Saudi king vows to destroy Al Qaeda

Saudi King Abdullah vowed in his first television interview as monarch to eliminate Al Qaeda even if the battle took decades to win, condemning the terror network as "the work of the devil".

Abdullah also told US channel ABC in an interview due to be broadcast later on Friday that Riyadh would work to bring down oil prices whose rise he admitted had helped Saudi Arabia while damaging other countries.

The new king, who took over from late half-brother Fahd in April, insisted that Saudi Arabia was doing all it could to halt terror following the 9/11 attacks on the United States, in which most of the hijackers were Saudis.

He said that Saudi would "fight the terrorists and those who support them or condone their actions for 10, 20 or 30 years if we have to, until we eliminate this scourge".

Anti terror laws

Lawyer Louise Christian accused the government of failing to learn the lessons of Northern Ireland with its introduction of new anti terror laws.

Ms Christian, who represented a number of those detained in Guantanamo Bay,
predicted that "there will be a rise in miscarriages like the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four."

Addressing a House of Commons meeting the human rights lawyer drew further
parallels with Ireland predicting that the operation of the anti-terror laws will lead to the creation of an unbridged divide in the community. "People won't co-operate with the police as happened in Northern Ireland," said Ms Christian.

She also criticised the government's plans to extend the period that the police can detain people without charge under anti-terror laws from 14 days
to 3 months. "For the whole of the period of the Troubles with the IRA the
limit on detention was 7 days. The idea that you need three months to analyse evidence is a nonsense," said Ms Christian.

Do you think maybe that mistakes like the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four were made because they only had 7 days and not 3 months to make their case?
Maybe then they wouldn't have had to beat false confessions out of them.

Ban the Qur'an

A Protestant evangelical pressure group has warned that it will try to use the government's racial and religious hatred law to prosecute bookshops selling the Qur'an for inciting religious hatred.

Christian Voice, a fringe fundamentalist group which first came to public prominence this year when it campaigned against the BBC's broadcasting of Jerry Springer The Opera, was among the evangelical organisations taking part in a 1,000-strong demonstration against the bill outside parliament yesterday as the House of Lords held a second reading debate on the measure.

Its director, Stephen Green, said the organisation would consider taking out prosecutions against shops selling the Islamic holy book. He told the Guardian: "If the Qur'an is not hate speech, I don't know what is. We will report staff who sell it. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that unbelievers must be killed."

Dutch Minister proposes ban on burqa

The Netherlands is likely to become the first country in Europe to ban the burka under government proposals that would bring in some of the toughest curbs on Muslim clothing in the world.

The country's Integration Minister, Rita Verdonk, told Parliament that she was going to investigate where and when the burka should be banned.

The burka, traditional clothing in some Islamic societies, covers a woman's face and body, leaving only a strip of gauze for the eyes.

The proposals are likely to win the support of parliament because of the expected backing by right-wing parties. But they have caused outrage among Muslim and human rights groups, who say that the government is pandering to the far right.

Verdonk admitted that a complete ban on the garment would be legally tricky because of freedom of religion legislation. However, she said that she would prohibit the garments "in specific situations" on grounds of public safety. The ban is likely to be enforced in shops, public buildings, cinemas, train and bus stations and airports, as well as on trains and buses.

MN

High court to rule on torture evidence

­A ruling by Britain’s highest court on the use of torture evidence is likely to have profound implications for the worldwide ban on torture, Human Rights Watch (HRW)said today.

Britain’s highest court will convene on Monday, October 17 to consider whether torture evidence obtained from third countries is permitted in domestic British law. The House of Lords Judicial Committee will hear an appeal against an August 2004 majority decision by the Court of Appeal that the U.K. government was entitled to rely on torture evidence in special terrorism cases, provided that the U.K. “neither procured nor connived at” the torture. The use of evidence obtained through torture or other ill-treatment is prohibited by international law.

“When it comes to torture, the rules of the game must not change.” said Holly Cartner, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, “You can’t accept torture evidence without condoning torture.”

Human Rights Watch is part of a coalition of fourteen human rights and anti-torture organizations intervening in the House of Lords case.

Under the Convention against Torture, to which 140 countries including the U.K. are party, evidence obtained under torture is inadmissible in “any proceedings” before a court. The rule is also part of customary international law binding on all states. But a two-to-one majority in the Court of Appeal held that because the convention is not part of British law, the courts did not have to exclude such evidence.

Danish newspaper slanders prophet

The Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) expressed strong condemnation over the slandering of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) by the Danish newspaper “Jyllands-Posten,” published from Copenhagen.

ISESCO, in a press statement, stated that this slander is a violation of international law, which forbids the infringement of peoples’ religious beliefs."
The statement said that running cartoons allegedly of Prophet Muhammad is not an expression of the freedom of opinion and faith, nor is it a part of human rights; it is rather a blasphemy and calumny. "One billion and three hundred million Muslims throughout the world consider this slander against their Prophet by the newspaper as an aggression against them all.
Consequently, they call on the paper to apologize to all Muslims,” ISESCO said. Danish Muslims condemned the Danish daily for publishing some 12 cartoons featuring the prophet in a despicable manner.

MI6 recruited Al-Muhajiroun terrorists

The British intelligence service M16 recruited Muslim extremists in Britain with the assistance of the now disbanded terrorist group, Al-Muhajiroun , for terror training abroad and to fight in Serbia claims Oldham MP and former cabinet minister Michael Meacher.

The now disbanded al-Muhajiroun group held meetings in Manchester after 9/11 praising the courage of the suicide bombers and claimed to be helping UK Muslims to fight US troops in Afghanistan. Since the July 7th terrorist attacks on London Scotland Yard has been interested in an alleged member of al-Muhajiroun, Haroon Rashid Aswat, who some sources have suggested could have been behind the London bombings. Therefore it seems that a Muslim terrorist group that was assisted by MI6 to recruit terrorists to kill European Christians in Serbia, then used the terror training it received from Pakistani security services and in Serbia to train the British Muslim terrorists that slaughtered 56 British citizens in the July 7th bombings.

Full story here

And yes, this is a link to an article from the BNP last week.