warren said:
The terrorist/insurgent/freedom fighters were just so stupid and badly organised it was impossible to for law courts to convict them.
People need to remember that there is a big decision taken in every proactive operation as to when to swoop and arrest everyone.
You start off with some information / intelliigence which suggests something may be happening. On that basis you launch some form of surveillance, initially a bit of background research and a bit of a look see. Lots of jobs die at that stage - the research and quick look see either removes any initial suspicions or, at least, does not bolster them in any way.
In a few jobs the initial suspicons increase and then a more extensive information gathering phase is entered. Conventional surveillance is stepped up and perhaps technical surveillance is involved. More and more information is gathered and you reach the point where there is sufficient evidence of a conspiracy (in this case a conspiracy to cause explosions). Usually some of that evidence is inadmissible (i.e. you know you will not be able to use it in Court (because it either reveals the identity of an informant who would then be endangered (the authorities have to respect the informants right to life as well as the suspects and everyone else's Human Rights) or it has come from a phone tap (which means that in the UK iit cannot (by law) be used in evidence)).
You now have the difficult decision. If you arrest now, you protect the potential future victims - you disrupt the network, you seize the explosives, or whatever. But will you be able to convict the suspects? It's usually less than clear cut - evidence of a consipracy - because it does not catch the suspects red-handed - can always be portrayed as something else by the time Court arrives. It is nooriously difficult to convict people of conspiracy (and the sooner you swoop, the more potential holes there will inevitably be in the evidence). If you do not convict them then they will be released. That means they MAY go on to conspire again and commit further offences in the future, but this time with an awareness of how they got caught and, hence, be far more difficult to catch again, so next time they may get away with it and unknown people may be killed.
But if you don't swoop, keeping up the surveillance until you have got them red-handed, you run a very big risk of something going wrong. perhaps you will lose them. perhaps the technical equipment will malfunction. Perhaps they will strike before you thought they were going to because there is a piece of the jigsaw you don't know. And then you have people die when you could have stopped it.
In conventional crime (like the armed robbery I used to deal with) the authorities can allow things to run at a much lower risk, because even if a armed robbery does take place it is very rare for shots to be fired, people to be killed, etc. That is clearly not the casse with a potential explosion. With the IRA there was a little more predictability about what they were doing and several lorry bombs were allowed to be put together, primed and even driven towards targets before being intercepted.
But with Islamic terrorist groups there is far, far less predictability and hence the authorities will tend to swoop sooner rather than have ANY risk of (e.g.) a repeat of 7 July or ricin being released in central London or whatever. This means the evidence of conspiracy WILL be thin. And there WILL be a chance that the defence will be able to portray it as a terrible misunderstanding and the suspects MAY be acquitted (or possibly even not charged at all).
But what would you rather the authorities did?
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