Getting On With Things
Now it's Britain's turn to be offended and scandalized that someone involved in mass murder on British soil has been handed a free pass out of jail. This is a man who enjoyed all the privileges of growing up in the United States, but for whom his Pakistani heritage and his religious convictions overruled all else. His loyalty to the country that gave his parents haven and that gave him a lifetime of opportunities dissolved in the face of a perceived need to prove his brotherhood with Islamic extremists, otherwise known as violent jihadists.How much more could someone intent on provoking as much violent damage on his country of birth - not his country of ethnic and religious heritage - be involved in than was Mohammed Junald Babar? Even though his own mother narrowly escaped being one of the three thousand victims of the 9/11 atrocity - privileged to emerge alive - he was further encouraged to greater lengths in the cause of Islamist jihad, supplying cash and military equipment to al-Qaeda and other militant Islamists, and setting up a terror training camp.
In his Pakistan-based training camp he trained eager jihadists in the handling of explosives and small-arms training. Theirs was a shared ambition to bring the West, and particularly the United States, to collapse. He trained the leader of the London suicide transit bombings that sounded the death knell for 52 innocent Londoners, aside from the deaths of the 4 home-grown attackers. Canada has this man to thank also for training its first-sentenced home-grown jihadist, Momin Khawaja.
Mohammed Babar decided expedience in self-preservation trumped incendiary Islamist valour, and to save himself from a 70-year prison sentence, he decided to turn state's evidence, testifying about what he knew of jihadist operations, including his own. He had much to detail, among which were his meetings with high-ranking al-Qaeda members whom he provisioned with equipment, weapons, money and with whom he lent himself to planning atrocities.
Little wonder Britons are incensed at the expeditious release of his man. The memory of those murdered by those of his ilk, with his connivance and assistance, rankles the thought of his being free to get on with his own life. This does give Brits something to think about, on the other hand. The sole individual who was convicted of the deaths of 270 passengers on Pan Am Flight 103, over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.
It does rather make one gag with disbelief that the former Labour government in Britain sought to secure oil drilling rights for BP in Libya, and sealed the deal by putting pressure on the Scottish government to release Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds, his death from cancer supposedly imminent. He was released to a hero's welcome in Libya, and there he still is, miraculously recovered from imminent death.
In their defence, the U.S. through their justice system, insist that by having Mohammed Babar release the information he had, the authorities in the United States were better equipped to continue their battle against terror. "The defendant's efforts in this case were more than substantial. They were, in fact, exceptional", lauded an assistant U.S. Attorney as the court sentenced the man to 4-1/2 years of "time served" in custody since he was charged and pleaded guilty in 2004 (spending the final two years out on bail).
Britain, it would appear, was also satisfied, albeit somewhat embarrassed at its blatant hypocrisy, with the outcome of the release of the Lockerbie bomber, securing for BP and Britain, the oil transaction they were so eager to conclude. The families of those who died in the transit bombings may feel anguish at the injustice of it all, and that is completely understandable. Just as the families of the hundreds who died in the plane crash off Scotland were understandably enraged.
War is war, and terror is terror, but nothing trumps the business of getting on with things.
Labels: Britain, Terrorism, Traditions, United States
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, February 15, 2011
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