BAE: secret papers reveal threats from Saudi prince
Spectre of ‘another 7/7′ led Tony Blair to block bribes inquiry, high court told
Prince Bandar, head of Saudi Arabia’s national security council, leaving Downing Street last October. Photograph: Martin Argles
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Saudi Arabia’s rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.
Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced “another 7/7″ and the loss of “British lives on British streets” if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.
Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.
He was accused in yesterday’s high court hearings of flying to London in December 2006 and uttering threats which made the prime minister, Tony Blair, force an end to the Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribery allegations involving Bandar and his family.
The threats halted the fraud inquiry, but triggered an international outcry, with allegations that Britain had broken international anti-bribery treaties.
Lord Justice Moses, hearing the civil case with Mr Justice Sullivan, said the government appeared to have “rolled over” after the threats. He said one possible view was that it was “just as if a gun had been held to the head” of the government.
The SFO investigation began in 2004, when Robert Wardle, its director, studied evidence unearthed by the Guardian. This revealed that massive secret payments were going from BAE to Saudi Arabian princes, to promote arms deals.
Yesterday, anti-corruption campaigners began a legal action to overturn the decision to halt the case. They want the original investigation restarted, arguing the government had caved into blackmail.
The judge said he was surprised the government had not tried to persuade the Saudis to withdraw their threats. He said: “If that happened in our jurisdiction [the UK], they would have been guilty of a criminal offence”. Counsel for the claimants said it would amount to perverting the course of justice.
Wardle told the court in a witness statement: “The idea of discontinuing the investigation went against my every instinct as a prosecutor. I wanted to see where the evidence led.”
But a paper trail set out in court showed that days after Bandar flew to London to lobby the government, Blair had written to the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, and the SFO was pressed to halt its investigation.
* Remember BLiar, that incompetent poptart, has aspirations to become president of the EU
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Fitzgerald: A tribute to Prince Bandar
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Multiculti makes Britain a Target for Terrorism
With thanx to the Illustrated PIG
Britain has become a soft touch for terrorists, leading defence experts warn today.
The world-renowned Royal United Services Institute has delivered an unprecedented attack on the Government’s security policy.
It warns that a failure to “lay down the line” to immigrant populations is undermining the fight against domestic extremism.
It condemns the country’s “fragmented” national identity and obsession with multiculturalism.
And it accuses ministers of a “piecemeal and erratic response” to urgent threats to the nation and of starving the armed forces of cash to the point of “chronic disrepair”.
The security think tank, which has unrivalled contact with senior political and military figures, urges ministers to abandon “flabby and bogus strategic thinking” and to make the defence of the realm the “first duty of Government”.
The study also follows two blows this week to Labour’s anti-terror strategy.
Appeal judges have given an Algerian pilot the go-ahead to claim compensation which could run into millions for being wrongly accused of training the September 11 hijackers.
And five young Muslim men had their convictions for terrorist offences quashed by the Appeal Court.
Dangerous Lunacy in the Judiciary:
Laws making it a crime to possess extremist jihadi propaganda and literature could now have to be re-written and dozens more prosecutions could collapse after senior judges ruled that police and prosecutors must prove to juries that terror suspects not only possessed potentially dangerous material but were intent on using it in an attack.
The security think tank, which has unrivalled contact with senior political and military figures, urges ministers to abandon “flabby and bogus strategic thinking” and to make the defence of the realm the “first duty of Government”.
* Well the one of the “first duties of Government”would be to get rid of this pompous old fart:
In Wednesday’s ruling the Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips stated that unless there was clear evidence of “terrorist intent”, merely possessing or sharing extremist material did not amount to a crime.
The law was designed to help police catch so-called “clean-skins” – would-be terrorists who have yet to carry out an atrocity but are in the early stages of planning one.
But the effect of the ruling is that the police will struggle to build a watertight case against suspects based on such early planning or research for an attack, and will instead be forced to wait until plans are far more advanced – increasing the risk of a successful atrocity.
* Common sense is now completely gone out of style, by the looks of it…
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Muslims suck.
It isn’t coincidental that ahabs look like monkeys.
“they faced “another 7/7″ and the loss of “British lives on British streets” if they pressed on with their inquiries”
Perhaps Moslems face another Christmas if they keep up their violence. Recall the earthquake in Bam, Iran and the earthquake/Tsunami exactly a year later in Indonesia both occurred on Christmas less than an hour apart.
Threats like this used to bring a response in the form of a declaration of war. My, how times have changed-for the worse. Such is life in the age of appeasement.
* merely possessing or sharing extremist material did not amount to a crime.
Unless, of course, it was directed at Muslims, in which case it would be “hate speech”,
or incitement to racial hatred, or some other catch-dhimmy.