A Modest Proposal
Letter To The Home Secretary

Right Honourable Charles Clarke MP, 93c Venner Road, Home Secretary, Sydenham, Home Office, London SE26 5HU. 50 Queen Anne’s Gate, London SW1H 9AT. January 29, 2005 Dear Home Secretary,

I am writing to you in connection with the ongoing problem of the Belmarsh detainees and the terror suspects who remain at large because they cannot be arrested due to the legal technicality that they have committed no crimes. I believe I have the solution to both these problems. First, the Belmarsh suspects:

According to media reports - which must be treated with some reserve - there is strong evidence against these men but it cannot be used because to do so would compromise sources, it might for example reveal that the Security Services have been intercepting communications illegally, or spying on friendly foreign governments. The way I see it, the best way around this problem is to extract confessions from the suspects. This can be done without torture or other embarrassing methods. You will recall that recently the Court of Appeal upheld Michael Stone's conviction for the Chillenden murders on the basis of a confession he is alleged to have shouted through his cell wall to the inmate in the next cell, a certain Damien Daley.

I'm sure that like me you have never heard of anything so ludicrous, and I'm equally sure that Lord Justice Rose and his fellow judges didn't really believe this rubbish either, but they dismissed Stone's appeal all the same. All you have to do is arrange for the Belmarsh detainees to "confess" to conspiring to commit terrorist acts in a similar manner, then you can charge them, drag them into court, convict them, and send them down for lengthy sentences. You might consider using Damien Daley to manufacture such confessions, but if his handlers won't agree to this, or if you think Daley would be a bit too obvious, you can use an Islamic "grass", an Iraqi exile who has fallen foul of the law perhaps. You don't even need to use a bona fide inmate as you can simply issue a certificate of Public Interest Immunity as with the Stone case.

To deal with terrorist suspects who have not been detained requires somewhat more robust treatment, and I would suggest that you use police marksmen to shoot and kill them. This would be a lot easier than you think. You will recall the case of James Ashley. In January 1998, Ashley was shot dead by the police marksman Christopher Sherwood; he was unarmed and naked at the time. Shooting an unarmed man in such circumstances can only be murder, whatever the intentions of the gunman; the element of recklessness involved is inexcusable. Although PC Sherwood was charged with murder, his prosecution was half-hearted, and when the judge sabotaged the trial, the Crown threw in the towel without a whimper.

Armed police attended Mr Ashley's premises because information - which later turned out to be incorrect - claimed he was armed. There was of course no need to raid the premises even if that had been the case, but it seems to me that this gung-ho attitude can work to your advantage. What I suggest you do is make a list of the undesirable Al Qaeda operatives at large in Britain, then in each case arrange for the police to be tipped off anonymously that firearms are kept on the suspect's premises, and you can then send in armed officers to murder them.

This would cause a bit of a hullabaloo, but the noise always dies down after awhile as it did in the Ashley case, in the Harry Stanley case, and in all similar cases where armed police shoot dead innocent members of the public. You could probably bump off fifty or sixty suspected terrorists like this, and squelch any official inquiries by using Public Interest Immunity.

The above suggestions may sound both Draconian and immoral but at the cost of a little controversy for a month or two it would solve a problem which has been dragging on for the past three years and more, and which is likely to drag on indefinitely with continued embarrassment for the government as things stand. Yours sincerely, A Baron


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