Category Archives: Anti-Muslim violence

Four police officers charged with assault on Babar Ahmad

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Babar-AhmadFour police officers have been accused of assaulting terror suspect Babar Ahmad as they arrested him in 2003 in London.

The officers, all members of the Metropolitan Police’s territorial support group, will be charged with causing actual bodily harm. The Crown Prosecution Service said Pcs Nigel Cowley, John Donohue, Roderick James-Bowen and Mark Jones will appear before magistrates on September 22.

Simon Clements, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “Babar Ahmad was arrested by the officers on suspicion of terrorism offences. Mr Ahmad suffered a number of injuries during that arrest, including heavy bruising to the head, neck, wrists and feet.

“The Crown Prosecution Service received a file of evidence on how those injuries were caused from the Independent Police Complaints Commission in 2004. We took the view at that time that there was insufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction of anyone involved.

“Following Mr Ahmad’s successful civil proceedings for compensation from the police in the High Court last year, his solicitors asked the CPS to look at the evidence again. The Director of Public Prosecutions asked the Special Crime Division to do so. We have now completed our review of the evidence.

“Our conclusion is that there is sufficient evidence and it is in the public interest to charge four of the officers involved in the arrest of Mr Ahmad with causing actual bodily harm to him, contrary to the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.”

The four officers will be summonsed to appear at City of Westminster magistrates’ court in central London.

Ahmad, 36, was held by a team of police officers who raided his home in Tooting, south London, in December 2003. In March last year the Met paid £60,000 damages as lawyers for Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson admitted he was the victim of violence.

In a statement, Ahmad said: “I am pleased that the CPS has decided that a jury will hear the evidence in this case and it will now be for the jury to determine whether any police officer should be punished for the assault upon me in December 2003. I have no further comment to make at this time.”

Press Association, 12 August 2010

Arlington, Texas: mosque vandalised and children’s playground burnt

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hundreds of worshipers attend Friday prayers at the Dar El-Eman Islamic Center in south Arlington. This past Friday, they were greeted by stick figure graffiti in the parking lot, depicting Uncle Sam sexually assaulting Allah. Then early Sunday morning, someone torched the children’s playground behind the mosque.

“The children, when they saw this, they were horrified,” said mosque president Jamal Qaddura. He said the message is clear to young and old alike. Unfortunately, they look at us as someone who doesn’t belong here,” Qaddura said.

Qaddura said whoever did this might also have tried to burn the mosque itself by pulling apart old gas lines, but the building no longer has gas service.

“I think it’s related to igniting people’s feelings and emotions and give people the wrong directions of Muslims and Islam,” he said.

Islamic centers in other cities have been vandalized, and one in Florida fire-bombed. Qaddura says until now, worshipers at the south Arlington mosque have felt completely welcome, and have hosted numerous community events.

Arlington police have stepped up patrols around mosques in the city after vandalism and anti-Islam graffiti appeared at the south Arlington mosque.

WFAA-TV, 28 July 2010

EDL members arrested over suspected mosque bomb plot

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Several English Defence League members were sensationally arrested last week by police investigating an apparent plot to bomb a British mosque.

Tim Ablitt, partner Tanya, Alfred and Tracy Saint, and a man known only at this stage as “Poole Knight” were arrested by officers in Dorset on Thursday evening and held for 24 hours while police investigated their potential involvement in an bomb plot thought to involve Bournemouth mosque.

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Racist thug jailed for attack on Muslim woman

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A racist thug who ripped off a Muslim woman’s religious veil and threw it on the ground was jailed for two years yesterday.

Brute William Baikie grabbed the veil from 26-year-old Anwar Alqahtani as she was on her way to catch a train from Glasgow’s Central Station. Miss Alqahtani, who wears the hijab to protect her modesty as part of her religion, had to use another piece of clothing to cover her face after the veil was ripped as Baikie pulled it from her. Baikie, 26, ran off but was later arrested by police after being identified on CCTV.

Miss Alqahtani, who had come to Scotland from Saudi Arabia to study for a masters degree, has quit her studies and is afraid to leave the house as a result of the attack.

Sentencing Baikie at Glasgow Sheriff Court yesterday, Sheriff Lindsay Wood told the racist what he did was an “absolute disgrace”. Sheriff Wood added: “The offence you committed was a shameful one. You are a man who has a number of racist convictions and you knew full well how offensive the act would have been to the lady.”

Daily Record, 27 July 2010

Memorial to Marwa El-Sherbini vandalised

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Marwa El-Sherbini memorial

Vandals have attacked an art project erected in honor of Marwa El-Sherbini, a pregnant headscarved Egyptian woman who was murdered in a German court room, organizers said Friday.

The Citizen.Courage group, which sponsored the display in the eastern city of Dresden, said that a few knife-shaped columns used in the open-air show had been knocked over several times and signs explaining the project were stolen.

“Citizen.Courage assumes this was a malicious, politically motivated attempt to destroy the project,” group chairman Christian Demuth said in statement. To warn against everyday racism, we will not restore the destroyed installations. But we will continue the project.” A police spokeswoman said authorities had opened an investigation.

During a trial last July, a Russian-born defendant suddenly attacked Sherbini – who was Muslim and wore a headscarf – plunging an 18 centimetre kitchen knife at least 16 times into her while she was three-months pregnant with her second child. Her son, Mustafa, three years old at the time, watched her bleed to death at the courtroom.

Sherbini’s husband, Egyptian geneticist Elwy Okaz, rushed to her aid but was also stabbed repeatedly and then shot in the leg by a police officer confused about who was attacking whom.

The 28-year-old assailant, who was sentenced to life in prison, attacked her out of revenge after she pressed charges against him for calling her a “terrorist”, “Islamist” and “whore” during a dispute over a playground swing.

The killing, and the initially muted reaction of Germany’s politicians and media, sparked outrage in Sherbini’s home country, as well as in the wider Muslim world. Many newspapers dubbed her the “veil martyr” after her headscarf.

The “18 Stabs” installation, unveiled on the first anniversary of Sherbini’s death on July 1, featured 18 knife-shaped concrete pillars erected throughout the city with signs condemning racism and xenophobic violence.

AFP, 23 July 2010

Leicester: Muslim women who wear veils suffer rise in hostility and abuse

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim women who wear face veils say they are seeing a rising tide of hostility and abuse because of the way they dress. Women spoke out as police reported a sharp rise in crimes, ranging from verbal abuse to physical attacks, against Muslims in the past year.

Two women who wear the niqab, a veil which leaves only the eyes showing, said Leicester had become more “hostile” since the French Government said it planned to ban the garment and the burka, which covers the entire body.

The women also believe publicity surrounding Conservative MP Philip Hollobone’s decision to refuse to meet constituents wearing veils had deepened public hostility.

Mr Hollobone, an MP in Northamptonshire, also attempted to introduce a private member’s bill in the House of Commons to pave the way for a law similar to that being considered in France.

One of the women, a 29-year-old from Leicester’s Clarendon Park, said: “There is a more hostile than usual atmosphere at the moment. I have been called names like ”Taliban” and ”terrorist” and one man, who was drunk in the middle of the day, told me to go back to where I came from.

“I just want to live my life in accordance with my faith, I don’t see what harm I am doing by wearing the niqab.

“People talk about women who wear these garments being outside of society in some way. I was born and brought up in this country and don’t want to live anywhere else. I have been to university and I have a well-paid job, I live by the law and I love my family. How am I not taking part in society?”

Another woman, aged 32, from Evington, Leicester, said: “Women are saying that they feel intimidated by some of the comments they hear in the media or in the street. There seems to be this feeling now that women who choose to dress this way are some kind of threat to the British way of life.”

Police in Leicester have seen the number of cases of Muslims being verbally abused or physically assaulted rise in the past year. Between April 2008 and March 2009, officers in the city recorded 25 offences. In the following 12 months, it rose to 42.

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West Midlands community centre gutted in arson attack

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Langley Islamic Culture Centre arson

A former community centre in Oldbury faces demolition after being gutted in an arson attack.

Up to 40 firefighters battled the blaze at Langley Hall in Vicarage Street last night, which was set to be taken over by the Langley Islamic Culture Centre. Crews battled flames from 1.30am to 6.30am, but the building was destroyed in the attack. Bosses at Sandwell Council say it is now likely to be demolished.

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Strasbourg: 18 Muslim graves desecrated

Posted on by Bob Pitt

AFP reports that last night 18 graves in the Muslim section of a cemetery in the Strasbourg suburb of Robertsau were desecrated.

Twelve headstones were overturned, while the perpetrators overturned or damaged plaques and decorations on six other graves.

“Deliberately targeting the Muslim section is unspeakable, it is a barbaric act”, Driss Ayachour president of the regional Muslim Council of Alsace was quoted as saying.

The Socialist mayor of Strasbourg, Roland Ries, who visited the scene this morning, announced that the municipality would cover the cost of restoring graves.

AFP, 26 June 2010

See also “18 tombes musulmanes profanées à Strasbourg”, L’Express, 29 June 2010

Update:  See “Cemeteries desecrated in Strasbourg: three skinheads receive prison sentences”, Islamophobia Watch, 20 June 2012

Youth supporter of EDL and BNP manufactured gunpowder and nail bomb

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A boy with an “unhealthy interest” in explosives and right wing politics made gunpowder and nailbombs with chemicals bought from his mother’s eBay account.

Police found a pipe packed with nails and screws and charged with powder in the 16 year old’s bedroom, and a pipe with a firework inside hidden under a waste oil tank at a nearby petrol station.

The youngster also had literature from the right wing groups the British National Party and the English Defence League, together with Nazi emblems.

Officers were tipped off by the eBay seller who was concerned about the commodities being bought. The family’s house in Tamworth, Staffs, was immediately evacuated while explosives and firearms experts searched the property for three days.

Daily Telegraph, 28 June 2010

Update:  See also Tamworth Herald, 1 July 2010

Muslim schoolgirl suffers brutal attack

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sureyya OzkayaThese are the shocking injuries inflicted upon schoolgirl Sureyya Ozkaya during a brutal daylight assault near her Thornton Heath home.

The 14-year-old’s hair was set on fire and her hands and feet were cut with glass during the attack in Grangewood Park, before her attackers smashed her head against a tree and left her bleeding in a bush.

She was stumbled upon by a woman walking her dog and carried home to nearby Kitchener Road following the attack, at about 7.30pm on June 9.

Sureyya’s mother Pemdegul Kale, 39, said three girls taunted her daughter about her Muslim faith as they carried out the assault, before burning her hair with a lighter and stealing her trainers.

Croydon Guardian, 24 June 2010