So, the British Police have briefed the US Press about their investigations into the supposed bomb plot last month which led to the virtual closing down of normal air traffic too and from the UK and has left us with special restrictions on all flights out of the UK (but not into it) and even more restrictions on US-UK traffic.
The New York Times ran an article yesterday:
which described the Press Briefing.
A further article today claimed that the site had been blocked to British viewers because of British laws on contempt of court:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/29/business/media/29times.html.
Registration may be required for the above articles.
It took me three minutes to circumvent the restrictions.
I now find from the article that, with the police spin removed there are no claims of:
Actual plans to blow up aircraft
Any explosives available
Any date set
Any evidence of competence
They did find:
Some Hydrogen Peroxide (Hair Bleach) and some batteries which are listed as ‘other chemicals with which to make a bomb’)
Videos expressing thoughts of anger and martyrdom.
Money Orders
A computer memory stick that showed he had looked up airline schedules for flights from London to the United States
Batteries and Lucozade bottles
Jihadist literature and DVD’s about “genocide” in Iraq and Palestine
A copy of a book called “Defense of the Muslim Lands.”
A considerable amount of computer and other electronic media which has yielded only the above.
Excerpts:
*five senior British officials said, the suspects were not prepared to strike immediately. Instead, the reactions of Britain and the United States in the wake of the arrests of 21 people on Aug. 10 were driven less by information about a specific, imminent attack than fear that other, unknown terrorists might strike.
British officials said the suspects still had a lot of work to do. Two of the suspects did not have passports, but had applied for expedited approval. One official said the people suspected of leading the plot were still recruiting and radicalizing would-be bombers.
While investigators found evidence on a computer memory stick indicating that one of the men had looked up airline schedules for flights from London to cities in the United States, the suspects had neither made reservations nor purchased plane tickets, a British official said
two and a half weeks since the inquiry became public, British investigators have still not determined whether there was a target date for the attacks or how many planes were to be involved. They say the estimate of 10 planes was speculative and exaggerated.
Despite the charges, officials said they were still unsure of one critical question: whether any of the suspects was technically capable of assembling and detonating liquid explosives while airborne. A chemist involved in that part of the inquiry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was sworn to confidentiality, said HMTD, which can be prepared by combining hydrogen peroxide with other chemicals, “in theory is dangerous,” but whether the suspects “had the brights to pull it off remains to be seen.”
While officials and experts familiar with the case say the investigation points to a serious and determined group of plotters, they add that questions about the immediacy and difficulty of the suspected bombing plot cast doubt on the accuracy of some of the public statements made at the time.
“In retrospect,’’ said Michael A. Sheehan, the former deputy commissioner of counterterrorism in the New York Police Department, “there may have been too much hyperventilating going on.”
British officials said many of the questions about the suspected plot remained unanswered because they were forced to make the arrests before Scotland Yard was ready.
“While the arrests were unfolding, the Home Office raised Britain’s terror alert level to “critical,” as the police continued their raids of suspects’ homes and cars. All liquids were banned from carry-on bags, and some public officials in Britain and the United States said an attack appeared to be imminent. In addition to Mr. Stephenson’s remark that the attack would have been “mass murder on an unimaginable scale,” Mr. Reid said that attacks were “highly likely” and predicted that the loss of life would have been on an “unprecedented scale.”
Two weeks later, senior officials here characterized the remarks as unfortunate. As more information was analyzed and the British government decided that the attack was not imminent, Mr. Reid sought to calm the country by backing off from his dire predictions, while defending the decision to raise the alert level to its highest level as a precaution.
*
Now, undeniably, these people were acting in a potentially culpable manner and needed to be brought to book, but
given the information that came out before British Contempt laws came into effect and the above NY Times briefing, and considering the British Government’s previous record on this matter- collapsed ‘Ricin Plot’, Non-existant ground to air missiles at Heathrow, the execution of an innocent Brazilian on the Subway in London, and the shooting of a young Asian man and the pistol-whipping of his family and next door (Sikh) neighbours,
I just do not believe that there is a real case against these people that warranted the massive (and politically useful) government over-reaction to the case.
Can anyone convince me otherwise? Is there really a serious case of real terrorism here?
