Dangerous terrorists arrested in the UK weren't

Remember the urgent raids British cops conducted two weeks ago after the names of potential terrorists leaked when a top official got out of a cab, holding a top secret memo that the newspapers photographed and published?

Remember how this publication had the potential to tip off these scary terrorists about their impending arrests?

Turns out that the police didn't find any evidence, though they held the men for 13 days. Then they let them go.

All of 12 men arrested over a suspected bomb plot in the UK have now been released without charge by police.
Eleven of the men have been transferred to the custody of the UK Borders Agency and now face possible deportation.
The Crown Prosecution Service said there was insufficient evidence to press charges or hold them any longer.
The Muslim Council of Britain said the government behaved "very dishonourably" over the treatment of the men should admit it had made a mistake.

No charges after anti-terror raid (via Schneier)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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pmhparis

anon #18

I agree in part with your arguments and often with Cory on the oppressive “snitch on your neighbor” that seems to be creeping into the UK however the screed he posted: “All charges dropped so they MUST be innocent” goes way beyond any facts he could possibly have.

The “warning terrorists plots surround us” message is is coming from the left like labor & even red ted in a country that has undeniable problems with terrorist sympathisers in their midst. This from a country that found a way to resolve their prior terrorist threat relatively peacefully, yet now we should all assume the worst of them all the time as Cory seems to be doing? Not for me.

takuan #20

So discrimination is OK as long as the oppressed are people you mislike? How enlightened of you. Sure, that’s a yardstick we should all live by…

SF #24

I’d assumed that the UK govt had justification in pushing for deportation but the details didn’t get this far yet. Thanks for the info.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  I’d assumed that the UK govt had justification in pushing for deportation
  
  The road to hell is paved with those kind of assumptions.
beneditor

You see, Cory, this is why we in Britain are not afraid of the Big Brother ambitions of the UK govt. They’re just too incompetent to pose any real threat to us.
Takuan

we’ll take all the good ‘uns. But no bleedin’ Thacherites!! (yes, they LIVE!)
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  British expats just became an endangered species.
OLAF9000

I knew it! from the very beginning this sounded fishy to me, like always the uk guberment goes on a witch hunt 4 the lulz and produces antilulz of fail proportions! yet one more reason to avoid this country on my future tour of erupe! ill use my tourist dollars elsewhere.
Takuan

if the UK has abandoned the rule of law, what is the point in living there?
Baldhead

#25- So… they solved the last terrorist issue (presumably you mean the IRA) peacefully. This is true. it’s also true that they didn’t do it by conspicuously assuming all irishmen/ red- haired folks/ catholics/ people with cameras and/ or studying famous objects were suspect.

Instead they looked for real, solid evidence before making arrests.

Current tactics have no similarity to how they did it last time. Which is kinda funny since last time worked pretty well and this time seems to lead to such a high percentage of arrests that lead to no charge and general harassment of innocents. It just shows that not only are they barking up the worng trees they seem somewhat unsure what a real tree even looks like.
The Jones Ultimatum

Hmm,I am thinking they must have found something to be able to kick them out.
Unless of course they were all agent provocatuers,and Bob Quick got wind of it and decided”not on my watch”-and acidentlly on purpose leaked the top secret document(which the journos filmed last week)resulting in the loss of his job.
I thought at the time of the top secret leak that theres no bloomin chance in hell a top notch anti terror cop would flash a document like that to the press-I mean come on,the guy knows the press are there,and knows full well the capabilities of their lenses…part of his job i would have thought.
Would he really have made such a silly “mistake?”
Anonymous

#13

You can assume, and I can completely understand why you’d rationally expect those actions to be based on that thinking but you can’t actually know. Even parts of the English judiciary are coming out and saying you shouldn’t blindly accept that people with life and death power won’t abuse it. We’re not talking about special “The Man” conspiracies, we’re talking regular human failings but in people with lots of power so the scope for abuse is scaled up.

If you wouldn’t trust an MP’s expenses claim, why would you trust them with this? The problem is that no one is even bothering to come out and present reasons for the decisions that have been made. They’re being deported, maybe because they’re bad people or this could be purely to stop them selling their story to the News Of The World. We just haven’t got any evidence to the contrary.
dd528

There seem to be a few different issues here, which need separating out.

First is the arrests themselves. Obviously, the police can arrest anyone as long as they have a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed or is imminent. The men were held in custody for as long as was legally permissible, at which point the Crown Prosecution Service decided there was insufficient evidence to press charges, and the men were released from police custody. This process is the same as for any crime, with the one difference that the police can hold terror suspects for a longer (but still finite) period of time.

I read in an article, but unfortunately I can’t now find the link, that a lawyer representing some of the suspects was quite happy with the arrests and their release; the process was carried out well within the rule of law, and the men suffered no abuse at the hands of the police.

The second issue is what happens to the men after their release from police custody. As I understand it, one of the 12 men is a British citizen, and so presumably has been allowed to walk free. Of the other 11, 10 were in the UK on student visas. I have not seen the status of the other man stated explicitly in any news source. These 11 men have been turned over to the custody of the UK Borders Agency, and the government is pushing for them to be deported to their home countries.

I believe 6 of the men are from Pakistan; I’m not sure of the nationality of the rest.

The government is pushing for deportation on ground of national security.

What it comes down to is an evidence issue. A relatively high amount of evidence is required in order that the CPS recommend criminal prosecution in any case. On my understanding, however, a student visa, can be revoked by the Home Office at any point, for any reason. This is one of the conditions to which it is subject. As such, the government is well within its legal rights to seek to deport these men. It may be the case that there was insufficient evidence to press charges, but there was a substantial body of evidence nonetheless. As such, the government is suspicious of the men, and feels it is in the national interest to deport them. I would wager that an overwhelming majority of British citizens would support such reasoning, whatever my own personal views.

The problem is that the government is not renowned for its transparency in these matters. When the men were first arrested, various government and police sources spoke as if there was overwhelmingly conclusive evidence of these men’s guilt. When it turned out there was not even sufficient evidence for the a case to be brought to court, obviously doubt was cast on the nature of the evidence in the first place. That doubt now persists, because the government revealed only the barest details concerning what the nature of the evidence against these men is.

If there is insufficient evidence for a criminal prosecution, but still enough to point to a real security risk, then the government should demonstrate that this is the case, and would likely find it had majority support in attempting to deport the men. People will, at least, be free to make up their own minds.

If, however, the evidence turns out to be flimsy, clearly serious questions need to be asked about why the men were arrested in the first place. It may be that there is significant evidence pointing to a serious risk, but the government is doing itself no favours by playing its cards close to its chest on this one.

I don’t wish to jump to the government’s defence. It may be that what they have done is indefensible. I do think though, that people should bear in mind that “insufficient evidence for a prosecution” does not mean no evidence at all. And I think the government should bear in mind that the longer it refuses to explain itself, the more and more justified the British people are in being suspicious of every one of its actions.
dd528

@ #27:

“Which is kinda funny since last time worked pretty well”

I think the Birmingham Six, Maguire Seven and Guildford Four might disagree with you there.
mannakiosk

“So discrimination is OK as long as the oppressed are people you mislike? How enlightened of you. Sure, that’s a yardstick we should all live by…”

It’s good that someone stands by the Thatcherites when they are discriminated against.

They must be allowed to live their lives in accordance with their nature, kicking the poor in the nuts while getting rich by exploiting the workers.

It is their inherent right, which no one shall discriminate against!
Takuan

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/25/terrorism-islam-police
Robert

Those men held without finding evidence against them must be quite angry. Perhaps they will be 12 Angry Men!
Takuan

if they had been allowed to waterboard them, they could have convicted the lot!
dd528

@ #28:

Sorry, seems I was wrong on a couple of details. This article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8012838.stm

suggests that all 11 men who have been handed over to the Border Agency were Pakistani nationals.

It also suggests that the Home Office does require some evidence to revoke a visa, but this falls short of the standard of evidence required for criminal charges to be pressed.

It seems that the Special Immigration Appeals Commission is likely to hear whatever evidence there is in favour of deportation behind closed doors. I find this worrying, to say the least.
nanuq

“Perhaps they will be 12 Angry Men!”

Especially since they are about to be deported. Charming.
dragonfrog

Well, they are here on student visas, and they’ve just skipped two solid weeks of school, right around final exam time. Hardly evidence of diligent studiousness, is it? Might as well send them home, they’re obviously going to flunk out anyway.
ThermobaricTom

What I found interesting was that these arrests are being used as promotion for the ID card system. I have seen many Police and Government officials talking about the “missing foreign student” who could be terrorists.

So an arrest with no evidence= Political gain?
The Unusual Suspect

They were found to be harmless, they have no criminal history, they were here lawfully on student visas… and they’re going to be deported anyway?

Stay classy UK!
knodi

What’s the standard of evidence required to press charges or hold them longer? Were they found with bomb components, but no written plans for a bomb? Or was it just photos of the subways that spooked somebody?

Was this like the “missing WMDs”, where a lot of honest people sincerely believed we’d find ‘em? Or was it a purely manufactured case, for the entirely cynical political gain that it appears to be?
desiredusername

I would suggest the strategy of arresting everybody and then letting the good guys go.
Gilgongo

When I pointed this out to my dad the other day, he said that such things were necessary: you can’t take the risk of ignoring threats. When I said there were surely limits to this, and that it was silly to totally and utterly over-react to the slightest unfounded load of cobblers about men with beards about to blow us all to hell, he said no – we have to be careful. 10,000 beards inconvenienced is worth one person kept alive.

Words fail me – where are we all going with this??
Ceronomus

If a “Top Official” is waving around a top secret memo in such a way that the press is ABLE to photograph it? It sounds like HE is the one that should be locked up under the…is it called the Official Secrets Act or somesuch?
Anonymous

Isn’t this sort of routine for Great Britain? Don’t they arrest various alleged terrorists and then always seem to be letting them go? They are either incredibly inept or their standards for evidence are extremely overly narrow. What do you have to do, get caught actually lighting the fuse?

I thought ex-president Bush only did this sort of thing to instill fear in the general populace and drum up support and votes.
DWittSF

A bit of wog bashing is always handy to keep the populace in line, eh guvnor?
pmhparis

the only things reliably known about the 12 are:
- That they were suspected of preparing a terrorist act
- That the UK government decided to arrest them prematurely because of a security breach
- That the UK govt has decided that they do not have a sufficient level of proof to convict them on terrorism charges
- That the UK govt has decided that is has sufficient proof to deport them as undesirable

While Cory can jump to the conclusion that these guys were completely innocent, I can assume, with just as much justification, that they were exposed before enough conclusive proof was assembled to convict, yet enough was found to make deporting them an intelligent act.
Anonymous

@ Gilgongo #9
“10,000 beards inconvenienced is worth one person kept alive.”

We can be more accurate than that. If each person is inconvenienced by having 13 days of their life wasted, doing that to 10,000 people would take up 356 years. Since the average age is about 40 and the life expectancy about 80, you’d need to save at least 8 or 9 people to be worth it, more if there are repeat inconveniences.

(Not written in earnest)
Patrick Dodds

Ceronomus – the “top official” fell on his sword honourably quickly after the gaffe.
As to the “evidence” that was amassed – I read that it was pictures of tourist attractions and conversations during which those under suspicion arranged to meet, possibly, I guess, at said tourist attractions. There you have it of course – going out as a group to popular places in possession of a camera – string ‘em up.
Sadly, Ken Livingstone (for those of you not reading from the uk, a former original political thinker with something to offer) recently came out in favour of Gilongo’s dad’s position – clear the streets of facial hair if it saves one life. Way to go Ken, trash your reputation in one easy move.
sf

“Something occured to me-if these guys have legit student visas and were released without charge,how the hell can the gov boot them out of the UK?”

They can kick them out as they are in breech of their student visas by not actually attending (and in some cases not even enrolling for) their college courses i.e they were not here for there stated reason the visa was issued.

I suspect their absence is probably what flagged them anyway “Hello Immigration? I like to speak to the Entry Clearance Officer, we were supposed to receive 12 students on visa enroll for classes but it has been 3 weeks and none have turned up yet…”
Anonymous

I think that the signs that the British police have put up are just terrible, asinine and extremely big-brother like, but this article doesn’t quite get it all right. Its true that the charges were dropped, but there have been reports that the evidence that the police had in this case was NOT admissible in a British court. Several ministers alluded to the fact that the evidence was from a wiretap, which is legal to get in the British Justice system, but its not admissible in a court.

Just putting it out there.
The Jones Ultimatum

From what i heard on my local radio last night the head honcho of Liverpool cops was basically saying that these 12 were up to no good,but that they couldnt get any evidence or enough to actually charge them.
In other words evil intentions or a thought crime maybe.
He did state his claim quite well,and sounded genuine-but he also said he didnt know what evidence had been gatthered,as his officers only did some of the arrests-it was down to the met and anti terror squad to collect the evidence(who were running the whole operation).
He almost sounded cheesed off that his coppers were not allowed/able to collect said evidence.
Something occured to me-if these guys have legit student visas and were released without charge,how the hell can the gov boot them out of the UK?
Just suspicion?is that enough these days?
Nelson.C

Because, Takuan, if we didn’t live here, we’d live somewhere else. And by “us” I include those who are fucking up the place. Do you really want to share your country with ex-pat Brits who used to be in the Met?