Alex Miller
On August 10 the British government's home secretary, John Reid, announced that a major terrorist plot involving the bombing of multiple transatlantic airline flights had been discovered by security services. Reid placed the country's terrorist threat grading at the highest possible level of "critical", meaning that a major terrorist attack is believed to be "imminent".
The announcement led to widespread travel chaos, with hundreds of flight cancellations and the introduction of severe restrictions on what passengers are able to take on board flights as hand luggage. BBC News reported on August 16 that "security experts believe that potentially extremely effective liquid explosives would have been used, taken on board in hand luggage, possibly disguised in fizzy drink bottles. Detonators were to be disguised as electronic equipment."
The August 16 Guardian reported that British Airways alone had to cancel over 1100 flights in the week following Reid's announcement, and that over 20,000 pieces of luggage have gone missing at London's Heathrow Airport.
The "critical" threat level was reduced to "severe"on August 10, meaning that a terrorist attack was still believed to be "highly likely", but the travel chaos continued. In addition to severe delays, passengers have to meet strict rules on hand baggage.
Twenty-three people were arrested on August 10 in raids on houses in East London, Birmingham and High Wycombe. A further person was arrested in the Thames Valley area on August 15. BBC News reported on August 17: "Police investigating an alleged bomb plot targeting UK to US flights have been given extra time to question 23 of the suspects. A judge has granted Scotland Yard police officers an extra seven days to question 21 suspects, and an extra five days to question two. A person arrested on Tuesday, was released without charge."
The mainstream media has been playing up the potential threat. Even the normally restrained Independent on Sunday carried "Target Britain" as its August 13 main front-page headline, with "Terrorists in UK still possess huge arsenal of bombs and weapons" and "Country remains under 'very severe' threat, security sources warn" as secondary headlines.
Peace campaigners have voiced scepticism about the scare. The August 15 Morning Star quoted Stop the War Coalition convener Lindsay German: "This has taken the Israel-Lebanon war off the front pages, distracted the public from the crisis faced by PM Tony Blair and the pressure from MPs for a recall of Parliament to discuss the Middle East situation."
In a post on his website on August 14, Craig Murray, the British ambassador to Uzbekistan until he was withdrawn in 2004 after criticising the Uzbek regime's human rights record, argued that the timing of the terrorist scare was likely designed to draw attention away from the current political problems faced by Blair and US President George Bush.
Murray wrote: "Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for 'Another 9/11'. The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shoveled. In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot.
"Of the over one thousand British Muslims arrested under anti-terrorist legislation, only twelve per cent are ever charged with anything. That is simply harassment of Muslims on an appalling scale. Of those charged, 80% are acquitted. Most of the very few — just over two per cent of arrests — who are convicted, are not convicted of anything to do with terrorism, but of some minor offence the Police happened upon while trawling through the wreck of the lives they had shattered."
In an August 18 comment piece for the Guardian, Murray noted that "Nine days on [since the arrests], nobody has been charged with any crime" and argued that "For there to be no clear evidence yet on something that was 'imminent' and would bring 'mass murder on an unbelievable scale' is, to say the least, peculiar ... I am very sceptical about the story that has been spun.
"None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not have passports. It could be pretty difficult to convince a jury that these individuals were about to go through with suicide bombings, whatever they bragged about on the net.
"What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for more than a year — like thousands of other British Muslims ... Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests."
Murray concluded: "Plainly, Islamist terrorism does exist. But its growth is encouraged by our adherence to neocon foreign policy, by our support for appalling regimes abroad, and by our trampling on the rights of Muslims in the UK ... Be very wary of politicians who seek to benefit from terror. Be sceptical. Be very, very sceptical."