Baby P Lived With A Terrorist, Abdulla Ahmed Ali Was Innocent

HAVING failed in its campaign to get all social workers who dealt with the Baby P case sacked, the Sun now latches on to the news that Haringey social workers placed a child with relatives of Abdulla Ahmed Ali, who led the plot to blow up at least seven transatlantic flights from London, murdering 1,500 people.

Cue a tabloid storm, leading to the front-page screamer:

“Baby P council let foster kid live with terrorist”

Not that Abdulla Ahmed Ali was a convicted terrorist when a child was placed with his relatives. You see, Abdulla Ahmed Ali didn’t foster a child. But still, close enough.

A spokesman for the council says:

“The placement here was made after checks and before anyone was made aware of any terrorist activity in the extended family network. The child was moved immediately when the police were in touch and arrests were made in 2006. The family no longer fosters for Haringey.”

The Mail’s hack press f9 and makes things even worse:

Chillingly, it is feared the ruthless terrorist may even have planned to use the infant as cover when taking bombs on to a plane – meaning it would have been among the victims.

The Star goes one better. It knows:

Ali even discussed using the child as “camouflage” on the mid-air suicide mission.

No, he discussed using a child.

And then comes a piece of political opportunism:

The Conservative Party’s shadow children’s secretary Michael Gove tonight expressed fears that Haringey would not learn lessons from the new revelations. Mr Gove said: ‘It’s truly frightening to think that the social services department of this council placed a child with a terrorist, and even more so to think that the child could have been used as part of the foil for the bomb plot.’Haringey council needs to make public exactly what vetting procedures it has in place to ensure that this can never happen again. As with the Baby Peter tragedy, there has been far too much secrecy, which raises the concern that lessons will not be learnt.’

Well said. Here here. Haringey needs to investigate all foster parents and familes for any relatives that may be thinking about killing people. Gove does not say how this will done, only yhat it must be.

The Daily Express wails: “BABY P COUNCIL PUT CHILD IN TERROR PLOTTER’S HOUSE”

The child lived in the same house as “cold-eyed fanatic” Abdulla Ahmed Ali as he laid schemes to massacre tens of thousands of innocent passengers on transatlantic flights.

But it to the Sun we look for real vitriol aimed at Haringey. How very dare it go against the paper’s campaign to sack social workers.

Last night the astonishing blunder – by the SAME council slammed over the death of Baby P – left MPs horrified. Anti-terror cops had kept Ali under surveillance and seen the foster child.

So they should have removed the child and thus alerted Ali to the idea that the authorities were onto him?

Outraged local Lib Dem MP Lynne Featherstone declared yesterday: “Just when you think Haringey cannot get any worse, it does. This beggars belief.”

Says the concil:

Yesterday Haringey insisted Ali did NOT live at the same property as the fostered child – then couched the statement to say only they had “no record” of him doing so. An official insisted the foster family was checked with the Criminal Records Bureau.

Hatingey went by the book, then? But let’s have some speucaltion:

A source said of the foster child’s placement: “A desperate shortage of Muslim foster families may have been a factor. Muslim children can only be placed with people of the same faith and the need to find foster parents could mean corners were cut in the vetting process.”

The facts: Haringery council placed a child with hie peer group. The family the child was placed with had no criminal record and wanted to care for a child. And the Sun failed in its camping to have ahringey social workers sacked.

In other news:

The three people jailed over Baby Peter Connelly’s death have been denied leave to appeal against their sentences. The 17-month-old boy died in Haringey, north London, in August 2007. His mother Tracey, 28, and her partner Steven Barker, 33, were given minimum terms of five and 12 years for causing or allowing the baby’s death.

Baby P: Rest In Peace.