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.

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.