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Home Office undermined MI5 claim terror suspects were guilty
A Sunday Herald investigation has undermined claims by a UK Lord that suspects arrested on terrorism charges in Scotland, but later freed, had been planning mass murder.Lord Carlile, the independent assessor of UK terrorism laws, claimed last week that he had been shown secret information which convinced him the suspects posed a real threat and could have been prosecuted if the police had had more time to hold them. His comments were made on the eve of a crucial vote, which the government won, favouring new legislation outlawing the act of glorifying terrorism. The men were arrested in Edinburgh in December 2002 under anti-terror laws. The charges against them were dropped in December 2003. Their lawyer has already hit out at Lord Carliles comments and at a whispering campaign by the security services who insist in private briefings that the men were guilty. A document passed to the Sunday Herald shows that the Home Office knows that at least one of the men Fouad Lasnami is innocent. The revelation is contained in a copy of an immigration hearing adjudication for Lasnami. The hearing, in Glasgow, was held almost a year after the charges were dropped. At the hearing, Lasnami fought for the right to remain in the UK, claiming he would be persecuted and possibly tortured and killed if sent back to Algeria. A written report of the entire hearing, compiled by the immigration adjudicator, Donald Corke, revealed that the Home Offices own representative at the hearing admitted that the British government does not consider Lasnami to be a terrorist and says explicitly that he has no links to al-Qaeda. The official said: It would be right to assume that there was an exchange of information between the Algerian and British security services [regarding Lasnami]. There had been a very thorough investigation in the United Kingdom. Because of the exchange of information, the United Kingdom would have supplied evidence of his clean bill of health. As far as the United Kingdom was concerned, he was not a terrorist or a member of al-Qaeda, otherwise he would still be in custody. However, last night British intelligence was sticking to the line that they believed that at least some of the suspects were terrorists. One very senior intelligence official, who has seen the same documents as Lord Carlile, said he believed that these men are 100% terrorists of the al-Qaeda affiliated kind. He said that it was possible Lasnami had been innocent while others were guilty, or that the Home Office had held back information from the immigration hearing in the hope he would be thrown out of the UK anyway. He insisted that the information shown to Lord Carlile had not been cherry-picked or exaggerated. He added: The Scottish justice system was clearly not working in the public interest. The official added: We need to look at the relationship between the police and the Crown Office. If you talk to any chief constable in Scotland, they complain about the Procurator Fiscal service. Aamer Anwar, of Beltrami Anwar solicitors, who represented the men, said: What is being said about these men is utter rubbish based on misinformation and lies. To say there was no time or resources is nonsense. The point is that there was no evidence against them. Lord Carlile has been briefed wrongly by the security services. Its a deliberate attempt to hoodwink someone who the public sees as independent, in order to push through unpleasant terror laws and create bogeymen that dont exist. The lives of my clients have been destroyed. After Lord Carliles comments, one was in my office in tears. Posted by: Dan Darling 2006-02-19 |
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