Posted on 04/17/2005 11:12:00 AM PDT by quidnunc
After Kamel Bourgass was convicted last week of plotting to make poisons and sentenced to 17 years in prison, ministers sprang to the microphones to claim that the jury's verdict in the ricin trial proved that they had told the truth about the terrorist threat to Britain. But this was far wide of the mark. On the contrary, it was a disaster for those who believe that such a threat exists.
The acquittal of eight of the nine defendants allowed the opponents of the Government's behaviour in Iraq to claim that Bourgass was merely a lone and ineffectual nutcase, that there was no al-Qa'eda conspiracy, and that the threat of a ricin plot was simply cooked up by Tony Blair to justify the Iraq war by mendaciously fuelling a climate of fear, as he had done over Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
The prosecuting authorities effectively stand accused of suborning justice to shore up support for an unjustifiable war. Duncan Campbell, the maverick intelligence analyst, has pooh-poohed the claim that Bourgass's ricin recipe came from al-Qa'eda, and insisted instead that he downloaded it from American internet sites.
Some lawyers involved in the case suggested that the evidence by Bourgass's alleged co-conspirator was obtained under torture. And, in The Times, Sir Simon Jenkins wrote that there was no ricin, no al-Qa'eda plot and that anyone who was alarmed about such a thing was insane. Reality's boot, however, may be on the other foot. For it is surely the Government's opponents who filter everything through the distorting prism of their obsession that Britain was taken to war on a lie.
Evidence suggests that the trial itself was politicised, with the wholly unconnected war in Iraq being dragged in at every opportunity. The jury never actually heard some of the most crucial evidence. It all raises urgent questions about whether the adversarial knockabout and courtroom gamesmanship that characterise the criminal court system can cope with trials of this nature, where public safety is said to be so gravely at risk.
-snip-
This guy's a fruitcake who's now in prison. He's a fantasy terrorist, but he wasn't an actual threat to anyone. He had some basic recipes to 'make' a crude form of ricin which he hadn't managed to successfully do.
What's the problem?
You mean other than the fact that he also stabbed a detective to death during the course of the raid?
Yeah and he's in prison. I was responding to the article which doesn't mention the murder...
Several related articles here, posted by ScaniaBoy:
Ricin terror gang 'planned to unleash terror on the Heathrow Express
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1385333/posts
You should read the articles in the thread I just posted in my post 5, then you get a better picture.
This guy is an Al Qaeda terrorist.
Yes, I've read all of the press stories. The Al Qaeda link is unproven. The plots were essentially fantasies, this guy had no ricin and couldn't make it.
Sure, and 9-11 was just a fantasy too.
After all, prior to that all we had is a bunch people taking flight lessons, how innocent can that be, right?
A more appropriate analogy would be if you had guys watching airline movies. I'm not saying that a fantasist can't be dangerous. And now he's locked up.
"Senior Whitehall officials have told The Telegraph that Bourgass and some of his associates intended to target the busy rail link between central London and Heathrow Airport. The plan was to place ricin, a fast-acting and potentially lethal home-made poison, on hand rails and in lavatories on the trains. "
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1385333/posts
"And now he's locked up."
Yeah, for a big 17 years. Rather too long for a fantisist; rather too short for a terrorist.
Yes he had a plan to put some ricin on some trains. But he didn't have any ricin. That's the bit that makes him a fantasist.
Any link between Bourgass and the other defendants (in a terrorist sense) was never established. I place little store in what 'senior Whitehall officials', aka Labour spin merchants, say. There is an election coming, it's in their interests to look like they're nailing massive terror plots.
Well, if you plot to carry out terror attacks, you deserve what you get, even if you don't actually have the means to do it. He's already serving a life sentence for the murder, so there's no need to feel sorry for him.
That's exactly why they want to spin it.
Which sounds better?
(a) Some really evil, cunning and dangerous terrorists were planning to attack us, but we thwarted them in the end, although a brave policeman lost his life defending his country.
(b) We let a crazy loon who fantasised about being a terrorist into the country illegally. While here he stabbed a policeman to death before we caught him, then made a total botch of the trial by trying to link him with a load of people who he had randomly associated with, but we had no actual evidence against.
Oh I agree. But the story was already out, so they spin it as best they can, it's what they do.
(Brits unclear on the concept of anti-terrorism)
I don't think Britain is unclear on the concept of anti-terrorism since we have been fighting it for decades.
Lets not mention where those terrorists got most of their money to kill innocent British children from shall we! :)
Ah, but you largely were until it finally dawned on you that handling terror as a law-enforcement issue was a recipe for failure
For evidence of that, read this:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1385218/posts
But then when you found out what was needed to effectively fight the IRA you couldn't stomach it and shrank back in horror.
As for Irish-Americans funding the IRA to a large extent, that was true.
I don't know of any al queda plots succeeding in Britain, so it has worked so far.
But then when you found out what was needed to effectively fight the IRA you couldn't stomach it and shrank back in horror.
Erm did we? Your hatred of all things British makes you blind to the fact that Northern Ireland remains part of the UK, while the IRA are being forced to disband without achieving their goals.
As for Britain shrinking from the IRA only someone who doen't know what he is talking about could say that. If anything the IRA and their apologists moaned about British "intimidation" like the SAS shooting dead three IRA terrorists in Gibralter without arresting them first.
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