Britain has become a safe haven for foreign terrorists following court rulings that they cannot be deported, the government terrorism watchdog has said
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Shariah in the UK
Ben Donnelly was dismissed from his volunteer post as a phone bank manager for the Yes To Fairer Votes campaign after his comments provoked a political storm.
The part-time music teacher could yet face disciplinary action from his employers at Kidbrooke School in Greenwich, who are looking into the matter.
The Yes to Fairer Votes campaign, which wants a switch from first-past-the-post to the alternative vote (AV), moved quickly to axe Mr Donnelly after details of his tweet were leaked to the Standard.
Posted yesterday afternoon, it read: "Says in the Holy Qu'ran Mohammad used to get his neighbours to vote by AV which of his 4 wives he'd shag each night." The thing about a joke is that you have to have some of it right. Mohammed had eleven wives.
Muslim groups were outraged, with Labour MP Khalid Mahmood calling for Mr Donnelly to be referred to the police. "This is outrageous and totally Islamophobic," Mr Mahmood said. "What has Islam got to do with AV?"
Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of Muslim youth organisation the Ramadhan Foundation, described the joke as "disgusting".
A Yes campaign spokesman said: "These comments were utterly disgraceful. Conduct like this will not be accepted by the campaign. We apologise for any offence taken and are as offended by these appalling comments as any other right-thinking person."
Mr Donnelly issued a statement through the Yes campaign saying sorry for the tweet, which has been deleted from his account.
"I apologise unreservedly for any offence caused," it read. "My comments were thoughtless and I bitterly regret them."
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[Bangla Daily Star] A Bangladeshi national working for British Airways (BA) in England conspired with a radical preacher to blow up a US-bound aeroplane, a London court has heard.
From his Newcastle home, Rajib Karim shared details of his BA contacts in e-mails to Mohammedanholy manAnwar al-Awlaki, Woolwich Crown Court was told.
The computer expert worked for the airline in the city and had access to BA offices there and at Heathrow.
Karim, 31, denies plotting to blow up an aircraft and gaining a UK job to exploit terrorist purposes. He has already pleaded guilty to three other terror charges, the jury was told.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my client was perfectly willing to commit many acts of mayhem and murder, but he'd never, ever blow up a plane!"
Karim is accused of plotting to blow up a plane, sharing information of use to hate groups such as al-Qaeda, offering to help financial or disruptive attacks on BA, and gaining a UK job to exploit terrorist purposes.
He was nabbed in February 2010 while working for the airline's call centre in Newcastle.
On the first day of the trial, the court heard how Karim came to the UK in 2006 and got a job with BA. The jury was told that Karim established a "deep cover", joining a gym, playing football and never airing extreme views.
It is alleged that he was communicating with a terror cell as well as Anwar al-Awlaki, who has never been caught and is believed to be hiding in the mountains of Yemen.
Jonathan Laidlaw QC, prosecuting, said the defendant was preparing himself or others for terrorist attacks. He said the court would hear that Karim was an extreme jihadist.
"He believes that terrorism, including the murder of civilians, is permissible to establish a true Islamic state. The defendant was anxious himself to carry out such an attack and he was determined to seek martyrdom - to die and to sacrifice himself for his cause," Laidlaw said.
He also said that those who knew Karim thought he was mild-mannered. He attended two mosques--Grange Park Mosque and University of Newcastle Mosque--and was not known to hold extreme views, the court heard.
Laidlaw said "It was, as far as anybody could tell a perfectly ordinary life he was living."
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This article starring:
Anwar al-Awlaki
al-Qaeda
Rajib Karim
al-Qaeda
Posted by: Fred ||
02/03/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11138 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Britain
[Dawn] The ringleader of the July 7, 2005 suicide kabooms on London's transport system received advice from a mystery figure in Pakistain just days before the attacks, an inquest heard Wednesday. I repeat myself: Pakistain currently holds the same position as al-Qaeda HQ that Afghanistan held in 2001.
Mobile phone records showed a series of calls made from phone boxes of Rawalpindi to bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan, a police officer told hearings in London into the deaths of 52 people.
Metropolitan Police detective Mark Stuart said many of the calls were made through different Pak phone boxes within minutes of each other, suggesting that the caller there wanted to conceal their identity.
Hugo Keith, counsel to the inquests, asked Stuart: "Did you assess that those calls therefore were probably connected to some guidance or some means of communicating information concerned with the manufacture of the bombs and then ultimately their detonation?" "Yes, I think they had to be," replied Stuart.
The inquest heard that Khan never made any calls to Pakistain himself, but that he had instead given contacts in that country the numbers of four phones used purely for the purpose of the attacks.
Most of Khan's conversations with the unknown person in Pakistain took place between May and June 2005 but one lasting six minutes happened five days before the bombings, the inquest heard.
The final, unanswered call to the phone was made on the afternoon of July 7 after Khan, 30, Shehzad Tanweer, 22, Hasib Hussain, 18, and Jermaine Lindsay, 19, had blown themselves up on three subway trains and a bus.
Khan and Tanweer are both known to have travelled to Pakistain in the months before the attack where they are believed to have had contact with members of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.
A video statement by Khan is believed to have been filmed there.
Britain's domestic security service MI5 has admitted it monitored Khan on several occasions before the attacks, including meeting members of a separate bomb plot, but that it failed to follow up the lead.
Britain opened the long-awaited inquests into the deaths of the victims in October and the hearings are expected to last until March. They will examine whether the intelligence services could have prevented the attacks.
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This article starring:
Hasib Hussain
al-Qaeda
Jermaine Lindsay
al-Qaeda
Mohammad Sidique Khan
al-Qaeda
Shehzad Tanweer
al-Qaeda
Posted by: Fred ||
02/03/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11133 views]
Top|| File under: al-Qaeda
Three men have appeared in court charged with stirring up anti-gay hatred in Derby in the first prosecution of its kind.
Ihjaz Alie, 41, Mehboob Hussain, 44, and Umer Javed, 37, appeared at Derby Magistrates' Court on Friday to face charges of distributing threatening propaganda to stir up hatred after handing out leaflets outside a mosque.
Another two men, Razwan Javed, 30, and Kabir Ahmed, 27, were charged in December over accusations they also handed out the leaflet called 'The Death Penalty?' outside a mosque in Derby. The leaflet calls for homosexuals to be executed.
The leaflet was dispersed outside the Jamia Mosque in Derby in July 2010 and through mailboxes during the same month.
Alie, Hussain and Umer Javed are also charged with several counts each of sending communication of threatening messages and displaying signs of writing with abusive or insulting messages.
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Posted by: Dave UK ||
02/03/2011 2:21 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Interesting the sudden number of prosecutions of Muslims misbehaving badly. Hopefully it means the tide is turning, rather than that the number of misbehaviours is up.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
