By Craig Murray

What is most worrying about the sad death of the Brazilian Mr Jean Charles de Menezes, shot to death by police on the tube, is that it is used by the government to further ratchet up the climate of fear. While regretting the death, Jack Straw tells us that the “Shoot to kill” policy must remain, while Sir Ian Blair says that more innocent deaths cannot be ruled out. All this boosts the politics of fear, talking up the perpetual war scenario that justifies increased government authoritarianism.

Our tactics for dealing with potential suicide bombers are apparently borrowed from the Israelis. This is appalling. It is not so long ago that the UK was horrified by pictures of a fourteen year old girl being shot down at an Israeli checkpoint, and an Israeli officer emptying a magazine into her head. Now we are adopting precisely the same tactics ourselves ‘ the unarmed Mr Menezes took eight bullets to the head, not the five originally reported.

What is more, we are now adopting Israeli rhetoric. Any attempt to explain or understand the phenomenon of terrorism is dismissed as “justifying” or “excusing” it. Blair rants that Muslim anger has nothing to do with Iraq, or Guantanamo Bay, or Abu Ghraib, or our support for torturers of Muslims like Karimov. It is rather a spontaneous development, sufficient unto itself, arising in a vacuum from the evil teachings of Wahibbism.

But the truth is that Muslim hatred feeds on some very real injustices. That in no way justifies or excuses acts of terror, which are warped and evil. But the growth of that evil is not, as Blair and Bush appear to believe, the spontaneous work of the devil. There are a few masterminds of terror who are simply psychopaths. But by removing injustice we can remove their ability to recruit, and to operate within a sympathetic community milieu. Announcing a firm intention to withdraw troops soon from Iraq would be a start. Announcing an end to all government to government co-operation with the Uzbek regime would be another good move. We need to reduce the causes of tension.

What will not help is the Blair proposal to introduce detention without charge for three months for terrorist suspects. Over 1200 people have been arrested under government anti-terrorism legislation. Only 18 have actually been convicted ‘ and only a handful of them on anything to do with terrorism. Most were found to have some minor criminal involvement.

Almost all of these were Muslims. Nearly all were innocent and released after the current fourteen days. Holding large quantities of innocent Muslims now for three months is hardly going to reduce tension. Let us not forget that one of the first reactions to the 7 July bombings was to arrange the arrest by Egyptian authorities of a Leeds chemist on holiday there. This was trumpeted on the front pages by our press as a great example of international intelligence co-operation against terror. There has been much less ‘ indeed almost no ‘ coverage of the fact he was found to have no connection at all to the bombs. He just happened to be a Muslim, from Leeds, a pharmacist (Aha! Potential Bomb Maker!) and to have gone on holiday at the time of the bombings. His was one of hundreds of British Muslim names falsely publicised in the UK media in the last three years as part of Al-Qaida.

Do not forget that on the afternoon of poor Mr Menezes’ death, the Evening Standard carried the massive triumphalist headline “LONDON BOMBER SHOT DEAD”. The Standard has not apologised.

There is another point that has not been made about Mr Menezes’ death. He died because of his skin colour. As a Brazilian, his skin tone was not so different from that of the average British Muslim. Had someone with a complexion as white as mine been running around on the underground, they would not have been gunned down by the police.

Of course, Mr Menezes almost certainly died in terror having absolutely no idea who was chasing him. He was not asked to stop by uniformed police. He was suddenly chased by men in plainclothes waving guns. Is it surprising he ran? An eyewitness said that the police did not pull on Baseball caps saying “Police” until after he started running from them. At which point, chased by men with guns, he probably did not spend much time looking back and admiring his pursuers’ headgear. He jumped on a tube, tripped and they shot him dead.

It is time we pulled back from this. To declare this part of an unending war, and the new normality we should live with, shows what a failed and irresponsible government we now have.

The BBC are reporting that another series of terrorist bomb attacks have been targetted at london.

“A number of Tube stations have been evacuated and lines closed after three blasts in what Met Police chief Sir Ian Blair says is a “serious incident”. Sir Ian appealed to Londoners to stay where they were and said the transport system was effectively being shut down.”

For those wishing to follow up-to-the minute headlines from different news sources a news feed is available at the London Friends of Craig Murray Blog.

THE IRAQ WAR AND THE LONDON BOMBINGS

There is a heated discussion in progress at the moment about whether the war in Iraq caused the London bombings. Jack Straw was quoted yesterday dismissing the notion that it had anything to do with Iraq, pointing out that bombers had also struck in countries which did not have troops in Iraq. Tony Blair has made the point that on September 11 2001 Iraq had not yet been attacked. Which is true, although he and Bush had already agreed to do so.

But unlike the bombs in New York and Turkey, these involved young British Muslims. To pretend that the anger of young British Muslims is not stoked by Blair’s foreign policy is just absolute nonsense. Following along with the George Bush international agenda, including the attack on Iraq, has made us deeply unpopular with Muslims everywhere.

On 18 March 2003 I sent Jack Straw an official telegram from Tashkent about US foreign policy in Central Asia, and our support for it. An extract reads:

“4. Democracy and human rights are, despite their protestations to the contrary, in practice a long way down the US agenda here. Aid this year will be slightly less, but there is no intention to introduce any meaningful conditionality. Nobody can believe this level of aid – more than US aid to all of West Africa – is related to comparative developmental need as opposed to political support for Karimov. While the US makes token and low-level references to human rights to appease domestic opinion, they view Karimov’s vicious regime as a bastion against fundamentalism. He – and they – are in fact creating fundamentalism. When the US gives this much support to a regime that tortures people to death for having a beard or praying five times a day, is it any surprise that Muslims come to hate the West?”

It is Iraq, but not just Iraq. It is a foreign policy of oil grab cloaked in hypocrisy, and the impact of that policy on Muslims, that has caused this hate. And that is squarely the fault of Blair and Straw.

None of which justifies the terror. It is probable that most of the people who got killed and injured on 7 July were opposed to Blair and Bush. Only 23% of eligible British adults voted for New Labour. Several of the victims will have marched against the war. Violence just begets more violence.

Nor will it help to rush through yet more legislation restricting civil liberties. It is already against the law to incite someone to commit terrorism. An offence of ‘indirect incitement’, now proposed, sounds very dangerous indeed. It could be just what is needed to silence critics like us.

But perhaps most laughable is the government’s claim that the new legislation is needed to ‘prevent further terrorism’. The idea that you can do that by legislation is laughable.

It is also hard to equate with the other government line, that attacks on London are ‘inevitable’. They are not. Had we not thrown our lot in with Bush, we would not have been attacked. Terrorism is a politically motivated act by human beings. It is not a natural phenomenon like the wind.

We should certainly not change our foreign policy in response to terrorism. We should change it because it was seriously misguided in the first place, and is bringing on us consequences that many of us saw and predicted.

Craig Murray

On Friday we posted an article in which Moazzam Begg discussed possible motivations for those behind the horrific London attacks.

Today, a report from The Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House lays waste to the UK governments claim that the conduct of the “war on terror” and the invasion of Iraq were not important factors in increasing the vulnerability of the UK. According to the Chatham House press release:

“there is ‘no doubt’ that the invasion of Iraq has imposed particular difficulties for the UK and for the wider coalition against terrorism. According to the paper, the situation in Iraq has ‘given a boost to the Al-Qaeda network’s propaganda, recruitment and fundraising’, whilst providing an ideal targeting and training area for Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists”.

“A key problem for the UK in preventing terrorism in Britain is the government’s position as ‘pillion passenger’ to the United States’ war on terror”.

Click here to read the report in full.

During the British election, the Craig Murray campaign was pleased to receive the endorsement of Moazamm Begg, a British man imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay for more than two years and then relaeased without charge. In an article published today, Moazamm talks about what could have driven young British man to blow themselves apart along with so many others.

Gitmo detainee offers motives for bombings

By PAISLEY DODDS Associated Press

LONDON – Moazamm Begg spent more than two years at the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, where some fellow detainees were British-born Muslim radicals or self-proclaimed al-Qaida operatives – the same sort police believe carried out last week’s suicide bombings in London.

During his imprisonment, Begg got to know Muslim extremists who spoke of their anger at the United States. Some talked of attacks. Many were recruited by foreign radicals.

As members of the Muslim minority agonize over how some of their own might have caused such carnage and brace for revenge attacks, Begg – who denied U.S. allegations that he was an aide to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden – offers a glimpse at the possible motives.

Racism in Britain, non-assimilation in some communities, and anger over Iraq, Afghanistan, and the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay might have been factors, the 37-year-old of Pakistani roots tells The Associated Press, six months after being released from the camp in Cuba. Britain negotiated his release along with three other British nationals.

Like many Muslims, Begg says he grew up in Birmingham – England’s second largest city and ethnically diverse – feeling the pull between Britain and Pakistan.

“I talked to many people who were self-declared members of al-Qaida while I was in Guantanamo, and there’s definitely indoctrination taking place in a lot of communities in Britain,” Begg said in a telephone interview with the AP while in London.

Begg described racism that he encountered when he was growing up in the 1980s. Some of his Pakistani friends were beaten up by skinheads, he says. “Almost everyone back then was harassed at some point for being dark-skinned, for being Pakistani,” he said.

But the divide between Muslims and non-Muslims was more acute in regions such as West Yorkshire, which includes Leeds, the northern city where at least three of the four suicide bombers in last week’s attacks are believed to have grown up. The fourth is believed to have been Jamaican-born.

Unlike Birmingham, Begg said pockets of West Yorkshire are dominated by immigrants from specific regions. Many of the groups have not assimilated into British culture, making it easier for radical recruiters to deepen the divide and fan hatred, he said.

The neighborhood where the three suicide bombers are thought to have come in Leeds – 185 miles north of London – is predominantly Pakistani.

Begg says many Muslims living in Britain have been recruited by Pakistani groups to study and fight in Kashmir, a Himalayan border region that both India and Pakistan claim.

“Just like the military doesn’t recruit the old, these groups know to go after the young,” Begg said. “They’re stronger fighters; they’re more impressionable.”

Beyond targeting the young, however, Begg says other issues have fueled hatred in the community – particularly the issue of the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“That is the one issue that has unified the Muslim community recently,” says Begg, who is unemployed but working on a book about his time in Guantanamo. “Even though there are people from more than 40 countries there, most of them are Muslim and that’s what people talk about.”

More than a dozen cases of abuse and mistreatment have been documented at Guantanamo Bay, including details of a military investigation reported on Wednesday where interrogators forced a detainee to wear underwear on his head and attached a leash to his chains.

Another Briton who was jailed at Guantanamo Bay – Feroz Abbasi who grew up in the Croydon, south of London – wrote in his melancholy memoirs penned in prison that he battled shyness, loneliness and suicide attempts before discovering Islam on a backpacking trip through Europe.

Inside the biography are clues that could answer how the young bombers in last week’s London attacks could have turned violent.

Abbasi writes that he read books about Islam and jihad, or holy war, and joined an activist group – S.O.S., or Supporters of Sharia, the strict Islamic law – at Finsbury Mosque, one of London’s largest mosques. Meetings at the mosque left him with fliers describing the plights of Muslims in Chechnya. He later became interested in the Taliban’s fight in Afghanistan.

Although Abbasi admits training as a militant in Afghanistan, the Briton denies being an al-Qaida member.

“One thing is clear: they (the bombers) were motivated more by hatred than the faith of Islam,” said Inayat Bungalwala, spokesman for Muslim Council of Britain.

Begg says it doesn’t stand to reason that Muslim suicide bombers would strike Britain, a country with a high-profile Muslim population where religious and cultural freedoms have been enjoyed to a greater extent than in any other Western country.

“I was religious but it never caused me to feel like I had to carry out attacks,” says Begg. “What has happened is that it appears that the lines are being redrawn with the targeting of civilians who had no apparent loyalty to the country where they lived.”

Begg was in Afghanistan during the start of the U.S.-led war before his capture. He said he was there to start a primary school.

“What I, and what other Muslims struggle with, is the question of why any one could carry out these attacks in a country where we have so much freedom,” Begg says. “Unfortunately I think the attacks will have a profound effect on the Muslim community in Britain before that question is ever really answered.”

The United Kingdom Parliament: Sixth report of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs – March 22nd 2005

61. We conclude that, now that the British nationals have been released from detention at Guant’namo Bay, the Government need no longer keep its diplomacy quiet in the interests of increasing leverage over individual cases. We recommend that the Government make strong public representations to the US administration about the lack of due process and oppressive conditions in Guant’namo Bay and other detention facilities controlled by the US in foreign countries, such as Iraq and Afghanistan. We further recommend that, during the United Kingdom Presidency of the EU, the Government raise the situation at these facilities in the UN Commission for Human Rights…

98. We conclude that the Government has failed to deal with questions about extraordinary rendition with the transparency and accountability required on so serious an issue. If the Government believes that extraordinary rendition is a valid tool in the war against terrorism, it should say so openly and transparently, so that it may be held accountable. We recommend that the Government end its policy of obfuscation and that it give straight answers to the Committee’s questions of 25 February.

Craig Murray reflects on the London attacks

The first thought is obviously that this is appalling; an evil and stupid act. It can have no possible desirable political consequence, and killed entirely innocent people.

The second thought is that we must not rush to judgement. There was no intelligence indicating an attack was in the offing. We should be very wary therefore of the instant analysis of politicians. Jack Straw could be right when he said yesterday it was probably Al Qaida, but he could equally be wrong. This was premature and could stoke up anti-Muslim feeling.

There is a real danger here. It is right to be outraged at this mass murder, but we should proceed with caution and reflection. It was excess of outrage that led British police to frame the innocent Irishmen of the Birmingham 6 and the Guildford Four, leading to over 100 man years in jail served by innocent people.

Were I still in the FCO and considering this as a terrorist incident, I would consider the following. In terms of co-ordinated attacks using public transport systems, this bears some Al-Qaida hallmarks. However the blasts, terrible as they were, were nonetheless small for Al-Qaida. This was much less devastating than Nairobi, New York, Bali or Madrid and appears in that sense more improvised. We have to ask why? It is very normal to get on the tube with a heavy suitcase or rucksack, and the risk of detection getting on with 15 kg of high explosive is not much greater than getting on with 3kg.

The other question is the relation to both the Olympic award and the G8 conference. It seems to me the timing is most unlikely to be coincidental, but the purported Al-Qaida responsibility claim on the internet doesn’t stress either of these. A curious omission.

I by no means rule out Al-Qaida or their sympathisers. But I just want to point out it is by no means a straightforward question. We should wait until evidence and investigation starts to answer some of these points before we jump in assigning blame.