Newspaper Watch: Stemming scepticism

The front pages on Tuesday 22 August announced that British police had charged 11 people with offences relating to the recent alleged bomb plot. The statement issued by the police described the discovery of "bomb-making equipment... chemicals, including hydrogen peroxide, electrical components, documents and other items... a number of video recordings – these are sometimes referred to as martyrdom videos". The statement added: "As well as the bomb-making equipment, we have found more than 400 computers, 200 mobile telephones and 8,000 items of removable storage media such as memory sticks, CDs and DVDs. So far, from the computers alone, we have removed some 6,000 gigabytes of data."

Numerous security correspondents remarked on the highly unusual nature of the police describing the evidence they had gathered. The release of this information could be used by defence lawyers to argue that the defendants now cannot receive a fair trial. On the other hand, almost all of the information made public by the police had already been front-page news in the preceding days, courtesy of "unofficial police sources". Within hours of the alleged plot being revealed to the media on 10 August, USA Today published a story quoting a "senior US intelligence official with knowledge of the investigation", saying that the explosive involved was based on hydrogen peroxide. On 19 August, the BBC reported that "terror police" had found "martyrdom videos" on "laptop computers".

The close correlation between the evidence revealed in the police statement and the information leaked to the media earlier strongly suggests that the security services had been the source of these leaks. Since the leaks were generally treated as factual by the media and reported without much scepticism, the damage had already been done to the accused in terms of their chances of receiving a fair trial. So why did the police release the official statement and remove their ability to deny responsibility for prejudicing the jury?

The curious decision to release this statement probably stems from the high level of public scepticism – a quality largely absent from news reports – which greeted the announcement of the foiled bomb plot. On 16 August, in an article entitled "people are definitely sceptical", the Guardian described receiving "a wave of sceptical views".

Unfortunately for the police and their political masters, their statement is unlikely to ease the public's scepticism. Hydrogen peroxide is a common household chemical, used to bleach hair. "Bomb-making equipment" and "electrical components" are both extremely broad terms, which can apply to a large amount of material that would be found in any large search. The description of the "martyrdom videos" does not make it clear if they feature the defendants, or whether, for example, they were simply downloaded from the internet.

Finally, the explicit mention of hydrogen peroxide suggests the police believe the bomb plot involved an attempt to manufacture TATP (triacetone triperoxide), as was widely reported. However, serious doubts have been raised as to the plausibility of such a plot. Leading UK online technology journal Register conducted an investigation and concluded: "The fabled binary liquid explosive – that is, the sudden mixing of hydrogen peroxide and acetone with sulfuric acid to create a plane-killing explosion – is out of the question."