A refreshing insight into how the government and security services shamelessly seized on an alleged conspiracy to promote their “war on terror”. ... The plot never existed and no ricin was found. This is an inside story of a six month trial which provides valuable lessons, not least to budding members of MI5 and the police.  

(Richard Norton-Taylor, Security Editor of the Guardian)

Terror cannot be defeated with military action, no matter how powerful or how well equipped the military that takes the action. Terror, let us not forget, is a feeling. 

The post 7/7 “soft-approach” to challenging “extremism and terrorism within the Muslim community” became known as the ‘Prevent’ programme. I talk in the past tense because the policy, to all intents and purposes, is almost dead. The counter-terrorism review, which will disclose its findings at the start of 2011, will hopefully make this flawed and knee-jerk policy a thing of the past, and rightfully so.

WASHINGTON — Two human rights organizations went to court on Monday to challenge the Obama administration’s decision to authorize the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical Muslim cleric now hiding in Yemen.

Frightening reports of radicalised prisoners and 'home-grown' terrorists will increase, rather than address, any grievance

Since my return from Guantanamo I've received numerous communications from US soldiers - some former and others still serving - male and female, black, white and Hispanic. Most were my guardsmen in Guantanamo, Bagram or Kandahar. One of them was even an interrogator. Others are veterans of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan; two of them have visited me and the former prisoners in the UK. A few have even embraced Islam. 

The Guantanamo prisoners have, despite unimaginable odds, faced their ordeal with dignity and strength sustained by an unshakeable faith. This is one of the reasons why so many of them have returned stronger - not weaker - for the experience of imprisonment.

Since the story broke about the recent Detroit bomb plot, the media has reported frantically that Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab – who is alleged to have sewn explosives into his underwear in order to avoid detection at airport security – became radicalised and recruited by extremists during his time in the UK, with particular reference to his period as President of the Islamic Society at the University of College London (UCL).