Calibrating fear: The liquid bomb plot and the long war

[reprehensor]

http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/paper/index.php?article=4267

By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed ( http://nafeez.blogspot.com/ )

The conviction of Abdullah Ahmed Ali, 28, Tanvir Hussain, 28, and Assad Sarwar, 29, in relation to the liquid bomb plot has been seen as a major triumph for British police and intelligence efforts. Yet, despite this being the second re-trial, the prosecution was still only able to convict the three for conspiracy to murder, including their intent to bring down an airplane – but not to prove their capability to carry out the plot.

Questions raised by this newspaper last year about the technical viability of the plot also remain unanswered. For the plot to work, hydrogen peroxide would need to be present in at least 30 per cent concentration, a state in which it is highly unstable; and it is unclear from the prosecution’s case how the plotters would have supplied the necessary input of oxygen at high concentration to enable an explosion.

Perhaps the biggest unanswered questions remain about individuals allegedly linked to the plot whom the police have shown no interest in arresting or prosecuting. Rashid Rauf, a British citizen of Pakistani ethnic origin, who before this plot, was already wanted by police for murdering his uncle, was described as the plot’s al-Qa’ida mastermind, coordinating it from Pakistan. According to British police sources, Rauf was pre-emptively detained by Pakistani intelligence services under maximum security in August 2006 under US Government orders, an act which jeopardised the ongoing intelligence operation to gather hard evidence about the plotters. Rauf then became an original source for information about the plot, which, according to human rights organisations was obtained through torture.

But despite Rauf’s pivotal role in the case, for over a year the British Government refused to seek his extradition to the UK to stand trial for his alleged role as the plot’s ‘mastermind’. Official British disinterest in prosecuting the alleged al-Qa’ida ‘mastermind’ of the liquid bomb plot was compounded by Rauf’s inexplicable escape from Pakistani maximum security detention, and then by his reported extra-judicial assassination by a US drone late last year...

Continued...
http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/paper/index.php?article=4267

EDIT: See also: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x149725