LONDON, 17 August 2006 — In a show of solidarity with Britain in the wake of last week’s foiled airline terror plot, European Union interior ministers meeting in London yesterday agreed to boost transport, especially airline security, cooperation and to initiate research on any new formulations and use of liquid explosives to pre-empt any future attacks.
Gjis de Vries, EU counterterrorism coordinator, confirmed to BBC News that the meeting was very sober and workmanlike, and that the EU was united in its stance against any terrorist threat. Asked why the EU is only starting research on liquid explosives now, he stressed that new techniques of developing and applying liquid explosives are always materializing. As such, EU security officials needed to keep themselves updated and aware of the changing circumstances.
Earlier, UK Home Secretary John Reid, flanked by French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and their German counterpart Wolfgang Schaeuble at a press conference, warned that the whole of Europe faced a “very real” and “persistent” threat from terrorism and urged member countries to stand together to “evolve our reaction” to the “evolving threat.”
“The EU, indeed the wider world, is now confronted by a form of terrorism that is unconstrained in its evil intention. Given the means of destruction on a massive scale which is available through modern technology — biological, chemical and other means — it is virtually unconstrained in its capacity and its ability to do immense harm and cause death and destruction,” he explained.
He confirmed that progress had been made at the meeting, attended by six interior ministers and by a number of senior EU Commission officials, on several fronts. These included coordinated research on tackling the threat of liquid explosives; practicalities of improving and developing a common EU-wide transport security; better exchange of intelligence; and a dialogue on the nature of European Islam. The world, he added, was faced by a form of “intolerant and violent totalitarianism,” which was subverting a religion, Islam, whose very name stood for peace. “It’s very important that the measures that are taken in one country are reflected in other countries…What’s clear to all of us is that we face a persistent and very real threat across Europe,” he explained. Sarkozy, France’s hard-line interior minister who is likely to be the main Gaullist candidate in elections to succeed President Chirac, reiterated that more than ever the key word in the efforts of counterterrorism is coordination between countries in Europe and elsewhere in the world. EU aviation security and counterterrorism experts are due to meet later this week to discuss issues relating to terrorist threats and the adoption of EU-wide security controls. However, it remains to be seen whether this new-found cooperation leads to progress in other politically volatile associated areas such as the abolition of the veto in criminal justice matters, something which the British, especially the opposition Conservative Party is vehemently against. The EU Commission argues that such a move would help the anti-terrorism effort.
In the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings in London last year, counterterrorism rose high up on the EU agenda. The then UK Home Secretary Charles Clarke in fact clinched an EU-wide deal to force companies to retain telephone and e-mail data for use in security and criminal investigations.
The meeting came at a time when lawyers acting for Scotland Yard through a private hearing via video link asked a District Judge in London to extend the time police can detain the 23 alleged plotters arrested after last Thursday’s raids in London, High Wycombe and Birmingham. Under the provisions of the new Anti-Terrorism Act 2006, police can hold terror suspects for up to 28 days, but they have to pass an increasing burden of evidence and probable cause after each week.
Police were indeed granted the extension, but the next extension next Wednesday will have to be approved by a higher official with a higher burden of evidence such as a High Court judge.
In another development, radical Muslim leader Abu Hamza Al-Masri, who is currently serving a seven-year sentence at the Belmarsh high security prison for soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred, has been remanded back into custody until Sept. 13 as part of extradition proceedings.
The US wants “temporary” custody under the 2003 Extradition Act of the 48-year-old cleric, who appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court by video link. This would allow him to be tried across the Atlantic on charges of supporting Al-Qaeda and involvement in a hostage-taking conspiracy in Yemen. He would then be returned to the UK to serve out his current sentence, and if convicted and sentenced in the US, would be returned there to serve out any new term.
On the travel front, the war of words between major UK airlines, the British Airport Authority (BAA), which owns and runs the UK’s major airports including the ‘Big Three’ — Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted — and the UK government, continues.
British Airways (BA) told passengers that it hoped to operate a 90 percent service yesterday and a normal service by tomorrow. “We are not planning on any Gatwick cancellations tomorrow and we hope that by Friday everything will be back to normal.”
Some 20,000 bags had gone astray at Heathrow during the last few days, with the bulk belonging to BA passengers. Yesterday, the airline, using articulated lorries, was trying to get about 5,000 bags to their owners in the UK and Europe.
Budget airline Ryanair Chief Executive Michael O’Leary warned that his airline had seen a 10 percent drop in group bookings over the last couple of days as a result of the travel disruption. “We’re seriously considering taking legal action against the government to force them to get the airports back to normal,” he added. Airlines and tour operators have bitterly complained about “inconsistent airport policies and clearly inadequate staffing arrangements.”
However, British politicians including Home Secretary Reid have come to the defense of BAA stressing that the delays and loss of baggage experienced by passengers were “more acceptable than death.” “The inconvenience is not being imposed for the sake of imposing it, it is being imposed in order to defeat terrorism and protect our public,” said Reid yesterday.
However, both the government and BAA were embarrassed by two potentially serious security lapses at Gatwick yesterday. Airport authorities at Gatwick are investigating how a 12-year-old boy managed to board a flight bound for Portugal on Monday without a ticket or passport despite the high state of alert across all the UK airports. Yesterday, tour operator Thomas Cook confirmed that an unauthorised man had entered one of its planes at Gatwick. The man, sweating profusely, was challenged by cleaning staff and later detained and questioned by police. It turned out that he was a passenger on an earlier flight who had forgotten his wallet on the plane and went to retrieve it.
Meanwhile, in a further rebuff to Prime Minister Tony Blair, Suzy Wighton, a 47-year-old aid worker from Aberdeen in Scotland, who was awarded an MBE in recognition of her work in a frontline war clinic at Beirut’s Bourj Al-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp between 1986 and 1988, has returned the honor to Buckingham Palace in disgust at British foreign policy in the Middle East.
She attacked Blair’s refusal to call for a cease-fire sooner in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon as an “utter disgrace.”
“I’ve been thinking about sending it back for the last five years ever since the war on terror began. We’ve seen invasion after invasion, breaches of the Geneva and UN conventions and complete abuses of human rights. When’s it going to stop?” she asked.
