UK Terror plot

The UK Terror plot: what's really going on?
August 14, 2006
Craig Murray http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/index.html

[As Britain's outspoken Ambassador to the Central
Asian Republic of Uzbekistan, Craig Murray helped
expose vicious human rights abuses by the
US-funded regime of Islam Karimov. He is now
a prominent critic of Western policy in the region.]

I have been reading very carefully through all the Sunday newspapers
to try and analyse the truth from all the scores of pages claiming to
detail the so-called bomb plot. Unlike the great herd of so-called
security experts doing the media analysis, I have the advantage of
having had the very highest security clearances myself, having done a
huge amount of professional intelligence analysis, and having been
inside the spin machine.

So this, I believe, is the true story.

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a
plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the
efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a
plane bomber for quite some time.

In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases
passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond
reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide
bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat
rooms.

What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for
over a year - like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just
Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the
need for early arrests.

Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing
plot to blow up multiple planes - which, rather extraordinarily, had
not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators
of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like
canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most
extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give
the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort
to stop or avert torture. What it doesn't give is the truth.

The gentleman being "interrogated" had fled the UK after being wanted
for questioning over the murder of his uncle some years ago. That
might be felt to cast some doubt on his reliability. It might also be
felt that factors other than political ones might be at play within
these relationships. Much is also being made of large transfers of
money outside the formal economy. Not in fact too unusual in the
British Muslim community, but if this activity is criminal, there are
many possibilities that have nothing to do with terrorism.

We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing
the possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the answer to that
is plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed
for "Another 9/11". The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy,
gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has
bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shovelled.

We then have the appalling political propaganda of John Reid, Home
Secretary, making a speech warning us all of the dreadful evil
threatening us and complaining that "Some people don't get" the need
to abandon all our traditional liberties. He then went on, according
to his own propaganda machine, to stay up all night and minutely
direct the arrests. There could be no clearer evidence that our Police
are now just a political tool. Like all the best nasty regimes, the
knock on the door came in the middle of the night, at 2.30am. Those
arrested included a mother with a six week old baby.

For those who don't know, it is worth introducing Reid. A hardened
Stalinist with a long term reputation for personal violence, at
Stirling Univeristy he was the Communist Party's "Enforcer", (in days
when the Communist Party ran Stirling University Students' Union,
which it should not be forgotten was a business with a very
substantial cash turnover). Reid was sent to beat up those who
deviated from the Party line.

We will now never know if any of those arrested would have gone on to
make a bomb or buy a plane ticket. Most of them do not fit the "Loner"
profile you would expect - a tiny percentage of suicide bombers have
happy marriages and young children. As they were all under
surveillance, and certainly would have been on airport watch lists,
there could have been little danger in letting them proceed closer to
maturity - that is certainly what we would have done with the IRA.

In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the timing
is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot. Of the over
one thousand British Muslims arrested under anti-terrorist
legislation, only twelve per cent are ever charged with anything. That
is simply harrassment of Muslims on an appalling scale. Of those
charged, 80% are acquitted. Most of the very few - just over two per
cent of arrests - who are convicted, are not convicted of anything to
do terrorism, but of some minor offence the Police happened upon while
trawling through the wreck of the lives they had shattered.

Be sceptical. Be very, very sceptical.
--
Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/>
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