Published on Tuesday, August 15, 2006 by Craig Murray

I have been reading very carefully through all the
Sunday newspapers to try and analyse the truth from
all the scores of pages claiming to detail the
so-called bomb plot. Unlike the great herd of
so-called security experts doing the media analysis, I
have the advantage of having had the very highest
security clearances myself, having done a huge amount
of professional intelligence analysis, and having been
inside the spin machine.

So this, I believe, is the true story.

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None
had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have
passports, which given the efficiency of the UK
Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane
bomber for quite some time.

In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in
many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to
convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that
individuals intended to go through with suicide
bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in
internet chat rooms.

What is more, many of those arrested had been under
surveillance for over a year - like thousands of other
British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me.
Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need
for early arrests.

Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details
of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes -
which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a
year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of
the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making
people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in
Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary
information this way. Trouble is it always tends to
give the interrogators all they might want, and more,
in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What
it doesn't give is the truth.

The gentleman being "interrogated" had fled the UK
after being wanted for questioning over the murder of
his uncle some years ago. That might be felt to cast
some doubt on his reliability. It might also be felt
that factors other than political ones might be at
play within these relationships. Much is also being
made of large transfers of money outside the formal
economy. Not in fact too unusual in the British Muslim
community, but if this activity is criminal, there are
many possibilities that have nothing to do with
terrorism.

We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and
Blair discussing the possible arrests over the
weekend. Why? I think the answer to that is plain.
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 shovelled.

We then have the appalling political propaganda of
John Reid, Home Secretary, making a speech warning us
all of the dreadful evil threatening us and
complaining that "Some people don't get" the need to
abandon all our traditional liberties. He then went
on, according to his own propaganda machine, to stay
up all night and minutely direct the arrests. There
could be no clearer evidence that our Police are now
just a political tool. Like all the best nasty
regimes, the knock on the door came in the middle of
the night, at 2.30am. Those arrested included a mother
with a six week old baby.

For those who don't know, it is worth introducing
Reid. A hardened Stalinist with a long term reputation
for personal violence, at Stirling Univeristy he was
the Communist Party's "Enforcer", (in days when the
Communist Party ran Stirling University Students'
Union, which it should not be forgotten was a business
with a very substantial cash turnover). Reid was sent
to beat up those who deviated from the Party line.

We will now never know if any of those arrested would
have gone on to make a bomb or buy a plane ticket.
Most of them do not fit the "Loner" profile you would
expect - a tiny percentage of suicide bombers have
happy marriages and young children. As they were all
under surveillance, and certainly would have been on
airport watch lists, there could have been little
danger in letting them proceed closer to maturity -
that is certainly 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. Of the over one thousand British
Muslims arrested under anti-terrorist legislation,
only twelve per cent are ever charged with anything.
That is simply harrassment 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
terrorism, but of some minor offence the Police
happened upon while trawling through the wreck of the
lives they had shattered.

Be sceptical. Be very, very sceptical.

Craig Murray was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from
August 2002 to October 2004. He can be reached at: http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/index.html