If any further evidence were needed of the incompetence of the old Home Office before it was broken up, the trial of the four men convicted of attempting to bomb London’s bus and Tube network two weeks after the 7/7 atrocities afforded ample proof. The series of blunders, missed leads and crass misjudgments that allowed the terrorists to travel freely and train for their deadly mission is astonishing. Time and again Home Office officials, immigration officers and police failed to detain men suspected of terrorist links whose intent should have been obvious. It was only luck and the would-be bombers’ technical incompetence that prevented further carnage in London.
Several of the decisions taken at the time were strange indeed. Muktar Said Ibrahim, the leader of the bombers, was allowed to leave Britain while facing charges over extremist behaviour. He flew to Pakistan, where it was known that extremists were being trained in terrorist techniques, despite having been stopped at Heathrow carrying £3,000 in cash, a new video camera, a sleeping bag and cold-weather clothing. Making the improbable claim that he was going to a wedding when he could not name the bride or say how the groom met her, he was nevertheless allowed to fly out. And no attempt was made to detain him when he returned, many months after the date that he gave police earlier.
Ibrahim had already been arrested for a public order offence and had been seen in the entourage of Abu Hamza, the radical preacher at Finsbury Park mosque. The Metropolitan Police said that he was not prevented from flying to Islamabad because his bail conditions did not include travel restrictions. If so, there was a clear disconnection between the Government’s stated intention to clamp down on terrorist suspects, official policy since 9/11, and the workings of the courts and the police. Even more shamefully, he had been observed by security officials attending a training camp in the Lake District along with more than 20 others. Yet the surveillance operation was so cack-handed that four of the men were able to spend the next year preparing their attacks.
Equally astonishing is the decision by the Home Office to grant full British citizenship to Ibrahim in 2004 even though he had convictions for indecent assault on a 15-year-old girl and had served a two-year jail sentence for a series of street robberies. Yet again, British officials seemed incapable of standing up to the demands of those using the conventions on refugees and human rights to make it all but impossible to send home violent or criminal asylum-seekers.
There are many lessons to draw from the July 21 case. One is that the sale of all items that could be used to make crude but potentially deadly bombs gas cylinders, chemicals, fertiliser or household items such as nails should be monitored, and those whose purchases arouse suspicion should have to satisfy rigorous security checks. Another is the need for the stricter policing of internet sites. Servers are forbidden to post bomb-making manuals on the web; but why can a simple Google search show a terrorist how to turn a mobile phone into a detonator?
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Far more important, however, is the need to end the bureaucratic incompetence that compounds the oversights of Britain’s hard-pressed and overstretched intelligence services. The immigration service needs a database that works. Terrorists should be tracked, not lost. Criminals should be expelled rather than allowed to plot how to kill those who have offered them shelter.