IAN HART: How do we combat future threats?

A Channel 4 documentary entitled The Jihadis Next Door, which aired last year and featured one of the London Bridge killers, Khuram Butt, has sparked some controversy this week.
By The Newsroom
Published 8th Jun 2017, 10:00 BST
Updated 8th Jun 2017, 15:29 BST

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Ian HartIan Hart
Ian Hart

In the wake of the horrendous events of Saturday night, footage from the documentary has been re-broadcast in a number of news bulletins.

Questions have been raised over the footage. The Guardian has reported that film-makers were advised not to hand it over to police immediately, in front of the people being filmed, and that they later received no formal request for the footage.

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While Butt was already known to the security services and police, would further footage have strengthened the case to get him off the streets?

From the snippets I have seen – the programme has been now removed from Netflix and Channel 4 on demand – I think the content was extremely worrying.

Puzzling in the footage is the blurring of the faces of some of the film’s participants, apparently to do with protection of civil liberties.

What a ludicrously politically correct society we have created, where individuals can spout hatred which threatens the law-abiding Christian and Muslim communities, yet ‘rights’ are both respected and protected.

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I think the whole thing beggars belief, yet no doubt when this column is published online the usual internet trolls and ‘keyboard warriors’ will start throwing around words such as ‘bigot’ and the like.

I’m not. This situation affects the whole country regardless of race, colour or creed, I’m just like everyone else who lives most of their life away from a computer screen, extremely concerned about what’s happening and wondering how the authorities are going to effectively combat any future threats.

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Related topics:Ian HartChannel 4Questions