Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
Thursday 8 July 2004
LORD NEWTON
OF BRAINTREE
AND MR
MICHAEL TODD
Q60 Chairman: Mr Todd, Lord Newton has
made it quite clear that we must not take his work out of one
context and put it in another, but if there were a set of offences
characteristic of terrorism and that enabled you more clearly—for
example if you charged somebody with fraud rather than terrorism—to
charge them with a terrorist related fraud offence would you welcome
that change or would it make no practical difference?
Mr Todd: In terms of community
confidence the Muslim Council of Great Britain, their confidence
in us, I think it would make a tremendous difference. If you think
what we have done when we have race or hate crime we have labelled
it; this is an offence which is actually related to race hate
crime so we should be taking it more seriously and it may be criminal
damage. I think it would have a similar effect if we were to give
communities confidence that it may be fraud but this is fraud
in relation to terrorism and that is really important.
Q61 Chairman: One of the areas where
the Muslim Council of Great Britain does not have confidence at
the moment is in the assurances that you and other officers are
giving us about the quality of the intelligence. Is there a case
for bringing somebody in from outside the police service—obviously
in confidence—to review the quality of the intelligence
that the police are using to justify Section 41 operations in
order to see whether it is being done consistently and to a high
quality? Could that be something that Lord Carlile might do as
part of his review of that Act, for example?
Mr Todd: Personally I think that
would be incredibly difficult, I really do. We do not take any
of these decisions lightly and in almost all cases—in fact
I think you could say in a 100% of cases—it is not just
the police acting on their own. We work together with the security
services; we work together with the anti-terrorist squad from
New Scotland Yard. This is not just the case of a particular police
force which has gone out and arrested some people under the Terrorism
Act; it just does not work that way. Counter-terrorism plc for
the UK works very, very closely together; we run case conferences,
we run advisory groups where you have a whole group of people
there from different parts of the security operations of the country
coming together to say, "What is the right way forward in
this?" It is very, very seriously considered; it is not just,
"Here is a scrap of intelligence, let's go out and act on
it." I really do think the set up we have here is far better
than anywhere else I have ever experienced in the world—and
I have spoken to colleagues in the States—the openness between
the police, the security services, the anti-terrorist squad in
sharing intelligence and openly sharing and challenging each other
over that is just so great I do not know how you would get that
if you were trying to introduce an independent element into it.
I think we could potentially go back to people saying, "I
will only share so much in this environment". We have learned
some painful lessons over the years in this but we have learned
that you really do need everyone involved in the fight against
terrorism sharing absolutely everything and you cannot go there
if you are thinking that the security services are not telling
the whole truth. I really do believe in everything that I have
seen over the last few years that we have got to a very good state
of affairs, far better than anywhere else.
Q62 David Winnick: Would you consider,
Chief Constable, that the recent arrest of 10 Kurds in Manchester
was one of your more brilliant operations?
Mr Todd: I think it is difficult
when you are talking about individuals. It really is difficult.
I think it was a totally and utterly unavoidable operation.
Q63 David Winnick: You are justifying
it, are you?
Mr Todd: I would justify it, yes.
And, to be honest, if we were in a more closed session I could
justify it in a lot more detail because I think it is unfair when
you are talking about individuals who are known and who are known
in their communities. I would be quite happy to justify that particular
operation; there was no alternative whatsoever.
Q64 David Winnick: If they are in the
news it is presumably because of their arrest and later release
but what was the basis of the arrest? You talk about information
being collected and acting on it but are you really telling us
now that you are satisfied that the evidence to arrest the people
I have just mentioned was justified?
Mr Todd: Yes, 100%.
Q65 David Winnick: So what happened as
a result of those arrests?
Mr Todd: All of the people were
subsequently released. Two of the individuals were subject potentially
to prosecution for some other minor offences but it was decided
by the Crown Prosecution Service that it was not in the public
interest to prosecute. Some of the individuals would have been
deported but because of the state of things back home for them
we were not in a position to do that. One individual was deported
back to Libya.
Q66 David Winnick: Out of the 10, how
many charges were actually made?
Mr Todd: There were no charges.
Q67 David Winnick: And yet you say it
was justified. They were arrested. No charges were made, they
were released and one person has been deported. You tell us it
was all perfectly justified.
Mr Todd: If you think about the
example I tried to provide as an illustration, it may be difficult
when you are talking about individuals. I am not saying those
individuals are guilty; I am saying that I am convinced, the security
services are convinced, the anti-terrorist squad are convinced
that there was no alternative whatsoever but to arrest those individuals.
Q68 David Winnick: There was no alternative
to arrest them. Having been arrested they are released and if
they were any sort of danger to the public in Manchester or elsewhere,
they are free. I just do not get the logic, Chief Constable. If
they are people who are dangerous and you believe there is evidence
to arrest them, one would assume that you would have sufficient
evidence that charges would follow. Having been charged a court
may decide—since we live under the rule of law—to
find them not guilty, but they did not even appear before any
court, they were just released by the police and yet you tell
us it was perfectly justified.
Mr Todd: There is a difference
between arrest on intelligence and arrest on evidence. In this
country we have reasonable suspicion that somebody has committed
an offence and you can apply that to almost any other offence
where frequently someone is arrested and you could challenge:
"Why did you have reasonable suspicion to arrest that person
at two o'clock in the morning when you saw them running down the
street with a video recorder?" Would that be reasonable suspicion
of them just having committed a burglary? Yes, it may well be
and that would be an entirely legitimate arrest. If you then found
out afterwards that they had just had a domestic dispute, they
had decided to leave home upset and are running down the road,
then you can say that is a quite legitimate purpose why that person
had that video recorder running down the street. You can entirely
justify that particular arrest but you are not talking about the
outcome. That is the difference also between arresting on intelligence—very,
very, good intelligence—and arresting purely on evidence.
If we take that example—although I do not really want to
delve into it too much—if there been a terrorist outrage
on that particular date at that particular location and the Prime
Minister and Home Secretary were called to the House and somebody
said, "We deplore the fact that we have just had a terrorist
outrage in this country, but is it true that the police had some
intelligence that this was going to take place? How did they act
on it? Why did we not arrest people? Why did we not do something?"
The controversy that is still going on in the States at the moment
about scraps of intelligence in relation to 9/11 would be out
of all proportion to what would be said to me about not acting
on this intelligence. I do not think I would have to wait for
the Home Secretary to ask me to resign; I think I would be resigning.
Q69 David Winnick: Are you satisfied
that the people concerned—not all, one has been deported—are
not in any way related to terrorism? It is a yes or no answer
really, Chief Constable, is it not?
Mr Todd: I do not think I can
answer that question. I do not think that would be fair on the
individuals because I think it would be labelling individuals.
Q70 David Winnick: Do you accept in any
way whatsoever that it has caused antagonism in the Muslim community?
It has caused a feeling that the police are misusing their powers
and frankly that the whole operation—to put it mildly—has
simply been counter-productive?
Mr Todd: I can understand people
thinking that and a large chunk of that I am afraid is because
of the publicity that that particular operation was given which,
I have to say, was not our making and we tried as much as we could
to minimise it.
Q71 David Winnick: So the police are
not at fault, it is all the media, is it?
Mr Todd: No, I did not say that.
Q72 David Winnick: You implied it.
Mr Todd: We had to carry out an
operation to try to make sure we kept Greater Manchester and the
UK as safe as possible from terrorism.
Q73 David Winnick: That is not in dispute,
is it?
Mr Todd: The way in which that
is sometimes transmitted and is blown up and labelled and targeted
at a particular community, and that is the only reason why this
particular operation is actually taking place, does lead to those
fears. I regret those fears. That is counter-productive and we
do not want to see that. That is why the use of any of this legislation
has to be very sensitively applied.
Q74 David Winnick: You say that in a
closed session you could give us more detail, but I must confess—I
cannot speak for my colleagues round the table—that I have
not seen any reason that you have put forward today to justify
what occurred. Has the police force generally in Greater Manchester
under your leadership learned any lessons from what has happened
in this particular case?
Mr Todd: Yes, we have. In particular
it was in relation to the Kurdish community. We actually have
very good links with a very diverse group of communities across
the Greater Manchester area. We did not have particularly good
links with the Kurdish community. We also learned lessons in that
one weekend while we were still running the operation we met with
some of the leaders of the Kurdish community which was extremely
useful and I met some of those leaders as well about a week later.
We always carry out community impact assessments on any of these
types of operation. We run a consequence management cell with
all sorts of people asking how it is going to impact on our communities,
what do we need to do to try to minimise that impact as much as
is possible? One of the things that we did not realise—and
did learn—was actually the impact that that can have by
some of that information and some of the labelling being misused
by people even outside the country. In my conversations with some
of the Kurdish leaders they said that what was happening is that
back home in Iraq the arrests and the fact that the individuals
have been identified by the media and confirmed as being members
of the Kurdish community, this proved that the Kurds are involved
in terrorism. That was misused back home in a tremendously bad
way. That was not something that we had thought about. We did
not realise the implication that information just coming in—confirmed
information as we have an open relationship with the media and
we normally do confirm it—would have.
Q75 David Winnick: Has the matter been
discussed at all with the Manchester Police Authority?
Mr Todd: Yes it has, and it continues
to be discussed.
Q76 David Winnick: Is there any criticism
of the police operation?
Mr Todd: No, there has not been
any great criticism. There have been a lot of searching questions
about it and also questions similar to the ones that you have
asked yourselves.
Q77 David Winnick: So "searching
questions" does not come under the category of criticism?
Mr Todd: No. I actually welcome
searching questions. I think that is only right; that is how we
are actually held to account.
Q78 David Winnick: Yes, but those searching
questions were presumably not meant to praise what happened; searching
questions, as you put it, were to try to find out why these people
were arrested in the first place and what mistakes were made by
the police.
Mr Todd: That is making the assumption
that there were mistakes made by the police.
Q79 David Winnick: Which you deny.
Mr Todd: One can always learn
from any operation. I still maintain that this was an intelligence
led operation and there was no alternative but to act on that
intelligence.
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