What
became of Blair’s
“several hundred” terrorists?
"What they [the security services] say is you have got
to give us powers in between mere surveillance of these people - there are several
hundred of them in this country who we believe are engaged in plotting or
trying to commit terrorist acts - you have got to give us power in between just
surveying them and being sure enough to prosecute them beyond reasonable doubt.
There are people out there who are determined to destroy our way of life and
there is no point in us being naive about it.” [my emphasis]
These are
the words of the Prime Minister on Women’s Hour on Radio 4 on 28 February 2005,
when the Prevention of Terrorism Bill was before Parliament (see Times report here). The Bill became an Act on 11 March after
much toing and froing between the Lords and Commons.
The Act
allows the Home Secretary to impose a “control order” on any individual who in
his opinion “is or has been involved in terrorism-related activity”. When the control order deemed necessary by
the Home Secretary amounts to house arrest, he has to apply to a court for
it. But in neither case is the
individual charged, let alone given the opportunity to answer the charge
against him.
On the
basis of the Prime Minister’s remarks on Women’s Hour, one could be forgiven
for thinking that by now, two months after the Bill became law, “several
hundred” individuals would be subject to control orders. But, in fact only about a dozen individuals
have been, and none of them from the “several hundred” referred to by the Prime
Minister. All of them are foreign
nationals, who had already been detained under Section 23 of the
Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001.
In
other words, literally none of the “several hundred” terrorists said by the
Prime Minister to be “engaged
in plotting or trying to commit terrorist acts” have been made subject to
control orders, even though, he said, the security services were demanding
powers to deal with these people, whom they weren’t in a position to prosecute.
It seems that the Prime Minister
was, as usual, playing fast and loose with the truth when speaking on Women’s
Hour on 28 February. As I wrote
last March:
“The reality is likely to be that, with a few exceptions,
these apparently dangerous terrorists will continue to roam our streets
uncontrolled – because they are not really dangerous at all, but the Prime
Minister felt the need to mention them in order to frighten Parliament into
passing the Prevention of Terrorism Act.”
It appears that I was wrong: to the
best of my knowledge, there have been no exceptions.
The
introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Bill was prompted by the House of
Lords’ ruling last December that Section 23 of the
Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 was incompatible with the European
Convention on Human Rights (see here). Section 23 allowed for the detention without
trial of foreign nationals suspected of terrorist links, who couldn’t be
deported to their country of origin, because they might be subject to torture
there.
Section
23 was due to expire on 14 March 2005, and the Prime Minister attempted to
frighten Parliament into passing new legislation by raising the spectre of
dangerous terrorists walking free (even though the Conservatives offered to
support the renewal Section 23 for a limited period). And since the new legislation was to apply to British as well as
foreign nationals, in order to justify its enactment, he felt the need to raise
the spectre of “several hundred” terrorist suspects of British nationality on
the loose.
In
fact, by the time the new legislation came into force, the foreign nationals
originally detained under Section 23 were out on bail under conditions that
placed severe restrictions on their liberty.
When the new legislation came into force, they were put under control
orders, the terms of which bore a striking resemblance to their previous bail
conditions.
All
this begs a number of questions:-
(1)
Why did the foreign suspects, who for years were
deemed to be so dangerous that they had to be locked up in solitary
confinement, suddenly, and simultaneously, become so much less dangerous that
they were allowed to live at home, albeit with severe restrictions on their
liberty?
(2)
If the Prime Minister’s “several hundred”
British suspects did exist, why did he wait until the legislation applying to
foreign suspects was about to expire before taking measures to deal with them?
(3)
If the Prime Minister’s “several hundred”
British suspects do exist, why have none of them been made subject to control
orders under the new legislation?
Few
convictions
The Home
Office published a series
of background papers when the Prevention of Terrorism Bill was going through
Parliament. The first of these reveals
(p2) that an extraordinarily small number of people have been convicted in the
UK under anti-terrorist legislation in recent years, at a time when the
Government has being warning unceasingly of the dangers from “international
terrorism”, by which they mean terrorism emanating from the Muslim world.
Prior to
9/11, a comprehensive anti-terrorism law, the Terrorism Act 2000, was
passed. Amongst other things, this
allowed the proscription of foreign terrorist organisations and allowed
individuals to be tried for engaging in terrorism abroad. It came into force in February 2001.
According
to the Home Office paper, post 9/11 and up to the end of 2004, there were 701
arrests under this Act. Of these, 119
were charged under the Act but only 17 were convicted. What is more, by no means all of those
convicted were from a Muslim background.
When the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme looked into the convictions,
according to a BBC News report:
“Information gathered with the
help of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Institute of Race Relations
provided details of 13 [of the 17] convictions.
“It emerged that three of the
convictions related to Irish republicanism and four to the Irish loyalist
movement.
“Two stemmed from a Sikh terrorism
case and one involved Tamil terrorism.
“Only
three related to some form of Islamic terrorism.”
There have been more convictions
this year (for example, of Saajid Badat and Kamel Bourgass) but overall the
number of convictions of Muslims for terrorist offences in Britain since 9/11
has been extraordinarily small.
The Home Office paper does not say
how many of the 119 charged under the Act had the charges against them dropped
before reaching trial. It does say that
of the 119 charged under the Act, 45
were also charged with other offences, and that 135 others arrested under the
Act were charged under other legislation, “including charges for terrorist
offences covered in other criminal law such as the use of explosives”. The paper doesn’t say how many arrested
under the Act were convicted of offences under other legislation. I suspect not many, otherwise the paper
would have told us.
Time and again, over the past few years, arrests of alleged terrorists
from a Muslim background, have been reported in banner headlines, with the
obvious encouragement of the Government.
In David Blunkett’s time in the Home Office, he sometimes convicted them
on the spot. Since very few of these
arrests were followed by high profile trials, it must be assumed that many of
them were followed by the quiet release of most or all of the suspects, or the
equally quiet charging of them with relatively minor offences.
The most high profile case that came to court – the al-Qaeda ricin ring
uncovered in January 2003 – ended in farce.
Around 90 people were arrested in this investigation, of which nine were
eventually charged. In the first trial,
which lasted six months and finished on 13 April 2005, the five defendants were
acquitted of conspiracy to murder by plotting attacks with ricin. One individual, Kamel Bourgass, was
convicted of conspiracy to commit a public nuisance with poisons. Earlier, at an unpublicised trial, he had
been convicted of killing a policeman at the time of his arrest. A second trial of the other four defendants
was abandoned.
In reality, the ricin ring produced no ricin, and wasn’t a ring. What is more, two days after the public
announcement that traces of ricin had been discovered in a flat in Wood Green,
North London, Porton Down scientists had concluded that the original finding
was a false positive: no ricin had been produced, and there were no other
poisons in the flat. Needless to say,
these basic facts were not announced to the public, then or since.
Recipes for ricin, and other poisons, were found in the flat, but they
were of US origin and probably obtained by Bourgass from the internet, rather
from an al-Qaeda handbook, as asserted by the prosecution. In any case, they were useless for producing
poisons capable of killing an individual, let alone large numbers of people, as
widely reported. Bourgass may have
wanted to produce ricin and other poisons, and to kill people with them, but
the chances of him doing so were remote.
This case would never have got off
the ground if it wasn’t for a confession by an Algerian, called Muhammad
Meguerba, to his Algerian interrogators, a confession which he later
recanted. He told them that he was part
of a UK-based poison cell, having received special training on poisons with
Bourgass in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, and he said that ricin had already
been produced. This is what got the
hare running.
Even
when the trial ended with the acquittal of all but Bourgass, the Government was
clearly determined to keep the hare running, and present the investigation as
having foiled a serious al-Qaeda plot to produce poisons and use them to lethal
effect. And by and large the press
obliged by telling this story.
For the truth of the matter, see GlobalSecurity.Org notes on the case:
(1) UK TERROR TRIAL
FINDS NO TERROR: Not guilty of conspiracy to poison London with ricin, 11
April 2005
(2) MORE UK TERROR
TRIAL: Evil foiled or more mendacity?, 13 April 2005
(3)
PLAYTIME RECIPES
FOR POISONS: The Bourgass notes of mass exaggeration, 18 April 2005
* *
* *
The
lesson of all this is: when the Government speaks about terrorism, be
sceptical, be very sceptical.
Postscript
The
following statements were made in the House of Commons on 10 March 1993, during
the annual debate on the renewal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (Hansard,
cols 972–5):
“It must be accepted, as it was
accepted when the power was introduced, that prima facie the power is offensive
to the basic principle of the rule of law, which is that deprivation of liberty
should be through the courts and not through politicians.”
“It is not
good enough to say that the Home Secretary will exercise them in a proper way,
because the very principle of the rule of law is that that decision should be
made by a court, not a politician.”
“The
notion that one should be detained by executive power rather than order of the
court is contrary to the provisions of the convention on human rights. If the
right hon. . . . Gentleman cannot understand that, he cannot understand the
basis of British law.”
“It is
important that the power is vested in a court because in this country we
believe that the powers of detention should be exercised by courts, not by
politicians, civil servants or parts of the Executive.”
The speaker was an up and coming
opposition Home Affairs spokesman, named Blair.
Labour & Trade Union Review