deporting your mistakes

This is not exactly unexpected:

Greater Manchester Police have released without charge all 11 men arrested a fortnight ago in the north-west of England over an alleged terror plot. The last two men to be released have joined nine others given their freedom last night.

Gordon Brown had claimed the operation uncovered a "very big plot" against the UK.

Says Greater Manchester’s copper in charge:

"We can only operate to one standard - that is people are innocent until proven guilty." He praised the professionalism of his officers. When asked if the arrests had foiled a major terrorist attack, he said: "We do not know that. We cannot say that. That starts to imply guilt against those people involved."

Shame the Prime Minister couldn’t observe that fairly basic distinction. The Pakistani nationals have been “given their freedom” in the sense that they have been turned over for deportation to the Borders Agency on the grounds that they are “a threat to the country”, despite no such threat having been found after prolonged and exhaustive investigations of the individuals concerned. It is, however, within the government’s power to punish them in some way, and so it has been done. I’m only surprised that they weren’t charged with wasting police time.

Meanwhile the various cops and spooks involved seem to be blaming each other for the whole mess after, you’ll recall, a senior counter-terrorism officer apparently blew the case by revealing briefing notes live on TV. The intelligence services now seem to be implying that there was no evidence there anyway, that the cops rushed the whole thing and that they wanted the arrests pushed back to some unspecified time in the future, which presumably includes “never”. The government are making a big play about insisting that the soon to be deported embarrassments are not tortured on arrival, while the Pakistani foreign minister wants to know why if nothing has been found against them they cannot be allowed to complete their studies. I assume he’s also wondering why the British have the sheer bloody nerve to call Pakistan a failed state.

Comments

[Fellow Traveller]

Deportation orders no doubt have a much lower burden of proof on the part of the State. 'We don't like the look of him' represents sufficient grounds to send a man back whence he came.

[Phil]

Yep. If the Home Secretary deems that the deportation of Mr X would be "conducive to the public good", and would not violate the Human Rights Act, then Mr X is served with a deportation order and informed of his right to appeal. Not that the right to appeal amounts to much. Borders Agency guidance says that

"while each case will be considered on its merits, where a person is liable to deportation the presumption shall be that the public interest requires deportation. The Secretary of State will consider all relevant factors in considering whether the presumption is outweighed in any particular case, although it will only be in exceptional circumstances that the public interest in deportation will be outweighed [other than in HRA cases]."

In other words, if the Home Secretary says you need to go, then we presume that [s]he's got it right, and we don't anticipate changing our minds very often with regard to this one.

[Chris Williams]

ooh, the latest report in the Graun appears to indicate that the Met have joined MI5 in taking a couple of sharp steps back and leaving GMP to face the music:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/22/11-men-released-anti-terror-raids

"It is understood anti-terrorist officers in the Met disagreed with their counterparts in Greater Manchester that the arrests should be made. But the concern that there was a threat to the public led to the decision being made to move in."

Gotta love that passive voice!

[Phil]

Cf.

[red]

I've just posted on this - I'm inclined to think the raid at the time was quite handy for the Met. And clearly Brown was briefed on it. If the Met/Home Office/police reputation repair team didn't suggest the timing they must at least have been thrilled to bits when it happened.

When it all goes wrong, it;s time to wheel out the "not us, bad apple somewhere else" schtick, I suppose.

[Martin Wisse]

It's all been a typical New LAbour distraction move, hasn't it? High profile arrests to take attention away from an embarassing fuckup, then quit release on a day the newscycle is dominated by the budget. For added spite, deport the victims.

[Phil]

Oops. I meant (with regard to the passive voice) cf. this.

[ajay]

So, apart from the ones who helpfully revealed themselves by setting themselves on fire or trying to detonate themselves on tube trains, have we actually arrested, tried and convicted any Islamic terrorists at all in the last five years?

[Richard J]

I was wondering that myself. It would be helpful to the securicrat's case if they could actually point to any, y'know, actual terrorists they've caught.

[Chris Williams]

We got a few white supremacists.

[Chris Williams]

But aside from that, there _was_ the 'fertiliser bomb crew', who appear to have actually done something on the way to making a bomb - like buying a big bag of fertiliser, leaving it in a lock-up and shooting their mouths off over what they might want to blow up with it once they'd made it into a bomb. Seems to me that they at least were bang to rights. Any more? Phil?

[Richard J]

So the dreaded Islamic terrorists we've caught turn out to be numpties that even MI- sorry, the UVF, would have rejected as loud-mouthed fuck-witted incompetents.

[jamie]

There was the part time taxi driver and his mate from round here who apparently had top al Qadea telephone numbers written in invisible ink.

[ajay]

Good point. Omar Khayam and the fertiliser bombers were kosher terrorists. (Or, rather, halal terrorists.) And the invisible ink guys, and the chaps who wanted to behead a Muslim soldier in Tipton. So there have actually been a few.
If they can grab another two or three, they might have enough for a football team.

[Phil]

Are we counting the mystery chemists with the airline... oh, convicted. Never mind.

In half-hearted defence of CONTEST, it is very much about using intelligence-led policing to disrupt terrorist ops before they can rise to the level of a prosecutable offence, so you wouldn't necessarily expect a given number of intelligence-led interventions to lead to the same number of prosecutions. (On the other hand, you wouldn't necessarily expect the interventions to take the shape of a size ten boot, either.) The problem is, at the same time that the police have been given this mandate to disrupt, the definition of a terrorist offence has been widened massively, which means that the definition of actionable evidence has also expanded. There's not that big a gap any more between "intelligence good enough to intervene" and "evidence good enough to prosecute" - so the absence of the latter has got to call the former into question. No wonder 5 and the Met are sidling away.

[Chris Williams]

So they're approaching an arrest:successful conviction rate of nearly _1%_ so far. Cases in the pipline might, they say, knock it up to 10% Real Soon Now. OTOH, 'sources' have been saying this about 'cases in the pipeline' for at least a couple of years now, and this has yet to happen.

[Chris Williams]

In other news (and it _is_ buried in other news) there appears to be a breaking uncovered terrorist ricin plot _with some actual ricin_. But the perps are pasty and eat pork, so move along, there's nothing to see. Just a little local story:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wear/8085982.stm