Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

If we don’t bug a conversation between Khan and Ahmed, who do we bug?

Rod Liddle says that discussions between a radical Muslim MP and a man suspected of facilitating terrorism overseas are fair game. Extradition is a much bigger worry

issue 09 February 2008

Should members of Britain’s beleaguered and persecuted bombing community be subjected to intrusive surveillance techniques such as bugging? It seems a bit illiberal, given their very real difficulties in day-to-day life. Hard enough trying to find a safe place to hide all that fertiliser, castor beans, etc., without having to worry if your whispered conversations after Friday prayers are being eavesdropped upon by some spook. There is probably a European Union law about bugging Muslim terrorists, which insists you have to notify them in advance and also provide disabled access ramps if you’re bugging them in a public place.

I remember an enormous furore a couple of decades back when it was revealed that MI5 had been bugging one or another homicidal Welsh nationalist group — The Revolutionary Sons of Noggin the Nog, or something. The Welsh psychos complained that this was an infringement of their civil liberties and that one should be allowed to go about one’s business, setting houses alight and planning bomb attacks on people whose names had vowels, without the totalitarian interference of the state. It occurred to me at the time that if MI5 weren’t bugging these rabid, pinch-faced maniacs, then it was time for a few sackings. The story is back with us because it has been revealed that the Labour MP Sadiq Khan has been bugged by the Old Bill too, during conversations he had with someone who is allegedly a member of Britain’s vibrant bombing community, a man called Babar Ahmed. Babar is currently fighting extradition to the United States, where he is wanted on charges relating to terrorism. It is argued that he is a fervent jihadi in cyberspace, at least. Mr Khan MP is apparently outraged at having been thus bugged; he seems to have taken it personally. And so we now have a debate as to whether it is right that Members of Parliament should be immune from the attentions of the security services — as, it is argued, they have been for a long time.

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