Warning: Undefined array key "rbname" in /data/rantburg.com/www/rantburg/pgrecentorg.php on line 14
Hello !

Britain

Would-be terrorist 'sentence 'too lenient'

2008-02-01

A man who tried to travel to Afghanistan to fight against British troops could have his jail term increased after the Attorney-General lodged an appeal against his “undluly lenient” sentence today. Baroness Scotland of Asthal, QC, decided to refer the 4-and-a-half-year sentence passed on Sohail Qureshi this month to the Appeal Court. Qureshi, 30, a dentist, who speaks five languages, admitted a range of terrorism offences after a rare legal procedure that led to his being told in advance what the maximum sentence would be if he pleaded guilty and avoided a full trial. He was the first person to be convicted for the offence of preparing to commit terrorist acts, under Section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006. Prosecution lawyers and the police were furious that an Old Bailey judge had imposed what they felt to be a light sentence. It was believed that had Qureshi been convicted after a trial he would have been jailed for between 10 and 15 years. Counter-terrorism officials were particularly concerned that the sentence had sent out a signal that the offence of preparing for terrorism was a minor one. The maximum term in the legislation is life imprisonment. Qureshi, from Forest Gate, East London, was stopped at Heathrow in October 2006 as he tried to board a flight to Pakistan with £9,000 cash and military equipment in his luggage and combat manuals on a computer hard drive. Searches at his home recovered pictures of Qureshi, who was born in Pakistan, carrying an array of assault rifles on previous visits to the region.In an e-mail to a friend that was retrieved from his computer he said: “Make dua [pray] that I will kill many.” He said he was going to take part in “an operation”. Qureshi had also been in e-mail contact with Samina Malik, a shop assistant at a Heathrow airside branch of WH Smith, to ask about security arrangements. Malik, who called herself the Lyrical Terrorist on websites, was tried separately from Qureshi and given a nine-month suspended sentence for possessing items useful to terrorists. Her link to Qureshi was not disclosed to the jury in her trial. A spokesman for the Attorney-General said: “After careful review the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland has decided to refer the sentence given to Sohail Qureshi to the Court of Appeal as she considers the sentence to be unduly lenient. It will now be for the Court of Appeal to decide at a future hearing whether or not to increase the sentence.”

Link

Britain

Bunglawala Sez: "Lyrical Terrorist" Case Reveals UK Oppression

2007-11-13

Inayat Bunglawala, Guardian I seem to recall that a California blog received e-mail threats from an office building where Bungy was employed. The conviction last Thursday of the self-styled "Lyrical Terrorist", 23-year old Samina Malik, marks a further dramatic erosion of our liberties in the United Kingdom. The British public was outraged when the leader of the Muslim Council of Britain, complained of "Nazism" in the UK, and did so 1 day before "Armistice Day" (Nov. 11) In the wake of the guilty verdict, several newspapers printed extracts from her attempts at poetry, including gems such as How to Behead, and The Living Martyrs. The court had heard that on an online social networking group known as Hi-5 Samina Malik had listed her interests as "helping the mujahideen any way I can" and, in the section for her favourite TV shows, she entered "watching videos by Muslim brothers in Iraq, yep, the beheading ones". However, Malik was also said to have downloaded some material from the internet including The al-Qaida Manual and The Mujahideen Poisons Handbook - it took me less than a minute to find both of these using Google, along with a document entitled How To Win Hand-to-Hand Fighting. Although she was acquitted of the more serious charge under section 57 of the Terrorism Act of possessing an item for a "purpose" connected with terrorism, she was still convicted under section 58 of the same act which states: A person commits an offence if ... he collects or makes a record of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism It hardly needs stating how incredibly broadly this act can be interpreted. The act does allow a defence for a person to download such material if the person can "prove that he had a reasonable excuse for his action or possession". Evidently, the court felt that Samina Malik had no such reasonable excuse and as the Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, of Scotland Yard, remarked after the trial: "Merely possessing this material is a serious criminal offence." It is to be hoped that this case may yet serve as a demonstration of just how badly-framed some of our anti-terror legislation actually is. In a truly free society, it should not be a crime to merely download and read such material. During her trial, Malik argued that she was not a terrorist and that she had chosen the online moniker "Lyrical terrorist" simply because it had "sounded cool" and that her poetry, online remarks and downloading of internet material was undertaken in an attempt to attract male admirers. The "poetess" clearly declared her hate for the majority in her adopted homeland, and she more than advocated violence, she expressed an intent to personally act on her hate. Her story is quite plausible and I am sure there must be many more like her. Countless young British Muslims visit popular internet sites such as YouTube every day to obtain footage of what is really happening in Iraq and come across sickening material such as US soldiers deliberately killing a clearly wounded Iraqi and then appearing to gloat over the murder, a US soldier in Iraq using a loudhailer to taunt Muslims with his expletive-filled mocking of the Islamic call to prayer, footage graphically showing the enormous and terrible impact of the US-led war on Iraqi civilians (this last one has the haunting Manic Street Preachers hit, If you tolerate this your children will be next ... as its soundtrack). If you have not already done so, then do try viewing some of this material - there is a lot more out there - and ask yourself whether, if you were a 23-year-old it might not also have prompted dark thoughts to cross your own mind, however fleetingly, and perhaps even have led you to download similar material from the internet. Samina has been put under house arrest for the time being, but she must return for sentencing on December 6. As one blogger noted, it will be interesting to see if the judge chooses to make an example of her in order to discourage others or if he chooses instead to make an example of what is undoubtedly a bad and illiberal law whose primary purpose is to punish people for having the wrong thoughts. There would appear to be something preposterously wrong with our criminal justice system if nearly five years after the Iraq war was launched and hundreds of thousands of wholly unnecessary deaths later, Tony Blair is able to just walk away from his responsibility for the ongoing carnage and unbelievably emerge as a Peace Envoy to the region, while a foolish young woman who did not harm anyone now faces a maximum 10-year term in prison for what can only be described as a thought crime. Free speech? Bungy and the MCB have a habit of demanding "hate" prosecutions of non-muslims who scrutinize his cult. He would jail "islamophobes" if he had the power.

Link

Britain

Muslim Council of Britain leader : Integrate Muslim and British cultures

2007-11-10

The head of the Muslim Council of Britain does not mince his words on integration, report Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson There is fear and loathing in Britain. This week, the head of MI5 claimed there were 2,000 people involved in terrorist activity and children as young as 15 were being "groomed" to be suicide bombers. Gordon Brown announced plans to require immigrants to learn English and Downing Street said the Prime Minister wanted to double the number of days that terrorist suspects can be detained without trial. Then, just as the Metropolitan Police was being censured for shooting the Stockwell One, the Lyrical Terrorist became the first woman to be convicted of terrorist crimes. Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, the leader of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), thinks the Government is stoking the tension. "There is a disproportionate amount of discussion surrounding us," he says. "The air is thick with suspicion and unease. It is not good for the Muslim community, it is not good for society." The 53-year-old special needs teacher has a gentle manner and a quiet voice - he describes himself as a "community spokesman" rather than a "religious leader" - but he does not mince his words. Britain must, he warns, beware of becoming like Nazi Germany. Or like Saudi Arabia? Or like Iran? Or like Tajikistan? Or like Kosovo? Or like Pakistan? Or like ... "Every society has to be really careful so the situation doesn't lead us to a time when people's minds can be poisoned as they were in the 1930s. If your community is perceived in a very negative manner, and poll after poll says that we are alienated, then Muslims begin to feel very vulnerable. We are seen as creating problems, not as bringing anything and that is not good for any society." Kinda rich, a Muslim cleric warning us of Nazis ... There is, in his view, no such thing as Islamic terrorism. "Terrorists are terrorists, they may use religion but we shouldn't say Muslim terrorists, it stigmatises the whole community. We never called the IRA Catholic terrorists." Dr Bari thinks Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, made the extremists' job easier by giving a bleak picture of the threat on the eve of the Queen's Speech. Never mind the equivalence game (for the record, the IRA, particularly the Provos, were Marxists), but just for grins, did the 7/7 bombers call the cops with a coded message before the bombs went off? Has the IRA ever demanded that Britain surrender to a religious theocracy? "I think it is creating a scare in the community and wider society. It probably helps some people who try to recruit the young to terrorism. Muslim young people are as vulnerable as any others. Under this climate of fear they will begin to feel victimised." Can't recall off-hand the last time Anglo-Saxon teens and twenty-somethings trained overseas for the opportunity to kill hundreds/thousands of Muslim Britons. The Prime Minister's plan to increase the length of time terrorist suspects can be detained without trial is also, he believes, misguided. "Even the police haven't asked for more than 28 days. As far as we know there is no clear evidence of the need for more time." Control orders and stop and search powers are further increasing the sense of alienation among Muslims, Dr Bari says, and the Metropolitan Police are not helping matters either. "There was institutional racism and institutions as massive as the Met find it hard to change. They need more Muslim police officers. I'm not going to use the term trigger happy - sometimes the police can make mistakes - but they need to do their job in a better way." Sir Salman Rushdie should never have been knighted, he says. "He caused a huge amount of distress and discordance with his book, it should have been pulped." First he announces that the British government is behaving like "Nazis", and now Bari barks for a book-burning. What a card ... ... not to mention what he really wants done ot Rushdie ... Critics say the MCB - an umbrella organisation with 500 affiliates - has itself contributed to the growing sense of unease in Britain. The Government has cut funding to the council following claims that it had links with extremists. A Tory report this year accused it of promoting segregation. Dr Bari insists he is simply trying to unite disparate communities. "On the one hand we are accused of not engaging, being insular, and on the other hand of being too political. We can't win." Which makes you ... losers? The MCB was criticised for boycotting Holocaust Day but he says he did not mean to offend Jewish people: "It should be inclusive, commemorating all massacres." BS + more moral equivalence. Farcical, too- they hate Jews. According to a recent report by the Policy Exchange think-tank, the bookshop at the east London Mosque, which Dr Bari chairs, stocks extremist literature. "The bookshops are independent businesses," he says. "We can't just go in and tell them what to sell I will see what books they keep, if they have one book which looks like it is inciting hatred, do they have counter books on the same shelf?" But Bari sure as hell knows which books HE would pulp. He is more careful about who is allowed to preach in the mosque. "If I hear of a specific preacher who is inciting hatred I will ban him from preaching but I cannot disallow him from praying." In Dr Bari's view, suicide bombers are victims as well as aggressors. "I deal with emotionally damaged children," he explains. "Children come to hate when they don't get enough care and love. They are probably bullied, it makes a young person angry and vulnerable. More than 50 innocent people were killed on 7/7. The bastards who killed them wanted to kill hundreds more. "The extreme case could be suicide bombers, it is all they have The people who become suicide bombers are really vulnerable." Unfortunately, they weren't vulnerable enough. Although he stresses there is no justification for suicide bombing - "killing innocent people is completely forbidden, Islam is very emphatic on that" - he says British foreign policy has driven Muslims into the arms of the extremists. "Criminal people have used that as a weapon to encourage young people, those who don't have any anchor in themselves, [to become suicide bombers]. Iraq has been a disaster, the country has been destroyed for no reason, that had an impact on the Muslim psyche." His passion is to integrate Muslim and British cultures - he says integration must go both ways. Sharia, of course. And he's lying - it's all one way. "Everybody can learn from everyone. Some of the Muslim principles can help social cohesion - family, marriage, raising children with boundaries, giving to the poor, not being too greedy." British people could, in his view, benefit from arranged marriages. "I prefer to call them assisted marriages," he says. "Marriage should not be forced on people but parents can be a catalyst Young people are emotional, they want idealism. Older people have gone through all sorts of things and become a bit more experienced. A child will always want to eat chocolate but if he does then he will become fat. He needs to be given things that are good for him too." "Alcohol is the worst drug long-term," he says, and adds that the Government should consider banning drinking in public places, as it has done with smoking. Dr Bari believes Britain would benefit from a little more morality: "Religion has principles that can help society Sex before marriage is unacceptable in Islam On adultery and living together we should try to go back to the religiously informed style of life that helps society." Abortion should also be made more difficult. "By the time a foetus is 12 weeks old our religion says that the child has got a spirit." Homosexuality is "unacceptable from the religious point of view". Is stoning ever justified? "It depends what sort of stoning and what circumstances," he replies. "When our prophet talked about stoning for adultery he said there should be four [witnesses] - in realistic terms that's impossible. It's a metaphor for disapproval." Wow. He said that for publication, too. He must be feeling very confident. Lips stayed on, too. He's very practiced ... There should be more modesty too. "You shouldn't be revealing your body so much that it can be tempting to other people. I hope my daughter wouldn't wear a bikini but I also hope she wouldn't wear a burka." Dr Bari runs guidance courses for parents of all faiths. "Children are like plants, if you don't look after them they will grow wild and weeds can come in." The same is true of Britain, he says. "There is plenty of freedom in Western society but boundaries are sometimes hard to see."

Link

Britain

Convicted UK Terrorist Is Only Confused Daydreamer

2007-11-09

Pity Samina Malik, the young woman who will live for the rest of her life with the consequences of a terrorism conviction simply for being a suburban shopgirl who committed her fantasies on the internet. Scribbling doggerel in praise of al Qa’eda on the back of WH Smith receipts will do no more to bring about the universal caliphate then a smartarse politics student with a Che Guevara poster in his bedroom does to further guerrilla struggle in South America. How could we even think that a Muslim would perform jihad obligations as imposed by the founder of his cult? Malik is just one of many millions of kids in every country around the world wrapped up in a flirtation with any variety of anti-establishment symbolism that comes immediately to hand. Mostly it stops at posting message on online talk boards, as it did in her case. Yeah, M. Atta and the other 18 911 murderers, just acted out a fad. Sometimes, tragically, it goes much, much further. Only yesterday, Pekka-Erik Auvinen – fascinated with both Nazism and Stalinism, it now emerges – went on a shotgun rampage through his high school in a small Finnish town, killing seven others and then himself in the name of social Darwinism. So terror thinking is acted out? Auvinen styled himself Sturmgeist89 on the worldwide web. Malik, for her part, wished to be known as the Lyrical Terrorist. The reason? Because, as she explained to the jury, 'it sounded cool'. At that age, what better reason can there possibly be? I remember being an anarchist for approximately six months in 1977, after the first Sex Pistols single came out. Had the internet existed then, I might well have written up my urge to 'destroy the passer-by'. Back in the early 1980s, I used to hang around the polytechnic bar clad in a Brigate Rosse T-shirt. These days, that might constitute prima facie evidence of the offence of glorifying terrorism. Let’s keep a sense of proportion here. Yes, I am in favour of intelligence service surveillance against violent Jihadists. But what is needed is action against real terrorists, not lyrical ones. Just imagine how counter-productive Malik’s conviction is going to prove in the struggle for the hearts and minds of alienated Muslim youth. The paranoid determination to bust crazy mixed up kids is the first step on the road that leads to gunning down innocent Brazilian electricians at Stockwell tube station.

Link

Britain

'Lyrical Terrorist' found guilty

2007-11-08

A 23-year-old who called herself the "Lyrical Terrorist" has become the first woman in the UK to be convicted under the Terrorism Act. Samina Malik from Southall, west London, has been found guilty at the Old Bailey of owning terrorist manuals. Malik worked at WH Smith at Heathrow Airport until her arrest last October. The jury heard Malik had written extremist poems praising Osama Bin Laden, supporting martyrdom and discussing beheading. She had earlier been found not guilty of the more serious charge, under Section 57 of the Act, of possessing an article for a terrorist purpose. She denied the charges. "Lies! All lies!" Malik burst into tears in the dock when the verdict was read out. "Waaaaaah! They're onto me!" Following the verdict, Judge Peter Beaumont QC, the Recorder of London, told Malik: "You have been in many respects a complete enigma to me." "Other than you're guilty as hell, of course." She had posted her poems on websites under the screen name the Lyrical Terrorist, prosecutors said. Malik said the poems were "meaningless", but prosecutor Jonathan Sharp said: "These communications strongly indicate Samina Malik was deeply involved with terrorist related groups." Police said they had found a "library" of extreme Islamist literature in her bedroom including The Al-Qaeda Manual and The Mujahideen Poisons Handbook. The court also heard she had written on the back of a WH Smith till receipt: "The desire within me increases every day to go for martyrdom." Malik said she had only called herself the Lyrical Terrorist "because it sounded cool". "And it made the guys all hot for me!" She was convicted of having articles "likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism". Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command, said: "Malik held violent extremist views which she shared with other like-minded people over the internet. She also tried to donate money to a terrorist group. "She had the ideology, ability and determination to access and download material, which could have been useful to terrorists. Merely possessing this material is a serious criminal offence." There goes the UK market for Paladin Press... Malik was bailed under what the judge described as "house arrest" until her sentencing on 6 December. He warned her that "all sentencing options" remained open to him.

Link

Warning: Undefined property: stdClass::$T in /data/rantburg.com/www/rantburg/pgrecentorg.php on line 132
-5 More