Oil Storms

We will now never know if any of those arrested would have gone on to make a bomb or buy a plane ticket. Most do not fit the "loner" profile you would expect. As they were all under surveillance, and on airport watch lists, there could have been little danger in letting them proceed closer to maturity: that is what we would have done with the IRA.
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. More than 1,000 British Muslims have been arrested under anti-terrorist legislation, but only 12% have been charged. That is harassment on an appalling scale. Of those charged, 80% were acquitted. Most of the few convictions - just over 2% of arrests - are nothing to do with terrorism, but some minor offence the police happened upon while trawling through the lives they have wrecked.

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. Now David Cameron has joined Blair and Reid in the rush to benefit politically from the fear thus engendered. Be very wary of politicians who seek to benefit from terror.

Be sceptical. Be very, very sceptical.

Biljeska o piscu:
· Craig Murray, who was posted to Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004, is the author of Murder in Samarkand - A British Ambassador's Controversial Defiance of Tyranny in the War on Terror