Chris Morris’ half-comedy half-documentary about British Jihadists opens today in the United States. I can’t recommend it strongly enough. Neither, so I’m told, can Cage Prisoners.
There’s a nice vignette in this interview with Chris Morris here:
CM: Reading the documentation about this cell of seven guys who have 600 kilograms of fertilizers in a storage space they want to make into a bomb. They go to Pakistan to learn how to create a bomb from this material. They come back, sit around talking a bit more, and forget how to make the bomb. They start making phone calls to Pakistan, “Listen brother, can you tell me the bomb recipe?”—at which point the line goes dead.
There was a point in that trial transcript in which the leader of that cell has been banned from going to Pakistan by his parents. The cell comes up with this idea to send the whitest looking guy in the group, who is a Moroccan, to see the parents and pretend he’s from [the British government’s security division] MI5. This white-looking guy has a habit of turning up at the flat where the cell members congregate and saying to the other guys who are all Pakistanis, “Alright you hairy hobbits!”
XJ: That’s actually in the court documents, “You hairy hobbits”?
CM: Yes. So, this man who calls the other guys “the hairy hobbits” goes off and pays a visit to the cell leader’s parents’ home. He says, “Hello Mr. and Mrs. Khan, I’m from MI5. Now, we know your son wants to go to Pakistan and we’d like you to let him go, because we’ll look after him and he’ll lead us to some interesting people. So for the sake of queen and country, could you please do that?”
And mom and dad, being loyal citizens, said, “Alright yes of course.” So the white-looking guy comes back to the car—by the way, every beat of this is being recorded by the real MI5—”Yes, bro, yes! I killed it! We done it! We fooled your parents! Let’s go to Pakistan!”
Your jaw drops when you read this stuff. And the police tell you, “Oh, listen, that’s not the half of it, listen I got a ton more where that came from.”
Go see it.
