People Unexpectedly Suspected Of Terrorism

[Jerry_B]

One wonders whether the bloke would've been arrested for wearing an old Sigue Sigue Sputnik 'Fashion Terrorist' t-shirt

No, not on grounds of taste... well...

 

[ramonmercado]

no more Marleys I Shot The Sherrif.

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

i wonder if smash's 1994 hit would get past the censors in blair's post-terror glorification world (particularly if the cast of characters were brought up to date).

(I Want To) Kill Somebody

(e.borrie/smash)

a statistician studies titian
the hand up his arse is a politician
red-headed women and a disraeli disposition
what lack of vision
i want to kill somebody

hold my hate like a knife to their throats
cut through every muscle
and breake every bone
i want to chop their fucking heads off
and stick them on a stake
that's the extent of my hate

its not that i want them dead
it's just this world would be a better place
if they had never existed
i want to kill somebody

a statistician studies titian
red-headed women and a disraeli dispoistion
what lack of vision
whoever's in power
i'll be the oppisition
i want to kill somebody

so i'm a hyprocrite
cos i don't believe in capital punishment
but here's my paradoxical quip
"the people who prescribe to it are
the people who should subscribe to it"
it's not that i want them dead
its just this world be be a better place
if they never existed
i want to kill somebody

margaret thatcher, jefferey archer,
michael heseltine, john major, virginia bottomeley
especially gill shepherd's got an appauling enemployment record
i want to kill somebody

i want to kill somebody
everbody knows somebody
i want to kill somebody
(don't you?)

i want to kill somebody
i want to kill somebody
i want to kill somebody

 

[Graylien]

Harraj Mann, from Teeside, suffered the interogation after he got a cab to Durham airport and plugged his MP3 player into the taxi's stereo.

I'm afraid I take issue with people who force their musical tastes on you like this. If I'm in someone elses space - whether it be their home or car or tent or whatever - then I accept that it's up to them what music they have on. I can't abide people who instantly thrust CDs into your hand and demand you put them on as soon as they've crossed the threshold. It's my castle and I'll listen to my own f***ing choice of minstrels, thank you very much.

 

[Anonymous]

I think there was a fuss recently about the punk band "This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb." See.. they have these stickers, like every little band out there that kids stick on there bikes and... well whatever.

 

[boynamedsue]

It's a proper disgrace. And it wouldnt have happened if he'd bin a white lad.

 

[tastyintestines]

It's a proper disgrace. And it wouldnt have happened if he'd bin a white lad.

Really? What about Henry Rollins not being allowed into australia because he was reading a book on the plane ride over and he is still white. Also what color was the kid with the bike sticker? You know, since you are stereotyping and making a generalization??

 

[crunchy5]

It's a proper disgrace. And it wouldnt have happened if he'd bin a white lad.

Really? What about Henry Rollins not being allowed into australia because he was reading a book on the plane ride over and he is still white. Also what color was the kid with the bike sticker? You know, since you are stereotyping and making a generalization??

In a UK context boynamedsue is probably right, the bogyman is a Muslim young man of Pakistani extraction from a bleak northern town. I cant see myself getting arrested or even grassed up in those conditions no matter what my choice of music

 

[Yithian]

What about Henry Rollins not being allowed into australia because he was reading a book on the plane ride over and he is still white.

Details please.

 

[Leaferne]

According to News.com.au, American punk rock icon and writer Henry Rollins was reported to the National Security hotline during his recent Australian tour because of a book he was reading on a flight to Brisbane.

A furious Rollins was informed he was "nominated as a possible threat" for reading "Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam In Central Asia", writes Kathy McCabe.

The incident happened on a flight from Auckland on the recent Big Day Out tour.

Rollins told Australian fans during his tour that he received a letter from a "nice woman" who worked "in one of those government areas that deals with anti-terrorism matters."

He posted the letter on his web site.

"Please tell your Government and everyone in your office to go fuck themselves. Baghdad's safer than my hometown and your PM is a sissy," he wrote.

Source

 

[ted_bloody_maul]

poor henry. would anybody advise against reading "the war of the flea - guerrilla warfare: theory and practise" as i leave heathrow this afternoon? they didn't seem to mind a couple of weeks ago when i was reading "the next attack: the globalisation of jihad" even though i was wielding a suspiciously taped-up mobile phone of a cumbersome vintage.

 

[Anome]

Well, he does look suspicious. (I've recently seen photos of Henry in evening dress. A scary sight indeed. I never knew they made tuxedos with no neck.)

At any rate, he was certainly allowed into Australia, as he did tour here with the Big Day Out (a touring rock festival).

[EDIT]And he's right. The PM is a sissy. Actually, I'm surprised he was that polite about it.

 

[EnolaGaia]

A Russian teen has been sentenced to prison on terrorism charges, in large part because he and two fellow teens wanted to create an FSB (intelligence directorate) building within Minecraft and destroy it.

Russian Teenager Gets Five Years In Prison In Minecraft 'Terrorism' Case

A court in Siberia has sentenced a 16-year-old boy to five years in prison in a high-profile terrorism case prompted by plans he had with two friends to add the building of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) to the popular video game Minecraft to allow players to blow it up.

The First Eastern District Military Court in the Krasnoyarsk region sentenced Nikita Uvarov on February 10 after finding him guilty of illegal weapons possession and passing through training for implementation of a terrorist act, charges he has rejected since his arrest in fall 2020.

Two other defendants in the case were convicted of illegal weapons possession and handed suspended prison terms of three years and four years ...

Prosecutors had sought nine years in prison for Uvarov and six years in prison for the other defendants.

The three boys were 14 when they were arrested in 2020 while distributing leaflets to support Azat Miftakhov, a mathematician, who was in custody at the time and later sentenced to six years in prison in January 2021 on terrorism charges that he and his supporters called politically motivated.

After their arrest, investigators confiscated their telephones and said later they found chats in the phone that "had proven" that the trio planned to add the FSB building to the Minecraft game and blow it up there. ...

The investigators also said that the boys criticized the FSB in the chats, read banned books, fabricated firecrackers, and blew them up in abandoned buildings in their native city of Kansk. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-teenager-minecraft-terrorism/31697608.html

 

[Aether Blue]

This last case reminds me of someone's description of a roleplaying game that took place (IIRC) in the late '90s.

The narrator of the account was running a modern or superheroic campaign, and one's day's scenario involved dealing with villains who had taken control of a police station, and threatened to detonate a bomb if they were attacked. The players, as role-players usually do, started to come up with all sorts of complicated plans to deal with the crisis. To adjudicate the success of these plans, the narrator/GM searched the internet for floorplans of police stations, designs for ANFO bombs, and the effects of small arms fire in close quarters.

He summed up the account by saying (to the best of my memory), "If someone in authority had become aware of my searches, I have no doubt that my RPG session would have been broken up by SWAT."

Note: Edited for grammar.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

Two men aged 60 and 61 were arrested by counter-terrorism police today for damaging a ULEZ traffic camera in Sidcup south-east London, using what was described as a "low sophistication improvised explosive device” (firework-based I'm guessing?).
OK, so this latest example of a people-power protest, probably influenced by the far more bolshy French Gilets Jaunes, clearly constitutes criminal vandalism, but is it really "terrorism"?
I always thought terrorism was defined as the deliberate violent targeting of civilians for a political end. Damaging property, even recklessly, which may have been the case here, doesn't strike me as terrorism.

https://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/23998308.sidcup-ulez-camera-explosion-two-men-arrested/

 

[ramonmercado]

Two men aged 60 and 61 were arrested by counter-terrorism police today for damaging a ULEZ traffic camera in Sidcup south-east London, using what was described as a "low sophistication improvised explosive device” (firework-based I'm guessing?).
OK, so this latest example of a people-power protest, probably influenced by the far more bolshy French Gilets Jaunes, clearly constitutes criminal vandalism, but is it really "terrorism"?
I always thought terrorism was defined as the deliberate violent targeting of civilians for a political end. Damaging property, even recklessly, which may have been the case here, doesn't strike me as terrorism.

https://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/23998308.sidcup-ulez-camera-explosion-two-men-arrested/

Destroying property without the deliberate targeting of civilians has long been a tactic of terrorists along with other actions intended to cause casualties. In this case there is clearly a political motive as the intent is to prevent a policy being carried out by a local government body. IEDs, even crude ones have caused injuries and fatalities. If Extinction Rebellion etc carried out an action using even a crude IED I wager that you wouldn't be so blasé about it.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

Well no. I certainly wouldn't class what is effectively civil disobedience in the same category as, say the suicide bomber at the Ariana Grande concert.
Holding up traffic on the M25 or damaging ULEZ cameras simple doesn't strike me as terrorism and it just feels plain wrong to dilute the term in this manner.

 

[Spookdaddy]

Destroying property without the deliberate targeting of civilians has long been a tactic of terrorists along with other actions intended to cause casualties. In this case there is clearly a political motive as the intent is to prevent a policy being carried out by a local government body. IEDs, even crude ones have caused injuries and fatalities. If Extinction Rebellion etc carried out an action using even a crude IED I wager that you wouldn't be so blasé about it.

Yup.

Terrorism, as defined by the CPS:

Terrorism

The Terrorism Act 2000 defines terrorism, both in and outside of the UK, as the use or threat of one or more of the actions listed below, and where they are designed to influence the government, or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public. The use or threat must also be for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause.
The specific actions included are:

• serious violence against a person;
• serious damage to property;
• endangering a person's life (other than that of the person committing the action);
• creating a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public; and
• action designed to seriously interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.

The use or threat of action, as set out above, which involves the use of firearms or explosives is terrorism regardless of whether or not the action is designed to influence the government or an international governmental organisation or to intimidate the public or a section of the public....

...It is important to note that in order to be convicted of a terrorism offence a person doesn't actually have to commit what could be considered a terrorist attack. Planning, assisting and even collecting information on how to commit terrorist acts are all crimes under British terrorism legislation.

In regard to that latter point, it may well be that the situation is exacerbated by the perpetrators online activity - for instance, the naming of potential targets (both human and otherwise) and any expressed intent to target those elements, or encourage others to do so.

 

[Spookdaddy]

Well no. I certainly wouldn't class what is effectively civil disobedience in the same category as, say the suicide bomber at the Ariana Grande concert...

This is a form of reductionism which doesn't really apply in law - at least, not in the first instance. In the initial phase of the legal process we don't reduce in value all crimes which apply to a particular type by comparing them to the worst form of that particular type of crime that we can find. Any nuancing comes later in the legal process.

 

[Floyd]

It was the use of an 'explosive device' that appears to give more weight to the offence of 'terrrorism' here.
So next time then, just spray-paint over the lens of the camera.

 

[Spookdaddy]

It's worth noting that some reports on this incident mention that the involvement of counter-terrorism police is primarily because of their expertise in explosive related incidents.

This is also mentioned on Met's own page relating to the arrests, which describes the charges thus:

...A 60-year-old man in Sidcup was arrested at approximately 06:10hrs on suspicion of conspiracy to cause an explosion likely to endanger life or property, contrary to section two of the Explosive Substances Act 1883.

A 61-year-old man was also arrested in Horsham at approximately 06:15hrs, on suspicion of conspiracy to cause an explosion likely to endanger life or property, and criminal damage, contrary to section one of the Criminal Damage Act 1971...

Not really any argument about that surely?

It's also worth noting that eyewitness reports suggest something a little more substantial than some people are suggesting. I mean - it could have been a firework - but it was definitely something with a bit more oomph than a poundshop rocket.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

It's worth noting that some reports on this incident mention that the involvement of counter-terrorism police is primarily because of their expertise in explosive related incidents.

This is also mentioned on Met's own page relating to the arrests, which describes the charges thus:



Not really any argument about that surely?

It's also worth noting that eyewitness reports suggest something a little more substantial than some people are suggesting. I mean - it could have been a firework - but it was definitely something with a bit more oomph than a poundshop rocket.

Fair enough.
My point was that if the government intends to use anti-terrorism measures to clamp down on civil disobedience that's like using the proverbial sledgehammer to crack a nut and dilutes the horror of genuine terrorism.
Over the Channel, I don't believe Macron ever associated the Gilets Jaunes, who carried out very similar actions, with terrorism.

 

[Mythopoeika]

It was the use of an 'explosive device' that appears to give more weight to the offence of 'terrrorism' here.
So next time then, just spray-paint over the lens of the camera.

That sounds about right. Using any form of explosive adds a random element of danger, which could threaten the lives of civilians.

 

[Druk]

using what was described as a "low sophistication improvised explosive device” (firework-based I'm guessing?).

Super-thermite.