More about the UK plot: UK defends its border procedures

 

The UK government has defended itself against claims by Interpol’s head that it is failing to check visitors against a database of stolen passports. Ronald K Noble, the police agency’s chief, said there was a “clear link between stolen passports and al-Qaeda linked terrorist activity”.

Mr Noble told the BBC’s Today it was “extraordinary” the UK was not making use of the information at its disposal. The Home Office has insisted border officials were aware of the list.

It said any name on the list which was also regarded as a threat by police forces or the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca) would be passed to border authorities.

Mr Noble said in an open letter that only 17 out of Interpol’s 186 member countries systematically checked the passport numbers of incoming travellers against the database. “On the other hand, all countries systematically check our bags to see if we are carrying bottles of water or other liquids,” he said. “These priorities seem misplaced.” He also warned that a British “watch list” had not been passed to Interpol.

BBC NEWS | UK | UK defends its border procedures

More about Australia connection:

Police in Australia have carried out further searches in connection with the suspected car bomb attempts in London and at Glasgow Airport.

Officers have searched the home of Mohammed Haneef, 27, who was arrested as he tried to leave Brisbane international airport late last Monday.

The Indian doctor is related to two of the six people being held in the UK.

Another man, Bilal Abdullah, 27, was remanded in custody on Saturday charged with conspiracy to cause explosions.

The Iraqi doctor is the only person charged over the suspected attack attempts. The charge carries a maximum life sentence.

Over the weekend, anti-terror police were also granted more time to question five of the six other people detained in the UK.

The sixth person, Kafeel Ahmed, is in a Glasgow hospital suffering from severe burns.

According to his lawyer in Brisbane, Dr Haneef has not been interviewed since a magistrate granted police 72 hours of so-called dead time – which allows them to review the evidence and pursue other lines of inquiry – three days ago.

Police will then have 12 hours of interviewing time left available to them, although they could seek a further extension.

However, they have returned to Dr Haneef’s top-floor apartment, close to the hospital where he worked on Queensland’s Gold Coast, to carry out further searches and have towed away his car, a blue Honda Jazz.

Thanks to Stefania, I reach a Daily Mail article: Eight Al Qaeda fanatics working for the police (but they don’t dare sack them):

The dossier was drawn up with the help of MI5 amid fears that individuals linked to Islamic extremism are taking advantage of police attempts to increase the proportion of ethnic staff.

Astonishingly, many of the alleged jihadists have not been sacked because – it is claimed – police do not have the “legal power” to dismiss them.

We can also reveal that one suspected jihadist officer working in the South East has been allowed to keep his job despite being caught circulating Internet images of beheadings and roadside bombings in Iraq.

He is said to have argued that he was trying to “enhance” debate about the war.

Classified intelligence reports raising concerns about police staff’s background cannot be used to justify their dismissal, sources said.

Australia has extended the terror inquiry on Haneef.

Also in UK:

Three men accused of taking part in an extremist Muslim plot to carry out a series of suicide bombings on London’s transport system in July 2005 have been convicted of conspiracy to murder.

Police issued these closed circuit television images of the suspects soon after the events of July 21, 2005 on London trains and buses.

Muktar Said Ibrahim, 29; Yassin Omar, 26; and Ramzi Mohammed, 25, were found guilty Monday of plotting to bomb London’s public transport system on July 21, 2005. Later, Hussain Osman, 28, was also found guilty of conspiracy to murder for taking part in the plot.

The jury, still deliberating on two co-defendents, was sent home for the night after failing to reach verdicts on Manfo Kwaku Asiedu, 33, and Adel Yahya, 24.

Earlier, Judge Adrian Fulford told the jury of nine women and three men he would accept 10-2 majority verdicts on the remaining three defendants, The Associated Press reported.

[…] The July 21 failed attacks happened 14 days after the July 7 London suicide attacks, which killed 52 commuters and four bombers.

The defendants — all from London — denied charges of conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosions.

Four of the men claimed the devices, made from liquid hydrogen peroxide, chapati flour, acetone and acid, were a hoax. Another claimed they were real bombs but that he was duped while the sixth man denies having anything to do with the alleged conspiracy.

During the trial the jury was told by prosecutor Nigel Sweeney that the conspiracy “had been in existence long before the events of July 7” and did not appear to be some “hastily arranged copycat.”

Each bomb was placed in a large plastic container in a knapsack and screws, tacks, washers or nuts, were taped to the outside to “maximize the possibility of injury,” Sweeney said.

Angel has more about Islam in UK.

Other news include:

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ETA-Government negotiations: more shameful details

read No Pasarán: The World can’t Wait:

after ZP won the general election in 2004 following the Atocha atrocities, he decided to present himself to the world as Blair had done in Britain – as the Great Peacemaker. Blair and his group had won the peace in Ulster, and ZP was going to do even better in the Basque Country – by hook or by crook. No-one, and especially no political party, would be allowed to block this crusade. If the chief opposition party found the peace process potentially explosive, or farcical, or a devilishly clever means by which ETA could recover from its then crippled and bankrupt state, and made this view public knowledge – then ZP and his companions would denounce the chief opposition party. They would be hounded in the socialist media, and on the Government-owned TV channels. They would be turned into an ogre by the Administration’s spokespeople. We would be taught to hate the Partido Popular.

Read it all. And yes, a lot more people than MSM tells -but not so many as I would like- are angry at this process.

Also the position of this Government with Cuba has been widely critisized. Now we know why Zapatero had this love relationship with Castro’s brothers:

Cuban dictatorship was used as a post office between Zapatero’s Government and ETA in their negotiations. According to El Mundo newspaper, the Government transmitted to some regime civil servants of the “precriminal detentions” the messages it wanted to send the gang. Cuba wrote them and handled them to the terrorists. This messages, even after the T-4 terrorist attack, were maintained till last april.

[…] The newspaper, in the editorial, maintains that the meddling of the Castroit dictatorship in the negotiations shows the “frailty of the relationship’s ways in which Zapatero was based to put into effect that ETA has already abandoned the weapons“. And reminds that “the president was depending on an intermediary, who was not only a dictatorship, but who has repeatedly shown their sympaties for a band with whom it has a common Marxist ideology“. It concludes that “if we were asking favors of this class to the Cuban government, it is logical to think that there was a price to pay. And that explains our shameful relationship with the Cuban dictatorship and their defense of the international institutions“.

And do you know why this was made? To prevent people to know what they were talking about.

And more:

This contact wasn’t direct at all, because the President Zapatero named a person with reknown international prestige who has been given important posts in other precedent Governments.

The Supreme Tribunal President, Hernando has spoken about this piece of news:

[He] has assured that the ETA’s post office exists and also confirmed that a judge is investigating the relationship between the Government and the terrorist band.

Hernando, who was inagurating in Aranjuez a course about ‘The Judicial Power and the other State Powers“, was asked about the journalistic informations which appeared in relation with the judicial investigations related with ETA.

He did not wanted to comment on them, stating that “normally those news reflect the truth, but in other occasions they are only mere speculations“.

 Interior Minister Rubalcaba has stated that, in the course of the negotiations, there has been contacts with several countries. He also spoke about the latest ETA terrorists’ detentions:

The detentions made a week ago in Paris, were also the object of some questions to the Minister, who assured the journalists that the detentions of Iker Beristain and Liher Rodríguez, summed up to the great quantity of material used to falsify documents, can be considered as the end of the “falsification organization of the terrorist band”. Rubalcaba also told that the police operation has offered “lots of information” which is being analysed and could be relevant.

The Government also asked France to free two ETA terrorists with whom it wanted to negotiate last March. The petition was made on August 2006.

The answer from the French Government was negative. “The problem”, says El País, “is that, in the moment of their detention, the two ETA terrorists were driving a car who had false registration and one of them was armed. No mecanism of emergence can ever serve to protect people who are caught in a criminal act in French territory“.

El País, left-leaning Spanish newspaper, is surprised that in France the law is applied against terrorists. But then foreign people consider it the epitome of independent thinking and journalism…

By the way, tomorrow it’s the anniversary of the brutal kidnapping of PP Councilman of Ermua Miguel Ángel Blanco. He was found with a bullet inside his brain two days later and died that same night. A bus has been travelling throughout Spain remembering him.

The reaction to his death was unanimous. ETA felt the grasp of decent people for the first time. Policemen had to defend Batasuna’s offices.

That was 10 years ago. ONLY ten years ago.

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