The New Neo

Yesterday I wrote this:

In the case of Manchester terrorist Salman Abedi, there were warnings aplenty. But they were general, and amounted to mere speech of a suspicious nature, and it’s not surprising that nothing was done…

This is potentially dangerous behavior, but not actionable behavior except perhaps to call the person in for questioning or some sort of monitoring of activities. I’m not sure if even that was done in the case of Abedi, but I very much doubt it would have mattered had it been done. And there are just too many Abedis all over the Western world to monitor effectively, even if law enforcement wanted to do so and was allowed to do so.

Now we get more details on the warnings that authorities had received about Abedi prior to the bombing—and by “prior” I mean during the previous five years, when at least five warnings were called in on separate occasions from different people. That’s a lot of smoke indicating a fire:

Salman Abedi told friends that “being a suicide bomber was okay”, prompting them to call the Government’s anti-terrorism hotline…

The authorities were also aware that Abedi’s father was linked to a well-known militant Islamist group in Libya, which is proscribed in Britain. Abedi also had links to several British-based jihadis with Isil connections…

Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, said: “People in the community expressed concerns about the way this man was behaving and reported it in the right way using the right channels.

“They did not hear anything since.”

Two friends of Abedi also became so worried they separately telephoned the police counter-terrorism hotline five years ago and again last year.

“They had been worried that ”˜he was supporting terrorism’ and had expressed the view that ”˜being a suicide bomber was ok’,” a source told the BBC.

Akram Ramadan, 49, part of the close-knit Libyan community in south Manchester, said Abedi had been banned from Didsbury Mosque after he had confronted the Imam who was delivering an anti-extremist sermon…

A US official also briefed that members of Abedi’s own family had contacted British police saying that he was “dangerous”, but again the information does not appear to have been acted upon.

I know there are just too many suspicious people, and reports of their suspicious behavior, for authorities to effectively “monitor” them all (whatever “monitoring” consists of in this day and age). But this is an outrage. This guy was a walking red flag, and basically nothing appears to have been done—not even questioning? At most there’s a single mention that he might have been put on a “watch list.”

Why do these hotlines even exist? Is it to reassure people that they are helping authorities to do something about it when in fact nothing is done? In other words, to give a false sense of security?

And what happens to those on such a “watch list”? If Abedi was on one, it apparently was one that was all “watch” and no action, because he was allowed to regularly travel back and forth to Libya despite it, and it is suspected he traveled from there to terrorist hot-spot Syria as well.

I wonder—did authorities even compile a file on Abedi linking all these reports, or was each call-in treated as disconnected from the others? It seems as though most of them came from the Muslim community in Britain, which would stand to reason would be the main and most valuable source of such complaints. In particular, if the story about Abedi’s being banned from the Didsbury mosque for protesting an anti-extremist sermon is true, that would be the reddest flag of them all.

Are authorities not allowed to do anything at all until someone has acted? Or do they do nothing out of fear of being accused of Islamophobia if they do something? Or are they simply overwhelmed by the numbers, because there are thousands and thousands of people with records just as suspicious as Abedi’s? And if Abedi had not been a citizen, would the reports about him have been treated more seriously, and if so in what manner?

As always, the question is what is the proper remedy for this situation. Non-citizens with terrorist sympathies could be deported (at least theoretically; I doubt we or Britain actually do very much of it), but citizens cannot. What’s more, with a hotline you have the problem of bogus grudge complaints phoned in with the goal of getting someone deported or in trouble, so authorities must authenticate the charges, which can be difficult.

Clearly, the problem is already more than authorities can handle or are willing to handle.

One commenter at this blog has suggested that Islamic terrorists should be treated less as criminals and more as enemies in a war. The problem is that citizens do have certain rights, and suspending them in the case of jihadi terrorist sympathizer citizens who have not yet committed any crimes leads to a dangerous situation where we could have a two-tier justice system.

I’m all for increasing the penalties for terrorist acts or plans for terrorist acts. But terrorist-sympathizing thoughts or words are a different matter. And if we use a warfare analogy, we could end up with domestic internment camps as in WWII. There is no way that is going to happen now.

Which brings us back to my question: what is the remedy? Is there one? One remedy would be to red flag people such as Abedi more readily, and institute more sting operations (including computer surveillence). But that would almost certainly involve the allocation of more resources towards the anti-terrorism activities of law enforcement, as well as the will to do it (which we seem to lack). Another remedy would be quicker deportation of non-citizens who are determined to be jihadi terrorist sympathizers or activists. It seems to me that every non-citizen is here as a guest of this country, and if the guests abuse that privilege they need to be shown the door.

[NOTE: If you can bear it, here are the names and photos of the Manchester victims and something about the life of each. It makes for heartbreaking reading.]