In the same week that Mr T landed in Britain to flog Snickers bars, Britain welcomed back Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyan Mohamed who arrived after the Foreign Office successfully lobbied the US for his release.
At the end of last year British Airways announced that it would offer Mr T, who found fame as BA Baracus who had a fear of flying, a free flight ahead of his ‘Get some nuts’ marketing campaign for Snickers. Ethiopian Mohamed, on the other hand, was arrested in Pakistan and accused of plotting to detonate a dirty bomb.
While Binyan Mohamed and BA Baracus can both share the claim that ‘they were convicted of crimes they did not commit’, what this incidence also shows is the mendacious power of PR.
For British Airways, it’s quite a smart stunt given that these things usually leave me cold; for the Government, however, to claim that Mohamed’s release is some kind of victory and that he should be welcomed back (although his presence in Pakistan has never been fully explained) is I think rather perverse.
