Terrorism

I was looking through an old contacts book the other day (something that sad ageing hacks find themselves doing) and found that a number of people I used to call are now in prison. There was old Abu Qatada’s mobile number: I’d interviewed him in 1999 for The Observer when he was first named as a terror suspect. He outlined then what became the standard line for Islamist apologists: ‘Why do we hate America, why are we enemies of America? This is a question that should be addressed to America. Islam is the enemy, you say it, the West says it. And by America's action it made us the enemy.’ Man of God or Man of Violence, we wondered and it seems the British justice system is having difficulty deciding too.

West Midlands Police have just announced seven arrests as part of an investigation into alleged terrorist activity. This follows the detention of six individuals on similar charges across London yesterday. Together, they reveal just how active the Islamist network in the UK remains and the potency of its ongoing threat. One of those arrested in London yesterday, a convert, Richard Dart (also known as Salahuddin al-Britani) first came to prominence last year when his step-brother featured him in a documentary called ‘My brother the Islamist’. It offered a rare observational view on the inability of one family to comprehend the militancy and millenarianism of their son.

A small silver lining for David Cameron in the ‘cash for access scandal’: on a quieter day, today’s report on the coalition’s replacement of control orders with ‘Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures’ (TPIMs) might have got more attention. The report, published by the Independent Reviewer of counter-terrorism legislation, David Anderson QC, makes for difficult reading for ministers. Before looking at the detail of the report, it is worth remembering that control orders were always a second-best policy.

It’s unusual for The Guardian and The Spectator to agree on anything, but Seamus Milne and our own John R Bradley are sceptical about these Syrian rebels whom we’re being invited to support. Bradley was alone in predicting the Egyptian revolution, and argues in today’s magazine that the conventional wisdom is once again wrong. Who’s backing the rebels? The Qataris, keen to depose the last secular regime in the Arab world. And the Saudis and Israelis, whose hatred of Iran eclipses all other considerations: this isn’t about the Syrian people, but about depriving the ayatollahs of an ally. Some in the West also take the view that the enemy’s enemy is my friend — so the rebels must be good eggs.

The Al-Qaeda preacher Abu Qatada is a Jordanian national who is in the UK illegally (having come here in 1993 on a forged United Arab Emirates passport). The headache he has caused successive UK governments looks like finally reaching a peak. But there is a simple solution to the problem he poses. Last month, not only for the first time in the decade-long Qatada process, but for the first time ever in an extradition case, the European Court of Human Rights cited Article 6 ‘rights to fair trial’ to ensure that Abu Qatada could not be returned to Jordan. The Court had previously played around in the Qatada case only with Articles 2, 3 and 5.

William Hague has transformed the Foreign Office in his 18 months in charge. He inherited a system hardwired with the dynsfunctionality of the Labour years, and it’s almost fixed. But not quite. It has not yet woken up to the wave of what can only be called ‘religious cleansing’ in the Middle East, which I look at in my Telegraph column today. Here’s a rundown of my main points. 1) The killing has begun, and could get worse. In Iraq, about two thirds of its 1.4 million Christians have now fled — being firebombed by the jihadis. Last year, gunmen entered a Baghdad church and killed 58 parishioners. To go to church in Iraq, which Christians have been doing for two millennia, now means risking your life.