LONDON: A Muslim man who was so hungry while fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan that he killed a swan to eat was jailed for two months at a court in Britain on Wednesday.

Shamsu Miah, 52, killed the mute swan at a boating pond in the north Welsh seaside resort of Llandudno on September 25 -- only the second day of fasting in Britain.

All mute swans in Britain belong to the sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II, an historical quirk dating from the 12th century.

When challenged by police, Miah said: "I am a Muslim, I am fasting, I needed to eat."

Llandudno Magistrates Court heard that Miah had blood on his shirt and white feathers in his beard.

Prosecutor Jim Neary said: "When interviewed he said, 'I was hungry, I had to eat the swan so I killed it, I stabbed it. I did nothing wrong, it was just a bird, I needed to eat'."

"The officers told him the swan was the property of the queen and he replied, 'I hate the queen, I hate this country'."

Judge Andrew Shaw told Miah: "You killed a swan at night. It was a cruel and reprehensible act.

"I don't know how it died; there seems to be some speculation that you bit it but I accept you killed it with a knife. It is a taboo act and the only sentence I can pass is one of imprisonment."

Miah had pleaded guilty to intentionally killing a wild bird and possessing a bladed article. He was released from custody having already served his two-month sentence while on remand.
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Permanent Link posted by J @ 9:03 am 11 comments

GAZA CITY (AFP) - Two Italian Red Cross workers were abducted at gunpoint in the Gaza Strip, just hours after arriving from Jerusalem, in the latest foreigner abduction to blight the chaotic territory.

The two men were driving alone back to Gaza City from the southern town of Khan Yunis when they were stopped by gunmen, forced out of their vehicle at gunpoint and driven away, an International Red Cross spokesman said.

"Both of them were Italian Red Cross workers and both were Italian," said ICRC spokesman Simon Schorno, naming them as Claudio Moroni, 36, and Gianmarco Onorato, 63.

Palestinian security forces have mobilized to search for the abducted aid workers and set up checkpoints on roads throughout southern Gaza, Palestinian security sources said.

The two Italians had arrived in the Gaza Strip from Jerusalem only Tuesday morning, Schorno said, to work on a joint mission between the Italian Red Cross and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society on a "psychological support project".

Masked gunmen forced the two foreigners out of their vehicle at a junction in Khan Yunis and into their own car, driving off to an unknown destination, a Palestinian security source said. No group immediately claimed responsibility.

Schorno said they were travelling in a clearly marked Red Cross vehicle, adding it was not unusual for foreign Red Cross staff to travel alone.

He was unable to provide any other personal details about the two men and confirmed that no news had been heard from them since they were seized.

A spokesman for the Italian consulate in east Jerusalem said the Italian authorities were investigating.

Kidnappings of foreigners have increased in the impoverished and increasingly lawless Palestinian territory, which has been mired in an unprecedented financial and political crisis for months.

Most of the victims have been released unharmed in days.

Around 20 foreigners, including many journalists, have been taken hostage in more than a year by gunmen generally looking to secure the release of Palestinians detained by the Palestinian Authority.

An Italian journalist working for the Corriere Della Sera newspaper was abducted in the Gaza Strip on September 10 but freed safe and sound later the same day.

Last month, a Spanish aid worker and photographer were kidnapped by gunmen in two separate incidents in the Gaza Strip before also being released unhurt.

Most Gaza-based kidnappings end with the victims released unharmed within a few days, but last August two journalists for US television Fox News were held for 13 days by a previously unknown militant group, Holy Jihad Brigades.

Their abductors demanded the release of all Muslim prisoners held in US jails, the first time that Gaza kidnappers made demands of a foreign government rather than the Palestinian Authority.
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Permanent Link posted by J @ 7:20 pm 3 comments

JABALIYA REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip (AFP) - Palestinians were celebrating victory over Israel in a Gaza refugee camp after a human shield of hundreds prompted the military to abort a threatened air strike.

"This is a victory for the Palestinian people. It is a defeat for the Israeli F-16s," said Ahmed Fuad Barud, a 33-year-old militant in the radical Popular Resistance Committees, on Sunday.

"Every time they (the Israeli military) call from now on, no one will leave their homes," he said from his house in the Jabaliya refugee camp which Israel had warned overnight would be destroyed in a campaign against militant infrastructure.

The military called off the strike after several hundred Palestinians late Saturday formed a human shield around the house, home of wanted militant Wael Barud of the Resistance Committees.

"Basically yes," a military spokesman said when asked if the raid was aborted. "We don't want to hurt uninvolved civilians. The terrorists are using uninvolved civilians as human shields.

"We'll continue to operate against terrorist infrastructure while continuing to distinguish between the civilians and the terrorists," the spokesman added.

Between 200 to 300 neighbours had flocked to the Barud family home after receiving the warning late Saturday. Neighbours and militants gathered at the house throughout Sunday to celebrate what they hailed as a victory.

"The sons of the Jews cannot break us, our will or our resistance," said family member Abu Emad Barud, calling himself a local leader in the armed wing of the ruling Hamas movement.

"These are the boys of Islam, the boys of the resistance who have gathered here," he added, gesturing to those circling around him.

The wanted Wael Barud is a member of the Popular Resistance Committees, one of three factions that claimed responsibility for the capture of an Israeli corporal in June, triggering a massive Israeli offensive in Gaza.

Israel has been carrying out nightly raids against targets across the Gaza Strip since rockets fired by Palestinian militants in northern Gaza killed a mother of two in the southern town of Sderot on Wednesday.

Another salvo of Palestinian rockets on Sunday left three people wounded in the same town, including one seriously, as the Israeli cabinet weighed its options in combatting the rocket attacks.

On November 3, several hundred heavily veiled women managed to rescue 15 Palestinian gunmen from a mosque in the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanun by marching in a chain of human shields during a bloody Israeli ground offensive.

Four protestors, including two women, were killed and another 25 people wounded by Israeli gunfire ahead of the daring rescue attempt.
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Permanent Link posted by J @ 8:18 pm 1 comments

One of Britain's most prominent speakers on Muslim issues is today exposed as a supporter of David Irving, the controversial historian who for years denied the Holocaust took place.

Asghar Bukhari, a founder member of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC), which describes itself as Britain's largest Muslim civil rights group, sent money to Irving and urged Islamic websites to ask visitors to make donations to his fighting fund.

Bukhari contacted the discredited historian, sentenced this year to three years in an Austrian prison for Holocaust denial, after reading his website. He headed his mail to Irving with a quotation attributed to the philosopher John Locke: 'All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good people to stand idle.'

In one email Bukhari tells Irving: 'You may feel like you are on your own but rest assured many people are with you in your fight for the Truth.' Bukhari pledges to make a donation of £60 to Irving's fighting fund and says that he has asked 'a few of my colleagues to send some in too'. He also offers to send Irving a book, They Dare to Speak Out, by Paul Findley, a former US Senator, who has attacked his country's close relationship with Israel. Bukhari says Findley 'has suffered like you in trying to expose certain falsehoods perpetrated by the Jews'.

In a follow-up letter, Bukhari writes: 'Here is the cheque I promised. Good luck, if there is any other way I can help please don't hestitate to call me. I have also asked many Muslim websites to create links to your own and ask for donations.'

Bukhari confirmed sending the letters in 2000. 'I had a lot of sympathy for anyone who opposed Israel,' Bukhari told The Observer said. 'I wrote letters to anyone who was tough against the Israelis - David Irving, Paul Findley, the PLO."I don't feel I have done anything wrong, to be honest. At the time I was of the belief he [Irving] was anti-Zionist, being smeared for nothing more then being anti-Zionist.

'The pro-Israeli lobby often accused people of anti-Semitism and smear tactics against groups and individuals is well known. I condemn anti-Semitism as strongly as I condemn Zionism (in my opinion they are both racist ideologies). I also believe that anyone who denies the Holocaust is wrong (I don't think they should be put behind bars for it though).'

At his trial this year, Irving said he had been 'mistaken' to say the gas chambers did not exist. He had been due to attend a conference hosted by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, questioning the 'truthfulness' of the Holocaust.

'David Irving was described by a High Court judge as a falsifier of history and a false denier,' said Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust. 'I can't understand why anyone would want to support his views, let alone encourage and influence others to sympathise with them. I'm appalled.'

Earlier this year, speaking on behalf of MPAC, Bukhari said a march in London in protest at the publication of satirical cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad should not have gone ahead. 'We believe it should have been banned and the march stopped,' Bukhari said. 'Freedom of speech has to be responsible.'

MPAC was banned from university campuses in 2004 after being branded 'anti-semitic' by the National Union of Students. It is becoming increasingly influential within the Muslim community. At the last election the organisation drew up a list of Labour candidates with links to Israel, whom it urged Muslims to vote out. One MP, Lorna Fitzsimons, lost her seat to the Lib Dems by 400 votes.

'Getting into bed with Holocaust revisionists who are the heroes of racist organisations which use Islamophobia to divide communities on racial and religious grounds is just extraordinary and very, very sad,' Fitzsimons said.

MPAC, which strongly denies allegations that it is anti-semitic, accused The Observer of 'twisting an innocent gesture of support (even if gravely mistaken) into more than it is'. The story was 'just another Islamaphobic attack aimed at undermining and harming the brave individuals who support the Palestinian cause and the cause of Muslims within Britain.'
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Permanent Link posted by J @ 8:10 pm 3 comments

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The death of a man with Moroccan roots who was run over by a woman after he stole her bag has inflamed Dutch racial tensions that have smouldered since the murder of a filmmaker critical of Islam.

Several hundred people, including many Moroccans, marched on Friday from the site in an immigrant neighbourhood in Amsterdam where the 19-year-old died on Monday. The woman whose bag he stole drove her car into his moped, crushing him against a tree.

The friends and family of the youth, named by the media as Ali El Bejjati, say his death was a racially motivated murder. Two months ago, filmmaker Theo van Gogh was killed in the same district, allegedly by a 26-year-old Dutch-Moroccan.

The story has been front-page news all week in the Netherlands, home to about one million Muslims, more than a quarter of Moroccan descent. De Telegraaf daily said on Friday it was the man's own fault.

Geert Wilders, an anti-immigration politician whose popularity has soared since Van Gogh was murdered, called for the government to strip criminals with dual citizenship of their Dutch nationality.

"Arresting the woman makes the victim the criminal and the criminal a victim. It's turning the world on its head," he said.

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende was forced on Friday to defend Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk, who said the woman had not committed murder and the death would never have happened if the youth had not stolen the bag. A placard reading "Verdonk, murderess" was placed at the site of the death.

Van Gogh's murder on November 2 triggered a series of attacks on mosques and churches and a wave of death threats against politicians, including Verdonk and Wilders, shattering the Netherlands' reputation for tolerance.

The woman, who prosecutors want to charge for manslaughter, was released on Thursday pending further investigations.
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Permanent Link posted by J @ 2:39 pm 5 comments

Three bombs have exploded in a predominantly-Muslim province in southern Thailand, killing one person and injuring about 30.

The attacks followed a visit and a call for peace on Thursday by the new Prime Minister, Surayud Chulanont.

Five soldiers were hurt in one roadside bombing in Narathiwat province. An hour later another roadside bomb and one in a tea shop killed one and injured 24.

More than 1,500 people have died in the restive south since January 2004.

The first bomb of about 15kg (33lb) and possibly hidden in a fire extinguisher exploded as a patrol of soldiers was passing. Two of the injured soldiers were said to be in critical condition.

An hour later, a 5kg bomb went off in a tea shop followed five minutes later by a similar-sized roadside bomb that killed a street vendor.

Since coming to power following a coup in September, the army-appointed Mr Surayud has apologised for previous tough policies in the Muslim-majority, Malay-speaking region.

But the violence has increased since his appointment.

Bombs also exploded on 9 November, a day after his previous visit.

Brad Adams of the US-based Human Rights Watch said: "Insurgent groups are targeting civilians to show their power and highlight the Thai government's weakness."

The group called on the government to take concrete steps to rebuild trust in the region.
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Permanent Link posted by J @ 9:15 am 1 comments