[lbo-talk] Fwd: Be sceptical. Be very, very sceptical.

[Jean-Christophe Helary]

> Craig Murray
> Writer and broadcaster
>
>
> 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.
>
> --> The UK Terror plot: what's really going on?
> 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.
> http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2006/08/the_uk_terror_p.html