British Dupe Acquitted

A law student in London, convicted of being in possession of a bomb-making manual last year was retried on a charge of plotting a terrorist attack. Of course, there had to be secrets.

Erol Incedal, 27, was cleared of preparation of acts of terrorism after a four-week retrial in which large parts of the evidence were heard inside a locked courtroom.

[...]

He [told the court] that that although he had been carrying a memory card with the bomb-making manual stored on it at the time of his arrest, he believed he had a “reasonable excuse” for having it in his possession.

However, such is the secrecy surrounding the case that it is not currently possible to report on the basis for that belief. Nor is it possible to report on other significant parts of the evidence that Incedal put forward in his defence.

Nonetheless, the jury, who did hear all the evidence, was clearly not satisfied that the prosecution had made out its case beyond reasonable doubt, and acquitted Incedal of the charge.

A small number of journalists were permitted to attend some of the sessions held in secret, but they have been warned they will be committing an offence if they disclose what they heard, unless the trial judge, Sir Andrew Nicol, lifts the extensive reporting restrictions.

[...]

When police stopped him in Ealing, west London, in September 2013, and searched his E-Class Mercedes, a piece of paper bearing the address of the London home of Tony and Cherie Blair was found inside his Versace glasses case.

Over the next two hours, while he was being held at a police station in west London and questioned about a number of motoring offences, a listening device was wired into the vehicle, and an investigation codenamed Operation Vendible was launched.

[...]

Thirteen days [later], Incedal and Rarmoul-Bouhadjar were travelling in the Mercedes when armed police forced the car to a halt [...] and shot out the tyres to prevent any escape.

The two men were arrested and were found to be in possession of almost-identical SD memory cards wrapped in masking tape and concealed inside their iPhone cases. Stored on each of the cards were[containing] a number of documents concerning explosives, including the five-page bomb-making manual.

Ministry of Defence forensic explosives experts dismissed some of those instructions as farcical.

[...]

The examination also showed that Incedal had been communicating with another person, thought to be in the Middle East, who was using an email account in the name of Zaynab Alawi.

The pair exchanged a number of messages referring to “straps” – slang for firearms. One exchange referred to [...] Kalashnikovs, and [...] a reference to an attack on a hotel, such as that carried out in Mumbai in November 2008.

The jury was able to consider Incedal’s explanation for these communicatons, but due to the secrecy surrounding the case, that explanation cannot be reported.

[...]

Despite his limited income, the jury has heard evidence that Incedal was enjoying a free-spending lifestyle.

[...]

As with so much about the case, other sources of Incedal’s money must, for the time being, remain a mystery: following his acquittal, the small group of reporters who have heard some of the secret evidence cannot disclose whether they have learned where it was coming from.

  Guardian

Let me guess. The British equivalent of the FBI.