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Al-Ahram Weekly 6 - 12 May 1999 Issue No. 428 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 6 - 12 May 1999 Issue No. 428
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Special Focus Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Bombing the innocent
By Peter SnowdonFollowing a fortnight of terror in the United Kingdom, police arrested a 22-year-old engineer from a small town in Hampshire on Sunday and charged him with three counts of murder and three counts of causing an explosion with intent to endanger human life.
For three weekends in a row, the country has been horrified by a series of explosions deliberately targeting "minority" communities.
The first bomb exploded at 5.30pm on Saturday 17 April in Electric Avenue, Brixton, a major market street in the heart of south London's Afro-Caribbean community. Thirty nine people were injured. The next Saturday saw a bomb go off in Brick Lane in the East End of the city, wounding six.
Although security was stepped up, police were unable to prevent a third strike, which came at 6.30pm on Friday 30 April. In the most horrific blast of the series, a nail bomb which exploded in the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho -- a gay bar -- has already left three people dead, and more than 60 seriously injured.
Eight hours after the Soho bombing, police arrested David Copeland, a 22-year-old air conditioning engineer. After 30 hours' interrogation, Copeland apparently admitted responsibility for all three crimes, and was charged accordingly. He is said to have denied any relationship with extremist groups, and to have insisted that he acted independently, and for his own reasons.
Before Copeland's arrest, Prime Minister Tony Blair, speaking to leaders of the Sikh community in Birmingham, insisted that whoever was behind the attacks would not succeed in undermining the faith of a people who were committed to living in harmony with one another. "When one section of our community is under attack, we defend them in the name of all the community," he declared.
While it is certain that the last few days have seen unprecedented displays of civic solidarity between different communities in the face of these tragedies, not everyone is able to share the prime minister's confidence for the future. Broadcaster and gay rights activist Simon Fanshawe, writing in Monday's Guardian, described his experience of sitting in the office of the Stonewall organisation on the day after the Soho blast: "As the families began to weep and the wave of shock turned to despair the calls started to come in. 'We're so very sorry'. Real sympathy. And then, 'They should have bombed every pub in the street'. Twenty-five calls by lunchtime."
Nor is the government's record on these matters faultless, despite the prime minister's stirring words. Other columnists drew attention to the many apparent contradictions in New Labour policy: its failure to push through key reforms promised on equal rights for homosexuals, and the draconian new Asylum and Immigration Bill currently before the House, which is likely to make the lives of many ethnic minorities that much more difficult.
The spate of murderous bombs may be over for now, but the culture of hatred and incomprehension that made them possible is still there, simmering just below the surface.
By an extraordinary -- and tragic -- irony, the national state of anxiety was further fuelled by the murder on 26 April of Jill Dando. One of Britain's most popular television personalities, Dando was best known for hosting the enormously successful series Crimewatch UK, in which viewers were invited to help the police track down dangerous and violent criminals by watching security camera footage and dramatic reconstructions. Copeland, the nail bomber, was himself arrested after police released video footage to the media showing a young man in the vicinity of the site of the Brixton bombing shortly before the first explosion. It would appear that he was recognised by neighbours, who then tipped off the police.
Dando was shot in the head at point blank range as she was returning to her flat after spending the evening with her fiancé. Public reactions to her death were complicated by revelations that Dando's murder had been claimed by a man who declared he was speaking on behalf of Serbian terrorists.
He said that the TV presenter had been killed to avenge the journalists and technicians who had died when a NATO missile struck the Serbian TV centre in Belgrade.
Is Dando's murder just another random act of violence -- the work of a lone deranged obsessive? Or is it the first clinical strike in a "ground war" that may yet be fought, not as planned in the east of Europe, but in its far west? And if so, are journalists innocent bystanders -- or legitimate targets, as that NATO missile seemed to think?
What of Dando's own record? Even as the tributes to her "as a person" flooded in, Crimewatch UK's greatest "triumph" to date -- the arrest and conviction of Michael Stone for the brutal murder of a mother and daughter -- was being questioned. It now seems that the verdict rested largely on false statements extracted by the police from hardened criminals, and that the police deliberately misled the press in order to create a climate of hostility towards the accused. The next few weeks will show whether the arrest of the nail bomber David Copeland rests on any solider foundation.
