THE THESEUS PARADOX: The stunning breakthrough thriller based on real events, from the Scotland Yard detective turned author. (16 page)
Authors: David Videcette
Tags: #No. 30, #Subway, #Jake, #Victim, #Scotland Yard, #London Underground, #Police, #England, #Flannagan, #7/7, #Muslim, #British, #thriller, #Bus, #Religion, #Terrorism, #Tube, #Tavistock Square, #Extremism, #Metropolitan Police, #Detective, #Fundamentalist, #Conspiracy Theory, #Britain, #Bombings, #Explosion, #London, #Bomb, #Crime, #Terrorist, #Extremist, #July 2005, #Islam, #Inspector, #Murder, #Islamic, #Bus Bomb, #Plot, #Underground, #7th July, #Number 30 (bus), #Capital, #Fundamentalism, #terror
BOOK: THE THESEUS PARADOX: The stunning breakthrough thriller based on real events, from the Scotland Yard detective turned author.
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During the lengthy booking-in process, Jake had learned that the man in the burka was called Samir Shafiq. He was twenty-one years old, originally from Somalia and he spoke English fluently.
Most of all, Jake had learned that Samir wanted to talk – that he didn’t want a solicitor present during the interview. That’s why the stitches, new shirt, new suit and nurses were going to wait. If your man wanted to talk, you got on with it, there and then. You sat there and let him talk to you.
Samir was brought out of his cell and handed over to Jake, who stood by the custody desk.
‘Samir, we’ve asked you repeatedly if you wish to have a lawyer present and you have said no each and every time. I’m now going to take you to the interview room and we can talk in there.’
Samir said nothing. He nodded. His eyes were wide. Jake started to sense fear in them. ‘It’s just you and me having a chat,’ said Jake.
42
Friday
22 July 2005
1845 hours
High-security custody suite, Paddington Green police station, central London
Jake led Samir to a small and windowless interview room with just one desk and four chairs in it. On one side was a series of shelves on which sat a DVD video recorder and a separate audio recorder.
Each device would record two true-to-life copies of everything, so everyone could be doubly sure nothing had been missed. There were two cassette tapes that went into the audio recorder and two DVDs that went into the DVD recorder.
Jake began the spiel that he knew off by heart, ignoring the laminated prompt cards lying on the table in front of him.
‘This interview is being recorded and may be given in evidence if your case is brought to trial. The recordings are audio – sound – and visual – TV pictures.
‘We are in an interview room at Paddington Green police station in London and I am Detective Inspector Jake Flannagan of the Anti-Terrorist Branch. I am interviewing – please state your full name.’ Jake paused and indicated to Samir that he should speak.
‘Samir Shafiq.’
‘At the conclusion of the interview I will give you a notice explaining what will happen with the recordings of this interview and how you may get access to them.
‘I must remind you that you have the right to free and independent legal advice at any time – day or night. This interview can be delayed for you to obtain legal advice. You can ask for a solicitor to come and sit in this interview with you – but you have said that you do not want a solicitor. Why is that, Samir?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t need one, I don’t think.’
Jake was surprised. Samir was looking down the barrel of a minimum of thirty years in prison for this. As with most crimes, you had to prove guilt, prove intent, prove that the suspect had a guilty mind. A cornerstone of the English justice system: ‘
Actus reus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea
.’
Actus reus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea
.’
It was the only Latin that Jake remembered. The only Latin he’d ever bothered to learn. It was written in the front of the first criminal-law book Jake ever read at university. There was no translation; he’d had to look it up. It always surprised Jake that the police never taught this stuff fully to students at Hendon. The Latin translated to: ‘An act is not necessarily a guilty act unless the accused has the necessary state of mind required for it.’
That’s why police interviews were so important. You had to prove the accused’s guilty mind. The fact that he had done something wrong wasn’t enough. The courts demanded evidence of a ‘guilty mind’. The interview is where that proof most often came from.
‘It’s your choice. You’ve chosen not to have a solicitor – fine. You are under caution. You do not have to say anything unless you wish to do so, however it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’
Once they’d got past the formalities, Samir seemed more relaxed.
‘OK, Samir. We can talk as long as you want, but I need to ask you something urgently. It’s urgent because we are concerned lots of people are going to get hurt or die. I need to know – are there any more bombs anywhere?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means what I said. Bombs are bombs. They kill people. Do the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine know when the next bombs are going to be dropped?’
‘Maybe not. But we are talking about London – not any of those places. And the bombs in those places are dropped by trained professional military personnel on military targets – not on Tube trains and buses by people wearing backpacks.’
‘I am a soldier of Allah.’
‘Are you? You didn’t act like a soldier when you dressed as a woman and tried to escape on a bus. I’ve never seen any soldier ever do that.
Ever
. If you’re a soldier, where is the rest of your army now? The other members of your unit that you normally fight with? Have they fled dressed as women too?’
Ever
. If you’re a soldier, where is the rest of your army now? The other members of your unit that you normally fight with? Have they fled dressed as women too?’
Samir said nothing.
Jake needed to keep up the tempo of the interview. He didn’t want Samir to have too much time to deliberate and start to make up his answers. Keep asking questions quickly, thought Jake. He needed the first thing that came into Samir’s head. That way there was less time for suspects to think up a strategy; less time to evade the questions being asked of them.
‘You’re from Somalia?’
‘Yes.’
‘When did you come here to the UK?’
‘When I was nine. I came here with my aunt and uncle. They were given political asylum here.’
‘You grew up here in the UK after that?’
‘Yes.’
‘That was good of us – the UK, I mean. We gave you somewhere to live. Educated you. Did you go to college?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re twenty-one now, right? Are you working?’
‘No – I study Islam.’
‘So, when did you train to be a soldier… of Allah, I mean?’ Jake wondered if Samir could tell he was being sarcastic.
‘Every day I read Quran. This trains me. We don’t always do jihad by going abroad and firing guns and using bombs. Before we do that we must have jihad within ourselves,’ answered Samir calmly.
Most people would have been annoyed at Jake’s dig, yet Samir remained impassive. Maybe Samir was stupid?
‘You live on your own?’ asked Jake.
‘Yes.’
‘At Sullivan House?’
‘Yes.’
‘So what’s your trouble then?’
‘What do you mean?
‘You fled a war-torn country. Asylum means your family must have been persecuted in your own country. You come here. My country allows you in. Feeds you. Gives you somewhere to live. Educates you. Then it sends you to college. Then, even when you’re not working, we give you your own flat, free of charge, for you to read religious books and go down the mosque every day… I don’t get it – what’s your trouble?’
‘This world is like a toilet. Who wants to spend all their life in the toilet, when something better is waiting for them? My people are being bombed every day. Women and children raped and murdered in Afghanistan and Iraq by butchers.’
‘Whose words are they?’
‘What?’
‘You said “raped and murdered by butchers”… You’ve seen this happening or did someone tell you about it?’
‘I have been told by people who have been there.’
‘You believe everything you’re told?’
‘These people speak the truth. I trust them.’
‘What if they were telling lies? Just to make you do what they wanted you to do?’
‘I’ve seen videos and photos of these things.’
‘Given to you by the same people that told you that these things were real?’
Samir was silent again.
‘Samir. How do you think I found you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘These people that you trust… The people that tell you the “truth”. Do you think maybe that they might be messing you about? Telling you lies that you are their friend, when in fact you are not? Telling you that they will protect you, when in fact they are telling us where you are?’
Samir was silent. He stared at Jake.
Jake could see it. In the corner of Samir’s eyes. It was working. A seed of doubt had taken root.
43
Friday
22 July 2005
1910 hours
High-security custody suite, Paddington Green police station, central London
Jake allowed the silence to go on much longer than he would in a normal conversation.
‘Let him fester and think,’ Jake’s inner voice said.
Silence was awful in this environment for a suspect who was now beginning to self-question and reprocess everything that they’d once believed in. They couldn’t run. They couldn’t hide. They couldn’t block out what you were saying. It was even rumoured that some of the walls of the building had been specially designed with white tiles to make the view perfectly symmetrical. This was to help prevent suspects from focussing on an image in their heads that might block out interrogation.
After what seemed like an age, Jake spoke again. ‘We can come back to that later, Samir. Let’s move on. Tell me
why
you did it, Samir. Let’s talk about that.’
why
you did it, Samir. Let’s talk about that.’
Jake had consciously shied away from asking ‘Did you do it?’
It may have passed Samir by, that Jake had deliberately skipped this, the million-dollar question. Yet, by moving on, Jake inferred he already knew the answer. This was his subtle way of playing mind games.
Samir responded, ‘You will not listen to our words. Only when we show you our blood will you listen to our words.’
Probably the most profound thing he’s said all day, thought Jake. But yet again they sounded like someone else’s words, not Samir’s.
‘So by blowing yourselves up on Tube trains and buses you make us listen to your words?’ Jake asked.
‘We need to make you and your government listen. If that’s what it takes, then that’s what we will do.’
Jake needed more. It wasn’t enough to prove intent. It was close but not perfect.
‘So when you went onto the Tube on 21 July, 2005, you wanted people to listen by seeing your blood?’
‘Yes.’
‘By blowing yourself and others up, you would have made people listen?’
Jake had gone in for the kill quickly. The opening was there.
Samir couldn’t see it, but his next answer would change the course of his life from here on in. If he answered, he was saying he was guilty and had a guilty mind. It was like playing tennis. Jake had served for the match. Would Samir notice that Jake’s next shot had topspin lob on it before he hit it back? Or would he lose everything?
‘Yes – that’s right.’
Samir was stupid. He was fucked. He’d admitted his act, and admitted that he had a guilty mind. Jake could let his guard down a little.
Jake sat back in his chair and took a moment to really look at the human being in front of him. He suddenly saw a boy sitting before him, not a man. The interview had been a walkover. Jake wasn’t even trying. He was like Roger Federer, playing tennis with a kid who didn’t know the rules of the game; a child opponent versus a three-time Wimbledon winner who did this for a living.
He felt a slight pang of remorse. Samir was more immature than he’d realised.
‘Samir – tell me about your life. Tell me about you.’
‘The aunt and uncle I came with left me. I lived with foster parents more or less as soon as I arrived here in Britain. I missed my own parents. They didn’t have enough money to come. They sent me, paid for me to come. Said my life would be better here.’
‘The foster parents – were they Muslim?’
‘No. They were white. English. Christians. They were nice. But I was different. I didn’t fit in. I drank alcohol and took drugs to escape. Chewed khat. I was nobody. When I left school I met some other boys from my part of the world. East Africa – Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia. They were like me; had no identity, were going nowhere, taking drugs and getting drunk. We started going to a special Thursday-night club at the mosque.’
‘And what happened there?’
‘They made me feel like I was family, part of something; one of them. They kept me in a room, made me stop the drugs and alcohol. It was hard but they didn’t give up on me. To take my mind off the pain they showed me videos of what was happening abroad – all the killings. Then, when I got better, they took me and my friends on trips to the countryside, to the forest. It was cool. We were all brothers together. The feeling I had missed since I left Somalia. They made me feel special – wanted.’
For the first time, Jake felt a twinge of empathy for him. He understood Samir’s desire to feel wanted and needed, to feel part of something. Jake had that desire too. His own neediness and loneliness also drove him into the arms of strangers; women that would boost his self-esteem just like Samir’s friends had done. But Samir’s friends had played on these feelings, had manipulated him and led him to do terrible things.
‘What did they do on the trips?’
‘At first it was just walking. Then we ran. They made us train. Then they taught us to build hideouts. We played war games. I liked it.’
‘War games?’
‘Yes. They made us pretend that we were being hunted; that people were trying to kill us. Then they would leave us in the forest. One night at first. Then two. Then a whole week. No food.’
‘And why did they do that?’
‘They said it was training for when the UK and US began wiping out all Muslims. That if we wanted to stay together as a family we’d have to learn how to hide together.’
‘The photos and videos you mentioned earlier – the ones of women and children being raped and killed…’
Samir interrupted him, ‘They said that it had started – Muslims were being slaughtered. That we had to help before it went too far. That you were not listening to us. That we had to give our blood to make you listen and to stop the killing. The videos, I watched them over and over when they kept me safe. They said watching them would help me to stop the drugs.’
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