Andy Hayman's book, 7/7 conspiracy theories and the campaign for a 7/7 inquiry

On June 20th, Andy Hayman, CBE, QPM, who was in overall charge of the Counter-terrorism Command and Special Branch at the time of the London 7/7 bombings, and was the UK's National Counter-terrorism Co-ordinator, sensationally came out in favour of an independent public inquiry, in the media as he pre-promoted his new book 'The Terrorist Hunters', serialised in the Times and the subject of a Tonight With Sir Trevor McDonald ITV primetime special.

Startlingly, Mr Hayman's memoir, which is co-written by Margaret Gilmore, previously BBC Home Affairs Correspondent and now RUSI Senior Research Fellow has just been banned from UK shops, because of an injunction by the Attorney General, which nobody is allowed to talk about.

I'm very grateful to Mr Hayman for lending powerful support to the inquiry campaign, and I hope the court hearing goes well this week. The Terrrorist Hunters is an interesting book. I'm already on page 285 (cheers, Amazon). It's a disturbing and candid account of the worrying politicisation of terrorism and policing, and powerfully evokes the chaos and confusion behind the scenes as well as covering the successes and disasters facing the police and security service.

Earlier last week, on Tuesday 30th June at 9pm, the BBC broadcast a controversial one-hour investigative documentary examining the conspiracy theories that have grown up around the 7th July Bombings in the absence of an independent public inquiry into the atrocities. The programme can be seen here on i-player. I felt quite anxious about doing an interview when I was approached about this in early 2008, and talked to friends and colleagues before I agreed to get involved with the project in a personal capacity. I recorded the interview in April 2008 because I strongly believed that it would help the 7/7 public inquiry campaign. Then the programme was held back until after a terrorism trial this year.

I am relieved to say that the documentary 'The Conspiracy Files: 7/7' finally being shown has indeed helped the inquiry campaign. Martin Bright on The Spectator website was straight out of the blocks with a column on the conspiracy theories and why we need an inquiry, and the Guardian ran a similar article on its website. (The Guardian recently ran other columns on the subject of the need for a 7/7 inquiry, and was the first to cover the rise of 7/7 conspiracy theories back in June 2006.)

Then, today the Mail on Saturday, published a fairly hysterical feature on why only a major independent inquiry will stop the wild rumours, pointing out that as well as Andy Hayman, former Scotland Yard deputy assistant commissioner Brian Paddick, and David Davis, former Tory Shadow Home Secretary - support the call for an independent investigation into the bombings. In an earlier big breakthrough for the campaign, the Daily Mail came out editorially for an independent 7/7 public inquiry in May this year. The Mirror, meanwhile first began editorially supporting a 7/7 inquiry in July 2006.

Former army officer, Patrick Mercer OBE, who is the Chair of the Home Office Sub-Committee n Counter-terrorism, has supported a full investigation into 7/7 and counter-terrorism for ages. Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee Keith Vaz told me last summer that he favours a full investigation into the terrorism events of the terrible summer of 2005 - a position he reiterated on Newsnight only weeks ago.

To these supporters can be added long-time 7/7 inquiry supporter Nick Clegg, and the Liberal Democrat party, who support a full public inquiry, and Chris Grayling, Shadow Home Secretary, who supports an independent Judicial inquiry. Meanwhile, Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones, former Chair of the British Joint Intelligence Committee and Shadow Minister for Security has condemned the Intelligence and Security's Committee's 7/7 reports as 'not good enough'.

So I'm pretty pleased that the campaigning which is having such an effect. I'm also relieved that the BBC2 programme was as effective as I hoped it would be.

Why the focus on rebutting conspiracy theories? I, personally have been the both subject of conspiracy theories, and the target of conspiracy theorists, probably due to this blog, for over three years. Because of this strange experience I became interested in what these people believed, and I researched the conspiracy theories, their origins, dissemination and effects in some detail. As time has gone on I have become more and more concerned about the effects the 7/7 conspiracy theories are having; how they are no longer the preserve of eccentrics and cranks, but are spreading like a virus.

I first raised my concerns about 7/7 conspiracy theories to SO15 Counter-Terror command back in November 2006, following up on 4th December 2006. I contacted them via the secure website used by victims, drawing their attention to conspiracy sites which had sprung up on the internet and which made much of the lack of 7/7 CCTV images. I asked them if they could release more CCTV of the bombers, since the public had, to date, only seen 'one grainy image of the bombers entering Luton station'. I wrote,

'I have been contacted by dozens of people who read my blog over the last year and who say that they simply do not believe the official version of what happened on 7/7 because ''there is no proof that the bombers were in London ''The Government's official narrative giving a non-existent train that never ran as the one the bombers caught from Luton to Kings Cross made things worse and I have had even more people get in contact and say that there is some kind of cover up.

Checking out internet message boards, it seems these doubts are becoming widespread particularly amongst some young Muslims and these bizarre conspiracy theories are gaining in popularity. I think this increasing denial of the culpability of the bombers ( the attitude of 'there's no proof they were even there') is unhelpful for police/community relations and surely we need good intelligence and good relations to prevent future attacks?'

A senior SO15 officer responded with a detailed and entirely reasonable explanation of how 7/7 remained an active criminal investigation, and there was an investigation being conducted in support of the Coroner and that they would not want to do anything to compromise investigations. He explained that they had a large number of CCTV images, he wrote of the need to preserve evidential continuity of exhibits, 'sometimes even before they become significant as exhibits'. He explained that CCTV cannot be viewed in isolation,

'...many strands of investigation are brought together to get the greatest evidential value from the images. Images of people entering a station are worked in reverse to find the vehicles they arrived in, potential routes are traced and images viewed to see whether the vehicles can be seen in other places, and so on, to the start of a journey. Financial and general enquiries can give insight into ownership, or hiring. Forensic work is used to add or detract from other findings. Documentary, technical and witness accounts are also added to lead to a formidable account of events.

Release of CCTV imagery in isolation will show what police say it shows. It would have to be accompanied by explanation and a sequence of events, involving other strands of the enquiry to enable those viewing the images to recognise their significance. This explanation and corroboration could amount to much of the material to be used in the Coroner's court. This may lead to intense media speculation, and the Coroner's inquest being conducted in advance by our rightly vigilant, necessarily intrusive, but sometimes speculative media. It may also compromise the criminal investigation. We have to take immense care with this'

He also added, somewhat wryly.

'...with respect to 'conspiracy theories', if a person has the view that the enquiry is less than transparent, it could be difficult to change this view.

It is sobering to see the detailed analysis, conducted by persons with apparent authority, of the limited material released to the media.'

The CCTV images were later shown at the 2008 Theseus trial, R.vs. Ali, and again at the retrial in spring 2009, and subsequently released. Yet doubts, rumours and conspiracy theories remain and indeed are spreading; it seems once people start to believe there is a cover-up or deception, it is very hard to get them to change their mind or review any evidence which contradicts their belief that there powerful forces are conspiring to hide the truth.

One of the most disturbing parts of the BBC programme showed respected senior figure Dr Mohammed Naseem of Birmingham Central Mosque showing a newly-popular internet film called '7/7 Ripple Effect' to a room full of men and boys. The homemade film posits that the 7/7 bombs were not the work of Islamist extremists but instead placed under the trains by agents of the British and Israeli government, who then arranged for the execution of 4 Muslim men with rucksacks, who had been duped into believing themselves part of a terror training exercise. When Dr Naseem asked the who believed the film's message, over two thirds of the people in the room raised their hands. Dr Naseem had made 2000 copies of the film to be distributed by the mosque attendees afterwards .

How can you help to stop violent extremism and jihadi attacks, if you will not even accept it exists? A Channel 4 News survey in 2007 reported that nearly a quarter of Muslims in the UK did not believe the London bombers were responsible for the attacks and a similar number think the security services were involved. Given that many Muslims in the UK are of Pakistani heritage, and the Pakistani ISI has a long history of covertly supporting pro-Kashmiri liberation militant cells, and attributing terrorist bomb attacks to people other than those who detonated the explosives, this is perhaps not surprising. But we are not in Pakistan, and the UK security service is not the ISI.

Whilst our security service have in the past have compromised and tolerated radical Islamists and violent extremists residing in the UK , accepting the 'Covenant of Security', and despite being rightly under pressure for being tangled up in the abhorrent use of torture, they are, I believe, brave and dedicated to keeping the UK safe and the idea that they bombed UK citizens in a false flag act of terror is insupportable. I am not saying this because I am some kind of naive liberal: I am saying this because it is manifestly true.

Fortunately, denial of the reality of the London attacks being carried out by four young British men, radicalised like thousands of others by causes such as Kashmir, Iraq and Afghanistan; recruited in the UK by those on the lookout for those who simmered with a sense of resentful grievance, and takfiri religious zeal, trained in camps in the foothills of the Afghanistan-Pakistan borders, and mentored by spiritual and political emirs, frequently based outside the UK - is NOT representative of the views of most of the 2.4 million Muslims in the UK. This cannot be repeated enough. It is worth repeating stories such as how, in Luton, local Muslims recently took peaceful but determined action against a small local group of odious al Muhajiroun extremists, with three hundred marching to their preaching stall in Luton after Friday prayers and telling them to shove off.

In fact, a recent survey of UK Muslims found them to be patriotic, respectful, and extremely socially conservative. 77% said they identified 'strongly' with the UK - compared to only 50% of the general UK population.

Preying on a sense of victimhood, anger and grievance, stating that not only do all police and politicians lie but they are actively involved in nefarious plans to persecute 'people like you'. Spreading inflammatory and racist ideas in meetings, online and through passing on DVDs and tracts - that is how pretty much all extremists strive to fan hate and spread division, and some of them hope it will flare up into headline-grabbing violence.

Muslim-hating white supremacists, takfiri 'Kuf'-hating Islamists are startlingly similar in many ways. Both groups are, unsurprisingly, awash with conspiracy theorists, both contain zealots who are deeply antisemitic and racist, both contain many who take the mendacious tract 'The Protocols of the The Elders of Zion' seriously - the tract Hitler used to justify the Holocaust - and indeed, holocaust-deniers can be found in both camps. Hateful extremism can wear surprising masks, and extremists will always try to recruit the idealistic, the angry, the activists, the politically engaged and yes, the devout who are light on theological understanding of how all the world's religions deplore killing and advocate respect and love for fellow humans.

Most people do not buy into extremism, that is why it exists on the fringes. Some flirt with it, then move on. It is almost impossible to change the mind of a true bigot, zealot or hardcore conspiracy theorist. What is important is depriving them of an accepting or endorsing community who does not challenge their ideology, thus semi-legitimising it. Conspiracy theories are used to recruit, to persuade, to give cover for many different kinds of extremism. To persuade people of the righteousness of your cause you must persuade them that they are being victimised and that you are standing up for their rights. But when 'standing up for what's right' involves attacking people on the basis of their race or religion - or lack of religion - then this is dangerous and wrong.

It is far easier to gain sympathies for extremist causes when it is passed about that an all-powerful and wicked, lying government is actively oppressing white people, or Muslims, or whoever, and that innocent people are being misrepresented, abused and in the case of terrorism, set up and framed for crimes they did not commit.

I don't think many conspiracy theorists realise the damage spreading conspiracy theories does. And in many conspiracy theories, there is a small grain of truth. The government has indeed done some very bad things.

Unfair, oppressive laws, horrific and illegal practices like rendition, torture, detainment without trial, control orders, illegal wars and unpopular invasions, the cynical support of loathsome regimes with appalling human rights records, and the use of proxy groups in territorial machinations all play as mood music to extremists' propaganda, acting as a further recruiting sergeant. Wise security experts in the UK and US governments have now begun to speak out against this, but the terrible consequences of the misconceived 'war on terror' conceived by the Bush neocon idealogues continues to bear bitter fruit. And though President Obama has ordered Guantanamo and the network of 'black' prisons are to be closed, those responsible for the policies and the abuses are seeking to cover their tracks; the stink goes right to the top.

No wonder ordinary people are angry. No wonder they are suspicious. No wonder the situation is volatile. The exposure of the catastrophic greed of once-feted bankers, the public revulsion at the 'spin' and lies that led to politicised intelligence, dodgy dossiers, and flashpoints such as the hounding to death of Dr David Kelly, the horrors of war, the abuse of anti-terror laws to snoop on the innocent, the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes and its aftermath, the suspicious fervour for ID cards and other wastes of public money, the public beating of protesters leading to the death of Ian Tomlinson, and finally the corrosive damage done by the Parliamentary expenses scandal has led to a deep mistrust and resentment of those in power. In such environments, conspiracy theories find fertile ground.

There is finally to be a public inquiry into the Iraq war, despite the efforts of Tony Blair to have it in secret, and it is only right that there should be an independent inquiry into the London bombings of 7/7, as well as a Select Committee report into counter-terrorism, terrorism and radicalisation in the UK - including links with activity abroad.

If the public and government no longer trust each other, then we are in real trouble.

I hope it's even more clear that the campaign for a public inquiry is nothing to do with the 'Government did it' conspiracy theories. I hope police and politicians note that in the absence of public information, and in an atmosphere of growing mistrust, people will start to fill in the gaps. What starts as speculation can become a damaging rumour that hardens into tolerance of hateful extremism. If you truly believe that the government has such contempt for voters that it will murder its own citizens, if you tie that into a narrative of a racist war waged on people like you, then where do you go with that belief? What do you do next? What does it make you become?

There are people who say that conspiracy theories are foolish but harmless, there are people who passionately want to believe them, but protest that they are not racists, extremists antisemites or bigots, only asking reasonable questions. There are people who say that giving the conspiracy theorists attention is counter-productive. There are people who will say that there is no point having an inquiry into 7/7 or the Iraq war, it will be a whitewash, or a waste of money, or both; some will say that there is no point listening to politicians, or police, or anyone in power - no point asking questions, no point listening to answers. They say you hear only excuses and lies.

Well. In the end you can only do what you believe to be right. I think that having inquiries into Iraq and 7/7 is both necessary and overdue. I believe there needs to be greater accountability, scrutiny and transparency, combined with a cool-headed investigation into the roots of terrorism. I say that party politics and personal ambition should stay as far away from counter-terrorism policy-making and operational decision-making as possible. I know that the effects of a breakdown of trust between people and power are dangerous and divisive. I want liberty to be protected, and the rule of law respected and Parliament reformed, and real truth, not 'truther' speculation fostered, whilst lies and propaganda are challenged and debunked.

And if people care about these things, and speak about them, then I believe we are better off than if we just give up and embrace resentment and cynicism.

I hope so, anyway. I always hope.

UPDATE: Thirty two people are being questioned after a network of suspected extremists with access to 300 weapons and 80 bombs has been uncovered by counter-terrorism police, in England's largest seizure of a suspected terrorist arsenal, reports the Sunday Times today. Rocket launchers, grenades, pipe bombs and dozens of firearms have been recovered in raids on over 20 properties. Police are investigating links to arrests in Europe, New Zealand and Australia. Recently two men were charged with offences against the Terrorism Act following the discovery of an alleged plot involving ricin. They were linked with the thuggish, barking, deeply unpopular and pitifully small extreme-right white-supremacist organisations, Aryan Strike Force (ASF) and Racial Volunteer Force ( RVF). I'm not putting up links here, but a quick browse of their internet activity will find paranoid militant extremist ideology, lashings of Islamophobia, homophobia and antisemitism - and oh yes - extreme conspiracy theorising galore. *Sigh*

The police are investigating whether this latest lot of arrested suspects were planning a bombing campaign against mosques. Would this disturbing story have had more coverage if the alleged arms-stashing haters were extremist al Muhajiroun types instead of white supremacists?

Possibly. Probably, in fact. Yet it's all equally odious. It would be good if it was generally accepted that extremists like Anjem Choudary are no more representative of all Muslims than extremist like Nick Griffin are representative of all white people. It would be good if far-right terror plots and criminal extremists were routinely given the same sort of coverage as Islamist terror plots and criminal extremists.

It would also be good if the startling similarities between the ideologies of both were pointed out, too. Oh well, I'll keep mentioning it.

'Considerable damage to national security'

It is getting kind of tiresome now, how frequently it seems to happen. Something embarrassing happens to a senior person in government and all of a sudden it's OMG! QUICK! LOOK OVER THERE! A THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY! 1111!!!

The latest headlines concern the scathing parliamentary report in which it is stated that the threat to national security had been grossly exaggerated just before the Crown Prosecution service was due to announce whether MP Damien Green would be charged or not. The report states that claims in a letter to the Met from Chris Wright, (Cabinet Office director of security and intelligence), that the leaks had caused 'considerable damage to national security' were 'hyperbolic'. And 'unhelpful'. And gave 'an exaggerated impression of the damage done' by the leaks. 'Frustration' in the Home Office and the Cabinet was, the report suggested, the probable cause of the exaggerated claims.

Yeah, I bet they were frustrated.

Could any examples of actual damage to national security be found? Nope. But the leaks were damaging to the Home Secretary and that must have been very upsetting indeed. What can be done? Arrest someone! That's the spirit!

Now it's all collapsed into a great flapping heap of humiliation, desperate fingers are pointing blame at Bob Quick, who resigned last week. No word from the Home Office, who are possibly looking for a passing bus to throw certain people under. But 'Scotland Yard sources' are today quoted in the Standard saying 'the only senior officer keen on an arrest was Mr Quick, who quit last week when he compromised top-secret terror raids'.

That'll be the The Top Secret Terror Raids conducted in the full glare of publicity that managed to conveniently push the embarrassing stories of the Home Secretary's expenses claims - for bathplugs and adult movie rentals and a kitchen sink - off the front pages for a day, remember.

Terrorists! Easter spectaculars! Pictures of places in Manchester! Pakistanis!

Except, unfortunately, no actual evidence of bomb-making equipment has yet been found, and now a diplomatic row has broken out with Pakistan. Pakistan has been lectured on 'doing more' to fight terrorism by the British - but Pakistan has not been given 'basic information' about the Pakistani citizens who have been nicked. Way to go, international co-operation between staunch allies in the War on Terror! Communication and intelligence-sharing is key, right?

Right?

The threat from a plot may yet turn out to be real. Worse, the investigation may turn out to have been fatally damaged by too-early arrests. Or they may be no plot at all. Who knows how parlous the state of national security is today, compared to a week ago?


Here's the thing. National security is a grave and serious concern, and those tasked with protecting it bear heavy responsibilities and should receive our dutiful support whenever it is asked for. To see the sacred and honourable business of protecting and preserving the life and liberty of the realm bastardised and cheapened so, made into a tawdry stunt, a distracting sleight of hand, to see the horrors of terrorism invoked and waved about as a tattered figleaf to cover up someone's embarrassment, for God's sake - is sick-making.

And they've done it too often now. They're always bloody doing it, this lot in power, and then the headlines fade and the news machine trundles on, and then sometimes, three months later, if you're lucky, a paragraph on page 27 states that so-and-so was released without charge, or bundled off to be deported, or whatever, and the headline-grabbing plot, the threat, the suspect and the suspicions that were made so much of at the time came to nothing after all. More than half of those arrested under suspicion of terrorism offences are released without charge.

And yet there is a threat; a threat made worse half the time by the frequently heavy-handed and misguided policies of this government at home and abroad. There are people who want to hurt us - there always have been and there always will be - and those brave and dedicated men and women in the police and security service who are sworn to the task of thwarting their plans are best served by being allowed to get on with their jobs and not being dragged into political gambits to prop up other people's sodding careers.

Communication between agencies. Intelligence-sharing. The grindingly boring business of slow, careful detective work. This is what keeps us safe, not media showboating, not civil-liberty-shredding, not ratcheting up the all-channel terror until millions of people become ill with worry and sick with anxiety. When we allow our logical thinking to be bitch-slapped by paralysing fear, and we indulge the attention-seeking posturings of the powerful who should know better, who should respect us more than to try to play us like cheap fiddles, then we do ourselves no favours, and we make things much, much worse than they need be. It blows back and bites us in the face, this bad business. Terrorism terrorises. So does reading about it all the time.

'Considerable damage to our national security?'
Yes, I should say there has been over the last few years.
And the stink, as they say, comes from the head.

Sheesh. It's always worth remembering, however grand you are, the following piece of wisdom:

And so, take it away, the original and best poster of all time, that has suddenly become wildly popular a half century on, expressing as it does the epitome of Britishness in its dignified humanity. Reminding us of a time when nobody sat about worrying about such things, because there were more important things to concern people, like whether the house would be flattened by a bomb overnight and whether loved ones would come home alive, as a result of a raging world wide war.

With thanks to some now-rather-old -hat popular internet memes
for providing the illustrations to today's irritated rant.

Good night and good luck.

Paedo-jihadi-facebook-terror!

Paedo terrorist rapist jihadists are using teh internetz to spread filth and evil! OMG WTF!!11 !!
Or How the Internet Must be Controlled, by Jacqui Smith and Geoff Hoon.

After last week's humiliating failure of the government's latest 'anti-terror' strategy, which resulted in them dropping their plans to hold people for 42 days without charging them, and to hold secret inquests in State-implicated deaths, Jacqui Smith and Geoff Hoon came back with their giant database plan. They want access to absolutely everyone's mobile and web records, including social networking sites like Facebook. Why? Because ' terrorists use such communications'.

Not monitoring this traffic is 'giving terrorists a licence to kill people', Hoon actually had the brass neck to say. He confirmed that the government is prepared to go 'quite a long way' with removing civil liberties 'to stop terrorists killing people'.

*headdesk*

Terrorists also wear clothes, Geoff, which might conceal bombs. They live in houses, which have blinds and curtains, which can be drawn to conceal their nefarious terrorist activities therein. Ban window coverings! Get your kit off! If you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear!

Anyway, today, as if by magic, we get three full pages in the Times about 'Links between child porn and Muslim terrorists' and 'dangerous and depraved: Paedophiles unite with terrorists online.'

Paedophiles and child porn and terrorists and Muslims and the internet all in one story! I don't think I've ever seen quite so many memes working in concert before: it's like the Chinese State Circus act I saw once when a dozen people all managed to balance on one bicycle and whizz round and round at high-speed whilst we all gasped and applauded.

I decided to take a closer look at the Times story. I note that it has

10 mentions of 'Muslim'
6 mentions of 'Islam'
5 mentions of 'Islamic'
8 mentions of 'Mosque'
8 mentions of 'Jihad'
6 mentions of 'Jihadi'
29 mentions of 'Terrorist'
15 mentions of 'Terrorism'

So what evidence have we got for all this?

a) An East-end rapist, who got seven friends to lie for him and give a false alibi that he was giving a sermon on repentance at a mosque during Ramadan when the attack took place. He was caught after being investigated by police over suspected links to a 'jihadi gunrunner'. DNA taken after he was arrested proved he was wanted for the vicious rape a year earlier. His computer was seized and found to contain child pornography downloads. He has never been convicted of terrorism offences.

b) Another suspected terrorist - also calling himself a Muslim - who was also found to have hard-core child porn when raided in a different investigation.

c) Hard-drives found at a Milanese mosque allegedly used by Islamist militants, which contained images of children being sexually abused that were also encoded with messages as 'a clandestine method of communication'. An Italian 'anti-terror magistrate' (a what?) said that pornographic images were being used to camouflage 'messages of quite a different content', and remarked to the Times that the men did not have 'paedophile tendencies', but 'in many parts of the Arab world - wives are often very young girls of 11, 12 or 13 who because of family negotiations are given in marriage to men much older than them...' . He then added, 'But that is not paedophilia, it is a question of Arab culture'.

(That last statement is utter rubbish by the way. The average age for marriage in Arab countries in in the 20's and rising. You can read a full report into marriage in the Arab world here. Even in Yemen, which has the youngest wives, the percentage of married women aged 15-19 has declined from 27% in 1997 to 17% in 2003.)

The person who ran the mosque was sentenced to 8 years for terrorism offences, in absentia.

Any more evidence for the CHILD PORN INTERNET MUSLIM TERRORIST thing?

Well, there's this.

d) The Times found 'a case in Spain where an Islamic terror suspect is accused of downloading child porn'. It's still before the courts. The case concerns an alleged terror cell broken up in 2007. Spanish police say thousands of hardcore child porn images were found on home computers.

e) There's an Algerian awaiting trial who is accused of incitement to jihad via the internet and of sending money to prisoners belonging to a banned Islamic group accused of killing 45 people in Casablanca in 2003. He is also accused of downloading child porn.

f) And a case in Yorkshire where child protection officers 'stumbled upon a nail-bomb terror plotter'. He was white, and making bombs to attack Black, Asian and Jewish people. He was not a Muslim, in fact, he was an anti-semitic Islamophobic nazi loon. He had 39,000 child abuse images.

g)Also a Salford chemistry student nabbed for looking at explosives websites and downloading 7 child abuse images. He was 21 years old, also white and non-Muslim. He was jailed for explosives offences, not terrorism.

And er, that's it.

I can't see that these few cases - from all over the world - justify the number of mentions of Islam, Muslim, terrorist and all the rest of it in the copy.

I really can't.

Nor can I see how the fact that some men - some nasty pieces of work - are into extremely horrible sex and violence - online and offline - in any way justifies the government wanting to spy on everyone's emails and phone calls and web use.

If anyone would like to have a go at explaining it in the comments, please feel free.

That speech

Yesterday I went up to East Riding with the irrepressible Bob Marshall Andrews and Shami Chakrabarti to take part in a debate about liberty on the eve of the by-election hosted by David Davis. This is the speech I made. Minus the Leeds United opening gag.

UPDATE: Now on The Guardian's Comment is Free

Three years ago I was on the way to work when a 19 year old British man detonated a suicide bomb in the carriage I was travelling in, killing 26 innocent people and wounding over a hundred more. So I understand first-hand how terrifying terrorism is. But I now know that the real aim of the terrorists is not to kill hundreds but to terrify millions. To terrify us so much that we forget who we are and what we stand for and become like frightened children begging only to be kept safe. To use our own nightmares against us and to amplify them through the media and news cycle's endless feedback loop of fear. But as any parent knows, it is not always possible to keep those you love safe, and a person who is always safe is a person who never knows freedom - and who has no life.

Tony Blair once said that the freedom not be to be blown up on the way to work was the most important freedom - and that sounds temptingly true, until you unpack it. For no government can keep us safe, even if they watch over us and film us and listen to us and check our emails and internet use and hold our most intimate data and fill hundreds of prison cells with people who are merely suspected of - but not charged with - any crime at all.

When terrorists attack us, they try to divide us. They want a panicked reaction and a divisive, draconian response. It plays into their propaganda machine and by deeming them our terrible enemies against whom we must wage all-out endless, limitless war, we dignify and glorify their hateful - and hopeless - cause.

But what I learned on 7 July was that we are each other's best security. We are the guardians of each other's liberties and lives. I learned this when the bomb exploded and on each carriage of the train, trapped underground, despite the terrifying darkness and choking dust and screaming, men and women still took each other's hands and comforted and calmed each other, shared water, passed tissues, whilst other men and women ran into dark tunnels, into unknown danger, to rescue the injured. Further horror and injury was only prevented by people's calm and altruistic response. And in the darkness, you could not know if the person who reached to touch your hand was male or female, or what race or religion or sexuality they were. Just a stranger in the dark on whom your own sanity and survival depended.

I have held on to that lesson ever since.

I expect terrorists to attack our way of life and to try to use fear to divide us and change our behaviour. I do not expect our government to do the same, nor do I expect us to collude in giving up our ancient liberties and thus to do the terrorists' work for them.

Make no mistake, this is not about being soft on terrorism. I have no empathy for terrorists and I will cheer loud and long when one is convicted by a jury of his peers of plotting murder and mayhem and is locked up for a very long time indeed. But it is simply not right that we should support laws where people merely suspected of terrorism should be locked up for 42 days and nights without being charged with any crime at all. More than half those arrested for terrorism so far have been found to be entirely innocent, and terrorism laws have been used to harass and harry ordinary people: poets and protesters, chefs and pensioners, students and parents and priests. Ordinary people like you or me.

The Director of Public Prosecutions, the ex-Director General of M15, in office during 7/7, many senior police and the ex Attorney General, and numerous others whose job it has been to protect us, and prosecute those who mean us harm say 42 days is not needed nor is it workable, and I support them. How can I not?

Sometimes an issue is so important that it transcends politics and party lines. We have a choice: whether we focus on our fears or our freedoms. To defy the terrorists by standing together, strong in what we know ourselves to be, looking at what unites us. Not to tolerate political posturing and base attempts to cajole and frighten us. I pray that we have the courage to stand up for the freedoms our enemies want to destroy, and older generations died to protect; whatever our party politics, whatever our background. To say that our liberty is our security and our freedoms the key to unlock our fears, and so let us breathe and live and love and work as we want to, as humans, as is our right. Our birthright, our human right.

I am not a Tory, but I am passionate about the debate that is playing out in David Davis' constituency and all over the UK. They say if you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything, and I am glad to stand shoulder to shoulder with people from all across the political spectrum, knowing that freedom is something worth standing for, worth fighting for, worth dying for. I stand today asking for freedom. I ask you to stand up, and stand for it too.

M15 not asking for 42 days

I said last Thursday that the security services were not pushing for 42 days. I also said, don't ask me how I know that, because I can't tell you.

Anyway, now it is all out in the open. Jacqui Smith has just been forced to admit that M15 have not asked for 42 days.

So there.

I gave evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee about this. I wrote about it in the Sunday Times and the Guardian. I have gone on and on and on and on about this on my blog and elsewhere for a very long time, since 90 days was first mooted in fact, and I expect regular readers are sick of me on the subject,

so here are some other people saying it.
David Davis, Shadow Home Secretary on the BBC Politics Show
Sir John Major, ex-Prime Minister in the Times
Senior police officers in the Guardian,
The former Lord Chancellor, Lord Goldsmith
The former Attourney General, Lord Falconer
Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty
Kate Allen, director of Amnesty International
The General Synod of the Church of England
Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner

65% of the public are reported to back 42 days. Large swathes of the public also back hanging, castration of child sex offenders and Jack Bauer-esque torture of baddies. Large crowds of the public used to come along to watch public executions. If the public are presented with the question 'do you think the police should be allowed to lock up suspected TERRORISTS for 42 days?' they will tend to hear the word TERRORIST and think, yeah, throw away the key.

But nothing is stopping the police from investigating and charging terrorists, and juries finding them guilty and judges locking them up for forty years. It is not a case of protecting the human rights of 'terrorists' over the human rights of everyone else including those who are directly impacted by terrorist bombs. And it is wrong to present it in such terms, as the Sun has been doing.

The grief and anger of victims are not sound bases from which to start to start constitution-shredding. Nor is political posturing and playing to the gallery about who can look toughest on terror.
42 days has not been needed to stop any plots so far.
42 days would not have stopped 7/7, or the Madrid bombings or the Bali attacks or 9/11.
42 days is not going to stop the downwards plunge in the polls for Brown's Government either, which is really the whole point of it.

Yes - it is that cynical.
It's not about protecting us at all. It's about protecting politicians' ambitions and careers.

Which is why, if by some miracle of whipping and bullying it goes through, it will get absolutely trashed by the House of Lords, and sent straight back again, and thus carry on being a stinking albatross round the neck of an increasingly authoritarian government who show disgracefully little respect for the human rights and liberties of all of us.

If the government really cared about 7/7 victims, why are they so slow with injury compensation payouts and why have the families still not had inquests into the deaths of their loved ones? Why is there a clause in this cursed anti-terrorism bill which allows inquests to be held in secret, without juries?

Why indeed?

42 days: and so it all comes down to this

"The hard politics is very simple: are Labour MPs prepared to defend British civil liberties even if it's at the cost of their own party leader?" - Nick Clegg

Well, you'd bloody well hope so, wouldn't you?

Time to talk to Al Qa'ida?

Vikram Dodd in today's Guardian has an interview with a senior police officer, Sir Hugh Orde, head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, who is tipped to be the next Chief Commissioner. Orde said the experiences of his force tackling the IRA had convinced him that policing alone - detecting plots and arresting people - would not defeat al-Qaida inspired terrorism.

Orde said: "If you look at some of the biggest risks my people have taken it is talking to people who historically they would not have dreamed of talking to. Were we going to actually police our way out of the Troubles? No. Are we actually going to police our way out of the current threat? No."

He added: "It means thinking the unthinkable."

Before everyone flips their lids and starts howling about appeasement and standing strong in the face of terror, and leaving aside the fact that the set-up of the paramilitary Irish mainland-based IRA was and is very different to the Al Qa'ida global franchise, there are solid strategic reasons for talking to your enemy.

Louise Richardson, in her excellent book What Terrorists Want, explains clearly the three things that terrorist groups seek : Revenge, Renown and Reaction. 'There is no greater affront to terrorists than being ignored', she adds.

For a terrorist to be created, you need a disaffected individual, a supportive group and a legitimising ideology. And to deter, contain and prevent terrorism, it stands to reason that you need to know your enemy. Know who your would-be terrorists are, how many of them there are, where they are, what they believe, why they believe it and what support they have in their beliefs and to facilitate their plans.

How can you find this out? Well, you can read books, hold seminars and meetings, set up think tanks, but there is no substitute for actually talking to the people involved and finding out for yourself - whether by recruiting double agents, intelligence penetration and interception, or in secret meetings. Spycraft, intelligence and diplomacy have always been key tools of war, as Sun Tzu pointed out in The Art of War.

The snag is, Al Qaida is not a disciplined, well-funded well-organised group with clear leadership. If it ever was such a thing, it is not now, not since the US and coalition forces disrupted its base in Afghanistan after 9/11. After this set-back, and the capture of many of its active planners and leaders, it morphed and reformed and is now best described as a very loosely affiliated network of people and groups spread across the world who have in common a shared ideology which is anti-Western, anti-democratic, sees violence against civilian and military targets as justifiable in terms of achieving its objectives, which tend to be local, often vague and even personal, and in some cases, hopelessly idealistic and unachievable. A Caliphate is but a dream of a golden age; it never existed and will not come into being now. Other objectives are more measurable and even achievable.


In Spain for example, the Madrid bombings were ''successful'' in that they caused a victory for the party who supported withdrawal from Iraq. In London, the bombers cited UK foreign policy and the Iraq and Afghan wars as justification for bombing those who elected the government who went to war. They also wanted to raise awareness of causes that inflamed and angered many UK Muslims.

As the current 7/7 conspirators trial is indicating, the London bombers spent time in Pakistan and Afghanistan, learning from and talking to their heroes, battle-hardened jihadis/mujahideen before deciding to bring the fight back to the capital of their own country.


Who led the 7/7 bombers? Ostensibly Mohammed Siddique Khan, but he himself took inspiration, and probably clear instruction in bomb-making, anti-surveillance techniques and tactics from others who were based in the mountains of Pakistan.

Are the mujahideen of the distant mountains likely to sit down and discuss their aims and objectives with a British police officer? Not likely. But by talking to those who call themselves jihadi leaders or sympathisers in this country, and hearing what they have to say, it is possible to find out much about the aims, objectives, numbers and levels of support for what they say they stand for. This is extremely valuable information.

It s often assumed that the desire of terrorist groups like Al Qa'ida is to kill as many innocent people as possible. Actually, this is a tactic, not an objective. It's important not to mistake the effects of their actions for their aims and objectives.

Bin Laden himself has laid out many times his objectives. They are

1. End U.S. support of Israel
2. Force American troops out of the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia
3. End the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and (subsequently) Iraq
4. End U.S. support of other countries' anti-Muslim policies
5. End U.S. pressure on Arab oil companies to keep prices low
6. End U.S. support for "illegitimate" (i.e. moderate) Arab governments, like Pakistan

Since 9/11 and the subsequent disruption of his base-camps there, he has managed to further his appeal by issuing proclamations appearing to be backing a series of issues to garner local support in different countries and communities. This shows an adept use of communications and an understanding that his movement can change to being a franchise with a life of its own, even if he is captured or killed or dies of kidney failure. Al Qa'ida is, these days, whatever you want it to be, and that's true if you are a member of a cell that cites Al Qa'ida as an inspiration or a politician making a speech.

If you sit down with those who consider themselves to be Al Qa'ida sympathisers and bother to discover what it is they say they want, you can then do several things: you can choose to demonstrate to them that you are inflexible on their issues and that their tactics therefore doomed to failure, which is a psychological and strategic blow to them, you can demonstrate to the communities who might support them what their objectives are and see if they truly have community support for them, you can indicate that you are reasonable and willing to listen rather than being driven by reactionary vengeful ''crusading attacks against Muslims'' and you can gather information about your enemy and assess his chances of success. You may find that some of his grievances, if not his methods, are legitimate

You also grab back some of the moral high ground. And listening to grievances often takes out some of their poison. It shows that everyone has a voice, and that jaw jaw is better than war, war, as Churchill pointed out.

Being willing to listen is a sign of strength, not weaknesses. Even the Olympian immortal gods, we're told, frequently heard supplication from humans; they did not feel it demeaned them to listen. Angry rhetoric and swingeing attacks on liberties are seen as unfair by those who think they are already victimised and ignored - and such actions have consequences in terms of further radicalisation and hardening of attitudes. So I agree with Sir Hugh; let those who claim to speak for the angry and dispossessed, the bombed and the maimed and the suffering downtrodden Muslims of Britain and the world (which is what Al Qa'ida and affiliated groups claim they do) step up to the plate and make their case.

And we will see with what right and by whose mandate and authority they speak, and what support they really have, what future they plan and how they intend to achieve it, and we will see how attractive to people it really is, and whether it has any real chance of success and support.

We already know of course, and there is a reason why democracy is disliked by hardline fringe revolutionary movements: they know they would never get enough people to vote for them.

Let's hear what those who consider bombing us have to say, in all its paranoid, disjointed, angry, incoherent, idealistic entirety. Then we might have less reason to feel afraid. Though we'd not sell as many newspapers, and politicians would not be able to grandstand as much and pass as many laws.

UPDATE: Just about to go and discuss this on the World Service 6-7pm

Open democracy: A language sea-change?

'According to documents recently published by the National Counter-Terrorism Center, a US agency responsible for coordinating the government response to terrorism, officials are now being asked to stop using terminology that could "unintentionally legitimate terrorism," and reorient their vocabulary away from language that might frame radicals in a sympathetic light. This entails ceasing to describe radical cells as either Islamic or Muslim, and also rejecting the term "Islamist," which experts argue is confusing to the general public. Instead of using words such as jihad or mujahedin, which "have positive connotations for Muslims," the report recommends replacing these terms with "'death cult,' ‘cult-like,' ‘sectarian cult,' and ‘violent cultists'" as more accurate indicators of "the ideology and methodology of al-Qaida and other terrorist groups."

Grounding the report in an awareness of the wider connotations of these terms for Muslims, experts advised that officials must be more "careful and judicious" in "navigating the rocks and shoals of terminology to avoid unnecessarily alienating a large segment of the Muslim community." To this end, the main focus of this initiative is to divorce al-Qaida and other radical cells from control of their own language, or in other words, to distance them from language steeped heavily in historical and religious import, which US officials claim has the effect of legitimating their goals.

toD analysis: While the effort to jettison sweeping terms like "Islamic" or "jihad" in official discourse is definitely one of the more enlightened suggestions made by a government agency recently, what is most striking about this project is its attitude towards its stated target audience, the international Muslim community. In choosing to eliminate words that bear religious and cultural significance to Muslims, the report is clearly attempting to distinguish between extremist groups and the Islamic community at large, an effort that has largely been ignored until now. However, by recasting radical groups in the Manichean framework that is at work now, the report ultimately remains faithful to the same Cold War logic of "us-versus-them" that permits alienation to ferment in the first place. In order to truly attend to the question of the alienation of Muslim communities, the US government must address this issue, and disrupt the cyclical thinking that has structured foreign policy.'
article by
Jessica Loudis

What Terrorists Want

One man from Manchester says that in 2006 he was beaten, whipped, deprived of sleep and had three fingernails slowly extracted by ISI agents at the Rawalpindi centre before being interrogated by two MI5 officers. A number of his alleged associates were questioned in Manchester at the same time and two were subsequently charged. This man's lawyers say his fingernails were missing when they were eventually allowed to see him, more than a year after he was first detained. They say they have pathology reports that prove the nails were forcibly removed.

Guardian today

How can you win against people who are motivated by ideology and idealism? For these people who attack us are not mad, however monstrous and wicked their plans to attack innocent civilians; they honestly believe that they are acting in the name of God to help and revenge their suffering brothers and sisters?

You can only claim to have the moral high ground and to act in the name of freedom and democracy and justice if your deeds bear out your words.

That there are appalling regimes in this world, that there are men who do not scruple to cause innocent blood to flow is not in doubt. But this is not a war that can be fought with armies. It is not even really a war. It is a battle of idealogies, of liberal democracy versus fundamentalism. Tactics and strategy and intelligence to isolate those who wish to cause harm whilst bringing all together in pursuit of our common humanity are our best assets; this conflict plays out in hearts and minds. And in the media headlines. And by stooping so low, by all the acts of wickedness and injustice that we commit, which are then reported around the world and used as propaganda against us by our enemies, we make things worse for ourselves. Much worse.

Revenge, renown, reaction; the unholy trinity that terrorists want.
To commit acts of terrorism, you need a disaffected individual, a legitimising ideology and a supportive group. ( See What Terrorists Want: Louise Richardson)

If you want to fan the flames of hate and rage, today's story gives you more fuel for the bomb makers, if not their bombs.

Sometimes I despair of what we are doing in the name of a 'war on terror'.

Atilla Ahmet renouncing hate makes the Mirror

Musa Ahmet, has just called me sounding thrilled because the story I passed on to the Mirror about his brother Atilla speaking out against hate, and condemning the bombing of civilians has been published today.

When I interviewed him for the Sunday Times, Musa told me about how his brother had stepped in to protect a prison officer who was being threatened by another prisoner. (This was confirmed by the officer who made a statement to the court when Atilla was sentenced.)

When I managed to speak to Atilla in prison to check, he confirmed to me what Musa had told me after a phone call with his brother - that he wanted to apologise to the British and American people for the things he had said before he was jailed. Like this

This change of heart came about after Atilla got away from his extremist gang and began studying the Qur'an for himself in his cell. Musa had described when we talked to me how Atilla had often been heard been 'banging on the wall' of the adjoining cell to Musa, calling out to Musa how he was realising as he read that what he had been told was wrong, and there was nothing about killing civilians - especially women and children - or condoning suicide or suicide bombing in the Qur'an.

Yesterday I spoke to Atilla again. He said he was very keen to 'make things right' when he came out of jail; he hoped that he could get involved in anti-extremism work 'because I know how to get to them and say it, they will listen to me because I was there, I've done it, I was one of them'.
He asked me to come and visit him and I said I would do so as soon as possible.

Atilla is currently in isolation in the hospital wing for his own protection from the other Muslim prisoners, because of what he has said and done. It takes courage to apologise; it takes guts to say you are wrong and to try to make it right. Respect to Atilla for what he is doing.

The Mirror was the paper who outed Atilla as a hate-preacher when he was speaking at Friday prayers outside Finsbury Park Mosque, so he is really pleased that they have recognised his change of heart and reported it accurately.

Not quite as much space given to the new improved Atilla as the old scary ranting Atilla, but that it made it in at all is another hopeful sign.

Looking for Paradise: Musa Ahmet's story

This is the original Sunday Times article, before editing. The link to the ST and discussion of the article is in the shorter post below this one

Ever since I was caught up in the London bombings of 7 July 2005, I have tried to learn more about terrorism. To understand is not to condone, nor to forgive. But I believe that by studying the roots of radicalization, we have a better chance of preventing atrocities in future.

Last year, I read about Hassan Butt, an ex-jihadi who has renounced extremism and is now engaged in de-radicalisation work. A fortnight ago I participated in a Newsnight discussion about whether Butt, who was co-authoring a book with journalist Shiv Malik about his journey, until police seized the manuscript and notes, should be prosecuted for his past fundraising for terrorism and radicalizing British youths. I argued that if Butt’s outreach work could stop potential suicide bombers, he was more useful to us outside jail.

April 22 sees the launch of Quilliam, a new counter-extremism think-tank, created by former activists of radical Islamist organisations, who are familiar with the mindset and methods of extremist groups. Another hopeful sign. But sometimes I still want to weep.

On Thursday I sat in Kingston Crown court with some of the families bereaved by the London bombings, watching the trial of three men alleged to have conspired to cause explosions on 7/7. The court was shown CCTV footage of the 7/7 bombers’ journey from Beeston to Kings Cross underground network. We saw footage of two of the explosions and pictures of the devastated carriages and bus. We saw a home video of lead bomber Mohammed Siddique Khan kissing his baby daughter, telling her ‘I have to do this thing for our futures’ as he prepared to head off for martyrdom. It was shattering to watch.

Researching extremism led me to blogger and independent film maker Dave Bones, who has spent five years filming the men who used to gather outside Finsbury Park Mosque listening to Abu Hamza preach. A few weeks ago, Dave introduced me to Musa Ahmet, who spent nine months in Belmarsh with some of the UK’s most notorious terrorists and terror suspects before being found innocent and released in May 2007. Musa’s younger brother Atilla is still inside Belmarsh. Formerly the bodyguard of radical cleric Abu Hamza, he is serving 6 years 11 months after pleading guilty to incitement to murder. After Abu Hamza was jailed in February 2006, Atilla led Friday prayers in the streets outside the Mosque. He was dubbed ‘Hate Preacher Atilla the Scum’ by the media. In an infamous interview with CNN in August 2006, Atilla said Bush, Blair, the army, police and banks which charged interest were ‘targets’ and that 9/11 was a ‘deserved punch in the nose for America’.

Musa tells me how his brother has changed inside Belmarsh, stepping in to protect a guard from another prisoner, studying the Qur’an properly for the first time. Atilla says he now understands that the words of the Prophet should not be used to justify violence against innocents. He is being kept in the hospital wing for his own safety. Later, I manage to speak to Atilla on the phone in prison, and he confirms to me that he wants to ‘say sorry to the British and American people for what he said’.

I ask the engagingly friendly Musa, who is smartly dressed in a suit with a shaved head and neatly-trimmed goatee, why his brother said such incendiary things to the cameras.

‘He likes the limelight’ explains Musa, who loves his younger brother, but is of the opinion that his previous business partner and ‘closest person in the world’ ‘lost it’ when he became part of a radical group.

Settling down on my sofa, Musa tells me his family’s story.

Born in Islington in 1959 to ‘strict’ Turkish Cypriot parents who moved to the UK in the 1950’s, Musa was the second of five brothers, with two sisters. Atilla is the youngest brother, (‘he looks older because of his big beard’), and closest to Musa. Their father worked hard to support the family, taking a job as a chef at the Savoy, then working for British Rail, before becoming a textile designer. Musa enjoyed primary school, but his eldest brother had a bad reputation. Aged 11, Musa had his first experience of getting into serious trouble because of one of his brothers when he was falsely accused by the primary school headmistress of letting down her car tyres. His father gave him ‘a right good hiding’.

'I couldn’t believe it. I begged. It was a shame, when you’re a kid and you’re telling the truth and your parents don’t believe you – it hurts. It’s sort of a double smack. But there was nothing I could do, so I had to take it’. But the unfairness rankled, and he began to play truant from school. Aged 13, he and his best friend managed to get work loading scrap metal onto ships at Greenwich Docks, passing themselves off as 18 year olds. Musa gave most of the money he earned to his Mum. ‘I loved it. I preferred working to going to school. I was earning three or four times my father’s wages’. The job ended abruptly when the school found out and threatened to sue the company if the boys did not return to school.

Musa got into gang fights in his teens, and aged 14, spent two years in a young offenders institute. He worked in his father’s textile factory on his release, but another fight aged 17 saw him put into Borstal. Released at 19, he decided he had ‘learned his lesson’. He and his brothers – including Atilla – lived for the weekend, when they would ‘get done up all nice, go clubbing… rock and roll. I loved Elvis and all that, I grew up doing the bop, and I used to pull a big crowd when I danced'

Unlike many of his school friends, he had always avoided hard drugs, and although he considered himself a Muslim, he knew little about Islam. ‘I classed myself as a Brit, doing what everyone else was doing’. Lacking qualifications, Musa and his brothers found themselves unable to get steady jobs. They began working as minders for a Turkish gangster family. Violence, drinking, late nights and girlfriends were a way of life. ‘Me and my brothers, we were well-known to the police’. Then Atilla’s older brother was shot through both legs in the early nineties. Did that feel like a message? ‘Yes’

Both men settled down with women they loved. Atilla married and had four children; Musa's first son was born when he was twenty-three, and he went on to have four more children with his partner.

One day an old clubbing mate came to the café the brothers ran in London’s Old Kent Rd and urged them to join him in embracing Islam. Atilla ‘loved it. He grabbed it straight away. He changed within weeks’. Musa felt that he could not be a ‘strong Muslim’ as he sold alcohol in his club. Meanwhile, Atilla, who had begun praying five times a day and had given up drinking, smoking, swearing and ‘naughty stuff’ was upset that the police seemed to have not noticed his new sincerity. ‘Now Atilla’s become a good guy, but he still wasn’t accepted. That’s why he said in one of his speeches ‘I owe this country nothing. What has this country done for me apart from mixing me with drug dealers, killers…? They’re trying to protect young impressionable Muslims from me… but where was my protection from the likes of the extremists?’

Soon after, Atilla was asked by his new friends to manage security for Abu Hamza at Finsbury Park Mosque. Musa had by now embraced Islam himself, but was not part of the radical group.

Journalists, police officers, spooks and crowds of young men would hang around the mosque watching Abu Hamza talk. The controversial cleric’s speeches were headline news, and soon Atilla began to notice the cameras were trained on him too. ‘Him getting into the papers gave him a buzz. It gave him a big head, because he would run out and get all the papers. He loved the limelight.’

Encouraged by Abu Hamza, Atilla began to give impromptu sermons of his own He copied Abu Hamza’s style of fiery rhetoric, mixed with conspiracy theories and angry condemnations of British and US foreign policy. Musa thinks it unfair that his brother was thrust into such a high profile position, although he admits that his brother did not keep his mouth shut when journalists encouraged him to deliver the controversial quotes that make good copy.

‘There was people behind it, they put him up front…he said at first ‘I can’t do it’. He wasn’t an expert on the Qur’an. He was under a lot of pressure to get a Friday speech together… I know there was a few knowledgeable people behind him, that wouldn’t go up front, wrote for him, said, look, speak on this subject. … Where are these people now? Where were they when my brother was arrested?’

After Abu Hamza was jailed, Atilla became even more outspoken. Musa was horrified when he saw Atilla boast to journalists of his ‘thousands’ of followers and being the 'Number One Al Qaeda in Europe'.

‘He lied. He put himself right in it. Because he didn’t have followers. He didn’t have anything. He said some really stupid things’. Musa tried to get his brother away from the cameras. ‘Me and my friend Kem asked Atilla, what did you go and say that for? And Atilla said ‘I’ve had enough.’ He was giving it up anyway. You know, that was his last media thing.’

Musa maintains that pressure from Hamid, who could be charming but who also 'wound people up', combined with the volatile environment of the group, the increasing media interest and the paranoid fears about police surveillance and infiltration was causing Atilla to become unstable. In August 2006 Musa decided to take his brother to Cyprus, away from the group, to start a new quieter life. But time had run out.

On September 1^st, 2006, Atilla asked Musa to accompany him to a Chinese restaurant where he was meeting ‘some of the brothers’. But Musa was decorating his house and had his family with him. Finally Atilla tempted him with the £5 Buffet Menu. It was to be the costliest meal of Musa’s life.

Musa and Atilla were swept up in a huge police and security services operation to smash an Al-Qaeda-inspired UK recruitment network meeting at the restaurant. The group attended Friday ‘Islamic chat nights’ at the Hackney home of a 50-year old man nicknamed ‘Osama Bin London’ - Mohammed Hamid. Hamid also ran paint-balling and para-military training sessions in the English countryside, which were attended by young men - including 4 men later convicted for trying to bomb the London transport network a fortnight after 7/7. The group had been infiltrated by an undercover police officer, and the Friday meetings bugged. Last month, Hamid and some of the men received sentences of between five and seven years for terrorism offences.

Atilla never went on the training weekends, though he did attend nineteen of the Friday night meetings over two years. Although the prosecution maintained that Atilla was the ‘amir’ – commander- of the group, Musa disagrees. ‘You can’t be the amir in somebody else’s house’.

Musa describes the police raid on the restaurant. ‘All of a sudden, there was vans, cars, coppers, you name it, all running in. The place was filled. ’ Musa watched, ignoring a warning to move on. ‘I thought, well, I haven’t done anything, and this is exciting to me.’

Several police officers then arrested a startled Musa, punching and kicking him to the pavement ‘I’ve been in some rows, but this really scared me. They sat on my neck’.

He was taken to Paddington Green station, hoping he would be released once the police realised that he was not on the list of men to arrest. But the police kept him in, angry and distressed, whilst they searched his house for a week. They found a flare signal kit in his wardrobe, which Musa had confiscated from his son years before. The flare was classed as a ‘firearm’. The police also claimed that they had found a copy of the Anarchists’ Cookbook, which Musa denies owning

Charged at the secret court inside Paddington Green police station, and then locked up in Belmarsh, Musa tried hard not to worry too much about his five children and his future. He describes the atmosphere amongst the Muslim inmates as friendly and brotherly, with people playing practical jokes ‘like the Marx brothers,’ at association time. He became very close to several of the young men convicted for plotting to set off a huge fertilizer bomb in a London nightclub and shopping centre, particularly Anthony Garcia, who was jailed for life in May 2007.

I asked him if the young radicals who had been convicted of plotting the deaths of civilians preached extremism inside, or vowed to continue the struggle on their release.

‘People just want to forget. They just want to have a laugh. They want to phone up their mum, they want to speak to their wife, they’re having a game of pool, having a laugh and a joke.’

Those who planned to hurt innocents, he says, ‘will have to answer to Allah for their actions, for what they’ve caused – and for what they haven’t done.’

Whilst Atilla struggled inside Belmarsh, and suffered claustrophobic panic attacks, Musa says that the knowledge that he was innocent and would eventually be released kept him sane. ‘The thing is with the police, yeah, I was bitter. I am bitter. But I’m not telling them not to do their job. If you look at it, they’ve done a really good job. Look at how quiet it is…you’ve got no one out there screaming, you’ve got no one out there really saying anything anymore.’

Why was he kept inside for nine months?

‘I wasn’t mixing with anybody bad outside. The undercover cop, he knew I was nothing to do with the group. He could have got me out. But he didn’t.’ He frowns. ‘No, I don’t blame them, because they do have to do their job – fifty two people dead. But nine months, I feel it’s too much.’

‘I think they was hoping to find something – thinking ‘if we look hard enough, long enough, we will get this guy.’ It’s possible that they may have just locked me up with my brother to keep me out of the way of the investigation. Or they thought I was financing terror.’

Musa thinks that the hyped-up intensity in radical groups creates the problem with young Muslims ‘This isn’t a Muslim country, you’ve got to follow the laws of the land, like it or don’t like it, that’s they way it is.’ Of the fearsome boasts and the bloodcurdling speeches that landed his brother and so many others in jail he says ‘Sometimes I think, was it just kids, trying to get a buzz, trying to feel big‘

I asked him whether he had listened to the tapes of his new ‘brothers’ inside jail that were played in court and on TV – of them discussing gruesome attacks on UK soil. He has. ‘It sounded like two little kids in cuckoo land, dreaming up something that could never be. I looked at it and I thought ‘Idiots. It sounds like a load of bull’

But the men who bombed London on 7/7 seemed like normal British guys until they murdered dozens.

The subject clearly makes Musa uncomfortable. He maintains of his terrorist friends that he ‘finds it hard to see beyond what I knew of them. It’s strange, because I was with them all my time in there, and I got to know them so personally. I never got to see that side to them. They seemed so bright, they was fun loving…’

What is the magic ingredient, that turns ‘fun-loving lads’ into jihadi warriors on a suicide mission?

‘I think as soon as they get into extremism, if they don’t come out of it, over time it can build up. They get it instilled into them and these youngsters, if they can’t see a future, if they haven’t got anything going for them, and they’re down – it could be any one of those reasons, and they just think – what is there for me? And if you’re promising Paradise, and dreams like that, and they’re in dreamland thinking, Paradise, wives…it could be anything that could turn a person’

He thinks ‘a good percentage, maybe 25%, 30% of the brothers inside would rejoice if there was another 7/7 or 9/11 There is arguments about this subject, we used to discuss this kind of thing in there’. He remains adamant that whilst his brother may have spoken favourably of those training to fight abroad, Atilla has never approved of attacking civilians on UK soil.

How do people who have prepared to kill themselves and others cope with facing the rest of their lives in jail? Musa describes talking to a remand prisoner who surprised him by saying ‘If I’m in here and Allah has decreed that for me, I’m better in here than out there. What am I going to do out there?’ He didn’t mention attacking. He just mentioned that there’s so much sinning going on out there, he would rather be banged up away from it all, being cleansed for 35 years. Lo and behold, the guy’s smiling at me having a laugh and a joke - and then he went and got sentenced - 35 years. And when he came back, he was the same, he still had this smile. For me personally, I don’t think I could cope with that.’

‘There’s a lot of them like that, they believe so much. You have to have strong beliefs… I told you, I’m just a Muslim who does his prayers… I ain’t strong; I would love to be strong. Not like that way, not in the way that I’d want to do some flipping atrocity, just in myself, you know, to be better than I am, to have that kind of faith. There are these guys doing these years and it don’t seem to bother them’

‘I think he’s looking for Paradise, because that’s what he said. He’s being punished now – they always say its better to be punished whilst you are on earth than God punish you there, because the punishment there is going to be totally different to here. Whatever befalls you, you’re still meant to praise Allah.

So people accept it as their fate?

‘Yeah, a strong believer will say this was written for me’

Do you think the bombings were ‘written’?

‘No! No, because that isn’t written…you have the free will to do it or don’t do it. You could have changed it. You could have said no, I’m not doing it. It’s wrong.’

Do many people in Belmarsh advocate bombing civilians?

‘I believe after a taste of prison, a lot of people have come to their senses’

Musa was released after the jury found him not guilty of the firearms charge. The terrorism charge relating to the Anarchist’s Cook book was dropped. When he finally came out, he cried with relief. He was particularly worried about his five children, who had ‘gone haywire’ whilst he was inside.

I ask Musa if he thinks his brother was preaching hate ‘outside’. Musa says no, then talks about the pressure of the media wanting controversy, and Atilla playing to the cameras. ‘When you are new to Islam, you take what knowledgeable people say. If you don’t have the knowledge, you have to take it from these people, and if it’s the wrong knowledge…he’s at the learning stage still, he hasn’t studied himself to know this is wrong…. So all of a sudden, he’s there, he’s doing security, the media are there, things are getting out of hand… ‘

I ask Musa if he thinks it would make a difference if the people teaching Islam were more experienced, given that a lot of people who get involved in extreme Islam, like Atilla, know very little about theology. Musa agrees that is it is easy ‘to put people on the wrong road, that people new to Islam are vulnerable to the wrong messages.’

‘Knowing what you know now, would you let your kids listen to Abu Hamza?’

‘No’.

Musa is visibly shocked when I tell him that the security services say there are a couple of thousand people believed to be actively involved in attack planning. ‘Where are they then?’ he asks. ‘Because it’s so quiet. Why has not one or two of them succeeded?’

As we talk, sirens blare outside Finsbury Park mosque and the Muslim cafes outside my flat. I wonder how hard it is being a young Muslim these days.

‘There are loads of Muslims, they get raided because someone’s phoned up intelligence or M15 and said, look, this guy’s bad. And they find some kind of literature. That’s enough to warrant the police putting them in prison. And they’re going, look , you had jihadi material, you had extremist material. And yet the person isn’t [extremist]. You can always find extreme material, like in Hadiths and this and that, even some verses in the Qur’an. And people think whoa, don’t like the sound of that. But the police are arresting them. There are so many people like that, they don’t deserve to be in jail. Not everybody in there is having that view of ‘let’s go and bomb someone.’

But you have to stop the people who want to detonate bombs. Musa agrees. I ask him if he has a message for people.

‘Yes. Ask for evidence. Even a newcomer has the right to be shown the evidence’

‘Learn from your teacher, but be careful who your teacher is?’

‘Yes. Definitely’.

I guess that is all we can hope for. That people will realise that self-righteousness and rhetoric is not the same as discovering the facts for yourself. That submission to God is not the same as vengeance against unbelievers. That some dreams of Paradise lead to hell on earth.

I hope that Musa ‘s fierce brothers do temper their anger in future. Without figureheads, and cameras, and column inches, with time to study and learn from those who have renounced violence and hate, they have a chance. I’m crossing my fingers.

Additional Research – Dave Bones