mutilated. He was deprived of sleep and food. He was summarily transported from one prison to another. Captors held him in stress positions for days at a time. He was forced to listen to piercingly loud music and the screams of other prisoners while locked in a pitch-black cell. All the while, he was forced to inculpate himself and others in various plots to imperil Americans.

...

At page 58, she said that "[t]he [US] Government does not challenge or deny the accuracy of [Mr Mohamed's] story of brutal treatment" and repeated that point at pages 62 and 64. On pages 61-2, she said that his "persistence in telling his story" and "very vigorous… and very public ... pursu[ance of] his claims in the British courts" indicated that his evidence was true and "demonstrates his willingness to test the truth of his version of events in both the courts of law and the court of public opinion". In the passage just quoted from page 70 of her Opinion, she referred to Mr Mohamed's "lengthy prior torture" as an established fact.


Compared to the seven paragraphs we have today, it doesn't really get much more damning.

Fortunately, the government, through its staggeringly inept attempts to stop even the slightest criticism of the security services from being made by those mad, unelected, unaccountable judges, has completely given the game away. Having seen the draft judgement, as is usual, the government's QC Jonathan Sumption was presumably ordered to complain about the withering remarks by Lord Neuberger in paragraph 168, which is distinctly unusual. Even more unusual is that Neuberger acquiesced, and withdrew his comments. Worth quoting in full is Sumption's objections:

The Master of the Rolls's observations, to whichever service they relate, are likely to receive more public attention than any other part of the judgments. They will be read as statements by the Court (i) that the Security Service does not in fact operate a culture that respects human rights or abjures participation in coercive interrogation techniques; (ii) that this was in particular true of Witness B whose conduct was in this respect characteristic of the service as a whole ('it appears likely that there were others'); (iii) that officials of the Service deliberately misled the Intelligence and Security Committee on this point; (iv) that this reflects a culture of suppression in its dealings with the Committee, the Foreign Secretary and indirectly the Court, which penetrates the service to such a degree as to undermine any UK government assurances based on the Service's information and advice; and (v) that the Service has an interest in suppressing information which is shared, not by the Foreign Secretary himself (whose good faith is accepted), but by the Foreign Office for which he is responsible.

Neuberger, whether through acute analysis or just searing condemnation, got far too close to the reality of how the security services were acting post-9/11. From repeated accounts of MI5 and 6 officers visiting those held in by either the CIA or the Pakistanis, we already knew that despite being told of how they were being mistreated nothing was done, and that even on some occasions there was total complicity, with questions from the UK authorities being asked while the detainees were undergoing stress techniques and worse. They clearly, as Neuberger identified, had no problem with operating within a culture where human rights were not respected. Most pointedly, he also noted that the security services had deliberately misled the Intelligence and Security Committee. "Deliberately misled" is mild; they lied and lied and lied, all the way up to the very top.

That is though what the security services do for a living - they lie to people, they mislead and they abuse. For a judge to say that the Intelligence and Security Committee is useless, which is what he was more than implying, is far too damaging. For one to imply that the assurances given by MI5 to politicians are worthless, because of their "culture of suppression", is even worse. As Ian Cobain notes in his annotations on the letter sent by Sumption, the courts are in danger of dismissing the reassurances of politicians based on information from MI5 because of its continued pattern of deception. If they'll lie to the politicians that represent them, then it therefore follows that they'll lie to everyone. They therefore then have to be made accountable to someone, and that someone would likely have to be a fully independent, judicial committee, not a parliamentary select committee packed with ex-ministers.

Despite then already being fully aware that the information in the seven paragraphs was already well known, the real reason for wanting them to remain secret was because they show just how out of control our supposedly fully accountable and enlightened defenders of British security actually were and indeed remain. They show that they'll lie not just to the public, but to politicians as well. And despite knowing this, those self-same politicians are far more interested in protecting their own hides than in shining a light on the agencies that colluded in the torture of both British citizens and residents. The sad thing is that they succeeded on the principle, but not on this particularly case, thanks to the same United States which supported the government's attempt to stop the paragraphs being published. That must hurt, but not as much as a fully damning judgement with an unexpurgated paragraph 168 would have done.

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2/10/2010 09:40:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, January 20, 2010 

The illusion of safety.

Amid all the predictable over-reaction to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's successful attempt to set fire to himself, the first thing to go out the window was any sort of perspective. We are now after all fast approaching the fifth anniversary of the 7/7 attacks, which also marks the last successful attack by takfirist jihadists on a Western city. Not that al-Qaida and its franchises haven't tried to attack or haven't been plotting; it's just that all their attempts have either been spectacular failures or have been successfully prevented.

While America supposedly worries that this otherwise inconsequential island has the highest number of al-Qaida operatives in the West, they don't seem to have noted how, even if accurate, just how incompetent they are. First we had the 21/7 group, whose chapati flour bombs sadly failed to rise (surely explode? Ed), the liquid doom plotters, who needed to be tried twice before a jury was convinced that the main three were going to target aircraft, and where it has never been successfully proved that they were ever going to be capable of constructing a viable explosive, even if they had the necessary material, and then, and most humorously, we found ourselves threatened by two geniuses who thought that they could make a bomb by simply filling a car with patio gas canisters without realising that they needed either a detonator or an oxidiser to create an explosion that was going to actually hurt anyone. Instead, they, like Abdulmutalab succeeded in only harming themselves rather than anyone else.

No, instead we have politicians to do the harming for us. Admittedly, the "underpants" bomber's attempted attack was more serious than the Glasgow airport duo's failure, both for the reason that it focused attention on the deteriorating situation in Yemen, but also because he used proper military explosives, even if they also failed to detonate. It is though unclear whether even if he had created a successful detonation he would have managed to bring the plane down; he may well have killed both himself and some of those seated around him, but the plane could well have limped home, close as it was to its destination. The key fact is though that he failed, and that once such a method has been attempted, it's unlikely to be repeated. Not even the morons "who love death more than we love life" tend to repeat themselves once they've failed once; instead they somewhat innovate. Project Bojinka became the liquid bomb plot, similar but involving suicide bombers and with a different more obtainable explosive. Richard Reid's attempt led to Abdulmutalab's, and in turn will likely lead to a further attempt along the lines of the failed assassination of the Saudi prince Muhammad bin Nayef by Abdullah Hassan Al Aseery, in which the explosive might well have been inside his anal canal, although some have since suggested it was sewn into his underpants ala Abdulmutalab.

Is there any point then whatsoever to today's "package of enhanced security measures"? It seems doubtful, especially the ludicrous stopping of direct flights between Britain and Yemen, as if that'll somehow stop anyone travelling between the two countries instead of just inconveniencing them somewhat. It's also unclear just what use a "no-fly" list will be when almost all those who have attempted attacks in this country have either been British citizens, been here since childhood or here legitimately, such as the Glasgow attackers. As for the full-body scanners, Abdulmutalab went through rigorous security in both Nigeria and the Netherlands which failed to detect his explosives; as it simply isn't possible to go over everyone with a fine tooth comb there's still no guarantee that a bomber wouldn't get on a flight in similar circumstances. The only part of the proposals that might help is the further sharing of intelligence and the security services joint investigation team to be set-up.

In short, this is the same old illusion of safety that we've always had. If the intention is to do something rather than doing nothing, then the government has succeeded. If instead the intention was to increase the fear factor, then it might work amongst a few people; more likely though is that it will just further infuriate those who regularly travel. If al-Qaida in Yemen's real motive was to further discourage air travel they might have succeeded, although then again, the government seems as determined to do the job just as well for them.

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1/20/2010 11:41:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, September 09, 2009 

The sense of impending doom returns.

Did you notice anything missing over the past few months?  That slight feeling of dread which you could constantly feel in the marrow of your bones?  That cloud of doom which had hung over the country ever since 7/7, being whipped up at least once a year by either further supposed disruptions of supposed plots or by newspapers demanding that we wrap ourselves in the flag in the face of such unmitigated horror as two idiots succeeding in only setting themselves on fire.

For a while this year, since the Manchester raids turned out to be the latest example of "security sources" briefing their poisonous hyperbole to an ever compliant media, we've actually had something approaching a thaw, helped along both by the actual reduction in the supposed threat level from severe to substantial, and also MI5's own acknowledgement that there are now less "active" plots than there were previously.  Considering the claims that there was up to 30 active plots and 2,000 individuals dedicated, presumably, to the militant variety of radical Islam, this was a sudden turn around and still remains so.  In line with this, we've had less blatant scaremongering, including from the worst offender, the Sun.  The recession and expenses scandal have of course helped also.

It was perhaps to be expected then that when the verdicts were finally returned in the retrial of the "liquid doom" plotters, with this time round the three ringleaders all being convicted of conspiracy to murder on airplanes that the headless chicken act would return once again.  Yesterday we warned to be alert that al-Qaida would try to bomb aircraft again, as clearly they don't learn from both their successes and mistakes, while today the Sun has attempted to do something approaching investigative journalism by discovering that, shock horror, those convicted of terrorism offences or offences related are being released from prison when they've served their sentences.

OK, perhaps that's a little unfair to the Sun, but not by much.  As per usual though, the story doesn't live up to its billing:

FORTY convicted Islamic terrorists are back on the streets after being released from jail, a Sun investigation has revealed.

"Islamic terrorists" as a description is being used rather loosely here.  Almost all the "big names", which is another loose description, have not been released yet, as we'll come to.  In fact, the biggest name that has already been released is Abu Bakr Mansha, a quite clearly deadly individual.  When arrested, Mansha had a blank firing pistol, which someone had been attempting to convert to fire live ammunition, a balaclava, a Sun newspaper article on a soldier who had won the military cross, and the soldier's former home address, as well as the expected radical material.  Mansha though also happens to have an IQ of 69, and allegedly gave the "intelligence" which led to the Forest Gate raid.   Truly someone to worry about.

The others already released are in much the same category, and so dangerous that the Sun doesn't actually name them.  According to the paper, at least three of those convicted in connection with the 21/7 attacks have been released.  This would be surprising for the fact that as far as I'm aware, the shortest sentence passed was six years and nine months, which even with the deductions made for current overcrowding and for time spent on remand would seem to have been released early, although the sentences could have been reduced on appeal.  None of these individuals were charged with directly helping with the bombings; they provided sanctuary or helped after they had failed, while others were either relatives or wives that helped.  The vast majority of these are unlikely to be "fanatics" but helped out of friendship or even because they were under pressure to.  The organisers of the Danish embassy protests have also been released, unsurprisingly, given that however disgraceful the views expressed, there was no action behind the words, and considering that they seem to be from the usual suspects who are all mouth and no trousers.  Others include those involved on the periphery of the Birmingham beheading plot, on similar charges to the 21/7 accomplices of not disclosing what they knew even if they weren't involved, while one was convicted of having the "Encyclopaedia Jihad".  Two had helped the ringleader, who has not been released, with supplying equipment to fighters in Pakistan, but again that doesn't specifically involve any sort of violent threat in this country.  Those involved with an Islamic school in Sussex have also been released, such an important set of convictions that there seems to be very little on it anywhere.  That doesn't begin to add up to 40 but we'll let the Sun off.

How about those soon to be released then?  We'll, there's Sohail Qureshi, not to be confused with the Canadian "terror suspect".  Qureshi was arrested when attempting to travel to Pakistan, and had night vision equipment, medical supplies and £9,000 in cash in his bag.  Material was found where he talked of hopefully "kill[ing] many", and presumably hoped to join fighters in Afghanistan.  Sentenced to four and a half years, with time on remand and reductions, he's meant to be released next month, which will still mean he's served 3 years.  The judge said his offences were at the "lower end of the scale", and while undoubtedly he could be a threat, with careful supervision and the confiscation of his passport there doesn't seem to be any reason why he shouldn't be released.  Much the same is the case with the next person mentioned, "[H]ulking thug Andrew Rowe", who Peter Clarke, that former king of hyperbole as anti-terrorist chief at the Met, called a "global terrorist".  In reality the evidence against him amounted to the usual radical material, supposed code referring to attacks and a guide on how to fire mortars.  Oh, and don't forget the socks bearing traces of high explosive.  How dangerous he truly was or is is anyone's guess, as he was under careful police supervision prior to his conviction.

Next up is the other "shoe bomber", Saajid Badat, who had meant to carry out an attack on a plane at the same time as Richard Reid, but pulled out at the last minute, also cutting himself off from his handler in Pakistan.  Considering that he failed to go through with the attack and also seems to have been about to settle down when he was arrested, the threat he poses seems low to negligible.  Finally, we have Kazi Nurur Rahman, who had links to the fertiliser bomb plotters, and probably the most serious risk as a result.  He was however entrapped by the police and security services, and there was no evidence whatsoever that he actually had the money to buy the weapons beyond the 3 Uzis which he agreed to purchase.  Again though, there is no reason why he shouldn't be able to be handled by MAPPA.

There are other problems with the Sun's story beyond the actual facts.  Does anyone really believe that a "senior security source" genuinely told the Sun this?:

If this was the United States, a great many of these people coming out soon would have been sentenced to 99 years and locked away for the rest of their lives.

But in this country much weaker sentences have been handed down and a large percentage of them have received reductions from the Appeal Court.

As a result, we are faced with an extremely worrying situation. We have got to hope these people come out without violent extremist views. But the likelihood of that is slim.

This simply isn't true in any case: Jose Padilla for example, convicted of charges similar to some of those here, received 17 years and four months. The wife of one of the 21/7 bombers received 15 years just for the help she provided.

Then of course we have the views of the contacted politicians, including the egregious Chris Grayling:

IT'S time to get tough on the extremists.

Yawn.

It's time we stopped these people from operating in our society. Yet the preachers of hate continue to preach.

Who? Where, Chris? The idea that it's still preachers of hate behind most of the radicalisation is years out of date.

It's also time we outlawed radical groups who propagate extremist views and in doing so incite violence against innocent people.

So you're going to ban the BNP and other neo-Nazis are you Chris? Good luck!  As for the Sun's editorial, it calls those released and soon to be released a "Terror army".  I don't think they're going to be challenging any of the more famous fighting units any time soon.

There were two other more important terrorism stories yesterday which didn't make the Sun's front page.  There was, oh, err, a huge fucking bomb discovered on the Northern Ireland border, twice the size of the one which caused the largest single loss of life during the Troubles in Omagh in 1998.  The Real IRA just aren't as sexy or as terrifying as the "terror army" though.  Or there was Neil Lewington, given an indeterminate sentence with a minimum of 6 years for carrying what were glorified Molotov cocktails with him, supposedly on the cusp of a "terror campaign".  He though was white and a neo-Nazi, even though he was actually more prepared and ready to carry out attacks than the liquid bomb plotters were, who hadn't constructed any devices while some didn't even have passports.  Terror though no longer just corresponds to individual nutters and old, boring causes: it's planes exploding one after another however implausible and however well covered they are by the security services.  If we're left meant to be fearing those who were stupid enough to get caught once, then we really are scared of the wrong people.

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9/09/2009 11:42:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, September 08, 2009 

Crying over spilt liquid part 94.

Congratulations are then in order to the Crown Prosecution Service for second time around managing to convince a jury that the three main ringleaders of the "liquid explosives plot" had indeed intended to target airplanes.  There was never much doubt that they had indeed been plotting an attack; the devil was in the detail of just what they were planning to target, and the case that it was to be transatlantic flights was flimsy at best, amounting it still seems to little more than the fact that when arrested Abdulla Ahmed Ali had a USB memory stick with flight times on it, as well as an e-mail, supposedly written in code to a handler in Pakistan where Ali made clear that all he had to do was "sort out opening timetable and bookings".

Not that you would have noticed from the celebrations from the authorities and also from the press that the "liquid doom" plot was indeed viable, but this second trial was also a miserable failure in as far as convincing a jury again that the underlings, including those who recorded "martyrdom videos" were guilty not only of conspiracy to murder on aircraft, but also conspiracy to murder persons unknown.  Only Umar Islam was convicted of the second charge, the jury hung on the first; the three others were cleared of the first charge while they were hung on the second, and lastly Donald Stewart-Whyte, who had only converted to Islam four months before his arrest, was cleared of any involvement in the plot.  This, it's worth remembering, is what the police are again calling "the strongest terrorism case ever presented to a court".  This strongest ever case has now been presented to a jury twice, and it's still only succeeded in convicting 3 individuals of conspiracy to murder on two separate charges, and one on a single charge.

Also interesting is that this time round everyone is openly accusing Rashid Rauf of being the plotters' main conduit to al-Qaida, which just shows how you can smear the dead, or rather, supposedly dead, of anything you like.  Suddenly Rauf is the new Khalid Sheikh Mohammed of international jihadist terrorism, not just helping the liquid plotters but also the 7/7 and 21/7 crews.  Rauf, of course, mysteriously disappeared from Pakistani custody while visiting a mosque, then equally mysteriously turned up, apparently dead, in a missile strike.  His family, quite reasonably considering that no body has been forthcoming, think that he's either still alive and his "death" is to cover up Pakistani embarrassment, or that Rauf has instead entered the American "black" system, or at least the parts which haven't been shut down, a view that I'm partial to, even if I dislike believing in a conspiracy theory.

It remains the fact that there was no need whatsoever to retry the main three convicted again today; the sentences that they would have received, which have been deferred and they will presumably now receive, likely to run concurrently with the sentences to be handed down for the new convictions, would have been substantial, likely to be in the 30 year range.  The real reason for doing so was two-fold: both to prove that there definitely had been a "liquid bomb" plot, regardless of whether or not it could actually have been carried out, and also to ensure that the government and security services were not embarrassed again for hyping up a plot out of all proportion, ala the ricin fiasco and the other plots which haven't even got past the arrest stage.  Hence tomorrow the Telegraph is running with the front page legend that up to 10,000 could have died, despite the fact that only four people have actually been convicted.  They keep claiming that up to 18 could have taken part in the attacks, but where are these supposed people and how can they even begin to suggest that was possible when they can't even convince a jury that those whom recorded videos were out to commit "mass-murder on an unimaginable" scale as John Reid so famously put it?

It would be even worse if the government were to use today's verdicts to rally support for the war in Afghanistan as Alan Johnson already seems to be doing.  The whole plot in fact illustrates the folly of what we are doing in that benighted country.  Not only does the exact foreign policy we continue to insist on enrage the likes of Abdulla Ahmed Ali and Assad Sarwar, if not radicalising them entirely then sowing the seeds which lead to them coming into contact with those of like minds who then poison them further, the policy is even further counter-productive because it's in the wrong country.  What's happening in Afghanistan is a civil war which we still seem to imagine is a global one; what's happening in Pakistan rather, is a civil war with global dimensions.  This isn't even to begin to suggest that what we're doing in Afghanistan we should start doing across the border, but it is about being honest both with ourselves and with them that the real problem is in the autonomous areas of the Pakistani state where they do still exist safe havens.  We need to help Pakistan without getting ourselves fully involved.  Tackling Salafist ideology involves not walking into exactly what it feeds upon: Western states acting like bulls in a china shop.  When we finally learn that we might not have to keep pretending that we're all doomed by 500ml bottles of soft drinks.

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9/08/2009 12:03:00 AM | | | links to this post

Monday, July 20, 2009 

Of Revelation and terror threat levels.

Thanks to my glorious religious upbringing, an upbringing so successful that instead of inculcating the fear of God in me it instead made me a God mocker, I can't approach the "terror threat level-o-meter" without thinking of Revelation. It brings to mind the four horsemen, the seven seals, the pouring of bowls, the moon turning to blood, the whore of Babylon and the 1,000 year reign. There are, of course, dozens of different interpretations of Revelation, as well as those that dismiss it as either the hallucinations of a madman or drug-inspired similar visions. I, belonging to a well-known sect which preach expressly that the end is nigh, was only taught the strictly literal interpretation; indeed, there is an entire book dedicated to "understanding" Revelation, which was relatively recently updated to take account of "changes" to the interpretation. Also connected in is the "King of the North and King of the South", both of which are mentioned in Daniel, and also taken literally. During the Cold War the King of the North was Russia, while the South was the United States, or rather the "Anglo-American" world power; since the Soviet Union's collapse they have hedged their bets and said they don't yet know who the King of the North will be.

Some of the more independently theorising members (something which itself is not often encouraged) believe that the King of the North may yet turn out to be radical Islam. This fits in with the belief that the Wild Beast of Revelation 13:1-18 is the United Nations, and that at some point in the near future the United Nations, probably prompted by war between the South and North, will attempt to eradicate all religion except for the chosen sect, which will then be turned on once all other belief has been stamped out, heralding the beginning of Armageddon proper. That this entire utterly bizarre interpretation gives the United Nations the sort of power which some of its members could only dream of, and that members of the UN keep attempting to get it recognise religious defamation as well as the other varieties makes no difference to the true believers: it's simply going to happen.

Waiting for the apocalypse and for the four horsemen to appear is much like the sort of belief required to think that the brown trousers-o-meter actually means something. In a long predicted move, the level of threat has been lowered from "severe" to "substantial", although why has not been explained. In fact, those making the decision have gone out of their way to say that there'll be no change in actual resources being used to ensure that the level doesn't have to rise, and that rather gives the impression that they're doing it simply because you can't in a democracy where there hasn't been an attack in four years forever keep up the impression that exploding Muslims are just around the corner or over the hill. Even politicians and terrorism "experts" eventually get weary of maintaining that the sky is perpetually dark, and that death, famine, war and conquest will soon be clippity-clopping along the High St.

You can't however not notice that it still is a step change from the last few years, where scaremongering was the order of the day and where there was talk of 30 plots and 2,000 individuals ready to heed their own call of duty. What's happened to those 30 plots and those 2,000 individuals? Few of those plots have been publicly broken up, as we're sure to have heard about them had they been, and while the courts have been relatively busy dealing with those charged with terrorism "offences", the numbers don't come close to the magic round number which was pushed around. It might simply be that like the intelligence which suggested that Pakistani students were ready to go with their own attack, it was wrong; it might be that the security services are telling lies, having enjoyed years of plenty after their own years of famine which were the mid-90s; or a cynical "expert" on the BBC suggests it might be to underline just how fabulously the troops in Afghanistan are doing in protecting us from terrorists here, yet not even the politicians themselves believe their own lie, and Gordon Brown has after all said himself that the crucible of terrorism is Pakistan, not Afghanistan.

Whatever the reason, it's one we should embrace, even if the "threat level", then not publicly declared, was similarly lowered before 7/7 occurred. Now that the threat isn't so severe, any further legislation on terrorism should be even more rigorously opposed, and the target should be set on repealing control orders, bringing the detention limit back to 14 days, lifting the Kafkaesque ban on some "suspects" not being informed of the evidence against them, and campaigning for investigations into our role in rendition and the potential "outsourcing" of torture. Fear, whether it's of the end of the world or of terrorism, is what makes numerous individual worlds go round.

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7/20/2009 09:31:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, July 08, 2009 

Her Majesty's Willing Torturers.

Since the allegations first emerged that this country had been complicit in the rendition and torture of those picked up in the so-called war on terror, we've almost never had a complete picture of what happened when, why and how. The closest we've came to was the rendition of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna, associates of Abu Qatada who were visited prior to leaving the country to travel to Gambia by MI5, and where they were picked up by the CIA and taken to Guantanamo Bay. It later transpired that Bisher al-Rawi had in fact been providing the police and intelligence services with information on Qatada; once Qatada himself was in custody, it seems al-Rawi was disposed of.

Thanks to David Davis, we now have the fullest account of just how complicit both the police and the security services have been in such practices, almost outsourcing torture in the case of Rangzieb Ahmed. Using parliamentary privilege to get round reporting restrictions and the secrecy which the government has easily imposed on the trials of the men alleging that they were tortured, he detailed how despite knowing that Ahmed intended to travel first to Dubai and then onto Pakistan, they let him leave the country. This was a man who they knew was almost certainly a terrorist, and whom they had evidence on which later convicted him as one, yet they let him go to what has since been called the "crucible of world terrorism". There was a method to their madness though: they suggested once he had arrived that Pakistan's inter-services intelligence arrest him. That was their exact message: they "suggested" that the ISI might be interested in him.

The ISI was happy to oblige. Once they had arrested Ahmed, both Greater Manchester Police and MI5 supplied the ISI with questions to which the ISI was more than willing to provide answers. Ahmed's torture, compared to perhaps that which Binyam Mohamed underwent, was mild by comparison. He had just the three fingernails removed, which an independent pathologist confirmed were removed whilst he was in the custody of the ISI, was beaten with wooden staves the size of cricket stumps, and whipped with a 3ft length of tyre rubber. He was, like the others who allege they were tortured, visited by officers from both MI5 and MI6, except this time, after telling them he was being tortured, they didn't return. The policy it seems, after the first allegations were made that intelligence officers had visited those who had been tortured, was that officers would not return if they were explicitly told by the person they were questioning that they were being tortured.

After 13 months in Pakistani custody, Ahmed was deported back to the UK and was convicted last December of being a member of al-Qaida and of "directing terrorism". The attempts by his legal team to have the case thrown out on the basis of the complicity of the police and the intelligence services in his torture failed, having been held in secret. His conviction does not diminish the fact that we felt the need for this man to be tortured, despite the fact he could have been arrested before he left the country, where it was quite possible he could have disappeared. His conviction also appears to have purely been down to the information acquired whilst he was in this country; his torture it seems added absolutely nothing. It seems instead to have been almost vindictive, plotted by MI5 and the police, presumably safe in the knowledge that the government wouldn't allow what they were doing to leak out. Unfortunately for them, it has.

David Davis in his statement to the Commons pointed out that the United States has somewhat attempted to wipe the slate clean when it came to their complicity and use of torture against various "terrorist suspects", even if no one responsible for putting the policy into action has been brought to justice. Instead here we still have ministers and ex-ministers completely denying that they would ever condone torture, when they quite clearly must have known what was going on, and if they didn't, they should never have been in the job in the first place and it would suggest that we have intelligence services that are completely unaccountable even to those ostensibly in charge of them. Quite obviously, there needs to be, as Davis called for, a full judicial inquiry into all the alleged cases of rendition and torture that have come to light down the years. It is also equally clear that like the Bush administration, the current government will never admit willingly that it has colluded and indulged in such medieval practices. That might just be the best possible reason that the current lot, Her Majesty's Willing Torturers, if you will, should be kicked out at the first possible opportunity.

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7/08/2009 11:30:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, April 22, 2009 

The government should be in terror, not the people.

3 years ago, after the police had conspicuously failed to find anything more dangerous in the Kamal family's house in Forest Gate than a bottle of aspirin, a "senior police source" told the Graun that "[T]he public may have to get used to this sort of incident, with the police having to be safe rather than sorry." For the most part since then, most of the major anti-terrorist raids, while scooping up some innocents along the way, have resulted in prosecutions rather than the authorities emerging with egg on their faces. Instead, the most objectionable thing that has characterised the arrests has been the febrile briefing of the media with the most outlandish and potentially prejudicial, as well as exaggerated, accounts of the carnage which would have taken place had the attacks not been foiled. These leaks, despite the self-righteousness of former Met chief anti-terror officer Peter Clarke over the stories which appeared in the press concerning the plot to behead a Muslim soldier, appear to have came from all sides, with the police, security services and the government all involved.

Along with the leaks, we have become wearily accustomed to politicians commenting on what are after all, criminal operations, with no apparent concern for whether their remarks might subsequently influence a jury. The apogee was reached when John Reid famously said that the disruption of the "liquid bomb" plot had prevented "loss of life on an unprecendented scale", something that the jury in the first trial decided not to agree with. Their second trial is still on-going. I can't recall however any politician making similar comments to that which both Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith did about the raids in Manchester and the north-west two weeks ago where those arrested were subsequently released without charge. Politicians may have defended the police after the Forest Gate raids, but at no point did they appear to specifically say that a "very big plot" had been disrupted as the result of the police's actions. In the case of the ricin plot where there was no ricin, much which was inflammatory was spoken by politicians and the police, but in that instance Kamel Bourgass was at least guilty of murder, as well as stupidity in that his ideas for using the ricin that he wouldn't have been able to produce would have failed to poison anyone.

The only reason why there doesn't seem to far more deserved criticism of this latest fiasco is that it's been overshadowed completely by the budget. From getting off to one of the most inauspicious starts imaginable, things have in actuality got worse. If we were to believe the media's initial reports, if the men arrested had not been taken off the streets, there would now presumably be hundreds if not thousands dead, up to six places of varying interest and importance would have been badly damaged if not destroyed, and new anti-terrorist legislation would almost certainly be back on the agenda. Instead, 11 Pakistani students are going home far sooner than they would have anticipated, and no one can explain adequately how the position changed from there being an attack imminently prepared to there being not even the slightest evidence that there was anything beyond the murmurings of one.

Not that anyone from the very beginning even managed to get the facts straight. Variously the targets were meant to be two shopping centres, a nightclub and St Ann's Square, or Liverpool and Manchester United's stadiums. Then there were no targets, as the planning had not reached that stage, then they were photographs found of the places previously briefed, the only real piece of circumstantial evidence which seems to have been recovered and then finally there was no plot at all. Depending on who you believe, the men had either been under surveillance for some time, or the intelligence had only came in very recently. Like with the claims that the men arrested at Forest Gate had been under surveillance for up to two months, it reflects rather badly on the police/security services if the case is the former. Having hoped to find something more explosive than bags of table sugar, the police turned to desperately searching the suspects' computers and mobile phones. After nothing incriminating enough to bring any sort of charge was found on those, they seem to have declared defeat. We should be glad for the small mercy that the police seem not to have tried to string out their detention for the full 28 days allowed.

That will of course not be any sort of comfort for those who now find themselves in the custody of the Borders Agency, their studies disrupted for no good apparent reason. The BBC is suggesting that their cases will be considered by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, which meets in secret and hears evidence which is inadmissible in the normal court system. Presumably this means that the very intelligence which resulted in their arrests, despite being proved either downright wrong or speculatory at the least, will be used against them. It also happily means that none of the men can talk directly to the media about their experience, something which in the past has led to embarrassment all round, whether it was the person released without charge who described this country as a "police state for Muslims", or Hicham Yezza and Rizwaan Sabir, both arrested after Yezza had printed out an al-Qaida manual for his student, which he had downloaded from a US government website, with the intention that Sabir was to use it to write his MA dissertation. In a bizarre reversal of fortune, after Gordon Brown had lectured Pakistan on how it had to do more to combat the terrorist threat, it's now the Pakistan High Commissioner who's doing the honourable thing, offering legal assistance to the men so they can continue with their studies. As Jamie says, it takes some nerve to call Pakistan the failed state in all this.

As previously noted, it was from the outset strange that such a imminent threat should emerge considering the way that the head of MI5 and the government had begun to downplay the threat for the first time since 9/11. When you bear in mind how the previous head of MI5 scaremongered about "the evil in our midst" just three years ago, it instantly suggested that something substantial had changed. It's not unknown for surprises to be sprung, but this one seemed to be too outlandish to be accurate. That within 48 hours it was already becoming clear that no attack had genuinely been disrupted should have rung alarm bells then in the minds of the media, but still they kept with the fallacy for the most part that something would turn up. Only now that it hasn't will questions be asked.

It has to be kept in mind that intelligence work is not an exact science. It often turns out to be wrong, or just too unreliable to be used to carry out the sort of arrests which we saw two weeks ago. As the senior police source didn't quite say, it is better to be safe than sorry, but this is beginning to become a habit. At the very least, if such raids are to be carried out, then politicians should keep their mouths closed and the media should not be used to put completely unsubstantiated rumours into circulation which then can colour a person for the rest of their life. We have however said these things before, and no notice whatsoever has been taken. After the incompetence of the patio gas canister attacks, both Smith and Brown seemed to be keeping to their word not to exaggerate things in the same way as their predecessors so copiously did. The irony of this is that as politicians continue to use security threats as a way to justify their serial dilutions of civil liberties and the imposition of ID cards and databases, the public themselves become ever more cynical when these threats turn out to be nothing more than hyperbole with a motive. It also surely isn't coincidence that today of all days MI5 shows the Sun their brilliant invention that can stop a "suicide truck bomb" in its tracks, as long as the driver keeps the speed below 40. That terrorists have shown no inclination whatsoever to use such bombs in this country, when explosives are incredibly difficult to obtain and where the next best thing, such as TATP, is even more difficult to produce in such quantities is neither here nor there. This we are advised will be part of the government's "Fortress Great Britain" counter-terrorism strategy, where more or less every public building may well be reinforced in case it becomes a target. This is not just a colossal waste of time and money, it's a colossal waste of time and money with the intention of scaring people. The quote goes that governments should be scared of the people, not people of the government. Despite its almost certain imminent electoral demise, this one doesn't seem to be. That may be what needs to change the most.

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4/22/2009 06:22:00 PM | | | links to this post

Wednesday, April 15, 2009 

No smoke or fire.

It's now almost three days on from when those arrested last Wednesday were supposed to have launched their attack at the latest, yet surprisingly considering the scare stories which the press was full of last week it still remains the case that the most dangerous items to be found so far remain photographs of 4 separate locations, and after a raid by the bomb squad yesterday, a bag of table sugar.

Regardless of the fact that the botched arrests look likely to have been even more botched than they were originally by Bob Quick, a kind judge has agreed that the police can continue to hold 11 men for another week (one man caught up in the raids having already been released without charge and another turned over to the immigration authorities), although whether they're saying anything or indeed whether the police have even began to question them yet is open to scrutiny.

The plot though does seem to be thickening. Despite claims that the raids were only 12 hours away, having to be brought forward after Quick exposed himself (geddit????) other sources seem to have suggested that the plans outlined on Quick's briefing note were simply one option, that had yet to be authorised, and that it was likely that the "plotters" would have been left to incriminate themselves further if it hadn't been for the snapper in Downing Street. This would explain why nothing has been found, and possibly also opens the idea that Quick was seeking political opinion on what should be done. If this was the case, it still doesn't explain quite how wrong the intelligence seems to have been - both Jacqui Smith and Gordon Brown swiftly praising the police for swooping in the way they did and claiming that a "very serious" terrorist plot had been disrupted. There still might well have been a plot, unlike at Forest Gate, where there was nothing whatsoever, but it seems to have been nowhere close to being put into action, despite the predictable briefing of the media that doom was just around the corner unless they had acted.

The Times reported on Monday that the most likely course of action would be that all the Pakistani students here on visas would simply be deported, which though again is only speculation, seems to suggest that the intelligence was almost entirely wrong. As I wrote last week, this is the danger with relying on intelligence rather than good old fashioned surveillance, and while we should hesitate before second guessing the security services or the police over when such raids should take place, the danger is that you both alienate the communities where the arrests happen when no one is charged, while also creating cynicism about the scale of the threat and the political motivation behind the exaggeration of it. It was peculiar that so soon after the head of MI5 and the government itself had almost unprecedentedly started to talk down the level of threat from jihadists that such important arrests would be made, and the failure to find anything suggests that the prior assessments are still the ones that seem to be the closest to the truth.

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4/15/2009 11:38:00 PM | | | links to this post

Thursday, April 09, 2009 

Frustration and terror raids.

This week has been deeply frustrating, not having the internet at home, my entire phone line still being completely dead, although Tiscali have finally put BT engineers onto the case, because despite it being ostensibly a "holiday" week with parliament in recess, the news has hardly been slow, what with the emergence of the video footage of Ian Tomlinson being assaulted, the arrest of the two boys in Doncaster in what seems like a chilling echo of the murder of James Bulger, which the tabloids have predictably leapt upon, as have the equally shameless Tories (although only following Labour's own politicisation of the Bulger killing), with Chris Grayling reprising his somehow worse than Labour front on tackling youth crime, and then finally with the anti-terror raids in the north-west.

It's the latter that's most intriguing because of the way already in which the "plot", if indeed there was one, is starting to be downplayed. Yesterday the Sun was headlining its website with "BOMB PLOT TO KILL THOUSANDS", as it is wont to do, while now spooks' friend Frank Gardner is briefing that it had been at "the aspirational, rather than operational" stage. This is quite a change from yesterday: then sources had been claiming, to the Guardian in particular that the attack was expected to have taken place by Monday at the latest, and that the raids, triggered by Bob Quick's slowness had successfully disrupted a soon to come to fruition plot. Others talked, even this morning, of suicide attacks on up to four locations, with the Daily Star yesterday going out on its usual limb (or as usual simply making it up) claiming that Anfield and Old Trafford were potential targets.

Equally, other stories claimed that those involved had been under surveillance for months; now the Guardian suggests that the intelligence alerting the authorities to the alleged plot had only arrived in the past couple of weeks, with the raids triggered because further intelligence had suggested that the attack was imminent. The only "incriminating" thing that appears to have been found so far is photographs of the Trafford centre, the Birdcage nightclub, St Ann's square and the Arndale centre, along with claims that officers watched and listened in as they took them.

It's enough to make you wonder whether already the police and security services are preparing for another "ricin plot"/Forest Gate style fiasco. This is the obvious problem when relying almost solely on intelligence rather than good old fashioned surveillance and police work; it tends, more than often, to be inaccurate. If the Guardian's take on the intelligence only coming in in the last two weeks is correct, it explains why both ministers and indeed the head of MI5 were up until very recently beginning to suggest that the general level of threat from terrorism had begun to diminish. If we assume for a moment that those arrested are at some level connected with jihadism, even if any attack they were planning was still way off, it does also suggest a step change in tactics. Until recently almost all those involved in past plots were either British citizens or had lived here for significant periods of time; only one of those arrested this time round is of British origin. Whether this is because those indigenous to this country had miserably failed, whether they be those involved in the fertiliser plot, the "liquid bomb" attacks or the Tiger Tiger/Glasgow airport patio gas canister debacle or because those at the top thought Pakistani student "clean skins" would have a better chance of going undetected, as well as being probably far better trained is unclear, but it does also suggest that the threat from actual Brits is declining, as suggested by Jonathan Evans when he said al-Qaida had no "semi-autonomous" structure in the country at present.

It could of course yet turn out to be everything which security sources initially briefed on, but as always it's equally difficult to know just how cynical to be, with Craig Murray getting his in early, especially regarding the coincidences regarding the Ian Tomlinson evidence and the continuing furore over parliamentary expenses. Always worth keeping in mind is that however much ministers and police attempt to exaggerate the threat, or what might have happened had a plot not been foiled, so far jihadists in this country have exposed their incompetence and ignorance on numerous occasions, while only succeeding once. The IRA used to say that they only had to be lucky once, which is true, but the odds are overwhelmingly, nonetheless, in our favour.

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4/09/2009 05:27:00 PM | | | links to this post

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