Dazed and confused
More than seven
months after ten young men from Britain were arrested on bomb plot charges in Aden, the
British are still unsure what to make of it ...
(Text last updated August 1999)
THE
ADEN TEN: Or should they be "The Aden Eight" as the Daily
Telegraph maintains? All ten were living in Britain but two were Algerian asylum-seekers
so apparently their fate is of no concern to the Telegraph.
THE FOREIGN OFFICE:
Stung in the early stages by accusations that it failed to look after the interests of the
defendants as much as it would if they had been white and middle-class, the British
Foreign Office has been bending over backwards to placate their supporters ever since.
Even after the verdict was announced, it continued to refer to the defendants as
"detainees" - a term usually applied to those held without trial. But the FO's
Stiff Upper Lip Award should go to David Pearce, British consul general in Aden. After
being informed that his own consulate had been one of the defendants' bombing targets, he
then had to represent the defendants on behalf of Her Majesty's government - a job he did
with total professionalism.
THE YEMENI GOVERNMENT:
If the official version is true, the Yemeni authorities saved various British and American
interests in Aden from attack - by a bunch of Britons. However, nobody thanked them for it
because the Yemenis were slow to tell the British authorities about their achievement. In
the meantime, supporters of the arrested Britons kidnapped 16 (mainly British) tourists in
Yemen, hoping to exchange them for the arrested men. Yemeni security forces tried to free
the hostages and, in the ensuing gun battle, four tourists died. Britain complained
vigorously.
ABU HAMZA AL-MASRI: The
wild imam of Finsbury Park mosque in London is a pivotal figure in the case. He's also a
caricaturist's dream. His looks and words are everything that prejudice leads us to expect
of an Islamic extremist. The Daily Mail hates him and relishes doing so; liberals feel
uncomfortable even discussing him. Many Muslims refuse to take him seriously. Of course,
there were lots of people who couldn't take Margaret Thatcher or Binyamin Netanyahu
seriously - until it was too late.
THE MUSLIM COMMUNITY:
Opinions range from "our boys are innocent" to "these people are giving
Islam a bad name". The easy line is to claim victimisation by the British or Yemeni
authorities. But more thoughtful voices suggest the community has a problem of alienation
among its youth: instead of dismissing Abu Hamza's views as rubbish, perhaps they should
be asking why some young Muslims find them so attractive.
TONY BLAIR:
He's highly regarded by the Muslim community - especially after his efforts in Kosovo -
and is wary of upsetting them by taking action against Abu Hamza. But he's also committed
to being tough on the causes of crime, which means he really ought to do something about
the wild Imam. So far, it's a truly British compromise: Abu Hamza has been arrested under
the Prevention of Terrorism Act but released on bail. Abu Hamza, incidentally, had his own
solution for Kosovo which did not require Nato planes.
ISLAMIC LAW:
Always assumed to be bad. Latent snobbery tells us that foreigners could never devised a
legal system as fine as the one that convicted James Hanratty and the Birmingham Six and
acquitted Ernest Saunders, chairman of Guinness. Abu Hamza and his followers, on the other
hand, believe that Islamic law is good - except when the Yemenis use it against them.
THE DEFENDANTS:
Still an enigma after seven months in the limelight. In the TV pictures at the start of
the trial, they looked more like to sort of lads you would find at a disco - or in a
scuffle outside it - than at a mosque. Prison guards were baffled by their un-Islamic
behaviour. The first thing Islamic militants usually asked on being thrown into a cell was
the direction of Mecca. But several in this bunch showed no interest in praying. By the
end of the trial, though, they all looked different. They had smartened up and several had
grown beards. As sentence was passed they shouted "Allahu Akbar". Have seven
months in a Yemeni jail politicised them in a way that Abu Hamza's teaching failed to do?
ARE THEY GUILTY?
Yes, the prevailing view is that the authorities in Aden are guilty of torture. But does
that make the defendants innocent? |