(London police are accused of leveling discriminatory charges against Muslim Gaza solidarity protesters"
"We are very angry, very afraid, very sad, very upset. My wife, she is depressed. When she sees police in the street she's very frightened. They destroyed our life," says Badi Tebani.
In January 2009, Tebani's teenage son Yahia was one of tens of thousands of people who joined demonstrations in London against the Israeli bombing of Gaza. At one of those demonstrations Yahia and many others were "kettled" -- surrounded by a police cordon and slowly let out in return for giving their names and addresses and for being filmed.
That was the last Yahia knew of it until the following April, when the family home was raided by 20 to 30 police at 5am. The front door was forced open and Badi Tebani and his family were ordered to lie on the floor. His four sons were all handcuffed. Three police officers knelt on the back of Hamza, 23. He was sleeping in shorts, but they refused to let him put on any clothes, even though they'd opened the windows, letting in the cold. Computers, mobile phones and clothes were all taken and the family car was broken into. Badi and Hamza described how police played games on the boys' iPhones and made themselves coffee in the kitchen.
I don't know what these people are whining about. At least they didn't shoot the kid, like they shot and killed Jean Charles de Menezes because he looked Middle Eastern; like they shot Mohammed Abdulkahar when they raided his home. Then, when they couldn't find any terrorist links they planted child porn on his computer which they'd seized.
ReplyDeleteFrom the Metropolitan Police this was kid glove treatment.
Not all bad news from the UK. War crimes apologists got short shrift from a Scottish court when they tried to prosecute anti-Israel protesters for racism (i.e., anti-semitism).
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'Sheriff James Scott ruled that "the comments were clearly directed at the State of Israel, the Israeli Army, and Israeli Army musicians", and not targeted at "citizens of Israel" per se. "The procurator fiscal’s attempts to squeeze malice and ill will out of the agreed facts were rather strained", he said.'
'The Sheriff expressed concern that to continue with the prosecution would have implications for freedom of expression generally: "if persons on a public march designed to protest against and publicise alleged crimes committed by a state and its army are afraid to name that state for fear of being charged with racially aggravated behaviour, it would render worthless their Article 10(1) rights. Presumably their placards would have to read, ‘Genocide in an unspecified state in the Middle East’; ‘Boycott an unspecified state in the Middle East’ etc.'
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/
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