Quick question about British law. Would they bother charging those 15 if they didn’t feel they had a good case? A lot of times here in the states the government will drop the charges if it feels it has a weak case.
Just curious how it works on your side of the pond (and I’m working late tonight so I’m bored).
-XT
In England the Crown Prosecution Service is tasked with bringing cases to court; the police merely gather evidence and then present it to the CPS. A CPS solicitor (with a Barrister’s opinion in some cases) will take the decision whether to prosecute. The official guidelines are that it must be considered that there is a better than 50% probability of gaining a conviction and that the case must be in the public interest. These guidelines are sometimes open to covert political pressure.
It should be noted that the CPS has brought the Ricin case and the Video case mentioned above to trial, only to have the cases found not guilty by the juries involved. It is possible that the CPS is assessing the liklihood of convictions in borderline terrorist cases as more probable to convict than the juries are really willing to allow- there is a great deal of scepticism about the government and the way they are dealing with terrorism.
I assume your comment is meant to be humorous.
Wish as they might, the Government is not going to be allowed to introduce Diplock courts in mainland Britain. IIRC they have only just been phased out in the six counties. Also IIRC they are still available in the 26.
I do agree that this evidence will be well tested. Solicitors involved so far inclue Michael Mansfield and Gareth Pierce. The prosecution will have its work cut out. I usually assume that if these two are involved, then the case is winnable and that the Government’s arguments are likely to be faulty.
For our Amrican Friends:
Diplock Courts are non jury courts brought into being in the 6 counties of the North of Ireland when convictions for terror became difficult in front of juries. The Irish Republic ibtroduced a similar system.
Gareth Pierce and Michael Mansfield are anti-authoritarian lawyers with an excellent track record for overturning and avoiding miscarriages of justice brought on by both an over-weaning executive determined to produce illiberal laws and a legal system that historically has given a massively unfair hearing to defendants. Hearing that these two are involved makes me certain that this case is going to be hard for the CPS to prove except for the most clearly involved. Of the 20 pluis people arrested, 11 have been charged with conspiracy to murder, and seven have been charged with lesser crimes (concealment and possession of videos or books). Six remain incarcerated for the third week of four and are still being interviewed. I suspect that the lesser charges will prove very difficult to gain a jury conviction. I also suspect that the more serious charges will be reduced from conspiracy to murder to conspiracy to carry out acts of terrorism or Carrying our acts preparatory to terrorism. Previously in the UK there was a tendency to charge people with the actual offence which the CPS thought was convictable. There has been a drift in the current retributionist climate to ‘overcharge’ people with the intention of dropping to a lesser charge later. Plea-bargaining is also creeping into our system.
Guess you will have to stop claiming that it is possible then. 
The business about not being sure about the 7/7 explosive is spurious.
They found the bath it was mixed in.
Do you remember the 21/7 fiasco, they have had all four of those bozos locked up for over a year.
The similarity between the 7/7 and the 21/7 operations were so striking that I would not give odds /against/ them being parallel cells.
Incidentally the black guy from 21/7 who scarpered to Italy was yakking away on his mobile to someone in Saudi - which makes me suspect that both lots were somehow connected to Al Quaeda.
Personally I doubt that they intended using a Peroxide bomb, since it failed on 21/7, also that chemist’s link that you provided (I’ve seen it before) is in my view pretty stupid, heat distillation of Hydrogen Peroxide might be dangerous, but freeze distillation is simple and safe.
For obvious reasons, the security services are keeping tight lipped about things, but they have got the four from 21/7, clues from 7/7, Richard Reid and another shoebomber that they located via Reid’s mobile.
That makes ten young lunatics, is it that unlikely that there are at least another ten out there ?
I agree that petrol would be enough to cause havoc on a flight, but reckon it is much more likely that they would mix up something like Nitro Glycerine, which is easy to make and requires three liquids. A cookbook seldom contains just one recipe.
There have been past problems, the Ricin episode was embarrassing, but they did find a recipe for Ricin - which is not exactly the sort of thing you expect in a Halal kitchen.
Also, the timing was inconvenient for Blair, which suggest that something made them act before the security services were ready, it might have been Pakistan, possibly the USA, most likely something entirely different.
There is another thing to consider, getting a successful prosecution is not at all important, once you have identified someone you get a load of their contacts, probably get a load of information from them, and you can keep a careful eye on what they get up to.
I would be totally unconcerned about prosecuting them, and not very worried about releasing them - they are a lot more useful outside prison, and if they had one brain cell they would stay away from their mates
Effectively the punishment for not informing is … capital.
You just said that the government’s “hand was forced”. What would you have them do differently? Wait until the explosives were mixed? Until they got on the plane?
What problem was solved? No matter when the government made these arrests, it would be a time when the government was under fire, whether it be Israel, Iraq, War on Terror, or Bad Hair Day. I know that it is fun in your mind to create these conspiracies, but you’re not making any sense, and you lack any evidence.
And you still haven’t answered my earlier questions: I don’t think so myself, but, really, what harm was done outside of more inconvenience for travelers? If you have a problem with people being more scared about terrorist attacks, why not blame the people who were planning the attacks and not the police or government? Did I miss your condemnation of these people?
From Pjen’s New York Times article link:
*"If Web readers in Britain were intrigued by the headline “Details Emerge in British Terror Case,” which sat on top of The New York Times’s home page much of yesterday, they would have been disappointed with a click.
Details Emerge in British Terror Case (August 28, 2006) “On advice of legal counsel, this article is unavailable to readers of nytimes.com in Britain,” is the message they would have seen. “This arises from the requirement in British law that prohibits publication of prejudicial information about the defendants prior to trial.”*
Apparently “regular crime” in the U.K. means trying to keep the public informed about criminal proceedings. :dubious:
This is something that tends to get overlooked when folks like Pjen look down their noses at American freedoms.
And your point is?
British and US law differ in the freedom of the press over several matters. One of these is over matters which are sub judice. To the American eye this looks like prior restraint which is anathema to Americans; to the British eye, American Preess coverage all too often looks like the Press acting as an aid to the prosecution. This is a balance between “Freedom of the Press” and “Due Process”. The US has solved this problem by ignoring Due Process and upholding Freedom of the Press; the British have solved the process by limiting the Freedom of the Press whilst upholding Due Process. Whichever is right or wrong is a close call.
And some of us don’t just look down our noses at American freedoms, we look at American, British and other 'Freedom’s and American, British and other abominations and make judgement calls on American, British and other ways of doing things and are open to argument about change without necessarily calling Patriotism or Anti-Americanism, Anti Britishism or Anti-anyothercountryism.
Note that it is only the phrase Anti-Americanism that sounds like a real phrase as it is so often used by people in the US who cannot see how other countries might have different (and possibly even better) ways of doing things than was laid down by a few dozen Anglicised Middle Class White People 230 years ago.
No, that is down to our legal system.
The idea is to make sure that the jurors start without massive preconceptions.
It is a tradeoff between ‘freedom of speech’ and giving a ‘fair trial’
It is only delayed ‘freedom of speech’, and the dirt gets out anyway, but I don’t disagree with the principle.
I just don’t understand what you mean by the bolded lines above.
That you’re ducking the issue.
Your laws have, in your opinion, “solved the process” while depriving you of the liberty of knowing what’s going on (unless you can circumvent the process), and keeping a lid on potential public pressure to dismiss or settle a weak case.
I find it odd that this long-standing limitation of your liberty doesn’t bother you, while in the same breath you are all het up about the Patriot Act (which despite its defects, has not stifled criticism of Administration policies).
Your statements sound a lot like reflex xenophobia coupled with defensiveness about outside criticism.
The Register is extremely skeptical regarding the feasibility of mixing an effective explosive in a passenger airplane.
You are partially quoting what I said. I quite even handedly said that the US and UK had solved the problem of the conflict between Freedom of Speech and Due Process in different ways. As I said, I believe it is a close call,
In fact I come down on the Fredom of Speech side (which had you not so assumed, you could have discovered by looking at the criticisms that I launch against the British system (majority juries, limits to defences, non-jury trials -magistrates sitting alone, Public Immunity Certficates etc.; and before recent amendments over the last twenty years- witholding of evidence from the defence – regular verballing and fitting up of suspects, torture light- plastic bagging, planting of evidence, manipulation of juries etc. etc. ).
I do however think that the British legal and governmental system has handled the “War on Terror” situation somewaht better, with many government demands being turned down by the House of Lords or by the Courts. Although the US checks and balances are more visible than ours, it does seem that the British checks and balances have worked well over here. Oh, and our chief executive does what the courts or the law tell him too and does not have the ability to circumvent or ignore legislation or court orders that it does not like.
Not quite the reflex xenophobia you were looking for, eh?
I don’t understand your premise at all. Are you saying you can’t produce a peroxide based explosive? That’s what they used in the London bombings.
I don’t understand your premise at all. Are you saying you can’t produce a peroxide based explosive? That’s what they used in the London bombings.
If I understand the situation, peroxide based explosive is detectable at airport security, its components are not. Peroxide based explosives were used on the 7/7 bombings as there is no detection equipment on the underground. The supposed airline bomb plot relied on making up the explosive on board the aircraft after sumuggling the non-detectable items onto the plane. This is thought to be near impossible by reputable sources.
No, thats not what they are getting at. The explosive used in the London bombing probably WAS the stable solid form of TATP, which needs to be processed in the way the OP’s cite expressed (ice baths, careful filtering, kept at less than 10 degrees C, stirred constantly untl thickened, etc etc). Thats because the guys who blew up the subway needed a stable product they could carry and detonate when and how they wanted too.
No, their claims seem to revolve around the effort to ignore that you CAN mix this explosive at room temperature. Its pretty fricking dangerous to do as its very likely to begin reacting immediately (i.e. its likely to blow up in your fact). It IS possible to get a suspended solution at room temperature however without all the safety precautions, but the result is an EXTREMELY unstable and highly volitile explosive compound. For whatever reason, the OP and appearently a lot of folks on the Brit news/blog scene don’t want to think that terrorists would do something like that…not when they are comforted by the description of how to make the stuff in the safe way (something you absolutely couldn’t do on a plane). Since you can’t safely mix the explosive on a plane…well, Q.E.D. it was impossible to do, so therefore these guys weren’t REALLY serious. They were just playing at terrorist, blah blah blah.
-XT
Cite?
Yes, and have a minimal effect on the integrity of the aircraft.
Cite?
No, I just think that the government over-hyped this hopeless plot for its own reasons- the same as the Man U Bomb, the Ricin plot as well as non existent ground to air missiles at Heathrow, the execution of the Brazilian and the shooting of the innocent man and pistol whipping of two asian families. There is a bit of a pattern here- over-reaction and spin on all of these events until the wheels came off at a later date. Now, when we do have real bombers with a well thought out plot (7/7) the security services knew nothing of them, nor of the 24/7 lot. Keystone Cops spring to mind!
No, I found that amply demonstrated in your early posts (as well as the general run of threads you begin). One wonders why you couldn’t simply question the merits of your government’s case against these terrorism suspects without dragging in the Patriot Act et al.
It’s encouraging that you recognize some of the defects of your system as regards civil liberties (although puzzling that you on the one hand praise legislation against public disclosure in criminal cases, while doing your best to circumvent these “protections”). :dubious: