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Post by fretslider on May 20, 2014 16:52:21 GMT -5
By Con Coughlin
The one thing you can count on when dealing with Islamist extremists who freely ply their trade from the sanctuary of the British Isles is that they are fully aware of their human and legal rights. Whether it is through the useful advice provided by civil liberties activists – who more often than not are funded at British taxpayers’ expense – or the result of studying al-Qaeda’s manual on waging judicial jihad against the West, the leaders of British-based Islamist groups know only too well how to protect themselves against unwelcome scrutiny of their activities.
The extensive support network available to terrorists such as the Egyptian-born Abu Hamza al-Masri would certainly help to explain how the radical cleric from north London managed to avoid extradition to America for a decade or more, thereby making a mockery of British justice, as well as undermining the efforts of successive British governments to protect the public from attack. Thankfully we can now bid good riddance to Abu Hamza as he prepares to spend the rest of his life incarcerated in a small concrete cell, with no natural light, in one of America’s notorious “supermax” prisons following his conviction on 11 counts of terrorism in New York.
But if the successful conclusion of this seemingly endless legal saga is a cause for celebration for all those responsible for bringing him to justice, this one-eyed, modern-day monster is unlikely to be the last Islamist radical to lead both our security services and judiciary a merry dance. The life sentence that is likely to be imposed on Abu Hamza in September will symbolise the end of a generation of British-based Islamist radicals who openly rejoiced in the horrors of the September 11 attacks in 2001. But it is unlikely that this will deter the modern breed of jihadists, who arguably pose far more of a threat to our national security than Abu Hamza ever did.
Ask any senior Whitehall security official who poses the greatest threat to our security, and I can assure you they will not reply “Vladimir Putin”, nor the carefully targeted cyber-attacks being orchestrated by China’s People’s Liberation Army. Their greatest fear is the prospect of devastating terrorist operations being launched by the estimated 450 young British Muslims who have travelled to Syria to wage jihad, where some are believed to have undergone radicalisation at the hands of well- organised terror cells such as al-Qaeda.
Tuesday’s conviction of a 31-year-old Portsmouth man for attending a terrorist training camp in Syria shows how seriously the security authorities are treating this challenge. A number of other suspects, including Moazzem Begg, the former Guantanamo detainee and darling of BBC current affairs programmes, are now awaiting trial on similar charges. Add to this all the other radical Islamic groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, that are using Britain as a base from which to campaign for the overthrow of pro-Western regimes – often through the use of violence – in countries such as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, and you get some idea of the scale of the security nightmare our hitherto tolerant approach to Islamist extremism has created.
One of the reasons Britain has struggled to conclude a multi-billion-pound arms deal to provide the strategically important Gulf states with Typhoon Eurofighters is their resentment that the British government tolerates the activities of Islamist extremists based in Britain who actively seek their overthrow. Why, say the Bahrainis and the Emiratis, should they buy arms from Britain, when their opponents are provided with a safe haven in London from which to plot their downfall? In fairness to David Cameron, he has asked British intelligence officials to undertake a thorough review of the threat posed by groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, whose past activities have led the capital to earn the unwelcome soubriquet “Londonistan”.
But even if any of these outfits were to stand accused of indulging in terrorist activities, they will no doubt resort to the same judicial stalling tactics Abu Hamza expertly deployed to thwart the British and American judicial systems for the better part of a decade.
One of the principal tenets enshrined in the al-Qaeda manual is for militants to deny any involvement in acts of terrorism, even when they are presented with incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. That was the case when suspicions first surfaced more than a decade ago that there was something much more sinister to the 56-year-old Abu Hamza’s activities than his north London sermons. To give the British authorities their due, the radical cleric did serve a seven-year stretch following his conviction in 2004 for inciting racial hatred and supporting terrorism. But the judicial system was less successful when it came to processing a request by the American authorities for his extradition to stand trial on a number of more serious terrorist offences.
Part of the difficulty stemmed from the preacher’s absolute rejection of accusations that he and his acolytes had used his London base to orchestrate acts of terrorism, such as providing a satellite phone and advice to Yemeni militants who kidnapped a group of Western tourists in 1998, resulting in the deaths of four hostages, three of them British. To aid his campaign, Abu Hamza also cleverly exploited the protection provided by the European Court of Human Rights to avoid deportation, on several occasions blocking the deportation order on the grounds that he would not be treated humanely if his extradition to the US went ahead.
That it took until 2012 before Theresa May, the Home Secretary, won her legal battle and put the hate preacher on a military flight to America is a testament to the effectiveness of the battle he waged to avoid the clutches of the American judicial system.
Fortunately, the US courts have been less inclined to take his protestations of innocence at face value, not least the quite preposterous claim he made during the trial that, all along, he had been a British spy working with our MI5 Security Service and Scotland Yard to “keep the streets of London safe”. Any lingering doubts about the legitimacy of this remark can now safely be laid to rest, after a senior British intelligence officer took the unusual step of going public to refute the claim.
For all those Americans for whom the September 11 attacks remain a traumatic memory, the conviction of this vile advocate of mass slaughter, by a jury sitting just half a mile from Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan, will be the source of deep satisfaction.
But if the Americans have every right to congratulate themselves for their dogged perseverance, Mr Cameron and Mrs May have less cause for any sense of triumphalism, because, as things stand, Britain today remains just as much a hotbed of radical activity as it did during Abu Hamza’s Finsbury heyday back in the Nineties. These days the intelligence and security services apply immeasurably more resources to tracking and disrupting the activities of terrorists around the globe than they did 20 years ago. Even so, the brutal truth is that this has not yet diminished Britain’s appeal as a bolt-hole and fertile recruiting ground for experienced Islamist militants.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/10844067/Abu-Hamza-is-gone-but-Britain-is-still-a-hotbed-of-radical-hatred.html
The one thing you can count on when dealing with Islamist extremists who freely ply their trade from the sanctuary of the British Isles is that they are fully aware of their human and legal rights. Whether it is through the useful advice provided by civil liberties activists – who more often than not are funded at British taxpayers’ expense – or the result of studying al-Qaeda’s manual on waging judicial jihad against the West, the leaders of British-based Islamist groups know only too well how to protect themselves against unwelcome scrutiny of their activities.
The extensive support network available to terrorists such as the Egyptian-born Abu Hamza al-Masri would certainly help to explain how the radical cleric from north London managed to avoid extradition to America for a decade or more, thereby making a mockery of British justice, as well as undermining the efforts of successive British governments to protect the public from attack. Thankfully we can now bid good riddance to Abu Hamza as he prepares to spend the rest of his life incarcerated in a small concrete cell, with no natural light, in one of America’s notorious “supermax” prisons following his conviction on 11 counts of terrorism in New York.
But if the successful conclusion of this seemingly endless legal saga is a cause for celebration for all those responsible for bringing him to justice, this one-eyed, modern-day monster is unlikely to be the last Islamist radical to lead both our security services and judiciary a merry dance. The life sentence that is likely to be imposed on Abu Hamza in September will symbolise the end of a generation of British-based Islamist radicals who openly rejoiced in the horrors of the September 11 attacks in 2001. But it is unlikely that this will deter the modern breed of jihadists, who arguably pose far more of a threat to our national security than Abu Hamza ever did.
Ask any senior Whitehall security official who poses the greatest threat to our security, and I can assure you they will not reply “Vladimir Putin”, nor the carefully targeted cyber-attacks being orchestrated by China’s People’s Liberation Army. Their greatest fear is the prospect of devastating terrorist operations being launched by the estimated 450 young British Muslims who have travelled to Syria to wage jihad, where some are believed to have undergone radicalisation at the hands of well- organised terror cells such as al-Qaeda.
Tuesday’s conviction of a 31-year-old Portsmouth man for attending a terrorist training camp in Syria shows how seriously the security authorities are treating this challenge. A number of other suspects, including Moazzem Begg, the former Guantanamo detainee and darling of BBC current affairs programmes, are now awaiting trial on similar charges. Add to this all the other radical Islamic groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, that are using Britain as a base from which to campaign for the overthrow of pro-Western regimes – often through the use of violence – in countries such as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, and you get some idea of the scale of the security nightmare our hitherto tolerant approach to Islamist extremism has created.
One of the reasons Britain has struggled to conclude a multi-billion-pound arms deal to provide the strategically important Gulf states with Typhoon Eurofighters is their resentment that the British government tolerates the activities of Islamist extremists based in Britain who actively seek their overthrow. Why, say the Bahrainis and the Emiratis, should they buy arms from Britain, when their opponents are provided with a safe haven in London from which to plot their downfall? In fairness to David Cameron, he has asked British intelligence officials to undertake a thorough review of the threat posed by groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, whose past activities have led the capital to earn the unwelcome soubriquet “Londonistan”.
But even if any of these outfits were to stand accused of indulging in terrorist activities, they will no doubt resort to the same judicial stalling tactics Abu Hamza expertly deployed to thwart the British and American judicial systems for the better part of a decade.
One of the principal tenets enshrined in the al-Qaeda manual is for militants to deny any involvement in acts of terrorism, even when they are presented with incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. That was the case when suspicions first surfaced more than a decade ago that there was something much more sinister to the 56-year-old Abu Hamza’s activities than his north London sermons. To give the British authorities their due, the radical cleric did serve a seven-year stretch following his conviction in 2004 for inciting racial hatred and supporting terrorism. But the judicial system was less successful when it came to processing a request by the American authorities for his extradition to stand trial on a number of more serious terrorist offences.
Part of the difficulty stemmed from the preacher’s absolute rejection of accusations that he and his acolytes had used his London base to orchestrate acts of terrorism, such as providing a satellite phone and advice to Yemeni militants who kidnapped a group of Western tourists in 1998, resulting in the deaths of four hostages, three of them British. To aid his campaign, Abu Hamza also cleverly exploited the protection provided by the European Court of Human Rights to avoid deportation, on several occasions blocking the deportation order on the grounds that he would not be treated humanely if his extradition to the US went ahead.
That it took until 2012 before Theresa May, the Home Secretary, won her legal battle and put the hate preacher on a military flight to America is a testament to the effectiveness of the battle he waged to avoid the clutches of the American judicial system.
Fortunately, the US courts have been less inclined to take his protestations of innocence at face value, not least the quite preposterous claim he made during the trial that, all along, he had been a British spy working with our MI5 Security Service and Scotland Yard to “keep the streets of London safe”. Any lingering doubts about the legitimacy of this remark can now safely be laid to rest, after a senior British intelligence officer took the unusual step of going public to refute the claim.
For all those Americans for whom the September 11 attacks remain a traumatic memory, the conviction of this vile advocate of mass slaughter, by a jury sitting just half a mile from Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan, will be the source of deep satisfaction.
But if the Americans have every right to congratulate themselves for their dogged perseverance, Mr Cameron and Mrs May have less cause for any sense of triumphalism, because, as things stand, Britain today remains just as much a hotbed of radical activity as it did during Abu Hamza’s Finsbury heyday back in the Nineties. These days the intelligence and security services apply immeasurably more resources to tracking and disrupting the activities of terrorists around the globe than they did 20 years ago. Even so, the brutal truth is that this has not yet diminished Britain’s appeal as a bolt-hole and fertile recruiting ground for experienced Islamist militants.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/10844067/Abu-Hamza-is-gone-but-Britain-is-still-a-hotbed-of-radical-hatred.html
