disappearing terror plots - Green Left Weekly

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http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/683/683p19.htm



BRITAIN: The mysterious case of the disappearing 'terror' plots

by Norm Dixon, Green Left Weekly, September 13, 2006


Readers of Britain's newspapers are regularly accosted with
blood-curdling banner headlines screaming of the "thwarting" of
potentially catastrophic "terror plots", of "Islamic fanatics" being
apprehended in daring midnight raids. "Chilling" details, "revealed"
by anonymous police and government "sources", underline why "we" must
accept a "trade-off" between civil liberties and "security", the
editorials assure an apprehensive populace. Months or even years
later, however, news that many of the "plots" never actually existed
is buried behind the latest sex scandal or exploitative "expose" — if
reported at all.

On August 10, deputy commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police Paul
Stephenson declared that a plan to "cause untold death and
destruction" and "mass murder on an unimaginable scale" had been
foiled with the arrest of 24 people. "We believe that the terrorists'
aim was to smuggle explosives onto planes in hand luggage to detonate
them in flight", Stephenson alleged. Britain's and the world's mass
media trumpeted the claims.

However, within days the dramatic case against the detainees as told
to the media by anonymous US and British government and police
"sources" began to unravel. The claim that an attack was "imminent"
was false. No reservations had been made or airline tickets purchased
by the 10 charged with serious terrorism offences; several did not
even have passports. Apparently, just one had used the internet to
check flight schedules recently. There were no bombs.

The assertion that the detainees intended to destroy 10-12 aircraft
was "speculative and exaggerated", a British official admitted to the
August 28 New York Times. Claims of a convoluted "Pakistani
connection" between the plotters and al Qaeda have disappeared. The
possibility of successfully concocting "liquid bombs" from household
products in a plan'es toilet mid-air has been dismissed by chemical
experts.

Misrepresentation
Gareth Pierce, defence lawyer for the 17-year-old in the case accused
of possessing items "useful to a person preparing acts of terrorism",
told the August 31 Chicago Tribune how police had misrepresented what
they had found at the boy's mother's home and twisted it to fit their
grandiose claims. According to police, "suicide notes", a map of
Afghanistan and a bomb "manual" had been found.

What was actually discovered, Pierce told the Tribune, were wills
written by people who had fought in Bosnia more than 10 years earlier.
The accused was just six when much of this material was placed in the
box! "They're not suicide notes at all. They're really simple wills.
To call these suicide notes was absolutely disgraceful", Pierce said.

The wills were found in a box that once belonged to the boy's father —
who has since divorced and moved out — when he ran a now-defunct
charity that helped displaced Bosnian Muslims. The box also contained
a crude map drawn by the boy's younger brother when he was a child.
There was also a book of drawings of electrical circuits, which even
if it was of some use in building a bomb, it would be useless for the
device that police allege the group was trying to construct.

Associated Press on September 4 reported that prosecutors told a
London court that the detainees will not face trial until March 2008.
They will remain in prison and the key details of the prosecution's
case will be kept secret until then.

Lies and fabrication
Will the British government and mass media's accusations stand up in
court? Not if the record of British police, government and media
lying, exaggeration and fabrication in recent "terror" cases is
anything to go by.

As Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, pointed out
in an August 14 article on his website
(<http://www.craigmurray.co.uk>), "Of the over 1000 British Muslims
arrested under anti-terrorist legislation, only 12% are ever charged
with anything. That is simply harassment of Muslims on an appalling
scale. Of those charged, 80% are acquitted. Most of the very few —
just over 2% of arrests — who are convicted, are not convicted of
anything to do with terrorism, but of some minor offence the police
happened upon while trawling through the wreck of the lives they had
shattered."

At 4am on June 2, around 250 police, some wearing chemical suits,
stormed a house in Forest Gate, east London. Police claimed that a
chemical bomb was in the house. Awoken by the sound of doors being
broken down, the two families living there thought they were being
attacked by robbers. Mohammed Abdul Kahar was shot in the chest by
police, who failed to identify themselves or give a warning, narrowly
missing his heart.

Rupert Murdoch's seedy Sun newspaper on June 3 ramped up the
anti-Muslim panic, without a shred of evidence: "A CHEMICAL bomb held
by Islamic terrorists is primed to go off at any time, police feared
last night. The device is believed to have been designed to release a
toxic cloud in a crowded space — killing hundreds. And senior officers
are convinced it has been prepared for an 'imminent' attack in the UK
... Last night a frantic hunt was on to find the bomb before it could
be activated by fanatics. One senior security source said: 'We are
absolutely certain this device exists and could be used either by a
suicide bomber or in a remote-controlled explosion.'"

Not to be outdone, Murdoch's Times on June 3 reported the finding of a
"poison suicide vest of death". No chemical bombs or suicide vests
ever existed. Kahar and his brother were detained for eight days
without charge under the Terrorism Act (2000) before being released.
"The only crime I have committed is being Asian and having a long
beard", Kahar told the BBC on June 13. "They haven't had the decency
to apologise."

'Red mercury'
In one of more bizarre examples of how the British government, police
and the media work hand in glove to manufacture terror scares was
provided when the notorious "fake sheikh" Mazher Mahmood, a journalist
for Murdoch's tacky News of the World who regularly dresses up in Arab
robes to trick celebrities and others into compromising themselves,
and an undercover police agent in 2004 attempted to entrap three
people in a "virtual" terror plot.

Mahmood offered to sell them an imaginary nuclear substance, "red
mercury", telling them it could be used to make a radioactive "dirty
bomb". However, the three seemed to be more interested in the claim
that red mercury could also wash marked money. The undercover cop then
offered to buy the fake substance from them for $300,000 a kilo.

With the approval of the Labour government's attorney-general, the
three dupes were arrested by the Met's anti-terrorist squad on
September 24, 2004. They were charged with attempting to secure
funding or property for terrorism and having "a highly dangerous
mercury-based substance" for use in terrorism. The following day, the
News of the World's front page screamed, "Anti-terrorist cops move in
after News of the World uncovers bid to buy radioactive material". Red
mercury, the News of the World lied to its unfortunate readers, is"a
deadly substance developed by cold war Russian scientists for making
briefcase nuclear bombs".

The three remained in jail until their acquittal almost two years
later. During the trial, which cost more than £1 million, the
government prosecutor declared that "the Crown's position is that
whether red mercury does or does not exist is irrelevant" and urged
the jury not to get "hung up" on that point. Luckily, the jury did not
agree.

Own goal in Manchester
Britain's government-police-press team scored an own goal in April
2004, when 400 Greater Manchester police rounded up 10 Iraqi Kurds.
Leading the lynch mob was the Sun, which ran an invented story that
began: "A SUICIDE bomb plot to kill thousands of soccer fans at
Saturday's Manchester United-Liverpool match was dramatically foiled
yesterday. Armed cops seized ten terror suspects in dawn raids.
Intelligence chiefs believe al-Qaeda fanatics planned to blow
themselves up amid 67,000 unsuspecting supporters. A source said: 'The
target was Old Trafford.' The Islamic fanatics planned to sit all
around the ground to cause maximum carnage. They had already bought
the tickets for various positions in the stadium, cops revealed last
night."

The entire fantastic story, and the cops' case against the Kurds, was
improvised from leaked police information about the "discovery" of a
couple of old ticket stubs from a Manchester United soccer match in a
suspect's flat. He was indeed guilty of being a fanatic — a fanatical
supporter of Manchester United who had kept the stubs as a souvenir of
the only game he and a friend had attended! They were bought from a
scalper, which explained why the tickets were for different parts of
the ground. The 10 people were released without charge.

Ricin reflux
Perhaps the most cynically exploited of the British government's
series of fabricated "terror scares" was the police announcement in
January 2003 that a "terrorist cell's" plans to use ricin poison in an
attack had been foiled.

On January 7, British government ministers announced that "traces of
ricin" had been found in a flat raided by police. Prime Minister Tony
Blair seized on the "plot" to bolster the propaganda campaign to go to
war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Blair made the ludicrous claim that
the discovery of ricin, which can only kill if directly injected into
a person's bloodstream, proved that "this danger [of weapons of mass
destruction] is present and real and with us now. Its potential is
huge."

Then US Secretary of State Colin Powell also referred to the alleged
"cell" during his speech to the UN Security Council on February 5,
2003, arguing for war against Iraq if Hussein did not abandon his
non-existent WMD. Powell claimed it was proof of a "sinister nexus
between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network".

The truth was that there was no al Qaeda cell and no ricin. On the
same day that the government proclaimed the discovery of "traces of
ricin" in the flat, tests by the government's own research facility at
Porton Down had found there was no ricin. That finding was kept secret
by the government for more than two years.

In April 2005, four people were acquitted on charges of conspiracy to
commit terrorism, while charges against four others were dropped. One
person, Kamel Bourgass, was convicted on a lesser charge of
"conspiracy to cause a public nuisance by the use of poisons and/or
explosives", based on his possession of "recipes" to make ricin and
evidence of attempts to do so. However, the April 20, 2005,
Independent reported that "Professor Alistair Hay, one of Britain's
foremost authorities on toxins, said Bourgass's attempts to construct
toxic weapons from his small supplies of ingredients and ramshackle
'laboratory' were 'incredibly amateurish and unlikely to succeed'."