The cancer of political correctness...
The British police are going to brief a panel of Muslim leaders before terror raids. The panel will offer their assessment of whether information police have on a suspect is too flimsy and will also consider the consequences on community relations of a raid. The panel members will have to promise not to reveal any intelligence they are shown but will not have to sign the Official Secrets Act.
It sounds bonkers, but there is a good reason behind it. Recent raids (Forest Gate comes to mind) have been based on completely sound and credible evidence, according to the police, but have turned out to be total disasters - nothing found, and a whole community alienated. There was a Muslim officer on the radio the other night, saying that if they had asked any Muslim (including himself) they would have been aware of the context of the intelligence and been able to assess it better. Asking a panel of sensible and trustworthy people if the evidence you have makes sense within the context of their community would seem to be a good idea (although asking their own Muslim officers apparently hasn't been tried yet). We would all have a worry that the information would go directly back to the terrorists, but I imagine the police would have thought of that. To dismiss the idea out of hand implies that
a) no Muslim is ever to be trusted, and b) the police haven't considered the most basic security aspects of the idea.
I would say the idea has a lot to recommend it, provided the usual precautions are taken.
The above assumes that events like Forest Gate are errors and that nothing was gained. Personaly, I believe there was a point to it, but what that point is we'll never know. I'll bet the security services have plenty of Muslim contacts and officers and probably know a hell of a lot more about what's *really* going on in the UK than the Muslim Council of Britain do. Obviously, they are not saying who they are. Anyone who does know what is going on is *definately* not going to say, and whatever the media think they know, they know no more than you or I - but "I don't know" makes a very boring, if not far more accurate, news story.
Richard
Wonder how D Day would have gone if we had advertised the event in advance ???
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