Remains of the nail bomb that Pavlo Lapshyn planted outside the Kanz-ul-Iman Central Jamia Mosque in Tipton
A white supremacist terrorist who admitted murdering a Muslim pensioner and plotting three explosives devices at mosques in the West Midlands has sentenced to life in jail.
Pavlo Lapshyn, 25, admitted to stabbing grandfather Mohammed Saleem as he returned home from evening prayers in Small Heath, Birmingham on 29 April. He also pleaded guilty to planting three explosive devices near mosques in Walsall, Wolverhampton and Tipton.
Lapshyn from the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk, was sentenced to a minimum of 40 years in prison at the Old Bailey. As well as murder, he was also sentenced to 12 years for offences under the Explosives Substances Act and 12 years for offences under the Terrorism Act, all to run concurrently.
The prosecution pushed for Lapshyn to receive a whole-life tariff, meaning he would never be able to apply for parole.
A coalition of 125 civil rights, religious and community groups has written to the Department of Justice, calling for a federal investigation into the blanket surveillance of mosques and other Muslim outlets by the New York Police Department (NYPD).
“This book seeks answers to the questions that presented themselves to me with such force after 9/11 when popular concern about Muslim women’s rights took off. As an anthropologist who had spent decades living in communities in the Middle East, I was uncomfortable with disjunction between the lives and experiences of Muslim women I had known and the popular media representations I encountered in the Western public sphere, the politically motivated justifications for military intervention on behalf of Muslim women that became common sense, and even the well-meaning humanitarian and rights work intended to relieve global women’s suffering. What worldly effects were these concerns having on different women? And how might we take responsibility for distant women’s circumstances and possibilities in what is clearly an interconnected global world, instead of viewing them as victims of alien cultures? This book is about the ethics and politics of the global circulation of discourses on Muslim women’s rights.”
Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, who three years ago became the first Muslim elected to the office in a major North American city, easily won re-election on Monday after a first term dominated by a stellar performance during devastating floods.