Easter bomb plot? Not so much

Remember the “Easter Bomb Plot” announced with such triumphant fanfare by the UK Home Office two weeks ago after a series of SWAT-style raids?  UK police arrested 11 Pakistanis and a twelfth suspect variously identified as a British citizen or possibly Afghan.  Home Secretary Jacqui Smith made an expansive statement to Parliament about this triumph of anti-terrorism, and the world was told how the gallant British police had thwarted a plot to blow up stores, nightclubs, restaurants and a train station.  It was touted as “the largest terror plot since the July 7th attacks in London four years ago”.  A STRATFOR analysis began with the following paragraph:

On April 8, British authorities mounted a series of raids in Merseyside, Manchester and Lancashire that resulted in the arrest of 12 men suspected of being involved in a plot to conduct attacks over the Easter holiday weekend.  In a press conference the following day, Prime Minister Gordon Brown noted that the men arrested were allegedly involved in “a very big terrorist plot.”  British authorities have alleged that those arrested sought to conduct suicide bombing attacks against a list of soft targets that included shopping centers, a train station and a nightclub.

So it’s possibly a little of a surprise that all twelve suspects were just released, with no charges filed, after being held for 13 days.

But perhaps this should have been seen earlier.  That same STRATFOR report goes on to discuss how the suspects were fingered by intelligence “contacts” in Pakistan, and how — despite being supposedly determined terrorists — “the suspects did not appear to possess any surveillance detection capability -- or even much situational awareness -- as they went out into Manchester to conduct pre-operational surveillance of potential targets while under government surveillance themselves.  Furthermore, the suspects’ surveillance techniques appear to have been very rudimentary in that they lacked both cover for action and cover for status while conducting their surveillance operations.”

Indeed, the major first-hand “evidence” that the Home Office and the police had against the twelve is that they were seen videotaping each other in front of several Manchester landmarks and using computers to communicate.  These are things just about every 20-something student in the western world has done.  But because they’d been fingered as “suspicious persons” by a Pakistani “source” of unknown credibility, these acts became evidence.  And that led to Operation Pathway.

Yet in two weeks of searching their homes, their possessions, their personal effects, and their computers, the UK police have found no attack plans.  No Al-Qaeda contacts or communications.  No explosives.  No bomb-making materials.  In fact, they found not one single shred of evidence.  Not even the vague circumstantial evidence that usually suffices to have terrorism suspects locked up indefinitely in places like Guantanamo Bay.

Hence, the release without charges.  Hence, also, the personal investigation of Operation Pathway by Lord Carlile.  (It’s unclear whether this is the same Lord Carlisle who, while Home Secretary himself, laughingly refused every expansion of police powers asked for by UK police, suggesting that if they couldn’t do their job with the powers they had, maybe they weren’t competent to do it in the first place.)

What about the twelve suspects?  Are they receiving compensation?  Are they at least being allowed to go back to their lives with a formal apology?

Oh, of course not.  They’re Pakistanis, and the words “terrorism” and “national security” have been muttered in dark corners, so they’re all being deported.  For the sake of national security, you know.  They’re too innocent to hold any longer, and too innocent to charge with anything, but they must be guilty of something, even if it’s only being an embarrassment to the police and the Home Office.  It’s being called “a police fiasco” and “a mockery of British justice”.  The attorney representing three of the men charges that their human rights have been “very seriously breached”, which of course will only be compounded by deporting them.  But that’s OK, because they won’t be in the UK any more, and won’t be able to do anything much from Pakistan, so that’ll be someone else’s problem.

Until they become real terrorists out of anger at their treatment, of course.

Required reading

BRITAIN appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian state.  As a sometime teacher of political science and international law, I do not use the term totalitarian loosely.

Read and reflect.  The Brittannia that once ruled the waves is gone.

(via writerspleasure)