Woolwich: the world witnesses murder

The last time people were killed on British streets for political reasons it was 7/7. We know why that happened because the bombers left videos to explain.

Spool on to yesterday and the alleged attackers capitalised on the new world where almost everyone’s a paparazzi, if not a film-crew.

No need for the pre-prepared video tape – simply wander up to the nearest smartphone and start talking, meat-cleaver in hand.

The need to explain, to grandstand, isn’t new, though the brazen means is, as is the need in this case to simply stand by the body of the soldier until the police turn up.

The sheer insouciance of the suspected attackers, bloodstained, addressing the smartphone-witness, the blood, the body in the road – images which will haunt the public consciousness for a long time to come.

Of course the bloody methodology is not new either. The al-Qaeda reversion to medieval levels of hatchet brutality married to this century’s video technology has a brutal and well-established pedigree from Pakistan to Iraq via Afghanistan.

Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was the man who cut Daniel Pearl’s head off in Pakistan. He was from a leafy street in Wanstead on the outskirts of London – his parents, who still run a clothing business in the east end – even sent him to the local private school, Forest.

The irony is, such young men are complaining at the British army, when that institution is out of Iraq and soon out of Afghanistan at the end of next year.

Follow @alextomo on Twitter