Each day at just after midnight Eastern, a post like this one is created for contributors and readers of this site to upload news links and video links on the issues that concern this site. Most notably, Islam and its effects on Classical Civilization, and various forms of leftism from Soviet era communism, to postmodernism and all the flavours of galloping statism and totalitarianism such as Nazism and Fascism which are increasingly snuffing out the classical liberalism which created our near, miraculous civilization the West has been building since the time of Socrates.
This document was written around the time this site was created, for those who wish to understand what this site is about. And while our understanding of the world and events has grown since then, the basic ideas remain sound and true to the purpose.
So please post all links, thoughts and ideas that you feel will benefit the readers of this site to the comments under this post each day. And thank you all for your contributions.
This is the new Samizdat. We must use it while we can.
For those interested, please check out https://vladtepesblog.substack.com/ as an another avenue of expression. The Substack is a different project in a sense. It is older videos that in the light of subsequent events, look different or of increased importance, Check it out now and again if you like.
This Is How Somalians Took Over Minnesota *EXPLAINED*
Nick Shirley Interviews – 6 hours ago
Taqiyya (Shia) Muda’rat (Sunni) — tactical deceit for the purpose of spreading Islam — Lie for Allah
I went to get sour cream for the cabbage rolls I was making last night for supper.
But my eyes weren’t working right. The sign for the green onions said “2/$5”.
It had cost five-dollars for four bunches of green onions for over a year, but suddenly they offered only two scrawny, pitiful twigs of green onions for the same price. I stood stunned, staring at the sign, questioning what I saw. This couldn’t be right. Out of habit I placed two bunches into the little plastic bag, but my mind was still computing. I turned to the woman next to me who was lingering just as was I.
“Last week these were 4/$5,” I said to her.
“Look at the celery,” she shot back without hesitation. I saw the celery was also five-dollars for one small clutch.
“Wow. Those were $1.99 last week. This isn’t right.” I placed my onions back on the pile and began to move on. The rice and meat dish my son made would have to go without green onions, or else I would check another store.
“I’m not paying that for celery,” the woman said as she, too, put her celery back.
In the meat section I checked the chicken. $29 for four boneless chicken breasts. The price of food is going crazy, I thought. And not only this, but on three recent occasions in the last few weeks the meat spoiled in my refrigerator before its expiry date.
It reminded me of my visits to Hungary under communism. Grocery stores offered pitiful selections for meats. Fatty cuts and more bones than meat shocked my Western sensibilities at that time. I mentioned it to my Belarus friend. “I know!” she said as if she had been thinking the same, and then she went on to describe the games they played lining up hours on end for everything from sugar to shoes under communism, trading vouchers with strangers.
I elect to believe this inflation is intentional. None of the behavior of our government since Trudeau justifies trust proferred in any form. It will grind the people into financial dust with currency debasement, hear their screams, then will offer socialism as the solution while blaming capitalism. And I fear it will succeed.
This is intentional, as was the Covid narrative attack, the net-zero attack, the sexual identitiy-liquidation attack–everything that our lying-eyes-behold-to-be-false-that-is-pronounced-from-above-as-true attack.
Disturbed by the sticker shock I went on to buy a few more things that I needed, but I started thinking about all the less fortunate people who were struggling with inflation. Young people trying to start their lives, pensioners on fixed incomes, young families…I stopped for pepper, but it was seven bucks for a little bag. Forgot it, I thought.
The punchline to the story is that I arrived home and realized I’d forgotten the sour cream.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canada-grocery-code-of-conduct-jan-1-9.7031468
https://brownstone.org/articles/the-heart-of-the-matter-cardiac-risks-of-covid-19-vaccines/
A relative of a refusenik relative told me that when she took her uncle, a gentleman about 65, into a supermarket for the first time he started crying. He just stood in front of the aisles crying, helpless.
Lord, I hate communism!
Breaking: U.S. seizes Russian tanker off U.K. coast. It seems to have no oil in it. I have heard other speculation that it may contain precious metals and cash:
Richard: One question asked in the video above is whether the U.S. is spreading itself too thin. My take is: if the PT admin wants to reduce the thrust of foreign policy to a nominal defense of Fortress Americas, thereby repatriating its huge assets worldwide, it has more than enough to protect its security interests. I say “nominal” because there will always remain strategic interests abroad such as Israel etc. What do you think?
PT is taking a hard look at what is likely to occur and at what the US needs to do to protect itself from the known threats and as many of the unknown threats as possible. He has had Pete Hegseth rebuild the US military and turn it from a social behavior lab into a “lean mean fighting machine filled with life takers and heart breakers.” The last I heard before Biden/Obama set out to destroy the US military we were striving for a military force that could fight 1 1/2 major wars at the same time. It takes roughly 1 year to build or rebuild a war fighting military force. Pete has taken close to one year to do his job and we are seeing the result.
Are we spreading ourselves too thin, not really, we have several enemies we need to watch or remove, Russia has a blooded military and has been using the Ukrainian war to train more of his people in combat operations. I can’t emphasize enough the advantage that blooded troops have over non combat experienced forces. China has a very large military (larger then ours) but most of their training has been how to oppress or put down domestic threats. Iran has semi blooded troops but they spend most of their time putting down local rebellions to the Mullahs. Cuba has a small military but a big intel group with the skills to train and possibly lead guerrilla forces.
Taking a hard look at our enemies and our so called friends in Europe PT appears to be shifting the US focus from Europe to South America, Israel and its protection, and the Far East. He is spending US treasure and military capital to reshape our protection to insure that no matter what or who our enemies have embedded in the US we can protect ourselves.
The action(s) around Venezuela are shutting down a chemical/bioweapons attack on the US and removing a source of income for our enemies. PT is going to have to remove the leaders of Columbia and Cuba. The latter is complicated by the agreement that JFK made with the Soviet Union that we would not move to conquer Cuba as long as the Castro family is in control of that nation.
Shifting back to are we over extending ourselves? Yes and no, we can do this during the buildup to WWIII but once the real fighting starts we can’t. PT has made the decision that since Europe isn’t willing to build up its own military and wants to free ride on the backs of the US taxpayers they are our lowest priority. PT is moving to get Greenland to ask to join the US but is willing to use military force if it becomes necessary. There is an old Cold War agreement that allows the US to move as many people and as much equipment as it wants into Greenland pretty much at will so his moves there are more trying to ensure that the locals won’t cause trouble when he is forced to move in.
Today he started to remodel the US defense industry into a wartime war fighting production force and we can expect the left and the High Ranking Officers who were/are expecting to get high paying jobs once they retire to scream. His insistence that the new class Battleships will be designed and build withing 12 to 18 months says he wants to US industrial sector to slim down and get ready to fight a nasty war.
I don’t know what is going on behind the scenes with the 4 Western Provinces and I don’t want to know, the less I know the better the chance that things will work our like you want.
I hope this answers your question, I spent the day down in Columbia taking a friend to a Drs. appt in the morning and seen a Dr at the VA in the afternoon. The Dr at the VA sounded like she reads VTB the way she talked about Covid, the so called super flu that is currently being hyped as the new reason to shut down the US.
Thanks Richard! I don’t see why an agreement with a defunct entity (Soviet Union) should stand. Anyhow, I think we here knew the maps were going to be redrawn for some time, but I think it will take only one Western province (Alberta) to see the others want to leave.
When new governments take over from ones that have failed the first thing they do is to state that they will live up to all old international treaties and agreements. This is why we haven’t moved on Cuba before, well this and lack of guts on the part of a lot of politicians. We will have to prove some semi direct action against the US, personally I think the level of Cuban control of Venezuela should meet this standard for I tend to use common sense and most people in politics and the media don’t.
Thanks that is good info, I think that the reason we don’t hear more on this issue is everyone is afraid to bring it up, afraid that their statements will either help the 51st State movement or harm it.
Interesting times.
Father gets 30 years, brothers 20 for alleged honor killing of Ryan Al Najjar
https://nltimes.nl/2026/01/05/father-gets-30-years-brothers-20-alleged-honor-killing-ryan-al-najjar
The Lelystad court on Monday sentenced the father and two brothers of 18-year-old Ryan Al Najjar from Joure to prison terms of up to 30 years for her murder in May 2024. Ryan was strangled and drowned in the Oostvaardersplassen area near Lelystad, the court ruled, according to De Telegraaf.
The father, 53-year-old Khaled Al Najjar, received the heaviest sentence of 30 years, five years longer than the prosecution had requested. He reportedly played a leading role in the crime and fled to Syria after the murder, where he remains internationally wanted. Ryan’s brothers, aged 23 and 25, were each sentenced to 20 years, matching the prosecution’s request.
The court found that Ryan was killed because she had allegedly “dishonored” the family by adopting Western behaviors. According to court records, her brothers ensured she arrived at the location, fully aware that their father intended to kill her.
“It is a parent’s job to support their child and allow them to flourish. Khaled did the opposite,” the court said.
Prosecutors argued, and the court agreed, that all three were guilty of complicity in the crime, making them equally responsible for Ryan’s death regardless of their individual actions in the final moments. The court also noted premeditation, stating the family had intended to erase any trace of her existence. Neither the father nor the brothers attempted to contact Ryan afterward, suggesting they knew she was already dead.
As he was escorted to the holding facility at the court, Muhanad Al N., one of Ryan’s brothers, shouted, “I will clear my name!” according to De Telegraaf.
Oldham child gang-rape suspect later attempted to murder wife
Exclusive: Greater Manchester police ignored claim ‘Offender J’ among men who had abused 12-year-old, paperwork shows
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/dec/31/oldham-child-gang-rape-suspect-evaded-prosecution-attempted-murder-wife
[..]
The man, named only as Offender J in paperwork seen by the Guardian, is alleged to have taken part in the gang–rape of 12-year-old Samantha Walker-Roberts in Oldham, Greater Manchester, in 2006.
Offender J tried to kill his wife in 2009. Two years earlier, he had been named by the ringleader, Shakil Chowdhury, as an alleged accomplice in Walker-Roberts’s abuse but Greater Manchester police failed to follow up on this and closed the case.
Dozens of items recovered from Chowdhury’s home, where Walker-Roberts says she was raped for hours by five men, were destroyed by officers or returned to Chowdhury. She was trafficked around the town to be abused by several groups of men after being kidnapped from a police station where she had tried to report an earlier assault.
The Guardian understands that Offender J is now unlikely to face charges in relation to Walker-Roberts’s ordeal because the surviving forensic evidence does not link him to her abuse. Chowdhury, jailed for six years in 2007, remains the only man to be convicted in the case, but Walker-Roberts was told last month that officers were pursuing two outstanding suspects.
Sarwar Ali absconded after being charged with rape and has never been traced. Police are trying to identify a third man forensically linked to the case. The Guardian understands he appears not to have come to police attention before.
[..]
An internal police inquiry concluded in 2014 that Offender J’s wife may have been spared his attack if forensic inquiries had been adequately conducted in Walker-Roberts’s case.
[..]
It added that Offender J’s wife told police in 2011 that he had admitted to her that he had raped a 12-year-old. She said Offender J had kept newspaper clippings relating to Chowdhury’s court case and subsequent conviction.
The information was passed to Operation Messenger, a now defunct multi-agency taskforce designed to combat child sexual exploitation in Oldham, but again was not acted on. The safeguarding review said this was a “serious failure”.
[..]
The national inquiry, which will look at abuse in England and Wales, has been mired in controversy since it was announced in June.
In October, four women quit a survivor advisory panel, saying they felt the government was manipulating them to expand the scope of the inquiry beyond street-based grooming gangs.
They called for the resignation of the safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, but five others, including Walker-Roberts, wrote to the prime minister, Keir Starmer, to support her.
Seven men who groomed vulnerable girls in Rochdale guilty of multiple sex offences
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jun/13/seven-men-who-groomed-vulnerable-girls-in-rochdale-guilty-of-multiple-sex-offences
Seven men who groomed two vulnerable teenage girls in Rochdale and treated them as “sex slaves” have been found guilty of multiple sex offences.
[..]
After a four-month trial and three weeks of deliberation a jury on Friday returned unanimous guilty verdicts for 50 offences committed between 2001 and 2006.
[..]
Three of the abusers, Mohammed Zahid, 64, Mushtaq Ahmed, 67, and Kasir Bashir, 50 – all born in Pakistan – were stallholders at Rochdale’s indoor market.
[..]
Zahid was jailed for five years in 2016 as part of an earlier grooming gang case. He was found guilty of sexual assault of a child after he engaged in sexual activity in 2006 with a 15-year-old girl who he met when she visited his stall to buy tights for school.
Bashir did not attend the 2025 trial and jurors were ordered not to speculate why. It can be revealed that he absconded while on bail before the trial began.
It can also be reported that co-defendants Mohammed Shahzad, 44, Naheem Akram, 48, and Nisar Hussain, 41, had their bail revoked and were remanded in custody in January before the jury was sworn in.
Police received intelligence that the three Rochdale-born taxi drivers were planning to leave the UK and had paid a deposit for their transport, the court heard.
All three denied the accusation but the judge Jonathan Seely said the court was not prepared to take the risk that they too would abscond.
A seventh defendant, Pakistani-born Roheez Khan, 39, was also convicted in a previous Rochdale grooming trial. In 2013 he was one of five men convicted of sexually exploiting a “profoundly vulnerable” 15-year-old girl in 2008 and 2009. He was jailed for six-and-a-half years for engaging in sexual activity with a child and witness intimidation.
Girl A told the jury she could have been targeted by more than 200 offenders but said “there was that many it was hard to keep count”.
The trial heard that social workers in Rochdale had labelled girl B a “prostitute” from the age of 10.
VIDEO from ’24
‘It’s disgusting’: Rochdale whistleblower lambasts authorities for scapegoating her team – video
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/video/2024/jan/15/its-disgusting-rochdale-whistleblower-lambasts-authorities-for-scapegoating-her-team-video
Disturbing article from ’24:
Police took aborted foetus without telling Rochdale grooming victim, review finds
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/15/police-took-aborted-foetus-without-telling-rochdale-grooming-victim-review-finds
Greater Manchester police (GMP) secretly took the aborted foetus of a 13-year-old grooming victim in order to do a DNA test without telling the girl or her parents, a highly critical review of the police and council in Rochdale has found.
The revelation is one of a series of “deplorable” failings detailed in the latest chapter of an independent assurance review into how GMP and other agencies responded to child sexual exploitation (CSE) in Greater Manchester. The 173-page review was commissioned by Andy Burnham when he was first elected as mayor in 2017 and covers the period from 2004 until 2013.
It identified at least 96 individuals who could pose a risk to children, most of whom have yet to be prosecuted.
[..]
Other findings include:
When cases did reach court, GMP left the young victims to be “harassed and intimidated by the men who had previously abused them”, sometimes at gunpoint.
GMP took no action in the case of a 15-year-old girl who gave birth to a child of her “pimp”.
One child told GMP that her abusers kept girls in cages and “made them bark like a dog or dress like a baby”, but GMP took no action once she left Greater Manchester and was put in care elsewhere.
In an “incredible example of poor practice”, one victim, known as Amber, was herself arrested and then bailed to live with a man who had already been arrested on suspicion of grooming.
The Crown Prosecution Service, in consultation with GMP, decided to name Amber as a co-conspirator in the sexual exploitation of other children in a trial of her abusers, in what the authors describe as “deplorable further abuse of a CSE survivor”.
[..]
Burnham said it was “unacceptable” that five GMP officers, including an assistant chief constable, as well as the head of children’s services at Rochdale council at the time, either refused to cooperate with the review or failed to respond to a request for interview.
A GMP whistleblower, Maggie Oliver, welcomed the review but said victims in Greater Manchester and beyond were “still routinely treated badly or even inhumanely, still not believed, still judged, still dismissed when they report these horrendous crimes”.
The authors were particularly critical of how police treated a girl known as Child 44. She had an abortion at 13 in 2009 and only found out in 2011 that the foetus had been taken by police.
Officers collected the foetus from Rochdale hospital in March 2009 but took no immediate action when the DNA failed to match possible suspects in the investigation at the time.
The foetus was then placed in the freezer at Rochdale police station and forgotten about until a “routine property review” some time later. Meanwhile, the girl continued to be exploited for several years and at one point was at risk of being taken to Pakistan by her abusers.
She told the report’s authors she thought it was “disgusting” that the baby’s remains had been taken without her consent, and that police had “robbed” her.
The girl ultimately gave evidence at a 2012 trial but was “particularly distressed” that the man who impregnated her at 13 was not charged with raping her. He was given an eight-year sentence for conspiracy and trafficking for sexual exploitation, and was released on licence within four years.
Child 44 described being threatened by a man with a gun before her trial and the total absence of any protection after the trial.
She described being chased by men in cars, and bumping into her abuser in Rochdale Asda four or five years after the trial.
““I didn’t even know he was out of prison. Nobody had told me or asked me if I wanted to object to him being released. I see many of the men who abused me all the time, all around Rochdale all the time,” she said.
When the review authors asked Child 44 how police responded, she replied: “They didn’t. They just said lock your door.”
Another victim, Child Three, spoke of the devastating impact of giving evidence against her abusers.
She claimed that when pregnant with her second child she returned home to find “my house was trashed, with slag and grass written across the wall, they ripped the carpet, burned the shed down, and killed the chickens”.
The police just told her to “get out” if it happened again, she claimed. She ended up with two young children in a homeless hostel after her windows were smashed and she received threatening messages.
[..]
So far 42 men have been convicted for non-recent, multi-offender child sexual exploitation in Rochdale across six trials from 2012 to 2023.
Teenage Afghan asylum seekers who abducted and raped girl, 15, sentenced
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/dec/08/afghan-asylum-seekers-who-abducted-and-raped-teenage-girl-sentenced
Two teenage Afghan asylum seekers who abducted and raped a 15-year-old girl have been given custodial sentences.
Jan Jahanzeb and Israr Niazal, both 17, face possible deportation and were ordered to register as sex offenders following the sentencing at Warwick crown court on Monday.
The court heard the two boys had led the highly distressed girl into a “den-type” area in Leamington Spa in May before pushing her to the ground and attacking her.
[..]
The boys pleaded guilty to rape at an earlier hearing.
The court sentenced Jahanzeb, who has been served with deportation papers due to his age at the time of his guilty plea, to a youth detention term of 10 years and eight months.
Niazal was sentenced to nine years and 10 months. As he was 16 at the time of the guilty plea, the judge invited the government to recommend deportation.
The pair will start their sentences at a young offender institution and move to prison at a later date. They were also made to sign the sex offender register for life and given an indefinite restraining order.
The judge lifted reporting restrictions protecting the identities of the defendants, who she said had “betrayed” those who come to Britain seeking sanctuary and observe the laws of this country.
“A lack of information stokes public anger and leads to the unchecked spread of false information,” the judge said.
[..]
At the trial, the court heard that both teenagers had arrived in the UK from Afghanistan as unaccompanied child asylum seekers. Jahanzeb came to the UK in January this year, while Niazal arrived in November 2024.
Footage taken by the victim was shown in court and was described by the judge as “highly distressing”. In the video, the victim could be heard crying and shouting for help.
Another video taken after the incident by the victim showed her crying, screaming for help and detailing the offences.
Asylum seeker at centre of Essex hotel protests jailed for 12 months
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/sep/23/asylum-seeker-at-centre-of-essex-hotel-protests-jailed-for-12-months
An asylum seeker staying at a hotel in Essex that became the focus of protests has been jailed for 12 months for the assault of a 14-year-old girl and a woman.
Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, 38, from Ethiopia, who had been living in the Bell hotel in Epping, was found guilty last month of two counts of sexual assault and one of attempted sexual assault, committed days after arriving in the UK on a small boat.
Anger over the case prompted protests outside the hotel over the summer that far-right activists and others sought to exploit.
Kebatu wants to be deported after serving his time in prison, his lawyer told Chelmsford magistrates court. His sentence was announced as new rules come into force on Tuesday under which foreign prisoners could be deported at an earlier point in their sentence to free up jail space. Those serving fixed-term sentences with no right to stay in the UK could be deported after serving 30% of their jail term, instead of half of it as at present.
This article is more than 3 months old
Asylum seeker at centre of Essex hotel protests jailed for 12 months
This article is more than 3 months old
Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, 38, was convicted last month of assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman
Ben Quinn and Rajeev Syal
Tue 23 Sep 2025 18.49 CEST
An asylum seeker staying at a hotel in Essex that became the focus of protests has been jailed for 12 months for the assault of a 14-year-old girl and a woman.
Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu, 38, from Ethiopia, who had been living in the Bell hotel in Epping, was found guilty last month of two counts of sexual assault and one of attempted sexual assault, committed days after arriving in the UK on a small boat.
Anger over the case prompted protests outside the hotel over the summer that far-right activists and others sought to exploit.
Kebatu wants to be deported after serving his time in prison, his lawyer told Chelmsford magistrates court. His sentence was announced as new rules come into force on Tuesday under which foreign prisoners could be deported at an earlier point in their sentence to free up jail space. Those serving fixed-term sentences with no right to stay in the UK could be deported after serving 30% of their jail term, instead of half of it as at present.
It is understood that the Home Office will seek to deport Kebatu, who has served 30% of his sentence owing to time spent in custody.
Kebatu’s trial heard he told two teenagers eating pizza in Epping that he “wanted to have a baby with them” and tried to kiss them.
The 14-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted by Kebatu said in a victim personal statement that her school uniform now made her feel “exposed” and she was “checking over my shoulder” when out with friends.
The woman he assaulted said in her statement that Kebatu “did not even appear to know that what he’s done was wrong”, and that she had felt anger and frustration since the attempted assault.
The district judge, Christopher Williams, said Kebatu posed a “significant risk of reoffending”. He ordered him to sign the sex offenders’ register for 10 years, and made him the subject of a five-year sexual harm prevention order. He also ordered that Kebatu pay £650 prosecution costs and a £187 victim surcharge.
[..]
The judge agreed with the author of a pre-sentence report that Kebatu was “manipulative”. When interviewed by a probation officer, he raised mental health difficulties and a lack of English as reasons why he either could not remember what had happened or could not talk about it.
Williams also told him: “I’ve no doubt the author of the report is correct and you couldn’t have anticipated that your offending behaviour as an asylum seeker housed at the Bell hotel would cause such a response from the public, particularly in Epping but also across the UK, resulting in mass demonstrations and fear that children in the UK are not safe. It’s evident to me that your shame and remorse isn’t because of the offences you’ve committed, but because of the impact they’ve had.”
The area around the Bell hotel became the focus of unrest during the summer, with Essex police making dozens of arrests and charging more than 20 people in connection with incidents of disorder, which included officers being assaulted.
The political storm around the case continued on Tuesday, with the Conservative party accusing the government of failing to listen to people in Epping.
[..]
Shabana Mahmood, when serving as justice secretary, disclosed plans for reforms in August to deport eligible foreign prisoners immediately after they received a custodial sentence. The change is included in the sentencing bill, currently going through parliament.
‘They thought we were problem children’: how grooming victims were failed in Oldham
National inquiry on grooming gangs will look at how police ignored girls while officials feared fuelling the far right
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/dec/31/how-grooming-victims-were-failed-oldham-children
[..]
By 2006, there were concerns that groups of offenders were targeting children at high schools. One girl, later referred to in court as Child X, fell into their clutches while truanting when she was 12 years old. By 14, she had been abused by 300 men and was addicted to crack cocaine and heroin.
“Unless you scratch below the surface you do not realise the enormity of the problem,” Ruth Baldwin, then the executive director for young people and families at Oldham council, said in December 2006. “We are not talking about teenage relationships. These are men in their 20s, 30s, and beyond.”
[..]
Although Oldham council now accepts its failings and has welcomed the national inquiry, at first some officials were privately baffled by the scrutiny the town was receiving. For many years, Oldham had prided itself on a child sexual exploitation strategy that was seen as being ahead of its time.
When Baldwin, who left Oldham council in 2007, first spoke of her concerns about teenagers being preyed on by older men the previous year, she announced a new taskforce designed to combat the problem. The project – involving the council, police, health services and the charity Barnardo’s – was named Operation Messenger. It was seen as being so groundbreaking that it won a Greater Manchester police award for partnership working in its first year. Yet the accolades the project received obscured a troubling truth: Operation Messenger failed many of the girls it came into contact with.
A safeguarding review, commissioned by the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, and published in 2022, concluded that “the quality of casework by both the police and social care” working on Operation Messenger was “generally very poor and characterised by a failure to appropriately initiate multi-agency child protection procedures when children were known to be at risk of significant harm”.
The review found no evidence to substantiate social media rumours that the Labour-led council was covering up the scale of the problem to protect its vote among the town’s Muslim population. Operation Messenger investigated alleged offenders from a range of racial backgrounds, including white men. However, exploitation by British Asian men – particularly those of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage – formed a significant chunk of its caseload. Throughout the project’s eight-year lifespan, the agencies involved wrestled with how to address the problem without fuelling the far right, perhaps mindful that Oldham had already been torn apart by racial division during the 2001 riots.
[..]
Police said in the same document that there was a “need to continue to provide support to the Messenger team” but warned: “Further cases in Oldham might bring wider media interest and further exploitation of the issue by the BNP and English Defence League. There is therefore a risk of further demonstrations and the risk of increased hate crimes.” It added that Muslim communities felt “demonised”.
[..]
She was 12 when she was kidnapped from a police station in October 2006, as she tried to report a sexual assault by a man in a nearby churchyard. She was then trafficked around the town to be abused by multiple men. She ended the night in a quiet cul-de-sac, at the home of Shakil Chowdhury, where she remembers being raped for hours by five men.
[..]
uring his trial, Chowdhury named two accomplices, but police did not follow up this information, according to the 2022 safeguarding review. The men remained at large and, in 2009, one tried to murder his wife.
[..]
Walker-Roberts, now 32, has campaigned for an independent inquiry in Oldham for more than five years and hopes it will help establish whether Chowdhury, a British citizen born in Bangladesh, and his accomplices could have been stopped before they attacked her. Many years after her ordeal she tracked down some of his former neighbours; she later told the council and the safeguarding review that they recalled a “conveyor belt” of children arriving at Chowdhury’s house in taxis. Separate sources say at least one neighbour tried to alert the council before Chowdhury was arrested.
On another occasion, a few months before Walker-Roberts was targeted, the Guardian understands a 14-year-old girl, missing from a children’s home 20 miles away in another county, was found in the street, apparently having just visited Chowdhury’s house. Sources say a neighbour who helped return her to the home was later visited by detectives from another force, but Chowdhury appears to have escaped their inquiries unscathed.
[..]
There are also fears that senior officials didn’t understand the complexities of child sexual exploitation. Peter Fahy, a former chief constable of Greater Manchester police, described Operation Messenger, which was closed and absorbed into a regional taskforce in 2014, as being focused on “child prostitution”.
The story of Child X – the 12-year-old who went on to be abused by 300 men after she started skipping school – came to light when she stabbed one alleged offender in a row over money. The person the police pursued was an older teenager who had introduced the girl to the offenders. She was in her early 20s by the time she appeared in court. She was handed a 12-month suspended sentence and ordered to sign the sex offender register for 10 years for causing and arranging for a child to enter into prostitution.
[..]
A 20-year-old defendant was sentenced to a 12-month supervision order for the repeated abduction of a girl from Oldham who had been abused by Asian men. The girl’s ordeal had begun when she was 10 and the defendant was 16 with a “boyfriend” who took them out in cars to drink alcohol with other men. The Guardian sent a freedom of information request to Greater Manchester police, asking how many teenage girls had been arrested or charged by Operation Messenger, but the force said it would be too expensive to retrieve the data.
Walker-Roberts, who was once described in files as “attention-seeking” when she disclosed her abuse to a social worker, hopes the Oldham strand of the inquiry will focus just as much on how victims like her were treated by the professionals employed to help them as it will on the cultural factors that could have led to them being abused. She said many were already vulnerable by the time they were targeted by grooming gangs, having experienced domestic or sexual abuse within their families.
Twitchy announces she will resign on Friday. Good riddance. I will never forget her smirking face as she announced they would find everyone who contributed to the TRUCKERS. Disgraceful, pushy WEF committee chair. Shame.
Will herself freeze Zelenskyy and his wife’s bank accounts? She will be responsible for the billions of dollars Canadian taxpayers gave to the Ukraine! What a terrible joke. Will Brookfield be the main company to rebuild? Will Carney be rewarded?