Doing one's bit

Very few people, if any, will remember this post. I haven’t posted any updates on that particular incident as the court case hadn’t concluded so it wouldn’t have been apppropriate, but now I can actually say something. (Being deliberately vague here, I’m trying not to write anything that’s not appeared in the press anyway)

It’s actually been ongoing for some time, as we first got involved following a phone call in 2005 - no cloak and dagger James Bond stuff here, it seems a few people had been rather rash in discussing terrorist stuff on the internet, resulting in SO15 very indiscreetly kicking in their front door one day.

The police wanted some things from us at the time as I had access to some of the information they were after - I’ve since found out it was because the stuff that was posted on the internet was incitement to murder as well as information on how to make car bombs. Didn’t think much of it at the time as we do get quite a few enquiries from the police about various things, but they did come and take a statement which was unusual. The phone call I mentioned in that previous post was because they wanted to come and take another statement from me as they had a few things they wanted to clear up and my evidence was pretty key to the case.

It seems that the defence were trying to wriggle out of various bits of evidence, including the bits I’d supplied so I had the same policeman round a third time while the trial was running to clarify some points yet again - this time he had to come to my flat in Witham as I was off work following surgery and it was looking very likely like I’d be turning up at court around the time I was due back at work to give evidence. I even went and bought a skirt suit at the time as I didn’t own anything suitable and started checking out disabled access arrangements for getting there, there was no way I could have managed public transport for that sort of journey 4 weeks post-op, as the trial was at Woolwich Crown Court in London, south of the river! Luckily such a high-profile court has plenty of car parking and good access… but it didn’t come to that, as after the last visit back in May it all went quiet.

I’d actually eventually forgotten all about it, despite the fuss, until a couple of weeks ago a letter obviously from the police (From the “Crimestoppers” postmark) turned up - my initial reaction was that I was in trouble for something, presumably a traffic offence of some sort but it turned out it was from a Detective Inspector in SO15… the reason for the silence was that they’d changed their plea to guilty in the face of the evidence against them, so I wasn’t needed after all, but he had written to thank me for my involvement.

I have no idea if my willingness to turn up in court made a difference at the end of the day as it was obviously a template letter sent to all the witnesses. I’d like to think it did and it was nice that they actually sent it out at all, including the details of what they all went down for in the end (Incitement to murder and conspiracy to defraud) and for how long. It was an interesting experience being able to chat to a copper who was involved in such things anyway and finding out how it all worked (Mostly, through rather boring things like taking witness statements, it seems) although I tend to be a bit of a libertarian and I did think his views on encryption (Microsoft should build backdoors into all their products) were perhaps a little naïve.

I should send a quick thank you letter back to him for letting me know - annoyingly, it seems that Counter Terrorism Command don’t have an E-Mail address.