Jailed in the US... for terrorism in the UK

TIME and again since the financial crash, American prosecutors have shown they are infinitely more effective at convicting corrupt bankers, fraudsters and market-fixers than their feeble counterparts in Britain. Now we learn they are also much more competent at jailing terrorists.

First there was the fiasco of Abu Hamza, the hook-handed hate preacher who was allowed to spout his bile here for years before being extradited to the US, where their authorities, in contrast to our own, managed to jail him for life. Now Abid Naseer – who was arrested here by anti-terror police in 2009 but released for lack of evidence – has been convicted i n New York of offences including conspiracy to blow up the Arndale Centre in Manchester.

Incredibly, officers knew about the plot at the time of his arrest six years ago. So why wasn’t he prosecuted here?

In an unedifying blame game, the police say they were desperate to charge Naseer but the Crown Prosecution Service said no. The CPS says it would have prosecuted but the police evidence was so weak it had no choice but to drop the charges.

Because much of the evidence against Naseer was gathered by secret interceptions, we will probably never know the truth.

But the deeply disturbing fact remains that it took an American court to convict a man bent on bringing appalling carnage to the streets of a major British city.