17 Arrested after Youths Riot in Denmark

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Bands of youths set fire to cars and trash bins overnight in a fourth consecutive night of vandalism mostly in immigrant neighborhoods of the Danish capital, police said.

Seventeen people were arrested, Copenhagen Police spokesman Flemming Steen Munch said, adding police were not sure what sparked the violence.

Some observers said immigrant youths were protesting against perceived police harassment and suggested the reprinting of a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad in Danish newspapers Wednesday, may have aggravated the situation.

"They feel provocations and discrimination by the police that stop then now and then to check them," Copenhagen social worker Khalid Al-Subeihi said. "It doesn't make it easier when the cartoons come back again."
The youths set dozens of fires in several districts of Copenhagen, torching cars and trash bins and in some cases hurling rocks at police.
Newspaper Jyllands-Posten said one of its photographers received minor injuries when he was attacked by vandals in the Noerrebro district.

It was not immediately clear whether the attackers knew he was working for Jyllands-Posten, which first printed the 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that sparked massive protests in Muslim countries two years ago.
More than a dozen Danish newspapers reprinted one of the cartoons on Wednesday in a gesture of solidarity after police revealed an alleged plot to kill the creator of the caricature.

Munch said he did not know whether the reprinting of the cartoon had any part in the violence.

"We see different reasons for the rioting," Munch said. "We do not know why exactly. It can be because of boredom, it can be because police in recent weeks have stepped up its search for knives, it can be other things too."

There were also reports of vandalism in Aarhus, Denmark's second-largest town, but no arrests were made.

Pleas for Condemned Saudi 'witch'  
By Heba Saleh
BBC News  

Many Saudi executions are beheadings by the sword in public places.
Human Rights Watch has appealed to Saudi Arabia to halt the execution of a woman convicted of witchcraft.
In a letter to King Abdullah, the rights group described the trial and conviction of Fawza Falih as a miscarriage of justice.
The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read.  Among her accusers was a man who alleged she made him impotent.
Human Rights Watch said that Ms Falih had exhausted all her chances of appealing against her death sentence and she could only now be saved if King Abdullah intervened.
The US-based group is asking the Saudi ruler to void Ms Falih's conviction and to bring charges against the religious police who detained her and are alleged to have mistreated her.
'Undefined' crime.  Its letter to King Abdullah says the woman was tried for the undefined crime of witchcraft and that her conviction was on the basis of the written statements of witnesses who said that she had bewitched them.
Human Rights Watch says the trial failed to meet the safeguards in the Saudi justice system.  The confession which the defendant was forced to fingerprint was not even read out to her, the group says.  Also Ms Falih and her representatives were not allowed to attend most of the hearings.
When an appeal court decided she should not be executed, the law courts imposed the death sentence again, arguing that it would be in the public interest.

Jews suffering more violence than ever, report says
February 14 2008.

The number of violent attacks on Jewish people in the UK last year reached the highest level since records began in 1984, new figures showed today.  But the Community Security Trust said the overall number of "antisemitic race hate incidents" – defined as malicious acts against the Jewish community – fell by 8% from the record level seen in 2006. The trust, which styles itself as a "the Jewish community's only defence organisation", said the fall may be due to a lack of "trigger events" during 2007 which typically lead to temporary spikes.

In 2006, the war between Israel and Hizbollah in Lebanon led to the highest recorded number of anti-semitic incidents in the UK, the report said.  Overall, in 2007 there were a record 114 violent assaults, one of which resulted in life-threatening injuries, among 547 race hate incidents against the Jewish community.

However, the CST warned the decrease from 594 such incidents the previous year did not alter the long-term trend of rising levels since the late 1990s. The remainder of the 547 race hate incidents included 328 cases of abusive behaviour, 62 acts of damage and desecration of Jewish property, 24 threats and 19 cases of mass-produced antisemitic literature.

CST spokesman Mark Gardner said: "The fall in the number of antisemitic incidents is very welcome, but is less than we had hoped for.  "2007 was still the second worst year on record and the worst ever for violent assaults. Over the past decade there has been a significant rise in the basic level of antisemitic incidents in our society, and it is affecting the lives of far too many British Jews."

A Department for Communities and Local Government spokesman said: "While we welcome the fall in the overall number of antisemitic incidents in 2007, the wider findings from the Community Security Trust's report are of concern to the government and serve as a reminder to us all that we still have more to do to eradicate antisemitism from our society.

"Antisemitism must be understood for what it is - and condemned. It should be dealt with promptly and effectively through the law." "We have one of the strongest legal frameworks in the world to protect people from discrimination or persecution on the grounds of their faith or race, and this was strengthened by the introduction of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act last year."

paleocon wrote:Did you see the article I posted on another topic where some nut job is suing the US military because he claims it harbors "Christian" fundamentalists and he is afraid for his life because of this extreme bias!  There really is no limit to their stupidity!