Back to Square One in Pakistan
January 8, 2007 by Laura | Trackback URI
With allies like this…
Anti-terrorism forces in Pakistan have been told to brace themselves for a wave of atrocities. Intelligence officials warned that the security situation is now more precarious than it was before the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
Senior officers say they are “back to square one” in their fight against international terrorist groups after the release of dozens of militants by Pakistani courts. High-ranking police officials say that as many as 80 hard-core militants are on the loose after being cleared by the courts or released on bail.
[...] Last month, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5, warned of the growing threat from within Pakistan. She said young British Muslims were being groomed to become suicide bombers and that most of the 1,600 suspects being tracked by her agents were British-born but linked to al-Qaeda in Pakistan.
MI5 is reported to have compiled detailed dossiers on British Muslims travelling to jihadist training camps in Waziristan, on the border with Afghanistan, the region where the United States believes Osama bin Laden is hiding. At least two of the British Muslims involved in the Tube and bus bombings in London on July 7 last year are known to have visited training camps in Pakistan.
Well, Pakistan can’t violate its own laws in order to keep these people in jail. The article says,
The government has called a meeting in Islamabad this week to discuss the release of militants. It may put forward a strategy to deter the courts from clearing suspects or releasing them on bail.
But police admit that their own methods have contributed to the problem. A senior official said police had taken to producing false witnesses because members of the public were too scared to testify in court. In addition, officers did not have the modern forensic tools to gather evidence.
Mind you, “contributed to” because the article doesn’t even hint that police misconduct is the sole reason for these releases. The courts are evidently releasing them for a variety of reasons. The Brits have good reason to be worried. But hey, Tony Blair is on the way out, so I’m sure the Brits have nothing to worry about. This extremism is only a reaction to him being Bush’s poodle, right? Or maybe not.
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