The Defence Brief

His Majesty King Harry: the goal of Colborne's plans Background News emerged from the Old Bailey this morning that Mark Colborne, a 37-year-old white man, has been convicted of an offence under the Terrorism Act 2006. The prosecution said that Colborne had planned to shoot Princes Charles and William so that Prince Harry would accede to the throne (apparently he is unaware of Prince George’s claim).  The reason he wanted to Harry to become king is that he felt marginalised by society following bullying as a child for having ginger hair. The prosecution alleged that he had written down plans for the assassinations – although owned no weapons capable of fulfilling his plans – and had been stockpiling chemicals that could be used to produce cyanide.  I assume that he also made plans for a cyanide attack; however, the newspaper reports I’ve seen do not make that clear.  In addition to the notes and chemicals there was evidence that Colborne had been searchin...

Amira Abase, 15, Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Shamima Begum, 15, at Gatwick airport Last week three schoolgirls from Bethnal Green in east London secretly met and began travelling from the UK to Syria where they intend to join Islamic State (ISIS).  The thing that struck me most was not that they made this journey but that so many people in the UK have such a heartless attitude to the three girls. Many people on Facebook and Twitter take the view that the girls are little more than terrorists and deserve what’s coming their way.  In the Independent, Grace Dent called the girls “ISIS fangirls” and went on to say that children running away to join ISIS should not be allowed to return to the UK. I can understand why somebody would take that attitude but I don’t think it is a position that holds up to analysis. Some years ago I represented a man who groomed children for sex.  I’ve met quite a few such men but this one was by far the most successful I’ve come acro...

The BBC have this story on their website about the Government's new Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures (aka T-PIMS, which just sounds like a mobile phone company to me). I don't have any immediate comment about these orders aside from the observation that there doesn't seem to be very much difference between these and the Control Orders that they replace.  It does strike me that if these people are seriously dangerous and the authorities know it then there must be a better system for dealing with them, such as bringing them to trial.  Maybe you think that is naive of me and that the Security Services must protect the sources of their information.  You may be right; I don't know.  I do know that the police manage to operate a large and highly secretive (unless you go to my basement where you'll find the informant handling manual!) intelligence system that utilises data from a wide range of sources from super grasses to rumors heard on the street. ...