Purna Sen has today been selected as the Labour candidate to stand against Caroline Lucas in Brighton Pavilion.
She was chosen ahead of National Secular Society council member Anne Marie Waters who spoke out against Sharia law.
Ms Sen, who lives in Brighton, was born in India and came to Britain when she was two. Brighton Pavilion is one of Labour’s target seats for the General Election in 2015.
One of two Ukrainian men being held over bomb attacks near three mosques has been further arrested on suspicion of murdering a 75-year-old man.
West Midlands Police said the arrest was in connection with the killing of Mohammed Saleem [pictured] on 29 April. They said the man, 25, was being held over “a further act of terrorism”.
Mr Saleem died after being stabbed in the back in Green Lane, Small Heath, in Birmingham, on his way home after attending prayers at his local mosque.
A man has appeared in court accused of causing a mosque to be evacuated after claiming that he had put a pig’s head inside.
Kirklees magistrates heard that 200 children were forced to leave the Lockwood-based Hanifa Mosque after the threat was made. Christian Joseph St Hillaire, of Fenay Street in Almondbury, yesterday pleaded not guilty to racially-aggravated threatening behaviour.
Police have made a handful of arrests after bottles, cans and other missiles were hurled at officers during an English Defence League rally. A total of four people were arrested, all for public order offences, at the EDL rally and a counter-demonstration in separate public squares in Birmingham city centre.
The state Senate on Friday passed a bill that would keep courts from recognizing Sharia law. While proponents of the legislation said it would keep people safe from foreign laws, critics derided the bill as sending a message of intolerance and bigotry to followers of Islam.
Matthew Broomfield talks to the head of the English Defence League’s LGBT division, one “Tommy English”, who dismisses the rampant – and on occasion violent – homophobia within the EDL and tells Broomfield that “the spread of [Islam] will increase homophobia and homophobic attacks”.
Reporting the sentencing of English Defence League activist Adam Rogers, the Hastings & St Leonards Observer adds the following information:
“Just a fortnight ago, Kevin Newsome, 58, from Luton, was fined £200 by Hastings magistrates after he walked into Hastings Mosque late at night on August 18 last year, threw a number of shoes into the street, and harassed a Muslim family.”
Wolverhampton Central Mosque was evacuated tonight as the police investigation into explosions near mosques in Walsall and Tipton took a series of dramatic twists.
A bomb disposal team and specialist police officers were dispatched to the mosque in Waterloo Road at 8pm after new information came to light in the mosque blasts inquiry. Detectives were working on fresh intelligence suggesting a device had been activated at the Wolverhampton mosque on June 28.
Main routes near the mosque were closed and the area cleared while police conduct searches. By 10pm the cordon had been reduced to 60ft surrounding the Five Ways island. The shut roads included Foxes Lane, Dunstall Avenue, Dunstall Hill, Dunstall Road, Waterloo Road and North Road.
Two men have been arrested in connection with an explosion near a mosque in Walsall last month.
A 25-year-old and 22-year-old, both Eastern European, are being questioned by detectives from the West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit. An area near Talbot Way, Small Heath, Birmingham, is being searched. Some nearby properties have been evacuated. Parts of Small Heath Highway, Golden Hillock Road, and Coventry Road are closed.
One eyewitness told BBC WM about 100 people had initially been evacuated from businesses close to the area being searched. Embreen Hashmi said:
“All of a sudden there was an entourage of police and they cordoned off the whole business park and everybody had to come out on to the street. We weren’t sure what it was and everybody was saying that it was some sort of bomb scare which frightened us. When we spoke to people that worked in the same building as one of the suspects he said there was a chap that they used to work with and that he was actually being forced down by armed police and they had to evacuate the building.”
A Facebook user who stirred up “appalling, racist and anti-religious” hatred about burning down a Grimsby mosque has been jailed for eight weeks. His remarks were “beyond the pale” and could easily have fanned the flames of more racial and religious hatred, Grimsby Magistrates’ Court heard.
Terence Baker, 25, of Columbia Road, Grimsby, admitted sending an offensive or menacing message on May 24.
Brendan Woodward, prosecuting, said Baker posted messages on his Facebook site after the murder of soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich. He made comments about the Grimsby mosque being burned down.
“The comments were quite inflammatory in nature, particularly in the context of what was occurring at that time,” said Mr Woodward. “He was asked about their extreme nature in relation to burning the mosque down but he declined to comment.”