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SCOTLAND YARD has appointed its first woman commander of the Special Branch to lead the fight against terrorism at a time of greatly heightened security concern.
Mother and Commander fighting terrorism
By Stewart Tendler, Crime Correspondent
SCOTLAND YARD has appointed its first woman commander of the Special Branch to lead the fight against terrorism at a time of greatly heightened security concern.
Commander Janet Williams joins Eliza Manningham- Buller, the head of MI5, in the front line of anti-terrorism intelligence, and is in charge of 560 officers responsible for gathering intelligence on terrorist suspects, protecting the Prime Minister and combating espionage.
Mrs Williams took up her post last week at a time when Special Branch is running 90 counter-terrorist operations a month. Mrs Williams has never worked in the branch before but is a highly experienced counter-terrorism detective. In the 1990s, she was with SO13, Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist branch, investigating IRA and Middle Eastern terrorism.
Now in her early 40s, Mrs Williams, who is married with children, is a graduate who joined the Metropolitan Police in 1982. She was Chief Superintendent in charge of Enfield until early this year when she was chosen to go on a course for potential chief constables.
Two other women head Scotland Yard frontline units. Detective Chief Superintendent Sharon Kerr runs the Flying Squad and Commander Cressida Dick is head of Operation Trident, which combats gun crime in the black community.
However a report two years ago showed that 95 per cent of the Branch’s detectives are male. One reason may be the traditions and work of one of the units, the nearest thing Britain has to a secret police.
It was formed in 1883 as the Special Irish Branch to fight Fenian bombers who had attacked targets including the offices of The Times, and was renamed in 1888. In its time, Special Branch has spied on Lenin, protected Sir Winston Churchill and interrogated Cold War spies. Once recruited to the branch, officers often complete their careers there.
November 30, 2003 at 06:23 PM in Special Branch | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Times Online - Newspaper Edition
IT WAS just before dawn last Thursday when armed officers from Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist branch swooped on the home of Sajid Badat and his parents in the maze of narrow streets around Gloucester city centre.
The quiet, hard-working student, who appeared to his friends and family as a devout young Muslim and the “bright star” of his local mosque, was now a suspected terrorist.
David Leppard and Nick Fielding
Within hours police found about a kilogram of PETN, a powerful military-grade explosive that can be moulded into almost any shape.
The operations were part of a nationwide trawl. On the same day detectives arrested a 33-year-old man and raided several addresses in Birmingham.
Badat’s arrest opened a new chapter in Britain’s war on terror. For the first time since the September 11 attacks on America, explosives had been found in the possession of a suspected Islamist terrorist in Britain.
The most senior police officers are now speaking openly of a “panic” in the hunt for the terror cells. They know they are involved in a race against time. They need to find the terrorists before they strike.
As news of the Gloucester raid spread, people who knew Badat expressed surprise. The 24-year-old Asian Briton was born and bred in the West Country cathedral city. His parents, Mohammad and Zubeida, emigrated from their native Malawi more than 25 years ago.
Sajid, the older of their two sons, attended St James Street primary school in Gloucester before going on to the Crypt grammar in nearby Tuffley where he achieved 10 GCSEs and four A-levels, including physics, chemistry and biology. He left school in 1997.
David Lamper, his former headmaster, recalled: “He was a very cheerful, polite boy who worked very hard and got some good grades. We knew of his devotion to his religion. But there was no inkling of anything more sinister.”
A member of the local Masjid-E-Noor mosque was equally supportive: “I’ve known Sajid since he was a baby. I cannot believe he would be involved in anything illegal. Yes, he attended the mosque regularly and he has led prayers before at Ramadan. But that doesn’t make you a terrorist, does it?” At least six Britons have so far attempted to blow themselves up in suicide operations.They include Asif Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif, who last April took part in an attack on Mike’s Place, a bar in Tel Aviv.
Hanif’s bomb detonated, killing him and three other people. Sharif is believed to have fled after his bomb failed, and was found dead in the sea off Tel Aviv the following month.
All the attacks by British bombers have happened abroad. Some fear it is only a matter of time before the bombers strike in Britain, thanks largely to a change of tactics by Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda organisation.
The relative success of the American government and others in tracking down, arresting, imprisoning or killing members of Al-Qaeda may, ironically, be the main reason why the movement has begun a new kind of warfare against western targets. This is based on the use of home-grown rather than foreign terrorists.
Before the September 11 hijackings, Al-Qaeda’s operations were characterised by multiple simultaneous attacks and the use of foreigners as suicide bombers. At the Khalden training camp in Afghanistan, Islamic militants from around the world were trained to carry out attacks. Fanatically loyal, they went wherever the Al-Qaeda leadership directed them.
“What we learnt was that Al-Qaeda is a top-down structure with command and control very closely controlled,” said Vincent Cannistraro, formerly a terrorism expert with the CIA.
Now that tight organisation has been transformed. In the two years since September 11 the international structure of Al-Qaeda has been heavily damaged. Many of its most important operatives have been arrested or killed; the world total is more than 3,000 in about 100 countries.
Experts doubt whether Bin Laden or his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri — both thought to be hiding along the Afghan-Pakistan border — exercise any day-to-day control over their remaining disciples. It is even questionable whether Al-Qaeda continues to exist as a single, identifiable organisation.
Instead, its methods and techniques are now being treated as blueprints for action by disparate local groups who see themselves as being inspired rather than directed by Bin Laden.
Earlier this year Thabet bin Qais, an Al-Qaeda spokesman, gave a chilling assessment of the new generation of global terrorist. “The Americans only have predictions and old intelligence,” he said. “It will take them a long time to understand the new form of Al-Qaeda.”
That “new form” of organisation sprang from the destruction of its terrorist training bases in Afghanistan. Many of the militants, some with experience of fighting the Americans, scattered back to their homelands. Others returned home after being radicalised in the mosques and madrassas (religious schools) of Pakistan.
Many have taken with them the expertise they were taught in the camps. Their instructions no longer come in the form of direct communications from the depleted and dislocated leadership.
Instead, Bin Laden and Zawahiri have issued a series of tape recordings calling for attacks on vaguely defined targets.
In almost every case the attacks that have been carried out have been the work of nationals of the country in which the operations were mounted. Claims of responsibility, too, are made in the names of unknown, nationally based organisations.
The bombers who hit Riyadh last May, killing 34 people, called themselves al-Muwahiddun (literally Those Who Profess the Oneness of God). The attacks on Casablanca four days later, which killed 33 people, were claimed by Assirat al Moustaquim (the Straight Path).
Bombers who blew up 19 Shell petrol stations in Pakistan at about the same time called themselves the Muslim United Army. The group behind the recent attacks in Istanbul was named as the Great Eastern Islamic Raiders’ Front. All the bombers came from the target countries.
Terrorism experts believe the move to nationally based organisations has direct implications for Britain. In the past, Islamist fanatics regarded Britain as a staging area where finances could be collected and recruits found while they enjoyed temporary shelter from more oppressive regimes abroad. Now Britain — and British interests abroad — are considered a target.
This fear has replaced the complacency in recent months that Britain had successfully contained the threat of terrorism after September 11.
Officials point to two recent developments in Britain that make them fear the worst. The number of warnings from their sources about possible plots has increased substantially.
In addition, several of those warnings are now much more credible.
An increase in “terrorist chatter” and reports from surveillance teams that some suspects were “on the move” led officials at MI5 to assess that the level of threat to Britain had been raised.
The decision was endorsed by the MI5 official who runs the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC), a recently formed unit designed to collate and evaluate intelligence on the Islamist threat.
On November 12 the unit dispatched a confidential security service information report (SSIR) to senior Whitehall officials and to all 43 chief constables in England and Wales.
It did not disclose the sources of the new information, but it warned that there was now a “credible threat” of an attack against “UK assets in Britain or abroad”.
One security official said: “The warning noted that Al-Qaeda was now represented in Britain and that it was intent on doing something.”
The existence of a surveillance operation on Badat and fears about a stash of explosives was just one of several factors in the framing of these warnings.
Just one week after the SSIR, Eliza Manningham-Buller, the director-general of MI5, decided that the agency simply did not have enough resources to cope with the existing threat.
“She made her views plain,” said a Cabinet Office insider. “She told David Blunkett (the home secretary) that there was a growing awareness that the problem is significant.” She reinforced her point by circulating a warning to ministers that a big Al-Qaeda operation was in the pipeline.
Two days later terrorists drove truck bombs into the British consulate and the HSBC bank in Istanbul, Turkey. Three Britons, including Roger Short, the consul-general, were among the 32 people who died. As a result, a Cabinet Office security committee is now undertaking a Whitehall-wide review of counter-terrorism spending.
The Home Office, the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence, the Department for Transport and other ministries have been asked to submit details of their spending on counterterrorism.
But the aim is not to provide new money for the war on terror. Instead, ministers want to “reprioritise” spending within the existing overall security budget, reducing the cash given to some departments so that MI5 can get more.
Manningham-Buller has also told ministers that the sheer size of the “terrorist pool” — the number of potential suspects — and the fact that most of them are living within the law-abiding community of 1.6m Muslims in Britain, has made her task virtually impossible.
The difficulty for the security services is that many of the terrorists are “sleepers” — young men with no criminal records who are not known to the police. Ministers have been told that some are British citizens living outwardly ordinary lives.
MI5 and Special Branch are thought to be running as many as 10 covert surveillance operations against suspected Islamist terrorists. Insiders say there are at least two cells formed by Al-Qaeda members operating in Britain.
Worryingly, suspects have carried out “dummy runs” against potential targets — thought to be shopping centres or large commercial buildings near the M25 motorway.
One security source said a terrorist suspect had been followed driving a car towards a potential target with a cardboard box — representing a dummy bomb — in the boot.
Security insiders said that last week’s arrest of Badat is just the tip of the iceberg as far as their inquiries into suspected Islamist terrorism in Britain goes.
Blunkett told MPs last Thursday that Badat was suspected of having links to Al-Qaeda. He said that the “life and liberty” of people in this country had been protected by his arrest.
However, his comments were roundly criticised by Matthias Kelly, chairman of the Bar Council. He said it was a matter for the courts to decide if Badat had committed any offence.
Police suspect that at least one Al-Qaeda cell has been formed in the north of England. A second cell is believed to be based in the Midlands with links in Yorkshire.
On Thursday police arrested a 33-year-old man and searched several premises in Birmingham. He was released yesterday, but Badat was still being held for questioning last night and more arrests and raids are expected soon.
Police will be questioning Badat about any links he may have had with the Finsbury Park mosque, north London, and about whether he also attended a mosque in Brixton, south London.
A fellow student there was Richard Reid, who is serving three life sentences in America for trying to blow up a transatlantic jet with explosives hidden in his shoe.
Scotland Yard is also concerned about the possibility of synchronised car bombings on targets in the London area. The precise date for the feared attack is unknown.
Sources close to the investigation fear the idea may be for at least two Al-Qaeda teams to drive cars loaded with explosives into crowded areas such as large shopping centres.
This may involve a suicide attack, but it is thought equally possible that the cars, loaded with time-delay bombs, could be left by the terrorists.
The security services are concerned because Al-Qaeda has a history of using the Christmas period to carry out attacks against western targets.
Badat’s arrest has been greeted with relief rather than triumphalism at Scotland Yard. Senior officers even suggest the arrest is not connected to a more serious attack they fear may be coming.
One source said: “This is not a big triumph. A lot of people here are very, very nervous about this.
“They are watching a number of people, not just one or two. The feeling is that some of them may be planning acts of terrorism.”
November 30, 2003 at 11:02 AM in Current Terrorism | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
David Leppard and Nicholas Rufford
The Times
SECURITY services fear a possible Christmas bombing campaign by Al-Qaeda terrorists in Britain. Scotland Yard and MI5 are worried that Islamic fanatics may be preparing to carry out simultaneous attacks on “soft” targets, including shopping centres.
Big retail centres have commercial importance and publicity value for terrorists but little protection.
David Leppard and Nicholas Rufford
Security sources indicated that suspects under surveillance have carried out possible reconnaissance or “dummy runs” for attacks on commercial sites. Those around the M25 near London are thought to be at particular risk.
One senior official, a member of a team evaluating intelligence on Al-Qaeda in Britain, said: “The whole atmosphere is that there is something going on. Al-Qaeda’s way of operating seems to be simultaneous attacks. We don’t know the exact plan.”
Security services in Britain are on the highest state of alert since the September 11 attacks in 2001. In addition to shopping centres and airports, so-called “picture postcard sites” such as Tower Bridge in London are also considered to be at risk.
One official, who sits on a secret committee to monitor terrorist threats to the capital, said: “The police are very nervous and very, very jumpy.”
Earlier this month an Al-Qaeda spokesman warned that terrorists loyal to Osama Bin Laden would deliver “cars of death” against British targets. He suggested the attacks were a response to Britain’s support for America’s war in Iraq.
Eliza Manningham-Buller, head of MI5, told ministers two weeks ago of intelligence that Al-Qaeda could be preparing attacks in Britain as well as overseas. Her agency recently circulated a warning that “British assets” were at risk, placing the country on the second from highest possible state of alert.
David Southwell, a spokesman for the British Retail Consortium, said it was working closely with Special Branch and the intelligence services. However, he said they had not given any warnings that shopping centres were a specific target. “They are a potential target. There are lots of potential targets. In terms of soft targets, anywhere the public gathers could be a potential.”
Robert Clark, research director of the Retail Knowledge Bank, which provides corporate intelligence to retailers, said shoppers could be panicked. “If there is another incident — like more arrests or something actually happens — people will start to avoid city centres.”
The recent high state of alert, which was escalated 18 days ago, is in response to fears Al-Qaeda may have activated a number of “sleepers” in the provinces or veterans of its Afghan training camps.
MI5 received intelligence earlier this year about two British passport-holders who volunteered for a “martyr” squad and trained to carry out suicide attacks. The intelligence came from inmates in the high-security prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where hundreds of terror suspects captured during the Afghanistan conflict are held.
One of the two Britons was recently arrested, but the other is believed still to be at large. He is said to be a black Muslim convert who served time in Feltham young offenders’ institution at the same time as Richard Reid, the shoe bomber. He has convictions for violence and prayed at the Brixton mosque where Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, also worshipped.
During interrogation by American authorities, the Guantanamo Bay inmates gave physical descriptions and helped compose artist’s impressions of the two men, with whom they had trained or fought alongside.
Khaled Sheik Mohammed, the captured top aide of Osama Bin Laden and a mastermind of September 11, confirmed details about the British men. One of Khaled’s roles was recruiting overseas fighters.
As part of a wide-ranging operation detectives are monitoring two suspected Al-Qaeda cells in the Midlands and the north of England. They suspect a third may be in place in a Yorkshire city. Each comprises four or five individuals.
Sajit Badat, a 24-year-old Asian Briton, was arrested during a police raid in Gloucester last week. Further arrests are expected. Detectives are also investigating whether the small amount of military grade explosives recovered in Gloucester is of the same type used by Reid.
Badat was still being questioned last night at Paddington Green police station in London. A 33-year-old man arrested under anti-terrorism laws in Birmingham was released yesterday. Another man arrested and released last week in Manchester has been named as James McLintock, the so-called Tartan Taliban briefly detained two years ago on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border Meanwhile the British embassy in Saudi Arabia said terrorists there may be preparing an imminent attack.
A Turkish court yesterday charged a suspect over the synagogue bombings in Istanbul two weeks ago. These preceded an attack on the British consulate and HSBC bank in the city which killed 32 people.
MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, the government listening centre, are to receive £25m emergency funding to counter terrorism in Iraq, newly released figures have revealed.
November 30, 2003 at 09:15 AM in Current Terrorism | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Yahoo! News - Japan Diplomats Slain in Iraq, Tokyo Says Undaunted
By Masayuki Kitano and Elaine Lies
TOKYO (Reuters) - Gunmen ambushed and murdered two Japanese diplomats and their Iraqi driver in northern Iraq (news - web sites), piling new pressure on the Tokyo government as it weighs a decision on sending troops to help rebuild that country.
An angry Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi vowed on Sunday not to be blown off course by Saturday's deaths -- the first of Japanese in Iraq since U.S.-led forces invaded in March.
"Japan must not give in to terrorism," Koizumi told reporters. "We will firmly carry out our responsibilities for humanitarian aid and reconstruction (in Iraq). There is no change in this.
"Why does this kind of thing happen? I am furious."
The Foreign Ministry later advised all Japanese non-diplomatic citizens to leave Iraq due to the security risk.
News of the murders can only deepen the dilemma for Koizumi, who must balance the demands of vital security ties with the United States with the concerns of domestic voters, who are increasingly nervous about the dangers involved.
A senior leader of Japan's main opposition party expressed outrage and demanded a special session of parliament to deal with the issue.
Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi told a news conference that diplomats Katsuhiko Oku, 45, and Masamori Inoue, 30, were killed in the attack, which occurred near Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s hometown of Tikrit, 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad.
The diplomats' Iraqi driver was also later confirmed to have been killed, a Japanese official said.
Kawaguchi called the ambush "unforgivable," but said Tokyo was undaunted in its determination to fight terrorism and help rebuild Iraq.
Earlier, Kawaguchi had told reporters that Japan would continue to carefully assess the situation to decide when it could send troops to Iraq.
Toshimitsu Motegi, a cabinet minister who had worked with Inoue, said: "I'm sure they'd be upset if their deaths made Japan stop aid -- otherwise, what meaning was there to their efforts?
"We must overcome our grief and go on with reconstruction."
PACIFIST CONSTRAINTS
The two diplomats had been en route to a conference on the reconstruction of northern Iraq to be held in Tikrit, about 10-15 km (6-9 miles) from the ambush site.
Koizumi, whose coalition retained power in a general election this month, although with a reduced majority, risks a serious blow to his popularity if troops are sent to Iraq and deaths occur, political analysts have said.
That would be an especially unwelcome prospect with an election for parliament's Upper House set for next July.
In a sign of trouble, Katsuya Okada, secretary-general of the main opposition Democratic Party issued a statement expressing "strong anger and dread."
"The government must be called to account for the wishful thinking of its predictions and safety measures (in Iraq)," Okada said, demanding a special parliamentary session be called. The Democrats have opposed the dispatch of troops from the start.
An executive of the Buddhist-backed New Komeito Party -- the coalition partner of Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party -- said Japan should be cautious about sending troops and committed to ensuring its citizens' safety, Kyodo news agency reported.
Japan has passed a special law to enable it to send troops to Iraq but, in line with the nation's pacifist constitution, they can only be sent to "non-combat zones" and must take part only in reconstruction and humanitarian work.
Japan has also pledged $5 billion in grants and loans to rebuild Iraq, the biggest donor after the United States.
Tokyo had inched closer to a troop dispatch on Friday, when Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba said a recent fact-finding mission had reported southern Iraq was relatively stable. Japan has been planning to send its forces to the town of Samawah.
A suicide bomb attack in nearby Nassiriya killed 19 Italians earlier in November, forcing Japan to put its plan to send troops by the end of the year on hold.
(Additional reporting by Linda Sieg and Midoriko Morita)
November 30, 2003 at 07:59 AM in Iraq, Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
November 23, 2003
David Leppard
DETECTORS designed to prevent a terrorist “dirty bomb” from being smuggled into Britain are to be installed at main airports.
Ministers are drawing on a special £330m security fund to help pay for the sophisticated “yellow box” machines at Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and all major provincial airports by 2005.
The network of airport detectors is part of Operation Cyclamen, a national strategy to shield Britain from Al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist groups.
Detectors have already been installed on a trial basis at some seaports, including Felixstowe. The metal screeners are large enough for a lorry to pass through.
Nadine Smith, a spokeswoman for Customs and Excise, which is co-ordinating the policy with the Home Office, said: “The coverage will be partly fixed at seaports and airports and partly mobile, with special squads responding to alerts anywhere in the country.”
Dirty bombs — small amounts of toxic or radiological material wrapped inside a large quantity of conventional explosive — are thought unlikely to cause mass casualties, but they could contaminate large urban areas, sparking panic and chaos.
Intelligence chiefs fear an attack using a dirty bomb concealed in a container ship driven into a British port. They have also recently warned that suicide terrorists could use a cargo plane packed with explosives.
Even before last week’s bombings of British targets in Istanbul, the assessment of the threat to Britain from Al-Qaeda was as high as at any time since the September 11 attacks on America in 2001.
Ministers were warned by intelligence chiefs 10 days ago that a big Al-Qaeda operation was in the pipeline. MI5’s Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, a 60-strong team of intelligence officers at the agency’s London headquarters, had learnt that suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists were on the move. Terrorist “chatter” — monitored by the GCHQ eavesdropping centre in Cheltenham — had increased.
Across the country police and security services were told of the prospects of an attack against “UK assets”. Nobody knew where or when it would happen, but it was widely expected to coincide with President George Bush’s visit. MI5 formally raised the threat level from “significant” to “severe general”, the second highest alert.
Both MI5 and MI6 have greatly increased their targeting of Al-Qaeda suspects in the past two years, and intelligence has improved. Last month another Al-Qaeda suspect was arrested in Britain after reports assessed the man as a “significant” threat. The foreign national is the 16th suspect held without trial under emergency anti-terror laws.
In a separate development authorities confirmed yesterday that a plot to buy half a ton of toxic chemical that could have been used to try to kill many thousands was foiled last year.
The approach to purchase a huge amount of saponin, used to help the transmission of molecules through cell membranes, was made last autumn to Amersham Biosciences. Suspicions were aroused because the amount involved was 1,000 times the size of a usual order and came from an Islamic-funded company with a London post office box address.
Experts suspect a mass poisoning plot using a mixture of saponin with ricin or a similar agent, though whether the components could have been successfully mixed has been questioned by scientists.
November 23, 2003 at 10:46 PM in Current Terrorism | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
William Rees-Mogg
At the cost of consuming fish, chips and mushy peas in a Durham pub, President Bush has returned to the United States with a diplomatic success and, inevitably, a better understanding of the balance of British opinion. The President demonstrated that he was a serious and thoughtful man, and not the Texan cowboy of tabloid cartoons.
The President and the Prime Minister showed that theirs is a genuine partnership, with real elements of friendship and trust on both sides. Yet the unforeseen circumstance had the greatest effect. That was the bombing by al-Qaeda of British targets in Turkey. At the start of the President’s visit there were many people who had forgotten the underlying cause of the new Anglo-American alliance — not the alliance that dates back 62 years to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but the one that dates back two years from the bombing of the World Trade Centre.
In London, the weekend before the visit had been one of grumblings about the inconvenience, about the traffic, about the heavy security. The suicide bombs in Turkey, killing British people as well as Turkish, made their point. After the United States, Britain is regarded by al-Qaeda terrorists as their chief enemy. Britain is in this alliance with America and our political leaders work in partnership, because both our countries are under attack. The President’s state visit gave a physical expression to a joint determination to fight terrorism.
Of course, some people have argued that, if Britain had done nothing to provoke al-Qaeda, it might have been spared. I am old enough to remember the same arguments being used by the advocates of appeasement in the late 1930s. If Britain lets Hitler seize Czechoslovakia, they said, he will be satisfied with that. He will not turn on us: Hitler is a German patriot with limited aims.
We now hear the argument that it is the allied invasion of Iraq that has led to the bombs in Turkey and caused these tragic deaths. Yet Turkey is conspicuous as the country which changed its mind about supporting the American action. That did not save Turkey, and it certainly would not have saved us.
It was an additional credit to Mr Bush, which may have contributed to his rising support in British opinion, that it took courage for him to come here. There are at least 100 people in London who sympathise with al-Qaeda and would have been more than willing to murder the President if they had seen an opportunity. It took courage to stay in Buckingham Palace, a rambling old house with Victorian standards of security, as the Daily Mirror proved. It even took courage to go to a pub in Co Durham that had been named in all the newspapers the day before. The President’s secret servicemen must have had an anxious week.
This constant threat is a price that has to be paid by modern political leaders. Tony Blair faces the same danger. No one can have shaken hands with the President without for a second half-wondering whether that might not be the moment a terrorist bomb would explode.
There were, of course, protests, but they came to less than had been expected. The protests were concerned with Middle East policy, primarily with the campaign in Iraq and secondly with US support for Israel. Interestingly, there was little protest from the advocates of European integration, although the balance between Britain’s relationship with the United States and that with “old Europe” is becoming a central question for our foreign policy.
The Americans, as Irwin Steltzer was explaining here last week, are becoming increasingly worried at the risk of losing Britain to Europe which, under Franco-German leadership, they see as increasingly hostile to the United States.
They are concerned about the new European constitution. British politicians are divided. Some are Europhiles who want Britain to make a clear and total commitment to the European Union and its new draft constitution, even at the expense of integration into a European federation. They would accept a common European defence force at the expense of Nato, and a common European foreign policy potentially antagonistic to the United States.
Some hope for a friendly, free trade relationship with Europe, but reject the new constitution and oppose integration into a single European state. If forced into a choice between Europe and the United States, they would probably choose the United States. Others want to leave the European Union and resume full British independence.
At present the Government belongs to none of these groups, but hopes it will be possible to continue to ride both horses, and simultaneously be Europeanist and Atlanticist. Perhaps Mr Blair shares the philosophy of Harold Wilson: “If you cannot ride three horses at once, you should not be in the bloody circus.”
In each of the major parties at Westminster one can find some Members of Parliament who support each of these views. Each party is divided, although the Liberal Democrats are predominantly Europhile, the Conservatives predominantly Eurosceptic, and most Labour members believe, as the Tories used to, in a judicious straddle. It is a very governmental posture.
While the President and the Prime Minister were discussing the Anglo-American alliance in London, President Chirac of France and Gerhard Schröder, the German Chancellor, were discussing the Franco-German alliance. One cannot consider these two relationships separately. As a senior French official put it last week, “the British must choose. Either they are with us, united in Europe, where they should be, or they are destined to become united with America, something like an American state.”
This is an exaggeration. I know many Americans who value Britain’s close alliance with the United States highly but hardly any who believe that a federal merger of British and American sovereignty is either desirable or practical. If our objection to the European constitution is that we do not want to be submerged in a federal structure, we are unlikely to seek a federal marriage with the United States. After all, Canada has never felt it necessary to seek admission to the Union. Nevertheless, there probably will be a choice to be made.
The development of the European constitution, and the ever-closer links of the Franco-German alliance, could present us with the choice British statesmen have been trying to avoid since 1945: Europe or America? Are we a Continental or an Atlantic nation? The combination of the centralisation of the new constitution with the close Franco-German alliance creates the difficulty.
If France and Germany act together, as a federation inside a federation, they can dominate Europe under the new constitution. Even in qualified majority voting terms, they will effectively have the power to block any European laws they do not like. We shall lose our veto, but France and Germany will, in practice, keep theirs. Britain might conceivably be persuaded to join a democratic European federation of the 25. Britain is likely to recoil from a bureaucratic European superstate dominated by France and Germany.
So will other European powers. When I was last in Denmark I was astonished by the depth of Danish fears of Franco-German dominance; they are particularly suspicious of the French. Similar fears are felt in Poland, Italy and Spain. These fears of a Europe which would really become a Franco-German empire, as Germany became the Prussian Empire after 1871, could lead to the rejection of the draft constitution, itself a French document.
Last week’s visit by President Bush confirmed the importance of the Anglo-American alliance to Britain and to the United States. In today’s talks, President Chirac will be discussing the European constitution with Mr Blair. The Prime Minister believes in the American alliance; he also believes in Britain’s European future. The draft constitution would make it impossible for him to remain loyal to both alliances.
If he agrees to President Chirac’s proposal that the constitution should go through almost unchanged at next month’s Brussels summit, the Prime Minister will be opting for integration in a Franco-German Europe, as against alliance with the United States. If that is what he prefers, he must at least be open about it. Such an historic decision is not for him alone: it must have the full, informed consent of the British people, which can be expressed only in a referendum.
Join the Debate on this article at comment@thetimes.co.uk
November 23, 2003 at 08:09 PM in Special Relationship | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Times Online - Newspaper Edition
Leading article: Democracy v terror
Many people in Britain and many more in Turkey are grieving this weekend over those murdered in Al-Qaeda-inspired attacks in Istanbul. Sadly, they will not be the last. Terrorism has become the grim spectre of our times. Britain is on high alert for suicide bombers — two Al-Qaeda cells are said to be planning an outrage here and the police have already foiled a gas attack on the London Underground. Washington has warned of a new threat, this time using cargo jets. In Iraq yesterday, 18 people were killed when suicide bombers blasted their cars into police stations, and disaster was only narrowly avoided when a plane landed in Baghdad after being hit by a surface-to-air missile. These are no longer distant acts of terror; people in the West fear where all this is leading and where the next bombs will strike.
There are two interpretations for this renewed surge of terrorism. Clare Short, the former international development secretary, claims that Britain and America are reaping what they sowed in Iraq. The war acted as a “recruiting sergeant” for Al-Qaeda because of the mishandling of the conflict by George Bush and Tony Blair, who she castigates for “bad leadership” and “terrible errors”. Many who marched in London last week to protest at the president ’s visit to London no doubt agree with her.
There is also a second interpretation: that the military action taken by Britain and America to overthrow Saddam Hussein is part of the wider war on terror and its state sponsors and is a solution to the problem, not its cause. The West responded to an attack on its soil, an attack that was a declaration of war. To have done nothing would have been interpreted as weakness and would have provoked yet more attacks. September 11 was planned under the presidency of Bill Clinton, who had shown little appetite to take on Saddam or even Al-Qaeda. The Taliban gave succour to Al-Qaeda and had to be overthrown. Saddam, too, was a regional threat and that in turn helped to create the instability on which terrorism thrives. Certainly we were misled about his weapons of mass destruction, but it was still right to overthow a tyrant who killed far more of his own people than any western alliance. Now the difficult process of installing a stable, democratic government has begun.
What hope can we find in this grim time? First, however much Al-Qaeda would like to strike at Britain, it is finding it tough. Why else attack soft targets in Muslim countries. There have been bombings in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Tunisia. Tragically, many more Muslims have died than westerners, although Al-Qaeda cares not a jot. We also know that as long as there are young fanatics prepared to strap explosives to their bodies or drive car bombs into buildings, the threat will remain.
We have to get used to a higher level of security and disruption in our daily lives than is desirable in a civilised society. A committee of MPs will this week criticise Britain’s readiness for a big terrorist attack and, in truth, you can never be prepared enough.
All this security must be underpinned by a political vision. That strategy was in part set out by Mr Bush on his visit to Britain. As he put it: “Democratic governments do not shelter terrorist camps or attack their peaceful neighbours; they honour the aspirations and dignity of their own people.” Too often in the past, and America and Britain have both been guilty of this, western governments have been prepared to support tyrants and despots while ignoring democratic rights.
Winning the war on terror, as the president argued, has to mean fostering the spread of democracy: “If the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation and anger and violence for export.” That means following the reformist road of countries like Morocco, Jordan and Qatar, not preserving autocracies such as Syria and Saudi Arabia, the region’s pivotal state. It means that anything less than a settled democracy in Iraq would be a failure. That is a strategy worth pursuing. The war on terror will not be won under this president or this prime minister. But it must be won.
November 23, 2003 at 09:59 AM in Political | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Times Online - Newspaper Edition
Is anywhere now safe? A special report into how terrorists linked to Al-Qaeda struck directly at British interests in Istanbul
Kismet is a word that is little used now in the English language.
It is dismissed as twee; but in its original Turkish it
is still the most common way of explaining luck, providence, fate — the roll of the dice that decides who lives and who dies.
Murat Akif Hazine, a waiter at the coffee shop opposite the British consulate general in the old heart of Istanbul, believes that kismet was at work last Thursday when one of his favourite English customers turned down an invitation to stop for his usual cup of sweet Turkish tea.
The short figure of Roger Short — he was the kind of man who used to joke about how apt his name was — hurried from the consulate that morning to have his shoes shined by a bootblack in the nearby fish market, something that he had been promising to do for days.
As Short returned at about 10.50am, Hazine hailed him. But there was no time for the usual banter. Short had an appointment in the consulate, where he was in the second year of a posting that he adored as Her Majesty's consul general.
Perhaps 10 minutes later his wife Victoria popped out of the consulate's heavy iron gates into Halambasi Street to buy some coffee.
The Shorts had been together for 32 years, spending much of that time in Turkey and neighbouring Bulgaria. They loved the ornate Istanbul consulate building, which was designed by Sir Charles Barry, architect of the houses of parliament.
It was a bit of a mess at the moment due to renovations after a fire, but Victoria Short had restored the Victorian garden — where Agatha Christie once sat and dreamt up a whodunnit — while her husband used temporary office accommodation in a lodge next to the gatehouse.
This office was in a vulnerable spot, but as the Shorts' friend, Lady Logan, wife of the former British ambassador to Turkey, said: "You get on with your life. Quite frankly, what can you do?"
So it was that, just after Victoria left on her errand, a loud boom echoed across the city. Many of those who heard it in the Tepebasi district near the consulate thought it was an earthquake. Minutes later, at 11.07am, the truth became all too horrifyingly apparent.
A green pick-up truck came careering up Yenikarsi Street, lurching from side to side, and swerved left into the consulate gates. There was an almighty bang, followed by a moment of silence — and then pandemonium.
Through the smoke, falling debris, maimed bodies and screaming survivors, it became clear that Roger Short's office had been obliterated. The two-storey building had disappeared.
His wife was still down the street, unaware that their years together, their plans for a peaceful retirement in Istanbul starting at Christmas next year, were over. He had been killed instantly, with two British members of his staff.
"If he had stayed outside with us for tea he would still be alive," said Hazine, wringing his hands outside the only superficially damaged Pano Saraphanesi coffee shop yesterday. "None of us was hurt. A few minutes later and he would have been all right. I call it kismet."
IN Downing Street, Tony Blair had called an early cabinet meeting as he had a busy day ahead with his visitor, President George W Bush. When the ministers sat down it was 9am in London and 11am in Istanbul.
At 9.20am, an official came in with a note. Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, hurried out. He came back with news that was still shocking for all that it had been so long predicted: Al-Qaeda had fulfilled its threats to spill British blood. It, or its affiliates, had successfuly struck at British targets abroad at the very moment when Bush was visiting the ally that had joined him in the invasion of Iraq.
Not only the British consulate had been attacked but also the Istanbul headquarters of HSBC, the British bank, where another huge explosion — the first boom of the morning — had wreaked similar death and devastation.
Bush heard the news before leaving Buckingham Palace to lay a wreath at the tomb of the unknown warrior in Westminster Abbey.
Throughout the hours ahead, as Blair and Bush adapted the long-planned choreography of the state visit to fit the sombre new mood — and as 70,000 of their opponents marched through central London branding them as war criminals — Britain gradually came to terms with the evidence that it really is in the frontline of the war on terror.
To Blair and Bush, this was vindication of their alliance. At a press conference, the prime minister vowed that the fight against global terrorism would not be derailed by "thugs or killers". For good measure, he added that terrorism would not force Britain out of Iraq.
To the demonstrators, however, the carnage in Istanbul was the fault of these two leaders. They were reaping the whirlwind they had sown by invading Iraq. To the British police and intelligence services — and the hordes of Secret Service, CIA and FBI officers who had flown across with the president — there was an emergency to be tackled and lessons to be learnt.
What was the immediate threat in Britain, where the security alert was only one notch below the highest rating? And what had gone wrong in Istanbul that such an obvious target as the consul general should have been working a few feet from a narrow street, for Al-Qaeda's suicide bombers to pick off? This was above all a Turkish calamity, however. Of the 30 dead, 27 are Turks. Furthermore, the suicide bombers were striking at a society that is a model for the American neo-conservative political prescription for the salvation of the Middle East: a functioning Islamic democracy. But it is one with economic, social and security problems that can only be exacerbated by terror.
Its history is evident in old Istanbul, where the 19th-
century British consulate jostled alongside beer halls, spice markets and discos, all squeezed close together in picturesque buildings from a bygone age. Once the heart of the Ottoman capital, today it attracts shoppers and tourists.
This part of town with its twisting streets is horribly vulnerable to bombers. Last weekend they attacked two synagogues, killing 23 people and injuring 146. Now police are sifting for body parts in the debris around the consulate.
The brutal lesson of Thursday is that Al-Qaeda can also strike at a very different kind of target. HSBC's new high-rise headquarters sits on a broad thoroughfare in Istanbul's main business district. Yet it was shattered by a car bomb thought to consist of 500lb of explosive.
The modern and elegant area around the HSBC building might be somewhere in western Europe or America — a fact that illustrates the misapprehension that some people in Britain may have of Turkey as a land of fanatical football hooligans, brutal soldiers, Kurdish terrorists and cheap holidays.
Although Istanbul is at the extreme edge of Europe, it is the continent's largest city and of course one of the oldest. For many of its 12m people, trying to live a modern European metropolitan lifestyle on incomes distinctly lower than those of western Europe, the bombings are the latest in a series of cruel jolts and economic setbacks.
In August 1999 an earthquake in a nearby province killed at least 17,000 people. In February 2001, mismanagement of the economy and rampant corruption triggered a headlong economic collapse which drove many comfortably off families temporarily below the poverty line. Many people fear that they now face more blows to their chances of a decent life.
On the fringes of Istanbul's society, groups of radicals dream of deflecting the country from the path to modernity. If they have now succeeded in scaring away international investors and triggering another economic downturn, they will have advanced their cause significantly.
Like Indonesia and Morocco, other recent Al-Qaeda targets, Turkey is one of a band of countries along the frontiers of the Islamic world where East and West overlap, making it relatively easy for terrorists to strike
at westerners and western targets using short lines of communication.
Turkish public opinion is every bit as implacable where terrorism is concerned as are the country's conservative military and political elites.They will give Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, pretty much a blank cheque to ensure security.
But it is impossible to guarantee protection against suicide bombers who do not mind killing more bystanders than their target victims.
Thursday's attacks, like the strikes on the synagogues five days earlier, are presumed to come from the ultra-religious right groups which view everything modern and western, and even the state of Turkey itself, as the work of the devil.
Members of IBDA-C (The Front of the Great East Raiders), a small, shadowy movement among extreme Sunni Muslims, have been held since the synagogue bombing. IBDA-C assassinated a leading secularist former minister in the 1990s and has attacked synagogues, churches, beer halls and busts of Kemal AtatŸrk, the founder of modern Turkey. But recently it has kept to the sidelines and it is possible that both Turkish and foreign intelligence operations failed to give it sufficient attention.
Analysts of Turkish terrorism say that organisations such as IBDA-C maintain lines of contact with Al-Qaeda and other sponsors of terrorism and act as local subcontractors when a suitable "project" comes up.
Security sources do not believe IBDA-C's remnants had the levels of sophistication required to carry out last week's attacks. "They are incompetent," said a Turkish security source, pointing out that they had once attacked a synagogue by tossing grenades at it on a Sunday afternoon. "Almost certainly the suicide bombers were Turkish and a lot of the intelligence was provided by Turks," he said. "But in terms of operational brains and logistical support and how to put the bombs together, all that would have come from outside."
Organisations such as IBDA-C see themselves as members of a worldwide revolutionary religious and political community.
Their existence is an embarrassment to moderate Muslims in Turkey, especially those who would like to see a pious, conformist version of the religion playing a greater part in the country's life without disrupting the drive to modernise society or the average Turk's patriotism.
Islamic activists in Turkey range from the radical to the moderate. The ruling AKP (Justice and Development party), which swept to power in elections almost exactly a year ago, is the epitome of the moderate pole of thought. It supports Turkey's application for the European Union and the deepening liberalisation this implies. It has continued Turkey's strategic partnership with Israel and membership of Nato. And it did its best to get Turkish soldiers into Iraq to support the coalition there. As such, it is anathema to the radicals.
It was in this complex and explosive milieu that Short was revelling in his last post before retirement. He had arrived in 2001 after working in Brazil, Norway, Bulgaria and most recently Sarajevo, but he had spent the best years of his career on previous postings in Turkey.
A family man with two daughters and a son, he laughed easily and loved to tell stories. He liked to wear white linen suits and was unmistakably English.
He would have been 59 on December 9, but he was not just serving out his time. Intensely interested in the country where he was first posted in 1967 and speaking the language well, he was planning to stay on teaching at Istanbul University.
"He was a really good egg," said Professor Norman Stone, the former Oxford historian who is now teaching in Turkey. They often had a drink together.
The Shorts enjoyed the ambience around their home, the smell of fish frying and the cries of shopkeepers. "It's rather like living in Soho, but nicer," said Logan. "There are clubs and restaurants and a big school nearby. And little arcades where you can buy buttons and haberdashery."
The Shorts were hoping to move into the magnificent main building of the consulate in February after renovation following a fire. It is, with New York and Hong Kong, one of the largest British consulates — a Victorian fantasy of orientalism that held many memories for the Shorts: they danced in its ballroom during a visit by the Queen in 1971, the year of their marriage.
THEIR temporary quarters in the consulate garden seemed serene and safe among the plane trees and rhododendrons. But many in the British community in Istanbul, including Short's surviving colleagues, wish with hindsight that Britain had followed the example of America — which moved its consulate out of vulnerable old Istanbul to fortress-like new premises set on a barren hilltop on the northern edge of the city this year.
After the synagogue bombings, the Foreign Office advised against all but essential travel to Istanbul but appears not to have doubted that the consulate general had adequate protection. The British community felt secure, too.
After all, the last major terrorist attack on British interests in Istanbul was 11 years ago when a far-leftist group murdered the British managing director of an insurance company. The last attack on a senior British diplomat in the city dated back to the second world war when Nazi agents planted a bomb in the luggage of the British ambassador arriving from Bulgaria. He survived but some Turks were killed and there is still a crack in the marble lobby of the Pera Palace hotel a few hundred yards from the consulate. Since the first Gulf war, reinforced steel gates weighing 1½ tons and a crash barrier controlled entry to the consulate. A Turkish police car was parked on protection duty, but there was no attempt to close the road, perhaps because it was a busy junction and closure would have caused chaos.
That was the extent of the consulate's defences as the suicide bomber came up Yeni Carsi Caddesi, crossed Istiklal Caddesi — a pedestrianised thoroughfare that is Istanbul's equivalent of London's Oxford Street — and crashed into the consulate's entrance.
Ramazan Soyturk, a gardener who has worked at the consulate for 17 years, was planting lettuces when the bomb exploded. Running round to the front he saw that the steel gate had been thrown 70 yards. Both Short's office and the consulate clubhouse next door were flattened and Soyturk saw human arms among the rubble.
THERE was no hope for Short, his personal assistant Lisa Hallworth, 38, or another British employee, Scots-born Nanette Kurma, 41.
Cafer and Kiraz Gunduz, a Turkish couple on the domestic staff, were also killed. So was Ismail Ciftli, 36, who was working as a security guard. He had two daughters. His brother Salman, known for being incredibly deferential to consulate visitors, was cut by glass in the blast but survived.
One of the luckiest consulate staff was Huseyin Karacus, 55, a security guard manning the front gate. "There was a sudden explosion and everything came down on top of me. Several minutes later I was pulled out from underneath three bodies," he said.
In the street there was pandemonium. Saadi Ozdemkir, a journalist working for Hurriyet, Istanbul's biggest selling daily newspaper, had been at the chamber of industry nearby. After the blast he rushed towards the consulate, noticing suddenly that people were stepping on human body parts. He came across a woman. "Four to five people went over and tried to lift her head. But she did not want to move and resisted and then stopped moving altogether. That must have been her last breath," he said.
Kulcan Boyun, 30, was killed in a small textile workshop opposite. She had got engaged seven months ago and was due to marry in two weeks. As rescue workers scrambled to save people, a similar scene of carnage was unfolding five miles away at the devastated 18-storey headquarters of HSBC bank in the Levent business district.
Here the first suicide bomb had gouged a huge crater in the road outside and sheared off the concrete and glass facade of the building, shaking windows 10 miles away.
Body parts rained down from the sky. Thick pungent black and yellow smoke rose, and a smell of ammonia and sulphur filled the air as emergency services screamed through the streets.
As Britain's biggest bank, with its headquarters in London and scores of branches in Turkey where it has operated for 10 years, HSBC was a symbol of western consumerism and an obvious target.
Probably nothing could have protected the building, which towers over a wide avenue awash with traffic, from a suicide attack.
"Suddenly everything began to shake and fall down on top of us," said Ezma Ozer who was in the canteen on
the second basement level underground.
"At first we thought it was an earthquake and then somebody said there had been an explosion and we should get out. We had had a lot of drill for earthquakes and for this reason we were able to get
out quickly."
A local doctor said he realised that it was a bomb when an arm came flying through his clinic window. Nevza Atal was half a mile away and rushed to help through streets the colour of ash. He passed a woman with lacerated legs flailing on the ground and screaming.
"There were corpses lying on the corner. One or two people were brave enough to run towards the ruins where they were lying wounded but nobody knew how to help them," he said.
"There was a woman on the ground in front of me trying to comfort and save her little daughter and to cover her with her body. But she was not able to save either herself or the child she was holding and they slowly died."
Yusuf Demir spotted a wounded man lying in front of the bank. Even though he had an arm and legs missing he was trying to move.
"I wanted to help too but couldn't think. I was dizzy with shock. I said, 'You have been hurt. Don't try to get to your feet. Please don't try to turn over'. That was all I could say. How could I tell him he did not have any legs?
"The man stared into my eyes but within two minutes he had stopped moving."
AS the Turkish police investigation and massive clear-up operation went on yesterday and the wounded fought for life in hospital, a sober re-examination was being undertaken of the week's events. Sixteen anti-terrorist police from London flew into Istanbul to assist the Turks and Britain warned that further terror attacks may be attempted.
Turkey is no stranger to terrorism. But it has never faced attacks of such sophistication or such magnitude. For many Turks last Thursday was their September 11.
"People were frozen in their offices, too frightened to stay and too frightened to move and they are still in enormous shock and will be for a long time," said a businessman.
If this is the start of a campaign of terror targeting western interests and Turkish security, the stakes are very high on this bridge between Europe and the Middle East. The evidence unearthed so far about the bombers illustrates not just Turkey's own complexities but also its geopolitical vulnerability.
Turkish investigators say they have identified the two suicide bombers who carried out the synagogue attacks from their identity cards and DNA tests.
One was Mesut Cabuk, 29, and the other Gokhan Elaltuntas, 22. Cabuk had visited Iran, Pakistan and possibly Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001, according to stamps in his passport. Elaltuntas had two cousins in jail for attacks carried out for an Islamic group in the early 1990s.
Both men come from the town of Bingol, a remote
spot 600 miles southeast of Istanbul. This is a place where many girls receive no education and the young men have little knowledge of the outside world as their education is controlled by religious brotherhoods.
If it sounds like Afghanistan under the Taliban, the comparison is apt. As well as being a centre for Kurdish nationalism, Bingol is home to some of the most virulently anti-Kurd groups, who have conducted widespread campaigns of assassination over many years.
Cabuk and Elaltuntas seem to be closely connected to Hezbollah, a local group of extreme Sunnis, many of whom have experience of fighting in Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan with Osama Bin Laden's jihad.
Terror experts suspect that members of the Ansar ul-Islam organisation — a predominantly Kurdish Islamic affiliate of Al-Qaeda which fled from Afghanistan to northern Iraq — may have linked up with the Bingol extremists.
The evidence for such a nexus is subtle but compelling, and it throws a different light on Thursday's bombings.Since losing their main base during the Iraq war, members of Ansar ul-Islam have scattered.
Some probably escaped to Turkey, where they would have found much in common with the Bingol extremists and could also provide them with bombing expertise.
Others are thought to have moved into the main cities in Iraq and to have been behind attacks on Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the Kurdish movement co-operating with the Americans. Jalal Talabani, the PUK president, is the chairman of Iraq's governing council.
At almost exactly the same time as the bombs were going off in Istanbul on Thursday, two more exploded in Iraq, both of them aimed at Talabani's organisation. While this was happening, Talabani was in Turkey as a guest of the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey.
M J Gohel, a terrorism expert with the Asia Pacific Foundation, sees a high degree of linkage between Ansar ul-Islam, the bombings in Istanbul and Talabani's presence in Turkey.
"Since the bombing and destruction of their training camps in northern Iraq by US forces, dregs of the Ansar ul-Islam terror group, affiliated with Al-Qaeda, have dispersed and moved not only into the Sunni triangle based around Baghdad but also relocating to neighbouring countries like Turkey," he said.
"The vehicle bomb attacks that we have witnessed in Istanbul resemble the type of attacks aimed against US and other western interests in Iraq, the style format and ferocity are very similar."
If he is correct, an alliance between Al-Qaeda outsiders and fanatical Turks aimed at destabilising Turkey, humiliating Britain and shaking the power of Talabani in Iraq appears to best describe the agenda of last week's attacks It is a reminder that the war against terror is not simply a matter of Britain and America against Islamic bombers; the complexities of the Middle East's own feuds and enmities are never far from the surface.
At the shattered consulate in Istanbul, under a bright autumn sky, Scotland Yard detectives yesterday began the process of sifting through the rubble. They went on for hours with customary professionalism hoping for a clue that might help them to win a victory in this new battleground against terror.
Watching, their faces grey and lips quivering with emotion, were a small group of Turk storekeepers who had known Short and who mourned his murder. The Union Jack fluttered at half-mast. But Metin Munir, a Turkish friend of Short's for 30 years, remembered his joyful spirit.
"I can't be sad about Roger's death," he said in a touching valedictory.
"It sounds strange but true.Death was his last joke. They didn't kill him. They blew up the building, tore down the wall, broke the trees, burnt the grass, tore up the flowers and put an end to his life. But they didn't kill him.
"Goodbye, Roger. We will be together again in the not very distant future. Don't finish all the McEwan's Export."
November 23, 2003 at 01:01 AM in Current Terrorism | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Why the governess spied on my mother
DESMOND Guinness’s blue eyes flicker with pride every time he talks about his mother Diana Mitford, a Hitler apologist who married the facist leader Oswald Mosley.
When I arrive at Leixlip Castle, ten miles west of Dublin, the farmer and conservationist is in something of a flap. In the corner of his cluttered but cosy study, framed by paintings of horses and old country houses, is a plastic bag bulging with papers which have just arrived from London.
Inside are almost 100 photocopied pages of newly-declassified MI5 files outlining details of surveillance operations on his mother which began five years before she was jailed in 1940. Guinness seems nervous at their contents.
It is now three months since her death in Paris at the age of 93. Her silver-haired son is preparing to write his memoirs, in which he hopes to portray a gentler side to her deeply controversial life.
What really shocked him last week was the revelation that his beloved former governess, whom he fondly called Growler, was an agent paid to spy on his mother. He never knew.
With some bitterness he says: “My grandfather apparently got her to spy on my mother. My governess! I don’t know whether she was paid anything or if she was too proud to take money because I think she was kind of fond of us.
“But it is a terrible thing when one is 72 to realise that this charming old lady was probably on the take. She wrote to me some years ago and I was very fond of her.
“She gave me such a great grounding. She adored my mother, well seemed to. Luckily my mother died before she knew about all this. She would have been heartbroken, for two reasons — that the governess would do that, and that her former father-in-law would pay her to spy.”
So while she gave baths to Desmond and his brother Jonathan, read bedtime stories and tutored them at home, Growler was all the while keeping a note on her employer’s activities.
One MI5 memo based on the governess’s observations shows how close Desmond came to meeting Hitler himself. It says Diana had planned to take her sons to see the Fuhrer in August 1939. The meeting was cancelled because of the imminence of war.
In a letter to the boys’ grandfather the governess wrote: “The children would have known how to greet the Fuhrer for they had been taught to give the Nazi salute and to say Heil Hitler.” Guinness says he remembers nothing of these lessons.
The governess later told MI5 that her mistress had received a number of “instructions” to visit Berlin, which she described as her “calls”. “There is little doubt that she acted as a courier between her husband and the Nazi government,” the MI5 file says of Guinness’s mother.
Regarded as the most beautiful of the famous Mitford sisters, Diana married into the Guinness brewing dynasty. After five years, she divorced Bryan Guinness and took up with Oswald Mosley, the father of British facism.
They were married in 1936 in the Berlin home of Joseph Goebbels, with Hitler as a special guest. Desmond was just five years old. Because of her husband’s politics, Diana Mosley was interned as a public danger in 1940 in London’s Holloway prison.
Guinness still remembers visiting Diana in jail as a ten-year-old. She died 50 years later still refusing to recant her belief that Hitler was a man to be admired.
Despite her infamy and her generally unpalatable political views, Guinness won’t say a bad word against her. But of course he must acknowledge the hostility directed against his deeply unpopular mother and stepfather after the war ended.
“Yes, of course. After the war ended and it became clear how many people had lost their lives in the Holocaust, it was quite understandable that people would not particularly want to continue to be friends with people who were seen as anti-British,” he says.
“But she was a remarkable lady and a marvellous mother. She was very beautiful, very funny. The books on her bring out all but her humour. She was very jolly and made everyone around her very happy.”
He tells the story of how he asked his mother for permission to use a stunning, some would say very sexual, portrait of her by William Acton on the cover of her biography called, with understatement, A Life of Contrasts.
“My dear Desmond,” she replied in her perfect cut-glass accent. “Just the head. Don’t use the bosoms, that is just porn.”
Resigned to her muddied reputation, Guinness’s loyalty is based on what only he can know as her son. Soon he will begin sorting through the boxes of journals and letters which he says will paint a much more rounded and personal picture of her life and views.
“For my memoirs I have so much to go through. I have to get down to get sorting through it. It would be a great pity not to make use of it. I will write about my parents but I have been thinking about what I can say,” he says.
“I have a lot of letters she wrote from Holloway prison which have never been seen. The first time I saw her there, there was a wardress in the room. Then my brother and I were allowed to spent the whole day there and sometimes in the prison garden.”
Diana was one of the six extra- ordinarily-beautiful daughters of Lord Redesdale who famously said he didn’t know which one was more foolish.
Diana’s sister Unity was smitten by Hitler and shot herself in the head when war broke out. Pamela, according to MI5 agents, was “fanatically anti-Semitist, anti-democratic and defeatist”. Nancy fell out with her sisters after satirising their love of Hitler in the novel Wigs on the Green.
Another sister, Jessica, was a communist. The sixth, Deborah, now Duchess of Devonshire, and her brother, Tom, who was killed in Burma in 1945, were described by MI5 as “apolitical”.
Thanks to the unexpected release of the MI5 files, a slightly shell-shocked Desmond now knows that his mother’s internment came after an intervention from his own grandfather, the government minister Lord Moyne.
The files reveal that Lord Moyne wrote to the Home Defence (Security) Executive in June 1940, warning of her “extremely dangerous character” and claiming that her journeys to Germany were to secure funding for the fascist Blackshirts.
His aunt Nancy provided the information MI5 needed to keep Diana behind bars. Nancy told MI5 officers that her younger sister was “far cleverer and more dangerous than her husband.” She added that her sister sincerely desired “the downfall of England and democracy generally and should not be released”.
In case anyone missed the point, she added: “She will stick at nothing to achieve her ambitions, is wildly ambitious, a ruthless and shrewd egotist, a devoted Fascist and admirer of Hitler”.
None of this seems to bother Guinness too much. He says he got on well with Nancy and found her extremely good company in later years.
Guinness, who studied French and Italian at Oxford, claims to be apolitical. He came to live in Ireland after his national service ended, partly because his father lived in Dublin for half the year while his mother lived with Mosley in Clonfert Palace, Co Galway. They later moved to Fermoy in Co Cork and then France.
“I’m sure it was because she was shunned by people in England that she chose Ireland. They were perfectly happy but they didn’t know anybody apart from their immediate neighbours. They lived in the middle of nowhere and didn’t even have a telephone.”
Guinness occupies Leixlip Castle, the beautiful landmark that has dominated the local landscape in some form since 1172 when Adam de Hereford, a a follower of the Norman invader Strongbow, built it at the confluence of the Liffey and Rye.
He lives there with his second wife Penny. He divorced his first wife, Mariga, in 1980 and she died in 1989. He regularly receives famous friends such as Mick Jagger. His granddaughter, the model Jasmine Guinness, often stays with her two-year-old son Elwood. His son Patrick, a historian, and daughter, Marina, live nearby in Co Kildare.
It has been his home since 1958 when, at the age of 27, he paid £15,500, a third of his then fortune, for the property and adjoining 180 acre farm. He says: “I first saw it in 1955 when I was still living in my father’s house near the Phoenix Park.
“He had seen an advertisement for it and got on to me and said ‘Really dear boy, it’s about time’. We had the farm but I spent my time driving around campaigning for the heritage.
“It was a small sleepy village when we moved here. Just 600 people. Now there are almost 20,000. There was nothing in the way of a restaurant or bank. The farm wages came in registered post in cash from Dublin.”
In between listening to Lyric FM and the odd trip to the opera, Guinness is at his most comfortable following his passions for conservation. He founded the Irish Georgian Society in 1958 with Mariga to help preserve Ireland’s rapidly disappearing architectural heritage. He has a role in providing social housing in Dublin as a member of the Iveagh Trust.
His latest battle involves trying to prevent Kildare County Council allowing the construction of a housing estate on open land surrounding the Wonderful Barn, a folly built in 1793.
The barn, conical in shape and with a helter-skelter stone staircase on the outside, was built as part of the Castletown House estate and was widely admired by connoisseurs of 18th-century European architecture.
The 90-acre site, close to the M4 motorway, was first proposed for rezoning in the mid-1990s and was finally zoned for housing when the county council adopted a local area plan for Leixlip in March 2002.
On the way out through the great hall of the castle, it is the ghostly images of the Mitfords, and not figures from Leixlip’s bloody history, who hover in the shadows of this great building, which is open to the public.
Six original portraits of the girls by the artist William Acton hang on a wall in a dining room, their English beauty frozen in time. Almost 70 years after they sat for Acton, the Mitfords are still turning heads.
Including Guinness’s, who for what must be the millionth time, looks at his mother’s perfect image and says: “Have you ever seen someone so beautiful?”
November 23, 2003 at 12:48 AM in Ireland | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
THE ARRIVAL of an American President on a state visit to Britain would worry the security boys at the best of times. But we are in a different era, when the whisperings of an international terrorist on his mobile in, say, Algeria could have deadly repercussions for all of us, let alone George Bush.
Intelligence has, therefore, become the key factor in planning a visit of this significance. It comes from surveillance of terrorist suspects and sympathisers, eavesdropping on communications, and information exchanges with Britain’s partners in the so-called war on terrorism.
The process by which vital intelligence about terrorists is gleaned often involves long-term surveillance operations in which secret agents attempt to penetrate the organisations that pose the gravest threat to our way of life; not dissimilar to the methods used by counter-espionage agents during the Cold War. Many senior intelligence officers now focusing on Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network cut their teeth combating the KGB.
The best books about the Cold War intelligence game are truly revelatory works. Among these should be included Chapman Pincher’s Too Secret Too Long (Sidgwick & Jackson), which showed how British Intelligence was riddled with traitors in the Cold War era, Secret Service by Christopher Andrew (Sceptre), a history of MI6 and MI5, and The Secrets of the Service by Anthony Glees (Jonathan Cape).
However, for an insight into how the Americans have developed space-based technology to eavesdrop on their enemies and potential enemies — such as al-Qaeda today — the two most extraordinary books have been written by one author, James Bamford. His first venture into the ultra-secret world of the American National Security Agency, the big brother of Britain’s GCHQ listening station at Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, was called The Puzzle Palace (Penguin), and the second was Body of Secrets (Century).
Bamford’s account of American technological espionage painted a picture of an all-seeing, all-listening superpower. But, as bin Laden and his cohorts proved on September 11, 2001, and on numerous occasions since, it is possible for the determined and patient terrorist to launch a devastating strike and outwit the most sophisticated and most powerful intelligence organisation of all time.
Inside al-Qaeda: Global Network of Terror by Rohan Gunaratna (Hurst) provided one of the most detailed accounts of a terrorist network which is said to have cells in more than 60 countries. He revealed how al-Qaeda terrorists are trained to use shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles and how bin Laden’s modus operandi is to launch often simultaneous attacks.
November 23, 2003 at 12:45 AM in MI6 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Forty years ago on Saturday, Lee Harvey Oswald killed John Kennedy. Two months before, Oswald had arrived in Mexico, hysterically demanding a visa to the USSR. The ex-KGB agent who dealt with him talks to our correspondent.
IN NOVY ARBAT STREET, Moscow, Oleg Nechiporenko sits at his desk. Now silver-haired, he is still visibly the man pictured in the world press in 1971 when he was expelled from Mexico for allegedly plotting to overthrow the Government. The CIA called him “the best KGB agent in Latin America”.
At about 12.30 on the afternoon of Friday, September 27, 1963, Nechiporenko was in his office at the Russian Embassy in Mexico City. He was about to go to lunch when his secretary put through a call from a fellow KGB officer, Valery Kostikov. “Listen,” said an agitated Kostikov, “some gringo is here, asking for a visa to the Soviet Union. Supposedly he already lived there, married one of our girls. They live in the States, but the FBI is harassing them. Come and get to the bottom of this. I’m in a hurry.”
When Nechiporenko arrived at the embassy’s consular office, Kostikov said: “Those are his papers . . . he might be of some interest to you. I’ll see you later. If there is anything to this, leave a note.” The American was ushered in and introduced. To Nechiporenko, the visitor seemed physically and mentally exhausted. Suddenly he became more alert, giving Nechiporenko the impression of being somewhat neurotic.
Nechiporenko looked over the documents and noted that the young man, Lee Harvey Oswald, had left the Soviet Union on an exit visa the previous summer, along with his Russian-born wife, Marina. Asked why he wanted to return to Russia, Oswald claimed that FBI harassment prevented him from getting a good job and that his situation had become intolerable.
Nechiporenko asked why Oswald had not gone to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, in line with visa application rules, rather than to Mexico City. Oswald replied that he feared he might be arrested there, so had travelled instead to the nearest foreign country.
Trying to steer the meeting to a conclusion, Nechiporenko told the American that in accordance with Soviet rules, all matters dealing with travel to the USSR had to be handled by the embassy or consulate in the country of an applicant’s residence. But to hasten Oswald’s departure, the KGB man said that an exception could be made and gave him the necessary papers to fill in, which would then be sent to Moscow. When he emphasised that a decision was unlikely to be made for at least four months, Oswald became aggressive. Slowly leaning forward over the desk which separated them, he practically shouted into Nechiporenko’s face: “This won’t do! For me, it’s all going to end in tragedy!” Nechiporenko shrugged and stood up, signalling the end of the meeting.
Dealing with eccentric American visitors to the embassy was not a new experience for Nechiporenko. Not long before the Oswald meeting he had interviewed a visitor who handed him six thick notebooks full of illegible handwriting. Nechiporenko had to struggle hard to keep a straight face when the visitor told him that the notebooks were a record of his continuing talks with the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Before the KBG man could think of a suitable response, the visitor suddenly cocked an ear and said: “Just a moment, Khrushchev is speaking to me again!”
Later that day, Nechiporenko related the gist of the Oswald meeting to Kostikov, and they decided to send a routine report to the KGB’s Moscow centre.
Nechiporenko particularly recalls the next day, Saturday, September 28, because a volleyball match was scheduled between the KGB and the GRU (military intelligence) in the embassy grounds. Just before the game was due to start at 10am, a visitor turned up at the embassy and was taken to the office of the consul, Pavil Yatskov, who, like Nechiporenko, was about to prepare for the game.
Nechiporenko, in an adjoining office, recognised the rising hysterical voice — it was Oswald’s —— and began listening at the connecting door. Sobbing, Oswald cried: “I am afraid they will kill me. Let me in!” He put his right hand into his left-hand jacket pocket and pulled out a revolver. “See,” he said, “this is what I must now carry to protect my life.” By now, Kostikov was also in Yatskov’s office. He casually took the weapon and gave it to Yatskov, who opened the chamber, shook the bullets into his hand and put them into the desk drawer in front of him.
A glass of water was given to Oswald, who took a sip and placed it in front of him. The rules regarding the visa application were again explained to him. His state of agitation was now replaced by depression. He took his revolver and put it back in his jacket, along with the bullets that Kostikov returned to him. As they escorted him out, Oswald again launched into a diatribe about the FBI and exclaimed menacingly: “If they don’t leave me alone, I’m going to defend myself.”
After he had gone, Nechiporenko, Kostikov and Yatskov discussed their strange visitor. The three KGB men agreed to send another report to the Moscow Centre immediately.
Like many people, Nechiporenko remembers clearly where he was when he heard of John F. Kennedy’s death: sitting in his embassy office in Mexico City. It was later that day, however, that Kostikov flew into Nechiporenko’s room in a state of shock: “Oleg, they’ve just shown the suspect in Kennedy’s death on TV! It’s Lee Oswald, the gringo who was here in September! I recognised him!” Dashing to the first-floor lounge of the embassy, where the entire staff was gathered around a TV set, the two KGB men pushed their way to the front to watch the screen. They saw the suspected assassin, surrounded by police, at Dallas police HQ. Neither Kostikov nor Nechiporenko had any doubts that it was the man they had interviewed two months previously. They ran back to their compound immediately to send a report to Moscow.
After witnessing Oswald’s death at the hands of Jack Ruby on the same embassy TV set, Nechiporenko was at first convinced that a conspiracy was behind the bizarre events in Dallas. As a conspiracy theory started to spread, the idea that the CIA had somehow been involved in JFK’s death was seen by the KGB as an opportunity.
Deciding to target the Watergate burglar and former CIA officer Howard Hunt, they used the repository of Oswald letters and documents in his KGB files to forge a handwritten letter seemingly from Oswald to Hunt and dated November 8, 1963, in which Oswald asks to meet Hunt to “discuss the matter fully before any steps are taken by me or anyone else”. So good was the forgery that it even contained the same dyslexic errors that frequented genuine Oswald correspondence. Photocopies of the letter were sent to leading conspiracy theorists in America, with a covering note from a “wellwisher” saying that the original had been sent to the FBI Director, Clarence Kelly, who appeared to be suppressing it. To Nechiporenko, himself a victim of a similar set-up by the CIA, such a tactic was all part of the game played between the two organisations.
With hindsight and the benefit of a detailed study of Oswald’s KGB files, Nechiporenko has become convinced that Oswald was a lone assassin. As evidence of Oswald’s mental state and his capacity for taking unpredictable, violent action, Nechiporenko reveals a little-known fact from a 1962 KGB observation report. When he was in the USSR, and clearly frustrated at the delay in obtaining his exit documents from the Soviet Union, Oswald had constructed a home-made bomb in his Minsk apartment. Before he could use it his permit came through, and he dismantled the device and threw it away among the household rubbish, much to the relief of the KGB observation officers. According to the same file, Marina Prusakova’s main goal was to marry a foreigner and leave the country with him. Nechiporenko still wonders whether Oswald was ever anything more to Marina than an exit visa. After his death she married another American rather than return to Russia.
Despite the end of the Cold War and a decline in high-profile political assassinations, Nechiporenko considers the world more dangerous than it was 40 years ago. Though political leaders are better protected than ever, according to 21st-century risk analysis, civilians are more vulnerable.
Drawing parallels between 9/11, Bali and the siege of the Moscow Palace of Culture last October by Chechen rebels, Nechiporenko sees international co-operation between intelligence services as the key to combating terrorism. The August arrest in Newark, New Jersey, of a British-based arms dealer, accused of trying to procure Russian missiles for Muslim extremists, is a textbook example of what Nechiporenko has in mind. The sting, organised by the FBI, MI5, MI6 and the Russian FSB, and sanctioned at the highest levels, led to arrests down the chain. The intelligence agencies remain tight-lipped about the operation. Nechiporenko, at least, is encouraged that old enemies have finally joined hands to fight a common foe.
November 23, 2003 at 12:43 AM in CIA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
David Leppard
SECURITY services are hunting two cells of Al-Qaeda terrorists whom they believe are preparing to carry out “spectacular” terrorist attacks in Britain.
Up to 10 terrorists from north Africa and Saudi Arabia have mounted surveillance operations on vulnerable commercial targets such as big banks and shopping centres, according to security sources.
They have also received intelligence that some of the suspects have already made “dummy runs” in preparation for possible suicide car bombings.
Warnings of a prospective attack by Al-Qaeda have been given to ministers by Eliza Manningham-Buller, MI5’s director-general. She has also told MPs and peers on the parliamentary intelligence and security committee of the Al-Qaeda “sleepers” conducting surveillance.
Many are integrated so deeply into the Muslim community that they are proving almost impossible to detect. Some are believed to be British citizens.
The disclosure came as David Blunkett, the home secretary, yesterday admitted for the first time that attempts to carry out violent attacks against Britain had been foiled. “These are the kind of things that counter-terrorist (operations) are designed to foil and (the security services) are doing this all the time,” he said.
The Al-Qaeda units, thought to be based in the Midlands and the north of England, have investigated the scale of security at synagogues and Jewish schools and community centres. However, intelligence on their plans is sketchy because MI5 has so far failed to penetrate the units.
Last week Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan police commissioner, confirmed that Britain was on its highest state of alert since the September 11 attacks in 2001. Security was heightened after MI5 received warnings of an imminent terrorist attack 10 days ago.
At least 18 more people died in attacks on two Iraqi police stations yesterday. Amid the surge of deadly bombings in Iraq and Turkey, the US government issued a fresh warning on Friday about possible terrorist violence to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan this week.
At the same time detectives from Scotland Yard’s anti- terrorist branch have started to sift through the wreckage of the British consulate and the HSBC bank in Istanbul for clues to the bombers behind last Thursday’s synchronised suicide attacks.
The death toll rose to 30 yesterday. It includes 10 consulate staff, of which three were British. This brings to more than 50 the number who have died in Istanbul following last weekend’s two synagogue blasts in the city.
Among the three Britons were Roger Short, the 58- year-old consul-general and a father of three, and his personal assistant Lisa Hallworth, 38. Hallworth’s mother Sylvia said she had been advised it was not safe to travel to Turkey where she wants to recover Lisa’s body.
The 27-year-old fiancée of Graeme Carter, a British tourist, is brain dead and will not recover, doctors at Istanbul’s Taksim hospital said last night. The couple were both pulled alive from the consulate ruins.
At first Carter thought Hulya Donmez had been blown to pieces. Then he was told she had survived. Yesterday doctors said she was still on a life-support machine but they had no hope of her surviving.
Security officials now believe the attack was carried out by local Islamists under the control of Al-Qaeda trainers. Turkish police were yesterday interviewing several people about their links to the suicide bombers.
The Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan said the four bombers who carried out last week’s attacks were all Turkish citizens. He said it was a matter of “shame” for Turkey that its own citizens had murdered so many.
As security was tightened at British embassies across the world, a senior committee of MPs and peers was preparing to attack the government’s plans to protect Britain from terrorist attack. In a report to be published on Friday, the committee will say that the proposed Civil Contingencies Bill has “potentially dangerous flaws”. MPs on the committee say the bill is “too little, too late”.
The committee’s chairman, the former Labour defence minister Dr Lewis Moonie, will criticise the bill for failing to provide any new money to pay for counter-terrorist and emergency planning. Also, the committee believes that absence of information about the new emergency powers ministers will get after a terrorist attack makes it “impossible for local authorities and other bodies to estimate the cost of the responsibilities they would expect to undertake”.
One of the most serious flaws, it says, is the absence of any new funds to help local authorities prepare to cope with an attack in which hundreds or even thousands of people could be killed.
It says the Cabinet Office is providing just £19m for emergency planning which, from next year, can be plundered by councils to pay for other services. The committee believes this money should be at least doubled and that it should continue to be “ring-fenced” so that councils cannot raid it.
Under the plans, ministers will have powers to cordon off and forcibly evacuate large areas. They will also be able to close down the internet and telephone systems.
November 23, 2003 at 12:42 AM in MI5 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Times Online - Newspaper Edition: "Virtuoso rock bands the Darkness, the White Stripes and the Strokes are credited with inspiring young fans to recreate the classic rock template of guitar, bass and drums. "
November 21, 2003 at 09:37 PM in | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Founder member of the SAS who went on to combat terrorism with the Bomb Squad of the Metropolitan Police
It would be wrong to say that Ernie Bond first made his name as commander of the Metropolitan Police Bomb Squad, since in its early days the press knew him simply as “Commander X”. But he had played a leading role in forming the squad in response to the threat posed by the self-styled Angry Brigade in the 1960s. Although anarchical and chaotic, this group unintentionally rendered the country a service by providing the Bomb Squad with useful forensic experience before the IRA mainland bombing campaigns that followed.
Few, if any, of Bond’s colleagues in the Met knew that he belonged to that tiny handful of men known as “the originals” — recruited by Colonel David Stirling to form “L” Detachment of the Special Service Brigade in Egypt in 1941, the founding group of the SAS Regiment. There was no great secret about this matter — it was just that Bond didn’t talk about it.
He was serving with the Scots Guards on the outbreak of war, and in 1940 accompanied the 1st Battalion on the ill-judged Allied intervention in Norway intended to forestall the German invasion which in the event it precipitated.
On his return to England, he volunteered to join No 8 (Guards) Commando. This unit formed part of the Layforce brigade of special service units sent to the Middle East under the command of Colonel (later Major-General Sir) Robert Laycock in 1941. When No 8 Commando was disbanded, Sergeant Bond joined 2nd Scots Guards with the Eighth Army confronting Rommel’s Afrika Korps in the Western Desert.
It was there that he and other members of the “originals” were recruited by Stirling for parachute training at Kabrit in Egypt in anticipation of his first operation. This was launched during atrocious weather conditions against the Axis airfields of Gazala and Tmimi on November 16, 1941. The aircraft flying Bond’s group to their objective crash-landed in the desert. At this point, Bond was captured and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner.
Demobilised on his release, he joined the Metropolitan Police in 1946 and served for two years on the beat until he was transferred to the CID. Promoted to detective sergeant in 1957, he began to develop a reputation for his discerning skill as a detective and progressed quickly through the Fraud Squad and Flying Squad to the Murder Squad. The early activities of the Angry Brigade, beginning in 1967, led to his attachment to the newly formed Bomb Squad.
Insofar as the anger of the Angry Brigade was susceptible to analysis, it appeared to centre on a rejection of what was judged “the good life” of the 1960s. It was not that its members lacked the financial means to join in — some came from upper-middle-class families and had education and intellect enough to earn good salaries — but they did not like what they saw of that lifestyle and resented its manifestations.
Their protest took many forms, including living in absolute squalor, disparagement of men (it was thought that more than three quarters of their estimated strength of 200 were women), social security fraud and straightforward theft. Early intelligence indicated that they planned to kidnap either a prominent politician or a foreign diplomat in order to oblige the Government to repeal legislation which they identified no more precisely than as being “imperialist”.
Two developments gave Bond the leads to track down and arrest key suspects. Unwisely, the Angry Brigade began to associate with professional criminals and to undertake attacks on property in the Metropolitan area using plastic explosives. The attacks on property, together with a number of stray shots fired at London embassies, were judged pointless by the professional criminal element, which encouraged the police informers among them to cash in their information.
Bond also discovered that the plastic explosive used came from France, which had its own Angry Brigade.
The breakthrough came when four key Angries were arrested in early 1972, shortly before Bond left the Bomb Squad, and were jailed for ten years for plotting explosions. Before moving to take charge of the Met’s Regional Crime Squad, Bond had identified a range of further suspects in the United Kingdom, the Irish Republic and in continental Europe. Co-operation between the Met and relevant foreign police services quickly threw the Angry Brigade on to the defensive.
Bond’s work with the Bomb Squad, which later became the Anti-Terrorist Branch of the Met, had been exclusively in the forensic science field of tracking down suspects rather than dealing with explosive devices. His success was rewarded by the Queen’s Police Medal in 1972 and his further promotion to Deputy Assistant Commissioner (Operations) at the end of that year.
It was while in this post that he masterminded the handling of the Balcombe Street siege in December 1975. After shots had been fired into Scott’s restaurant in Mayfair, four men from an active service unit of the Provisional IRA were chased and trapped in a flat in Balcombe Street, Marylebone. They took hostage an elderly man and woman as the flat was surrounded by hundreds of police.
The stand-off lasted six days while the terrorists demanded safe passage to Heathrow and a plane to Ireland. Working under Bond’s directions, two Special Branch officers resolutely made clear that the IRA men’s only option was surrender with the hostages unharmed. The negotiators were Peter Imbert, later Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and now Lord Imbert, and Jim Nevill, who later headed the Anti-Terrorist Branch. Their tough line was successful. The IRA men surrendered on the evening of the sixth day, having previously released the hostages.
Bond remained Deputy Assistant Commissioner (Operations) until his retirement in 1976, when he was appointed OBE.
Ernest Radcliffe Bond was born into a close-knit Cumbrian community in Barrow-in-Furness and served as an apprentice French polisher before enlisting in the Scots Guards in 1935 at the age of 17. It had been his intention to serve only a short regular engagement before joining the police, but the outbreak of war intervened. When he finally achieved that objective, his work absorbed him completely, and he received no fewer than 12 Commissioner’s Commendations during his service.
His wife Mabel predeceased him. He is survived by two sons and two daughters.
Ernest Bond, OBE, QPM, Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police 1972-76, was born on March 1, 1919. He died on November 20, 2003, aged 84.
November 21, 2003 at 07:24 PM in MI5 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
President Bush Discusses Iraq Policy at Whitehall Palace in London
Remarks by the President at Whitehall Palace
Royal Banqueting House-Whitehall Palace
London, England
1:24 P.M. (Local)
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Secretary Straw and Secretary Hoon; Admiral Cobbald and Dr. Chipman; distinguished guests: I want to thank you for your very kind welcome that you've given to me and to Laura. I also thank the groups hosting this event -- The Royal United Services Institute, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies. We're honored to be in the United Kingdom, and we bring the good wishes of the American people.
It was pointed out to me that the last noted American to visit London stayed in a glass box dangling over the Thames. (Laughter.) A few might have been happy to provide similar arrangements for me. (Laughter.) I thank Her Majesty the Queen for interceding. (Laughter.) We're honored to be staying at her house.
Americans traveling to England always observe more similarities to our country than differences. I've been here only a short time, but I've noticed that the tradition of free speech -- exercised with enthusiasm -- (laughter) -- is alive and well here in London. We have that at home, too. They now have that right in Baghdad, as well. (Applause.)
The people of Great Britain also might see some familiar traits in Americans. We're sometimes faulted for a naive faith that liberty can change the world. If that's an error it began with reading too much John Locke and Adam Smith. Americans have, on occasion, been called moralists who often speak in terms of right and wrong. That zeal has been inspired by examples on this island, by the tireless compassion of Lord Shaftesbury, the righteous courage of Wilberforce, and the firm determination of the Royal Navy over the decades to fight and end the trade in slaves.
It's rightly said that Americans are a religious people. That's, in part, because the "Good News" was translated by Tyndale, preached by Wesley, lived out in the example of William Booth. At times, Americans are even said to have a puritan streak -- where might that have come from? (Laughter.) Well, we can start with the Puritans.
To this fine heritage, Americans have added a few traits of our own: the good influence of our immigrants, the spirit of the frontier. Yet, there remains a bit of England in every American. So much of our national character comes from you, and we're glad for it.
The fellowship of generations is the cause of common beliefs. We believe in open societies ordered by moral conviction. We believe in private markets, humanized by compassionate government. We believe in economies that reward effort, communities that protect the weak, and the duty of nations to respect the dignity and the rights of all. And whether one learns these ideals in County Durham or in West Texas, they instill mutual respect and they inspire common purpose.
More than an alliance of security and commerce, the British and American peoples have an alliance of values. And, today, this old and tested alliance is very strong. (Applause.)
The deepest beliefs of our nations set the direction of our foreign policy. We value our own civil rights, so we stand for the human rights of others. We affirm the God-given dignity of every person, so we are moved to action by poverty and oppression and famine and disease. The United States and Great Britain share a mission in the world beyond the balance of power or the simple pursuit of interest. We seek the advance of freedom and the peace that freedom brings. Together our nations are standing and sacrificing for this high goal in a distant land at this very hour. And America honors the idealism and the bravery of the sons and daughters of Britain.
The last President to stay at Buckingham Palace was an idealist, without question. At a dinner hosted by King George V, in 1918, Woodrow Wilson made a pledge; with typical American understatement, he vowed that right and justice would become the predominant and controlling force in the world.
President Wilson had come to Europe with his 14 Points for Peace. Many complimented him on his vision; yet some were dubious. Take, for example, the Prime Minister of France. He complained that God, himself, had only 10 commandments. (Laughter.) Sounds familiar. (Laughter.)
At Wilson's high point of idealism, however, Europe was one short generation from Munich and Auschwitz and the Blitz. Looking back, we see the reasons why. The League of Nations, lacking both credibility and will, collapsed at the first challenge of the dictators. Free nations failed to recognize, much less confront, the aggressive evil in plain sight. And so dictators went about their business, feeding resentments and anti-Semitism, bringing death to innocent people in this city and across the world, and filling the last century with violence and genocide.
Through world war and cold war, we learned that idealism, if it is to do any good in this world, requires common purpose and national strength, moral courage and patience in difficult tasks. And now our generation has need of these qualities.
On September the 11th, 2001, terrorists left their mark of murder on my country, and took the lives of 67 British citizens. With the passing of months and years, it is the natural human desire to resume a quiet life and to put that day behind us, as if waking from a dark dream. The hope that danger has passed is comforting, is understanding, and it is false. The attacks that followed -- on Bali, Jakarta, Casablanca, Bombay, Mombassa, Najaf, Jerusalem, Riyadh, Baghdad, and Istanbul -- were not dreams. They're part of the global campaign by terrorist networks to intimidate and demoralize all who oppose them.
These terrorists target the innocent, and they kill by the thousands. And they would, if they gain the weapons they seek, kill by the millions and not be finished. The greatest threat of our age is nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons in the hands of terrorists, and the dictators who aid them. The evil is in plain sight. The danger only increases with denial. Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies. We will face these threats with open eyes, and we will defeat them. (Applause.)
The peace and security of free nations now rests on three pillars: First, international organizations must be equal to the challenges facing our world, from lifting up failing states to opposing proliferation.
Like 11 Presidents before me, I believe in the international institutions and alliances that America helped to form and helps to lead. The United States and Great Britain have labored hard to help make the United Nations what it is supposed to be -- an effective instrument of our collective security. In recent months, we've sought and gained three additional resolutions on Iraq -- Resolutions 1441, 1483 and 1511 -- precisely because the global danger of terror demands a global response. The United Nations has no more compelling advocate than your Prime Minister, who at every turn has championed its ideals and appealed to its authority. He understands, as well, that the credibility of the U.N. depends on a willingness to keep its word and to act when action is required.
America and Great Britain have done, and will do, all in their power to prevent the United Nations from solemnly choosing its own irrelevance and inviting the fate of the League of Nations. It's not enough to meet the dangers of the world with resolutions; we must meet those dangers with resolve.
In this century, as in the last, nations can accomplish more together than apart. For 54 years, America has stood with our partners in NATO, the most effective multilateral institution in history. We're committed to this great democratic alliance, and we believe it must have the will and the capacity to act beyond Europe where threats emerge.
My nation welcomes the growing unity of Europe, and the world needs America and the European Union to work in common purpose for the advance of security and justice. America is cooperating with four other nations to meet the dangers posed by North Korea. America believes the IAEA must be true to its purpose and hold Iran to its obligations.
Our first choice, and our constant practice, is to work with other responsible governments. We understand, as well, that the success of multilateralism is not measured by adherence to forms alone, the tidiness of the process, but by the results we achieve to keep our nations secure.
The second pillar of peace and security in our world is the willingness of free nations, when the last resort arrives, to retain* {sic} aggression and evil by force. There are principled objections to the use of force in every generation, and I credit the good motives behind these views.
Those in authority, however, are not judged only by good motivations. The people have given us the duty to defend them. And that duty sometimes requires the violent restraint of violent men. In some cases, the measured use of force is all that protects us from a chaotic world ruled by force.
Most in the peaceful West have no living memory of that kind of world. Yet in some countries, the memories are recent: The victims of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, those who survived the rapists and the death squads, have few qualms when NATO applied force to help end those crimes. The women of Afghanistan, imprisoned in their homes and beaten in the streets and executed in public spectacles, did not reproach us for routing the Taliban. The inhabitants of Iraq's Baathist hell, with its lavish palaces and its torture chambers, with its massive statues and its mass graves, do not miss their fugitive dictator. They rejoiced at his fall.
In all these cases, military action was proceeded by diplomatic initiatives and negotiations and ultimatums, and final chances until the final moment. In Iraq, year after year, the dictator was given the chance to account for his weapons programs, and end the nightmare for his people. Now the resolutions he defied have been enforced.
And who will say that Iraq was better off when Saddam Hussein was strutting and killing, or that the world was safer when he held power? Who doubts that Afghanistan is a more just society and less dangerous without Mullah Omar playing host to terrorists from around the world. And Europe, too, is plainly better off with Milosevic answering for his crimes, instead of committing more.
It's been said that those who live near a police station find it hard to believe in the triumph of violence, in the same way free peoples might be tempted to take for granted the orderly societies we have come to know. Europe's peaceful unity is one of the great achievements of the last half-century. And because European countries now resolve differences through negotiation and consensus, there's sometimes an assumption that the entire world functions in the same way. But let us never forget how Europe's unity was achieved -- by allied armies of liberation and NATO armies of defense. And let us never forget, beyond Europe's borders, in a world where oppression and violence are very real, liberation is still a moral goal, and freedom and security still need defenders. (Applause.)
The third pillar of security is our commitment to the global expansion of democracy, and the hope and progress it brings, as the alternative to instability and to hatred and terror. We cannot rely exclusively on military power to assure our long-term security. Lasting peace is gained as justice and democracy advance.
In democratic and successful societies, men and women do not swear allegiance to malcontents and murderers; they turn their hearts and labor to building better lives. And democratic governments do not shelter terrorist camps or attack their peaceful neighbors; they honor the aspirations and dignity of their own people. In our conflict with terror and tyranny, we have an unmatched advantage, a power that cannot be resisted, and that is the appeal of freedom to all mankind.
As global powers, both our nations serve the cause of freedom in many ways, in many places. By promoting development, and fighting famine and AIDS and other diseases, we're fulfilling our moral duties, as well as encouraging stability and building a firmer basis for democratic institutions. By working for justice in Burma, in the Sudan and in Zimbabwe, we give hope to suffering people and improve the chances for stability and progress. By extending the reach of trade we foster prosperity and the habits of liberty. And by advancing freedom in the greater Middle East, we help end a cycle of dictatorship and radicalism that brings millions of people to misery and brings danger to our own people.
The stakes in that region could not be higher. If the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation and anger and violence for export. And as we saw in the ruins of two towers, no distance on the map will protect our lives and way of life. If the greater Middle East joins the democratic revolution that has reached much of the world, the lives of millions in that region will be bettered, and a trend of conflict and fear will be ended at its source.
The movement of history will not come about quickly. Because of our own democratic development -- the fact that it was gradual and, at times, turbulent -- we must be patient with others. And the Middle East countries have some distance to travel.
Arab scholars speak of a freedom deficit that has separated whole nations from the progress of our time. The essentials of social and material progress -- limited government, equal justice under law, religious and economic liberty, political participation, free press, and respect for the rights of women -- have been scarce across the region. Yet that has begun to change. In an arc of reform from Morocco to Jordan to Qatar, we are seeing elections and new protections for women and the stirring of political pluralism. Many governments are realizing that theocracy and dictatorship do not lead to national greatness; they end in national ruin. They are finding, as others will find, that national progress and dignity are achieved when governments are just and people are free.
The democratic progress we've seen in the Middle East was not imposed from abroad, and neither will the greater progress we hope to see. Freedom, by definition, must be chosen, and defended by those who choose it. Our part, as free nations, is to ally ourselves with reform, wherever it occurs.
Perhaps the most helpful change we can make is to change in our own thinking. In the West, there's been a certain skepticism about the capacity or even the desire of Middle Eastern peoples for self-government. We're told that Islam is somehow inconsistent with a democratic culture. Yet more than half of the world's Muslims are today contributing citizens in democratic societies. It is suggested that the poor, in their daily struggles, care little for self-government. Yet the poor, especially, need the power of democracy to defend themselves against corrupt elites.
Peoples of the Middle East share a high civilization, a religion of personal responsibility, and a need for freedom as deep as our own. It is not realism to suppose that one-fifth of humanity is unsuited to liberty; it is pessimism and condescension, and we should have none of it. (Applause.)
We must shake off decades of failed policy in the Middle East. Your nation and mine, in the past, have been willing to make a bargain, to tolerate oppression for the sake of stability. Longstanding ties often led us to overlook the faults of local elites. Yet this bargain did not bring stability or make us safe. It merely bought time, while problems festered and ideologies of violence took hold.
As recent history has shown, we cannot turn a blind eye to oppression just because the oppression is not in our own backyard. No longer should we think tyranny is benign because it is temporarily convenient. Tyranny is never benign to its victims, and our great democracies should oppose tyranny wherever it is found. (Applause.)
Now we're pursuing a different course, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East. We will consistently challenge the enemies of reform and confront the allies of terror. We will expect a higher standard from our friends in the region, and we will meet our responsibilities in Afghanistan and in Iraq by finishing the work of democracy we have begun.
There were good-faith disagreements in your country and mine over the course and timing of military action in Iraq. Whatever has come before, we now have only two options: to keep our word, or to break our word. The failure of democracy in Iraq would throw its people back into misery and turn that country over to terrorists who wish to destroy us. Yet democracy will succeed in Iraq, because our will is firm, our word is good, and the Iraqi people will not surrender their freedom. (Applause.)
Since the liberation of Iraq, we have seen changes that could hardly have been imagined a year ago. A new Iraqi police force protects the people, instead of bullying them. More than 150 Iraqi newspapers are now in circulation, printing what they choose, not what they're ordered. Schools are open with textbooks free of propaganda. Hospitals are functioning and are well-supplied. Iraq has a new currency, the first battalion of a new army, representative local governments, and a Governing Council with an aggressive timetable for national sovereignty. This is substantial progress. And much of it has proceeded faster than similar efforts in Germany and Japan after World War II.
Yet the violence we are seeing in Iraq today is serious. And it comes from Baathist holdouts and Jihadists from other countries, and terrorists drawn to the prospect of innocent bloodshed. It is the nature of terrorism and the cruelty of a few to try to bring grief in the loss to many. The armed forces of both our countries have taken losses, felt deeply by our citizens. Some families now live with a burden of great sorrow. We cannot take the pain away. But these families can know they are not alone. We pray for their strength; we pray for their comfort; and we will never forget the courage of the ones they loved.
The terrorists have a purpose, a strategy to their cruelty. They view the rise of democracy in Iraq as a powerful threat to their ambitions. In this, they are correct. They believe their acts of terror against our coalition, against international aid workers and against innocent Iraqis, will make us recoil and retreat. In this, they are mistaken. (Applause.)
We did not charge hundreds of miles into the heart of Iraq and pay a bitter cost of casualties, and liberate 25 million people, only to retreat before a band of thugs and assassins. (Applause.) We will help the Iraqi people establish a peaceful and democratic country in the heart of the Middle East. And by doing so, we will defend our people from danger.
The forward strategy of freedom must also apply to the Arab-Israeli conflict. It's a difficult period in a part of the world that has known many. Yet, our commitment remains firm. We seek justice and dignity. We seek a viable, independent state for the Palestinian people, who have been betrayed by others for too long. (Applause.) We seek security and recognition for the state of Israel, which has lived in the shadow of random death for too long. (Ap