The UK Terror plot: what’s really going on?

by Craig Murray

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/index.html