The Muslim News - Terrorism blackout

Issue 243, Friday 31 July 2009 - 9 Sha'ban 1430

Terrorism blackout

Neo-Nazi Neil Lewington, who stored bomb-making items in his bedroom, was found guilty this month of terrorism and seven offences under the Explosives Act.

Counter Terrorism Units across the UK also recently foiled an international plot to put guns and explosives in the hands of violent bigots, after arresting no less than 32 people and carrying out property searches at 36 addresses, increasing the threat of attacks on mosques and Muslims.

Like previous terrorist cases involving white supremacists, neither received much publicity. None of them meet the pervasive identikit that suggests although all Muslims may not be terrorists, all terrorists are Muslim. The lack of publicity is either due the police not leaking it to the media, or the media not publicising it. This is in sharp contrast to the front page headlines when Muslims are arrested and accused of terrorism.

Lewington, who will not be sentenced until September, was arrested last October, not as a result of a counter-terrorism investigation nor due to an intelligence-led operation, but for drinking and urinating in public. It was only then that his holdall was found to contain components for two incendiary devices, including digital clocks, batteries, wiring, firelighters and ignition mechanisms. This led to the police to visit him home where they found arsenal in his bedroom.

Interestingly, the police did not raid his house in a glare of publicity. News about his case was not splashed across the front pages of the newspapers even after he was found guilty of planning to attack and terrorise ‘non-British people.’

He had once told a woman that “the only good Paki was a dead Paki.”

The raids on a network of alleged far-right extremists are believed to have so far led to only two men being charged despite the discovery of over 300 weapons and 80 bombs.

This was described as biggest seizure of suspected terrorist materials in England since the early 1990s, when the IRA was active. To his credit, West Yorkshire Chief Constable, Sir Norman Bettison, has spoken out of “a growing right-wing threat” but insisted that the “big bad wolf is still Al Qaeda.” Head of Scotland Yard’s Violent Crime Directorate, Commander Shaun Sawyer, has also voiced concern about emerging threats from the far right and admitted that the police will need to increase its investigative resources to deal with it.

The Leeds Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU) refused to provide information of whether the 14 white extremists who were detained were charged or not.

The other 16 were released without charge, what the CTU said had been helping the police with inquiries.

However, it remains difficult to understand the reluctance of the media to break its virtual blackout not only on this story but also why the judiciary system appears to treat right-wing terrorists with far less severity.

The most recent case was Neil MacGregor, who having threatened to blow up Glasgow Central Mosque and to kill a Muslim a day until the closure of all mosques in Scotland, was only ordered to undergo a psychiatric assessment. Others include former BNP candidate, Robert Cottage and dentist David Jackson, who were cleared in 2007 of plotting explosions despite being accused of stockpiling the largest amount of chemicals ever found domestically, Cottage did, however, receive a two and half year sentence while Jackson walked free after 10 months in remand.

Figures compiled by Europol even suggest that the threat of the “Islamist” terrorism in Europe is minimal compared with “ethno-nationalist” and “separatist” terrorism. In 2007, 517 out of 583 attacks across the continent were claimed by or attributed to nationalist or separatist terrorist groups, such as ETA in Spain, as opposed to those just classed as “Islamist.”

The apparent policy of pretending the problem does not exist seems far from working but is rather having the opposite effect despite the lack of publicity. For the police and Government to put it into context, it would also seem that the focus of counter-terrorism budgets needs to be badly readdressed. The media too must all stop acting like the proverbial, three wise monkeys, of not seeing, not hearing and not saying.

Not only the judiciary but the police and security services are also in the denial mood on white extremists. The CTU in Leeds categorically said their investigation on the “raids” and arrests of the white extremists “were not an extreme right investigation” and the Met Police said there was “no specific threat or intelligence of a far right attack.”