One of two Ukrainian men being held over bomb attacks near three mosques has been further arrested on suspicion of murdering a 75-year-old man.
West Midlands Police said the arrest was in connection with the killing of Mohammed Saleem [pictured] on 29 April. They said the man, 25, was being held over “a further act of terrorism”.
Mr Saleem died after being stabbed in the back in Green Lane, Small Heath, in Birmingham, on his way home after attending prayers at his local mosque.
Wolverhampton Central Mosque was evacuated tonight as the police investigation into explosions near mosques in Walsall and Tipton took a series of dramatic twists.
A bomb disposal team and specialist police officers were dispatched to the mosque in Waterloo Road at 8pm after new information came to light in the mosque blasts inquiry. Detectives were working on fresh intelligence suggesting a device had been activated at the Wolverhampton mosque on June 28.
Main routes near the mosque were closed and the area cleared while police conduct searches. By 10pm the cordon had been reduced to 60ft surrounding the Five Ways island. The shut roads included Foxes Lane, Dunstall Avenue, Dunstall Hill, Dunstall Road, Waterloo Road and North Road.
Two men have been arrested in connection with an explosion near a mosque in Walsall last month.
A 25-year-old and 22-year-old, both Eastern European, are being questioned by detectives from the West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit. An area near Talbot Way, Small Heath, Birmingham, is being searched. Some nearby properties have been evacuated. Parts of Small Heath Highway, Golden Hillock Road, and Coventry Road are closed.
One eyewitness told BBC WM about 100 people had initially been evacuated from businesses close to the area being searched. Embreen Hashmi said:
“All of a sudden there was an entourage of police and they cordoned off the whole business park and everybody had to come out on to the street. We weren’t sure what it was and everybody was saying that it was some sort of bomb scare which frightened us. When we spoke to people that worked in the same building as one of the suspects he said there was a chap that they used to work with and that he was actually being forced down by armed police and they had to evacuate the building.”
A Facebook user who stirred up “appalling, racist and anti-religious” hatred about burning down a Grimsby mosque has been jailed for eight weeks. His remarks were “beyond the pale” and could easily have fanned the flames of more racial and religious hatred, Grimsby Magistrates’ Court heard.
Terence Baker, 25, of Columbia Road, Grimsby, admitted sending an offensive or menacing message on May 24.
Brendan Woodward, prosecuting, said Baker posted messages on his Facebook site after the murder of soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich. He made comments about the Grimsby mosque being burned down.
“The comments were quite inflammatory in nature, particularly in the context of what was occurring at that time,” said Mr Woodward. “He was asked about their extreme nature in relation to burning the mosque down but he declined to comment.”
San Diego police had a bomb squad standing by on Wednesday as they searched the Clairemont apartment of a man suspected of making death threats at a nearby mosque during Ramadan.
No explosives or weapons were found in Larry Michael Rodgers’ apartment on Belden Street near Marlest Driver, police Capt. Brian Ahearn said.
Rodgers allegedly walked into the Islamic Center of San Diego in Clairemont early Monday morning, caused a disruption, then walked out saying, “I’m going to kill all of you,” Ahearn said.
Two men in the congregation followed him and called police, and officers caught up to him on Convoy Street. Rodgers was arrested on suspicion of making terrorist threats. He remained in jail on $50,000 in bail, and was to be arraigned Wednesday afternoon.
Ahearn said investigators were concerned that Rodgers may have been behind a series of verbal bomb threats made against the Islamic School of San Diego, next to the mosque, in May. One threat left on the school’s answering machine said, in part, “I’m going to throw a bomb at your (expletive) school.”
On Sunday 14 July in Trappes (west of Paris) a 21-year-old Muslim woman wearing the veil was attacked by two men in their 30s who lived in the same area as the young woman.
As she crossed the bridge in Trappes on her way home, accompanied by her two-year-old niece, the two assailants insulted her: “bitch”, “dirty veiled woman”. She didn’t reply and when she turned towards them one of them said “yes, I’m talking to you”.
Oblivious to the presence of the child, he pulled out a knife with a blade of 10 to 15cm while declaring “anyway we’re going to exterminate you Muslims, and you’ll be the first”. As he approached his victim with his knife, a man intervened and blocked his path, putting the two attackers to flight.
Police have today (Wednesday) released pictures of a man they urgently want to speak to in connection with the attack on the Aisha Mosque in Walsall last month.
The images – released to the public as part of a major investigation by the West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit – show a man, believed to be white, in his 20s or 30s and of slim to medium build.
A city centre mosque has finally opened its doors – after years of delays and an attempt to blow it up. The building, in Regent Road, Hanley, is now being used for prayers ahead of its official completion.
Plans for the Islamic centre were first tabled back in 2000, but the project sparked controversy after it emerged Stoke-on-Trent City Council had agreed to lease the site for a £1 peppercorn rent. The mosque suffered a further setback after a plot to blow up the building caused more than £50,000 of damage.
But the £2 million mosque is now nearly finished and is expected to be officially opened next month. In the meantime it has been opened for prayers for the holy month of Ramadan.
A man has avoided prison for posting an offensive comment on Facebook following the death of Fusilier Lee Rigby.
Adam Rogers, 28, pleaded guilty to sending an offensive, indecent, obscene, or menacing message by a public communication network in May.
Rogers, of Kingsman Street, Woolwich, was sentenced to 16 weeks in prison suspended for 24 months at Hastings Magistrates’ Court.
He was arrested in the town on 24 May after being identified from a Facebook entry made while in Hastings.
Update: See “Mosque fire threat man sentenced”, Hastings & St Leonards Observer, 19 July 2013
(Photo from Rogers’ Facebook page)
AFP reports that the prosecutor in Reims said today that he is investigating three separate complaints of assaults and insults against Muslim women.
The prosecutor told AFP that a preliminary investigation had been opened after a veiled young woman was assaulted on Friday while crossing a park in the centre of Reims by a man who was “probably drunk”. The victim was hit in the face and wounded with a sharp object by her attacker, who had previously attempted to snatch her headscarf, according to her testimony.
The prosecutor is investigating two further complaints filed at the Reims police headquarters on Sunday: one for physical assault – a blow with an elbow – and racist insults against a woman wearing a headscarf that took place on Saturday, and another for death threats and insults towards two other veiled women, dating back to July 2.
“Within two weeks there have been three Islamophobic attacks in Reims, the last of which was a very violent one against a young woman of 18, and other cities are experiencing the same upsurge”, Abdallah Zekri, president of the national Observatory against Islamophobic Acts, a component of the French Council of the Muslim Faith, told AFP. He denounced the “repeated attacks against Muslims in France” .