Lock 'Em Up

On occassion, I find David Aaranovitch's views to be unsavoury in the extreme. Like this.

He's commenting on the film made about the Tipton Three. He raises three points which he feels should have been aired in the film. The first is that the mosque they visited in Pakistan was heavily connected to the Taleban and was, according to an unnamed describer, "the alma mater for jihadis". The second is that the three went to Afghanistan a few days after the US bombing of that country had begun. The third is that some of those who knew the three had apparently said that they were "religiously zealous". The film, Aaranovitch claims, should have raised these issues.

He says:

I am emphatically not saying here that I believe that the Tipton Three took up arms in Afghanistan and fought for the Taleban. Their story may be implausible, but it isn’t impossible. What I am noting here is the way in which Winterbottom banishes ambivalence. His Guantanamo detainees are innocent, even if the facts have to be selected carefully so as to reinforce that impression.

David, you'll note, has carefully selected his facts in order to reinforce the impression that their innocence is implausible.

They spent two years under intense interrogation at Guantanamo, were then released by the US authorities without being charged of any crime, and have never been charged with any crimes related to terrorism since their return to the UK. Is it really implausible to suggest that they are innocent under such circumstances? The US and UK authorities have, albeit grudgingly, had to admit that the Tipton Three are indeed innocent.

Not so David, apparently. He's quite keen to make sure than as much innuendo as possible, as much implied guilt as he can muster, should continue to be directed towords the Tipton Three despite the fact that there is no evidence to substantiate their involvement in any illegal activities.

Here's the problem as David sees it.

There are British jihadis who have killed, or planned to kill, dozens of Britons. And the problem is that their profiles are not so very different from the Tiptonites, and certainly not very different from that of Moazzam Begg. They’re always nice guys, family guys, and we simultaneously demand that the intelligence services and the police know who they are and pre-empt their possible acts of terrorism, while demanding that they only be detained if they can be brought to trial and found guilty in a court of law, and that the wrong ones are never detained.

Got that? The problem is that it is very difficult to tell a terrorist from someone who is not a terrorist. We are putting out intelligence services in an impossible position by demanding that they stop terrorism by only detaining and arresting terrorists. The idea that the intelligence services should not be allowed to indefinitely detain people who look a bit like terrorists is a dangerous one.

In David's reality, in order to protect our freedoms, it's OK for the intelligence services to detain people who look a bit like terrorists for a couple of years while they investigate the matter. Profiling, with no evidence of criminal activity, is apparently a good enough reason to remove someone's freedom unless innocence can be proven beyond all doubt. You'd think that someone like Aaranovitch might find such ideas abhorent. But he doesn't.

Have a look again at his problem.

We simultaneously demand that the intelligence services and the police know who they are and pre-empt their possible acts of terrorism, while demanding that they only be detained if they can be brought to trial and found guilty in a court of law, and that the wrong ones are never detained.

Yes. That is exactly what we demand. It's called justice. Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

A rational analysis of terrorism must lead to an acceptance that it is impossible to fully protect a country against all terrorist attacks. It's a harsh reality to face, but it's true. This statement does not mean, as is sometimes fatuously claimed, that we should do nothing to combat terrorism. It means that we should do everything in our power to combat it while abiding by the principles we seek to defend. Abandoning those principles is a victory for extremism.

Tags: News, Politics, Guantanamo Bay