In Memoriam

May there be an afterlife

Every news feed I have is alive with the news that would-be terrorist Kafeel Ahmed has passed away from the burns he sustained in his failed attack on Glasgow Airport. To his family, who must love him, whatever he became, my sympathies.

I do though feel a different kind of bereavement; a chance to show the superiority of our values over those of the perverted form of a great religion that Mr Ahmed appears to have espoused, has been taken from us. As I posted earlier, all I wished for Mr Ahmed was a fair trial, and if the facts of the case were proved a long, possibly (literally) life-long, prison sentence.

Sky News quotes a spokesman for the Scottish Executive as saying:

"There has been some comment about the treatment provided for him by the NHS.

"It was perfectly right that he should have received the appropriate treatment our health service could offer as this reflects the value our society places on human life."

Source : Sky News

Quite right too; this is the kind of society that any decent person should want to live in, even in dealing with those that would wish to replace it with something less humane and forgiving of human frailty.

I hope that Mr Ahmed did not suffer in his final days. I do hope though that I am wrong, and there is some sort of God, and that if so, when Mr Ahmed awakes on the other side he finally understands just how wrong and misguided he was. In there, for anyone who, if Mr Ahmed qualifies, remains part of the human race, is a more profound punishment than any of the more lurid suggestions that will doubtlessly light up the Internet over the next few days.

It is so I can (albeit with diminishing confidence) write things like this that I feel such rage against politicans who want limits on detention without trial to be weakened to an unacceptable level, and a police service who want them removed entirely in any meaningful sense. It is easy to live in a safe country, totalitarian regimes down through history have proved this, albeit with some terrible side effects; it's much harder to live in a country that puts liberty combined with rule of just law first, but I know what which I prefer and which I will fight for.

As much as I might fume about Mr Ahmed, his strange beliefs and the awful things that stemmed from them, I find more comfort in the quote above than the 'strong', 'decisive' and 'hard hitting' statements and proposals from those with the real power on these matters.