By Sean O'Neill (THE TIMES, 12/05/06):
WHAT LED FOUR British Muslims to blow themselves and 52 innocent people to smithereens on July 7 last year? You were bound to be disappointed if you had expected the two official reports published yesterday to resolve some of the unanswered questions about Mohammad Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, Jermaine Lindsay and Hasib Hussain, and explain why Britain’s extensive security apparatus was unable to stop them.
The reports could only ever offer a truncated explanation of the events that led to last year’s terrorist outrages. The full story of 7/7 cannot yet be told. Not only do large gaps remain in the authorities’ knowledge, but also the sub judice rule, which prevents public discussion of anything that might impinge upon a current or forthcoming trial, is in force because associates of Khan face terrorism charges.
This rule, intended to protect the right of defendants to a fair trial, has the unhappy side-effect of stifling legitimate debate and creates a misleading impression of the threat posed by violent extremists.
The reports by the Intelligence and Security Committee and the Home Office tell us that Khan and Tanweer visited al-Qaeda training camps in Pakistan, were under surveillance and were recorded in the company of other terrorist suspects. We are told that those other suspects were regarded as a greater threat and that surveillance of the two men from Leeds was dropped. But the two reports cannot reveal who the other suspects were, who guided them, what they were planning to do or what became of their more dangerous plot. These points are sub judice. To disclose them would invite prosecution for contempt of court.
Senior counter-terrorist investigators have expressed to me their frustration that the sub judice rule prevents them from keeping the public informed about the terrorist threat to Britain. As a Times reporter who frequently covers Old Bailey trials, and hears, but cannot publish, detailed information about anti-terrorist operations, I can understand their concerns.
And it is not only the free and informed discussion of terrorism that is hampered by these outdated courtroom rules. Last week Gordon Brown blundered into the row over the release of foreign criminals and blurted out something he shouldn’t have during a Radio 4 interview. The Chancellor named the case involving a terrorist suspect who was not deported from Britain after serving a previous spell in jail. There were immediate calls for the trial to be abandoned. One human rights lawyer said the judge would have to ask the defendants if they had any objection to continuing with the case. This reaction, full of concern for the rights of one individual rather than the right of the entire community to know what is going on, is hysterical.
In the age of the internet it is increasingly ridiculous for lawyers to expect that trials can be conducted within some sort of sterile cordon. Yet defence counsel routinely attempt to stop trials on the ground that jurors have been prejudiced by the press. Judges usually overrule them and conduct the trials with scrupulous fairness. Who could argue that the jury who took three days to consider their verdict in the trial of Ian Huntley, the Soham killer, did not take their responsibilities seriously?
The sub judice rule also contributes to complacency about the scale of the terror threat. The situation is compounded by the length of the trials — one current case is expected to drag on for eight months — and the extraordinary delays in bringing the accused before the courts. The case of Abu Hamza al-Masri and the Finsbury Park mosque is a pertinent example of how the combination of sub judice and legal delays suppressed information and distorted the picture of terrorist activity in Britain.
In January 2003 the police raided the mosque seeking evidence in connection with a plot to manufacture poisons and explosives, and the murder of Detective Constable Stephen Oake. The key evidence — a photocopier used to make copies of recipes for ricin and cyanide — was recovered, but police found much more besides. Hidden in the mosque was a stash of military equipment including knives, air pistols, gas masks, chemical protective clothing and radios. All of it had been used for training would-be Mujahidin. Also found were hundreds of fake and stolen passports, credit cards and European ID cards — essential paraphernalia of terrorist fundraising and identity fraud.
Scotland Yard wanted to put the haul on display. But Crown lawyers said that to do so would prejudice a series of forthcoming trials. So the truth of what was found in Abu Hamza’s fortress remained secret for three years, and counter-terrorist agencies were vilified for raiding a place of worship.
Kamel Bourgass, who lived in the mosque, was found guilty of the poison plot and the murder of DC Oake in 2004. But still no mention could be made of what had been found in the mosque or Bourgass’s links with Abu Hamza. It was not until the end of Abu Hamza’s trial in February that it could be disclosed how the cleric had turned a London mosque into an al-Qaeda training facility that produced the likes of Bourgass, shoebomber Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, the would-be 9/11 hijacker.
The three-year information vacuum was filled by ill-informed pundits blithely pronouncing that there was no al-Qaeda network or terror threat to Britain, that armed police on our streets were a political ploy, the ricin plot was a confection, Bourgass was a mad loner and Abu Hamza nothing more than a cartoon fanatic.
July 7 proved them all wrong. Britain’s first suicide bombings were perpetrated by Britons who had heard the preachings of Abu Hamza and other extremist clerics, and who were plugged into a wider terror network. But the extent of their terrorist connections is something that you, the public, are still not allowed to know.