7/7 Bombs - The need for an inquiry grows
Today we find out that the police were forewarned about the July bombers, but took no action whatsoever.
We need to know if the security services are actually capable of protecting the public.
Speaking for the first time about his work, Martin Gilbertson, 45, says he produced anti-western propaganda videos, secured websites and encrypted emails for Muslims who were involved in an Islamic bookshop and a youth centre attended by bombers Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer. Mr Gilbertson was also employed to establish firewalls that would safeguard both places from outside interference.
By October 2003, he says he was so alarmed by what he was producing in Beeston, West Yorkshire that he went to the local Holbeck police station, saying he had material and names he wanted to deliver to anti-terrorist officers. He was told to post his material, and did so, to West Yorkshire police headquarters in Wakefield. The package contained DVD material he had compiled for circulation by the bookshop, a list of names including Khan and Tanweer and a covering letter giving a contact telephone number.
He claims he heard nothing until he was interviewed three times by two officers from the Metropolitan police, having contacted them after the explosions.
To find out more details, please read the full interview.
From the article: "Martin
From the article:
"Martin 'Abdullah' McDaid did most of the talking, most of the ranting and raving; and as an ex-Marine, he knew about matters military."
He was ex-SBS, in fact:
"EXCLUSIVE: BOMBERS AND THE SPECIAL FORCES SOLDIER
They worked in same bookshop
By Lucy Thornton
A FORMER Royal Marine, who converted to Islam, last night denied preaching violence to the four London bombers.
Martin McDaid, who also served in the Special Boat Service, said he knew the four terrorists but had no negative involvement with them and was totally against violence."
Daily Mirror, 21 July 2005
Funny he should wind up in Beeston!
And yet the ISC report (pdf
And yet the ISC report (pdf file) says " there were no culpable failures by the security and intelligence Agencies."
Rachel's post on the subject is well worth reading.
Car was bugged it
Car was bugged it seems.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2242598,00.html
Guess Gilbertson was not
Guess Gilbertson was not asked to testify at the not public enquiry into the 7 July bombongs.
"...no culpable
"...no culpable failures..."
Nice piece of lawyerese. "Culpable" means "blameworthy". Who decides if something is blameworthy? And on what basis? Presumably the theory is that if responsible officials decide not to blame someone for an action, that action cannot have been culpable. Very convenient indeed - especially for the person who might have been (but was not) blamed.
It's very much like the famous "credible intelligence". "Credible" means "believable" - but believable by whom? Everything is credible by someone, provided that someone is a gullible simpleton. My interpretation is that, if the police assure us that some obviously unreliable evidence was considered credible, that merely means that they are very credulous.
Which brings me back to the perpetual topic of "terrorist suspects". (No one ever talks about "suspected terrorists", which would be slightly less prejudicial). If we analyse the term "terrorist suspect" clinically and logically, it has to mean "one who is suspected (by someone else) of being a terrorist". No doubt, for every perfectly innocent and harmless person, there is some half-witted moron who thinks that person is, or might be, a terrorist. For Harry Stanley, the innocent and harmless Scot who took a chairleg in a bag into a pub for a quiet drink, the half-witted moron was the person who took it upon him/herself to call the police and warn them of an Irish terrorist with a shotgun.
So a "terrorist suspect" could be anyone at all - you, me... good Heavens, even George Bush or Tony Blair. All it takes is someone detached from reality, whether through pure stupidity, dementia, boredom, or downright flagrant incompetence. But the term, starting as it does with uncompromising word "terrorist", strongly suggests that such a person is a terrorist. The "suspect" part is easily ignored.
George Orwell was right when he said (my paraphrase) that the corruption of language is one of the mainstays of tyrrany.
Tom Welsh said; "So a
Tom Welsh said;
"So a "terrorist suspect" could be anyone at all - you, me... good Heavens, even George Bush or Tony Blair."
Come, come, George and Tony aren't terrorist suspects - they're the real thing.
Tom Welsh. Nice one. Nails
Tom Welsh. Nice one. Nails hit on their heads.
No cops say " He's a BURGLAR suspect" do they ? Nor would we, if cops.
When the "T" word comes into play all normal restraint and usage of language is abandoned.
Recent cases of the US (non muslim) terrorist Cell planning, or not, to blow up the Sears Tower, and the unemployed kids in the Canadian Cell playing with flashballs, supposed to be aiming to behead their PM, are now so public that maybe, sometime soon, Joe Public will wake up. ??????????
Ah yes, so true, corruption
Ah yes, so true, corruption of language is one of the mainstays of tyrrany.
Why not just dump the "terrorist suspect" or "suspected terrorists" appellation and get down to the point and call them "potential Islamic Body-Bombers" or "Muslim Kool-Aid Backpackers" that way there wouldn't be any confusing them with Blair, Bush or Tom, Dick, and Harry.