Peaceful protesters included on police database of 'domestic extremists' (UK)

Personal details about thousands of people – said to include those only suspected of minor public order offences such as peaceful direct action and civil disobedience – are being compiled on a database run by the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU).

The data includes pictures of people taken demonstrations and other observations made by police on the scene, such as vehicle registration numbers. These enable cars to be tracked using automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras.

The Guardian reported that a man with no criminal record was stopped more than 25 times in less than three years after he went to a small protest against duck and pheasant shooting.

However Anton Setchell, the Association of Chief Police Officers’ national coordinator for domestic extremism, said anyone on the list who had not done anything wrong “should not worry at all”.

[anyone on the list who had not done anything wrong “should not worry at all”.]

I love it when a government official says something like that.

Right up there with "we're from the government, and we're here to help..."

To the Uber State, anyone who diasagrees with them is an extremist who must eventually be dealt with. The Founders knew full well that there is no limit to the intrusions of the leviathan state. We are in grave danger...

Terror Groups Recruiting Westerners

A growing number of recruits from Western nations — including the U.S. — are traveling to Afghanistan and Pakistan to attend training camps run by al-Qaida and other terrorist groups, American and European counterterrorism officials say.

The flow of Western recruits has continued despite the intensified American campaign to take out terrorist leaders with drone missile attacks.

A propaganda videotape released in September by a group calling itself the German Taliban showed a gunman identified as Abu Ibrahim the American. The tape was one of several released by groups affiliated with the Taliban and al-Qaida warning of an attack on German targets if the government did not withdraw its 3,800 troops from Afghanistan, The Washington Post reported.

At least 30 recruits from Germany have traveled to Pakistan this year for training, Germany security forces say.

“About 10 people — not necessarily the same individuals — have returned to Germany this year, fueling concerns that fresh plots are in the works against European targets,” according to The Post.

Pakistani officials in August arrested a dozen foreigners on their way to North Waziristan, a tribal region where many of the training camps are located. Among them was Mehdi Ghezali, a former inmate at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

In July, American officials announced that they had taken into custody New Yorker Bryant Neal Vinas, who confessed to traveling to al-Qaida camps in Pakistan and training to become a suicide bomber.

While he has been in custody, the U.S. has made a series of successful drone strikes on suspected al-Qaida locations in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, raising questions about whether Vinas provided the information that led to any of the deadly attacks, according to The Associated Press.

Vinas also told American authorities that he spent time in Pakistan with another New York resident, whose whereabouts are unknown.

Al-Qaida and its affiliates have now developed an extensive recruiting network, The Post disclosed, with agents providing Western recruits with guidance, money, and travel routes to South Asia.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.