London: The British government on Friday defended the country's security services against criticism they missed signs which might have helped prevent the brutal murder of a soldier on a street of south-east London. MI5 now faces a House of Commons inquiry after it was confirmed the two terror suspects arrested over his murder were known to the national security agency.
But Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said it was impossible to control everyone all the time. "Peers and MPs will do a thorough investigation in terms of what the security forces knew but I've seen experts on security explaining how difficult it is in a free society to be able to control everyone," Pickles was quoted as saying by the BBC.
Drummer Lee Rigby, a 25-year-old soldier from the 2nd Battalion Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, was hacked to death by the two Islamist extremists near Woolwich barracks on Wednesday. Both Londoners of Nigerian descent were caught on camera-phones and have been identified as 28-year-old Michael Adebolajo and 22-year-old Michael Adebowale.
Adebolajo, from a Nigerian church going family who converted to Islam after college, had complained of harassment by MI5 in the last three years after he came to the intelligence agency's attention. He assumed a Muslim name of Mujahid, which means one who engages in jihad, and began attending demonstrations of the now-banned Islamist group Al Muhajiroun in the UK....
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03:59 PM, May 24, 2013
Many fear that the soldier beheading incident in London would spark reprisal attacks against Muslims. England's far-right protest groups called for a protest shortly after the attack in Woolwich. The English Defense League used social media to rally its supporters. ...
10:33 AM, May 24, 2013
Nine Muslim youth, accused for the Malegaon blasts and jailed for five years, were let off a few days back after no evidence was found against them. Is there an institutional bias and prejudice in the police? ...
09:23 AM, May 24, 2013
The National Commission for Minorities on Thursday slammed the CBI for putting "innocents in jail over serious crimes as terror acts". ...
11:51 PM, May 23, 2013
Baghdad: More than 70 people were killed in a series of car bombings and suicide attacks targeting Shi'ite Muslims across Iraq on Monday, police and medics said, extending the worst sectarian violence since US troops withdrew in December 2011. The attacks increased the number killed in sectarian clashes in the past week to more than 200. Tensions between Shi'ites, who now lead Iraq, and minority Sunni Muslims have reached a...
06:07 AM, May 21, 2013
Nashik: People in Nasik trooped out on Sunday on the streets to welcome and offer chilled soft drinks to over 1,000 Muslims who embarked on a 300-km Gandhian march to Mumbai demanding reservations in job, an official said. The protestors started from the sensitive power-loom town of Malegaon after the Friday prayers for Mumbai's Azad Maidan as their destination, which they hope to cover by May 26, according to Muslim...
06:01 AM, May 20, 2013
Washington: A panel in the United States has asked the government to continue its visa ban on Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. The same report has deemed Pakistan the world's worst violator of religious freedom. The report demanded that Pakistan be designated a country of particular concern. The report has also cited Afghanistan as being very poor for dissenting Sunni Muslims, Shias, Sikhs, Hindus and Christians. It also says that...
12:37 PM, May 01, 2013
Washington: Russian authorities secretly recorded a telephone conversation in 2011 in which one of the Boston bombing suspects vaguely discussed jihad with his mother, officials said on Saturday, days after the US government finally received details about the call. In another conversation, the mother of now-dead bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, officials said. The...
06:56 AM, Apr 28, 2013
Boston: The surviving suspect in last week's Boston Marathon bombing was moved to a prison medical center outside Boston on Friday, while the body of his older brother who died in a shootout with police remained unclaimed, officials said. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a 19-year-old ethnic Chechen charged with the bombing that killed three people and wounded 264, was moved from the hospital where he was kept under guard since he was...
06:10 AM, Apr 27, 2013
Baghdad: Nearly 50 people were killed in clashes on Thursday in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, sources said, on the third day of the most widespread violence in Iraq since US troops withdrew in December 2011. More than 100 people have been killed in fighting since Tuesday, when troops stormed a Sunni protest camp, triggering clashes that quickly spread to other Sunni areas in western and northern provinces. Thousands...
03:47 AM, Apr 26, 2013
Washington/New York: The two men accused of carrying out last week's bombing of the Boston Marathon planned a second bomb attack on New York's Times Square, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Thursday. The brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's original intent when they hijacked a car and its driver in Boston last Thursday night was to drive to New York with bombs and detonate them in Times Square,...
12:47 AM, Apr 26, 2013
Washington: US lawmakers grilled top security officials on Tuesday about the handling of the Boston Marathon bombing investigation and why one of the suspects flagged as a possible Islamist radical was not tracked more closely. FBI officials briefed members of Congress behind closed doors in Washington about the investigation into the April 15 blasts that killed three people and injured 264 others. Authorities say the ethnic Chechen brothers, who immigrated...
09:01 AM, Apr 24, 2013
Washington: In the years before the Boston Marathon bombings, Tamerlan Tsarnaev fell under the influence of a new friend, a Muslim convert who steered the religiously apathetic young man toward a strict strain of Islam, family members said. Under the tutelage of a friend known to the Tsarnaev family only as Misha, Tamerlan gave up boxing and stopped studying music, his family said. He began opposing the wars in Afghanistan...
06:59 AM, Apr 24, 2013
Ayodhya: The 64-year-old practice of performing rituals at the disputed site in Ayodhya on Ram Navami may face a halt in 2013 as district administration has decided not to allow any religious activity in the area. Only court appointed priest, Acharya Satyender Das, has been allowed to perform religious activities on the 67 acre land, which had been taken over by the Centre. However, for the last 19 years, locals...
11:02 PM, Apr 15, 2013
Raipur: BJP president Rajnath Singh on Thursday branded Congress as "the biggest communal party" in the country and accused it of raking up issues of Hindus, Muslims and Christians for the sake of votes. "The biggest communal party in the country is Congress. The party has ruled for more than 50 years, it was its responsibility to enhance the mutual understanding and brotherhood among the people of different religions and...
12:26 AM, Apr 12, 2013
Cairo: One person was killed and more than 80 wounded in clashes at the Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in central Cairo on Sunday after a funeral service for four Egyptian Christians killed in sectarian violence with Muslims, state media said. Christian-Muslim confrontations have increased in Muslim-majority Egypt since the overthrow of president Hosni Mubarak in 2011 gave freer rein to hard line Islamists repressed under his autocratic rule. The state news...
10:18 AM, Apr 08, 2013
Colombo: A red-robbed Buddhist monk calmly picked up stones and hurled them at a security camera. Then, as police looked on, his followers smashed up a popular, Muslim-owned clothing store. March's attack on the Fashion Bug chain near the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, filmed by a local television station whose cameraman was attacked by the mob, was the most public outburst in a growing anti-Muslim campaign by Buddhist nationalist...
09:50 AM, Apr 08, 2013
Hyderabad: Pakistan is "a fake country", and one day will reunite with India along with Bangladesh, Press Council of India chairperson Justice (Retd) Markandey Katju said in Hyderabad on Sunday. He also said that whereas today an overwhelming majority of Hindus and Muslims were "communal", it was not so a century ago. "A fake country was created in the name of Pakistan. It is an artificially created entity by the...
12:51 AM, Apr 08, 2013
Hyderabad: "Discrimination" against Muslims is giving rise to a feeling of injustice among them, Press Council Chairman Markanedya Katju claimed on Sunday and rebuked the media for what he described as "demonising" Muslim community through "irresponsible" journalism. "Whenever a bomb blast occurs or such incident takes place, within an hour or so many TV channels start showing that an email or SMS has come from the Indian Mujahideen, JeM or...
04:45 PM, Apr 07, 2013
Cairo: Clashes between Egyptian Muslims and Christians erupted early Saturday in a town near Cairo, leaving at least five people dead, security officials said. Investigators said they were waiting for autopsy reports to confirm how the men - four Christians and a Muslim - were killed in the small town of Khosoos, some 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of the capital. President Mohammed Morsi's office released a statement condemning the...
07:20 AM, Apr 07, 2013
