LONDON, England - So there will be a re-trial in the case of the British men accused of plotting to blow up transatlantic airliners. No great surprise. It's true the jury in the first trial could have acquitted all eight defendants, but it's otherwise hard to see how the result of the "airline plot" trial could have been less to the taste of the police, the security services and the government.



An armed British police officer patrols outside Heathrow Airport in August 2006.

Investigators had uncovered martyrdom videos and they knew what the bombs were going to look like. The number two at the Metropolitan Police had even said on the morning of the arrests that what was being planned was "mass murder on an unimagineable scale".



Well, yes it was; three men were found guilty of conspiracy to murder. But on the other hand the single most important "fact" about the "plot," as it was described at the time and as it was put by prosecutors, was that it was all about blowing up planes. Crucially, the "existence" of that particular plot was not established to the satisfaction of the jury.



Recriminations have already started to fly, with many in Britain blaming the United States for wrecking the investigation. The U.S. moved to have a key figure in the alleged plot arrested in Pakistan; this in turn forced the Met police to arrest the men it had under surveillance before it was necessary. And that, so the argument goes, meant the evidence against them was not as strong as it could have been if the police operation had been allowed to continue.

In Walthamstow, home to two of the three guilty men, and where the majority of the arrests two years ago took place, the mood, says one community worker who works to tackle extremism, is hard to measure.

Certainly, the absence of any convictions on the central charge will be grist to the mill for those already signed up to the bin Laden message, that the "war on terror" is in reality a "war on Muslims." They now have another string to their bow. 

More damaging is what it might do to the wider community. This case was seen as crucial to convincing doubters there was a problem of violent extremism in their midst that needed to be addressed. Making that argument has now become far more difficult, says the community worker; there is a risk that people will slip back into disbelief.

It's worth remembering, though, that it's not the job of the criminal justice system to maintain harmonious communal relations, just as it's not the job of a jury to simply follow the wishes of prosecutors. A jury's task is to try a case on the evidence before it. And in the trial that ended on Monday, the jury took a look at the prosecution case and decided it was seriously wanting.