Author Archives: taffy

My week wearing a burka: Just a few yards of black fabric, but it felt like a prison

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Liz JonesTimesOnline..Squatting next to me is my burka. It looks so innocuous: just a few yards of black fabric. But, my goodness, how oppressive it is, how suffocating, how transforming.

Moved by the plight of Lubna Hussein, a Sudanese woman who faces 40 lashes for wearing trousers in public, I decided to spend a week enveloped in what she should have been wearing.

Out shopping one day, I caught sight of myself in a Knightsbridge store window. Instead of me staring back, I saw a dark, depressed alien. A smudge.

A nothing.

On my first day, I was unaccountably afraid to put on my burka. When I did pluck up courage, I felt suffocated.

Driving to my local station, I felt blinkered, like a racehorse. Walking to the platform, I could hardly breathe: I kept getting my nose out from beneath its shroud for fresh air. I felt weak, and faint and itchy.

I walked to the kiosk to buy coffee, staring at my feet to avoid catching anyone’s eye.

‘Mumble mumble,’ I said to the young man serving.

To his credit – the station is in Somerset, so I’m pretty sure this was the first time he’d encountered the full burka – he didn’t bat an eyelid.

I automatically lifted the cup to my lips. Ah. How on earth do women eat or drink? Later that day, at a coffee shop in Fulham, I sat outside at a table, faced with an insurmountable sandwich.

An Arab man shouted abuse. I have no idea what he was saying – perhaps I shouldn’t have been out on my own, or perhaps eating is a sin – but the interesting point is that during my week in a burka, he was the only person who gave me any abuse whatsoever.

In fact, throughout my lonely journey, I was met with only helping hands and sympathy. 

‘I have had so much abuse on the train,’ a British Muslim called Um Abdullah complained on Woman’s Hour. Well, she has obviously never travelled with First Great Western.

On one journey home, after a particularly hot day spent steaming like a suet pudding in Regent’s Park, trying to lick a 99, I wobbled to the buffet carriage and mumbled for a stiff gin and tonic. Continue Reading →

Muslim Europe: the demographic time bomb transforming our continent

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Telegraph News 

Muslim InvasionThe EU is facing an era of vast social change, reports Adrian Michaels, and few politicians are taking notice

Britain and the rest of the European Union are ignoring a demographic time bomb: a recent rush into the EU by migrants, including millions of Muslims, will change the continent beyond recognition over the next two decades, and almost no policy-makers are talking about it.

The numbers are startling. Only 3.2 per cent of Spain’s population was foreign-born in 1998. In 2007 it was 13.4 per cent. Europe’s Muslim population has more than doubled in the past 30 years and will have doubled again by 2015. In Brussels, the top seven baby boys’ names recently were Mohamed, Adam, Rayan, Ayoub, Mehdi, Amine and Hamza.

Europe’s low white birth rate, coupled with faster multiplying migrants, will change fundamentally what we take to mean by European culture and society. The altered population mix has far-reaching implications for education, housing, welfare, labour, the arts and everything in between. It could have a critical impact on foreign policy: a study was submitted to the US Air Force on how America’s relationship with Europe might evolve. Yet EU officials admit that these issues are not receiving the attention they deserve.

Jerome Vignon, the director for employment and social affairs at the European Commission, said that the focus of those running the EU had been on asylum seekers and the control of migration rather than the integration of those already in the bloc. “It has certainly been underestimated – there is a general rhetoric that social integration of migrants should be given as much importance as monitoring the inflow of migrants.” But, he said, the rhetoric had rarely led to policy.

The countries of the EU have long histories of welcoming migrants, but in recent years two significant trends have emerged. Migrants have come increasingly from outside developed economies, and they have come in accelerating numbers.

The growing Muslim population is of particular interest. This is not because Muslims are the only immigrants coming into the EU in large numbers; there are plenty of entrants from all points of the compass. But Muslims represent a particular set of issues beyond the fact that atrocities have been committed in the West in the name of Islam. Continue Reading →

British police are now the useless uniformed wing of New Labour

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Community police forceFrom Mail Online…Our useless and complacent police can now see their doom staring them in the face.

The people of a Southampton suburb have clubbed together to hire private security men to do what the modern police ‘services’ refuse to do – patrol the streets.

As one resident of the area said: ‘We do see the police now and again round here but they are always busy with other things.’

And so they are. This week we learned that two female police sergeants and a ‘Community Support’ officer had shrouded themselves in Islamic gear, apparently to find out what it was like.

It must have made a change from going round telling people to nail down their possessions and barricade their houses because the police can’t do anything about thieves. Or going on diversity training.

Much better if they had tried living as lonely pensioners on a lawless estate, listening to the jeers of knots of drunk or drugged-up youths smashing bottles against their walls and urinating in their front gardens.

Or how about being really, really adventurous, dressing up as British police officers instead of members of the LAPD, ditching the huge club, the scowl, the pepper spray and the cuffs and going round the towns and cities alone, approachable and on foot?

Forget it. That’s not what the modern police are for. They’re useless for a reason, not by accident.

They have become the uniformed wing of New Labour, not preventing crime or seeing that it is punished – but mediating neutrally between ‘victim’ and ‘offender’ and spying out political incorrectness, in their own ranks and beyond.

Sooner or later, millions of people will catch on to the fact that the police in this country aren’t on their side and don’t want to do what we pay them for. Those who can afford it will hire their own protection. Everyone else will just suffer.

The three main political parties will do nothing.

Muslim couple file human rights beef over Superstore salami

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Anything for a buck. Disguised as religious and cultural rights.

Oh this poor Muslim family. I’m surprised they did not have their stomachs pumped and a transfusion of “clean” Muslim blood.

William Issa. Douche of the month club

METRO VANCOUVER – There’s no meat in a Muslim couple’s beef about the salami at a Coquitlam Real Canadian Superstore, B.C.’s Human Rights Tribunal ruled earlier this week.

The couple, William and Micheline Issa, filed a complaint with the tribunal on behalf of themselves and their three children, saying the store served them salami containing pork a year ago.

The couple said they eat only 100-per cent beef salami, as consuming pork would violate their religious beliefs.

BC Human Rights Tribunal Chair Heather McNaughton dismissed the complaint, ruling, in part, that it wouldn’t likely succeed.

A deli assistant admitted she mistakenly served salami that contained pork but said the couple told them of the error before receiving the salami.

The Issas concurred but said said in the complaint that they were concerned they had previously been served salami containing pork.

Loblaws, which owns the store, had offered to settle the complaint by paying the couple $5,000 for injury to dignity, feelings and self-respect, and giving another $5,000 to a charity of the couple’s choice.

But the couple proceeded with the complaint.

That “reasonable” settlement, the fact that the deli assisant merely made an error and the lack of proof that the family was previously served pork salami led the tribunal chair to dismiss the complaint.

One other fact didn’t help the couple: “They continue to shop at the Superstore and to purchase all-beef salami from the Deli,” the chair wrote.

William Issa ran for council in Port Coquitlam in 2005 and 2009. His candicacy saw him come 9th in the most recent elections with over 1800 votes. He spent just over $7000 on his political run, $2000 of which came from contributors.

Arrests at anti-Islamic protest

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PHOTOS  From Red Squirrel article-1205263-05FFEA63000005DC-463_468x286[7]article-1205263-05FFED2C000005DC-95_468x334[5]Of course we all remember Muslims allowed to march with signs calling for the deaths of all who appose Islam in which noarrests were made. Or the protests in which Muslims hurled insults and whatever they could lift at police, again no arrests. It will be interesting to see who got arrested during this demo.

BBC…Police in Birmingham have arrested 31 people during protests by anti-fascists and a group demonstrating against Islamic fundamentalism.

Thanks Philip

(Thanks Philip)


One protest involved a group known as Casuals United, which police said were made up of local football fans.

Another “counter-protest” in the city centre was organised by United Against Fascism, West Midlands Police said.

The protest, which began at 1800 (BST), is ongoing and police said disorder had been sporadic.

A police spokeswoman said public safety was an “absolute priority”.

Speaking before the demonstration on the West Midlands Police website, Superintendent Matt Ward said there had been a similar protest against Islamic fundamentalism a month before which 70 to 90 people attended.

He said the police wanted to balance the rights of protestors with retailers and shoppers who wanted to use the city centre for their normal business.

Two people were injured in the disturbances which began at 1800 BST.

Police said there were “sporadic incidents of disturbance in the city centre” with the majority of the arrests being for disorder.

There was one report of criminal damage to a vehicle, but more were expected. No police officers were hurt.

‘Burning flag’

Resident Gary Nichols witnessed the disturbances from his city centre flat and said he was unable to go outside for about two and a half hours.

“It was very disheartening to see,” he told the BBC.

“I’ve never experienced anything like it before in the three years I’ve lived here.

“It started off with a group of white guys who were chanting ‘England, England’. I thought they were just football fans, but then a larger group of black and Asian people turned up and it all kicked off.

“You had people burning the Union flag. People were being kicked – some of them weren’t anything to do with the protests.

“It all seemed to be very systematic – groups were arriving in cars and getting involved in the violence.

“It really wasn’t nice to see and I hope I never see it again.”

Speaking before Saturday’s demonstrations, on the West Midlands Police website, Superintendent Matt Ward said there had been a similar protest against Islamic fundamentalism last month, involving 70 to 90 people.

He said July’s protest had been “vocal” but peaceful.

Asked about the latest demonstrations, Supt Ward said the police wanted to balance the rights of protesters with retailers and shoppers who wanted to use the city centre for their normal business.

Fatah: Return Jerusalem before talks go on

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Palestine laughs at the thought of peace with Israel. Demanding the impossible is a sure way to keep the fight going.

fatah_logoThe Jerusalem Post…The sixth Fatah General Assembly decreed on Saturday that the return of both east and west Jerusalem to Palestinian control was a “red line” which was non-negotiable, and would need to be fulfilled before any peace talks with Israel could renew, Israel Radio reported.

According to the report, a document adopted by the Fatah delegates of the assembly declared that Palestinians would “continue to be sacrificed until residents of Jerusalem are free of settlements and settlers.” The document went on to state that all of Jerusalem, including the surrounding villages, belonged to the Palestinians, and lands conquered following the Six Day War shared the same status as those located within the Green Line.

Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz blasted the statement Saturday, saying that the declaration was a clear message to all those who maintained the “illusion that the Palestinians were prepared for compromise,” Israel Radio reported.

Israel should take legal steps in response to the decree, Israel Radio quoted the minister as saying. According to the report, he urged the government to expand the municipal authority of Jerusalem to include Ma’aleh Adumim, Givat Ze’ev, Gush Etzion, and Beitar. In addition, Katz encouraged further construction in surrounding neighborhoods so as to increase Jewish presence in the city.

Also at the conference on Saturday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was named head of Fatah.

“This convention must be a new beginning for the Fatah movement,” said Abbas to thunderous applause. “In our history we’ve had many launches and setbacks. Sometimes we have reached the edge of the abyss – but we have always returned stronger,” he said.

Hundreds of delegates cheered and clapped as senior Fatah official Tayib Abdul Rahim announced that Abbas was chosen to lead the party. There was no vote because no other candidate came forward to challenge Abbas’ five-year rule.

Technically Abbas can only lead the party for five years, until a new conference is announced, but this is the first time Fatah members have met in 20 years and it is not clear when they will convene again.

Yemeni cleric to be deported for Hamas fundraising

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Sheik_Mohammed_Ali__al-moayadCBC .. A jailed Yemeni cleric will be deported home from the U.S. after pleading guilty Friday in New York City to raising money for Hamas.

As part of the plea deal, Mohammed Ali Hasan Al-Moayad will be sentenced to time served — more than six years — and sent back to Yemen.

A Brooklyn jury had convicted the 60-year-old of supporting terrorism in 2005, for which he received a 75-year prison term. The U.S. government touted the verdict as a major victory in its war against terrorism. But an appeals court threw out the conviction last year, ruling that certain evidence at Al-Moayad’s trial was inflammatory testimony and should not have been admissible.

Rather than try him again, prosecutors opted for a plea deal because to spare government time and expense. They also said the cleric has severe health problems.

The United States considers Hamas, the political and militant group in power in the Gaza Strip, to be a terrorist organization.

Terrorists kidnap, torture boy to bully Iraqi policeman

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Khidir and Abdul QaderFALLUJA, Iraq (CNN) — Like many young boys, Khidir loves playing with toy cars and wants to be a policeman like his father when he grows up. But it was his father’s very job that caused the tiny child to suffer the unimaginable.

Khidir was just 6 years old when he was savagely ripped away from his family, kidnapped by al Qaeda operatives in Iraq.

“They beat me with a shovel, they pulled my teeth out with pliers, they would go like this and pull it,” said Khidir, now 8, demonstrating with his hands. “And they would make me work on the farm gathering carrots.”

What followed was even more horrific, an ordeal that would last for two years in captivity. Khidir and his father spoke to CNN recently, more than half a year after his rescue by Iraqi police.

“This is where they hammered a nail into my leg and then they pulled it out,” he says, lifting up his pant leg to show a tiny wound.

He says his captors also pulled out each of his tiny fingernails, broke both his arms, and beat him repeatedly on the side of the head with a shovel. He still suffers chronic headaches. He remembers them laughing as they inflicted the pain.

“I would think about my mommy and daddy,” he replies, when asked how he managed to get through the agony.

His father, Abdul Qader, struggles for words. “When he tells me about how they would torture him, I can’t tolerate it. I start crying,” he says. “What hurts me the most is when they hammered a nail into his leg.”

The father, a police officer, was sleeping at the police station in Falluja when his son was kidnapped. It was too dangerous to go home regularly. Although Falluja was no longer controlled by insurgents, assassinations against police were common.

“I woke up to the sound of a huge explosion … and then I heard my name on the radio. I ran outside and they came to me saying your house was blown up,” he says.

“When the police patrol came back, they all started kissing and comforting me,” he continues. “I was asking, ‘What’s going on? Where is my family?’ They told me that they took my son. This was a disaster. I went mad that day, I wasn’t normal, I was hysterical.”

Khidir’s grandmother was at home with the family at the time.

“The kidnappers climbed the fence and kicked in the door,” she says.”They were screaming for Abdul Qader. I told them he’s not here. They called me a liar and said we want his son. His son was hiding behind me, clutching my clothes. I said this is not his son. They hit me on the back with a rifle and ripped him out of my arms.”

The last thing she remembers were his screams of “Granny, Granny!” Continue Reading →

In Lahore workers kill factory owner accused of blasphemy

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According to an eyewitness, the owner was seen removing an old calendar with verses from the Qur‘an and that was sufficient for workers to kill him and two other men. The enraged mob also assaulted management employees and set the factory on fire. Pakistani Prime Minister Gilani travels to Gojra today to express solidarity to Christian victims of the previous massacre.

Mad Muslim MobLahore (AsiaNews/Agencies) – A factory owner and two other men were killed when workers from his plant attacked them along the Muridke-Sheikhupura Road, not far from Lahore, for allegedly desecrating the holy Qur’an, a private TV channel reported on Tuesday. However, another TV station said the owner, identified only as Najeebullah, and the two other men were killed over the factory administration’s failure to pay workers.

The incident began when a worker came into the factory at around 2 pm and saw that the owner had taken down an old calendar, which had verses from the holy Qur’an written on it, and put it on a table. The worker accused the owner for what he thought was “desecration” of the holy Qur‘an. When a guard tried to stop him, he ran out into the working area and started gathering his colleagues, claiming the owner had committed ‘blasphemy’.

When the group of workers surrounded Najeebullah, his guard tried to protect him by firing in the air, but this further enraged the crowd; shots were fired killing the owner and his guard.

In their rage workers attacked the factory administration, beat up several employees and set the plant on fire.

Police rushed to the site to bring the situation under control, but the angry mob turned on them and seized their weapons.

This incident follows a similar one in Gojra (Punjab) where a group of Christians was burnt alive just a few days ago for alleged blasphemy.

Today Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani visited the Punjabi town to express solidarity with the Christian community and reiterated his condemnation of the outrage which is currently under investigation.

American Prisons now hothouses for Islam

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Pakistani religious leaders Sami ul-Haq and Fazrul Rehman predict that “in the next 10 years, Americans will wake up to the existence of an Islamic army in their midst—an army of jihadis who will force America to abandon imperialism and listen to the voice of Allah.”  That army is being formed within the prison system.

pagehead_homegrown

CanadaFreePress thelastcrusade.org

CNN reports that more than 25% of the Muslims in America are converts who have embraced Islam in the wake of 9/11.

The report conveys the impression that Islam now attracts adherents from all religious, social, economic and racial backgrounds through interviews with recent converts – – both white women – – Allison Poole, formerly a Southern Baptist, and Barbara Cartokuke, a lapsed Roman Catholic.

Ms. Poole claims that Islam has heightened her religious awareness since she now prays five times a day, and Barbara Cartokuke says that Islam has brought her a “one-on-one relationship with God” that she was unable to establish by reciting Hail Marys.

While it is true that Islam is the fastest growing religion in America with over 1.5 million new converts, the development is far from multicultural or multiracial.

The CNN news clip fails to point out that 90% of the 1.5 million new converts are African Americans, and that 60% become Muslims while serving time in prison.

Prison – – not the college campus, the workplace, or the neighborhood  mosque – – has become the breeding ground for wholesale conversions of blacks.

The appeal of Islam to inmates is not difficult to explain.

Muslim prisoners demand and receive the right to observe congregational salat not only in the mosque but also the exercise yard, to a separate kitchen for the preparation of separate halal meals, to separate hours for showers and toilets to ensure their privacy, and to sadaqa (financial autonomy for their prison business endeavors, including the sale of incense, aromatic oils, and personal toiletries).1 They refuse to submit to strip-searching and frisking, claiming that such practices violated the Islamic code of wuduzu. These concessions grant Muslims the ability to corner the drug trade within the prison system. Continue Reading →

Expansion of Islamic Saudi Academy in Virginia Approved, Outraging Opponents

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I don’t think I will make many friends when I say, “It is official, Yanks are wanks”. Are you all so willing to sell out your futures for fear of offending the most offencive? The very type of Islamic teaching that puts all Americans at risk is welcomed in Fairfax? This should be making any American with a right mind break out in Tourettes.

Dhimmi USA FOX NEWS.. A controversial Saudi-funded academy that teaches strict adherence to traditional Islamic law has been given the green light to expand its Virginia campus — a decision by local officials that infuriates opponents who say the school’s teachings are anti-American.The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors voted 6-4 Monday to grant a zoning exemption to the Islamic Saudi Academy. The officials said the outcome was based strictly on zoning issues, not on what goes on in the school’s classrooms.

That left some in the community outraged.

“How could they … say they are such fine students? They are fine students but they are learning the wrong thing,” academy critic Ruth Mizell said after the vote, according to MyFOXDC.com.

Jim Lafferty, another opponent, vowed political retaliation against the supervisors who supported the expansion.

“We need to resist these people, make it clear they may have bought six votes in there but they are not buying my vote,” said Lafferty, according to MyFOXDC. “We will support — even if it’s Pee-Wee Herman — we will support whoever is running against them.”

 The academy was founded in 1984 and has some 1,000 students in pre-kindergarten through grade 12. It is the only Saudi-funded school in the United States.

About 80 percent of its students are U.S. citizens from the area’s Muslim communities. Most students attend classes at a second campus in the Alexandria section of Fairfax.

The plans granted approval on Monday permit construction of a building that would eventually accommodate 500 students.

“The community will get an awful lot of development,” said supervisor Penelope A. Gross. “I think (it) will improve the community.”

The school has undergone a series of high-profile examinations of its religious curriculum, which has been revised repeatedly to remove passages that extolled militant jihad and martyrdom. In 2007, at least one textbook still said that the killing of adulterers and apostates was “justified.”

But students, parents and teachers say the school does not teach intolerance.

“Throughout my whole time in ISA, I’ve never been taught to hate anyone,” said Heba Rashed, 16, a junior at the school.

The school’s curriculum was revised at the start of the 2008-09 school year after the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom condemned its textbooks.

Critics of the academy say most of the offensive material has been taken out. But they say the textbooks clearly remain guided by Wahhabism, the fundamentalist school of Sunni Islam that is dominant in Saudi Arabia.

“The stuff about killing, it’s not there anymore,” said Ali Al-Ahmed, the head of the Institute for Gulf Affairs and a critic of the Saudi government, who got copies of the latest textbooks.

Al-Ahmed said references to jihad had been removed from the curriculum. He found that strange, because the idea — which in the Koran is described as “striving in the path of God,” and is not necessarily violent — was essential to Islam.

In the past, textbooks referred to the militant form of jihad. Al-Ahmed said he would have felt better if moderate references to jihad had been kept.

Attorney Lynne Strobel, who represented the academy, said she was pleased with the vote and said the school has undertaken efforts to reduce some of the potential traffic.

Hamas blocks 50 from leaving Gaza

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The Jerusalem Post

Pals and Hamas50 Palestinians who were supposed to cross into Israel from the Gaza Strip Tuesday, mostly to receive medical treatment here, were repelled by Hamas security forces at the Beit Hameches Junction just west of the Erez Crossing in the north-eastern Gaza Strip.

Hamas operatives blocked off the road and prevented the Palestinians from reaching the crossing with Israel.

Israeli officials said the Hamas blockade was likely due to suspicions that among the sick were disguised Fatah officials trying to sneak out of Gaza to attend the Fatah conference which got underway in Bethlehem Tuesday morning.

Hamas men at the junction ordered those arriving at the crossing to return to the Interior Ministry in Gaza City and have their permits to leave the Strip reissued.

The officials also said it was likely that by the end of the day, Hamas would allow the Palestinians to cross into Israel, once it was verified that they indeed required medical attention.

The Fatah conference is the sixth of its kind, and the previous one took place in 1989. It is expected to bring together more than 2,000 delegates from many Arab countries.

Delegates are expected to vote for two of Fatah’s main bodies, the Central Committee and the Revolutionary Council. The first institution consists of 21 members, while the second has 120 seats. Delegates will also discuss Fatah’s strategy, especially concerning the conflict with Israel.

Blasphemy laws, a pretext to attack Pakistan’s religious minorities

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by Fareed Khan-AsiaNews.it
PAKISTAN_(F)_0702_-_Muslims_attacked_100_Christian_homes_after_alleged_blasphemy_(350_x_294)The official death toll in the Gojra massacre now stands at eight. A 35-year-old man succumbs last night to injuries he sustained during the attack by Muslim fundamentalists. Rights activists and minority leaders believe the government condones such attacks by tolerating laws that punish offences against Islam. The Catholic Church of India and Geneva-based World Council of Churches express their solidarity with fellow Christians in Pakistan.

Lahore (AsiaNews) – Pakistan’s parliament has unanimously condemned the attacks against Christians as an inquiry gets underway to quickly find the culprits. Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari announces a compensation package for victims’ families. In spite of all of this Pakistani Christians continue to endure violence and discrimination as the death toll in Gojra rose to eight. For human rights activists and minority leaders blasphemy laws are the cause of the problem.Last night a private TV station announced that a 35-year-old Christian man succumbed in Gojra hospital to the injuries he sustained last Saturday, when a Muslim mob went out of control and attacked the local Christian community.
Federal Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti and Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer handed a preliminary report to President Asif Ali Zardari on the recent riots in Gojra where a semblance of calm is in place following the massive deployment of security forces.

 

For his part President Zardari announced that families that lost a member would get 500,000 rupees (US$ 6,000) as compensation, whilst families that lost their homes, torched by Muslims extremists using a special fuel, would get 300,000 rupees (US$ 3,600). Continue Reading →

Australia detains terror suspects

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OzBBC…Australian police have arrested four people in the southern city of Melbourne after uncovering what they say was a plot to launch an attack.

The group was preparing a suicide attack on an army base, police said.

More than 400 officers were involved in searching 19 properties across the city before dawn on Tuesday.

The suspects are Australian nationals of Somali and Lebanese descent; one man, aged 25, has so far been charged with terrorism offences.

The man from the Glenroy district of Melbourne is due in court later, as are the others detained in the operation.

‘Sobering’

“Police believe members of a Melbourne-based group have been undertaking planning to carry out a terrorist attack in Australia and allegedly involved in hostilities in Somalia,” a police statement said.

The men’s intention was to actually go into the army barracks and to kill as many soldiers as they could before they themselves were killed,” said Tony Negus, acting chief commissioner of the Australian Federal Police.

Holsworthy Barracks on the outskirts of Sydney was one of the planned targets, according to police.

The attack would have been the most serious terrorist attack on Australian soil, he added.

“Members of the group have been actively seeking a fatwa or religious ruling to justify a terror attack on Australia,” said Mr Negus.

“The sobering element of today’s development is the reminder to all Australians that the threat of terrorism is alive and well, and this requires continued vigilance on the part of our security authorities,” said Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

The country’s security level is unchanged at medium, where it has remained since 2003.

Al-Qaeda links

The police said that the raids came after a seven-month operation involving several state and federal agencies.

Homes across several northern Melbourne suburbs were among those raided, The Australian reports.

It adds that those arrested are thought to be linked to the Somali-based al-Shabab group, which seeks to overthrow the Somali government and is believed to have links to al-Qaeda.

The BBC’s Nick Bryant, in Sydney, says reports suggest electronic surveillance was used to monitor members of the group.

Members of the Melbourne-based cell reportedly travelled to Somalia in recent months to train, The Australian reports.