A terror so great we forgot it at once

Dhiren Barot’s case faded because it revealed unbearable truths

Dhiren who? Mention Dhiren Barot to anyone and the chances are that you’ll be met with a blank look. At best, some might say, ‘Oh, wasn’t he that guy who, er, that trial recently, yeah, bit worrying….’ Thus the British have somehow failed to register the significance of the conviction last month of a man who was one of al-Qa’eda’s biggest fishes, guilty of the most devastating terrorist plot ever known in this country and one which would have made 9/11 look like a minor warm-up act.

This former airline ticket clerk plotted to kill hundreds of thousands of people in a series of synchronised atrocities in Britain and the US. He planned to blow up public buildings using gas cylinders in limousines, to mount a gas attack on the Heathrow Express rail shuttle, and to blow up the Tube under the Thames to rupture the walls keeping out the river. Police found in his notebooks details of how to construct a chemical laboratory, along with recipes for poisons and plans to use radiation to spread sickness, panic, chaos and death on a vast scale.

Terrifying and astounding as all this was, the real significance of the case lay in the way it punctured the myths fuelling Britain’s state of denial over Islamist terrorism.

Myth one is that Britain is only threatened by such terror because the war in Iraq has radicalised British Muslims. Yet Barot was laying his infernal plans before 9/11, let alone the fall of Saddam. As long ago as 1999 he advocated bringing Western countries to their knees. Significantly, he observed that this could only be achieved by Muslims living in Western countries, because only they understood the culture, geography and common practices of the people among whom they lived.