LONDON, England - For months on the campaign trail, the tough talk about Osama bin Laden never let him down. Repeatedly, President-elect Barack Obama said Bin Laden should be ‘chased out of the cave where he lives’ and that Al Qaeda leaders need to be ‘snuffed out’, killed or captured. And every time, there were cheers in the crowd. But those trite, simple statements now need to mean something in the “war on terror.”

File image of Osama bin Laden from 1997.

As Obama embraced his new status as America’s commander-in-chief, you could sense he knows there is little time to savour success. The extremists waging their war of terror are still on the hunt for their own victory.

U.S. General David Petraeus, now the head of U.S. Central Command and the point man in both Iraq and Afghanistan, has a sobering assessment. “It is not possible to kill or capture your way out of an industrial-size insurgency,” he told CNN earlier this week as he met officials in Pakistan.

Does that contradict the approach that Obama seems to want to take in combating terror? One thing is clear, no matter what strategy Obama adopts, the Bush administration has said that strategy must be devised and set in motion well before Obama is sworn in on January 20.

So it’s no surprise in the closing days of the campaign, Obama was reading up on Afghanistan, picking up a book entitled ‘Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 ‘ by Steve Coll. The book’s author told CNN his historical assessment has changed little in the last few years. Pakistan can no longer be a safe haven for Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

“I do think that it will be an important priority for the Obama presidency but I don’t think you’ll see him gun-slinging around the tribal areas of Pakistan simply trying to bring bin Laden to justice on his own.” says Coll.

But what about that cave? Presumably the one in Pakistan where U.S. intelligence officials believe bin Laden  is still hiding. Pakistani officials told CNN this week the U.S. has it all wrong and they will try to convince Obama that bin Laden is not in Pakistan.

“Mr. Osama is not in our part of the world, had we known that he was in our part of the world, had there been any credible evidence for it we would have gone after him ourselves instead of waiting for the Americans to do it,” says Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan’s High Commissioner to Britain.

And so the plot thickens, as it always has in trying to navigate a road to peace on either side of the Pakistan, Afghan border. It is a point not lost on Obama, even as domestic issues crowd his agenda.

“We have to snuff out Al Qaeda, we have to capture and/or kill bin Laden. And in order for us to do that, we’re going to have to have cooperation from Afghans and Pakistanis. But, you know, it may get murky in terms of who are our potential allies, who are enemies in that situation,” Obama told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer last Friday.

There are clear signs President-elect Barack Obama is already tackling the frustrating complexity of the “war on terror” he will inherit, but that doesn’t mean he will have any more success at winning it.

LONDON, England –The beatings, the broken bones, the squalid conditions — it was “nothing,” says Iranian Amir Fakhravar, compared to the pain he suffered under “white torture” in an Iranian jail.

“We didn’t see any colour, all of the cell was white, the floor was white, our clothes and also the light, 24 hours, was white, and our food also, was white rice. We couldn’t see any colour and we couldn’t hear any voice,” says Fakhravar.

Amnesty International first documented Fakhravar’s case in 2004, saying such conditions of extreme sensory deprivation appear to be designed to weaken political prisoners. Amnesty says that even if Fakhravar wanted to use the toilet, he had to slip a white piece of paper under the door. Even the guards wore padded shoes to muffle any sound. The organization describes the silence as “deafening” and inhumane.

“I was there for eight months and after those months I couldn’t remember my father and my mother’s face and they released from that prison I was not a normal person,” says Fakhravar. Watch my report on “white torture”

Fakhravar was first arrested at the tender age of 17 after criticizing the Iranian regime in speeches and writings. He says he spent more than five years shuttling between Iranian prisons. He eventually escaped to the United States but says he will not rest until he sees regime change in his homeland.

As a young medical student, Fakhravar says he wanted reform, not regime change. He says he struggled in prison to understand why the Iranian government was putting him through such extraordinary and dehumanizing psychological torture.

“That was the question for us, and I asked my interrogator: ‘What do you want from us?’ And after several times experiencing this I realized they want to inject fear into Iranian society, all of Iranian society,” he says.

Fakhravar says he now knows how dangerous the regime is and how determined its leaders are to export the Islamic revolution around the world.

“They are trying to brainwash all the children in Iran,” says Fakhravar. He claims there is an institutional program to indoctrinate all Iranian children into believing the globe should be converted to Shia Islam.

“Iranian children, Iranian students, they are suffering a really bad time in school and they are more dangerous than the atomic bomb.” says Fakhravar.

Fakhravar says change in Iran will only come from complete and utter isolation, enforced by severe economic sanctions. And he has some sobering advice for American presidential candidate Barack Obama, who has said he believes the U.S. should engage Iran through dialogue.

“He cannot find anybody to talk to him,” says Fakhravar. “It doesn’t work, and I’m sure that the Islamic republic will be closer to an atomic bomb.”

LONDON, England — Anjem Choudary is Britain’s highest profile radical Islamist. He’s been part of the scene for years.

Anjem Choudary, right, as Johnny Rotten anyone?

Since the departure of his emir, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, for Lebanon, in 2005, he’s been a regular guest on radio and TV programmes around the world.

Bakri’s organization was called Al Muhajiroun. It was banned almost four years ago but its members have continued to meet under a constantly changing series of names, such as Al Ghurabaa or the Saviour Sect.

Recently, Choudary has established a new Web site for the group called Islam4UK. It’s an interesting choice of name.

Now many Muslims would strongly dissent from Choudary’s interpretation of Islam and there must be some concern that the name is an attempt to push the site onto the front page of a Google search for the words “Islam” and “UK.”

But I’m intrigued by it for other reasons. On the one hand it obviously borrows from today’s “text-message” culture, where numbers mean words. But, to me at least, it also carries distant echoes of the punk movement of the 1970s.

Older readers might be familiar with the Sex Pistols’ debut, “Anarchy in the UK.” All of which leads me to ask: Anjem Choudary as Johnny Rotten, anyone…?

 LONDON, England – One day after Lord West’s ominous warning of one  ’great plot’ being monitored by UK security forces, there was a reminder today  of the terror threat at the other end of the scale.

 Nicky Reilly, a 22 year-old convert to Islam, admitted launching a failed  suicide bomb attack on a busy family restaurant.

 The attack was carried out not in London, or in any other of the UK’s major  cities, but in Exeter, a town of just over 100,000 people in the southwest of  England.

 Reilly had never travelled to Pakistan, for instance, to receive training; his  research was carried out on the Internet. Nor does it appear that he was part of  any cell - though more on that later.

The Old Bailey heard that Nicky Reilly entered the Giraffe restaurant in Exeter on a Thursday in late May carrying six bottle bombs, three containing caustic soda, three containing kerosene. He was also carrying nails packed around the devices to maximize the planned carnage.

CCTV footage shows plenty of people inside the restaurant as Reilly walked in, including a table of two women, one of whom is seen spoon-feeding her baby in a highchair.

Reilly made his way to the toilet cubicle to prepare his devices - which began to explode as he was doing so. He staggered out of the cubicle bearing serious facial injuries and was arrested by police.

Nicky Reilly was a convert to Islam who took the name Mohammad Abdulaziz Rashid Saeed-Alim The court heard he became a Muslim in his mid-teens and that over time he became drawn to violent action and the idea of himself becoming a martyr.

It’s well-established that converts are of particular interest to intelligence agencies. Security officials tracking the terror threat say one in ten of those they are concerned with were not born into Muslim families. In Reilly’s case, though, it’s only part of the story.

That’s because, in the words of his defence team, he has “rather simple characteristics.” When he was interviewed by police he was treated as a “vulnerable adult.” According to his mother he has a mental age of about ten and suffers from Asperger’s syndrome.

She believes he had been “brainwashed” into carrying out his attack. Police statements appear to back that up. They say he was “preyed upon, radicalized, and taken advantage of” by extremists in his home town of Plymouth.

Perhaps more worryingly he was also in frequent contact with two individuals over the Internet from whom he received encouragement and information about the attack.

One of the conversations included a discussion about the type of person to be targeted: public servants like the police, or ordinary citizens. In the end, the decision was to target the latter.

Police say they are still trying to trace Reilly’s Internet correspondents. It’s believed they do not live in Britain.

Reilly will be sentenced next month when the judge will have to weigh the significance of psychological and psychiatric reports promised by the defence. In doing so he will have to decide to what extent violent extremists are now deliberately targeting some of society’s most vulnerable individuals to carry out acts of terrorism.

LONDON, England — Paula Newton writes below on the British Government shelving plans to extend pre-charge detention limits for terrorism suspects from 28 to 42 days.

UK Security Minister Alan West.

As a follow-up, it’s worth noting comments today from the the country’s security minister, Alan West, about the nature of the threat facing Britain.

Now, West has “misspoken” in the past. He had to be rapped on the knuckles last year after he appeared to express a certain ambivalence towards the very counterterrorism legislation he was about to pilot through the House of Lords. (Something he clearly failed to do with the loss of the vote in the upper chamber yesterday.) But his latest comments are stark and give pause for thought.

“The threat is huge,” he said.

Yes, we’ve heard that sort of thing before. But it’s the next bit, albeit awkwardly worded, that’s more interesting.

“The threat dipped slightly and is now rising again with the context of severe, large complex plots, because we unraveled one the damage it caused to Al Qaeda actually faded slightly.

“They are now building up again. There is another great plot building up again and we are monitoring this.”

It’s the last bit that grabs my attention. Rather than the numbers game that MI5 has played in recent years, we have a reference, it seems, to one, great, specific plot.

The analysis about the ebb and flow of the threat is interesting as well and it tallies with something I heard from a senior figure in the UK counterterrorism firmament earlier this year.

His analysis at that time (May) was that there had been a pause in centrally directed Al Qaeda operations in the UK. There was still a huge amount of activity being monitored by police and the intelligence agencies, he said, but no big plots.

His assessment was that Al Qaeda had taken a bit of a beating in the UK with more than sixty terrorism convictions. He characterized it thus: “Somewhere someone [in Al Qaeda] has been saying, ‘we’ve taken losses in the UK, what do we do now?’”

That was then, this is now. And things really do appear to have changed.

Lord West’s comments follow hot on the heels of a security briefing from a “senior Whitehall source” that the current threat level is almost as high as it was immediately after 7/7. It’s not critical yet (the highest level), according to the “source,” but it is at “the severe end of severe.”

LONDON, England - After spending precious political capital for months propping up its so-called ‘42-day detention’ law, the British government watched its counter-terrorism legislation die a momentous death in the House of Lords (the upper house of the UK parliament) on Monday night.

UK interior minister Jacqui Smith has pushed for the detention limit to be extended to 42 days.

The Labour government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown proposed to extend the time police can hold terror suspects without charge from 28 days to 42.

The government pressed the issue for months, saying it was a necessary safeguard to ensure national security. In June the government narrowly passed the provision  — but the House of Lords proved a tougher audience.

Britain’s interior minister Jacqui Smith said she was disappointed by the vote from the Lords.

“I deeply regret that some have been prepared to ignore the terrorist threat, for fear of taking a tough but necessary decision,” said Smith.

“Let no one kid themselves that this issue can be made to go away. These are hard questions, tough questions, but however much honorable members opposite may wish to duck them, Britain still needs to be protected. Britain still needs to be prepared to deal with the worst.”

Smith’s Minister of State for Security, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Policing, Tony McNulty is a pugnacious advocate at the best of times. Sensing defeat last week, he made a controversial point that however contentious, is not new.

McNulty repeated that when his former boss, Prime Minister Tony Blair announced after the July 7 terrorist attack in 2005 that “the rules of the game have changed,” Blair was wrong.

McNulty’s point? Britain cannot afford to compromise its founding principles, no matter the threat to national security.

McNulty’s assertions were made during a speech when he then went on to defend the use of so-called ‘control orders,’ when suspects deemed to be dangerous, but not serving time on probation or in prison, are put under police-imposed curfews and travel restrictions.

He defended the government, saying such a suspension of civil rights was not taken lightly and imposed in only the most urgent of circumstances.

That’s exactly how the Labour government tried to defend its 42-day extension law. But even MPs in its own party refused to buy the government line.

The proposed law has been called unnecessary at best and draconian at worst. Even two former heads of MI5, the domestic intelligence service, could not be convinced of its necessity.

Many civil rights organizations and Muslim groups have long condemned the law. There was relief from many as the proposed legislation was defeated.

Mohammed Shafiq, Chief Executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, said: “The House of Lords have done the country proud, for too long our hard fought freedoms and civil liberties have been taken away by an authoritarian government that seeks to reduce the rights of individuals.”

What Shafiq went on to say though was that the government not only lost the vote, but also the argument.

Is that true?

Maybe. The government has not committed to reintroducing the legislation and as far as Jacqui Smith is concerned the legislation remains on the shelf, ready to be pressed into action if and when the country should need it.

It was interesting to watch prosecutor Jonathan Laidlaw as he opened his case against Bilal Abdulla and Mohammed Asha.

Armed police at Glasgow Airport in 2007.

After one full day of proceedings, Mr. Laidlaw is about halfway through his 87 pages of opening arguments and he is treading through them slowly, methodically and carefully. But it is the timing and tone with which he chooses to remind the jurors that the defendants are doctors, that is noteworthy.

Prosecutors are laying out a car bomb plot that they say came with no warning, no intelligence tips and is clearly without precedent.

Abdulla and Mohammed are accused of conspiracy to murder and cause explosions. Both are medical doctors, the very people entrusted to heal were instead were, in the words of the prosecution, intent on “committing wholesale and indiscriminate murder.”

Going back to the summer of 2007, when two car bombs failed to detonate in central London, prosecutors told the jury that if they’d worked, it would have triggered a series of deadly car bombings right across the country.

Laidlaw claimed: “The terrorists knew the public would be gripped by fear: they would not know where the terrorists would strike next.”

But the car bombs failed and prosecutors say when that happened, the bombers opted for a suicide mission knowing it wouldn’t be long before police were on their trail. The next day, two men rammed a fire bomb on four wheels into the airport terminal building in Glasgow,  Scotland. Prosecutors say Indian engineering student Kafeel Ahmed was at the wheel and would later die of his injuries.

But the prosecution points out Iraqi doctor Bilal Abdulla was arrested right by the flaming vehicle. Laidlaw then asked “So what is his defence?”

But Jordanian Mohammed Asha, a surgeon, husband and father was not at the scene. The case against him, the prosecution says, is much different. The jury was told he was an important source of material
support and inspiration to his accomplices.

Investigators mined internet and cell site data from mobile phones and prosecutors say there were dozens of phone, text and computer messages implicating Asha.

“It was as if Abdulla was reporting back, at the most notable points during the plot, taking instructions from or seeking the approval of Dr. Asha” said Laidlaw.

From the start, the prosecution wanted to suggest a motive to the jury. This was, they allege, a tight terrorist cell with no core Al Qaeda influence beyond inspiration. So why would did they do it? The prosecution claims not just to seize international attention but to vengefully punish innocent civilians for the perceived persecution of Muslims, especially in Palestine and Iraq. The trial is expected to last about three months. Watch this space, I’ll have updates.

LONDON, England – Anjem Choudary practises and preaches Islamic Sharia law. When we discussed the book, ‘The Jewel of Medina’, and the insult that he believes it brings upon the Prophet Mohammed, he could not have been more categorical: The punishment is death.

Sherry Jones is not scared off by threats.

So I asked him about the personal security of the book’s American author, Sherry Jones.

“You think her life would be in danger?” I asked Choudary.

“I think certainly, you know there will be consequences for her”

We reached Sherry Jones in her hometown of Spokane, Washington. She told us despite firebombs and threats, she is not afraid. Watch my story here.

“This is beyond me, this is a bigger responsibility than me. This is not about whether I live or die. This is about the future of the free world, the future of democracy and the future of freedom of speech. So I’m not going to abdicate that responsibility as others have and walk away because someone might try to harm me.”

Jones says she wants her book out now, more than ever and as soon as possible.

“I’m eager for my book to come out as soon as possible, that people will read the book and they’re going to say; ‘Gosh, what’s all the furore about?’ This is a book that honours the prophet Mohammed, it’s respectful of Islam, if anything, Muslims could use my book to gain Western converts. It paints a very positive picture of Islam,” says Jones.

But in the two decades since the publishing of Salman Rushdie’s ‘Satanic Verses,’ whether or not Jones’ book offends is really not the issue. Some editors admit a chill has swept through many booksellers and newspapers and self-censorship is practised more than ever.

Roger Alton, editor of The Independent newspaper in Britain, says although no British editors agreed to print the Danish cartoons of Mohammed after that controversy, it was a mistake. Alton says he is concerned that the guardians of free speech are giving in to fear and bullying.

“You’re going to get intimidated by fanatics and the sort of whole concept of freedom of speech, which is a very important part of Western democracy, is going to be weakened, limited and jeopardized and once you do that then tyranny is around the corner,” says Alton.

Stay tuned and weigh in. The book should be on American bookshelves within days.

LONDON, ENGLAND — “On hell’s door.”  That’s where an American author and her British publisher were told they would find themselves if they dared print their historical piece of fiction entitled “The Jewel of Medina.”

This story is still simmering, so watch this space.

And apparently it’s not just a figure of speech. On Saturday evening on a quiet square in London, a tidy fire bomb was squeezed through the mail slot of a substantial door. The building is both the home and office of Martin Rynja and his Gibson Square publishing company who have just agreed to publish “The Jewel of Medina.”

Little did the would-be terrorists know that Scotland Yard was keeping an eye on the house and warned Rynja to leave just the night before.

Three men were promptly arrested on the suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.

American author Sherry Jones is adamant that in writing her fictional account of the Prophet Mohammed’s youngest wife, Aisha, she meant no disrespect to Islam. Jones contends the book is meant to be a tribute to the courage and modern resonance of a little girl who was said to be Mohammed’s wife at the age of nine.

Most have never cracked the spine of this book and yet it is speaking volumes to both sides in the freedom of speech debate, a debate that almost 20 years to the day is still haunting Salman Rushdie after the 1988 publication of his book, “The Satanic Verses.”

Jones says it was actually Random House Publishing that jumpstarted this controversy. Random House was to publish her book in the UK but pulled out citing “security concerns.”  That’s when Rynja and his Gibson Square publishing company stepped in to say it would indeed put “The Jewel of Medina” on European bookshelves.  And then someone pitches a firebomb at his house.

Anjem Choudary is a longtime critic of what he calls the blanket protection of free speech, especially when it offends Islam.

“I’m not going to blame people who are reacting towards provocation. I think we need to deal with the root cause of all of this problem which is people gratuitously attacking Islam and Muslims and we should learn the lessons of Salman Rushdie,” he says.

Just to make sure I heard him right, I asked Choudary if he was saying that the author’s life was in danger if she dared publish her book.

“I think certainly, you know there will be consequences for her,” he said, reading the shock on my face and adding: “Well, would you just prefer that I remain silent? And then someone just you know firebombed some more houses and some more publishing places and you find blood on the streets of London? Is that a wise thing to do? I think it’s better for us to come out and tell you ‘look, this is what the Islamic verdict is.’”

Shelina Janmohamed is no opponent of free speech, she and her blog, www.spirit21.co.uk, thrive on the cut and thrust of earnest, intelligent debate. But she too has reservations about the tone and content of the book.

“I think the book raises the same big question again — where does freedom of speech end, and sheer good manners and etiquette begin? And it’s a conversation that is constantly at cross purposes, because the two shouldn’t be mutually exclusive. Muslims simply state generically, if we find it so upsetting, why do you keep publishing this stuff? Are you out deliberately to provoke?”

Janmohamed says although she has not read the entire book, it certainly falls short of scholarly pursuit. And she asks openly, what is the purpose of publishing such a work?

“I think Muslims are not saying anything about freedom of speech but actually legitimately calling a public debate on whether the concept of freedom of speech has blanket applicability, no questions asked, or needs to have a worthy cause which trumps social harmony and social cohesion.” says Janmohamed.

And yet she says there would be nothing gained by calling for the book’s censorship, save perhaps big sales for the author and publisher as the “controversy” is played up in the media.

This story is still simmering, so watch this space. We are still hoping to get comments from both Sherry Jones and her would-be publisher.

In the meantime, what do you think? We want to hear from you.

A significant terror trial opened in Manchester this week. Significant because it is the first time anyone in Britain has been brought to trial accused of directing terrorism.

Rangzieb Ahmed (above, left) is the man charged with the offence. He also faces a charge of belonging to Al Qaeda, as does another of his co-accused, Habib Ahmed (above, right).

The court has heard how the two men - who are not related - met up in December 2005 in Dubai, where Rangzieb Ahmed handed over what prosecutors described as a “contacts book for terrorists.”

Written in invisible ink in an ordinary diary, the court heard, was a series of phone numbers, including one for Hamza Rabia, described in court as the then number three in Al Qaeda.

The contacts book was uncovered in Habib Ahmed’s luggage at Amsterdam’s Schipol airport. Agents searched through his bags during a layover on his journey back from Dubai to Manchester.

Neither of the two men has been accused of any particular plot. However it’s alleged the Dubai meeting was called after Rangzieb Ahmed was forced to abort some sort of mission.

The court heard he was part of an active three-person cell involved in what was described as “major activity.” He had been due to fly on to South Africa when his alleged Al Qaeda commander in Pakistan, Hamza Rabia, was killed and the mission was called off.

Also on trial is Mehreen Haji, the wife of Habib Ahmed. She’s charged with funding terrorism by transferring money to her husband while he was on a trip to Pakistan, where he was allegedly attending a training camp.

The jury was told the married couple had connections to radical Islamism and the now-banned group Al Muhajiroun. The group’s leader, Omar Bakri Mohammed, officiated at their wedding in June 2001.

All three deny all the charges against them. The trial is expected to last about twelve weeks.