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Exasperation nation
Jonathan Hall, the gatekeeper for the UK's terrorism laws, is exasperated on many fronts. At one point after a speech on Tuesday, he held up his hands and simply called for more "effort" to enforce the rules.
With the country undergoing a struggle with radicalisation, Mr Hall is very much of the view that doing nothing is not an option, especially when hate becomes normalised. "Enforcement of laws is more important than the laws themselves,” he told a meeting at Policy Exchange.
In particular, he expressed alarm over events in Birmingham last year. Police intelligence suggested that local groups were “arming themselves” before a football game in which Aston Villa were hosting Maccabi Tel Aviv. The plotting to attack Israeli fans, Mr Hall said, should have led to criminal investigations. Instead, the Israel fans were banned from the stadium.
Mr Hall's fear is that failure to enforce public order laws is allowing sectarian calls for violence to become normalised on British streets. He said there is a “palpable” national security risk when police give priority to maintaining public order over applying the law.
Two days before, I looked at what you could call state failure to keep up its responsibilities when extremism rises. I found that the process to fill leading positions in commissions concerned with aspects of extremism has reached the embarrassing stage.
A year ago, the UK’s Home Office opened a “competition” to fill the role of Commissioner for Countering Extremism. It got rid of the extremely active and impressive Robin Simcox to prepare for some amalgamation of the role on conclusion of the competition.
The idea, promoted by Minister of State for Security Dan Jarvis, was to wrap in duties around tackling political violence and disruption to the remit of counter-extremism. In theory, the government was creating a more powerful position in the sensitive and high-profile political and security landscape.
But we remain at the “in-theory” stage.
There has been no conclusion to the selection process. No new commissioner has been appointed. There has also not been a parallel appointment of the Independent Prevent Commissioner, who oversees the government programme to tackle extremist threats. That second appointment was promised in the same press release under Mr Jarvis’s name.
Mr Hall must be very lonely in his role. In abeyance are decisions over how to proscribe the Iranian regime's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as the EU has done, and respond to calls for the Muslim Brotherhood to be outlawed.
Uncomfortable truths
The Iranian ambassador to France was summoned by Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot on Tuesday. "France condemns in the strongest possible terms the state violence that was indiscriminately unleashed on peaceful protesters," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement, as Iran reels from the demonstrations against the regime and the responding death toll.
A similar dressing-down was delivered in the UK. The Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper, promised to join the EU in further sanctions aimed at Tehran's finance, energy, transport, software and other significant industries. Additional measures might now be needed in response to developments.
Both countries have trodden carefully with Tehran, not least because they have citizens caught up in the courts as the regime teeters.
An Iranian woman, Mahdieh Esfandiari, appeared in a Paris court on Tuesday in a case that has attracted attention because her return is sought by Tehran in exchange for two French citizens. She faced charges of "glorifying terrorism online" and "online incitement to an act of terrorism". She faces seven years in prison and a €100,000 ($116,450) fine.
Wearing a pastel scarf and grey dress over a pair of jeans, Ms Esfandiari, 39, cut a defiant figure as the trial, expected to last four days, got under way.
French authorities have refused to acknowledge a link between her fate, and those of French citizens Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris, who are being held in Iran on espionage charges, which their families say are bogus. For Nicolas Salomon, a lawyer representing the European Jewish Organisation, which initiated the case against Ms Esfandiari, there is "little doubt" the cases are linked.
Foxtrot henchman
Ms Cooper mentioned in her speech that the UK has imposed sanctions on the Foxtrot criminal network, based in Sweden but with roots in Iraqi Kurdistan. The network's boss, Rawa Majid, is believed to have taken sanctuary in Iran in recent years. We've been following this network and its rivals as part of a major investigation.
It was revealed on Tuesday that Iraqi police have arrested a key figure in Foxtrot and the Swedish police are hopeful of his extradition.
The allegations include links to the murder of a man with connections to Ismail Abdo, who runs the Rumba network, a rival of Majid and Foxtrot. It was that killing that sent the gangland warfare in Stockholm into overdrive.
“He is a person who orders murders,” Sweden’s National Police Commissioner Petra Lundh told SVT. "He has been in Iraq and made those orders."
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