Romania: Illegal Afghan migrants caught

Romania: Illegal Afghan migrants caught


A bid to get to Britain turned sour for 50 Afghan would-be migrants when they were arrested hiding in the tanks of a vinegar lorry.


The group - which included 15 children - were discovered in a false compartment under the main tanks filled with thousands of litres of Greek vinegar.


Astonished customs officials found the migrants after using scanners to pick up heartbeats inside the tanks in Varsand on the Romanian border as the truck crossed from neighbouring Bulgaria.


(more)

Source: Romanian Times

France: State Council warns full burqa ban might be illegal

France: State Council warns full burqa ban might be illegal


Immigration Minister Eric Besson defended the upcoming law. Talking to Europe 1, Besson said: The world, and especially the Arab-Muslim world, is watching us and expecting a strong sign from France."


Eric Besson has told only during travel including the Maghreb and Africa, he met "many women [who] are waiting for a sign to take action in their countries" in their turn. He said that in his travels in the Magreb and North Africa he met many women who were waiting for a sign to mobilize in their own country.

Besson said he supposed a 'total ban in French territory in the name of the dignity of the woman."


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France’s top legal body warned the government Tuesday that a complete ban on the burqa in the home of Europe’s largest Muslim minority would be vulnerable to legal challenges.


"It appears to the State Council that a general and absolute ban on the full veil as such can have no uncontestable judicial basis," the body said in a report submitted to Prime Minister Francois Fillon.


But it would be possible to “require that faces be uncovered in some places or for some procedures” involving interaction with the state or security officials, added the body.


The State Council, headed by Jean-Marc Sauve, is France’s top legal body that advises the government on proposed legislation.


President Nicolas Sarkozy has described the burqa, as well as other full face veils such as the niqab, as “contrary to women’s dignity,” and has been pressing for a bill to ban it.


The government had asked the State Council for a legal opinion after a parliamentary report called for a ban on the garment in all schools, hospitals, government offices and public transport.


(more)

Sources: Europe1 (French), France24 (English)

Russia: Terror attack updates

Russia: Terror attack updates

There's lots of information about the recent terror attack (and a few which followed).

Abusing widespread public fear after Monday’s Moscow metro bombings, hooligans have made hundreds of false phone call terror alerts.


Several suspects have been detained in connection with the Moscow attack.

Russian investigators have identified one of the women suicide bombers who carried out the Moscow metro attacks as the 17-year-old widow of a Caucasus militant, Kommersant daily reported Friday. The bomber was named as Dzhennet Abdurakhmanova. (Photo)

The suicide terrorists were supposedly recruited via internet.



The leader of the Islamic "Emirate of the Caucasus" Dokka Abu Usman has claimed responsibility for this week's Moscow metro bombings, The Kavkav Centre, a Chechen Internet site, said Wednesday.

But the group also denied responsibility:

"We did not carry out the attack in Moscow, and we don’t know who did it," Shemsettin Batukaev, a spokesman for the Caucasus Emirate organisation, told Reuters by telephone in Turkey.

The spokesman said the group planned attacks on economic targets inside Russia, but not against civilians. Its leader, Doku Umarov, vowed last month to spread a Caucasian insurgency to Russian cities.

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A bomb was defused Wednesday in Kizlyar, Dagestan.

"At 20:00 [16:00 GMT] on the outskirts of Oguzer in the Kizlyar region, law enforcement officers found ... a homemade bomb made up of a 12-liter bucket filled with a mixture of ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder, as well as destructive elements such as metal nuts and screws," the source told RIA Novosti.

One of the terrorist act executors in Kizlyar, Dagestan, was a Wahabi adherent registered in the local Department of Internal Affairs, Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs reports.

It was a Kizlyar resident Daud Magomedov, born in 1988. He drove the Niva automobile and blew himself up when the road patrol officers tried to stop him.

Two men were killed and another injured when a car blew up in Dagestan on Thursday.


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Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called on Thursday for tougher action against global terrorism.

"The range of anti-terrorism measures must be expanded; they should be not only more effective, but also more harsh, merciless and preventive. We must punish them [the terrorists]," the Russian president said.


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More than 5,000 citizens gathered in the towns of Khasavyurt and Makhachkala in the southern region of Dagestan to protest the terrorist acts in Moscow and Kizlyar. On Wednesday a similar rally happened in Moscow.

Both rallies featured minutes of silence in commemoration of those who died as a result of the blasts.


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A two-year long experiment kicks off on April 1, following several years of debates and disputes. Fourth graders in 19 Russian regions will start receiving tuition in “Fundamentals of Religious Cultures and Secular Ethics”, Itar-Tass reports.

Belgium: French Community schools ban headscarves

Belgium: French Community schools ban headscarves

Many schools in the Belgian French Community already ban the headscarf.

The internal school regulations of 110 of the 129 schools [85%] of the French community educational system ban the wearing of religious symbols, according to a hearing in a committee of the various Francophone parliaments.

In the Catholic educational system, most schools have adjusted their internal regulations years ago and students must remove any head covering when they enter the school building.

The French-speaking Catholic education system doesn't support regulating the issue via decree, and want to continue working with internal school regulations.

Source: Knack (Dutch)

France: Gov't tightens immigration laws

France: Gov't tightens immigration laws



The French government unveiled a bill on Wednesday to toughen immigration rules and impose strict penalties on anyone employing foreigners without work permits, raising howls of protest from human rights groups.


It is the sixth time since 2002 that France has looked to tighten its immigration laws and comes after President Nicolas Sarkozy launched a debate on national identity that critics say pandered to far-right extremists.


Immigration Minister Eric Besson, who has recently backed calls for a French ban on the full-face Muslim veil, or burqa, presented the bill to the cabinet on Wednesday.


Amongst the measures was a move to increase the time illegal immigrants can be held in detention to 45 days from 32, after which the authorities have to make a decision on whether to expel them or further investigate their request for asylum.


It also postpones the moment that a judge can review their case, leaving it up to an administrative official to make the first call on their detention.


“This is a serious assault on fundamental liberties,” Patrick Henriot, deputy head of the French magistrates’ union was quoted as saying in Le Monde newspaper.


The government decided on this change after judges in January swiftly freed some 124 mainly Kurdish immigrants, who had washed up on the French Mediterranean island of Corsica, rather than move them to the detention centres.


Besson, who has been set a goal by Sarkozy to expel 30,000 illegal immigrants from French soil this year, defended the push to extend the detention period, which will give authorities more time to check asylum demands.


“(The period) is 60 days in Portugal, six months in the Netherlands, Austria or Hungary, eight months in Belgium, 18 months in Germany, 24 months in Switzerland, and unlimited in Britain,” he wrote in his presentation of the bill.


Under the terms of the proposed law, anyone caught employing illegal immigrants will face up to five years in prison and a maximum fine of 15,000 euros ($20,140).


The bill also calls for immigrants hoping to naturalise to adhere “to the essential principles and values of the republic” and requires people to sign a “charter of the rights and duties of the French citizen”.

(more)

Source: France24 (English)

Belgium: Extra protection for Cultural Center after 'Islam cartoons' incident

Belgium: Extra protection for Cultural Center after 'Islam cartoons' incident

Three immigrant youth were caught Thursday while trying to steal two cartoons from an exhibition in the De Bogaard cultural center in Sint Truiden (Limburg, Belgium), since they thought they offended Islam.


An employee managed to get the cartoons from them, after which the three threatened harsher measures. The De Bogaard center is getting extra protection since.

The cartoons which they objected to were created by cartoonist Frans Van Rompay, who works by the pseudonym ‘SnarF’. "I certainly didn't want to mock Islam. I wanted to give my interpretation of exotic fruit and our own native fruit, that have more character, taste and particularly body," Frans Van Rompay says.

Source: Hbvl (Dutch)

Paris: Halal Expo 2010

Paris: Halal Expo 2010


Organisers of the two-day Halal Food and Services Exhibition, which will kick-off on March 30 in Paris (France) urged the Algerian producers of food processing to profit of opportunities offered by such an event to intensify their exports to Europe.


This exhibition, which brings together actors of Halal distribution, manufacturers and importers in France and in Europe, is a "must-attend event of exchanges among the different circuits," Algerian Press Service (APS) cited official of organising agency of GL Events, Farid Terrache as saying here recently.

(more)


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Just weeks after a row erupted over a French fast-food chain selling halal burgers - or burgers prepared according to Islamic practices - a food fair featuring halal has opened in Paris this week.


(...)


The debate left a bitter aftertaste in a nation that has just spent the past few months engaged in a government-introduced "national identity debate" which raised more questions than it answered.


But in the food-stacked aisles of the halal section at Paris’s annual “Snack and Fast fooding Expo", the controversy has been put into cold storage.


Halal food is still a niche market, but it’s a business that’s growing at a fast clip. Attracted by the industry’s impressive 15% annual growth rate, major food conglomerates are now competing with the companies that have traditionally dominated the sector.


Cedomir Nestorovic, a halal food market specialist and marketing professor at the Paris-based ESSEC business school, said "Ultimately, the market will surpass, by far, the organic sector."


(more)


Sources: Bernama, France24 (English)

Related articles:
* France: Growing halal market
* France: 57% of Muslims regularly buy halal

Cordoba: Fight erupts after Austrian Muslims try praying at former mosque

Cordoba: Fight erupts after Austrian Muslims try praying at former mosque

Related story: Cordoba: Church rejects 'Muslim prayer for jobs' proposal


A confrontation between Muslim tourists and guards employed by the Roman Catholic bishop at the world-famous Cordoba mosque saw two people arrested and two guards injured last night.

Trouble broke out when the visitors knelt to pray in the building, a former mosque turned into a Christian cathedral in the 13th century, where a local bishop, Demetrio Fernández, recently insisted that a ban on Muslim prayers must remain.


Half a dozen members of a group of more than 100 Muslims from Austria had started praying among the marble columns and coloured arches of the vast building when security guards ordered them to stop.


"They provoked in a pre-planned fashion what was a deplorable episode of violence," the bishop's office said in a statement.


Cathedral authorities said the guards had invited the visitors to continue viewing the inside of a 24,000 sq metre building that was once the world's second biggest mosque, but without praying.


"They replied by attacking the security guards, two of whom suffered serious injuries," the bishop's office said.


Local newspapers reported that a dozen police officers had been called into the building and that these, too, had been attacked when they tried to arrest the two visitors.


The local Diario de Cordoba newspaper quoted anonymous police sources as saying that a knife had been taken off one of those arrested.


A group of local Muslim converts have long campaigned for the right to pray at the mosque building. "The building is very big and the main cathedral occupies only a part of it," said Mansur Escudero of the Junta Islamica group.


"They publicise the building as a mosque because that brings in tourists, but they do not allow the Muslims who pay money to go inside to pray," he said.


(more)

Source: Guardian (English), h/t Bivouac-ID

Bulgaria: Muslims Prevent Founding of OTOMAN Party in Mosque

Bulgaria: Muslims Prevent Founding of OTOMAN Party in Mosque

Related story: Bulgaria: Police act against suspected radical Islam preachers


The Muslim community in the northeast Bulgarian city of Shumen will not allow the notorious Yuzeirovi brothers to set up their new OTOMAN party in the famed Tombul Mosque.


The two brothers, Ali Yuzeirov and Yuzeir Yuzeirov, will make do with a conference hall in the local “Shumen” hotel instead, Shumen Mayor Krasimir Kostov has announced.


Kostov defined the decision of the wannabe politicians to found their party on April 2, which is Good Friday for Orthodox Christians, as a “pure provocation.”


The brothers have responded to the accusation by saying that they have chosen that day because of the traditional Friday's Muslim prayer.


In order to prevent clashes between rival groups, Mayor Kostov has banned any rallies or manifestations on the day in question.


He claims that some of the founders of the new party are residents of Shumen, currently living in Belgium and France, who are financed by Muslim extremists.


“It is quite indicative that the leaders of the Muslim community in Shumen wants to have nothing to do with the founders of the party and refuse to grant them access to the Tombul Mosque,” declared Kostov.


(more)

Source: Novinite (English)

Moscow: Muslims fear reprisals

Moscow: Muslims fear reprisals


In Moscow's oldest mosque members of the Muslim community gather. They share a common uneasy feeling following the double suicide bombings in the city on Monday with a terrorist group from the North Caucasus linked to the attacks.

 
Suspicion amongst Muscovites, say many of the Muslims, has increased and they fear they could become the target for reprisals.
 

Oumar, resident of Moscow: "My wife is veiled, she wears the hijab and today I won't let her go outside, because when she does go out in our neighbourhood, people give her strange looks, as though she is suspicious."
 

At the mosque these men believe their appearance puts them under the spotlight of suspicion.
 

"The mere fact of having a beard, that's enough to be carted off, now after the attacks it will be even worse, already two Muslim sisters have been beaten up."
 

(more)

Source: euronews (English)