It must be hard to be a failed fundamentalist bomber at the moment. You can`t leave the house without encountering your face splashed on every street pole, newspaper front page or Internet site. You can`t sleep very well, with the prospect of imminent arrest looming before you.
I mean, if you were a London bomber, and your face was the subject of the widest proliferation of 'wanted` posters since Jesse James hit the Wild West, you wouldn`t be able to just stroll out of your front door and catch a train or plane to Italy, now would you?
Wait a minute... That`s exactly what happened, isn`t it?
And here all of us South Africans have been rolling our eyes and shaking our heads at the fact that our passport control ninnies let Wesley Snipes, a fairly recognisable international celebrity, pass through with a fake South African passport (if the fact that he`s Wesley Snipes didn`t tip them off, didn`t they worry about the accent?).
This guy is an international terrorist, for heaven`s sake! How is it possible that he managed to leave the country when it was at red alert?
Georgina Guedes, ITWeb Brainstorm
Boy, the people in immigration in England must feel like idiots round about now. London gets blown up, and they let the guy who planted one of the bombs waltz through passport control without so much as a second glance. Did I mention how many posters, newspapers and Internet sites his face had been on?
The guy is now firmly trussed up in reams and reams of red tape, and the English authorities are unlikely to be able to get their paws on him for a significant amount of time as extradition orders are appealed and contested.
This guy is an international terrorist, for heaven`s sake! How is it possible that he managed to leave the country when it was at red alert?
Four years after the 11 September attacks, the Americans are still paranoid beyond belief, and on any given day of the week, it is impossible to drive a vehicle over the Hoover Dam wall without a full inspection by security personnel.
And yet, somehow, in the days after a terror attack, the Brits managed to let a terrorist, whose photograph they had in their possession, leave the country.
A cute e-mail is doing the rounds about terror alert levels in different countries. The butt of the joke is the French, who are claimed to have raised their terror alert from Run to Hide, while the English have apparently moved up from Make Another Cup of Tea to Remain Resolutely Cheerful.
While I feel terribly sorry for the French derision in this e-mail, I can`t help but think that the assessment of the British reaction is justified.
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