left lolling in legal limbo
Reader comment on item: [Brandon Mayfield and] Preempt Terrorists, Or Not?

Submitted by Rebecca Moulds (United States), Oct 3, 2007 at 18:19

In 1974 I was a 19 year-old tourist in the UK, driving around the country with my (then) husband, visiting his family members from south to north. In the course of our long car journeys, we stopped in various historical towns, such as Guildford and Coventry, on our way up to Yorkshire. We had just left Guildford when we heard of the pub bombing which took, I believe, five lives and injured more. This was an IRA operative. Then, after visiting Coventry, we heard about another bomb there.

Neither of us really paid much attention, until we arrived to Halifax, where my husband's aunt and uncle lived. No sooner had we sat down in their tiny living room by the fire (it was November) when the doorbell rang. It was the police, but not just a bobby, there were two Special Branch officers asking about who owned the white Ford Transit van. Immediately my husband jumped up and confessed that he knew the tires were bald but would replace them the next day. The Special Branch representatives very politely said that no, it wasn't the tires they were concerned about, but they needed to talk to us about two pub bombings. Imagine the impact that statement had on two American young people, two innocent people I might add; they were invited in and started grilling us, in their most polite British manner.

I remember clearly that I was physically shaking the entire two hours of questioning. One of the first questions asked was what religion we were, "Church of England or R..C.? " I had never heard Catholicism referred as "R.C" and pleaded ignorance to the officer, who clued me in with a smile, that "R.C" was simply Roman Catholic. I said I was neither. Then they wanted to know how our surname was spelled; if it contained an "e" at the end, then my husband was English, but his name didn't have an "e" at the end, so they knew immediately that it was an Irish name, although he was also Spanish and Jewish, but that didn't count.

They asked us a multitude of questions, what flight we arrived, where we had been for three months, what we were doing, who we knew in the UK, our parents' names, etc.etc. They also explained that the vehicle seen at both bombings was exactly like our white van, and we resembled the two people in that van. Great --although they didn't accuse us outright of this heinous crime, still there were doubts hanging in the air. After the two-hour grilling, they prepared to leave but told us that we couldn't go anywhere until they returned later that evening. By that time I was crying hysterically because I was sure we were going to be arrested for something we didn't do.

Late that night, the Special Branch returned and told us that all was well, we were off the hook, so sorry, but by the way, they had to intercept the telegram that was sent to the States earlier that morning. They had apparently been following us for two weeks without our knowledge, but somehow lost us in Guildford and Coventry. The next morning, we bought a local newspaper and on the front page the headline read something like this:""Pub bombing in Guildford leads to Halifax". There were two Photofit photos of the supposed bombers, and they looked just like us! It was scary; the whole town was staring and pointing at us.

A few weeks later, we left the UK back to the US, but that incident shook me so much I didn't return to the UK until 1980. Although I understand that Brandon Mayfield's case seemed to be cut and dried, and the evidence that he (is) was involved in fundamentalist activities, had known suspected terrorists, and had anti-semitic content in his home, along with other convincing evidence of his guilt, still he was exonerated and freed.

Sometimes there is reason for preempting a crime before it's committed and also for arresting someone on what seems like definite evidence of that person's involvement with that crime. All the evidence pointed to his guilt; however, the fingerprints didn't match exactly. In my case in the UK, I knew that we were innocent, but in Mayfield's case, I'm not quite convinced of his innocence; I think he just got lucky. Although no one wants a police state in this country, we are increasingly becoming a paranoid people, not capable of discerning where the evil lies and where the truth resides. Some see the Patriot Act as our government wielding too much power, but I think the Patriot Act is essentially a good thing, after all, it hasn't been in effect all that long and needs the wrinkles ironed out.

Our requirement as citizens should be to use our own brains, not to follow blindly. We just need the intelligence to be stepped up a few notches without becoming another Russia or China, with secret phone taps and neighbours wrongfully tattling on each other. We do not live in an ideal world, but many in our country would say that they wouldn't live anywhere else except the United States, because of our many freedoms. These freedoms are at risk if we allow terrorists to escape capture or, at the other end, if we become a police state. There has to be a balance, but to achieve this may take a long time.

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