The Memory Hole

Today we learn there was a news blackout on reporting that Dhiren Barot was seriously assaulted in jail-

Dhiren Barot, 35, from Kingsbury in north-west London, had been serving life at HMP Frankland near Durham. He spent five days in Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary after the assault. A news blackout was imposed for the duration of his hospital stay, during which armed police were present. Barot was returned to prison on Saturday.

How lovely and cooperative our press were and of course they give a quick shorthand of the dastardly evils he was sent to jail for-

At his trial at Woolwich Crown Court Barot was described as a determined terrorist who prepared meticulous plans for al-Qaeda figures on a series of synchronised attacks in the UK. These included exploding gas tankers hidden in limousines, flooding the tube network and a radioactive “dirty bomb”. He was jailed for life and told he must serve a minimum sentence of 40 years

Except…cast your mind back to when this ultra-dangerous (not so dangerous that he could be caught alone and badly attacked, AQ as prison gangs go can’t protect its own, but you should remain utterly terrified of them apparently)-

“The Crown could not dispute claims from the defence that no funding had been received for the projects, nor any vehicles or bomb-making materials acquired.” No money, no vehicles, no bombs – just some retarded nutcase scrawling absent-minded empty threats in a notebook. Should he be investigated by the police? No doubt about it. Should his “confession” of scribbling demented ramblings in a paper pad be splashed all over the top of the BBC website and head up the evening news as a major foiled bomb plot? No. That’s outright fearmongering and artificially inflating a nothing story to feed into the public’s fear of its own shadow.

Given that many of the readers of Spy Blog (or of Tom Clancy novels) have at least as much knowledge of potential targets and techniques as Dhiren Barot appears to have had, we are worried about this “thought crime” conviction with no actual evidence of means and capability to put into action any of the “movie plots”, which he appears to have been researching. Just because he pleaded guilty, presumably for the purposes of self martyrdom, this is only evidence of evil intent, not of an actual, realistic, threat. 

Americium, as Kelly’s evidence also states, is found in smoke detectors. Barot’s plan was to somehow either harvest the minute quantities of it from smoke alarms, or if that proved too difficult, to somehow acquire 10,000 of them, then either set them alight, or place all 10,000 of them on top of an “explosive device”, all without anyone noticing this tottering tower of beeping annoyances. He worked out that it would cost around £50,000 to obtain the smoke alarms, and another £20,000 to store them, all money which he didn’t have. 

But that was down the memory hole, now all that is put in the minds of the punters is terrifyingly dangerous terrorist getting pasted in prison. Somewhere between the lines ‘just deserts’ hovers and by not revisiting the ludicrous aspects of the case fear of the terrorist menace (they could be under YOUR bed!) is maintained. Ho-hum.