There could be an argument made for the disk drives. You can recover deleted data. The Guardian and other sources are quite clear that they have a lot more information than they have released. Without knowing the specific nature, then yes… I can see an argument being made… Laptops gets misplaced or stolen quite often and this would be a high value laptop.
Now… destroying RAM? Circuit boards, etc, etc? Nope. Not even remotely plausible. Straight out intimidation. This is actually a fairly common tactic in the US. Computers seized rarely are operational if they are ever returned.
