Not only were the scary brown people - with beards, no less - involved in the Forest Gate incident completely innocent; in fact they were innocent, to the extent that Commissioner Sir Ian Blair offered a formal apology to the victims. Although not, alas, to the public for the £2 million that were wasted.

But there are also some interesting questions about how exactly one of them came to be in possession of child pornography - which was touted for a while as a justifcation for the raid, when the terror angle clearly wouldn't stick - while lacking the knowledge to download it.  

Police said computer and electrical equipment had been seized during the search of Mr Kahar's house and passed to the Child Abuse Investigation Command for further examination.

On Friday a Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) spokesman said 44 indecent images of children had been found in the memories of a Dell computer, an external computer hard-drive and various mobile phones.

Of the total, 23 had been "embedded" images - which could have been inadvertently downloaded on the back of other computer files - and 21, on the external hard-drive and a Nokia 3G mobile, had been "deleted".

The spokesman said: "To transfer to the phone, the suspect would have to have specialist knowledge.

"There was no evidence that Mr Kahar had possession of, or access to, equipment or the technical knowledge to do so."

My prediction is that those involved in the Summer terror plot will turn out to be similarly innocent. Or at least, the only charges that will stick will prove that the most exciting thing they'll have done is bought some peroxide in bulk.

I suppose it's possible that the Pakistani decision is really part of a government and ISI plot to cover up a prospective attack.

But I'd rather take the decision at face value. And hope the UK legal system has as much of a sense of justice as the Pakistani one.