In the Times, Simon Jenkins amply fulfils my prophecy of yesterday, that the collapse of the ricin trials would prove a field day for the anti-war mob. Jenkins lets rip:

'No, there were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no 9/11 style threat, no ricin, no bombs or explosives, just some old photostats and a psychotic individual with undoubtedly evil intent...There is not the faintest convergence between the Bourgass case as revealed in the Old Bailey this week and the crazed media and political coverage of it. The BBC’s 6pm news on Wednesday night was a disgrace, worse than anything during the Gilligan affair. But because it served Downing Street’s purpose it will doubtless avoid censure. Nor was the press any better. Mention the word terrorist and sanity flies the coop.'

So everyone who thinks that Bourgass was part of an al Qaeda plot is insane, and party to Blair's lies over Iraq. Bourgass was nothing but a lone nut. Perhaps Jenkins should read his own paper. For a few pages previously, a report by Sean O'Neill paints a very different picture. O'Neill provides details of the belief by police and security sources that the conviction of Bourgass marks the final smashing of a major Algerian terror cell linked to al Qaeda headed by abu Doha, who is currently held in Belmarsh prison awaiting extradition to the US. Bourgass was a member of this cell. O'Neill writes:

'Doha was a member of the Salafist Group for Call and Combat (GSPC), a terrorist group which has carried out widespread atrocities in Algeria. In 1998, according to a US indictment, he won permission from Osama bin Laden to set up the Khalden training camp in Afghanistan for Algerians and other North Africans. Hundreds trained at Khalden and some who have since been arrested have testified that bin Laden visited regularly. Many left to fight alongside Islamists in Chechnya, but others were encouraged to base themselves in the West and carry out attacks there. With his camp established, Doha stationed himself in North London amid the growing Algerian population fleeing the bitter conflict in their homeland. The Finsbury Park mosque was a focal point for the community...'

'In December 2001 emergency powers were introduced to detain foreign terror suspects without trial.Many of those rounded up were associates of Doha. They are now free under the terms of terrorist control orders. Almost a year later the network suffered another blow when its new head, Kadre, was arrested in London. Police believe that he had come to activate the ricin plot. Two months later the poisons conspiracy was smashed and Bourgass was arrested.'

So is this all untrue? Are the police and security services also, in Jenkins's world view, either insane or telling lies? Or is it perhaps Jenkins and those who are making the same claim who cannot think straight, seeing everything through the distorting prism that anything at all that Blair or Bush have ever used to show there really was a terrorist threat must be a lie?

More gravely for the rest of us, if it is indeed true that Bourgass was a member of abu Doha's terror cell, then the question that I posed yesterday becomes overwhelmingly urgent: why did the ricin prosecutions go belly-up, and what does this tell us about the adequacy of our judicial system to deal with the terrorist threat?

Posted by melanie at April 15, 2005