[AP] London mosque leaders say they warned police in 2003 about bomb suspect

Very interesting, apparently the Brits had their own 'intelligence failures', and I am glad some mosque's leaders in Britian took this info to the authorities to report extremists who should be monitored.

http://www.kbcitv.com/x5154.xml?Par...ps9r01.xml&NewsSection=InternationalHeadlines

London mosque leaders say they warned police in 2003 about bomb suspect

Associated Press
August 5, 2005 12:58 PM

LONDON A trustee of a London mosque says he warned police two years ago about one of the suspected July 21st subway bombers.

The Stockwell Mosque official says he told police about a group of extremists that incited "racial and religious hatred in the community" and intimidated mosque management.

He says Hamdi Issac (HAHM'-dee EYE'-zik) was part of that group. Issac is suspected of trying to bomb a west London subway station on July 21st. He fled Britain after the attacks, and is being held in Rome.

The mosque official said London authorities provided a more visible presence in the area after he wrote them, but took no further action. The extremists were eventually expelled by the mosque.

The Metropolitan Police said it considers all such correspondence confidential, and can't comment.

 

That might only work in countries where there are large Muslim 'ghettos', which is the case in SOME (not all) European countries.

However, that would be rather difficult for Muslims in America, since very few Muslim communities exist in the U.S.; most Muslims here in the states barely meet or interact beyond maybe the weekly Friday prayers, and even then many Muslims don't actually attend mosques on regular basis. Therefore, the concept of a Muslim 'community' is not really applicable to the U.S. for the most part. Most Muslims here just 'blend in' and live in no particular neighborhoods, they don't really interact much in large gatherings outside of professional or family-to-family interactions (friendships, etc.).

 

I don't think you can 'force' the authorities to take their job seriously. Heck, even prominant counterterrorism officials in our government (for example Dick Clark among many others) were unable to get our leaders to pay more attention to the terrorism threat from Al-Qaida.

There were many leads that would have led to the direct apprehension of 2 or more of the 19 hijackers and crack their network in time to thwart off their plans, but our intelligence officials/law enforcement officials didn't follow up satisfactorily on these leads. In short, there was too much 'bureaucracy' and too much laziness on their part. I suspect the same thing is true of the British authorities in this particular case the article mentioned.

All a private citizen (Muslim or non-Muslim) can do is to inform the authorities of what he/she saw or heard, the rest is up to them to investigate and actually do their job.

 

Ahh, you are such a waste of time to respond to, but I will anyways.

The police force in London WAS 'lazy' if they didn't follow up on this extremist guy which the mosque ITSELF kicked out and banned, according to the article. This is not 'bashing' the police force or any other law enforcement body, but indeed when we have events such as 9/11 that could have been prevented by most accounts, then you have 'intelligence' or 'security' failures. Do I believe that the vast majority of law enforcement officers are hard-working people? Yes. Do they have a tough job to do? Yes. Do they always succeed in their line of work? No. That shouldn't be hard to understand even for someone like yourself.

This right here is exhibit A of your utter bias and ignorance that you have repeatedly exhibited in the D&D.

You say one comment from a Muslim group that not only informs the authorities of a 'dangerous individual' in their midst, but even takes the step to ban him from the mosque alltogether isn't "cooperation and/or participation to ake sure the problem is eliminated"? That's such a bunch of BS that this alone right here discredits any and everything you have to say regarding this story. You not only lambast Muslim 'leaders' for your perception that they aren't 'doing enough', but you also refuse to give credit to them for taking action to inform the authorities of a possible problematic individual. Basically, in your book, they are "damned if they do and damned if they don't". A hypocritical stance indeed if there ever was one.

What "additional info" or "urgency" did you want them to give? You don't know crap about the details of their account to the authorities and neither do I, but yet you insinuate that the fault lies on the Muslim leaders for possibly not showing "urgency" about thsi individual! Who the f*k is supposed to show 'urgency' about a potential threat: the civilians who can do absolutely nothing more than report a problem, or the police who are authorized to take action? Do you see the utter sillyness of your argument? It doesn't even make sense! What do you want them to do, shoot the guy and have him deported themselves back to eastern Africa or wherever else he is from ?

Let me entertain your silly argument for a second: say you have a tip about a guy at work who showed signs of leaning towards killing his wife -- say she has been nagging him for a while now, and he expresses to you his desire to either get rid of her or hurt her. What steps can you take as a citizen at this point? Can you do ANYTHING beyond informing the authorities of this 'potential threat'? How do you make sure you don't "wash your hands" of any blame in case the worst happens and he murders her? Would you have been able to nag the hell out of the authorities by insisting they do their work and treat this issue with the utmost urgency?

The funny thing, bigtexxx, is that you in essence sought -- through your argument -- to completely take the blame away from the London authorities and throw all the blame at the Muslim leaders by questioning whether they had "done enough" to make the authorities take notice and make this case of the utmost priority -- which they don't have the power to do in the first place. You are completely ignoring the fact that they DID inform the police about this 'threatening' individual. Again, your bias comes through pretty clearly in this case.

Sorry bigtexxx, but this is as silly an argument (if it can be called that) as you have ever made.

It deserves a big ol'