Bugger of the Yard

Now for some light relief.  The Metropolitan Police clearly concluded long ago that their job was to enforce the law, but not to follow it.  What other construction can we put on this?

Gordon Brown was drawn into a dispute yesterday over a claim that police secretly bugged one of his MPs during meetings with a man suspected of links to terror groups.

An inquiry was ordered into the allegation that Sadiq Khan, now a government whip, was covertly recorded during two visits he made to Babar Ahmad in the prison where he is being held. The Conservatives said that they had given warning to Mr Brown six weeks ago that an MP had been subjected to surveillance, in breach of a convention against bugging MPs, and accused him of doing nothing.

Now, I'm not sure what's the more laughable suggestion here, that Sadiq Khan is a prominent campaigner for civil liberties (he *was*, but his voting record since being elected to Parliament hardly does him credit on this, backing ID cards, anti-terror laws and Trident but opposing investigating Iraq), that the Met decide who to bug without asking anyone or that Gordon Brown's administration apparently lose letters from senior opposition politicians (hint: try asking top government couriers TNT).  Possibly none of them are quite as laughable as the case against Mr. Ahmad, a beneficiary of David Blunkett's enlightened attitude to justice and democracy as demonstrated by the 2003 Extradition Act.  In case anyone's not following the Register coverage of the associated trial in the USA, here's a taster:

Abu-jihaad has been charged with e-mailing information on the transit of his naval battle group through the Straits of Hormuz to Babar Ahmad and Azzam Publications in London in 2001. At the time he was serving on the destroyer Benfold. For the purpose of the case, Babar Ahmad - now awaiting a court decision in February on whether or not he is to be extradited to the States - is considered by the US government to be a terrorist. The government alleges Abu-jihaad's communications with Ahmad and the purchase of Chechen resistance videotapes from the Azzam website to be aiding terror, with the defendant an agent of a foreign power.

A glaring problem with the government's case against Abu-jihaad is that the evidence against him is thin. Although the US has submitted e-mails to Azzam which they have claimed are from Abu-jihaad, prosecutors admitted in pre-trial filings this month that "the Government had no recorded statements or testimony personally linking Abu-jihaad to the e-mail account from which [the communications to Azzam in question] were sent."

Of course, SpyBlog have been on the case from the start, in usual exhaustive detail, plus the bugging story.  Useful to correct some bias and poor details in the original Sunday Times story.  Also, remember the old rule, the Sunday Times is MI5's paper, the Sunday Telegraph is MI6's.