Ahmed and Ahmed: Bradford’s New Terror Duo?

Just a couple of days after BBC3 screened its documentary ‘7/7 Bombings: Conspiracy Road Trip’, The Telegraph and Argus brings us the news that two Bradford residents arrested in September – Saeed Muhammed Ahmed and Naeem Muhammed Ahmed, 20 and 19 years old respectively who both live in the Little Horton area of the city – are to appear in London tomorrow in connection with terror charges arising from an investigation conducted by the North East Counter Terrorism Unit. Moreover, “A 16-year-old boy from the Little Horton area has been bailed pending further inquiries.”

Both Ahmeds are being charged under section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000, with S.M. having been “charged with seven offences of collecting records of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”. N.M Ahmed was charged with only four offences. Quite how serious these alleged offences were remains to be seen, as the information provided thus far is rather vague and does not indicate how far down the line, if at all, they were with respect to planning or aiding a terror attack. However, we can be fairly certain that the conspiracy theorists who believe that 7/7 was “a state conspiracy” will not be persuaded either of the guilt or the self-professed motivations of these men should they be sentenced.

Review: 7/7 Bombings: Conspiracy Road Trip

This evening witnessed the broadcast of the first in a three-part series on conspiracy theories with the theme being the 7/7 Bombings; the second and third instalments will deal with Creationism and UFOs. Hosted by comedian Andrew Maxwell (I hadn’t heard of him either), I initially feared, given that is was screened on BBC3, that this offering from the BBC would be from the same stable of “in-depth” documentaries as have previously been hosted by Stacey Dooley, a young woman possessed of all of the gravitas of a helium balloon. Thankfully, this was not to be the case, with Maxwell putting aside his comic persona for the evening and doing a decent job of narrating the piece, questioning each of the conspiracy theorists and attempting to get them to see that “the official narrative”, as they would term it, was actually the correct one.

The four conspiracy theorists came from quite different backgrounds: Layla, a 32-year-old journalist and part-time model; Davina, a 20-year-old Muslim convert and law student; Tony, an ex-security worker and CCTV operative, and Jon, who was described as a “political activist” (i.e. presumably unemployed) from a group calling itself “We are Change”, which from the appearance of its website seems to be some sort of anarchist/Far Left platform akin to Indymedia.

At the start of the documentary, all four believed that the 7/7 bombings were not the responsibility of the men who carried them out: Shehzad Tanweer, Siddique Khan, Hasib Hussain and Germaine Lindsay, but it was the documentary’s express intent to challenge and change these perceptions by presenting them with rebuttals of their pet theories. One of the most interesting aspects of the documentary proved to be how resistant to evidence and logic some of the four proved to be owing to their deeply held and emotionally-charged beliefs, illustrating the lengths to which some people will go to validate a firmly held conviction that is buoyed up by emotional fervour rather than evidence. It seemed, especially for Tony, that to challenge the theory was to in some way question and undermine some aspect of their sense of self.

The four bombers detonated themselves in the bloodiest terrorist act witnessed in Britain (if one excludes the Lockerbie bombing) killing 52 victims and wounding over 700, yet unfortunately the conspiracy theories articulated by the group of four possess a certain resonance with a segment of the population, for an opinion poll carried out by Channel 4 News in 2007 revealed that 24% of its sample of 500 “British Muslims” believed that the 7/7 attacks were planned and implemented by the Establishment.

Maxwell spent a week with the conspiracy theorists, starting out in Leeds where they were introduced to a resident of Beeston named Sasha, who had lived opposite Shehzad Tanweer and knew two of the other bombers. Davina’s belief in a conspiracy theory rested upon her conviction that the personalities of the “Muslim boys” simply did not fit with the atrocity that they had committed. She posed the question as to whether they had been “forced to do it”. Sasha herself noted that a great deal of suspicion had grown up between Muslim and non-Muslim residents since 2005, but stated her belief that the bombers had been “innocent” and that the Hamara Centre – which is where the bombers had spent a great deal of time together – had nothing to do with terrorism as “they were good Muslim boys” who didn’t go to London to kill people. This delusional thinking was demolished by a Muslim academic named Dr Russell Razaq, who specialises in terrorist psychology. He noted how the three bombers sequestered themselves in the Hamara Centre until two or three in the morning, long after it had closed, with nobody else present. Talking long into the night, the three reinforced and radicalised each other’s worldview, free from the observation of others. Davina appeared impressed by this reasoning, and conceded that the apparent discrepancy between their characters and their actions could be accounted for in this way.

The group then took a minibus to Luton, where the three bombers who had set off from Leeds met up with Germaine Lindsay in a Luton car park. This is where one of Jon’s pet theories – that the train times had been “falsified by the Government” because the 07:40 from Luton had been cancelled – was challenged. All four were given the task of pretending to be one of the terrorists, and of making their way from Luton Station to the various points in London where each had detonated their devices. Contrary to their expectations, they made it to the designated locations at just the time that the bombers had – with three of the bombers simultaneously detonating their devices at 08:50 – thereby disproving Jon’s assertion that this had not been possible. Nonetheless, Jon remained convinced that elements in the Government had deliberately planned an operation to murder citizens to legitimise its ongoing war in Iraq and to secure access to oil. Even by the end of the documentary, having been confronted with much more evidence disproving his theory, he held dear to his paranoid leftist delusion that the 7/7 bombings had been planned as “a justification to continue those wars in the Middle East” and to support the spread of “British imperialism” around the world. Tony too was of a very similar mindset, thinking that “big business” also had something to do with it.

Tony had been convinced that there was something fishy about some CCTV footage having gone what he termed “deliberately missing”, with Jon concurring that 20 minutes of missing footage from the Tube “reeks of an inside job”. Brian Paddick, Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Met on the day was unable to convince the duo otherwise.

The four were introduced to a survivor of the Edgeware Road Tube explosion – Jacqui Putnam – who had seen Siddique Khan reach down and detonate his bomb, yet this convinced neither Jon nor Tony. Davina however, dabbed away a few tears, and at this point came to recognise that the four had committed this crime. Jon and Tony were now taking the line that the four had been “patsies” to cover for a “parallel operation” by the security services.

An Imam – Dr Naseem – was visited, who made the ludicrous claim that the Government had planned the suicide bombings to incite hatred against Muslims, a view with which Jon and Tony enthusiastically concurred.

Layla stated that she had some doubts over who had detonated the bombs, for she had heard that they were already in the trains and had been detonated remotely from beneath. However, an explosives expert explained that none of the trains had derailed, which would have occurred had bombs been planted beneath the carriages. This was the moment when the penny dropped for Layla, who promptly discarded her previous belief in the bombings having arisen from a conspiracy theory, the nature of which she had not elaborated to any great extent. A bitter row then later ensued between Layla and Tony and Jon, with Layla stating that neither of the two men believed in logic. This caused particular offence to Tony, whose argumentativeness appeared to grow out of his innate truculence.

It was Tony who also scoffed at the idea that homemade explosives could be powerful enough to cause the blasts, a belief blown apart like the bus in a quarry demonstrating the power of an improvised device using black pepper and hydrogen peroxide.

In pithy fashion, Maxwell turned to Tony and Jon and said: “Can you not have some more fucking doubt in these online idiots?!” A fair point. By now, Tony conceded that Maxwell had made him realise that “it was a cock-up rather than a conspiracy”. Not Jon though. Jon continued to stick to his conspiracy theory. Whether or not he also believes that the world is controlled by a global elite of lizards was not made clear, but it would come as no surprise to learn that he subscribes to such lunacy.

Although this documentary appears to have caused something of a furore in the press, it was a decent programme that sought to undermine some frankly outlandish conspiracy theories held by a worrying minority of people about the atrocity on 7 July 2005. The words of a father about his 22-year-old son David, who died that day on his first solo trip to London as he stood next to Siddique Khan, summed up the loss that many experienced, and will never be able to replace owing to the actions of a small group of violent Islamists: “I’ll never ever stop feeling angry about the death of my son”.

There are others like them in our towns and cities today, and it is to the credit of the security services that so many would-be bombers have been intercepted before being able to carry out their plots. Islamism is what caused these deaths, and it is Islamism that must be rooted out to ensure that this never happens again. Many so-called 'truthers' are apologists for and enablers of Islamism, and their ravings deserve no credence, just as Islamism deserves no place in our country. Who do they think made Shehzad Tanweer's 'martyrdom' video? MI5? Their position is delusional and risible.

Jon, Davina, Andrew, Layla and Tony: Conspiracy Road Trippers

7/7 Bomber Grave Vandalised

The BBC reports that the grave of one of the 7/7 bombers, Hasib Hussain, has been vandalised. Apparently, his was one of a number of graves in the ‘Muslim section’ of Cottingley Cemetery that was vandalised and according to the BBC ‘had racist graffiti scrawled on it.’ Whether it did or not cannot be objectively ascertained, for the BBC deems criticism of an ideology – Islam – to be ‘racist’.

Hasib Hussain does not deserve to be remembered with fondness or with any degree of respect; his name should rather be execrated. He, along with his fellow bombers, took the conscious decision to kill and maim innocent people for no reason at all, and as such, the vandalism of his grave specifically does not cause any disquiet to me. It would have been better had he possessed no grave at all, and whatever had remained of his body had been burned and the ash dumped far out at sea. Putting this aside, it is of course unacceptable that the graves of other Muslims in Cottingley Cemetery were vandalised, and the fact of their vandalism will understandably be painful to their family and loved ones. Such an action cannot be condoned. However, only two graves – one of which was Hussain’s – were damaged. West Yorkshire Police state that:

 "We have received a report of damage to two graves in the Muslim section of Cottingley Cemetery and we are investigating.”

"Neighbourhood Policing officers are paying extra attention to the area and have liaised with local community representatives to reassure them."

Given that the West Yorkshire Police refer to only two headstones, why does the BBC report mention ‘a number of graves’, for this seems to imply more than two? Unfortunately, given the innate contemporary bias and unreliability of the broadcaster in reporting such matters, doubt must be cast upon its portrayal of this act of vandalism. As one commenter - Dinan - has stated below, gravestones are vandalised every day, yet the BBC chose to accord this incident national prominence and to highlight it as a 'racist hate crime'. Why then did the BBC choose to completely ignore the racist nature of the murder of Luke Fitzpatrick (who was white) in Dollis Hill last month, when a 22-strong masked black gang descended upon a pub armed with bats and knives and unleashed a violent assault upon the drinkers inside? Apparently, the defacing of a gravestone belonging to a Muslim supremacist mass murderer is deemed to be some heinous 'racist hate crime', whereas a black gang attack upon white Britons resulting in death and injury, is not. The editorial policy of the BBC can be described as nothing less than perverse.

Hussain murdered 13 members of the public, and wounded many others.

Hasib Hussain's Handiwork: Tavistock Square Bus Bombing

Five Years on from 7/7 Beeston’s Islamist Threat Remains

Last week bore witness to the fifth anniversary of the Islamist suicide attacks upon the London transport network in which 52 people were killed and hundreds maimed and wounded. Strangely, just as with 9/11, you will come across some Muslims who claim that this attack was not carried out by the bombers, even though Shehzad Tanweer recorded a ‘martyrdom’ (sic) video and he along his co-conspirators – Hasib Hussain, Mohammad Sidique Khan and Jermaine Lindsay - blew himself to pieces in London that day. For some Muslims, 7/7 has been deemed a “false-flag” operation. This view is of course the product of a paranoid conspiratorial mindset in which doctrinaire Muslims’ favourite bogey – the Jews – had a hand. Peculiarly, this perspective is most frequently encountered amongst Muslims who possess the most fervent desire to see indiscriminate bloody violence wreaked upon the kuffar.

Until this morning, I had not noticed a piece that appeared in the London Evening Standard last week entitled ‘Anger still felt among our young Muslim men’. This report dealt with current attitudes in the Beeston area of Leeds, which possessed an intimate link with the 7/7 attacks and still possesses a (growing) Muslim population. Kiran Randhawa (interestingly, her surname means “battle leader”) afforded a certain Muslim community leader (hey, don’t these people have local councils like everyone else in the UK, or is it just that they prefer to possess a parallel tribalist apparatus of social governance and control?) named Akhlaq Mir an opportunity to voice ‘community’ grievances. He stated:

There are still feelings there that triggered the bombings. As far as the Muslim youth are concerned, our soldiers are out in Afghanistan killing people every day and they are angry and they are frustrated.

Unsurprisingly, he and two other men – the Imam Kasim Nasir and Muslim youth worker Fahad Khan – sought to use this assertion as a basis for seeking to leverage money and resources from the Government. We all know that the sole reason underpinning the actions of the 7/7 bombers was an adherence to doctrinaire Islam. That’s it. There’s nothing more to it. The men who carried out these bombings were ideologically motivated. They alone were responsible for their own actions. However Mir, who is chairman of an education centre in north Leeds, isn’t having any of this:

We try to educate them, we tell them what Islam says. But the fear is always there that some of them will follow a path that they shouldn't. The Government needs to do more, to provide projects like ours with funding and also give some of these young people a voice, so they can vent their anger and feel like they are being listened to without resorting to violence.

Give them a voice? What does he mean? We have elections in this country. People have the right to demonstrate and to debate using the spoken and written word. Constituents can write to their MP or local councillor if they wish to raise certain issues. They can write to the press or blog. If they don’t like this way of life then fine: nobody is compelling them to stay here. There are plenty of countries which have Shariah. Should they not consider setting up home in one of those, such as the one from which their family originated for example?

What Randhawa’s article shows is the fact that significant numbers of Muslims in Leeds (and elsewhere) are temperamentally predisposed towards attacking non-Muslim British citizens. This identification of we non-Muslims as “the enemy” arises directly from their reading of the Qur’an, for that book tells them to dominate all non-Muslims using whatever means necessary. Furthermore, it also demonstrates that influential so-called ‘moderate’ Muslims are willing to use this fact as a cynical ploy to bid for funds for their own pet projects at a time when core public services are being cut and taxes increased for all of us. Two words spring to mind which seem to aptly summarise their approach in this game: blackmail and intimidation. The way to prevent future suicide bombings is to remove their cause: Islam. How about funding projects aimed at mass apostasy amongst the Muslim population? Now, that’s what I’d call a worthwhile and productive approach.