Government report says UK universities have become breeding grounds for recruiting extremists and terrorists

Daily Mail   -   UK    June 6, 2011

40 UK universities are now breeding grounds for terror as hardline groups peddle hate on campus

By JAMES SLACK, HOME AFFAIRS EDITOR



England's universities have become a breeding ground for extremism and terrorist recruitment, according to a disturbing government report.

Officials have identified 40 English universities where ‘there may be particular risk of radicalisation or recruitment on campus’.

A soon to be published Whitehall report – seen by the Daily Mail – will point to a string of examples of students going on to commit terrorist acts against this country or overseas.

Alarmingly the Prevent review says that ‘more than 30 per cent of people convicted for Al Qaeda-associated terrorist offences in the UK... are known to have attended university or a higher education institution.

‘Another 15 per cent studied or achieved a vocational or further education qualification. About 10 per cent of the sample were students at the time when they were charged or the incident for which they were convicted took place.’

The report, prepared by Home Office officials, warns of hardline Islamic groups specifically targeting universities which have large numbers of Muslim students in order to peddle a message of hate.

Students are even ‘engaging in terrorism or related activities while members of university societies’.

But it says the universities are not doing enough to respond to this threat to national security. Fewer than half of universities are engaged with the police.

Home Secretary Theresa May will demand universities do more to confront this threat. She also wants more action to deport preachers of hate.

The universities which have given places to fanatics include some of our most prestigious institutions.

The report will say that terrorists who have attended English universities include Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, the Stockholm suicide bomber who had a BSc in sports therapy from the University of Luton, now the University of Bedfordshire.

The alleged Detroit underpants bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, studied mechanical engineering at University College London between 2005 and 2008.

Two of the fanatics convicted of the transatlantic liquid bomb plot – ringleader Abdulla Ahmed Ali and Assad Sarwar – attended City and Brunel Universities respectively.

The review says the Department for Business, which is in charge of universities, has identified about 40 English universities where there may be a particular risk.

Some now have a dedicated police officer to advise on tackling radicalisation.The document raises particular alarm about the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS).

It says there are ‘several examples of students engaging in terrorism or related activities while members of university societies affiliated to FOSIS.

Such extremists must have no part in any organisation that wishes to be recognised as a representative body.’

The finger of blame for radicalising students is pointed at Hizb-ut-Tahrir, which David Cameron promised to ban in opposition, and off-shoots of a fanatical group once run by preacher of hate Omar Bakri.

One section warns: ‘We believe there is unambiguous evidence to indicate that some extremist organisations, notably Hizb-ut-Tahrir, target specific universities and colleges (notably those with a large number of Muslim students) with the objective of radicalising and recruiting students.’

Universities UK says that universities ‘are places where ideas and beliefs can be tested without fear of control’, and that they act as a safeguard against ideologies that threaten Britain’s open society.

The worries about the lax attitude of some universities is combined with concern about the student visa route.

Ten of the 11 Pakistani nationals seized on suspicion of plotting an atrocity in the North-West in 2009 had student visas.

The alleged ringleader of this plot – Abid Naseer – was a computer studies student at Liverpool John Moores University.

Mrs May is determined to crack down on the abuse of the student visa route.

However, she has faced opposition within government from Michael Gove’s Education Department and Business Secretary Vince Cable.

Meanwhile, Whitehall officials are said to be concerned that Mr Gove’s flagship ‘free schools’ policy – where parents can obtain state funding to open and run their own schools – could be targeted by extremists.

Security officials working in a dedicated unit are expected to vet the backgrounds of all would-be applicants for evidence of extremism or radicalisation.

The Prevent strategy is said to have caused behind-the-scenes rows within the Government.

Mr Gove is understood to have argued that the Government should not engage with groups which hold any extremist beliefs – even though these are the ones most likely to attract would-be terrorists.

Four months ago, in a major speech in Munich, the Prime Minister signalled an end to ‘passive tolerance’ of extremist Islamic organisations which foster hatred against the West and radicalise young Muslims

This article was found at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1394625/40-UK-universities-breeding-grounds-terror.html

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Boy indoctrinated and terrorized by abusive neo-Nazi dad shot him while he was sleeping to stop the violence

Los Angeles Times - May 19, 2011

Chilling portrait of neo-Nazi's home life emerges

The 10-year-old son of neo-Nazi leader Jeffrey R. Hall tells Riverside investigators of shooting his father and says Hall beat him and other family members regularly.

By Phil Willon, Los Angeles Times



A chilling family portrait emerged Wednesday in the case of a 10-year-old Riverside boy charged with murdering his neo-Nazi father, including outings to practice target shooting, a house with guns and knives stashed in easily accessible places and, the boy told police, regular beatings by his father. And he knew exactly where to find the family's .357 magnum revolver.

The boy gave a harrowing account of how he carried out the early morning attack May 1 as his father, 32-year-old Jeffrey R. Hall, was dozing on the living room couch, detectives said in a court declaration filed in connection with charges against the boy's stepmother, Krista F. McCary.

The 10-year-old told police he grabbed a Rossi .357 magnum revolver from a closet and "went downstairs with the gun, pulled the hammer back, aimed the gun at his dad's ear while he was asleep and shot him," Riverside Police Det. Greg Rowe wrote in the declaration. The boy "went upstairs and hid the gun under his bed."

The court document, based on police station interviews of McCary and four of the family's five children, offered the first glimpse of a household terrorized by Hall's alleged out-of-control violence and rants. The boy was a target of that abuse "on a daily basis," McCary, 26, told police, adding that her husband "kicks, hits and yells" at him more than the other four children.

"He was tired of his dad hitting him and his mom…he thought his dad was cheating on his mom and thought he might have to choose which person he would live with," Rowe said, referring to McCary in the court declaration. "He knew his mom and dad had a gun, and he knew where they kept it."

These details came out on the same day that the boy appeared in Riverside County Juvenile Court for a detention hearing. Judge Charles J. Koosed approved a request by the boy's attorney, Public Defender Mathew Hardy, for a mental health evaluation. Hardy said he may pursue a defense of not guilty by reason of insanity. The boy is expected to enter a plea at his next hearing, set for July 22.

McCary has been charged with five felony counts of child endangerment and four counts of criminal storage of a firearm. The four other children, ranging from 2 months to 9 years of age, have been taken into protective custody and placed with a relative, police said.

Police found an unloaded .22-caliber rifle in the garage of Hall's home, 10 feet away from an unlocked and stocked ammunition cabinet. They also found several sharp-edged weapons in the master bedroom.

The prosecutor in the case, Deputy Dist. Atty. Ambrosio E. Rodriguez, cautioned that the court declaration was a "very short summary" of the evidence leading to McCary's arrest.

"It in no way gives a full explanation of the evidence we have in the case involving the juvenile's actions and mental state during the murder," he said.

From the outside, the family's stucco home near UC Riverside blended in seamlessly with the rest of the well-kept suburban neighborhood, though neighbors complained about Hall's occasional neo-Nazi barbecues and gatherings. Inside, police found squalor: dirty clothes strewn across floors, bedrooms smelling of urine, filthy bathrooms and beer bottles littering the downstairs, under the swastika of a National Socialist Movement flag.

Numerous complaints had been made to Riverside County Child Protective Services, the declaration stated, but most of the allegations were determined to be unfounded and may have stemmed from Hall's bitter child custody dispute with his ex-wife, the mother of the 10-year-old boy.

Sylvia Deporto, assistant director of childrens' services, said state law prohibits her from discussing any abuse investigation involving the family. In general, however, she said it's difficult to prove allegations of abuse unless confirmed by family members, who are often fearful of retaliation, or there is physical evidence.

Riverside police said they had no reports of domestic violence at the home prior to the shooting.

Rodriguez said there was nothing to indicate that Hall's neo-Nazi activities led to the shooting.

"I don't think you can deny that Jeff Hall's involvement, his leadership in the Nazi movement, is going to be an issue in this case. Think of the hate, the vitriol," Rodriguez said. "I don't see how that doesn't become an issue in a case when we're talking about a 10-year-old boy and what happened in the house."

Hall was the director of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement in the Western United States and last year lost a bid for the local water board.

Paul Mones, a Portland, Ore., attorney who has handled numerous cases involving children accused of killing a parent, said the vast majority of patricide cases are committed against controlling fathers abusing multiple members of their families.

"Many people know the situation in the house, but adults don't typically speak out for kids," Mones said. "If there's anything to take away from these cases, it's that kids suffer silently, and kids are put in the impossible human situation of ending it violently."

Maureen Pacheco, assistant director of Loyola Law School's Center for Juvenile Law and Policy, said she was dismayed that the details of the alleged shooting and abuse were made public in a court declaration, even though releasing the account was "legal, without a doubt."

A decade ago, California voters also approved Proposition 21, which opened to the public juvenile court proceedings involving alleged violent felonies.

"It's important to remember that because this boy is so young, he can't be prosecuted as an adult," she said. "That means he eventually is going to come back into society."

This article was found at:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-neo-nazi-20110519,0,2709791.story

**********************************************************************

Southern Poverty Law Center - Hate Watch     May 18, 2011

Stepmom of Boy Accused of Shooting Neo-Nazi Dad Faces Gun Charges

by Leah Nelson



Prosecutors Tuesday charged the widow of Jeffrey Hall, the California neo-Nazi who allegedly was shot to death by his 10-year-old son on May 1, with five counts of child endangerment and four counts of criminal storage of a firearm.

Krista McCary, 26, the boy’s stepmother and Hall’s widow, is accused of leaving the loaded pistol used to kill Hall on a shelf where the five children in the house had easy access to it.

In the meantime, the boy, who is being charged as a juvenile with the murder of his father, was expected to appear in court today to enter a plea. His attorney told reporters he is considering an insanity defense.

Hall, 32, advocated for a “white nation” and often led rallies of white supremacists giving stiff-armed Nazi salutes and waving swastika-adorned flags amid hundreds of angry counter-protesters. He was considered something of a rising star in the neo-Nazi universe. Hall made news last fall when he quietly submitted his name as a candidate for the Western Municipal Water District board of directors in Riverside County. He affirmed his neo-Nazi beliefs when confronted by the media as the election approached. Hall lost the race by a wide margin but still received almost 28 percent of the vote – more than a self-avowed Nazi might be expected to receive.

Evidence suggests that Hall involved the 10-year-old in the activities of the National Socialist Movement (NSM), the neo-Nazi group whose Southwest chapter he headed. Along with using his home as headquarters, he gave the child a belt bearing the SS insignia and was teaching him to shoot a gun. The NSM is notorious for drawing children in at a very young age, with organizations like the Viking Youth Corps, which is open to children of “European descent.”

The NSM, currently the largest neo-Nazi group in America with 50 chapters in 32 states, has its roots in the original American Nazi Party, which was founded in 1959 by former Navy Cmdr. George Lincoln Rockwell. Seven years after Rockwell was murdered by one of his followers in 1967, two of his chief lieutenants formed the National Socialist American Workers Freedom Movement in St. Paul, Minn. Leadership passed in 1994 to “Commander” Jeff Schoep, who gave the group its present name.


This article was found at:

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2011/05/18/stepmother-of-boy-10-who-shot-neo-nazi-dad-faces-gun-violations/

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Somali terrorists publicly execute two girls they say were spies, many more teens being held captive

New York Times - October 28, 2010

Somali Islamists Kill Two Girls Branded Spies

By MOHAMMED IBRAHIM


MOGADISHU, Somalia — Somalia’s most powerful Islamist insurgents, the Shabab, executed two teenage girls on Wednesday after deciding they were spies, setting off fears among residents, officials and witnesses said.

The two teenagers — one 18, the other 14 — were shot by firing squad in the center of the town of Beledweyne, near the border with Ethiopia, witnesses said.

Pickup trucks with big loudspeakers drove into the town, ordering the residents to watch the execution. Residents were also told to switch off their cellphones and were warned not to take pictures, a prohibition that has been enforced at some Islamist executions in the past.

“The teenage girls were executed in the regional headquarters at the center of the town. Some of the women who were watching fainted at the scene,” said Abukar Elmi, a witness. “This is a shocking event.”

The Shabab official in the town, Sheik Yusuf Ali Ugas, told local journalists that “the two girls were found guilty of spying for the Ethiopian government.”

Ethiopia invaded Somalia in 2006 to oust an Islamist movement that had taken control of much of the country, including the capital, Mogadishu. Thousands of Ethiopian soldiers remained in Somalia for the next three years before withdrawing, and some of the Somali government forces fighting the Shabab in the Beledweyne area are supported by the Ethiopian government.

Mr. Ugas said the teenagers were not the only ones in Shabab custody, adding, “There are many people now in Shabab prisons in Beledweyne.”

He also sent a warning to Ethiopia, saying that the Shabab knew “all the informants serving for the Ethiopian government.”

Townspeople argued that the two teenage girls were innocent. The girls, they said, were traveling away from their families when they were caught in a cross-fire just outside Beledweyne, where both government forces and the Shabab are positioned. Many Somalis try to reach Yemen and Saudi Arabia to find better opportunities there and escape from the violence in this country.

“When the fighting started between the Shabab and the government forces just outside Beledweyne, the girls had to flee to the bush, where they were finally caught,” said a resident whose name was withheld for his safety. “I think they were executed because they were caught at the front line.”

The Somali transitional federal government strongly condemned the public execution, arguing that the two girls had not been given the right to a legal defense, nor had their parents even been informed.

“This execution is yet another human rights abuse committed by the criminals,” the Somali government said. “This act of killing innocent children does not have Islamic and humanitarian justifications.”

The Shabab have been responsible for many human rights violations in the areas they control. In 2008, for instance, they stoned to death a rape victim in the port town of Kismayo.


This article was found at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/world/africa/29somalia.html


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Mosque Child Abuse in America

Front Page Magazine - March 23, 2009

by Jamie Glazovy

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Dave Gaubatz, the first U.S. civilian (1811) Federal Agent deployed to Iraq in 2003. He is currently the Director of the Mapping Sharia Project and the Owner of DG Counter-terrorism Publishing (dgaubatz.blogspot.com). He can be contacted at davegaubatz@gmail.com.
FP: Dave Gaubatz, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
You have been conducting some Counter-Terrorism (CT) field research during the last month. Tell us the results.
Gaubatz: I want to thank FPM for the opportunity to bring an issue to the attention of the American public.
In early Feb 2009, I went to a prayer and lecture at a Sunni mosque in Richmond, VA. I was informed a group of Muslims originally from Somalia, had relocated to Nashville, TN. This subsequently led me (with support from concerned citizens) to conduct first-hand research in Nashville.
My CT researchers and I conducted ‘first-hand’ research at a predominately Somalia based mosque, Al-Farooq Masjid, 1421 4^th Ave. S. Nashville, TN. Initially I conducted a pre-assessment of the various Islamic Centers within the area. Although there are other mosques in the area advocating the ideology of Sharia law for the U.S. and advocating the same ideology as Islamic terrorists groups, our research uncovered more frightening and disturbing intelligence. Not only does Al-Farooq provide materials by convicted Islamic terrorists to their worshippers, they practice polygamy (per statements made by Al Farooq worshippers) as allowed under Sharia law, which also advocates children to be taken as ‘child brides’ married to older men. One need only research how often this occurs in Somalia.
In Feb 09, I obtained evidence and there were several indicators the children were being physically and emotionally abused. I immediately provided my analysis and concerns to authorities. Almost immediately First Amendment religious freedom rights came up and their fear of being sued by Islamic organizations. I knew from the beginning when I had to explain the basics of Sharia law and who Islamic scholars such as Ahmad Sakr (U.S. based scholar who lectures to children and informs them to not follow the U.S. Constitution, but instead to follow Sharia law) are, it would be useless to rely on them alone to protect the innocent children of al Farooq, which ultimately means our country is not being protected. The objective of my company is to simultaneously provide the research intelligence to the American public and to Law Enforcement (LE). In our current times it is often necessary for news organizations and the public to become involved before issues are taken seriously.
In Mar 2009, I sent two researchers (male and female) to Al Farooq to obtain further information. On 9 Mar 2009, a female child informed one of our female researchers she and other children are ‘hit’ at the ‘Al Farooq School’ by a teacher and ‘her’ legs hurt. Additional lectures by convicted terrorists and their supporters were provided to my team. Again I notified authorities, but received no encouragement the allegations of child abuse or the evidence pertaining to Al Farooq leadership advocating violence would be responded to.
Authorities wanted ‘hard evidence’ children were being abused and Islamic leaders at Al Farooq were educating the worshippers to commit violence against innocent people, America, and Israel. Respectfully I advised authorities Americans rely on them to take the lead and conduct investigations pertaining to allegations. My organization is limited in manpower and funds. Taxpayers pay our LE and elected officials to protect our country. It is beyond my capability to convince authorities that distributing material by Al Qaeda, Mawdudi (JI), and Ali Al Timimi to children can lead to violence and is dangerous for all concerned. One need only look at the Palestinian schools who are educated by Hamas.
FP: Do Islamic leaders of Al Farooq, Nashville, TN, advocate and encourage the worshippers of the mosque to hate America and to follow the teachings of convicted Islamic terrorists such as Ali Al Timimi? Gaubatz: Yes. My team and I were provided several hours of Ali Al Timimi lectures (and others) I had previously never heard, and I have listened to hundreds of hours of lectures by ‘Islamic scholars’.
FP: Do Islamic leaders distribute material in America encouraging Muslim men to violate U.S. laws in regards to ‘polygamy’ and to force children (6 -16 years old) to marry older men?
Gaubatz: Yes. Al Farooq has these materials and polygamy is being practiced. On my blog at www.dgaubatz.blogspot.com, I have attached a one minute clip showing the library of al Farooq. I will update my blog continuously to show exact materials obtained and being distributed at Al Farooq.
FP: Do they (Al Farooq leaders) advocate an Islamic nation in America to be ruled under Sharia law?
Gaubatz: One need only review lectures/materials by Mawdudi, Timimi, Sakr, and Siraj Wahhaj. My team collected evidence supporting the above and can provide sworn affidavits to law enforcement/Department of Justice Officials (DOJ) at any level, but first the American public must convince Nashville authorities that advocating innocent Muslim children to be involved in ‘physical Jihad’ against America is illegal. If we do not have elected officials who can and will do this, then our government should discontinue the double standards of convicting some Islamic scholars (such as Timimi) and ignoring the actions of others.
LE, criminal justice officials, elected officials, and Americans must also understand Islamic Jihadists and their supporters are well educated and understand U.S. law better than most U.S. attorneys do. After 11 Sept. 2001, they will no longer stand at the podium and advise worshippers to commit treason, sedition, and to commit terrorist acts against America. They will provide you lectures advocating the same on professionally manufactured DVD’s and written materials funded by Saudi Arabia. Islamic scholars understand Americans will look at books and DVDs as protected materials under our laws.
FP: Will you continue CT research in other cities across the U.S.?
Gaubatz: Yes. Each week I will conduct first-hand research at a different Islamic Center and will provide the results on my blog. Based on my analysis I will provide a ranking of 1 – 10, pertaining to violence being advocated by the Islamic scholars. LE, elected officials, and Americans can ignore, or they can work together to obtain legal action against the scholars who advocate the destruction of our country and the futures of our children. Again, it is beyond my capability or means to convince authorities that providing material by Islamic terrorists to children can lead to violence.
I would like to again stress my team consists of researchers from various faiths and cultures, to include Muslims. Thank you again Jamie and I have completed reading your book, “United In Hate”. Highly recommended reading for all.
FP: Thank you Dave Gaubatz. We cherish your fight for the security of this country and also your effort to protect abused children.

---

Jamie Glazov is Frontpage Magazine's editor. He holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in Russian, U.S. and Canadian foreign policy. He is the author of Canadian Policy Toward Khrushchev’s Soviet Union and is the co-editor (with David Horowitz) of The Hate America Left. He edited and wrote the introduction to David Horowitz’s Left Illusions. His new book is United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror. To see his previous symposiums, interviews and articles Click Here. Email him at jglazov@rogers.com.

This article was found at:

http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=5D1BEAC8-5543-4113-AFB6-7A0E79972081

The Children of Asadabad

The New York Times - March 16, 2009

by KRISTEN L. ROUSE | Op-Ed Contributor




ONE afternoon in April 2006, my Army unit got word that the hospital at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, might need help carrying possibly dozens of litters from medevac helicopters into the emergency room.

The story gradually filtered in: the Taliban had attacked a primary school just east of us in Asadabad. The school taught young boys and girls together in an open courtyard outside a mosque. One rocket made a direct hit on the children as they sat in class. A second rocket exploded nearby. Seven children were killed. Thirty-four were wounded.

We had arrived in Afghanistan only a few months before and it hadn’t occurred to us that schoolchildren would be among the Taliban’s targets. But we soon learned that the Taliban routinely burned school buildings, assassinated teachers, and even singled out the children themselves for maiming, dismemberment and attack. As the Taliban see it, boys should not be educated beyond rote learning of narrow theology, and girls must not be educated at all. The Asadabad attack — although one of the most severe to date — was hardly unique.

In the end, only a half-dozen of the children were flown from Asadabad to Bagram for advanced care, and we weren’t needed to carry litters after all. But we still wanted to help. We made paper toys and took them to the few who were awake and able to move around. Some of the boys and girls were fine, but it seemed most of them weren’t. We smiled and visited with them for a few minutes, but ultimately I found it hard to look.

It has been two years and one month since I returned from Afghanistan, and I hadn’t thought of those children in a while. But the news last month that Pakistan conceded the Swat Valley to the Taliban, and with little apparent objection from American officials — it’s been getting to me. The valley’s a mere 70 miles or so east of Asadabad. And when I heard that the Taliban proceeded to shut down nearly 200 Swat Valley schools — well, it’s been keeping me up at night.

It’s also made me get back in touch with many of the soldiers I deployed with, sharing stories and talking about Afghanistan’s future. We hold diverse views about the war and about what should happen next. But I can tell you this much: many of the veterans I know are outraged at the possibility of the United States negotiating with the Taliban as if they were just another Afghan political party and not a criminal gang that inflicts and enforces the most extreme ignorance, poverty and violence upon innocent people — upon schoolchildren.

It was actually Jeanette Martinez who reminded me about the children in Asadabad. She was a medic from my unit assigned to support combat troops in the eastern mountains bordering Pakistan, and she was on the scene in Asadabad right after the attack happened. Jeanette said that at first she thought the call on the radio was a drill. But she soon found herself with other medics and corpsmen amid dozens of injured children, organizing their limited medical resources and triaging the children who might make it from those who wouldn’t.

Jeanette remembers handing a ventilation bag to a Marine who had helped to carry a little boy to a shaded spot in the yard. She remembers showing him how to place the mask over the boy’s mouth and use the bag to keep him breathing. She knew the boy wouldn’t make it. When she checked in on them later, she found the Marine overwhelmed with tears, dutifully squeezing the bag as he watched the boy die.

Jeanette also told me about a little girl she helped to take from the yard into a mud-brick building they used as an impromptu clinic. The girl had an open head wound. Jeanette began treating the girl but quickly realized the magnitude of her injury.

She told me: “They wanted me to fix her, suture or staple her closed. But I could see her brain, and had no idea how to properly close that wound. She was the toughest little girl I’ve ever seen. Didn’t cry or anything; she was awake, just looking around. Victim of the Taliban’s way of thinking.”

Kristen L. Rouse, a first lieutenant in the Army National Guard, served in the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan from 2006 to 2007.


This article was found at:


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/17/opinion/17rouse.html

Blasphemy Charges For Man And Four Children

Press Release: Asian Human Rights Commission January 31, 2009

A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission

Blasphemy Charges For Man And Four Children

PAKISTAN: Four children and one man have been arbitrarily arrested and charged with blasphemy at the request of Muslim radicals

Five persons belonging to the Ahmadi sect of Islam, four of them children, have been arrested for desecrating the name of the last prophet of Islam (peace be upon him), and charged under a law that can only be met with the death penalty. The children were accused of writing the name of the Prophet Muhammad on the walls of a toilet of a mosque in Punjab province, and are being accused of blasphemy.


According to our reports, the boys are students from grades nine and ten of the Superior Academy, Chak no. 172, TDA in Layyah district. They are Muhammad Irfan (14), son of Muhammad Mukhtar, Tahir Imran (16), son of Abdul Ghaffar, Tahir Mehmood (14), son of Muhammad Aslam and Naseer Ahmed (14), son of Nasrullah. A Mr Mubashar Ahmed, 45 has also been arrested.

The five were taken from their houses on the night of January 28, 2009 and taken into custody. Raiding police officials told their families that they would just be detained for 24 hours to appease a number of Muslim fundamentalists, who had recently renewed the long-waged ideological assault on members of the Ahmadi sect, a minority sect of Islam (also known as Qadiani sect). Sect members claims to be Muslim, but were constitutionally removed from the religion in Pakistan in 1974, partly due to their following of a nineteenth century messiah.

However after four hours in custody, charges were filed against all five under section 295-C, for desecrating the name of the last prophet. After contacting Dr Muhammad Azam, the district police officer (DPO) of Layyah, family members were told that the police were under pressure from fundamentalists to act against the children. If he did not arrest them, Azam said, the group had threatened to close down the whole city and attack the houses of Ahmedi sect members. Worried about civilian deaths, the officer arrested the children.

The registered complainant in the case is a Mr Liaquat, who has reported seeing the name of Muhammad (peace be upon him) on the walls of a toilet of Gulzare Madina Mosque in four different places, and scratched into the wall in another. Liaquat concluded that the graffiti must have been a deed of an Ahmadi sect member – a charge agreed with by a Mr. Shahbaz, a government school teacher and a leader of the anti-Ahmadi sect movement. Shabaz implicated the four students, claiming that the graffiti was written under the instruction of Mubashar, the adult accused. No evidence was given, and no investigation done before the five were arrested.

Inspector Khalid Rauf, station head officer (SHO) of Kot Sultan police satation, Layyah district, Punjab province, told the AHRC that police have still not initiated the investigation, but that the gravity of the case against Islam justified arresting the children first. He said the police do not know of any substantial evidence that links the four students with the crime.

Most bemusing, is the fact that the teenagers that were arrested are not students of the Gulzare Madina Mosque, where the graffiti was found, and neither they or Mubashar live anywhere near it. The boys are students of a private English medium school.

According to an Ahmadi spokesperson, a number of attempted assaults and attacks have taken place against sect members in the area, during the last week.

The police have not made any investigation into the threats sent in, to cause harm to Layyah civilians. Neither have they made investigations into the five detainees’ guilt. According to an amendment made by parliament in 2004 in section 295-C of the constitution, police officials are obligated to thoroughly investigate accusations of blasphemy before presenting criminal charges. The aim of this amendment was to reduce the scope of the blasphemy laws, which are still widely and frequently abused, and met with the death penalty.

At this juncture the AHRC would like to question who Pakistan’s police are meant to serve: a few civilian religious groups with little regard for the law, and an agenda of violent persecution? Or do they serve the rule of law and the people of Pakistan? Their actions and admissions in this case point to the former. That children can now be made scapegoats by the police, and high ranking police officers themselves can played with like puppets, is a disgrace to the nation.

The Punjab government has lately claimed to be liberal and progressive. Yet they show little control over the province’s radical religious groups, which flout the law and hold Pakistan society hostage in the name of Islam. When children can be arrested under laws that carry only the death penalty, with no evidence given and no investigation done, there can be no doubt that the systems of this province have broken down.

The AHRC urges the government of President Asif Zardari to immediately release the illegally detained prisoners. Instead they should turn their attention to the dependence of Punjab Police on fundamentalist Islamic groups and the implementation of the rule of law in the province, including the amendment in the blasphemy law made by parliament.

This article was found at:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0901/S00624.htm

Afghan Schoolgirls Undeterred by Attack

New York Times - January 13, 2009

Danfung Dennis for The New York Times

Shamsia Husseini, right, was among 15 girls and women in Kandahar, Afghanistan, who were splashed with acid in November.

by Dexter Filkins

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — One morning two months ago, Shamsia Husseini and her sister were walking through the muddy streets to the local girls school when a man pulled alongside them on a motorcycle and posed what seemed like an ordinary question.

“Are you going to school?”
Then the man pulled Shamsia’s burqa from her head and sprayed her face with burning acid. Scars, jagged and discolored, now spread across Shamsia’s eyelids and most of her left cheek. These days, her vision goes blurry, making it hard for her to read.
But if the acid attack against Shamsia and 14 others — students and teachers — was meant to terrorize the girls into staying home, it appears to have completely failed.
Today, nearly all of the wounded girls are back at the Mirwais School for Girls, including even Shamsia, whose face was so badly burned that she had to be sent abroad for treatment. Perhaps even more remarkable, nearly every other female student in this deeply conservative community has returned as well — about 1,300 in all.
“My parents told me to keep coming to school even if I am killed,” said Shamsia, 17, in a moment after class. Shamsia’s mother, like nearly all of the adult women in the area, is unable to read or write. “The people who did this to me don’t want women to be educated. They want us to be stupid things.”
In the five years since the Mirwais School for Girls was built here by the Japanese government, it appears to have set off something of a social revolution. Even as the Taliban tighten their noose around Kandahar, the girls flock to the school each morning. Many of them walk more than two miles from their mud-brick houses up in the hills.
The girls burst through the school’s walled compound, many of them flinging off head-to-toe garments, bounding, cheering and laughing in ways that are inconceivable outside — for girls and women of any age. Mirwais has no regular electricity, no running water, no paved streets. Women are rarely seen, and only then while clad in burqas that make their bodies shapeless and their faces invisible.
And so it was especially chilling on Nov. 12, when three pairs of men on motorcycles began circling the school. One of the teams used a spray bottle, another a squirt gun, another a jar. They hit 11 girls and 4 teachers in all; 6 went to the hospital. Shamsia fared the worst.
The attacks appeared to be the work of the Taliban, the fundamentalist movement that is battling the government and the American-led coalition. Banning girls from school was one of the most notorious symbols of the Taliban’s rule before they were ousted from power in November 2001.
Building new schools and ensuring that children — and especially girls — attend has been one of the main objectives of the government and the nations that have contributed to Afghanistan’s reconstruction. Some of the students at the Mirwais school are in their late teens and early 20s, attending school for the first time. Yet at the same time, in the guerrilla war that has unfolded across southern and eastern Afghanistan, the Taliban have made schools one of their special targets.
But exactly who was behind the acid attack is a mystery. The Taliban denied any part in it. The police arrested eight men and, shortly after that, the Ministry of Interior released a video showing two men confessing. One of them said he had been paid by an officer with the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, the Pakistani intelligence agency, to carry out the attack.
But at a news conference last week, Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, said there was no such Pakistani involvement.
One thing is certain: in the months before the attack, the Taliban had moved into the Mirwais area and the rest of Kandahar’s outskirts. As they did, posters began appearing in local mosques.
“Don’t Let Your Daughters Go to School,” one of them said.
In the days after the attack, the Mirwais School for Girls stood empty; none of the parents would let their daughters venture outside. That is when the headmaster, Mahmood Qadari, got to work.
After four days of staring at empty classrooms, Mr. Qadari called a meeting of the parents. Hundreds came to the school — fathers and mothers — and Mr. Qadari implored them to let their daughters return. After two weeks, a few returned.
So, Mr. Qadari, whose three daughters live abroad, including one in Virginia, enlisted the support of the local government. The governor promised more police officers, a footbridge across a busy nearby road and, most important, a bus. Mr. Qadari called another meeting and told the parents that there was no longer any reason to hold their daughters back.
“I told them, if you don’t send your daughters to school, then the enemy wins,” Mr. Qadari said. “I told them not to give in to darkness. Education is the way to improve our society.”
The adults of Mirwais did not need much persuading. Neither the bus nor the police nor the bridge has materialized, but the girls started showing up anyway. Only a couple of dozen girls regularly miss school now; three of them are girls who had been injured in the attack.
“I don’t want the girls sitting around and wasting their lives,” said Ghulam Sekhi, an uncle of Shamsia and her sister, Atifa, age 14, who was also burned.
For all the uncertainty outside its walls, the Mirwais school brims with life. Its 40 classrooms are so full that classes are held in four tents, donated by Unicef, in the courtyard. The Afghan Ministry of Education is building a permanent building as well.
The past several days at the school have been given over to examinations. In one classroom, a geography class, a teacher posed a series of questions while her students listened and wrote their answers on paper.
“What is the capital of Brazil?” the teacher, named Arja, asked, walking back and forth.
“Now, what are its major cities?”
“By how many times is America larger than Afghanistan?”
At a desk in the front row, Shamsia, the girl with the burned face, pondered the questions while cupping a hand over her largest scar. She squinted down at the paper, rubbed her eyes, wrote something down.
Doctors have told Shamsia that her face may need plastic surgery if there is to be any chance of the scars disappearing. It is a distant dream: Shamsia’s village does not even have regular electricity, and her father is disabled.
After class, Shamsia blended in with the other girls, standing around, laughing and joking. She seemed un-self-conscious about her disfigurement, until she began to recount her ordeal.
“The people who did this,” she said, “do not feel the pain of others.”
This article was found at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/world/asia/14kandahar.html

10 arrested in Taliban-ordered acid attack on Afghan schoolgirls

AFP - November 25, 2008

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Security forces have arrested 10 men suspected of involvement in a Taliban-ordered acid attack on schoolgirls in southern Afghanistan and some have confessed, authorities said Tuesday.
The 10 were Afghans who had each been promised 100,000 Pakistani rupees ($1,300 US) by Taliban rebels in Pakistan to carry out the Nov. 12 attack, deputy interior minister General Mohammad Daud told reporters.
Men on motorbikes used water pistols to spray acid into the faces of 15 girls and female teachers as they arrived at school in the southern city of Kandahar.

Most were given partial protection by their burqas, garments which cover the face and body, but one was seriously wounded in the face with some of the acid entering her eyes.
Daud said the men were all Afghans and had been arrested over several days. He did not say how many of them had confessed.
The men had been given orders by Taliban insurgents across the border in Pakistan, he said.
"They were led by Taliban...they were taking orders from the other side of the border from those who are leading terrorist attacks in Kandahar," he said.
Afghan officials say much of the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan is plotted in extremist sanctuaries in Pakistan's tribal areas.
Most of the four teachers and 11 schoolgirls caught in the attack were only slightly wounded because they were shielded by burqas, which most Afghan women wear in public.
Six of the girls were treated in hospital and the one who suffered the worst injuries, a 17-year-old named Shamsia, was transferred to a military hospital in Kabul.
All of them except Shamsia were back at school, an AFP reporter in Kandahar said.
The attack on the girls drew wide condemnation including from President Hamid Karzai and US First Lady Laura Bush who described it last week "cowardly and shameful".
A Taliban spokesman, Yousuf Ahmadi, said at the time that his group was not responsible.
The motive appeared to be to try to warn girls off going to school, something from which they were banned by the conservative Islamic Taliban regime that was toppled in a U.S.-led invasion in late 2001.
There were around 230 attacks on schools in Afghanistan from January to June this year, according to the United Nations.
About half of those attacks were on girls' schools even though they make up only 15 percent of schools in the country, said a report to the UN Security Council this month.
About 100 school staff and pupils had also been killed in the past year, the Afghan education ministry says. Insecurity linked to the insurgency has meanwhile forced 640 of the country's 11,000 schools to close.
About 35 per cent of the 6.2 million Afghan children in school this year are girls, the ministry says.
While a vast improvement from 2001 when only about one million children were in school, the total enrollment represents only about half the country's school-aged children.
This article was found at:
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=8d4283e1-9eed-4201-bb3c-ac52fd470dc7

Afghan girl says acid attack won't stop her lessons

canada.com November 15, 2008

by Mohammad Aziz | Reuters

KABUL - A victim of an acid attack on schoolgirls in Afghanistan said on Saturday she was determined to stay in school and finish her education even if that meant risking death.
The girl, who gave her name as just Shamsia, was the most seriously injured of a group of girls attacked outside their school by unidentified men in the southern city of Kandahar on Wednesday.
Shamsia, 17, a victim of an acid attack in Kabul last week, lies in a hospital bed. The Taliban, which does not permit women to attend school, attacked Shamsia two days ago as she was on her way to class, according to police. Omar Sobhani/Reuters
"I'll continue my schooling even if they try to kill me. I won't stop going to school," Shamsia said from her bed at Afghanistan's main military hospital in Kabul.

Shamsia, 17, suffered damage to one of her eyes when the men pulled off the girls' head scarves and threw acid in their faces. She has been brought to hospital in the capital for treatment.
There was no claim of responsibility for the attack but it bore the hallmarks of the Taliban, who banned girls from school during their hardline rule from 1996 to 2001.
The insurgents have attacked and destroyed hundreds of schools across the country since they were forced from power in 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
While some teachers and school caretakers have been killed, most of the attacks on schools have been at night and violence against children has been rare.
The attack on the schoolgirls has shocked a country long used to violence. President Hamid Karzai said the men responsible were the enemies of education.
Shamsia, much of her face covered in a yellow ointment, said she had to finish her lessons to help the country.
"I'll continue going to lessons. I'm studying to be able to build our country," she said.
Senior education official Najiba Nuristani, who was visiting Shamsia in hospital, was also defiant.
"These incidents, these suicide attacks, can not stop education in Afghanistan, especially for girls," she said.
Shamsia's doctor, Mohammad Wali, said the girl had suffered damage to an eye but was in good condition. A medical panel would decide if she needed to be sent to India for treatment, he said.
This article was found at:
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=29a501a0-a4fc-4fac-a9ed-f980760c5e02

Afghan schoolgirls burned by acid in attack by men on motorcycle

CBC News - Canada November 12, 2008

Three Afghan girls in a group of eight walking to school in Kandahar city were seriously burned Wednesday when two men on a motorcycle threw acid on them.
Six of the group were taken to hospital. Three were treated and released. Two girls who were wearing full-length burkas were not harmed.
Some of the girls wore a typical Afghan school uniform — black pants, a white shirt, black coat and white head scarf.
Atifa Bibi, 14, said from her hospital bed that two men rode up to the girls and threw the acid while they were walking to school. Bibi had burns on her face, which was covered in medical cream.
"This is a sophisticated, dangerous and complicated land with some fascinating people, some of whom are not keen that we’re here," said Gen. Andrew Leslie, the head of Canada's land forces.
"The vast majority are delighted that we’re here trying to protect their citizens themselves, if you would, from the type of foe who would throw acid on young girls trying to get an education.
"Arguably, that is why we’re here. That's what Canadian soldiers do. We risk our lives to bring certain degree of peace and security when possible to those young schoolgirls."
Girls were banned from schools under the Taliban's hardline Islamist regime, which ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi denied that the insurgents were involved.
With files from the Associated Press, Canadian Press

This article was found at:http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/11/12/
afghan-girls.html

Teen girls burned with acid in Kandahar

Canwest News Service - November 12, 2008

by Ethan Baron | Canwest News Service

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Two schoolgirls are in hospital with serious facial burns as doctors work to save their sight, after men on motorcycles sprayed acid in the faces of six teenage girls walking to school Wednesday morning.
"They stopped their motorbikes and took some kind of acid from their pockets," said Atifa, 16, a grade 8 student, from her bed in Kandahar's Mirwais Hospital. "They sprayed it in our faces."
The four other schoolgirls received less serious burns on their faces, and were treated and released from the hospital after the 8:30 a.m. local time attack on the western outskirts of Kandahar City.
Mirwais hospital director Sharifa Sadique said the attack threw medical staff into "a panic situation." No previous acid attacks on girls had occurred in the city, Sadique said.
"The two girls' situation is worse, because we fear for their eyes," Sadique said.
Atifa said she will not return to school once she recovers unless the security situation improves.
The other seriously burned girl was unable to speak.
"You see the situation, it's very bad," said her mother Malina, crying. "It's a very painful and terrible situation."
She will not allow her daughter to continue going to school, she said.
A family member of one of the burned schools said there had been no warnings to stop sending their daughters to school.
The Taliban have targeted schoolgirls.
Also Wednesday morning, a car bomb exploded near the Provincial Council Compound in Kandahar City, killing six people and wounding at least 40. Most are believed to be civilians.
With files from Reuters

This article was found at:

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=ded4a04a-da68-48d0-89e8-43acc4ddea04

Islamist sect banned as security threat 'is recruiting teenagers'

Evening Standard - UK   September 19, 2008

by Robert Mendick, Chief Reporter


A militant Islamic sect banned by the Government as a threat to national security has launched a campaign to radicalise teenagers in east London, the Evening Standard can reveal.

Al-Muhajiroun, headed by exiled cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed, tonight begins a recruitment drive targeting young Muslims - despite being outlawed under terror laws introduced in the wake of the 7/7 suicide bomb attacks on London.

Several members of the sect have been jailed in recent years for terror-related offences but there are fears the group is thriving again under a new name.

The group has launched a website, Islam4uk.com.

It is advertising its first youth conference, entitled Muslim Youth: The Spark of the Fire, at a community centre in Walthamstow - close to the homes of six men who face a retrial over a plot to blow up transatlantic airliners. Islam4uk.com is a reincarnation of al-Muhajiroun in all but name. It is headed by Bakri Mohammed, now living in Lebanon, and his deputy Anjem Choudary, its official spokesman.

The two have kept a relatively low profile since the 7 July attacks on London in 2005 but have become emboldened in recent weeks.

The youth conference tonight is being addressed by two notorious extremists, Abu Uzair and Abu Waleed.

Uzair, 40, who was a follower of jailed preacher Abu Hamza at Finsbury Park mosque, sprang to prominence when he praised the 9/11 hijackers as " magnificent" and claimed that if he knew terrorists were planning a suicide attack, he would not alert police.

In an interview with the BBC, Uzair declared: "We don't live in peace with you any more. The banner has been risen for jihad inside the UK, which means it's allowed for bombers to attack."

Waleed, another disciple of Hamza's, was caught on video earlier this year making a joke about Muslims taking backpacks on to the London Underground.

Having laid low for the past three years - since Bakri was forced to live in exile in Lebanon - there is concern al-Muhajiroun is growing in strength.

At a meeting last Thursday - as first reported by the Standard - almost 100 Muslims attended to hear a live video link-up with Bakri.

Andrew Dismore, the Labour MP for Hendon, who first called for al-Muhajiroun to be banned 10 years ago, said today: "This new group needs to be banned. Islam4uk is clearly just another side of the same coin.

"This shows the real difficulty with these splinter groups. The fact they are now getting 100 people to their meetings is very alarming."

This article was found at:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23557570-details/Islamist+sect+banned+as+security+threat+%27is+recruiting+teenagers%27/article.do

Faith schools ‘will hinder fight against terrorism’

The Independent - UK   September 10, 2008

by Steve Connor | Science Editor


The expansion of faith schools in Britain will hinder the fight against terrorism by fostering a belief in separate identity, says a psychologist who has studied the causes of violent religious extremism.

Professor David Canter, director of the Centre for Investigative Psychology at Liverpool University, said: "Faith schools are terribly dangerous. Setting up these divisions based on faith is the starting point for people thinking of themselves as separate, and identifying an 'out-group' that you are not part of.

"Identifying yourself as part of a group with power is a well-established notion in social psychology – social identity. Social identity is in part defined by an out-group distinct from yours."

A division of schools based on religion fostered separate identity between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, and expansion of faith schools in England and Wales is likely to do the same, Professor Canter said. "It will create the possibility of people considering their significance in terms of religion."

Professor Canter has overseen psychological interviews with 49 convicted terrorists in India. "They seem to [have] got really hooked into a very intensive religious framework early on," Professor Canter said at the British Association's science festival in Liverpool. "Schools with a mixture of faiths seems psychologically more healthy."


This article was found at:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/faith-schools-lsquowill-hinder-fight-against-terrorismrsquo-924501.html

Preventing violent extremism. "We must teach young people how to recognize totalitarian groups."

New Statesman - UK
September 8, 2008

There is no single, or simple, demographic or psychological profile of those likely to be recruited to take part in acts of terror argues academic Alexandra Stein

by Alexandra Stein

We now have a new record: last month Britain’s youngest terrorist was convicted. Hammaad Munshi was only 15 when he was recruited by the then 20 year-old Aabid Khan. Khan, according to the Guardian, had “links to proscribed terrorist groups” including al-Qaeda, and is believed to have visited a terrorist training camp in Pakistan.

A recent MI5 report confirmed what many scholars of terrorist and cultic groups have long known: there is no single, or simple, demographic or psychological profile of those likely to be recruited. Social psychologists such as Philip Zimbardo have for years argued that it is the strong situation of increasing isolation within closed, coercive groups that creates these dangerous behaviors. This is what is critical, not the particular psychology or disposition of the individual.

Further, and contrary to Mark Sageman, a former CIA agent, these are not simply “bunches of guys” who organise themselves into suicidal acts of terror. What we are seeing is the deliberate targeting and recruitment of youth by well-organized internationally-linked extremist groups, as, for instance described by Ed Husain in his book The Islamist, or by Masoud Banisadr in his account of the Iranian Mojahedin.

How then do we protect both the potential victims of these acts, and the young people who are recruited into these extremist groups? We know young people are being recruited in further education colleges and now, like Munshi, at even younger ages. How are we preparing these young people for these assaults on their autonomy and, eventually, on their lives?

Social psychologists, such as Zimbardo, who study extremist groups, cults and coercive persuasion understand that the key to prevention is education. This is education about the structures and processes of totalitarian, ideologically extremist groups.

I recently taught a course on Cults and Totalitarianism to two groups of students at the University of Minnesota in the midwestern US. We covered the social psychology, structures and processes of groups as varied as Lyndon LaRouche’s right-wing political cult, the sexually abusive Children of God, and Pol Pot’s totalitarian and murderous regime in 1970s Cambodia. Several students stated that during the term of the course itself they had cause to use this new information to help either themselves or friends and family to stay away from dangerous groups. Other students asked me why this sort of information hadn't been made available at an earlier stage in their education.

We must teach young people how to recognize totalitarian groups. Drawing on work from Hannah Arendt, Robert Jay Lifton and others, we can start with this five point definition:

• The group is led by a charismatic and authoritarian leader


• It is isolating and has a closed, steeply hierarchical inner structure


• The group adheres to an absolute and exclusive belief system (a total ideology)


• Processes of coercive persuasion are used to isolate followers and control them through a combined dynamic of “love” and fear


• Followers are exploited

These groups succeed because they operate based on universal human (and usually adaptive) responses of people seeking comfort and connection when afraid. The process unfolds by isolating recruits from prior sources of comfort, establishing the group as the new safe haven, and then instilling fear to create what is known as a trauma bond. This is now well-understood by social psychologists. It can be taught in interesting and understandable ways to young people.

We must take a strategic view to introduce this into the curriculum. Educators must collaborate with experts in this field to train teachers in both the classic social-psychological studies as well as the most up-to-date research available and work to develop materials and curricula for classrooms at various age levels.

For over 60 years social scientists have been developing a broad knowledge base about these fundamental human vulnerabilities and the groups and situations that exploit them. In her 1987 volume, Prisons we choose to live inside, nobel laureate Doris Lessing argued for disseminating this knowledge to our children in order to challenge our “most primitive and instinctive reactions” -- those reactions which so often have led us to act against our own interests and our own survival. We cannot wait any longer to take this on.

Perhaps then a future 15-year-old – one who has had some basic education in the structures, processes and dangers of totalitarian groups – will be able to recognize and turn away from a recruiter who promises liberation and glory but who will deliver only suicidal sacrifice.

Alexandra Stein is visiting lecturer, Birkbeck, Faculty of Lifelong Learning

This article was found at:

http://newstatesman.com/international-politics/2008/09/groups-recruited-social-young

TV rabbit preaching hatred and telling young Muslims to 'kill and eat Jews'

Daily Mail - UK July 23, 2008

by Daily Mail Reporter

An Islamic TV station using a Bugs Bunny lookalike to preach hatred to children has been slammed by religious leaders in the UK who fear it could brainwash vulnerable British children.

Assud the rabbit, who vows to 'kill and eat Jews' and glorifies the maiming of 'infidels' appears on Palestinian children's show, Tomorrow's Pioneers.

The rabbit is a number of characters who is punished by viewer's vote when he breaches Sharia law.

In one episode, Assud admits stealing money and is seen begging for mercy after young viewers and parents phone in demanding his hands are cut off as punishment.




Assud the rabbit is threatened with punishment for stealing on Palestinian children's show Tomorrow's Pioneers

At that point the 11-year-old presenter intervenes - and rules that the bunny should only have his ears severed because he has repented.

The rabbit is played by an actor in fancy dress and is one of the main characters on the show broadcast in Gaza by the al-Aqsa channel - known as Hamas TV.

Religious leaders across the UK have today spoken out against the controversial show which can be viewed via satellite.

The programme is also easily viewed on internet sites such as YouTube, sparking fears that British children could be subjected to the radical Islamic message.

The Association of Muslim Schools, which represents the UK's 143 Muslim schools, said it was opposed to any shows that incite violence.

Spokesman Dr Mohamed Mukadam said: 'It goes without saying that any programme which promotes the killing or injuring of human beings is wrong.




Assud encourages children to 'eat and kill Jews' and preaches hatred

'Regardless of religion, shows that incite or inspire others to inflict violence of any kind should be condemned.

'Such shows are against the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, and we would urge people of all ages not to watch them.'

Set up as a regional station prior to the Palestinian elections in January 2006, al-Aqsa TV now airs on a satellite slot.

It broadcasts what many call a mixture of news of Islamic propaganda, but has picked up a substantial following across the Arabic-speaking world.

Tomorrow's Pioneers was first aired in April 2007, and features young host Saraa Barhoum and her co-host, a large costumed animal.

The show originally featured a Mickey Mouse-style character called Farfur who urged children to fight against the Jewish community and form a world Islamic state.

Farfur was later replaced by a bumble bee called Nahoul, who told viewers to 'follow the path of Islam, of martyrdom and of the Mujahideen'.

He was 'martyred' earlier this year and replaced by Assud, who tells children in his first episode: 'I, Assud, will get rid of the jews, Allah willing, and I will eat them up.'



UK religious leaders fear young British children could be subjected to the rabbit's hate teachings

In a discussion with 11-year-old host Saraa Barhoum, the young viewers are referred to as 'soldiers'.

Assud asks Saraa: 'We are all martyrdom-seekers, are we not?'.

To which she replies: 'Yes, we are all ready to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of our homeland.'

The phone-in show accepts calls from children as young as nine on topics about life in Palestine.

During one show broadcast in February, Assud vows to kill and eat all Danish people over the cartoon images of the Prophet Muhammad which appeared in a newspaper.

He also pledges to assassinate the illustrator and Saraa also agrees that she would martyr herself for the cause of Palestine.

Saraa, who has seven brothers and sisters, was invited to host the show after entering a singing competition.

But speaking last year, she defended the programme - and insisted it was not responsible for spreading extremism.

She said: 'We are not terrorists. We do not support terrorism. We are normal people, but we are defending our homeland.

'The Israelis hit next door to my house with a shell. I was wounded on my feet and my little brother Youssef was wounded in the legs.

'We, as Muslims, are against suicide bombers. We are against the death of civilians on all sides. We are only the enemy of those who took our land and kill us every day.'

The show is regularly translated and posted online by The Middle East Media Research Institute, an independent media monitoring group based in the United States.

Al-Aqsa was today was unavailable for comment.

This article was found at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1037512/Pictured-The-TV-rabbit-preaching-hatred-telling-young-Muslims-kill-eat-Jews.html

Free Omar Khadr

National Post - Canada
July 15, 2008

Opinion | Jonathan Kay

This is a bad day for Canada. As I write this at 1pm Tuesday, piteous video images from Omar Khadr's interrogation at Guantanamo Bay are not only the #1 news item on the National Post web site, but also the lead item on BBC News and USA Today. Millions of Web surfers are now wondering why Canada's government has acquiesced — and as the video shows, even participated — in the unconscionable treatment of a blubbering boy-soldier.
As someone who otherwise considers himself one of the War on Terror's noisiest Canadian cheerleaders, I submit that the bleeding hearts are right on this one: Omar Khadr needs to come home.
Here's why:
Omar Khadr was a child soldier. During the carnage that gripped Sierra Leone in the 1990s, the most terrifying crimes were often committed by gangs of children who'd been abducted by the Revolutionary United Front. Isolated from their family, and stripped of any sort of moral compass, these child brigades were renowned for such monstrous acts as hacking off the legs and arms of defenseless villagers. When the RUF's war with the government ended, many of these children were assimilated back into civilized society. No one — in the West, at least — blamed them for what they had done. As in Sri Lanka, Congo, and other parts of the world where children are abducted and forced into combat, it is universally recognized that child soldiers are not morally culpable for their actions in the same way as adults. That's why the Sierra Leone war crimes tribunal didn't prosecute child soldiers — it prosecuted the monsters who exploited them. Can someone please tell me why this principle has not been applied to Omar Khadr, who was all of 15 when he allegedly threw the grenade that killed Sgt Christopher Speer of Delta Force in 2002?
What makes the case for Khadr especially strong is that he was essentially recruited into combat from birth — by his own flesh-and-blood no less. The true monster in the Khadr narrative is not Omar, but his father, Ahmed Said Khadr, an al-Qaeda lieutenant who moved his whole family from Canada to central Asia so they could share in the glory of jihad.
As a nine-year-old, Omar drank in his father's Islamist propaganda — spending months by his father's bed as the jihadi patriarch lay hunger-striking against Pakistani authorities, who'd arrested him on terrorism charges in 1995. Following 9/11, Ahmed (who, thankfully, was dispatched to his celestial virgins in 2003) enlisted his son as a sort of sidekick and maidservant to a jihadi cell hiding out in the Afghan outback. It was in this capacity that Omar tagged along with the pack of terrorists who would eventually be killed in the June 27, 2002 firefight that claimed the life of Sgt Speer.
I have spent today reading a lot of tough talk on the blogs about how Khadr should be "waterboarded until he stops crying" and such. I wonder if those same hawks could tell me how they would have turned out if they'd been told — literally, since the day they were born — about the necessity of jihad and the beauty of martyrdom; if, since early days, they'd been propagandized into believing that the West was waging a genocidal war against Muslims; and that military resistance was the only path of survival. Are we to expect some sort of inborn moral sense to activate — to tell us that everything being told to us by our own parents is wrong — even before one is old enough to shave?
I know about 20,000 former child soldiers in Sierra Leone who could tell you the answer to that question. And unlike Khadr, not one of them stands accused of "Violation of the Law of War."
Omar Khadr probably didn't kill anyone. The U.S. government's line on the events of June 27, 2002 — reported uncritically, for the most part, by the Canadian media — is that a cowardly Khadr popped up from the rubble in the aftermath of a firefight in the Afghan hinterland, killing a U.S. medic who was looking to treat wounded survivors. In fact, the grenade that killed Speer (who was fighting as a solider, whatever his training as a medic) was thrown when the four-hour long battle was still hot — and it is far from clear who threw it: Contrary to initial accounts, there was a second jihadi still alive when the fatal grenade was thrown — and since Khadr was badly wounded at the time, the second militant (who later died) seems the more likely candidate.
(We might also dispense with the idea that Speer was on a mission of mercy: Post-battle testimony from his battlefield companions suggests they were — quite understandably — more interested in shooting the wounded than healing them.)
My own view is that Speer may well have been killed by a grenade thrown by one of his comrades. (Reports from the battle suggest that grenades were flying thick and fast from both sides.) As the Pat Tillman scandal shows, the U.S. military sometimes goes to extraordinary lengths to cover up friendly-fire deaths. And in the Khadr case, his U.S. Department of Defense attorney claims, there is at least one instance in which a U.S. lieutenant-colonel retroactively amended and backdated a battlefield report to buttress the case against Khadr.
Even if Khadr did kill Sgt. Speer, he did so as a soldier, not a terrorist. There's little doubt that Ahmed Khadr was training his sons to be terrorists — the sort of people who blow up buses and restaurants, or who wear civilian clothing as they lie in wait to detonate explosives under vehicle convoys. But what Omar Khadr did on June 27, 2002 wasn't terrorism. It was participation in a military engagement — a fact that can't be changed merely by slapping a label like "unlawful combatant" on him.
Moreover, it was a military engagement fought on American terms: After U.S. soldiers sealed off the village encampment housing Khadr's cell, they prosecuted the siege with about 100 troops, some of them Special Forces, as well as Apache helicopters, F-18 Hornets and A-10 Warthogs. You can say that Khadr was fighting in an evil cause when he was captured, but you can't say that he was preying on the defenseless.

Even if you don't buy anything I've written above, Khadr's treatment still ranks as abominable. Let us assume that Omar Khadr actually threw the grenade that killed Sgt Christopher Speer; that he did so as a cold-blooded killer, not as a soldier; and that his status as a child combatant is irrelevant — in short, that Omar Khadr is a murderer. Well then, how do we treat murderers in Western countries? Answer: We put them in jail. We don't beat them; or move them from cell to cell every three hours; or terrify them with threats of pedophilic rape; or deny them appropriate medical care — all punishments that Khadr has endured — a litany of abuse so traumatic that, according to one piteous detail among many, he took to falling asleep at Guantanamo desperately hugging a Mickey Mouse book brought to him as a gift. In the space of six years incarceration, Khadr has endured more brutality than any ordinary jailbird would endure in 60.
That's punishment enough. Please bring Omar Khadr home.
This article was found at:
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/07/15/jonathan-kay-free-omar-khadr.aspx

Canada accused of undermining international court

Canwest News Service - June 26, 2008

Could set back the whole basic movement of rules of law against crimes against humanity, including child soldiers

by Kathryn May

OTTAWA - In a bid to bring a peace deal to war-torn Northern Uganda, Canada may end up undermining the very credibility of the International Criminal Court that has been a key piece of this country's foreign policy.
International justice advocates say Canada appears to be quietly promoting a proposal to drop charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity against notorious rebel leader Joseph Kony, head of the Lord's Resistance Army, to help seal a peace deal that could end the brutal war that has ravaged Northern Uganda for more than 20 years.
A copy of an unclassified document that Canadian officials are said to have circulated to member countries of the UN Security Council says Canada is open "in principle" to the idea of Uganda asking the security council to defer the indictments against Kony and his band of commanders. Canada played an instrumental role in creating the court, based in The Hague, and the indictments against Kony are among the first it issued. Its president is Canadian Judge Phillip Kirsch.
Lloyd Axworthy, a former foreign minister for the Jean Chretien government, said such a move undermines Canada's leadership in international justice and the "human security" approach to global issues. He argued it opens the door to impunity for Kony, who in his violent fight to bring in a government based on the Ten Commandments, kidnapped thousands of children and terrorized them to fight as soldiers in the war. Axworthy was a panellist here Thursday, discussing Canada's role in international justice at the official launch of the Canadian Centre for International Justice.
"If we let him and his chief commanders off the hook we will have set back the whole basic movement of rules of law against crimes against humanity, including child soldiers," Axworthy said.
"Using the judicial systems as a form of sanction and deterrent is a very powerful tool and I think that if the Uganda government and the Security Council give in to blackmail, they will set the cause of international justice back to where it was before (General Augusto) Pinochet or Idi Amin," said Axworthy.
Axworthy argued the proposal trades justice for a quick peace deal, but lasting peace will be impossible without justice for those who raped, mutilated, kidnapped and killed so many.
The peace negotiations in Uganda have been marked by a highly divisive debate over how to mete justice to Kony and his rebel leaders. Many have argued the ICC indictments have stood in the way of reaching a peace agreement. Thousands of people, displaced by the war, are still living in squalid camps and don't want to return to their homes until Kony signs the peace deal. They feel Kony will never surrender unless the ICC indictments are dropped.
Robert Fowler, a longtime diplomat who served as Canada's ambassador to the UN and personal representative for Africa for former prime ministers Chretien and Paul Martin, and current leader Stephen Harper, said Canada and the rest of the international community face a "Hobson's choice" in resolving the Uganda conflict.
"It's not easy. This is not a black-and-white situation. Neither choice is a good one," he said.
This article was found at:
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=39c1b9f1-1d01-4ba9-aafb-bf5dc526cafb

The 14-year-old Afghan suicide bomber

The Independent - U.K.
June 10, 2008

Teenager caught on a lethal mission reveals how he was groomed to kill British troops

by Kim Sengupta in Kabul

The surroundings were grim and forbidding, a notorious jail run by Afghanistan's feared security service for those taken prisoner in the bloody war with the Taliban.

Among the inmates: Shakirullah Yasin Ali; a small, frail boy, just 14 years old, arrested as he prepared to carry out a suicide bombing against British and American targets. "If I had succeeded, I would be dead now, I realise that," he said in a soft, nervous voice.

"But those who were instructing me said that if I believed in serving God it was my duty to fight against the foreigners. They said God would protect me when the time came."

It was a suicide bomber like Shakirullah who, on Sunday, claimed the lives of three more British soldiers in Helmand, bringing the total number of UK fatalities in Afghanistan to 100.

The Independent spoke to Shakirullah, a Pakistani Pashtun, one of the youngest ever suicide bombing suspects, after he was captured in a raid at the town of Khost in Afghanistan.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the prison run by Afghan intelligence, the NDS, Shakirullah said: "I do not know what is going to happen to me. All we were told was the British and the Americans were in Afghanistan and they were killing Muslims.

"All I know is what the mullahs told me and kept telling me, that the British and the Americans were against God," he said with his head bowed down, his hands twisting a handkerchief.

Shakirullah, one of four children of Noor Ali Khan, a farmer, lived at the village of Tandola in the Pakistani region of South Waziristan. He said his education was at a madrassa run by two imams, Mullah Saleb and Mullah Azizullah. About 50 students between 13 and 22 attended the school, where the syllabus consisted of learning the Koran by heart, interspersed with political lectures.

About two months ago, he finished a first course in Koranic studies. He was then approached by the two mullahs who told him that the time had come for him to serve God in Afghanistan.

"At first, I did not know what I was supposed to be doing, then Mullah Saleb said I would be striking a blow against the foreigners, the British and the Americans, and get justice for all the people being killed. I was told I must leave at once and they would talk to my family on my behalf. I wanted to see my mother and father but I was told that was not possible for security reasons. That upset me but I thought I will be seeing them again as soon as I got back. They said my family would get well paid for what I was doing."

On the way to Afghanistan Shakirullah said he was told by a mullah that his mission would involve driving a car bomb. "I said I did not know how to drive but they said they would teach me, they said I would not have to drive far. Mullah Saleb said it was too late to stop. He kept saying that to be a good Muslim I must fulfil my duty. I was missing my family but I did not know how to go back to my village and I did not know anyone in the area I could run to. There was nothing I could do except pray I would be all right and my family would be all right."

Shakirullah says he was driven across the border and taken to a house in the city of Khost. "There were a few more people there and the leader was a man they called the Doctor, he and Mullah Saleb took me for driving lessons and took me to sermons in the evening. The Doctor brought the explosives in two bags for the car and he was the one who made the bomb. I was told I would soon be ready to carry out my mission."

However, the car being prepared for the bombing, a Toyota Corolla, had stalled a few times while Shakirullah was being taught to drive and, on one occasion, he and the Doctor had been closely questioned by the police.

Forty-eight hours later, the house where they were staying was raided by Afghan and Nato forces. "I had been told by the mullah that I was ready to go, the time was right. But then they came during the night, the soldiers, and smashed down the doors. There were Afghans and foreigners. A gun was stuck to my face and I thought I was going to be killed. They dragged us all out and took us to a prison."

Shakirullah's attack may have been prevented but not that of the bomber who took the lives of Privates Nathan Cuthbertson, 19, Charles David Murray, 19, and Daniel Gamble, 22. They had been going to speak to local people when a bomber detonated an explosive vest strapped to his chest.

Last night, their families paid tribute to their loved ones. Pte Murray's family said: "David was the best son, brother, grandson, nephew, cousin and friend any of us could hope for. Although his time with us was short, he lived every second to the full and taught us the meaning of life."

The parents of Pte Gamble said: "Dan died doing the job he was so proud to do, with the regiment he was proud to be part of. He was special because he had trained in the Afghan Pashtu language. He was special to his family and friends – a true hero in every sense."

Pte Cuthbertson's company commander, Major Russell Lewis, said he was "a talented, motivated individual. He always had a smile on his face and relished the challenges faced by the professional soldier. "

British victims of the latest suicide attack

Private Daniel Gamble

Daniel Gamble, 22, from Uckfield, East Sussex, joined 2nd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment in 2006 and became his platoon's linguist, working to understand Afghan culture and society. His parents said he was proud of his job and regiment.

Private Charles Murray

Born in Dumfries and brought up in Carlisle, Charles David Murray followed a family tradition when he joined up. His father, grandfather and uncle were all in the forces. Pte Murray, 19, known as David, was serving as a rifleman.

Private Nathan Cuthbertson

The 19-year-old from Sunderland had been fast-tracked through the army since joining aged 16, and within a year of joining 2nd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, he had passed the infantryassault engineers course, usually reserved for more experienced soldiers. He was his platoon's machine gunner.

This article was found at:

http://www.independent.co.uk/
news/world/asia/the-14yearold--
afghan-suicide-bomber-843535.html