Facebook source code hacker explains,what really happened !

Software development student Glenn Mangham, 26, was freed earlier this month after appeal judges halved the eight-month prison sentence he was given for infiltrating and nearly bringing down the multi-million-dollar site.

Glenn Mangham, of York, England, posted a lengthy writeup on his blog and a video, saying that he accepts full responsibility for his actions and that he did not think through the potential ramifications.

“Strictly speaking what I did broke the law because at the time and subsequently it was not authorised,” Mangham wrote. “I was working under the premise that sometimes it is better to seek forgiveness than to ask permission.”

Mangham implied he meant to contact Facebook once he had noticed the social-networking site had observed his intrusions, which he did little to hide. He didn’t use proxy servers because he said it made auditing take longer due to the time delay between each request made to a server. He was also hoping that even when he got caught, Facebook would let him off the hook.

Mangham was sentenced to eight months in prison in February, but the sentence was reduced to four months by an appeals court earlier this month. He was then eligible for release, subject to electronic monitoring and restrictions on his internet use.

Mangham portrayed himself as a security researcher who continued to probe Facebook because he wanted to look deeper for other security issues, since most systems have “a tough outer shell and a soft inside.” He wrote that in the past he had been paid by Yahoo for finding vulnerabilities.

Mangham’s copy of the source code would surely have been of interest to cybercriminals who attempt to use Facebook to perpetuate scams. But he wrote he had no intention of selling the code.

via thehackernews.com

Testimony of 4 Admitted Terrorists Gives a Rare View of Al Qaeda

There was a man from Long Island who, after dropping out of the United States Army during training, traveled to Afghanistan to fight American troops alongside the Taliban.

And there were two high-school classmates from Flushing, Queens, who trained at a terrorist camp in Pakistan and returned to the United States with orders to stage suicide attacks on New York City subways during rush hour.

This was the cast of characters that took the stand as cooperating witnesses for the government in the trial of Adis Medunjanin, a Queens man who is accused of participating in the subway bombing plot, which federal officials have called one of the most serious threats to American security since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The jury hearing the case in Federal District Court in Brooklyn is expected to begin its deliberations on Monday. Mr. Medunjanin faces up to life in prison if convicted.

A rare terrorism trial stemming from a credible plot that was days away from being executed has yielded the even rarer spectacle of admitted terrorists testifying for the government they had sworn to fight — and against one of their own.

The testimony of the four men — Zarein Ahmedzay, Saajid Badat, Bryant Neal Vinas and Najibullah Zazi — was interspersed with moments of tears, conviction and regret, and provided a detailed and unusually human window into a normally secretive world, as each man described the journey that led him to the cusp of committing mass murder on behalf of Al Qaeda.

Though there are limits to what can be extrapolated from their personal tales, common themes emerged. They were all young Muslim men living in the West who were influenced by the fiery preaching of radical clerics: most often by Anwar al-Awlaki, who called on all Muslims to take up arms.

All of them traveled to the Middle East to fight against American troops in protest of what they viewed as the occupation of Afghanistan. They were all recruited to terrorist training camps, where they were told by Qaeda leaders that their passports made them far more valuable as suicide bombers back home, and they all struggled with the moral implications of their actions as they prepared to kill as many people as possible.

All four men pleaded guilty: three are testifying in the hope of leniency at sentencing, while the fourth, Mr. Badat, was released early from a prison in Britain in exchange for his cooperation.

Mr. Zazi said he hoped to get “a second chance.”

The government has highlighted the cooperation of four convicted terrorists as a sign of its success in undermining groups like Al Qaeda by using the threat of punishment to get their members to turn on one another, in much the same way as prosecutors took on the mob in an earlier era.

“As you apply a law enforcement model to these cases, people always cooperate,” said Anthony S. Barkow, a former federal prosecutor who specialized in terrorism cases and now works in private practice. “It took a long time in organized crime; it is taking less time with national security.”

On the stand, the men professed their Islamic faith but distanced themselves from the Qaeda leadership, which one man said had “brainwashed” him and another accused of using young religious fighters as pawns.

Their appearances in a usually sleepy courthouse in the heart of Brooklyn — which went unnoticed by the families who played each day in the park outside — have been used by some as evidence that the United States justice system was well positioned to handle terrorism cases.

“The federal courts are not just about providing due process and protecting defendants’ rights,” said Jonathan Hafetz, a professor at Seton Hall University School of Law who focuses on national security. “There is an information-producing function that allows the public to see how terrorists act and how the government acts to prosecute these terrorists.”

He added, “That’s something that we lose when we deal with more secretive processes like military commissions.”

The testimonies of Mr. Badat and Mr. Vinas were unrelated to the 2009 subway bombing plot that was the subject of Mr. Medunjanin’s trial. Instead, they were called as expert witnesses about Al Qaeda to corroborate facts about terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The camps Mr. Badat described encountering in 1999 — situated in major cities, with feasts, singalongs and even sporting events — seemed to bear little resemblance to the secret, mud-walled facilities encountered by Mr. Ahmedzay and Mr. Zazi a decade later.

Mr. Badat, the British man who was prepared to board a plane with a bomb sewn into his shoe before backing out of the plot in 2001, testified by video to his role in the conspiracy.

He described his radicalization as a “gradual process,” which accelerated when he became friendly with people who had taken up arms to fight for Islamic causes.

“It was almost the glamour factor of it drawing me in,” Mr. Badat testified. “So it was my desire then to go and at least acquire some training in taking up arms.”

For several of the witnesses, friendship played a large role in their radicalization. Mr. Ahmedzay and Mr. Zazi, who pleaded guilty in the subway plot, described listening to radical lectures together on a single iPod, with one man using the left earpiece and the other the right.

Mr. Zazi cried when talking about his love for the former high-school classmate against whom he was testifying.

Mr. Badat agreed to cooperate with the British and American governments on the condition that he never have to testify against a good friend from London who had introduced him to violent jihad.

When it came time to carry out their attacks, each of the witnesses withdrew or failed.

Mr. Badat decided not to board the plane and dismantled the bomb in his shoe, keeping the components under his bed for two years until his arrest.

Mr. Vinas, who decided he would rather carry out a suicide mission than deal with altitude sickness in the mountains of Afghanistan, was ultimately ruled out because Qaeda leaders did not think he had enough religious knowledge.

The plot of Mr. Ahmedzay and Mr. Zazi was derailed by law enforcement, but it had already been downsized because Mr. Zazi had lost a page of his bomb-making notes.

Other details emerged that provided insight into the thinking of the Qaeda leaders to whom the men answered. Mr. Ahmedzay recalled being cautioned against planning overly ambitious attacks on the scale of Sept. 11 because such attacks so often failed.

“If you can’t make a big bomb, do something smaller,” he recalled the leaders saying. “Other missions have failed because they tried to do a big thing.” Just going into a crowded area and shooting people, Mr. Ahmedzay said he was told, was better than nothing.

via nytimes.com

Al-Qaida in Islamic Maghreb Demands Release of Abu Qatada | Jih@d

by Florian Flade

Last November Islamist militants of Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) kidnapped three Europeans in the Mali desert city of Timbuktu. Among them British-South African national Stephen Malcolm.

Today AQIM released a statement offering the release of the Briton in return for the release of Palestinian cleric Abu Qatada. If the British government agrees to deport Abu Qatada to a country of his choice, Stephen Malcolm will be freed, the statement by AQIM reads.

Britain has been trying to extradite Abu Qatada to Jordan for more than six years now. In the Arab country the cleric has been sentenced in absentia for the involvement in terror attacks. Now the European Court of Human Rights is about to decide wether or not the British government is allowed to extradite Abu Qatada.

In today´s statement AQIM says that Britain will “open the doors of evil” if the Palestinian cleric will be send to Jordan.

via ojihad.wordpress.com

Northern Ireland police find huge unexploded bomb

via edition.cnn.com

Libyan Muslim Brotherhood Wants Clarification Of New Law Banning Religious Parties

Reuters is reporting on statements by the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood that the National Transitional Council needs to clarify a new law banning the formation of political parties based on religion. According to the report:

TRIPOLI | Wed Apr 25, 2012 12:02pm EDT (Reuters) – Libya, preparing for elections in June, has banned parties based on religion, tribe or ethnicity, the government said on Wednesday, and a new Islamist party viewed as a leading contender signaled it would challenge the decision. National Transitional Council spokesman Mohammed al-Harizy said the council passed the law governing the formation of political parties on Tuesday evening. ‘Parties are not allowed to be based on religion or ethnicity or tribe,’ he told Reuters. He did not make clear how this would affect a political party formed in March by Libya’s Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists. The new party was expected to make a strong showing in the election, the first since last year’s overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in a NATO-backed popular uprising. The head of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Development Party said the NTC needed to make it clearer what it meant by banning religious parties. He said this would cause controversy in conservative Libya, whose population of six million is made up almost entirely of Sunni Muslims.’This kind of clause is only useful in countries where there exists many religions, not in Libya where most people are religious Muslims,’ Sawan told Reuters. ’This law needs to be reviewed by the NTC and if it’s not changed, we would have to protest it.’ Libya’s NTC has already indicated that the country will be run in accordance with sharia, though the exact place of Islamic law in the legal system will be settled only once a new constitution is written after elections. Political analysts have said the Muslim Brotherhood is likely to emerge as Libya’s most organized political force and an influential player in the oil-exporting state where Islamists, like all dissidents, were harshly suppressed during the 42 years of Qaddafi’s dictatorial rule. Islamists have performed strongly in post-uprising elections in Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco since October and they are also likely to do well in Libya, a socially conservative country where alcohol was already banned before the 2011 revolution.

A post from March discussed the announcement by the Libyan Brotherhood that it had formed a political party.

A post from September 2011 reported on what the New York times called the “growing influence of Islamists in Libya”, identifying Qatari Muslim Brotherhood figure Ali Sallabi (aka Ali Salabi), already known to be the Revolution’s “spiritual leader and a close associate of Global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi, as well as for the first time Abel al-Rajazk Abu Hajar who is said to lead the Tripoli Municipal Governing Council and is described as a “Muslim Brotherhood figure.” An earlier post had reported on Ali Sallabi and his association with Qaradawi. A post from December 2011 reported that a delegation of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), headed by Qaradawi, was on a four-day visit to Libya at the invitation of the Transitional Council.

Women as peacemakers in Sudan – challenges and opportunities

With Sudan and South Sudan on the verge of all-out war, many local peacebuilding organizations are utilising the potential of women to act as peacemakers between communities in an attempt to thwart further violence.

By Louise Hogan

Less than a year after declaring independence, South Sudan is engaged in low-level violence with its northern neighbour, the Republic of Sudan. Aerial bombings and military raids by both sides are a daily occurrence. South Sudan’s ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) completely shut down oil production, in an attempt to deny Khartoum revenue, which has deprived the emerging nation of 71% of its GDP and prevented it from developing its basic infrastructure. Once again, all out war in Sudan seems depressingly inevitable.

In South Kordofan, a mineral rich border province which remains under Khartoum’s control but whose inhabitants’ identity politically and culturally with South Sudan, violent conflict is a daily occurrence. With a population of approximately two million people and vast oil and mineral reserves, South Kordofan is a valuable asset. For this reason, Khartoum refused to relinquish it during the peace negotiations which led to the signing in 2005 of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the eventual independence of South Sudan, despite its inhabitants waging a two decade guerrilla insurgency for independence.

Years of conflict and insecurity have, unsurprisingly, taken a heavy toll on a community whose culture and identity is rooted in tradition and the local environment. With an estimated fifty different ethnic groups resident in South Kordofan, ethnic tensions were also exacerbated by the wider conflict, and often erupted into violence. Ethnic groups who had respected each other’s customs when living side-by-side, found themselves thrust upon each other in haphazard, over-crowded refugee camps, and cultural tensions often graduated into violent outbreaks.

Women as peacemakers

This situation led a group of Sudanese women from South Kordofan to form an organisation called Ru’ya (Arabic for ‘Vision’). Recognising the important role women could play as peacemakers both within and between communities, Ru’ya initiated a simple project they christened Women Solidarity Groups. Based on the premise that a lack of cultural understanding and an archaic patriarchal system which placed undue precedence on pride were causing much of the conflict, the basic idea was simple but effective. By regularly meeting to share coffee, food and experiences, women from various backgrounds could learn about each other’s traditions, beliefs and practices and form bonds across cultural divides. These groups organically graduated into something more than simple support groups – some started their own micro-financing programmes; others served as peacemakers between previously warring communities. When a ceasefire was called and communities began to return home, the project spread from the refugee camps to newly-resettled villages and communities. Having established a method of gaining influence in a notoriously male-dominated society, women were reluctant to give it up.

A local micro-financing scheme established by one Solidarity Group

From peacebuilding to development

In the villages, the focus of these groups often moved from peacebuilding to development. In one particularly successful example, women in a Solidarity Group in Mirri Barra, a rocky outpost west of Kadugli, pursued their male family members to allow four illiterate women from their group to travel to India to study solar technology at the Barefoot College. After months of relentless lobbying from local women, with support from Ru’ya staff, the village elders eventually gave permission for the women to travel for the six month training. The women returned equipped with the skills and knowledge to install solar electricity in an astonishing ninety nine homes in the village.

Why Do They Hate Us?

The real war on women is in the Middle East.

BY MONA ELTAHAWY | MAY/JUNE 2012

In “Distant View of a Minaret,” the late and much-neglected Egyptian writer Alifa Rifaat begins her short story with a woman so unmoved by sex with her husband that as he focuses solely on his pleasure, she notices a spider web she must sweep off the ceiling and has time to ruminate on her husband’s repeated refusal to prolong intercourse until she too climaxes, “as though purposely to deprive her.” Just as her husband denies her an orgasm, the call to prayer interrupts his, and the man leaves. After washing up, she loses herself in prayer — so much more satisfying that she can’t wait until the next prayer — and looks out onto the street from her balcony. She interrupts her reverie to make coffee dutifully for her husband to drink after his nap. Taking it to their bedroom to pour it in front of him as he prefers, she notices he is dead. She instructs their son to go and get a doctor. “She returned to the living room and poured out the coffee for herself. She was surprised at how calm she was,” Rifaat writes.

In a crisp three-and-a-half pages, Rifaat lays out a trifecta of sex, death, and religion, a bulldozer that crushes denial and defensiveness to get at the pulsating heart of misogyny in the Middle East. There is no sugarcoating it. They don’t hate us because of our freedoms, as the tired, post-9/11 American cliché had it. We have no freedoms because they hate us, as this Arab woman so powerfully says.

Yes: They hate us. It must be said.

Some may ask why I’m bringing this up now, at a time when the region has risen up, fueled not by the usual hatred of America and Israel but by a common demand for freedom. After all, shouldn’t everyone get basic rights first, before women demand special treatment? And what does gender, or for that matter, sex, have to do with the Arab Spring? But I’m not talking about sex hidden away in dark corners and closed bedrooms. An entire political and economic system — one that treats half of humanity like animals — must be destroyed along with the other more obvious tyrannies choking off the region from its future. Until the rage shifts from the oppressors in our presidential palaces to the oppressors on our streets and in our homes, our revolution has not even begun.

So: Yes, women all over the world have problems; yes, the United States has yet to elect a female president; and yes, women continue to be objectified in many “Western” countries (I live in one of them). That’s where the conversation usually ends when you try to discuss why Arab societies hate women.

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The Worst Places to Be a Woman

But let’s put aside what the United States does or doesn’t do to women. Name me an Arab country, and I’ll recite a litany of abuses fueled by a toxic mix of culture and religion that few seem willing or able to disentangle lest they blaspheme or offend. When more than 90 percent of ever-married women in Egypt — including my mother and all but one of her six sisters — have had their genitals cut in the name of modesty, then surely we must all blaspheme. When Egyptian women are subjected to humiliating “virginity tests” merely for speaking out, it’s no time for silence. When an article in the Egyptian criminal code says that if a woman has been beaten by her husband “with good intentions” no punitive damages can be obtained, then to hell with political correctness. And what, pray tell, are “good intentions”? They are legally deemed to include any beating that is “not severe” or “directed at the face.” What all this means is that when it comes to the status of women in the Middle East, it’s not better than you think. It’s much, much worse. Even after these “revolutions,” all is more or less considered well with the world as long as women are covered up, anchored to the home, denied the simple mobility of getting into their own cars, forced to get permission from men to travel, and unable to marry without a male guardian’s blessing — or divorce either.

Not a single Arab country ranks in the top 100 in the World Economic Forum‘s Global Gender Gap Report, putting the region as a whole solidly at the planet’s rock bottom. Poor or rich, we all hate our women. Neighbors Saudi Arabia and Yemen, for instance, might be eons apart when it comes to GDP, but only four places separate them on the index, with the kingdom at 131 and Yemen coming in at 135 out of 135 countries. Morocco, often touted for its “progressive” family law (a 2005 report by Western “experts” called it “an example for Muslim countries aiming to integrate into modern society”), ranks 129; according to Morocco’s Ministry of Justice, 41,098 girls under age 18 were married there in 2010.

Turkey Blocking Israel From NATO Summit

Turkey says it’s blocking Israel’s inclusion in a NATO summit in Chicago until Israel issues “a formal apology” for an attack on a Turkish ship in 2010. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu vetoed Israel’s participation in the summit — scheduled May 20-21 — during a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting last week in Brussels, the Hurriyet Daily News reported yesterday.

“There will be no Israeli presence at the NATO meeting unless they issue a formal apology and pay compensation for the Turkish citizens their commandos killed in international waters,” a Turkish official told the Hurriyet Daily News. Davutoglu referred to the seizing of the Mavi Marmara in international water, enroute to Gaza, as part of an attempted Turkish effort to break the Israeli naval blockade on Gaza. Eight Turks and one Turkish-American citizen died in this attack, which resulted into violence following the commando’s attempt to take control of the ship.

FPS Russia Creates Quadrotor Weaponized With a Machine Gun | Video

We’ve seen a lot of quadrotors — those drone-style helicopters — flying in pretty elaborate formations, which could almost be considered creepy, as of late. But put those quadrotor dances in context with this next one and they don’t hold a candle in terms of fear factor.

The creator of the FPS Russia YouTube channel has a new video that, within a day, has gone viral with more than 1 million hits showcasing a quadrotor drone equipped with a sub-machine gun. Without a formal name prescribed for it, he goes with “Charlene.”

This is Charlene, a quadrotor equipped with a machine gun.

The host of the show is clear to state this weaponized quadrotor is just a prototype that he considers a “weapon of the future.” Even as a prototype, he shows us that Charlene is still fully functional. See for yourself (content warning: strong language):

As you can see, the quadrotor is connected to a control held by the user to allow them to fly the machine and also have a view of what exactly the drone is seeing. The operator is able to use Charlene to take out dummy targets on a hill and even shows how it’s mobile enough to make it through a make shift window. Ensuring Charlene doesn’t get into the wrong hands, the operator zooms her into a car, which he then blows up — Charlene included.

Saajid Muhammad Badat and the murky world of the supergrass

As a secret government deal with an al-Qaeda terrorist is exposed, can an informant’s value can ever outweigh their risks?

Saajid Muhammad Badat has been given considerable financial help in starting a new life 

By Michael Burleigh   7:00AM BST 25 Apr 2012

We pay his rent, mobile phone bills and travel costs. Taxpayers also cover the price of his internet access, job training courses and pay him an allowance. All in return for his terrorist “expertise”.

Saajid Muhammad Badat, the 33-year-old son of Malawian immigrants, is Britain’s first al-Qaeda supergrass. Jailed for 13 years in 2005, for conspiracy to destroy aircraft along with shoe- bomber Richard Reid, Badat’s sentence was cut by two years in 2010 at a secret hearing in return for information. While Reid serves a life sentence at the Supermax in Colorado, Badat has been given considerable financial help in starting a new life. Presumably, the job courses the Metropolitan Police organised for him will enable him to become a PE teacher, which is his latest goal.

Badat’s relatively light initial sentence reflected the fact that he abandoned his suicide mission, and flew home still wearing his exploding shoes. He subsequently hid the explosives in a black sock and the detonators in a case under his bed. These were discovered when he was arrested in late 2003. He said: “I know I’ve done wrong but I want to help the police now.” He also added that he wanted to restore “calm” to his dangerous life.

Badat has undergone 45 hours of debriefing sessions, during which he displayed what prosecutors call “extraordinary mental abilities”. The smart youth from Gloucester had trained as a bomber in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, and was sufficiently well regarded to have one-on-one sessions with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Osama bin Laden – who explained to him that the strategy of blowing up aircraft was like breaking a link in the entire “chain” of the US economy.

Badat provided information useful to unravelling up to 18 terrorist conspiracies. However, he is still wanted under indictment in the US for his attempts at shoe-bombing, and so is currently testifying via video link to a court in Brooklyn. Here, a Bosnian-born US citizen Adis Medunjanin is on trial for conspiring with two others to bomb the New York subway with 7/7-style backpack bombs on the eighth anniversary of the September 11 atrocity. The imminence of this trial led the CPS to reveal their secret deal with Badat, which was also covered by a broad injunction. He is also likely to be a star witness when the so-called architect of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, goes on trial in Guantánamo Bay this autumn.

Badat’s “arrangement” is one of 158 such deals concluded between prosecutors and informants since the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act of 2006. Eighteen people were granted either blanket or partial immunity and, in most of the other cases, any guilty pleas resulted in substantial sentence reductions.

The chequered history of informants and supergrasses highlights the strengths and weaknesses of relying on what some call “paid perjurers”. The authorities, though, would argue that turncoats are one of the best ways of fracturing and destroying terrorist or criminal organisations, while publicly advertising exit routes for people involved in such activity. So can they be an effective new weapon in the war on terror?

Few will remember the name of Britain’s first supergrass. Derek “Bertie” Smalls was a career armed robber who, in return for written immunity from the DPP, testified against 21 associates who were jailed for a total of 308 years. Smalls died peacefully in Croydon in 2005, despite his perilous midlife change of occupation.

Smalls was the trailblazer of a phenomenon that took off in the fight against London mobsters, before crossing the Irish Sea in the bigger struggle against Provo and Loyalist terrorists.

It was an international trend too, with the Italian authorities also using pentiti (“those who have repented”) to good effect against the Mafia and the Red Brigades terrorists who turned Italy into an armed camp in the 1970s and 1980s. One of the Red Brigade grasses, Patrizio Peci, entitled his autobiography I, the Vile One, though his arrested comrades simply called him “that b——”.

Widespread use of informers and supergrasses acknowledges the difficulty of inserting undercover agents into networks based on kinship or lifelong relationships. This becomes doubly difficult if, like Islamist terrorists, the culture is relatively alien to the authorities. Any self-respecting terrorist organisation does extensive background checks, with internal security services monitoring such things as runs of apparent operational bad luck, where the informant’s hidden handlers have averted catastrophe. Meanwhile, the informant desperately attempts to continue as “normal”.

Badat is relatively unusual in the sense that moral qualms joined cowardice in persuading him to abort his suicide mission. But even terrorists with long records of violence can be disillusioned by something particularly gruesome. Sean O’Callaghan, head of the IRA’s Southern Command, had few qualms about shooting a police inspector in a bar, but he gradually wearied of the vicious sectarian mentality of senior colleagues.

One moment that tipped him into becoming a supergrass came while hiding in a safe house with senior IRA man Kevin McKenna. They were watching a television report about a policewoman killed in a bombing in Bangor. “Maybe she was pregnant and we got two for the price of one,” opined McKenna. O’Callaghan then contacted a Garda Special Branch officer as a volunteer informer. He wrought havoc on IRA operations, before going on to testify against some seriously dangerous people.

Terrorists like Badat, Peci or O’Callaghan have sufficient independence of mind to see through the historical and self-romanticising myths that legitimise murder. More usually, supergrasses just grab opportunities to “talk and walk” in the hope of escaping the clutches of their organisation, or the criminal charges that no doubt await them. Lesser informants, meanwhile, often act just for money – and the thrill of knowing about and preventing future tragedies.

By definition, none of these are “nice” people. As one Italian head of the Anti-Mafia Commission said: “We do not find informants about the Mafia among nuns.” But allowing someone to continue with a criminal career – be it in cigarette smuggling or VAT fraud – can have its benefits. Lucrative illicit dealings allow the informant to explain why they are so flush with cash – vital, especially in cultures that pay derisory wages, such as the £14 a month Badat got from al-Qaeda. In reality, of course, informers are also on a monthly retainer from their handlers.

Of course, these handlers have many delicate judgments to make. Terrorist organisations exist in an almost constant state of paranoia. When too many operations go wrong, it does not do for the informer to sweat or avoid eye contact. One mistake guarantees a prolonged encounter in some remote house equipped with a full bath, pliers, pokers, drills and blowtorches to race the imagination. It probably ends with the informer in a ditch with a bullet in his head, the fate of around 40 men who gave information from inside the IRA.

After investing considerable time and money in a grass, this bloody fate is the last thing the authorities want. But do they then let operations run their course, knowing that a judge or policeman will be killed, just to maintain their source’s credibility and utility? Can protecting a supergrass ever justify sanctioning the occasional murder?

The most lethal informer the British probably ever had inside the IRA was Freddie Scappaticci, the barrel-chested head of its fearsome disciplinary “Nutting Squad”. He embarked on his informant career in 1976 after a row with a senior republican led to a vicious punishment beating. After walking into an Army base, he was put on a retainer of £80,000 a year and shopped dozens of his colleagues, while continuing to execute other informers.

As every defence lawyer will claim, grasses and informers are not the world’s most reliable witnesses. They have every incentive to make wild accusations, and are often motivated by personal grudges, like Scappaticci. Just such a case has recently resulted in the acquittal in Belfast of 12 out of 13 Loyalists accused of the murder of a rival paramilitary, Tommy English, shot lying on his sofa at Hallowe’en in 2000. Mr Justice Gillen described evidence from the “ruthless criminal and unflinching terrorists” Ian and Robert Stewart as “infected with lies”, bringing to a close a 21-week trial that must have cost several millions. These alcoholic drug addicts had received three-year jail sentences for their role in killing English. They are free men now, thanks to their supergrass deal.

Saajid Muhammad Badat may prove highly useful in convicting extremely dangerous people. His gala performance will be in Camp Justice at Guantánamo, for he can directly connect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed with organising atrocities. If Badat can help convict the man said to be the mastermind of 9/11, no one can argue that the money – and the moral capital – invested in his grooming won’t have been worth it.

Despite their uses, though, we should not idealise such figures, nor ignore the injustices that reliance on the honesty of criminals and terrorists sometimes entails. But supergrasses do afford a glimpse into the moral squalor of terrorist organisations, while their existence will surely shake the confidence of al-Qaeda cells and their operations. That is something in itself.

Read more:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/9131311/Saajid-Muhammad-Badat-and-the-murky-world-of-the-supergrass.html