Terrorism

Eric Randolph specialises in insurgency and is an editor at a defence analysis firm and London Editor at Complex Terrain Lab.The government released its updated counter-terrorism strategy, Contest Two, on 24 March. Last week, its continued relevance was demonstrated by the arrests of 12 people in Manchester, Liverpool and Lancashire, apparently on suspicion of involvement in a terrorist plot against major civilian targets. The news that 11 were Pakistani nationals who entered the UK on student visas has led the media to argue that the terrorist profile has changed once again – that the age of homegrown terrorism is being replaced by foreign cells entering the UK to carry out attacks orchestrated from abroad. The government no doubt enjoys the argument that the effectiveness of its counter-terrorism policy has forced a change of tactics on the part of global jihadists. However, the UK remains at such high risk precisely because of its involvement in overseas counter-terrorism operations, and because of the continued existence of jihadist sympathisers in the UK who provide an environment in which foreign terrorist cells are able to blend.

Guy Aitchison (London, OK): The fight against the Counter-Terrorism Bill must not end with the Government's humiliating climbdown over the 42 days proposals. There's still loads of nasties left in the Bill, not least the powers to confiscate a "terrorist's" property - including their bank accounts, vehicles, computers or even their house - without trial and potentially on the basis of secret evidence. There's more listed here in an excellent post by David Mery:

Tom Griffin (London, OK):With the Counter Terrorism Bill due to resume its passage though Parliament this week, Amnesty has launched a new petition against the provision to extend detention without charge to 42 days. The petition will be presented to Parliament if the legislation returns to the Commons, with individual MPs also being presented with signatures from their own constituents.

Such opposition may yet help to force a Government U-turn in the wake of the Lords defeat predicted by today's Times:

Gordon Brown is preparing for a humiliating climbdown over his proposal to hold terrorist suspects for 42 days after being told that it will be defeated in the House of Lords.

Ministers admit privately that there is not “a cat in Hell’s chance” of the legislation, which returns to the Lords this week, being passed into law.

The Government has decided against using the Parliament Act to force the measure through after peers reject it, The Times has learnt. That decision will effectively confine the controversial proposal — which the Prime Minister fought tooth and nail to get through a Commons vote in June — to the legislative dustbin.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The European Commission has this week released the findings of a new report, which will form the basis of EU policy on preventing violent radicalisation.

The study by Kings College London concludes that the dynamics of Islamist militant recruitment have changed significantly in recent years:

efforts have largely been driven underground, with little overt propagation and recruitment now occurring at mosques. Prisons and other places of vulnerability in which individuals are likely to feel lost or experience tensions continue to be a great cause of concern, which urgently needs to be addressed.

A variety of actors continue to be involved in propagation and recruitment, though radical imams have lost some influence. Activists are the ‘engines’ of Islamist militant recruitment. They often draw on recruits from so-called ‘gateway organisations’ which prepare individuals ideologically and socialise them into the extremist ‘milieu’. 

The latter finding may represent the most controversial element in the report:

Tom Griffin (London, OK): With the House of Lords set to vote on 42 day detention later this month, the Council of Europe has today raised a number of concerns about  how terror suspects are being held under the existing 28-day regime.

A new report by the Council's Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment (CPT) warned:

The existing - and a fortiori possible new - provisions regarding the permissible length of pre-charge detention in cases falling under the terrorism legislation are a matter of considerable concern to the CPT. The Committee has no intention of entering into the current debate on the arguments for and against the length of pre-charge detention of terrorist suspects in the United Kingdom. However, as the CPT has emphasised in the past, in the interests of the prevention of ill-treatment, the sooner a criminal suspect passes into the hands of a custodial authority which is functionally and institutionally separate from the police, the better. Consequently, the Committee must insist that neither the existing nor any new provisions in this area should result in criminal suspects spending a prolonged period of time in police custody. 

Hassan Akram (Cambridge): The search for a replacement for Gordon Brown is slowly becoming public. Last week Brown lost a second member of his Government after David Cairns followed Siobhan McDonagh in openly demanding that Labour look for a new leader.  McDonagh said she wanted to start the party thinking about who should replace Brown and refused to be drawn on who she thought might do the job best.  But Cairns went further, hinting that he “had someone in mind” although he refused to say who it was. Of course, it is an open secret that a large group of MPs, worried about losing their seats in the next election, want to replace Brown with David Miliband.  Miliband is seen as the only candidate youthful and vigorous enough to challenge David Cameron’s slick new Tory brand. The Party Conference is likely to put this on hold, but there can be little doubt that Milliband is hoping to be rewarded for "good behaviour".

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Over on our sister blog terrorism.opendemocracy, Daniel Moeckli looks at a recent MI5 report which challenges many of the assumptions on which the political debate about terrorism in Britain is based:

The report, which apparently is based on several hundred case studies, reveals that British-based terrorists fit "no single demographic profile". Most of them are male, but women also play an important role. The majority are British nationals, not illegal immigrants. There is a high proportion of converts. Importantly, MI5 concludes that "assumptions cannot be made about suspects based on skin colour, ethnic heritage or nationality."

Yet exactly such assumptions have informed British anti-terrorism policing in recent years. Government officials and high-level police officers have made it clear that law enforcement efforts should focus on certain ethnic groups.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Three young British Muslims convicted on terrorism charges this week, possessed the "biggest computer library of extremist material ever seized by British police," The Guardian reports.

Over at our sister-blog terrorism.openDemocracy, Tim Stevens examines the resulting focus on the internet as a conduit for radicalisation:

As the British government seeks to strengthen its stance on stamping out home-grown terrorism, it has zeroed in on the internet as a target for regulation and interdiction. Such an approach suggests both a misunderstanding of the internet itself and of the role that online behaviour plays in radicalisation and, ultimately, the creation of dangerously violent individuals. Wrong moves against wrong targets will eventually prove counter-productive.

Phil Groman: While gang violence and religious extremism attract a broadly different demographic, both phenomena appear to be gaining momentum among young people in Britain. Gang violence took the lives of 26 teenagers last year in London alone. The security services admit a steady increase in those supporting terrorist activities, some as young as 15 and 16.

Much of the analysis into the factors driving involvement in both street gangs and radical Islamist movements focus on broad structural causes such as unemployment, poor community leadership and even the failures of multiculturalism. However, one salient parallel between both movements is the presentation and mobilisation of violence as an attractive solution to disempowered youth.

John Jackson (London, Mishcon de Reya): At the end of her judgement in the BAE case one of the law lords, Lady  Hale, said “- - I would wish that the world was a better place where honest and conscientious public servants were not put in impossible situations such as this - - -“. I would wish that too. I would also wish that people and nations did not seek to advance their interests by violence or the threat of violence. If that were so there would be no need of armaments industries and questions of national security could be dealt with in a more open and satisfactory way.

The impossible situation to which Lady Hale referred was the dilemma confronting the Director of the SFO in deciding, with incomplete information, whether, to quote Lord Bingham, “the public interest in pursuing an important investigation into alleged bribery was outweighed by the public interest in protecting the lives of British citizens”. The incompleteness of information available to the Director is the link to my second wish and my remark about how questions of national security are dealt with.

Diane Forsyth (Dublin: Justice for the Forgotten): On Thursday all parties in the Irish Parliament passed a formal motion urging the British Government “to allow access by an independent, international judicial figure to all original documents” which it currently holds, relating to a number of “atrocities” that occurred in the Republic in the 1970s.  While not as significant as, say, last year’s Baha Mousa ruling allowing the application of the Human Rights Act to deaths perpetrated by the British Army overseas, the motion is a very important step in the fight against security force impunity and for military accountability.

The atrocities referred to include the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of the 17th May 1974, which killed 34 people, the Dublin bombings of 1972 and 1973 (the latter of which killed a British citizen) and a number of other fatal attacks perpetrated in the Republic in the early to mid-1970s, a period during which the conflict in Northern Ireland was escalating inexorably. All of the attacks were (privately) inquired into by an independent judicial figure appointed by the Irish Government, Judge Henry Barron, whose final report was published in 2006.  

Barron was tasked with inquiring into the attacks for a number of reasons, not least the fact that not a single person had ever been prosecuted in relation to any of the murders. His investigation came in the aftermath of a Yorkshire Television documentary, broadcast in 1993, which brought to light new evidence pointing to the involvement of British security forces in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. (In spite of this, it should be noted that the actual impetus behind the Irish Government’s decision to initiate the new inquiry, which only began in 2000, arose from the campaigning work of Justice for the Forgotten, the organisation representing the victims of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings.) 

Judge Barron’s Reports were subsequently examined by an Irish parliamentary Sub-Committee, which then produced a number of its own reports on his findings. The Sub-Committee’s ultimate conclusions in relation to the Barron investigations were stark. They noted that, “we are dealing with acts of international terrorism that were colluded in by the British security forces.” This collusion encompassed active co-operation between loyalist paramilitaries, the UDR (a British Army regiment based in the North of Ireland), the RUC (the contemporary Northern Irish police force) and British Military Intelligence.  

Despite his strong findings however, Judge Barron was not in a position to conclusively prove this collusion. Why? As the Sub-Committee also noted “all of the Barron reports [were] frustrated by the absence of any real co-operation from the British security forces."  

Concerns with regard to protecting information of relevance to “national security” may partly underlie this complete lack of co-operation. Fortunately, this can be, and should be, easily circumvented by the appointment of an independent, international judicial figure, acceptable to both the Irish and British governments, who can assess all of the relevant documentation and advise as to further actions.  

For citizens of the United Kingdom, who understandably might be shocked by Barron’s findings and hopeful that such criminal activity on the part of British security forces is dealt with appropriately, the appointment of such a judicial figure is of utmost importance, for the sake of the integrity of their own forces and to prevent the perpetration of further unlawful deaths in sovereign nations abroad.

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): The Counter Terrorism Bill continues its passage through Parliament today, with its second reading in the House of Lords.

Most of the controversy around the bill has focused on 42-day detention, but there are a number of other provisions that deserve serious scrutiny. Inquest has produced a briefing that focuses on part 6 of the bill, which it calls "a fundamental attack on the independence and transparency of the coronial system in England and Wales."

Patrick Corrigan, (Amnesty Blogs: Belfast and Beyond): Will Northern Ireland's (non-DUP) Lords help restore Northern Ireland's Westminster reputation when the Government's counter-terrorism Bill comes to the upper house tomorrow? When the government won the vote at the Bill's first reading in the Commons by just nine votes, the chamber rang with jeers and furious cries of 'shame' directed at the DUP MPs who had just voted with Brown after an eleventh hour private meeting with the PM.

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): The House of Lords begins debating the Counterterrorism Bill on Tuesday, the day after the third anniversary of the 7/7 bomb attacks in London.

In a briefing on the legislation released today, Human Rights Watch argues that detaining terrorism suspects for up to six weeks without charge violates the fundamental right to liberty and risks undermining counterterrorism efforts.

Guy Aitchison (London, OK): Reports this morning suggested that Brown was ready to make concessions on the 42 days, legislating for greater parliamentary and judicial scrutiny in return for the support of potential rebels. He apparently said he would “rather be right, and lose” but now recognizes that a defeat would be disastrous, possibly even fatal, for his leadership. His concessions have not done enough to convince Labour MP David Winnick, however, who went ahead and tabled an amendment to the Counter-Terrorism Bill to stop the extension of pre-charge detention. Winnick is the MP who tabled the amendment allowing 28 days detention in 2006, defeating Blair’s plans for 90 day. What is promising for opponents of the Bill (pretty much everyone outside the Home Office, including the Director of Public Prosecutions) is that Winnick claims to have support of MPs who supported the 90 days but have since decided that 28 days is sufficient. He thinks this may just be enough to bring about a government defeat.

I hope he’s right. As Stuart Weir and other supporters of OK and LC's “Not a Day Longer" campaign have endlessly pointed out on OK and elsewhere there has been no new evidence produced to justify 42 days detention; the judicial and parliamentary safeguards are inadequate; and the law risks alienating precisely those communities whose support is needed to defeat terrorism.

Brown’s determination to go for 42 days in the face of massive opposition from the legal establishment, human rights groups and countless experts on counter-terrorism was a cynical and calculating move designed to make him look tougher than the Tories and appeal to the Murdoch press. There is now every chance that, just like the strategy with the 10p tax, it will backfire spectacularly.

Jon Bright (London, OK): Heard this radio ad yesterday which I had to put a post up on.

[audio http://www.met.police.uk/so/docs/ct.mp3]

It's from the Met's "Trust your instincts" campaign - they are asking members of the public to phone a confidential hotline if they see any suspicious behaviour. We are asked: "How d’you tell the difference between someone just video-ing crowded place and someone who’s checking it out for a terrorist attack?" Answer - you don't have to, the Met will do it for you. "Trust your instincts: not each other" is the slogan that could have been.

OurKingdom is supporting Liberal Conspiracy’s campaign against 42 days detention, and will be publishing a series of posts about it over the next few weeks. Labour rebels will decide whether the bill passes or not. For a full list of those who rebelled last time (on 90 days detention), including email addresses, click here.

Jon Bright (London, OK): One of the aspects of the global war on terror which, as it were, would have been funny if it wasn't so tragic, was the often repeated desire to "win hearts and minds": often repeated by people who seemed to be going out of their way to do exactly the opposite. Forward Thinking's new report on "Forgotten Voices", which investigates the opinions of young Muslims through conversations with their peers, exposes the extent of the damage - and the rather worrying level of concern Muslim youth feel about their lives and their prospects. It reveals both that a "great majority" of them felt "British", and yet also felt isolated within their society - fearful of their prospects of educational and professional development.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Over on oD's terrorism section Kanishk has written an immediate response to Bhutto's assassination and its likely consequences. One of these, he suggests, is "casual over-simplification". Like his much to be recommended security alerts, OK is also dedicated to combat the way we colonise ourselves with clichés. Here is Kanishk's conclusion: