UK Counter-Terrorism (merged thread)

[slapout9]

The stomach wrenching part about something like this is that from the point of view of the powerful, it is better the innocent man die than the powerful be viewed as being other than PC.

If the British had a "2nd amendment right" this whole situation might have been different. A Soldier with no weapon, killed in broad daylight and then the jihad jerk goes before a TV camera and starts his Jihad Jive routine. I hope the British give him a fair trial and then Hang Him High and slow!


Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9f7y6mXSPA

[carl]

Tukhachevskii:

I have a question, for David too, that relates to what Slap wrote about trying these killers. It has been years since the Ft. Hood killer and the thing that killed the women and children in the night in Afghanistan committed their crimes, crimes of which there is no doubt that they are guilty. Yet, it has been years and their trails are nowhere in sight. Will the British take as long to try and convict the obviously guilty as we do?

[omarali50]

I have a comment on this issue that I am reproducing here for your opinion:
http://www.brownpundits.com/2013/05/...-for-woolwich/

... I think Kenan Malik should have devoted more space to shaming the left wing commentators who wish to glorify this atrocity as a political statement..an understandable if unfortunate expression of “Muslim rage”. Sure, Fox News does more than that with their pet news items, but is it too much to expect Greenwald to ease off for a few days? He and his ilk are saying “this is a response to UK foreign policy”. What if someone spent the first five days after Breivik’s massacre explaining how it was a “response to Muslim immigration” and could have been avoided if Muslims stop immigrating to Christian lands? Would that strike some people as an unacceptable attempt to profit from a terrible atrocity?
A deranged murderer can come up with whatever explanation HE thinks is justification for his action, but it is still worth it to try and make some distinction between an organized political attack (no matter how good or bad or moral or immoral) and what is a deranged act that really does not deserve to be classifed as a component of ANY political project.
As an example of a crime that IS part of an organized political effort, see 9-11. It was not the act of one or two deranged criminals, but a systematic well thought out effort carried out by an organization with clear political aims. It was a war crime, but at least it was an organized, well thought out war crime with an ideology that explains the crime. THIS deranged murder does not deserve to be included in the same register of war crimes (or heroic acts of anti-imperialist resistance).
its a fuzzy line, but its there.

i know that the IRA targeted soldiers and that was clearly a political cause. But I am thinking of this specific crime; it does not appear that these two butchers are part of any organized group working in any systematic way (more information may change that assessment, but current information does not seem to suggest that).
By suggesting that their act is part of a political struggle against British imperialism, Greenwald and company are elevating them to a level they did not actually achieve in their lives. This assessment may change if new facts come to light, but until then, this is the kind of nutjob crime that does not deserve to be discussed as a serious policy problem. That, in fact, would be the best way to encourage the next nutjob with a real or imaginary grievance to commit some other atrocity.

[davidbfpo]

This murder was not unexpected - in the general sense - and the response has been media-driven. Partly as Woolwich is in South East London, so close to the home of most UK broadcast media and the decision by ITN to use a film clip of one suspect murderer giving his reasons.

There is a deluge of reporting, some of which is speculative, so I have selected a few which I found helpful.

Once more Raffaello Pantucci, of RUSI, is worth a read:http://www.rusi.org/analysis/comment.../#.UZ90AFIayc1

He ends with:

From a security perspective, the dilemma is two-fold. On the one hand, how to identify lone actor terrorists who may feature in a larger intelligence picture, but do little to distinguish themselves from the crowd. And on the other, how to manage societal tensions when extremists on both sides prove eager to incite violent reactions in others.

Steve Hewitt, an academic, being a Canadian based here, offers a calm response and this point is one too many ignore:

The terrorists can’t defeat British society; only British society can do that by exaggerating the power of the terrorists. That happens when we overreact to their atrocities.

Link:http://www.cityam.com/article/woolwi...-crude-threats

Simon Jenkins, a London-based commentator, looks at the all powerful role of the media, with a pithy few passages:

When Cameron yesterday said we should defy terror by going about our normal business, he was right. Why did he not do so?

It is this echo chamber of horror, set up by the media, public figures and government, that does much of terrorism's job for it. It converts mere crimes into significant acts. It turns criminals into heroes in the eyes of their admirers. It takes violence and graces it with the terms of a political debate. The danger is that this debate is one the terrorist might sometimes win.

Link:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ria?CMP=twt_gu

Kings of War asks whether ITN was right, with fifty-four responses (as yet unread):http://kingsofwar.org.uk/2013/05/dea...out-terrorism/

Alan Judd, a more conservative writer uses a "broader brush" and ends with:

We should be watchful, very watchful, but not afraid. To fear them would be to grant them a kind of victory.

Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...the-radar.html

What was the "tipping point" for the two suspects to move from being extremists to using violence? In the last hour one friend has alleged:

Woolwich terrorist...en route to al-Shabaab.... allegedly imprisoned and tortured by Kenyan authorities. This flipped him.

Actual BBC Newsnight interview on link, after the interview the speaker was arrested on the premises by the police:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22664457

As they say a "developing story".

One suspect features in a short film clip "preaching":http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=gyT6Wqc_HZc

In the clip a white male, with a ginger beard holding a camcorder features; is Richard Dart, a convert, who was recently jailed for terrorism matters:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...-offences.html

[omarali50]

I updated my post with some background about what bothers me here..

http://www.brownpundits.com/2013/05/...-for-woolwich/

[davidbfpo]

Tukhachevskii:

I have a question, for David too, that relates to what Slap wrote about trying these killers. It has been years since the Ft. Hood killer and the thing that killed the women and children in the night in Afghanistan committed their crimes, crimes of which there is no doubt that they are guilty. Yet, it has been years and their trails are nowhere in sight. Will the British take as long to try and convict the obviously guilty as we do?

Carl,

No would be a simple answer. Nearly all contemporary terrorism-related trials occur in England, so I've not looked at cases in Northern Ireland (which has different laws) or Scotland.

Criminal trials here do not recognise 'the obviously guilty'.

Once a suspect is charged they must appear before a Crown Court within sixty days, for plea and direction. Very few terrorism suspects get bail, being in custody is supposed to accelerate the state's trial preparation; secondly few plead guilty until trial. There is a procedure now to signal a guilty plea before trial and get a lesser sentence.

Here are four examples: Moinul Abedin, B'ham's first AQ plotter, arrested 17th November 2000, trial February 2002; 21st July 2005 London bombers, not guilty trial ended with convictions 9th July 2007; B'ham's Operation Gamble, arrests 31st January 2007, two pleaded not guilty and trial February 2008 (one acquitted, one convicted) and Ahmed Faraz, B'ham bookshop owner, first arrested January 2007, not charged, arrested in 2010 charged and trial October 2011.

There was one terror plot in London which IIRC had three trials, after the juries at two trials were unconvinced and that took time to conclude. See:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_tr..._aircraft_plot

One London trial took a year in court and the jury were out for a month.

I cannot recall a terrorism related case not reaching trial within two years.

[davidbfpo]

An update on this plot (Posts 84-86 refer):

At the Old Bailey, Khan, Uddin and Ahmed were sentenced to 19-and-a-half years in jail, with a five-year extension on licence. Hasseen, Hussain and Saud were jailed for 18 years and nine months, with a five-year extension on licence.

Extended sentences, introduced in England and Wales last year, mean offenders serve at least two-thirds of their main sentence in custody (usually 40% automatically deducted for 'good behaviour'). After release, they are on licence in the community for the rest of their sentence plus the extension part. The six defendants received a reduction of a quarter in their jail terms for pleading guilty before a trial had been due to start.

Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22841573

Their motivation? No surprises here:

Anti-EDL bomb plot 'a reaction to calculated insults'

Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22814936

[davidbfpo]

An article whose title is too long for the SWC box: 'Fuelling the campfire – the importance of training camps to aspirant UK jihadists' by Raffaello Pantucci:http://raffaellopantucci.com/2013/07...-uk-jihadists/

UK jihadists engaged in militant training in the UK and abroad during the 1990s, with training camps providing a core element the necessary preparation for jihad.

Despite a crackdown on such activities, a series of disrupted jihadist plots in the UK over the past three years have highlighted the persistence of key elements in militant training.

Most notable was the continuing importance attached to training by aspirant jihadists and the preference for travelling abroad to train with existing jihadist networks.

In my first read a couple of new snippets, this one is local to Birmingham:

For Naseer, the Darul Ihsaan gym was also a source of recruits, including the four members of a cell who pleaded guilty in October 2012 to travelling to training camps in Pakistan. The group ended up being part of Naseer’s downfall as their absence was noted by their families who vociferously complained to another prominent local individual – identified as Ahmed Faraz (alias Abu Bakr), who was convicted in December 2011 on charges of possessing terrorist material – and accused him of facilitating the men’s travel. A regular at the Darul Ihsaan gym, Faraz denied responsibility and pointed the angered families in Naseer’s direction.

[davidbfpo]

One of the dubious benefits of having sponsored visitors:

White supremacist Pavlo Lapshyn stabbed a Muslim pensioner to death and tried to bomb three mosques after launching a one-man war against Britain’s ethnic minorities.

Lapshyn is a Ukrainian national, with very little public information about his life, especially his politics before arriving in Birmingham, for a short stay with an international engineering company. Today he pleaded guilty and awaits sentencing.

Link to the fullest account yet:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...-race-war.html

Shorter, different report:http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2...ues?CMP=twt_gu

The police press release:http://www.west-midlands.police.uk/l...se.asp?ID=5360

[davidbfpo]

Lapshyn was snentenced today for murder and terrorism - to forty years jail. The judge's sentencing remarks give an insight into Lapshyn's motivation - that pre-dated his arrival in the UK; the evidence found after his arrest on his computer and more. He was identified as a suspect after one mosque bombing from a CCTV trawl and local officers showing the photo around id'd him.

Link:http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resource...s-25102013.pdf

The RUSI analyst, Raffaello Pantucci, has a commentary:http://www.rusi.org/analysis/comment.../#.Umqo5NK1HfJ