Yearly Archives: 2014

Soldier charged with terror offences after nail bomb found at house in Eccles

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ryan McGee EDLA soldier has been charged with terror offences after a nail bomb was found at a house in Eccles. Ryan McGee, 19, of Mellor Street, Eccles, has been charged with making explosives and possession of a document for terrorist purposes.

He was arrested in December after Greater Manchester Police raided his end-terrace house as part of a separate investigation and discovered the explosives. Alongside the homemade device officers also found a copy of The Anarchist Cookbook – a book published in 1971 containing instructions on the manufacture of explosives.

Mr McGee was serving with the armed forces with 5th Batallion the Rifles in Paderborn, Germany, at the time of the discovery. He was taken into military custody days later and flown back to the UK to be questioned by police. Mr McGee is now due to appear at Westminster Magistrates Court on Wednesday, April 2.

After the discovery of the bomb, a cordon was put in place by police and 30 residents were evacuated to nearby Lewis Street Primary School. Army bomb disposal officers were called in to remove the bomb.

Continue reading →

TN Tea Partiers freak out on TV reporter for covering their effort to block Muslim cemetery

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Tempers flared in a confrontation between anti-Islamic activists and proponents of a plan to build an Islamic cemetery adjacent to a mosque in Murfreesboro, TN.

WSMV Channel 4 reported that supporters of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro asked the judge presiding over the hearing to recuse himself from today’s hearing about an injunction to stop the ICM’s expansion. The motion was granted, infuriating opponents to the cemetery plan.

Supporters of the Islamic Center said that Judge William Corlew lll ruled against them in the initial fight over whether to allow the mosque to be built at all in 2010. Federal judges overruled Corlew and construction proceeded. The Islamic Center and its attorney John Green didn’t believe it could get an impartial ruling from Corlew in the matter and he recused himself from the hearing.

“We’ll go to another judge because the Islamic center didn’t think Judge Corlew could give them a fair trial. I think it was sad today for all the people took off work to be here,” said Lou Ann Zelenik, a local Tea Party official and longtime opponent of the Islamic Center.

Green said that the “degree of hyperbole and misinformation” in the case has reached a point of true “absurdity.”

In the hallway outside the meeting room, mosque opponents turned nasty, jostling and shoving, then insulting a mosque supporter and ordering him not to film them. One elder gentleman accompanying Zelenik said that Islam is “not a religion” and told ICM supporters, “You’re the ones that’s lying.”

Continue reading →

EDL Girls and Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

EDL GirlsLast week BBC3 broadcast a documentary entitled “EDL Girls: Don’t Call Me Racist”, which followed a number of English Defence League “Angels” as they went about their lives whipping up hatred against the Muslim community. The subjects were treated sympathetically, and the violence and viciousness of the EDL were left unexamined, although it proved impossible to disguise their ignorance and bigotry. Over at the Tell Mama website, Aniqah Choudhary has a good article exposing the failings of the film.

‘My hell as a white Muslim living in Bristol’: Woman says she is racially abused every day

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Bristol Post My Hell front pageAssaults, insults, sly remarks and threats. All have been hurled at Kelly Ziane since she converted to Islam at the tender age of 18. She was not coerced, nor did she change her religion in order to marry – she did so because she believed it was the “right” faith for her.

For a white girl from Bedminster it was a bold and radical change to make, something she has been reminded of on numerous occasions since then. But the 36-year-old mum-of-three has not wavered from Islam – she says her skin has grown thicker and her resolve stronger, even when she felt forced to take her children out of their primary school because she was racially abused by another parent.

Kelly contacted the Bristol Post after we reported on a racially motivated assault in a Bedminster shop last week.

She said: “I saw the news the other night, about the Muslim women attacked at Poundstretcher in East Street, and there was a police officer saying racist incidents are very rare in Bristol. In my experience, that’s not the case at all.

“I converted to Islam 19 years ago. I grew up in Bedminster and over the last ten years it’s got a lot worse. I don’t have enough fingers to count on my hands the number of incidents. It gets to the stage where you don’t see the point in reporting everything that happens to you. I know I should, and I would urge everyone to report hate crimes, no matter how small.

“The insults used to bother me, but over the years you get used to blocking it out and carrying on with your life. If you let it get to you, you would end up feeling so hateful towards everyone. You have to have strength, otherwise you might end up thinking I can’t do this, it’s not for me.”

Kelly said the abuse has varied over the years, from being spat at by a man who tried to pull off her headdress (hijab) on her way home from work, to being called a “Paki” and a “raghead” by women in shops, to the ignorance of being asked whether she speaks English in everyday situations.

Continue reading →

Bullet fired at Illinois mosque during prayer service

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A bullet was reportedly fired through the dome of an Orland Park mosque Tuesday morning, damaging the building during a early morning prayer service.

No one was hurt when the single shot was fired through the dome of the mosque a few minutes after 6 a.m. during the Fajr, or break-of-dawn prayer, according to a statement from the Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The bullet penetrated the dome and caused debris to fall and disrupt the service, according to the statement. About 40 people were in the prayer center at the time.

Continue reading →

Neo-Nazi who plotted to blow up Mersey mosques branded ‘evil’ by judge

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ian Forman at Hitler's Berghof residence
Ian Forman at Berchtesgaden in 2012 during a pilgrimage to Adolf Hitler’s Berghof residence

A neo-Nazi who plotted to blow up Merseyside mosques was branded “evil” by a judge today.

Terror suspect Ian Forman, 42, from Birkenhead, planned to explode home-made devices packed with nails and ball-bearings. He downloaded pictures of two mosques near his home and labelled them “targets” before making a string of YouTube posts threatening to “blow them up”.

He stockpiled potassium nitrate, sulphur and charcoal, and drew up a shopping list of bomb components after months of internet research. The Hitler obsessive then created spreadsheets for the prices of chemicals needed for homemade bombs, and where they would be stocked.

Forman, who frequently expressed his racist ideology and views against the disabled to friends and workmates, also posted on YouTube about “Mosques lighting up the sky to keep us warm in the winter”.

A jury of seven men and five women at Kingston Crown Court today found Forman guilty of engaging in conduct in the preparation of terrorist acts.

Continue reading →

French airforce sergeant who planned to shoot Muslims has case dismissed

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Al Forqane mosque demonstrationThe Collectif contre l’Islamophobie en France draws our attention to reports that Christophe Lavigne, a sergeant in the French airforce with far-right links, will not now be prosecuted.

Lavigne was arrested last August and charged with planning an armed attack on worshippers at the Al Forqane mosque in the Lyon suburb of Vénissieux to coincide with the end of Ramadan.

Judges had already dismissed the charge against Lavigne of possessing ammunition in connection with a terrorist enterprise, on the grounds that the bullets were of a grade permitted for collectors of historical weapons and so were not illegal. This ruling has now been confirmed by the court of appeal in Paris.

Lavigne will stand trial in June on a charge of desecration of a place of worship in connection with a terrorist enterprise, having reportedly confessed to an earlier firebomb attack on a mosque in Libourne.

The CCIF comments: “There is no doubt that he represents a real terrorist threat, as he has already shown in practice by throwing a Molotov cocktail at the mosque in Libourne in August 2012. So how could this armed, dangerous and recidivist Islamophobe have been able to escape conviction and not be expelled from the French armed forces either?”

(Photo of demonstration outside Al Forqane mosque in August 2013 following Lavigne’s arrest: Abdel Malik)

Helsinki clothing store bosses fined over headscarf sacking

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Managers at a Helsinki clothing store have been fined over an incident in which they fired a Muslim worker on her first day at work because she was wearing a headscarf.

Helsinki District court has fined managers at a Helsinki clothing retailer for discriminating against an employee on the basis of religion. They received 20 day-fines for sacking a Muslim worker who was told she should not wear a headscarf.

The new worker, who had been hired on a one-month contract, was fired on her first day at work when managers realised she wore a headscarf. She had been hired over the phone, and told to turn up wearing a t-shirt and denim overalls. The store manager forbid her from wearing the headscarf in the store, and after discussing the matter with a senior manager fired the new employee.

The defendants denied that their decision was discriminatory, saying that a scarf that ensured only the worker’s face was visible did not fit the company’s brand. That view was not shared by the district court, which ruled in favour of the prosecutor and fined the defendants.

YLE News, 24 March 2014

Sentencing delayed in case of Toronto man convicted of promoting hatred

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Eric BrazauSentencing has been delayed in the case of a hate-mongering Toronto man convicted of a charge rarely laid in Ontario courtrooms.

Eric Brazau was found guilty in February of willfully promoting hatred against Muslims, a charge that was laid only after police and the Crown attorney received consent from the deputy attorney general. He was scheduled to be sentenced Monday, but due to court scheduling conflicts, it was put over until Wednesday.

The hate charge stemmed from incidents in September 2012, in which Brazau handed out home-made flyers, on which he wrote the words, “They are here and breeding,” with an excerpt from the Qur’an beneath it, which read, “Kill them wherever you find them.”

The flyers included photos of men, women and children dressed in tradition Muslim garb, including one photo of a Toronto man and his wife as she pushed a stroller. “As well, this side of the flyer contained a graphic representation of a skeletal pregnant woman wearing a hijab – her belly is a bomb with a lit fuse,” Justice Ford Clements wrote in his February judgment.

On the other side of the pamphlet were “a number of graphic images… (that) associated the Islamic religion and the prophet Muhammad with pedophilia, bestiality and Satanism,” Clements wrote.

Brazau was also convicted of criminal harassment and mischief, after blocking the path of the Toronto man shown in his flyer and photographing him as he attempted to walk down a pathway. Court heard Brazau had on an earlier occasion confronted the same man and called him “a terrorist.”

Given that Brazau was on probation for a previous conviction at the time, he was also charged with – and ultimately convicted of – breaching his probation by not keeping the peace.

Continue reading →

Vlaams Belang activists chant ‘fewer, fewer’ in solidarity with Wilders

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Vlaams Belang Wilders coverBelgian Vlaams Belang party activists were chanting “fewer, fewer!” during their party’s electoral congress on Sunday in Antwerp-Belgium, in support of the Dutch right-wing party leader Geert Wilders, who wants “fewer Moroccans” in the Netherlands.

According to the Belgian news website 7sur7, 2,000 activists appeared in support of the anti-Muslim Geert Wilders and chanted “fewer, fewer!” as the Vlaams Belang party leader, Filip Dewinter, spoke about stopping immigration in Belgium, during the nationalist party’s electoral congress.

Continue reading →