UK: Terror Investigations an "Inconvenience"? gatestoneinstitute.org/13190/britain-…
Britain's Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Max Hill, recently recommended:
"... Police should consider and reflect on the community impact of a large-scale [terror] investigation, centering... on particular areas of Manchester with a large Muslim population...”
"... Police should consider and reflect on the community impact of a large-scale [terror] investigation, centering... on particular areas of Manchester with a large Muslim population...”
”Good community policing, as well as good counter-terrorism policing, demands that real efforts are made to work within and with local communities, where many blameless residents will be inconvenienced and traumatised by regular appearance of Police search and arrest teams...”
“I would like to see the outcome of Police reflections on this aspect..."
The police, in other words, should consider making it a priority to work in a way so that their investigations of the murder and maiming of all these people will not "inconvenience" the community in which the suicide bomber lived.
Hill based his recommendation on talks he had previously had with various Muslim organizations across the UK about the impact of counter-terror legislation on their lives and the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in London and Manchester in 2017.
A "Community Roundtables" report described a meeting with representatives of the Libyan-Muslim community in Manchester -- from which the terrorist Abedi emerged.
"...almost all participants articulated a sense of anger and frustration at consequences of extensive police raids within the community and a perceived lack of support to deal with these consequences, including fear of being ostracised and targeted by wider society...”
“Specific concerns were raised about the potential for a rise in Islamophobic attacks in the current context and it was hoped that the authorities would take such a threat seriously and offer increased support to communities."
No one, however, seems to be holding roundtable talks with non-Muslim communities across the UK to address their legitimate fears and concerns about religiously-motivated terrorism on their lives.
In March, an independent review, the purpose of which was to examine the quality of the emergency response to the Manchester bombing, found that many respondents did not know where to turn for support after the attack.
Some suffered post-traumatic stress disorder, flashbacks, trauma and anxiety causing them to lose jobs and drop out of the educational system.
It is mystifying that the victims of terror had nowhere to turn: it has been more than a decade since the first mass terrorist attack in the UK, in 2005 on London's transit system, where 56 were killed and 700 wounded. Since then, Britain has only seen the terror threat continue.
Perhaps the main reason that terror victims had nowhere to turn is that even after years of living with Islamic terrorism, British authorities still appear to be more concerned with dealing with perceived "Islamophobia" than with the real, devastating consequences of terrorism.
If you do not even dare to link terrorism to its source, then neither can you prepare for it. You cannot even speak about the gravely detrimental effects that Islamic terrorism has on the well-being of general society, because Islamic terrorism is not even supposed to exist
It is only in such a society -- where everything is turned on its head, where authorities cannot tell who are victims and who are those who may feel as if they are victims if someone asks them some questions -- that a terrorist investigation can be considered "an inconvenience."
