Cologne, 21 March 2007 - German police have assigned plainclothese bodyguards to protect an Iranian-born woman, Mina Ahadi, who says she has received a number of death threats through the post since she formed a society in the northern city of Cologne. Formed last month together with around a dozen sympathisers and named the National Council of Ex-Muslims, the association contains a number of ex-Muslims who are atheists.
"I am a target," said Ahadi, 50, quoted by Deutsche Welle radio, adding that members of the society have received letters telling them they will be shot in the back. She is the widow of a murdered opponent of the Iranian regime and has lived in Germany since 1996. "We are going to get involved in politics, oppose women wearing headscarfs and building plans for new mosques," Ahadi said. She held a press conference in the capital, Berlin, in late February, announcing that she was no longer a Muslim.
"We'll stop honour killings, stop people being stoned to death… We want to make clear that the three million to three and a half million people from Islamic nations who live in Germany are people first and foremost, and should not be branded primarily as 'Muslim,'" she said. She is demanding that Germany do more to help women and girls who she says are oppressed by "political Islam", denied boyfriends or trips to the swimming pool and ostracised if they become pregnant outside marriage. The ex-Muslim groups said it wants to stop mosque groups speaking in the name of the entire community. It has received assistance from a German atheist organisation, the Giordano Bruno Foundation and is heeding police advice to rent office space in a safe location, Deutsche Welle reported.
The death threats are not believed to come from mainstream Muslim groups who say the new association should be tolerated. But they dispute her claim that Islam and human rights are incompatible, saying this only stokes latent Islamophobia already present in some Germans. Other former Muslims in Germany and abroad have rushed to join the group, according to fellow Iranian and council members Nur Gabbari, and it has grown to more than 400 members with daily contacts from countries such as Morocco, Iran, Egypt, Turkey as well as Germany.
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Politics&loid=8.0.397469986&par=0
Items found by a Redford businessman – including gas masks and notes about terrorist activity – in a Dumpster outside his workplace on Inkster Road have drawn the interest of the FBI.
Andrew Wishaw, the president of R.W. Hydraulics Inc., said he found the items Sunday while looking for cardboard and scrap wood, and turned them over to police on Monday. “It just didn’t add up correctly,” said Wishaw on Wednesday.
In addition to new gas masks, still in boxes, and handwritten notes, Wishaw said, the cache included laminated pictures that could depict terrorist activity, a map with a circle drawn around an airport, plus clothing, a pair of eyeglasses, a basket, files and a rock collection.
“It looked like stuff, at first, that people dumped out of an apartment,” Wishaw said. “It looked like some of the stuff was thrown away in haste.”
Wishaw said he was interviewed regarding the find by an FBI agent on Wednesday at the Redford police station. The agent showed great interest in the items, he said. Dawn Clenny, spokeswoman for the FBI’s Detroit office, said she wasn’t familiar with the situation and couldn’t comment on any investigation. A Redford Township police report said the find included a copy of the Earth First! Journal, female clothing and a map of Mecosta County, Mich. Wishaw said he didn’t know what county the map showed, but that the airport on it was circled.
Redford police Capt. Kraig Brueck said the photographs looked as if they may have been taken from magazines, and showed scenes typically associated with terrorism, such as the possible aftermath of a car bombing. Wishaw said the photos were nicely laminated. He said the notes made references to an explosion and a fireball. He said he didn’t look closely at many of the items, because he and his company have been busy with a big job.
Wishaw’s family-owned company makes and works on industrial machinery. He said the company sometimes uses things found in the Dumpster – cardboard is used in the paint shop, where machine parts are painted, for example. Wishaw agreed there could be an innocent explanation for the items – but that the find was weird nonetheless. “It would be an awful strange combination of things, to be nothing,” he said.
http://www.hometownlife.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070321/NEWS16/70321020/1033/rss21
Jurors to be screened for anti-Muslim bias
Wed, Mar. 21, 2007 Potential jurors in the upcoming trial of a Boca Raton doctor and three other men accused of conspiring to help terrorists will be screened for anti-Muslim biases.
A federal judge in New York ruled Tuesday that attorneys for Dr. Rafiq A. Sabir, Tarik Shah, Abdulrahman Farhane and Mahmud Faruq Brent can ask possible jurors to fill out questionnaires before jury selection begins. The questions cannot ask potential jurors about their religious beliefs, U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska said.
The men, all U.S. citizens who are Muslim, are scheduled to stand trial April 24. They have pleaded not guilty. Sabir, 52, was arrested at his Palm Beach County home in May 2005, days after investigators claim he recited an oath of loyalty to al Qaeda in front of an undercover FBI agent. Prosecutors say Sabir agreed to use his medical training to treat injured terrorists in Saudi Arabia. But his attorney, Ed Wilford, has said Sabir never stated or implied a desire to harm Americans.
Shah, a New York musician and martial arts expert, is accused of taking the same oath as Sabir and agreeing to train terrorists in hand-to-hand combat. Farhane, a Brooklyn bookstore owner, allegedly discussed a plan with Shah in December 2001 to send money to terrorist fighters in Afghanistan so they could hurt U.S. troops.
Brent, a Washington, D.C., cab driver, is accused of conspiring to support Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani-based terror group. They are being held without bail in federal custody and face up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
http://www.miamiherald.com/459/story/48729.html
I will pray for Mina Ahadi.