Inexorable leftist gibbering from someone somewhere. || "Our press, which you appear to regard as being free ... is the most enslaved and the vilest thing." -- William Cobbett. || “Tridents (sic) are not weapons of mass destruction.” -- Nadine Dorries MP
Others were however sceptical at whether the cutting off of the Hydra's head would end its reign of terror. One expert said: "This is by no means the end. The cutting off of the Hydra's head will simply result in it growing back two where once there was just one. The only way to bring this battle to an end is not just to cut off the head, but also to scorch the ends where they would otherwise grow back. That is far more difficult."
Osama bin Hercules could not be reached for comment.
It probably says something about the mounting cynicism concerning the war in Afghanistan that even the Sun, by far the most ardent supporter of our presence in Helmand province, has been moved to commission a justificatory article on the "chain of terror". As you might have expected though, to call the arguments made piss poor, utterly confused and easy to rebut would be an understatement.
To begin with, Oliver Harvey seems to be confused exactly where it is and who it is we're at war with. It is Afghanistan or Pakistan? Is it the Taliban or is it the Pakistani Taliban, who for the most part are entirely separate? This extends to Harvey's geographical knowledge: he claims that Malakand is near to the Afghanistan/Pakistan border when it is in fact quite some distance from it. This is an attempt to link Mohammad Sidique Khan and Omar Khyam to the war in Afghanistan and the Taliban; the problem here is that there is no link. Khan and Khyam, if trained by any particular grouping, were most likely trained by individuals with links to al-Qaida. Khan might well have left for Pakistan with the intention of fighting in Afghanistan; he left behind a video for his daughter which made clear he wasn't expecting to return. The fact that he did rather undermines any links he had with the Taliban, who are fighting only in Afghanistan and Pakistan rather than having worldwide ambitions.
Next we have just the word of Gordon Brown and Barack Obama to convince us that somehow British troops in Afghanistan do make us safer:
Gordon Brown made his remarks last week as the war in Afghanistan entered a particularly grim phase, with 17 British soldiers killed already this month.
The PM argued the sacrifice made by our troops - 186 have died since operations began in Afghanistan - was vital and that to stop fighting the Taliban would make the UK "less safe".
Justifying the UK military presence in Helmand, he said: "It comes back to terrorism on the streets of Britain.
"There is a chain of terror that links what's happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan to the streets of Britain.
"If we were to allow the Taliban to be back in power in Afghanistan, and al-Qaeda then to have the freedom of manoeuvre it had before 2001, we would be less safe as a country."
US President Barack Obama agreed, insisting: "The mission in Afghanistan is one that the Europeans have as much, if not more, of a stake in than we do.
"The likelihood of a terrorist attack in London is at least as high, if not higher, than it is in the United States."
Government officials state around three quarters of the most advanced plots monitored by MI5 have Pakistani links.
They said the security service is aware of around 30 serious plots at any given moment, suggesting that at least 21 of them are tied to Pakistani groups.
Again, we're meant to take it that Afghanistan and Pakistan are inseparable. Yet we have no military presence in Pakistan, and nor does the United States. The only thing that comes closest to it is the incessant drone strikes on alleged high profile militant targets. Afghanistan and Pakistan might be connected, but our military offensive is not, despite the recent AfPak change in emphasis by the Americans. The fact remains the al-Qaida doesn't need the freedom of manoeuvre it had in Afghanistan up to October 2001, both because it has something approaching that freedom in Pakistan and because its ideology has gone global, just as it hoped it would. 9/11 was mostly planned in Germany, having been first proposed years before by Khalid Sheikh Mohamed, just as 7/7 was mostly planned in this country. While attending a training camp is still integral to those who go on to become terrorists, most information can now be found and accessed through the internet. Furthermore, the fact that so many of these plots have roots in Pakistan is not always to do with how they can be linked back to the Taliban or al-Qaida there, but simply because so many of the Muslims in this country originate from Pakistan and have support or themselves support relatives back there.
And Afghanistan provides the bulk of the heroin on Britain's streets - with the profits funding Taliban guerrillas.
A staggering 93 per cent of the world's heroin comes from Afghanistan - two thirds of it from Helmand, where British troops are fighting and dying.
Taliban chiefs often "tax" narcotics gangs ten per cent for providing security.
Afghan police chief Lt Col Abdul Qader Zaheer, 45, told me last year: "If it wasn't for heroin there wouldn't be a war here. It pays for Taliban guns."
Of course, this omits the fact that the Taliban themselves first almost eradicated the poppy crop. They only turned to it once they needed to. It also fails to acknowledge that solutions to the poppy crop, such as buying it to be turned into medicines have been ignored or rejected. That the Sun also objects to even the most timid moves towards liberalisation of the drug laws also means that the opportunities that legislation offers are completely off the table. Heroin itself though has nothing to do with our presence in Helmand - we're not fighting a war against drugs in Afghanistan - this is just another distraction.
The tentacles of jihad linking Britain and Afghanistan begin on the Helmand frontline.
One dead Taliban fighter was found with an Aston Villa tattoo. The discovery suggested the insurgent was from the UK and followed news that RAF radio spies picked up Brummie accents while listening in on Taliban "chatter" over the airwaves.
These UK-born fighters arrive through the mountainous and sieve-like border from Pakistan - the same desolate, lawless region where Khyam and Khan received their bomb-making masterclass.
We've dealt with these same, unconfirmedand impossible to verify claims before. There probably are some Brits fighting in Afghanistan, but if there weren't fighting there, they probably would be somewhere else. In a way, this actually gives some credence to the claim that we're safer due to our presence in Afghanistan - fight those jihadists who want to do battle with their own countrymen outside the actual country rather than here. This isn't though the government's case - their case is that through defeating the Taliban and preventing al-Qaida from returning they're making us safer, which was dealt with somewhat above.
It is believed Khan filmed his "martyrdom" video in Pakistan. In it, he glares at the camera with his hatred of the West clearly evident and declares icily: "We are at war and I am a soldier."
Pakistan is the next link in the chain of terror. British jihadis receive not only weapons training there but are also further radicalised by preachers of hate at madrassas or religious schools.
Khan's fellow 7/7 murderer, Shehzad Tanweer, is said to have worshipped at Islamabad's notorious Red Mosque.
This is more nonsense - the idea that jihadists go to Pakistan to be "further radicalised" is specious. They wouldn't have gone in the first place if they weren't already somewhat committed to the cause. If anything, this further undermines the case for presence in Afghanistan: if all the radicalisation, training and hatred is going on in Pakistan, why are we in Helmand province? How does being there make us safer than stopping what goes on in Pakistan would?
We're then treated to some boilerplate rabble-rousing from a cleric whom Harvey had the privilege to meet:
The Islamist radicals in Afghanistan and Pakistan make no effort to disguise their aim to introduce Sharia law to Britain. In the dusty Pakistani town of Kahuta, a cleric was happy to tell me last year of his desire to bring beheadings and stonings to our shores.
Imam Qari Hifzur Rehamn, 60 said of Britain: "Non-believers must be converted to Islam. Morals in your society, with women wearing revealing clothes, have gone wrong.
"We want Islamic law for all Pakistan and then the world.
"We would like to do this by preaching. But if not then we would use force."
The Imam of the town's religious school, where kids as young as nine are taught jihad or holy war, added: "Adulterers should be buried in earth to the waist and stoned to death.
"Thieves should have their hands cut off. Women should remain indoors and films and pop music should be banned.
"Homosexuals must be killed - it's the only way to stop them spreading. It should be by beheading or stoning, which the general public can do."
Again, this fails to even begin to back up the case for our presence in Afghanistan. If Harvey had met this imam in that country perhaps he might have a point - but he didn't. The idea that those taught similar things are suddenly going to be any sort of threat to this country except as an irritant is ludicrous - if they can't even begin to impose their beliefs on Pakistan, how are they meant to do it in a country thousands of miles away?
But the US-led coalition has vowed to stop the radicals from governing the desperately poor nation again and fermenting an ideology of holy war against the West.
The final link in the jihadi chain is a return to Britain.
Khan slipped back into the UK in February 2005. Just five months later he detonated his rucksack bomb at Edgware Road Tube station, murdering six people.
On the sun-baked plains and river valleys of Helmand today, our forces - some just 18 - are locked in deadly combat with a resilient Taliban army.
The prize in this bloody war, and the legacy for those brave soldiers who have returned here to heroes' funerals, is to snap the chain of terror for good.
Except there is no such thing as a Taliban "army", just as there is no such thing as one Taliban. This so-called "chain of terror" cannot be snapped by an army based in just one province, with just less than 10,000 soldiers on the ground, in a country which has been at war for almost 30 years. It would require an army at least 10 times that size to have even the slightest chance of controlling the whole of Afghanistan, let alone Pakistan, which this piece invokes repeatedly. The Soviets had over 100,000 units on the ground post-1980 and they couldn't manage it. How can such a fragmented coalition as Nato currently is even begin to?
The article doesn't even begin to consider any alternatives, let alone any counter-arguments. It can be argued that our very presence in Afghanistan in fact makes us less safe: it makes us a target for reprisals whereas if we were not involved we would not be. 9/11 and 7/7 did not occur in vacuums; they did not happen simply because "they hate us". The chain of terror would have breaks in it if we did not involve ourselves in battles in which we have no dog in. It would not completely remove the threat, but it would decrease it exponentially. That the Sun doesn't even start to imagine the opposing side even exists speaks volumes.
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.
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.
2. Be a rank higher than the very lowest, those who usually can be ripped apart by bombs and who will only merit a mention at the next week's prime ministers questions
It's worth remembering that none of the main three parties oppose the utter lunacy which is our current policy in Afghanistan, where we serve as target practice for an enemy that is not going to be defeated unless we swamp the entire country with troops, which is not going to go away not matter how many years we spend there propping up a regime which we actively dislike, and where the only thing that makes this even approaching a "good" war is that most civilians seem to prefer the occasional 500lb bomb being dropped in their vicinity over the wearying tyranny which the Taliban and various other warlords impose. No amount of counter-insurgency theories or theorists are going to make the difference when you face an enemy which has been fighting for nigh on 30 years, and is not going to suddenly stop no matter how many hearts and minds you win or how many of them you kill. The sooner our politicians realise that this war is even more unwinnable than the Iraq one was, where the insurgents themselves eventually turned on the most brutal amongst them, the sooner the body bags of all our soldiers will stop being brought back.
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.
To begin with, Mohamed naturally only "claims" that he was tortured. Presumably whoever wrote this leader then assumes that Mohamed, who had his penis repeatedly slashed with a razor while he was in Moroccan custody and has the scars to prove it, something that MI6 has admitted they might have helped with due to their providing information about him to the Americans, did so himself as an alternative to masturbation. Likewise, it's a fact that Mohamed was a resident here, even though he was not an actual citizen. On these grounds David Miliband has already requested his release. Also a fact is that while Mohamed did travel to Afghanistan, although what exactly the "Taliban badlands" are is anyone's guess, he went to Pakistan after 9/11. The last "fact" seems to be completely irrelevant: as long as Mohamed was a resident here and his presence was perfectly legal, that he was travelling on a false passport is neither here nor there.
Now, it is thought, the Government is preparing to let Mohamed return.
Arguments continue about whether his alleged confessions were made under duress by security agents trying to stop terrorist atrocities.
These arguments are only occurring in the Sun's mind: no one else disputes that Mohamed was tortured. Why else was he flown from Pakistan to Morocco, then Afghanistan and finally to Guantanamo if it wasn't for the purpose of extracting information from him through mistreatment? Were these in fact just holiday trips disguised as torture sessions? Similarly, the idea that these were by security agents desperate to stop "terrorist atrocities" is both a joke and a disgraceful semi-justification for what is both a crime and completely counter-productive.
But one fact is certain: We DON’T want him back.
Err, except that isn't a fact: that's a statement. It's also one that shows the true heartlessness of the Sun: this is a man that has been viciously tortured, not convicted of any crime and whose detention and abuse we have connived with, and yet the Sun would still have him turned away from the country which he called home, presumably to waste away as he is currently doing in Guantanamo. The paper, as always, only believes in justice for those it deems acceptable.
Scum-watch: Cushy prisons, yet more Facebook bashing, and 42 days nonsense.
Plenty to get through today, starting with the familiar Sun refrain that the prisons are all holiday camps, this time on the back of data released by the Ministry of Justice:
The Sun doesn't bother to mention that this is over the last 7 years for another couple of paragraphs.
They showed that annually thousands of inmates would rather stay inside than take Home Detention Curfew.
It's worth linking to exactly what was asked, which TheyWorkForYou provides here. Nick Herbert didn't just ask about those who actually opted-out, but also those that didn't bother to apply, which means there might be plenty that forgot to do so that also make up the figures.
In any case, 37,000 prisoners not applying/opting-out over 7 years obviously doesn't instantly mean that those who turned out down are preferring to stay in prison because it's so wonderful inside. Some prisoners will obviously prefer to serve out their time than be subject to a 7pm to 7am curfew while electronically tagged, especially if it means that they can't work a night job as a result, if they have one to go out to. Some will turn it out down because they don't actually have a home to go to, or one where the other occupants will agree to the private contractor installing the necessary equipment, while others might prefer to stay in prison than go and live for the time period in a hostel. As Straw also points out, some probably don't bother applying because they don't think that they'll pass the risk assessment. Indeed, it's instructive that the Sun nor the Times bothered to publish the breakdown of the figures over the years, possibly because it shows that the prisons can't be that cushy, because the numbers opting-out/not applying has fell from a high of 7,800 in 2001 to 3,200 in 2006. This makes sense when you consider that the prisons are now hopelessly overcrowded, and that surprisingly, that makes them rather less pleasant places to be, 3 meals a day, "satellite TV and cheap drugs", as the Sun puts it, or not.
And there were 26 incidents of break-ins – including one at a high security jail and 25 at open prisons. Ladders were used by 13 and three climbed walls. Shadow justice secretary Nick Herbert last night blasted the prison crisis as a “farce”.
These figures are similarly making a mountain out of a molehill, with an average of just 4 attempted break-ins a year, the 42 coming from the number of individuals involved in each incident. The clue as to how easy it is to break-in, or break-out from an open prison is in the word "open"; a fair majority of the prisoners in them are being prepared for release, and have day jobs outside the walls as a result, or are ranked as the lowest risk prisoners were they to go on the run. It's little surprise that some drug dealers might think they'd get business in open prisons and think breaking in is worth a go, but by far the biggest source of drugs in prison is, *shock*, corrupt screws.
It's rather strange therefore that the Sun is also bigging up the CBI's condemnation of current prison policy, which is quite clearly not in the slightest supporting the ever increasing building and filling of new prisons, something dearly close to the Sun's heart:
The Confederation of British Industry will today tell the Government that reoffending rates are a “colossal failure”. Dr Neil Bentley of the CBI will say lack of rehabilitation means jail is just a “hugely expensive bed and breakfast”.
Two in three ex-inmates commit another crime in two years – rising to three out of four young lags.
A 40 per cent hike in spending has had no effect on reoffending in the last ten years, the CBI will say.
This is for the reason that it is incredibly difficult to rehabilitate prisoners in prison in the first place, but when they're full to bursting as they currently are, something the Sun has had no small part in ensuring thanks to its constant urging of crackdowns on law and order, it's close to impossible. This was reflected in the figures released at the weekend that showed that prisons were lying about the time that inmates had outside their cells, which in some was less than 2 hours out of 24.
Onward to yet another Facebook-bashing exercise while ignoring that the study also involves MurdochSpace users:
Meanwhile, it looks like the Sun is starting to step up the pressure on those opposing 42 day detention, just as it did prior to the 90-day vote, after which it denounced those who voted against as "traitors":
Former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove wrote: “If 42 days is not adopted, regret it we will.”
He's also apparently turned into Yoda.
The PM’s bid has also won the backing of Metropolitan Police chief Sir Ian Blair – and top TORY MP Ann Widdecombe.
Err, Blair actually hasn't commented recently at all on 42 days of late: the Sun is being deliberately misleading by claiming that he's only now backed it. How Widdecombe can also be described as "top" when she's long left the shadow cabinet and is stepping down at the next election is also stretching credibility, and also not mentioned is the fact that Widdecombe came very close to supporting 90 days last time round, instead abstaining on the vote. That she supports 42, being one of the most authoritarian right-wing figures in parliament, is hardly surprising.
Then there's this flagrant piece of either deliberate bullshit or getting completely the wrong end of the stick:
In one case, police had to study 270 computers, 2,000 discs and 8,224 exhibits in eight countries to identify a SUSPECT.
Err, I think you'll find that they studied that number of computers etc in pursuit of evidence, not just to identify a suspect. It's also interesting how almost all of the commenters on the article are opposed, which is a surprise considering how they'll usually support absolutely anything on crime or terrorism on MySun. Still, for those wavering, the Sun helpful points out just how vital the bill is in by headlining the Scum's political editor's column thusly:
New Bill will help defeat al-Qaeda evil
The world's worst columnist also valiantly picks up the theme:
Except the Tories supported Blair over "trust schools" rather than opposing it, for just one example.
Labour’s present doldrums have allowed Cameron to avoid being nailed for his unwillingness to face the biggest issue that can confront a Government — protecting the safety and wellbeing of the nation’s citizens.
Except that the Conservatives also opposed 90 days, when things might have been bad for Labour, but not as bad as they are now. Still, keep going David.
After all the compromises, is Mr Cameron, with his party in tow, still prepared to put the civil liberties of suspected terrorists before the greatest liberties of all — the life, safety and freedom of everyone in our country?
No Mr Blunkett, it's not the civil liberties of suspected terrorists he's prepared to put before the "greatest liberties of all"; they are the civil liberties of everyone. Unless you haven't noticed, and during your tenure you did try your best, considering you locked up foreign "terrorist suspects" without charge in Belmarsh for years, everyone is innocent until proven guilty. There is no such thing as a "suspected terrorist", a horrible piece of Unspeak.
The most shameless thing about this piece is it's the government that are behaving like "junior common room debaters", as Blunkett puts it. They can't possibly win without diluting the power down to almost nothing, yet it's still objectionable because 42 days detention without charge is simply unacceptable, and no amount of judicial oversight or safeguards will change that. The Conservatives have been completely consistent from the beginning, opposing 90 days, 56 days and now 42 days, and quite rightly so. It may well be that this is a tactic to put further pressure on the government, and I don't doubt for a moment that the Conservatives, should they win the next election, might well do a complete u-turn, but this is the government in the wrong, not the opposition. They're the ones that are protecting our liberties from those who want to destroy them, and that includes both the government and the "terrorists" themselves.
The Sun's leader echoes the exact same arguments (yes, I realise they're rhetorical questions but humour me):
Evidence may spread across several continents and many languages.
To be serious for half a second, then give the police more resources. Don't extend the time just so they don't have to rush so much.
Civil liberties are important. But if there is one person who should persuade the Tories, it is ex-Met chief Peter Clarke.
Mr Clarke is no scaremonger. He is the reassuring voice of sober authority.
If he says the terror threat is “growing in scale and complexity” and 28 days is not enough, Mr Cameron should listen very, very carefully.
This would of course be the same Peter Clarke who said of the ricin plot, where there was no ricin, and even had there been Kamel Bourgass was too stupid to know that it needs to penetrate the skin to have an effect:
I too have the possibility to cause real panic, fear, disruption and even death if I run around outside waving a gun. It just so happens that I don't have a gun, but I still have the potential to do so, even if I haven't got a clue where to get a gun from. That too would be no more no less than a plot to kill the public. Clarke also defended the infamous Forest Gate raid, misleadingly claiming that a report made no criticism of the police's action when it was highly critical, while yesterday he expressed amazement at the politicisation of the debate when the police had done so much to err, politicise it.
Cameron though will have got the message. If the bill is defeated, not only will the spineless and pusillanimous Labour backbenchers get a roasting, so will the Conservatives. All the more reason to continue opposing 42 days and to once again say that it was the Sun wot lost it.
There is a grave exceptional threat from terrorists of mass destruction...
If it wasn't so serious it would almost be funny. The latest safeguard that will stop 42 days detention without charge being used to hold anyone with a beard and funny ideas is that the Home Secretary herself will have to decree that the extension can only be used when there is a "grave exceptional terrorist threat", such as an attack on the level of 7/7 taking place or feared to be about to take place. Like with all the other safeguards, it's both pointless and worthless. We're being constantly reminded that the threat we face from terrorism is, in the words of the ex-head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist squad Peter Clarke, "deadly and enduring". The brown-trousers-o-meter already declares that the current threat level is "severe", which means an attack is highly likely. How could we possibly tell the difference between a "grave exceptional" threat and the current level?
I mention Clarke because he too has now stepped into the breach with his own article on why 42 days is necessary, while, like Brown yesterday, making no real justification other than that the police have their resources stretched to be able to manage within 28 days. It's not worth fisking in full, but there are some parts that deserve answering:
There in a nutshell seems to be the real reason why the police want longer than 28 days. It means they don't have to rush themselves quite as much or sleep on the floor of their offices, and who frankly could disagree with police officers doing such an important job being uncomfortable while protecting the public from evildoers? It's also nice to see that Clarke mentions that Barot's computers were encrypted, meaning that as the law has since changed the police could now charge someone in Barot's position alone for refusing to provide an encryption key to decode the files. Again, whether Barot really did have any genuine links to al-Qaida is unclear - he apparently went to Pakistan to get his plans approved - and returned empty-handed.
Barot was a career terrorist who had been to training camps in Pakistan and the Far East. But we didn't know what stage his plans had reached. We could not be sure that he or other members of his group were not going to launch attacks, even as we watched. The decision was made to arrest them, and they were promptly rounded up in London and Blackburn.
As it turned out, he or his group could not have launched attacks because they didn't have funding, explosives or have even reached the first stages of preparing to launch an attack. All they had was plans, and very asinine plans they were too.
There was not a shred of evidence against them. The intelligence was clear - that he and his gang were planning attacks in this country, but there was no evidence that could be used in court.
At the time, terrorist suspects could be detained for 14 days. In this case, the pieces of the jigsaw fell into place on the morning of the 14th day. It was a very close call. We were minutes away from having to release a group of terrorists. Two years later, they pleaded guilty to plotting to make a dirty bomb and to kill fellow citizens in huge numbers.
Ah yes, either the Coke can dirty bomb or the smoke alarm dirty bomb. It's strange how when discussing these cases that no one, either police or journalists seems prepared to go into the actual details which are nowhere near as frightening or doom-mongering as the popular perception of what a dirty bomb would involve are. Why Clarke is focusing so much on this case is unclear: it shows the system working as it should have done. So does his next example:
This case told us that things had to change. Plots that have been uncovered since Barot, and the attacks on London in 2005, show the terrorist threat is growing in scale and complexity.
Plots where again the system has worked, with three men who were held for 28 days being charged, and another three released after 28 after the "liquid bombs plot". Again, where does this all end? In two years will have the police asking for 60 days because the plots have grown in scale and complexity again, with spurious amounts of data which they've had to go through being used again as the casus belli?
And yet, as Parliament prepares for the debate on the second reading of the Counter Terrorism Bill, we have to brace ourselves for another deluge of politicised comment on the proposal to extend the time terrorist suspects can be held.
The cross-party consensus that, for many years, helped guide the thinking on such issues evaporated in 2005. The parties blame each other for this, but the quality of the public debate has suffered. It is now difficult for counter-terrorist professionals to offer a view without being accused of political partiality.
Could this possibly be because the police in the first case engaged in err, political partiality, supporting the indefensible when it came 90 days? Clarke himself previously why-oh-whyed over the criticism directed the police's way in a speech last year:
If Clarke would like to explain how Andy Hayman being asked by the Home Secretary to comment on why 90 days was needed is not the police making a political case or how the Association of Chief Police Officers' intervention prior to the 90 days debate, with officers phoning up MPs urging them to support the legislation is not the police becoming politicised, then I'm sure it would be gratefully received.
In any case, the political consensus collapsed because 90 days were so clearly beyond the pale, as the government now accepts, although the police themselves apparently don't. It's also because the evidence is simply not there for a further extension: it's been the opposition parties that have been the principled ones, holding the same position from the beginning, that beyond 28 day detention without charge is simply not acceptable.
Clarke continues:
For instance, critics claim that the proposal is a draconian extension of police powers. It is not. Detention would be a judicial discretion, to be exercised following an adversarial hearing with both sides legally represented. This would be no rubber stamp. Indeed, the record of the judiciary in challenging the Government in terrorism cases suggests that any application for extended detention will be subject to the sharpest scrutiny.
This is the exact same argument as Clarke made last year, and it was wanting then. The judiciary have been notably active in terrorism cases, but that's where the detention has been arbitrary, either indefinite or where those accused have been held under control orders. Where they have not been so active or so forceful is where the evidence against the accused has not just been around intelligence, and where they are in police rather than prison custody or under house arrest. The police case is almost always going to be stronger, making clear that the individual is a major potential threat while the defence will have to argue purely on civil liberty grounds; the judiciary, put in such a position, will almost always give the police the benefit of the doubt.
Skipping some of the rest which isn't directly relevant to why 42 days is needed so desperately:
When I was asked, in 2005, by the home affairs select committee how many terrorists I had been obliged to let go through lack of time to investigate, I inwardly despaired. It was the wrong question. We should look forward, not back. The fact that we have been able to convict more than 60 terrorists in the last year or so is irrelevant.
This seems more revealing than Clarke admits. It's because the answer is 0; the only organisations that have let some go through supposed lack of time are the security services. There is nothing to suggest that any "terrorists" will ever have to be let go because lack of time.
The better question would have been: "Is it likely that there will come a time when the present 28-day limit is insufficient?" The answer would have been, "undoubtedly". That is why we should legislate now, and not in panic in an emergency.
Except we wouldn't need to panic in an emergency. If there was some dire, dire need to go beyond 28 days, the Civil Contingencies Act could be invoked; the government could temporarily derogate from the European Convention on Human Rights; or the accused could even be charged with a lesser offence while the investigation continued, something that is apparently too obvious to consider. Doing either of the first two options would be worrying and potentially out of proportion with the actual threat posed, but then so is 42 days itself. The government and the police would however find it far more difficult to justify doing either than it would to invoke 42 days under the laughable "grave exceptional" threat when the only reason for extending the limit is so the police can get a little more sleep.
The details of the 42-day detention plan may not be perfect, but the principle of being able to protect the public in extremis must be right. The checks and balances in our system prevent arbitrary detention. The judiciary have repeatedly shown their vigilance and independence. We should trust the judges and give the public the protection they deserve.
And while we're at it - could we try, just for a moment, to take the politics out of this?
But it isn't the judges who are the ones who are proposing this; they're just the ones who'll get the blame if they get it wrong. It's not those who we have to trust, it's the police and the government, and the fact is that we don't trust either. Nothing Clarke or Labour has said is convincing, and those still on the Labour backbenches who are wavering need to continue refusing to countenance the counting dilution of our hard-won civil liberties.
How would we be able to tell when it had been implemented?
The more things seem to change, the more they stay the same. If you're getting an overwhelming sense of deja-vu, imagining that we seem to have been here before, then you're not alone. For 42 days, read 90. For Tony Blair, read Gordon Brown. For Charles Clarke, read Jacqui Smith. The whole abortion of a debate over the urgent, pressing need for more time to hold the dastardly terrorist suspects, whether it be for another 42 minutes, 42 hours, 42 months or 42 years, or for 90 minutes passim ad nauseam has become so repetitive that you could get a robot to take up the slack and make the case for both sides.
If you don't therefore want to bored to tears, you might be inclined to skip this post. Just like when Tony Blair was in trouble he depended upon the Downing Street Echo and the Times to back him to hilt, so it seems to have come full circle with Gordo. With almost every newspaper apart from the Sun opposing any extension, and you tend to not be taken too seriously if you make your scholarly case for further detention powers in the same tabloid which has topless woman on its third page, Brown has instead taken to the sympathetic pages of the Thunderer in his restless case to convince the only two remaining people whom haven't already made their mind up about just how desperately needed those further 14 days are. The results are far from encouraging.
Not really. There are two choices: to either reject yet another truly unnecessary, discriminatory, unhelpful, counter-productive and chilling reduction in civil liberties, or to support the government and a band of merry supporters which can be counted on one hand, which included the already mentioned Sun, "Sir" Ian Blair, Lord Carlile, who thinks that putting a figure on it is unhelpful but is supportive in principle, Melanie Phillips (a given) and David Aaronovitch. If I've missed someone, feel free to point them out.
Britain has lived with terrorist threats for decades. But I am under no illusion that today's threats are different in their scale and nature from anything we have faced before. Today in Britain there are at least 2,000 terrorist suspects, 200 networks or cells and 30 active plots. The aim of terrorists is to kill and maim the maximum number of victims, indiscriminately and without warning, including through suicide attacks.
We can agree on the point that the threat is different; whether it is in scale or nature is less obvious. It's too easy to forget that the IRA didn't always telephone through warnings, and unlike the jihadist takfirists, also used to specifically target politicians rather than civilians. They also had far more support and far more funding than our current "friends". Quoting the 2-year old murmurings of the former head of MI5 without any explanation as there wasn't then of whether these 2,000 "terrorist suspects" are all Islamists or otherwise, and without specifying if they're allied to al-Qaida type ideology or the more Muslim Brotherhood-influenced Hamas type simply isn't good enough. If there were 30 active plots, how come that more "plots" haven't either been disrupted or come to fruition since then? No one can dispute that the aim is to kill and maim as many as possible, but the last few attempts to do just that have failed miserably. Even one police officer called Nick Reilly's apparent recent attempt to construct a bomb in a restaurant as "amateur hour"; that could have been extended to last year's Glasgow airport attacks and even the "liquidbombs" plot. While we should be concerned and rightly, we should also be making clear that we're dealing for the most part with fantasists, not deadly trained and truly motivated fighters.
Look at the scale and complexity of today's terrorist plots and you will understand why the amount of time required before charges can be brought has increased. In 2001 police investigating the last big IRA case had to analyse just one computer and a few floppy disks. The suspects used their own names and never went beyond Ireland and the UK.
By 2004 the police investigating the al-Qaeda plotter Dhiren Barot had to seize 270 computers, 2,000 disks, and more than 8,000 other exhibits. There were seven co-conspirators, and the investigation stretched across three continents. In the 2006 alleged airline bomb plot, the complexity had grown again - 400 computers, 8,000 disks and more than 25,000 exhibits.
This is just yet another attempt to blind people with statistics and figures. We don't know what 270 computers means in reality: it could be handhelds, computers in internet cafes, etc, all of which are not going to take anywhere near the time to search as a personal encrypted computer which holds most if not all of the relevant information. The same goes for the number of disks mentioned: are they burned CDs and DVDs or are the police going through suspects' entire DVD and CD collections in search of even the slightest amount of possibly hidden evidence, which would explain the huge amounts of disks apparently gone through? The possibility that this is exactly what they are doing is raised because our old friend Dhiren Barot apparently had concealed some alleged "reconnaissance" material on a Die Hard video. Fast-forwarding through DVDs and videos doesn't take that long, which underlines just how subjective the raising of such apparently vast amounts of material which needs to be shifted through is.
In any case, these examples are not even necessarily relevant; both cases involve "plots" which were disrupted before they came to fruition and where the police are searching for anything that might support their case. The "nightmare scenario" which has been raised by ministers such as Tony McNulty which would justify 42 days is 3 or 4 attacks of 9/11 type intensity occurring at the same time. In such cases, where crimes have already been obviously committed, and when the perpetrators will be presumably dead, it already seems doubtful that 42 days would be necessary. The alleged facilitators of 7/7 have only recently been brought to trial, and it certainly didn't taken anything approaching 28 days to hold them prior to being charged.
The police find themselves investigating multiple identities and passports, numerous mobile phone and e-mail accounts, and contacts stretching across the world. Simply establishing the true identity of a suspect may itself take days. Often hundreds of hours of video footage have to be viewed, layers of computer encryptions deciphered and overseas authorities persuaded to co-operate.
Why is this being used as a justification, apparently the only remaining justification? If the reason why "suspects" need to be held for longer than 28 days is because of the resources the police have, then give them more resources, don't extend the time the "suspect" can be held. Similarly, bringing up the encryptions argument again is really getting tiresome: the police have the power to demand encryption keys, and if the suspect refuses, he can be charged on that alone. As Spy Blog points out, encryption can either be broken or it cannot. Having to "persuade" overseas authorities to co-operate is also a red herring; hardly any countries refuse to co-operate, it's just the time that it takes for them to do so, which again, is not a justification for extending the time limit.
And the police cannot just wait for suspects to be caught red-handed. They have to make a judgment about intervening early to avert tragedy; which means more time may be needed, between arrest and charges being laid, to unravel the conspiracy and assemble the evidence.
Which they've up till now managed perfectly well, perhaps too well, if worries about what the "liquid bombers" could have actually achieved are substantiated. Dhiren Barot and his cack-handed "dirty bomb", used so often to scaremonger, were similarly dealt with perfectly adequately. We're being asked to legislate for a hypothetical, something that may never happen but which may happen, asking us to support it on the basis of the "increasing complexity" which adds up to the police sifting through more data than perhaps they even need to. It's about as far from convincing as it's possible to get.
The challenge for every government is to respond to the changing demands of national security, while upholding something that is at the heart of the British constitutional settlement: the preservation of civil liberties. And if the national interest requires new measures to safeguard our security, it is, in my view, the British way to make those changes in a manner that maximises the protection of individuals against arbitrary treatment.
Now Brown's assaulting us with his favourite topic, Britishness. It's the British way to lock up suspects for a random number of days on the possibility they might be nasty; that's another way to say what Brown has just written.
So our first principle is that there should always be a maximum limit on pre-charge detention. It is fundamental to our civil liberties that no one should be held arbitrarily for an unspecified period. After detailed consultation with the police, and examination of recent trends in terrorist cases, we propose the upper limit of 42 days.
Really? Where where you then prime minister while Belmarsh was being used as the British equivalent of Guantanamo Bay, albeit only for "foreign terrorist suspects"? Were you making clear your opposition to this constitutional outrage, only ended when the House of Lords ruled that it was incompatible with an act which your self same government brought in? If you want us to know the specifics of exactly why the police think we need 42 days, why don't you publish these detailed consultations? In reality this "detailed consultation" seems to amount to asking either the head of the Met or the current head of anti-terrorist policing what amount of days they'd like: we've had 90, we've had 56, and now we've got 42. How do we know that in another 2 years' time the police aren't going to be asking for yet another 2 weeks longer than the current limit?
Our second principle is that detention beyond 28 days can be allowed only in truly exceptional circumstances. The decision is made by the Home Secretary but must be backed by the Director of Public Prosecutions as well as the police. And this would allow the higher limit only for a temporary period, and only where there is a specific terrorist incident or threat under investigation that warrants it.
Which is yet another "compromise" that isn't. It just so happens that this "safeguard" has been designed so that the current director of public prosecutions, who opposes any increase, has to embarrass himself by admitting that he got it wrong. How limiting the higher limit to a "temporary period" is also any kind of safeguard is bizarre: if the higher period is needed again, the police will just ask for it again, and parliament and judges are hardly likely to disagree with them, especially when the tabloid press will be howling if they do.
Our third principle is that the Home Secretary must then take this decision to Parliament for approval. If Parliament refused to sanction the decision, the existing 28-day limit would stand.
How likely exactly is it that parliament will disagree when it's already decided that 42 days might be appropriate? How and why should parliament be asked to decide whether it is necessary when they will neither legally nor politically be able to make such a decision without either prejudicing a potential case or without bringing the whole of the weight of the media down on their heads if someone then released goes on to commit any sort of offence? This isn't a safeguard or a compromise, it's an unholy mess that makes things worse, not better. Oh, and here's a good question: what happens exactly if parliament happens to be in recess when such an extension is needed?
Fourthly, the judiciary must oversee each individual case. As happens now for detention beyond 14 days, a senior judge will be required to approve the extension of detention in each individual case every seven days up to the new higher limit.
Again, how likely is it that any judge will dare to risk the chance of releasing such a suspect, especially when the police will be making clear in no uncertain terms how they must not be? It's not a safeguard now and it certainly won't be after 28 days.
Fifthly, to enhance accountability there must be independent reporting to Parliament and the public on all cases. That is why the independent reviewer will now report publicly not just in general on the operation of the legislation but on each individual case.
And since the "independent" reviewer already supports an extension, and thinks that control orders are necessary and proportionate, we can take a guess at what his reports will say. Yet again, how his reporting on each individual case will not prejudice a trial will be interesting to discover.
So I say to those with legitimate concerns about civil liberties: look at these practical safeguards against arbitrary treatment. With these protections in place, I believe Parliament should take the right decision for national security.
These safeguards are absolutely worthless. In fact, they're worse than worthless; they justify, condone and underpin that arbitrary treatment. There could not be a better specific example that the current anti-terror laws have already gone too far than that of Rizwaan Sabir: when you can be held for 6 days for downloading an al-Qaida manual from a US government website, the potential for arbitrary treatment, injustice and increased resentment against the authorities could not be greater. While those arrested at the same time were charged and convicted, two of those arrested during the investigation into the Birmingham beheading plot were held for a week without once being questioned about the allegations being made in the press, of which they only learned after their release. It doesn't matter if for every 1 that is released after an extended period in detention 10 are charged and subsequently convicted: it's that 1 and his story that enrage, that do the damage and which show why such an extension must be resisted.
I have received much advice in recent weeks. Some have argued that I should drop or significantly water down the 42-day limit. But having considered carefully all the evidence and arguments, I believe that, with all these protections against arbitrary treatment in place, allowing up to 42 days' pre-charge detention in these exceptional terrorist cases is the right way to protect national security.
Indeed he has received much advice, and typically of Gordon, he hasn't taken a single piece of it on-board. He's still convinced that this is the one remaining piece of legislation on which he can wrong foot the Tories, making them look weak, and by at least one of the quoted polls, around 57% of the public do support the government, although that's a figure way down on the support for Blair when 90 days was defeated, showing that the unpopularity of the government and the fall in fearmongering over the terrorist threat in general seems to have had an effect. The most laughable and contemptible opinion put across is that being "tough" has nothing to do with it: the loathsome McNulty appearing on Newsnight emphasising that, while in more or less the same sentence repeating Smith's argument from earlier tonight that this would be a decision showing the government "governing". If that isn't a shot across the bows of the Tories, ridiculing them for being playing with people's lives as they're in opposition rather than government, I don't know what is.
That is why I will stick to the principles I have set out and do the right thing: protecting the security of all and the liberties of each; and safeguarding the British people by a careful and proportionate strengthening of powers in response to the radically new terrorist threats we now face.
No Gordon, you're sticking the principle of being a politician rather than governing in the interests of the "British people". While terrorists threats will grow and wither respectively, our civil liberties will only ever be weakened. Once lost, they are near to impossible to win back. From a government that has only done one thing to civil liberties, and that's to slash them, despite the welcome introduction of the Human Rights Act, to claim to be protecting the security of all and the liberties of each is obscurantist in the extreme. It was to be hoped that Labour MPs would still vote 42 days down, something now looking less likely, not because MPs have been won over by the government's case, but because they don't want to make things even worse for the party and for Gordon. The cavalier attitude that shows towards civil liberties and the people's interests is politicians at their very worst. Those that do change their minds for just that reason more than deserve eviction from parliament itself, something the electorate seems inclined to do regardless.
