CNN Security Files

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2008-09-05T06:44:00.002-04:00

Our new home is here

OBL...over and out?

2008-07-07T06:02:00.004-04:00

Sana’a, Yemen---Credible assessment or wishful thinking?

Just after 9/11, Osama Bin Laden was arguably at his most menacing. His words and warnings were always breaking news as the world sized up every syllable, looking for the next threat.

Fast-forward to Bin Laden’s latest audio message a few weeks ago and his statements were merely reported and catalogued, hardly treated as major news. According to a credible collection of opinion from an array of security analysts and authors, Bin Laden’s core appeal may finally be unravelling.

Paul Cruickshank and Peter Bergen recently wrote in the New Republic that there was a “rising tide of anger in the Islamic world toward Al Qaeda and its affiliates, whose victims since September 11 have mostly been fellow Muslims” adding, “Al Qaeda’s new critics have the jihadist credentials to make their criticisms bite”

It is the kind of claim that can easily be interpreted as naïve or contrived. But on a on a recent trip to Yemen, the ancestral home of the Bin Laden family, the adulation of Bin Laden had been replaced by cynicism and doubt.

As one young student put it, “he kills innocent people who can’t be blamed, like what he did with the twin towers. Maybe if he wanted to declare war against America or Israel than he might find support but he uses unacceptable methods like killing innocent people” he told us on the streets of Sana’a ancient city centre.

Make no mistake, certain causes do resonate with young people in Yemen, especially ones that are anti-American and anti-Israel. But Bin Laden and Al Qaeda seem to have lost their deft skill at tapping into that anger and grievance and turning it into a terrorist advantage.

In an interview with CNN, Cruikshank said “ this is not the Pentagon line going out about what’s going or the CIA line going out about what’s going on- this analysis comes from people within Jihadist movement themselves. One senior ex-Jihadist told me in five years Al Qaeda will be finished.”

Abdullah Anas considered Bin Laden a friend and fellow freedom fighter when the pair were battling the Soviets in Afghanistan. He believes America’s war on terror actually helped keep Al Qaeda in business, “this organisation have got a very good gift, after 9/11 and after the occupation of Iraq so they were recruiting people as freedom fighters, ” says Anas.

But he adds, Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are now being deprived of these potent recruiting opportunities. More and more he says, Muslims are realizing that Al Qaeda cannot address any real grievances they may have.

“This organisation is not popular in the Arab world, it’s not popular in the Islamic world,” says Anas.

The problem is that all this analysis may not mean much when it comes to Al Qaeda’s operational ability to launch a terrorist strike. They still have thousands of militant sympathizers and powerful affiliates all over the world. What is significant is that this challenge to Bin Laden’s doctrine is coming from within the Muslim community, not from his enemies. It is a challenge coming from credible voices within Islam.

One shouldn’t be too optimistic though and interpret this to mean that any of us are any safer from terrorist attack. As Daniel Kimmage author of “The Al Qaeda Media Nexus" recently noted to CNN that the iconic and very media savvy image of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda is still at the heart of its message,

“This is their presence, this is their way of saying we are still here. But bear in mind there is an increasing disparity between the very grand claims they make to change the world and the fact that they are increasingly a media presence.”

That might give Bin Laden and Al Qaeda even more incentive to make good on some of their ‘grand claims’ to change the world and take jihad to civilians across Europe and North America.

By Paula Newton, International Security Correspondent

** WATCH MY REPORT BY CLICKING HERE **

Extremists and Radicals but not Terrorists

2008-07-03T10:16:00.007-04:00

Go to the UK Google site and type "Islamic extremist" into the search line and this is what the top entry will look like.

Click on the link and you'll be taken to the Metropolitan Police's main Anti-Terrorism webpage.

The same thing happens if you type "Islamist extremist" or "Muslim radical" ... or variations on any of the above.

Twelve weeks after buying these words the Met said it had recorded 139,000 click-thrus, though it won't say how many decent leads it's generated.

The Met's choice of words to buy is interesting, to say the least.

If you type "terrorist" instead of "extremist" or "radical" ... you'll most likely be heading for Wikipedia.

(Hat tip: Harry's Place)

By Andrew Carey

One of those tricky questions...

2008-06-16T06:34:00.002-04:00

It’s a mistake to put forward poverty as the root cause of extremism. In fact there’s too much emphasis given to economic factors in the whole debate about radicalization. What’s missing from the discourse is the role played by religion.

That’s what Kamal El-Helbawy, a leader of the Islamist organization the Muslim Brotherhood, told me earlier this week. His remarks struck me because they run counter to the complaints one still tends to hear that there is too much emphasis on Islam in the media; that when investigating terrorist acts it’s too often implied that it’s faith leading young men to do terrible things.

But for Helbawy it is faith, albeit faith wrongly understood, that’s to blame. He told me he boils the motivation behind acts of terrorism down to two main impulses. The first is a desire to please Allah, over and above any desire to displease the United States, or Britain, or whomsoever. The second is a desire to go quickly to paradise.

It follows then that the challenge is to convince would-be terrorists that the acts they are contemplating would lead to Allah’s displeasure and would send them not to paradise but to hell. Helbawy is surely right when he says it’s not Government leaders or the police who can do that, but religious figures.

And this, in turn, leads us to the big dilemma facing policy-makers involved in the hearts and minds bit of counter-terrorism. Which religious figures do they choose to help them? Which religious figures are most likely to succeed in turning around an aspiring suicide bomber in Birmingham? Those fully signed on to the idea of western liberal democracy? Or those who would wish to see Islamic law and ideas dominate all areas of life? Both are going to argue that Al Qaeda-style attacks on civilians are wrong. But which one is going to make headway?

By Andrew Carey

One Big Yawn

2008-06-13T07:29:00.005-04:00

That’s how one former Guantanamo Bay detainee reacted to the U.S. Supreme Court decision on Thursday that terror suspects held at the U.S. military base have the right to challenge the legality of their detention in American civilian courts.

Moazzam Begg was released from Guantanamo in January 2005. He was never charged with a crime. But Begg said that for most the 270 detainees still being held at Guantanamo, this ruling will mean absolutely nothing.

“This might be some kind of landmark victory but nobody has ever been released from Guantanamo because of a legal decision,” notes Begg.

Begg’s view is that American justice is an oxymoron and the detainees know even a U.S. Supreme court decision will mean very little to their future.

But the human rights organization Reprieve, which has been working for years for the release of detainees, says the ruling is a sweeping victory.

“It means the detainees will have their day in court,” says Cori Crider, a lawyer with Reprieve. “The detainees will be able to demand the U.S. government either charge them with a crime, or set them free,” she adds.

But even as Reprieve admits, a judicial ruling, even of this stature, will not necessarily lead to due process for all the detainees.

As Begg will tell you, the detainees, the lawyers who try to defend them, even some high ranking U.S. officials, have abandoned the idea that any judicial ruling will change the immediate fate of those still being held at Guantanamo without charge.

As Begg soberly added, “As Malcolm X once said, you can wedge a knife 6 inches into someone’s back, pull it back 5 inches and call it progress, it’s not progress,” says Begg.

By Paula Newton, International Security Correspondent

Nearly three years on... 21/7 recalled

2008-06-11T19:14:00.017-04:00

Fifteen people have now either pleaded guilty or been convicted in connection with the failed bomb attacks in London on July 21st, 2005. Among the most recent was Yeshi Girma, below, who was sentenced to 15 years after a jury decided she did know her husband was planning to blow up a London underground train.

The jury also found her guilty of helping her husband, Hussain Osman, escape. Osman fled first to Brighton - the CCTV image below captures him at Brighton station - and then to Rome, where he was eventually caught.

Also convicted was Yeshi's younger sister Mulu. She too was found guilty of helping Osman avoid capture. Among the items shown to the jury during their trial was CCTV footage of Mulu buying newspapers in the days immediately after the failed attack. One of them, seen below, bears the headline, “4 Suicide Bombers on the Loose.” The other paper contains an image of Osman; in a bizarre twist, the CCTV captures Mulu scanning the paper for the latest news on the hunt for the man whose whereabouts she is protecting.

The investigation into the botched bombings was the biggest manhunt in the history of the Met police. For journalists working on the story it was also a big operation...following up dramatic CCTV images of the would-be bombers, or news that another address was being searched in another part of the city.

Every new raid needed to be checked out, though it was rarely clear immediately whether or not it represented a major breakthrough. Time spent outside Curtis House, in north London, for instance, proved useful, as it became clear this was probably the bomb factory. By contrast, time spent on Tooting Broadway, in south London, proved to be wasted, as those addresses turned out to be nothing much at all.

Blair House, below, was raided on the Wednesday, six days after the would-be bombers had struck. One of the suspects, Yassin Omar, had been captured earlier that day up in Birmingham, and there was a definite sense that police might be into the end game.

We found Blair House in Stockwell, south London, part of a small estate built, at a guess, after the second world war. There was a blue plastic tarpaulin over number 40 and a cordon in front of that. Police officers were on duty outside.

There was also plenty of residents standing around answering questions from journalists. The story, everyone seemed fairly clear, was that a woman and some children had been led out of the house several hours earlier and driven away.

“Did anybody else live at the house?”

“Possibly a man… hard to be sure… they were friendly but kept themselves to themselves.”

Interesting, up to a point. Then suddenly someone new spoke up.

“He lived there, the man in the picture, the man in the picture on the telly just now, he lived there.”

That was definitely interesting. The picture was a reference to a new image of Hussain Osman, seen below, released just a few hours earlier by the Met.

The image showed Osman on a bus, an hour or so after his bomb had failed to go off. Crucially it was a much better image than the first one released by the Met, which had showed him wearing a baseball cap as he waited, before the attack, for a train.

Unfortunately none of the other people still standing around outside Blair House seemed to have seen the early evening news bulletins. And no one had a copy of the late edition of the Evening Standard newspaper, which had also carried the picture. So there was no one able to corroborate this intriguing development.

What we needed to do was to film the reaction of the other residents as they looked at the new picture of Osman for the first time. So one of the photographers who had decided to stick around was prevailed upon to call her news desk. They sent a jpg file to her email address, which meant the image could be downloaded onto her laptop and shown to the residents.

That’s exactly what happened and we were the only camera team to capture the moment when the residents of Blair House in Stockwell realized they had been living next door to a man who had tried to explode a bomb on the underground.

OK, so it wasn’t quite as dramatic as the images two days later of the other two failed bombers, Muktar Said Ibrahim and Ramzi Mohammed, giving themselves up to police on a brick balcony in west London. But it did give us some unique footage and a good line at the end of another remarkable day.

By Andrew Carey

Charges in Barcelona - Ebbs and Flows of a Terror Case

2008-06-05T18:17:00.004-04:00

When it broke in the third week of January it looked a big story. A dozen or so men, almost all of them from Pakistan, arrested in Spain just days ahead of allegedly launching suicide bomb attacks in Barcelona. Then it transpired that very little in the way of explosive material had been found, casting doubt on whether the men really were in a position to carry out their attacks there and then. First question mark.

The story picked up again with reports there was an international dimension. El Pais reported attacks were being planned in five other European countries. And then a short while later the United States Defence Secretary Robert Gates told a conference in Munich that the cell appeared linked to Baitullah Mehsud. He’s the leader of the Taliban in Pakistan and the man blamed for the death of Benazir Bhutto. It looked once again like an important story.

Then a few weeks ago I received strong steer that took the air right out of it. The alleged attacks were not as imminent as it had appeared at the time, I heard; indeed, the threat had been exaggerated. I downgraded my interest accordingly.

And so today and the news that indictments have been brought against the men by Judge Ismael Moreno. The eleven charged, writes the Judge, were intending “to commit various terrorist suicide attacks between January 18th and January 20th on public transport in the city of Barcelona.”

The group were also “very close to achieving technical capacity with explosives.” Enough material was recovered to make “one or more” bombs, according to the indictment, adding “although they lacked sufficient destructive potency for the commission of an attack that would guarantee large-scale damage, they could have been used for training in the handling of explosives.”

The Judge said that four of the men were to carry out the suicide attacks; three of them, he noted, having arrived in Spain just weeks before their arrest. Moreno also named two men as the group’s alleged ideological leaders, including a 64-year old man, Mohamad Ayud Elahi Bibi, described as having lived in Spain for many years.

The indictment makes little mention of any international dimension and all these charges are yet to be tried in court. But as a story of interest, it goes back up the flagpole.

By Andrew Carey

Extremists Targeting Mentally Ill?

2008-05-25T06:29:00.002-04:00

As the expression goes here, ’those things’ like bomb threats and terror happen ‘up country’, in London, not here.

Think again. Residents of Southwest England are learning more and more about 22 year-old Nicky Reilly, the man who shattered their illusions of innocence and tranquillity as he emerged bloodied and burned from a restaurant in Exeter, England.

“You have lots of false alarms and tests and evacuations all the time and you just assume that it’s going to be another false alarm,” says Anna Lloyd a shop worker caught up in the terror scare on Thursday. “You never think that it will actually happen in this area for real,” she adds.

Cornwall and Devon police describe Reilly as a mentally ill and vulnerable young man. He was a convert to Islam and a person who in their words was radicalised and preyed upon by extremists. They allege he was planning to set off at least two bombs made of drain cleaner, kerosene and nails and the devices could have potentially been lethal.

“He was a normal guy you can’t imagine this guy would come and do these things,” says Nishant Patel who manages a neighbouring restaurant. Patel says he watched the whole incident unfold and it was clear Reilly was stunned and unable to speak after the incident.

Nicky Reilly remains in police custody in an Exeter hospital as he is being treated for severe burns. Police say they still have not been able to question him but they remain convinced he could not have acted alone.

And so in Reilly’s hometown of Plymouth, a calm cafe was transformed instantly over coffee. Several armed officers with assault rifles at the ready nabbed two more suspects for questioning. The chilling scene brought the terror threat to every store front and doorstep in town.

Authorities have also been scouring Reilly’s apartment in Plymouth, looking for clues into how a young man who they say is rather simple and dependent could have put together a lethal bomb and a chilling plot.

One place they are looking for leads is an internet café just a few blocks from Reilly’s home. Adam Targett, an employee at the internet café, says Reilly started coming to the internet café more than a year ago knowing very little about computers. Targett says he used to ask questions about very basic computing tools like email. But Targett says within months all that changed and so did the company he was keeping.

“He was actually accompanied to the café by two guys in Islamic dress,” says Targett.

While Reilly had a computer at home, Targett says it is now beginning to dawn on him why Reilly still came to the internet café. After each customer’s internet session, Targett says the computer history of that computer must be erased.

“It did bother us to begin with, yeah, but we can’t because of the way that data protection works we can’t check what people are looking at” he says.

Internet cafés have been well worn territory for extremists in the past. Police now fear that the picture emerging of Reilly follows a common pattern of radicalization and one that could now be affecting the most vulnerable of people in the most unlikely of places.

By Paula Newton, International Security Correspondent.

The Best Tent

2008-05-20T13:32:00.006-04:00

Three men are currently on trial in London accused of assisting the 7/7 bombers. One of them, Waheed Ali, above left, was in the witness box today. Among the things he told the jury was that in 2001 he had made a trip to a training camp in Pakistan with 7/7 ringleader Mohammed Siddique Khan.

Ali said the camp was in the mountains in NWFP and was run by Harakat ul-Mujahideen. He said both men learned how to fire Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, among other activities.

Even though there were more than 100 others at the camp, according to Ali, it was the British who were given the best tent, as well as special food and their own trainer. “It was because they relied on the British for money,” he said.

Waheed Ali is charged, along with Sadeer Saleem and Mohammed Shakil, of conspiring with Khan, Shezhad Tanweer, Jermaine Lindsay, Hasib Hussain and others unknown to cause explosions. They all deny the charges and the trial continues.

By Andrew Carey

Morocco Arrests

2008-05-19T11:29:00.006-04:00

Eleven arrests in Morocco announced today … members of an alleged terrorist cell involved in sending people to fight in Iraq and train at AQ camps in Algeria.

Among their number is a Moroccan resident in Belgium. Among the accusations levelled at the cell is that it was planning terrorist acts in Belgium.

A spokesperson for the Federal Prosecutor in Brussels, who’s authorised to speak on security and terrorism cases, says the arrests were as much news to them as they were to everybody else.

Belgium has worked hard to develop its CT relationship with Morocco, stationing a magistrate and a liaison officer there specifically to facilitate information exchange on terror threats. It’s safe to assume there was more than a little frustration in the upper echelons of Belgium’s police and security organisations this morning that they’d been kept in the dark over this alleged plot.

By Andrew Carey

Watching Big Brother on the Bus

2008-05-15T09:53:00.004-04:00

When I used to get a bus to and from school there were certain things one might have wanted to keep hidden from prying eyes. For the fortunate few it might be getting to know better a girl from the next village. For the rest of us it was more likely just the cards we were holding at whist.

Fortunately, in those days, what passed for surveillance was carried out by an old man named Percy who rode the bus trying – and failing - to maintain order among fifty rowdy kids. Ungoverned spaces flourished.

Fast forward to the present and woe-be-tide anyone with anything to hide on the new 102 to Edmonton Green. It positively bristles with cameras; no fewer than nine providing complete coverage of the passengers and their antics. Count them for yourself.

Of course cameras have been fitted on London buses for years now. They played a crucial role in tracking down two of the failed bombers who struck the capital on July 21st, 2005.

But what’s striking about the new technology is the fact that passengers can now watch the images from the nine cameras on two screens, one on each deck. And the quality of those images is very impressive.

The screen cycles through the shots on a never-ending loop, in the same way any other CCTV circuit does. The difference of course is that it’s not just one man behind a closed door keeping an eye over it. Pretty much everyone on the bus can monitor the behaviour of fellow passengers.

There is something rather voyeuristic, even depressing, about staring at the screen as it cycles away. It all feels like a particularly dreary episode of Big Brother. Perversely it also feels more intrusive to know the whole bus is watching me, as I watch them; even though it’s surely much more democratic to be surveilled by everyone rather than by a single faceless stranger.

One unambiguously positive element to this does, however, suggest itself. If we really are going to live in a society where CCTV cameras proliferate then we surely want to see some pay-off in terms of preventing crime and prosecuting criminals. Last week, as Paula wrote in an earlier entry, it emerged that at least one senior police officer at the Met believed CCTVs had been an “utter fiasco,” due in large part to the fact that criminals, and presumably everyone else as well, assume the cameras aren’t working.

Sitting on the 102 as it crawls its way through north London, I can confirm that the cameras most assuredly are working. And, though I’d be foolish to say it proves a link, I can report that everyone’s behaving themselves.

By Andrew Carey

'Bottle Bombs'

2008-05-13T13:16:00.004-04:00

From the outset, explosives expert Keith Ritchie made clear that this experiment was incredibly dangerous to carry out, even for the British military. Protectively rigged within a sealed chamber, authorities say they carefully constructed a bomb in bottle and would only detonate it by remote control.

On impact, the destruction is profound. You can see the shattered glass, the collapsing panels. This experiment was shown to a British jury in connection with an alleged plot to bring down several airliners in 2006. Prosecutors allege this proves that liquid explosives disguised as sport drinks could have been smuggled onto planes causing massive damage.

From several different camera angles the hydrogen peroxide mixed with a powdered drink explodes with shocking intensity. You can hear loud bangs, you sense the extreme heat and other pictures show close-ups of punctures in the panels.

These video images and pictures were all played for the jury and accompanied by expert testimony. Eight men are now standing trial accused of trying to bring down American and Canadian jets with their ‘bottle bombs’. They deny all charges. The prosecution claims the experiment simulates what the accused were plotting and what they were perfectly capable of pulling off. The prosecution told the jury, the accused had all the component parts in place.

But the Judge in the case cautioned the jury after seeing the images, telling them the explosions were hypothetical, they had to deal in facts only: Would this have killed anyone or brought down a plane? The prosecution is expected to present more experts in the coming weeks to testify to the lethal potential of these ‘bottle bombs’

Watch my report, which includes footage of the explosion, by clicking here.

By Paula Newton, CNN’s International Security Correspondent.

GWOT - An End in Sight?

2008-05-12T11:23:00.007-04:00

Two years ago, the Bush administration started characterizing the ‘global war on terror” as the “Long War.” Bush himself made direct comparisons between the GWOT and the Cold War in a series of speeches. The message was clear: the defeat of Al Qaeda was a long-term project. It would be many decades before OBL and his followers were gone for good.

So it’s a bit of a shock when FBI boss Robert Mueller says that AQ will be defeated “on my watch.” The remark came at an event in London last month in response to a question from the audience. There’s a suggestion he might have misspoken and meant to say “in my lifetime.” Even if it wasn’t a slip of the tongue, it’s quite possible that Mueller was referring only to the core of Al Qaeda rather than all those inspired by it. You can watch the clip here.

But whichever way you want to slice or dice this particular remark, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that those fighting jihadi terrorism have a bit of a spring in their step at the moment. As one member of Britain’s intelligence community says, “there are green shoots of hope.”

He points to a poor showing from Islamists in the recent Pakistani elections, as well as his belief they’ve suffered a setback in Iraq and sustained severe and unforeseen blows in Indonesia and Malaysia.

He still puts a timeframe on the defeat of jihadi terrorism in the region of fifteen to twenty years but adds: “The problem probably won’t be sustained as long as I had originally thought.”

By Andrew Carey

Abu Qatada refuses to be written out of the script

2008-05-08T21:14:00.004-04:00

The news that Abu Qatada is to be bailed marks another plot turn in the blockbuster that is “Londonistan.” The story, for those who need reminding, begins in the late 1990s, when the French, in particular, were being driven crazy by what they saw as Britain’s naïve neglect of dangerous extremists living in London. These were people, they said, involved in spreading a message of hatred and violence towards non-Muslims; in some cases, too, it was said, helping to recruit volunteers and raise money for terrorist acts.

Slowly but surely, however, the main characters in “Londonistan” disappeared from Britain’s streets. Firebrand preacher Abdullah al-Faisal was convicted of soliciting to murder in 2003; last year he was deported to his native Jamaica. Abu Hamza, who ran the Finsbury Park mosque in north London, is serving time at Her Majesty’s pleasure after he, too, was found guilty of soliciting murder. Once out he faces almost certain extradition to the United States to face trial on separate terrorism offences. And Omar Bakri, the founder of AQ-sympathisers, Al Muhajiroun, fled Britain shortly after 7/7 and was subsequently barred from coming back.

Abu Qatada’s story was always more complicated. Convicted in absentia in his native Jordan for terrorism offences in the 1990s, he was later described by Spain’s chief terrorism prosecutor, Baltasar Garzon, as Osama Bin Laden’s right hand man in Europe. Recordings of his sermons were found in a Hamburg apartment frequented by the 9/11 hijackers.

Facing likely arrest in the face of new terror laws in Britain introduced after those attacks Abu Qatada went on the run. He was caught in October 2002 and then held without charge at Belmarsh high security prison for two and a half years. In March 2005 he won bail and was slapped with a control order instead, placing strict limitations on his movements.

At this point the British government embarked on a new strategy for dealing with foreign nationals it believed posed a threat to national security. It started negotiating agreements, or Memoranda of Understanding, with countries with dodgy human rights records aimed at securing a promise from those governments that they wouldn’t torture or carry out the death penalty on individuals returned there from Britain. After agreement was reached with Jordan in August 2005, Qatada was immediately arrested again pending deportation. It looked like the beginning of the end.

That is until not one but two key legal victories for Abu Qatada in the space of the last four weeks. First the Court of Appeal blocked deportation saying it was unsafe to send him back to Jordan. And now an immigration tribunal has granted him bail, albeit effectively confining him to his house for 22 hours each day. Britain’s Home Secretary pronounced herself extremely disappointed at this latest decision.

It’s all very messy and certainly offers fresh ammunition to those who believe “Londonistan” continues to tie British authorities up in knots. With recent High Court challenges to certain terror offences as well as the sanctions regime targeting terrorist financing, there will be those who believe British judges remain too soft on the terror threat.

Opposition politicians, meanwhile, are saying it underlines the need for Britain to fall into step with many other jurisdictions around the world and allow intercept evidence into court. If that’s what is needed to build a case against Abu Qatada in a British court, they say, then the case for changing the law has never been stronger.

By Andrew Carey

A Candid Look at Cameras

2008-05-07T09:47:00.004-04:00

It seemed to be the ‘smoking gun’ many were waiting for. One of Scotland Yard’s finest telling a security conference that CCTVs have been ‘an utter fiasco’, that only 3 per cent of street crime is solved using them, and that criminals had no fear of CCTV.

So what are the facts? Do CCTVs make us any safer?

London’s Transport Police say the cameras do work. It claims violent crime on trains and buses is down by half in the past year alone. But officers admit they have to find smarter ways to use the technology.

“The challenge for the police service is to constantly look for smarter ways to look for the product, so the images. “ says Paul Crowther of the British Transport Police. He adds that law enforcement officials are constantly asking themselves how they can use the footage more effectively.

“How do we quickly get those images out, how do we process them, how do we identify the people that were on them and then turn those into arrests so that we can reduce crime further by making it clear to people that CCTV means they are going to get locked up,” says Crowther.

Privacy advocates in Britain claim the country has one fifth of all the world’s CCTVs, at least one for every 14 people in the country. When you’re in Britain, you can be caught on camera hundreds of times per day.

Scotland Yards refuses to comment, but its internal audit suggests all those long lenses are short on results. Government statistics on crime rates have held steady in Britain in the last decade despite billions of dollars of investment in CCTV.

“Most of these problems are social problems and you can’t just get around them by introducing a flashy new technology,” says David Murakami Wood, a surveillance expert who studies its impact on society.

But there is compelling evidence that some crimes would never be solved without CCTV evidence.

In July 2005, CCTV cameras in London candidly caught three armed men viciously stab and beat two friends on a night out. Even though all of it was caught on tape, it seemed to make no difference to the criminals. One of the victims, Daniel Pollen died that night, but Andrew Griffiths, the other victim, survived to see his attackers convicted using CCTV evidence.

“Without it, there wasn’t a case really,” says Griffiths. “Due to the fact that I didn’t remember barely anything, the CCTV showed everything that happened, the way it happened,” he adds.

Experience authorities here in Britain point out that there is no way of knowing how or when CCTVs actually prevent crime.

“This is a wonderful tool for crime reduction and crime prevention but it’s not being used in the right way” says John O’Connor, a former Scotland Yard commander.

“Who knows how bad crime would be if it wasn’t for the CCTV?” he asks.

Watch my report here.

By International Security Correspondent, Paula Newton.

Amnesty Update: Drowning in Controversy

2008-05-02T10:29:00.004-04:00

A few of you have commented that regardless of the morality of torture, an interesting question is: Does it work? Back in the Fall, when CIA and U.S. justice department secret memos on aggressive interrogation were leaked, we interviewed a man who says he was tortured by American authorities. He claims torture is useless.

Watch my report here.

Update by Paula Newton.

Amnesty Shocker

2008-04-30T17:50:00.006-04:00

So, picture yourself in a movie theatre, some frenetic music starts up, then the water starts to pour. It could be an ad for spring water or even vodka, it’s slick. But within seconds the slick commercial pans down and delivers a big dose of shock.

Amnesty International actually staged a waterboarding session in order to sharpen its campaign against it and beginning in May the commercial will air as a preview in theatres throughout Britain. http://www.unsubscribe-me.org/

“It’s not a stunt, ” insists Sara McNeice of Amnesty. “This constitutes torture. We don’t need to gloss it up, we don’t need to call it an enhanced interrogation technique. It’s torture, it should be illegal it should never be used,” she adds.

Malcolm Nance, a former American military officer, trained personnel to resist water boarding and claims it feels like slow motion murder. He acted as a consultant for Amnesty during the production of the commercial.

“These videos that Amnesty International has put out are pretty realistic, ” says Nance. “These people are being tortured and this is just not how the American public, I’m certain, wanted their government to dishonour themselves,” he says.

Water boarding is now an iconic symbol in what has become known as the 'War on Terror". It is emblematic of the controversy and confusion now surrounding the war itself. The Bush Administration bans the practice of waterboarding for the military, but not intelligence officers which is why Amnesty International says it wants the American public to demand it be banned outright.

“This isn’t about being anti-American or taking an anti-American stance on the issue this is about an anti-torture stance people and the public don’t want to see people being tortured in their name” insists McNeice.

But some scholars warn that a shock ad will only add to all the confusion surrounding the debate. Professor Michael Levin of City College in New York is a noted scholar on the philosophical question of when and if torture is justified.

Levin insists he is not advocating waterboarding or any other kind of aggressive interrogation technique but he points out that there is a realistic question to asked : How tough should governments get when lives are on the line?

“There have to be firm rules, it has to be to protect the innocent, it has to be non-punitive,” he says before insisting that the blanket ban that Amnesty is advocating is not realistic.

“I don't see how you can honestly say that there are techniques you just can't use to save thousands of innocent lives, it just seems absurd." Says Levin.

Amnesty claims its commercial is the "video the CIA doesn’t want you to see”. It says almost four hundred thousand people have already viewed it online, even before it’s been released in theatres. And so the debate continues with another battleplan, on a different battlefield with Amnesty’s latest salvo coming soon to a theatre near you.

Watch report on the video.

By Paula Newton, International Security Correspondent.

The Defectors

2008-04-24T06:07:00.002-04:00

Their first salvo is hardly revolutionary, but those launching the Quilliam Foundation say it will be much more than just a talk shop. Quilliam is the first of its kind, a think-tank run by former extremists, ‘defectors’ from Islamist thinking who insist they will stand up to terrorists by blowing apart their ideology. Watch Paula Newton's report.

“We really are rocking the boat, this is the first time you’ve had Muslim voices coming up and saying ‘we’ve got problems,’ says Ed Husain, one of the directors of this new think-tank. He adds, “Within the Muslim community thus far there’s been a denial, there’s no problem guys.”

For those caught up in modern day terror, denial is not an option. Rachel North survived the train blast on the Piccadilly line in London in July 2005. She says that almost three years later she is still in search of answers that may only come from those once so inspired by terror.

“You start to see that what you’re dealing with has solutions it’s not a black and white situation where fear and panic and hysteria about terror rules,” says North. “You’re actually dealing with people at the end of the day, people you can communicate with,” she adds.

One of those people is now Maajid Nawaz, another Quilliam director who used to recruit extremists all over Europe. He says he will now methodically, patiently debunk what he calls the ‘Islamist lie’.

“We’ve done this because for the first time a counter-extremism think tank has been established by former Islamists to critique the ideology, to critique Islamism and that voice can only come from Muslims because we’ve developed a theological and political critique of this ideology and in a nutshell what I’d say is we’re deciding to fight back with ideas,” he says as he strolls through the London university where he used to conduct much of his extremist recruiting.

Why does any of this matter? I put that question to Nawaz and asked him will any of his efforts really make us any safer?

“Definitely it makes us safer because terrorism grows out of Islamism, Islamist inspired terrorism is a phrase I use because it grows out of those who share the same ideology. The Al-Qaeda world view came from somewhere.”

By Paula Newton, CNN’s International Security Correspondent.

The Virtual Strip Search

2008-04-16T04:40:00.005-04:00

It’s coming soon to a crowded corner near you, a camera that can actually see through your clothes. It’s called the T5000 Camera and while it was first designed for space and has been used to measure the hole in the ozone layer it is now just one more security surveillance tool.

The camera works like a telescope to screen you from as far as 80 feet away, even when you’re moving. Its best application would be in crowded spaces where security authorities want to increase surveillance without slowing people down. Authorities can search for concealed weapons and explosives without you ever knowing it.

“We are genuinely looking through clothing,” says Clive Beattie of Thru Vision, a British company now piloting the camera. “It’s almost a glowing light bulb, you don’t see the detail that people might be concerned about.”

That ‘detail’ he’s referring to is body parts, but the camera actually makes people look like glowing blobs because of how it works. The camera picks up on electromagnetic rays that all of us, and all objects, give off naturally. These rays are called Tera-hertz or t-rays.

Thru Vision claims the camera is completely safe. “We’re not having to eradiate people with x-rays or any other type of radiation,” says Beattie.

We showed what the camera could do to people taking a stroll in Piccadilly Circus, central London, already one of the most spied on corners in the world. Some were still uneasy about a camera that can get under your skin.

“Yeah, maybe, a bit over the top I think” said one woman who couldn’t help but giggle when she saw the glowing images on the screen.

The crucial question is; will it actually make us any safer? Even this camera would likely not have detected the London bombers as they carried their explosive laden knapsacks. So many people are carrying so many packages it would take more than one camera to catch them, but very vigilant security personnel.

Privacy advocates worry security officials are relying too much on technology, extending the reach of ‘big brother’ without really making us any safer.

“What we should consider is how much we want to lose aspects of our privacy in order to attain a sort of notional security, in most cases this isn’t real security, it’s a sense of safety, that has very little real effect.” says a David Murakami Wood a researcher who studies the effects of new technology on society.

It seems authorities though are convinced a ‘sneak peak’ is worth it. Thru Vision says it has already sold its camera to a few companies in the London, including the Canary Wharf financial complex and they say the US military has also expressed its interest.

And remember, if the camera is in use as you’re walking around a crowded event in the next few years, you’ll never know it.

By Paula Newton, CNN’s International Security Correspondent.

Bin Laden Who?

2008-03-20T12:02:00.007-04:00

Question: When Osama Bin Laden speaks, who’s listening? That’s what we want to know as bin Laden releases not one, but two audio messages this week.

This image taken from a militant Web site shows an undated photo of Osama bin Laden as part of an audiotaped speech posted late Wednesday.

In the first, released on an al Qaeda Web site, he talks of a new crusade against Islam as evidenced by the publication of Danish cartoons that ridicule the Prophet Mohammed. He says, “Although our tragedy in your killing of our women and children is a very great one, it paled when you went overboard in your unbelief and freed yourselves of the etiquettes of dispute and fighting and went to the extent of publishing these insulting drawings. This is the greater and more serious tragedy, and reckoning for it will be more severe.”

In the second, an audiotape broadcast by Al Jazeera, bin Laden called on Muslims to keep up the fight against U.S. forces in Iraq as a path to "liberating Palestine." He says: "My speech is about the Gaza siege and the way to retrieve it and the rest of Palestine from the hands of the Zionist enemy," Bin Laden adds. "Our enemies did not take it by negotiations and dialogue but with fire and iron. And this is the way to get it back."

Neither message could be independently authenticated although security services around the world are now trying to assess if the messages are the recorded words of Osama bin Laden and when he might have issued his warnings.

Just a few months ago, a message from bin Laden would have rated among the top stories in any newspaper or on any newscast. Now, that’s just not the case. Most news organisations reported the messages but there didn’t seem a need for in-depth analysis or pundit panels about the imminent threat. Even security services seem less alarmed by bin Laden’s messages with one Italian security source telling Reuters.com: “Obviously we can't ignore it but at this moment that doesn't mean the threat is being taken seriously," the source said.

It gets you thinking. We debate this here at CNN but we’ve come up with no real definitive answers as of yet. When we cover bin Laden’s messages, do we give him too much credibility? Or given his iconic position as the head of al Qaeda, are we not taking his messages seriously enough?

But most importantly, to those who still see bin Laden as a guiding force for jihad, how do they interpret his messages? We’re still looking for those answers, and as always looking for your comments.

By Paula Newton, CNN’s International Security Correspondent.

Talking Peace with the Enemy

2008-03-17T07:58:00.004-04:00

Can you really? Apparently, if you’re the British prime minister and the issue is Northern Ireland, the answer is ‘yes’. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, gave a rare interview to The Guardian newspaper this weekend. Powell’s new book documents the behind the scenes Northern Ireland peace process and how talking to your enemies may be the only way to get rid of them.

However, Powell’s Northern Ireland experience gave him enough confidence to venture into another peace-making business that isn’t going so well. Powell argues, "if I was in government now, I would want to have been talking to Hamas, I would be wanting to communicate with the Taliban and I would want to find a channel to al-Qaeda".

Can talking to your enemies really destroy them?

Back in November I asked Afghan Prime Minister Hamid Karzai if he were willing to talk to the Taliban. Surprisingly, he answered in the most candid of ways, “we are willing to talk to those of the Taliban who are not part of Al Qaeda or the terrorist networks,” said Karzai. A qualified maybe?

Before this he sounded even more conciliatory pointing out that he and his staff had ‘increasing’ contacts with the Taliban, as many as five points of contact in the last week alone. He went on to say, “If we are talking of such contacts, they are there, if we are speaking of a centralized authority in the Taliban with whom we can talk for peace that is not there.” But he made it seem as if, when there is that centralized authority, sure, we'll talk.

I and others took this as a qualified ‘yes’, it’s acceptable, even desirable to open a channel of communication to your enemy, if only to continually assess any opportunity for peace.

Just weeks later, Karzai’s government expelled two diplomats for, essentially, talking to the Taliban.

Confused? I still am. The only lesson I can take from this: If you are talking to the enemy, keep it a secret. It seems Tony Blair and his advisors took that to heart.

Dutch nab Pakistani man "linked to Barcelona plot"

2008-03-14T08:28:00.013-04:00

In January, Spanish police arrested 14 men in Barcelona suspected of plotting suicide attacks on the city's public transport network. Four bomb timers were discovered but no explosives.

Most of the men arrested were Pakistani nationals. Their cover was apparently blown by an informant, who also told Spanish police the group was planning additional attacks in Britain, France, Germany and Portugal, according to El Pais newspaper.

Early this morning Dutch police made a follow-up arrest in that investigation. A 26-year old Pakistani national, who Dutch authorities had been watching for six weeks, was arrested in the southern Dutch town of Breda. Officials said he was detained on suspicion of belonging to an "international jihadist network" preparing attacks in western Europe. However there was nothing to suggest he planned to launch an attack in the Netherlands, they said.

The arrested man had arrived in the country in September last year on a student visa having secured a place to study at a vocational college. CNN was told he had not attended lessons and had worked instead as a painter and decorator.

The arrest comes just weeks after a series of media reports suggesting police in Europe were hunting a man called Akeel Abassi as a possible accomplice of the Barcelona cell. Several reports suggested Abassi was being hunted in connection with a possible attack in Germany.

Alleged plot is not home-grown

Spanish authorities have indicated they believe most of the people involved in this alleged plot have been rounded up. As prosecutors in Spain and the Netherlands work on building a case they can present in court, what is striking is how it appears to subvert so much of the received wisdom.

For the last three years or so all the talk in Europe has been about "home-grown terror." The focus has been on European nationals - mainly British, but also German and Danish to name just two - who've been radicalised at home, probably gone to Pakistan to receive some training, and then returned to Europe to carry out their attacks.

Those accused of this alleged conspiracy are Pakistanis. On top of that it was reportedly masterminded by Pakistani Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud. That points strongly to the idea that if the alleged plot had a raison d'etre then it was Afghanistan. And, in fact, that should come as little surprise. For there is a growing belief in European counterterrorism circles that it is Afghanistan - rather than Iraq, rather than Palestine, rather than Egypt or Saudi Arabia - that is the 'cause celebre a la mode' for jihadist extremists.

By Andrew Carey

Hezbollah and Cyber War

2008-03-14T08:22:00.004-04:00

CNN has learned intelligence officials in Britain and the US believe Hezbollah sleeper cells could use their computer expertise to launch a cyber attack, on the orders of Iran. Hezbollah has been described as Iran’s surrogate army. For years US, Israeli and European security services have accused Iran of exporting terror around the world, using Hezbollah operatives. Now, cyber space may be the new battlefield, especially if Iran believes its nuclear program is under threat.

While Hezbollah’s capability in launching such an attack has been questioned, the US and Israeli military are taking the threat very seriously. In fact, the FBI says it now considers Hezbollah operatives more capable and robust than even Al Qaeda terrorists.

Hezbollah showed its increasing technological sophistication during its war with Israel in 2006. The moment Israel starting bombing Hezbollah targets in Beirut, the US government says it was being attacked on another battlefield in cyber space. A US Congressional research report detailed more than 10,000 breaches including the Pentagon, the House of Representatives website and NASA.

“There’s an argument out there shared by most independent specialists on Hezbollah that Hezbollah is actually better at using and understanding cyber warfare against the Israelis, than Israel is,” says Bilal Saab, a Middle East analyst with the Brookings Institution.

In 1994, 85 people were murdered and hundreds injured when a white van, packed with explosives was detonated at a Jewish cultural centre in Buenos Aires. Prosecutors in Argentina still believe the Iranian government gave Hezbollah agents the ‘kill’ order and wouldn’t hesitate to attack again.

“What I can say with certainty is that they can quickly launch a terrorist attack. Because they have the sleeper cells ready, they have the research ready, they have the agents.” says Marta Nercellas, an Argentine lawyer working with victims and their families. Iran and Hezbollah deny any involvement in the attack and Hezbollah declined to be interviewed for this report telling CNN, 'they don't answer these kinds of questions'.

While analysts believe conventional terror is still Hezbollah’s main weapon, some now are looking at the possibility that it could activate sleeper cells in order to open a second front in cyber space.

“The ambition is there, they would have a vested interest in retaliating and working with the Iranians,” says Saab.

For Iran, Hezbollah still serves as a potent threat and a warning that if and when the US, Israel or Europe try to block its nuclear ambitions, it is ready to fight back.

By Paula Newton, CNN’s International Security Correspondent.

Swimming Upstream

2008-03-13T22:04:00.002-04:00

The great and the good of British counter-terrorism policing were in Brighton a couple of weeks ago for the first ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) Counter Terrorism Conference. There were plenty of top cops present, British and overseas, as well as Government officials, legal professionals and academics.

Opening the conference, in his last week as head of Counter Terrorism Command at the Met Police, Peter Clarke told delegates they needed an open mind if they were going to "understand the picture," adding that "old or stereotyped thinking simply will not do." It's worth paying attention to the speakers at a conferences like this one because they're providing the brain food upon which Britain's counterterror cops are being encouraged to feed.

One topic everyone wants to get a handle on is radicalisation. How does it happen? How can we recognise it? And how can we stop it from happening?

Martin Innes, a Professor of Criminology at Cardiff University, presented some interesting research. Muslim communities, he suggested, are pretty well functioning, certainly compared to British society as a whole. They have a high level of social capital - shared goodwill, sense of fellowship and shared values - and a collective efficacy. Crucially, according to Innes, that means people from these communities feel safe within their own environment.

This seems to me to be pretty profound. If a community feels cohesive, if individuals within it feel secure - and we're talking about a pretty fundamental human need here, a sense of security - then why would they have any interest in integrating with the wider community, when to do so, they feel, would be to put at risk their feelings of safety and security?

To put it another way, individuals from a tight-knit Muslim community look out at the rest of neighbouring society and take the view, rightly or wrongly, that it cannot look after their security as well as they can look after it themselves. That means they don't call the police when there's a problem.

The second interesting finding, related, is that within Muslim communities there is - relative to society as a whole - a high degree of awareness of "deviant behaviour", as sociologists call it. In other words people know who is up to no good in the neighbourhood. Crucially, however, there is a reluctance to give up that information to authority figures - like the police - drawn from outside the community. To do so carries a risk to family and wider kin, even those abroad.

This also strikes me as important because it appears to run counter to the assertion, often heard, that parents have no idea what their children are up to; indeed can’t be expected to know what they’re up to. In well-functioning communities, this research suggests, parents do know. That's not to suggest the parents of a suicide bomber are aware of their son's intentions. But it is to suggest that parents, or other authority figures from within the community, might be well-placed to spot signs of a possible drift towards violent extremism.

Put these two points together and you have a scenario where the police are not seen as the best guarantors of security ... but where there is a high level of potential intelligence available from within the community. The conundrum for the police is how they can best get hold of it.

From Andrew Carey

Update on kidnapped Austrian tourists

2008-03-13T19:05:00.009-04:00

Three days after it announced it had captured them, the group calling itself Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has now posted pictures of Wolfgang Ebner and Andrea Kloiber on the internet. Kloiber's face is obscured in all the pictures by what appears to be a crude post-production effect.

A message accompanying the pictures said that the pair's security lay in Austrian hands and that they'd be released if all AQ prisoners in Tunisia and Algeria were set free. The message set a deadline of three days.

Just where the pair are being held remains a mystery. Two days ago an Algerian paper said they had been taken through Libya and Algeria into Mali. Austria's Foreign Ministry spokesman confirmed to CNN that it was working with Malian authorities, along with those in Tunisia and Algeria, to try to find them.

From Andrew Carey

UPDATE (18TH MARCH): AUSTRIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY SAYS DEADLINE/ULTIMATUM EXTENDED BY A WEEK