Under arrest … Abu Izzadeen (formerly Trevor Brooks) holds the microphone at a protest outside the Old Bailey in London in November.
Photo: AFP
Posted on 02/11/2007 4:30:43 PM PST by PRePublic
Under arrest … Abu Izzadeen (formerly Trevor Brooks) holds the microphone at a protest outside the Old Bailey in London in November.
Photo: AFP
FIVE men were to appear in court yesterday charged with terrorism offences after raids in Birmingham over an alleged plot to behead a Muslim British soldier and show a video of his execution on the internet.
"Five men from Birmingham have been charged overnight with offences under the Terrorism Acts 2000 and Terrorism Act 2006," a police spokeswoman said. Another man is being held for questioning.
The charges against the men, aged 29 to 43, came amid increasing controversy over the arrest last week of nine British men of Pakistani origin and accusations that Britain had become a police state for Muslims.
On Thursday anti-terrorism police arrested the controversial London Muslim Abu Izzadeen, who last September was watched by millions on television as he heckled the Home Secretary, John Reid, at a public meeting.
Izzadeen, 31, is being held by the counterterrorism command on suspicion of encouraging terrorism. He was a leading figure in the banned radical Islamic group Al-Ghurabaa and had earlier praised the London bombers.
Another senior figure in Al-Ghurabaa, Anjem Choudary, said the arrest was connected to a speech Izzadeen gave in Birmingham on the anniversary of the 2001 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York.
Mr Choudary claimed Izzadeen's arrest was "a continuation of the witch-hunt" by the Government of the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and showed why Muslims felt under siege.
However, the homeland security spokesman for the opposition Conservative Party, Patrick Mercer, said Izzadeen was a dangerous figure who should be "put behind bars".
On Thursday the British Government was forced to dismiss as a "gross caricature" claims by one of three terrorism suspects released without charge this week that Britain had become a police state.
The Prime Minister's spokesman was drawn into the controversy over the Birmingham arrests. One of those released, Abu Bakr, condemned the way his arrest was handled and claimed he was a pawn in a political game.
Mr Bakr, a teacher and bookshop worker, and a second man, a 19-year-old apprentice plumber, were released early on Wednesday. After learning the extent of the allegations made over the terrorism raids, Mr Bakr, 27, invited the press to hear what he had been through. He said he felt humiliated and stigmatised. Describing the police as amateurish, he said that at no point during his seven days in detention had he been asked about the supposed plot to abduct and behead a soldier, and that he had been interviewed in total for no more than four hours.
Mr Bakr, a father of two, suggested the arrests were to distract attention from the Government's troubles, including a cash-for-honours inquiry.
The Prime Minister's spokesman rejected Mr Bakr's claim yesterday, saying: "In a police state a court would not have been able to release someone who was being questioned by the police."
British police are allowed to detain terrorism suspects for 28 days without charging them, subject to regular court approval.
Guardian News & Media, Reuters
Or maybe it's just a spin state:
Britain isn’t a police state, but it’s close to being a liar state
"When our beleaguered prime minister complained that he and the Downing Street staff were the victims of outrageous leaking in the cash for honours police inquiry, I felt no sympathy.
"It is true that someone — the Metropolitan police I assume — has been supplying the media with information (and probably disinformation) in industrial quantities. The practice is indefensible. But when the Met locks antlers with the government it is as though the Leviathan of leak and spin had engaged the Behemoth of spin and leak. It would be perverse to feel sorry for either.
"Hard on the heels of Tony Blair’s not very heartrending whinge, a massive amount of briefing was issued to the media on the terrorist plot allegedly uncovered in Birmingham. Information that you might expect to emerge only in court, maybe not before the end of a trial, spewed forth. There was a plot, we were told, to kidnap, torture and behead a Muslim British soldier.
"Some newspapers made clear that the information came from Whitehall, not the police. Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, wrote to the home secretary asking whether his special advisers had given off-the-record briefings. It is the sort of question that a clever person asks only if she already knows the answer perfectly well.
Continued at:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/michael_portillo/article1364671.ece
Passive aggressive terrorism.
The Constitution isn't a suicide pact - but far too many intrepret it that way!
The islamics laugh at us as they use our laws and constitution to protect them as they push their takeover plans. Then once they are in the majority, they will institute Sharia Law.
I would like to be tolerant towards these followers of Islam, but they make it impossible. Because British citizens don't want to be killed by Islamic terrorists, that means they're police state advocates. Muslims should focus on the murderers and tyrants in their own religion, if they are capable of doing so.
Wonder if they'll start treating the islamists as they did the Irish during the troubles?
islam is a murder state
This Abu Izzadeen laughed along with the members of his congregation as he described a horrified black woman who wept as she described how she had been in the first and second World Trade Center bombings. He found humor in 9/11. He laughed at 7/7. He claimed that he'd be a suicide bomber himself and mocked the lack of conviction in the West.
He deserves what ever is thrown at him.
Although his criticism of the West's conviction probably isn't far from the truth.
If Britain keeps its terrorists in check, then it ought to keep on doing what it's doing.
Fine. I therefore label Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan as Islamic Police States.
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