Launch of Inside The Crevice - Islamist Terror Networks and the 7/7 Intelligence Failure

I spent yesterday evening in Lincolns Inn Fields, listening to the launch of Nafeez Ahmed's Parliamentary Briefing paper on the 7/7 bomb attacks.

The government position - of four "clean skin" bombers has now unravelled completely, and an interesting panel joined Ahmed to press for a public inquiry into the attacks.

Having been introduced by Frances Webber, Nafeez Ahmed presented his report. Even though the early government position has now been exposed as false, MP's have not continued to grapple with 7/7. Similarly political activists have concentrated on opposing some of the outcomes of 7/7 without grasping the issues that remain unanswered about the attacks themselves.
Put simply, Ahmed sees government policy, over many years as fostering Islamic terrorism. This has been coupled with incompetence and policy failures within the security services, and there increased politicisation. MI5 knew of all four bombers, knew they posed a risk and had been monitoring their activities for some time.
The conclusions he reaches are therefore sensible one's - that giving the authorities increased security powers, without proper scrutiny, is nonsense. They have after all failed to act properly with the powers they already have.

Watching The Detective
Next up was the former Deputy Chief Constable of Hampshire, Des Thomas. This is the same Des Thomas who led Operation Washington, the intense series of police raids on political bookshops, plus green, Hunt Saboteur and animal rights activists in the 1990s, that eventually led to the GANDALF trial, and a serious miscarriage of justice.
The Gandalf trial is an interesting footnote in legal history - the three convictions were eventually quashed on appeal, the Judge David Selwood was later convicted on child pornography charges, and Defence barrister Ken McDonald, who refused to represent his client rather than put agent provocateur Tim Hepple into the witness box, went on to become the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Thomas used his talk to call for a Royal College of Detectives, to set and maintain serious standards. He argues that the current position on 7/7 can have only two explanations - either those investigating it are incompetent and didn't know what they were doing, or there are political reasons for the mess they have got themselves into.

Rachel From North London
7/7 survivor Rachel North spoke on her campaign to get a public inquiry into the attacks. She traced her rejection of the government view to a meeting with senior police officers and Home Secretary John Reid, where a survivor had asked why the police had so quickly linked Mohammed Siddique Khan to the attacks. The answer blurted out rather gave the game away - his credit cards had been found at bomb sites, and when his name was put in the Police National Computer, the PNC said he was linked to international terrorism. As someone once said - elementary!
North also warned the audience against conspiracy theories (perhaps she recognised a few people in the audience!) and called for an inquiry into what happened before, during and after 7/7. She was followed by
Clifford Tibbert, who is a barrister for the 7/7 Inquiry Group. He expressed surprise that succesive Home Secretary's have not agreed to an inquiry, and pointed out that no inquests have been held into any of the deaths - more than two years on.

An Islamic Viewpoint
Fahad Ansari from the Islamic Human Rights Commission spoke of the feeling of a siege mentality amongst British Muslims, and the widespread knowledge of mass arrests that rarely if ever lead to convictions. He complained that the recent case of letter bomber Miles Cooper had not recieved sufficient media coverage, and was unhappy at Nafeez Ahmed's linking of Muslim fighters in Bosnia to Al-Qaeda - such people were freedom fighters, not terrorists.

Two speakers remained from what was a long evening - Estelle DeBowley of the Jean Charles De Menezes Campaign, and Les Levidov of CAMPACC - the Campaign Against Criminalising Communities. The former made some strong points about the skillful police manipulation of the media immediately after the shooting - a series of briefings were given that turned out to be false, but shaped public opinion.

From The Floor
I asked the panel if the problem was not so much police/security service spin in the media, but the gullibility and indeed collusion of journalists in reporting false stories. Left/liberal journalists are often the worst for this - who can forget The Observer Martin Bright announcing to the world that May Day demonstrators planned to turn up on Oxford Street armed with samurai swords in 2001. Bright was either too stupid to question what his "sources" told him, or willingly ran their lies. Clifford Tibbert disagreed with this, arguing it is police spin that has created so many problems, for example after the Forest Gate shooting. He argues we should never accept spin from such quarters. Perhaps so, but glance at any days newspapers, and you will find countless stories that can be sourced back to either the police, MI5 or MI6. How does he propose to stop them all?

My second point was to remind those present that the late 1990s saw a series of raids and arrests of political activists - all led by Hampshire Police and Des Thomas, culminating in a miscarriage of justice. Activists need to have long memories......

Other questions from the floor centred on the validity of any public inquiry. After all shortly before 7/7 new legislation trimmed the strength of public inquiries, and past efforts (e.g. Bloody Sunday) have simply been manipulated by the state. To Rachel North this danger could be countered by robust use of the media - the questions that matter must be put in the public domain until the government is forced to act.

So, that was the launch of the report. Now I have to go away and read it! To order your own copy, go to the Global Crisis website
As far as I am aware, this evenings proceedings were recorded, so hopefully a recording will go on-line soon.

Comments

[Larry O'Hara]

Very good report Paul.

Three points to be made

1) The problem is not just the print media but also documentaries--all showing the validity of the concept of 'SPIJ'--state-compromised pseudo-investigative journalism.

2) Thomas worked very closely indeed with MI5 in fitting up the Gandalf defendants--and his refusal to even formally question Tim Hepple/Matthews, agent provocateur can be seen as at least vaguely analagous to prior knowledge of 7/7 bombers.

3) Which raises the question, what are Thomas' motives in attaching himself to this campaign? Is he infiltrating/nobbling it on behalf of the spooks himself? A valid question--and hardly reflecting well on those 'London Leftists' who must have known of his 'previous' but at the very least don't care.

I too look forward to reading the pamphlet--ordered weeks ago mind, and now likely to be delayed even more by postal problems...