All the terrorist suspects arrested two weeks ago are now released without charge. Interestingly, the BBC says it’s 12 men, but the Guardian article quoted below consistently talks about 11 suspects, perhaps out of confusion between the total number and the number of Pakistani suspects.
Greater Manchester Police have released without charge all 11 men arrested a fortnight ago in the north-west of England over an alleged terror plot. The last two men to be released have joined nine others given their freedom last night.
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In a press conference on the steps of the police headquarters, chief constable Peter Fahy said: “These people are innocent and they walk away … there are constant threats to this country but we totally respect the situation, we respect that they are innocent until proved guilty.”
Fahy denied that there had been a dispute with the security services or that bringing the arrests forward by up to 12 hours had disrupted the investigation. He criticised speculation by outsiders, including retired officers, but added: “I have not conducted any speculation. I do not feel embarrassed or humiliated by what we have done because we have carried out our duty. I don’t think a mistake has been made at all.”
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Nine of the men are due to be deported after being handed over to the UK Border Agency but it was not immediately clear what would happen to the last two men. One of the 11 is understood to be a British national. The releases came after investigators spent 13 days searching for evidence following the arrests from a number of addresses in Greater Manchester, Liverpool and Lancashire under the Terrorism Act.
The police operation was condemned today by a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain. Inayat Bunglawala told Radio 4’s Today programme: “When these arrests took place in very dramatic circumstances with students being pulled from universities and thrown to the floor, we were told by the prime minister, no less, that this was part of a very big terrorist plot. Clearly there just has not been the evidence produced to substantiate such a plot.
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“Now that we learn that actual evidence cannot be gathered to substantiate any terror plot, instead of releasing them with good grace and making clear a mistake has been made, the government is seeking to deport them, citing a very vague national security threat. That is a very dishonourable way of proceeding.”
Didn’t I say it, two weeks ago? This was a complete distraction operation to take away heat from the London police after the details of Ian Tomlinson’s death became known. Unlike previous operations, this largely failed and now these men are released quietly, on Budget Day, when the newscycle is dominated by that story.
To add insult to injury these innocent people now face deportation, despite being here legally. This is standard procedure for any case in which the government is embarassed by suspects being inconveniently innocent after ministers had crowed about disrupting terrorist plots or having arrested an important terrorist. The same is happening in the case of the student who supposedly downloaded a “terrorist manual” from the interwebs, which turned out to have been from an US government website…