Goudarz Karimi recounts his experience of being detained by armed police on suspicion of being a suicide bomber after he was spotted wearing a weight vest during a training walk.
Category Archives: UK
Police arrest EDL members to ‘avert planned attack’ in London
Police arrested 179 members of the English Defence League after reports of repeated threats to attack Occupy protesters camped outside St Paul’s Cathedral on Armistice Day.
Scotland Yard said they believed a breach of the peace was about to take place after they got intelligence that the EDL were planning the Armistice Day attack. The law states officers can arrest if they believe the breach of the peace to be “imminent.”
A member of the tented community outside the cathedral expressed gratitude to the police for preventing any violence. “It is fantastic if they are using their resources to try and stop people getting on to this site,” said Bryn Phillips, a member of the Occupy LSX community. “If this has prevented violence then I am pleased.”
We have to get over our ‘fear of Islamophobia’ (it says here)
“There is no doubt that there is a deep-rooted ‘phobia’ in our society, but it is not of Islam. The fear that has gripped people is a fear of open debate and free speech.”
So says Rania Hafez, who produced the session “Islamophobia: the new racism or liberal angst?” at the Battle of Ideas festival organised by ultraleftists-turned-rightwing-libertarians of the former Revolutionary Communist Party.
EDL member gets off racial harassment charge
The trial of a man accused of racially aggravated harassment at an EDL protest in Halifax was thrown out after magistrates ruled there was not enough evidence.
Dennis Farrell, of High Lees Road, Halifax, was charged with the offence after the English Defence League rally in Halifax on April 2. Farrell pleaded not guilty. Prosecutor Andy Dinning told the court he had been involved in filming the demonstration and had used offensive language.
Police said Farrell was seen in the Courtyard pub holding the camera. A voice could be heard shouting abuse, and DC Facey said no one else could be seen on CCTV standing near the microphone. But his solicitor, Richard Brown, argued there was no case to answer and there was no proof it was Farrell.
Halifax Courier, 8 November 2011
You’ll note that Farrell did not dispute that racial abuse was shouted – only that he was the EDL supporter who shouted it.
Another anti-Islam rant from Dawkins
The Independent has an article entitled “Women & Islam: The rise and rise of the convert”, which reports that “record numbers of young, white British women are converting to Islam”. Among the comments on the article on his website we find the following observation by celebrity atheist Richard Dawkins:
“Whenever I read an article like this, I end up shaking my head in bafflement. Why would anyone want to CONVERT to Islam? I can see why, having been born into it, you might be reluctant to leave, perhaps when you reflect on the penalty for doing to. But for a woman (especially a woman) voluntarily to JOIN such a revolting and misogynistic institution when she doesn’t have to always suggests to me massive stupidity.”
EDL supporter returning from Tower Hamlets protest threatened rail worker
A man was arrested at a train station for threatening to hit a rail worker. Lee Anthony Dunn, of Sydney Gardens, South Shields, was travelling on the King’s Cross to Sunderland train on September 3, passing Hartlepool, when he was asked to move by a train manager who wanted to get past. Hartlepool Magistrates’ Court heard that the 27-year-old asbestos fitter – who was with a gang from the far-right movement the English Defence League – refused to budge.
Prosecuting, Paul Power said: “The train manager asked the defendant to move so he could pass again, and he swore at the worker. This made the train manager nervous, because of the defendant’s size and because he was an English Defence League supporter.
“He ordered the train manager to zig-zag through him and his friends, and he warned the worker that he would hit him if he asked again. The train manager retreated behind two security officers who happened to be on the train, and police were informed. The defendant continued to square up to other people on the train, and the bar had to be closed.”
Dunn admitted using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour. He was fined £300 and told to pay £85 costs and a £15 victim surcharge.
Jailed for plot to stir up riots in Grimsby using Facebook
A Facebook plotter who tried to stir up riots in Grimsby at the height of the wave of disorder across the country has been jailed for three years.
Martin Hartshorn, 22, of Comber Place, Grimsby, admitted encouraging or assisting a riot and publishing inflammatory racist material on August 9.
Jonathan Sandiford, prosecuting, told Grimsby Crown Court that a wave of riots and serious public disorder was sweeping through towns and cities at the time.
Police were monitoring a Facebook community page saying: “Not rioting in Grimsby but it’s already a s***hole”. At the height of the riots, Hartshorn posted a message saying: “Whose up for a riot tonight in town?” He made racist comments, including “Let’s do our riot different. Let’s burn all the Paki shops and takeaways.” He later added: “And the Islamic centre. We can’t forget that.”
Grimsby Telegraph, 5 November 2011
See also Press Association, 4 November 2011
Over at the EDL Casuals United blog, the PA report is reproduced under the headline “If you are stupid enough to post race hate and threats on Facebook then you DESERVE to get banged up”. Note the absence of any condemnation of race hate and threats as such. The moral the EDL draws from the case is that you shouldn’t make the mistake of getting caught.
Drunken thugs who attacked Scunthorpe mosque get suspended sentences
A mourner at a funeral service at a Scunthorpe mosque was attacked when four men burst in, a court was told.
Grimsby Crown Court heard that despite Anayat Shah’s attempts to keep them out, the men barged through the Pakistan Social Cultural and Islamic Centre’s doors, in Parkinson Avenue, and attacked the man and disrupted the service. Earlier, they had urinated against the walls of the mosque as the funeral service for Mr Shah’s aunt was coming to an end.
The court heard mourners including children and relatives were in tears following the attack on December 7.
The Scunthorpe men – Grantas Gruzauskas, 25, of Frodingham Road, Ernestas Rimkevicius, 26, of Fox Street, Mantas Vilkaitis, 26, of Wells Street and Donatas Komas, 31, of Porter Street – all admitted affray. They all received a nine-month prison sentence, suspended for two years.
‘Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!’ EDL leader says he’s the victim of a state conspiracy
English Defence League leader Stephen Lennon’s latest address to the masses, “Tommy’s November video diary“, was posted on the EDL website yesterday.
It’s little more than an extended self-pitying whinge about his personal problems and how he’s being persecuted for his beliefs. He’s been charged with tax evasion, his sunbed business is closing down because he’s behind with his rent, his wife is stressed, his mother’s ill. And all as a result of Tommy’s selfless commitment to leading the EDL in their heroic struggle against the Islamification of Britain.
As evidence of his supposed persecution Lennon produces an email sent by James Brokenshire – who holds the junior ministerial position of parliamentary under secretary of state for crime and security at the Home Office – to the Labour MP for Newcastle North, Catherine McKinnell. Lennon quotes Brokenshire as stating that “we are working with a range of partners to address the driver of the EDL”. Lennon claims this is proof that the Home Office is colluding with “the police, the tax office, the VAT” in an attempt to destroy him and the movement he leads.
EDL members charged with racist attack on Plymouth kebab shop sent to Crown Court
Two women charged with a racist attack on a Kurdish woman at a city centre takeaway have been sent to Plymouth Crown Court.
Hayley Wells, aged 27, and Kelly Watterson, aged 29, appeared before Plymouth magistrates jointly accused of racially aggravated common assault against a woman in the kebab shop. Wells, of Shell Close, Leigham, and Watterson, of St Peter’s Road, Manadon, both deny the attack on Sawda Kurdo at the Istanbul Kebab shop in Exeter Street on August 31. Watterson has also denied a further charge of affray in connection with the same incident.
Magistrates have now formally committed their case for trial at Plymouth Crown Court. Wells and Watterson were released on conditional bail to appear before a judge on January 3.