A man who deliberately drove a van into a group of Muslims near a mosque in north London in June was convicted Thursday of murder and attempted murder.
Darren
Osborne, 48, appeared to have been motivated by anger over Islamist
terror attacks in London and Manchester, England, in 2017 and a child grooming scandal in Rochdale that involved men of Asian origin, Woolwich Crown Court in southeast London was told.
He
rented a van in Wales and drove it to London on June 18 planning to
attack people attending a march, the Crown Prosecution Service said in a
statement after the verdict.
When that did not prove possible, he drove around the city looking for a mosque, it said.
Just
after midnight, he saw a group of Muslims helping 51-year-old Makram
Ali, who had collapsed at an intersection. More people were around than
usual because it was Ramadan, and many Muslims were on their way to or
from prayers, the Crown Prosecution Service said.
According to the prosecution, Osborne deliberately drove his vehicle into the group near Finsbury Park Mosque, fatally injuring Ali and trying to kill as many others as he could. Nine others were taken to the hospital with injuries in the attack.
A
witness told the court that when Osborne was stopped from fleeing by
members of the public, he said: "I've done my job, you can kill me now."
In
his defense, Osborne claimed that a man named "Dave" had been driving
the van and was responsible for the attack. But he was unable to explain
why closed-circuit TV showed only one man leaving the van, the
prosecution said.
Osborne will be sentenced at a later date.
Flowers and tributes lie at a police cordon near the scene of the Finsbury Park attack.
The
Crown Prosecution Service said it had prosecuted the case as a
terrorist offense because Osborne's actions were intended to advance a
political purpose, expressed in a handwritten note found in the van he
used and in comments he made to police officers at the scene.
"Darren
Osborne planned and carried out this attack because of his hatred of
Muslims," said Sue Hemming of the Crown Prosecution Service.
"He
later invented an unconvincing story to counter the overwhelming weight
of evidence but the jury has convicted him. We have been clear
throughout that this was a terrorist attack, and he must now face the
consequences of his actions."
The Muslim Council of Britain welcomed the guilty verdict.
"The
scenes we witnessed last summer were the most violent manifestation of
Islamophobia yet in our country. We cannot be complacent and regard this
as a one-off terrorist incident," Secretary-General Harun Khan said in a
statement.
"We heard during the
trial how Osborne was motivated by anti-Muslim groups and Islamophobic
tropes not only prevalent in far-right circles, but also made acceptable
in our mainstream."
The private Hajj
operators were represented at the Public Hearing by the Acting National
President of the Association for Hajj and Umrah Operators of Nigeria
(AHUON), Alhaji Abdullahi Salihu Butu. Yours sincerely was with him as a
support and to corroborate his position. The aim of every tour
operator, AHUON stated, is to make Hajj affordable to as many people as
possible; the more pilgrims served, the better for the organiser to at
least break even and plan for enhanced service delivery.
A question was asked on the pricing of Hajj 2017 packages where some
tour operators advertised rates lower than those announced by NAHCON
through State Pilgrim Boards and Agencies. I had to respond by drawing
the attention of the distinguished senators to the fact that those of us
who made that claim and received payment on that wise failed lamentably
in delivering what was promised the pilgrims. Quite a number of tour
operators who thought they could serve their pilgrims at a lesser price
than NAHCON’s later realised that even the rate they charged for tickets
was not realistic because the price of air tickets soared at the peak
of operations. NAHCON came to the rescue and flew the pilgrims under a
separate arrangement, but for that intervention, by the Commission, many
pilgrims who paid to such tour operators would not have performed Hajj
2017. The nightmare did not end with the uncertainty of airlift to the
holy land, as some tour operators accommodated their pilgrims in
secondary schools in Makkah, I said. The much vaunted cheaper-than
NAHCON private Hajj packages kept pilgrims in proscribed places of
accommodation under sub-human conditions.
There is no basis, to my mind, of any comparison between what tour
operators charge for their services and what NAHCON published because
the packages offered and the clientele served are not in any way the
same. Any private Hajj operator that deems State Pilgrim Boards as
competitors, and thus looks for ways to offer similar services at a
lesser cost to his pilgrims, has brought this industry to ridicule. Yes,
the sharp edges of accommodation standards and logistics are becoming
blunt, thanks to NAHCON consistent improvements on service delivery and
ensuring pilgrims have value for their money, but still, state pilgrim
standards cannot swing the pendulum against those offered by any tour
operators worth their salt.
I further explained that Hajj services are not static but ever evolving
to better standards. This Ad-Hoc Committee, I said, must be commended
for its laudable ideals of searching for ways to lessen the price of
pilgrimage for those of restricted subsistence; but the distinguished
senators should let not the nobility of their task impede the evolution
of the standards already attained in serving Nigerian contingents during
the holy pilgrimages. In times gone by, our pilgrims were nowhere near
the vicinity of the two holy mosques; they were housed in pilgrim
apartments miles away from the Haram. But today pilgrim officials of
other countries who thought the hotels around Markaziyyah in Madeenah
are meet for their pilgrims exclusively are waking from a deep slumber,
wondering how Nigerian pilgrims became the current entrants in the
Markaziyyah hotels overlooking the Masjid an-Nabawiy. I concluded,
therefore, by saying that the Committee should be wary of a situation
where even the pilgrims will not support lesser Hajj rates at the
expense of the standard of services to be offered; after all this
religious exercise is for those who can afford to undertake the journey.
(Aali-Imraan, 3:97)
No sooner had I finished than one of the members of the Committee,
Distinguished Senator Ali Malam Wakil deprecated my position. ‘Ustaz’,
he said, ‘I disagree totally with what you said. Your thinking is
exploitative, anti-people, and I hope the government will not listen to
your advice. We are not talking about people who have stolen from the
state, who can afford expensive packages. We are speaking about the
ordinary people who may have to save for the most part of their lives in
order to pay for Hajj. I don’t accept that these people have no means;
they do, but they are denied the opportunity.’
The distinguished senator reminded me of my ‘moving exhortations’ in
both print and electronic media years ago; that my position now is
discordant with that of the ‘Ustaz Abubakr Siddeeq’ that he had ‘been
reading for about twenty-five years’. I bashfully lowered my head and
refrained from making further comments or repudiating the distinguished
senator’s sentiments, not the least as he threatened, light-heartedly,
to stop reading me henceforth since I abjured asceticism as evident in
my presentation to the Committee. No comment!
The Chairman of the Committee wanted to know how package prices are
arrived at and what makes one Hajj arrangement distinct from another.
The President of AHUON explained that the class of tickets embedded in
the package as well as the standard of (3, 4, or 5 stars) hotels for
accommodation account for most of the variations in package prices.
Other factors include the class of tents in Minaa and Arafah and the
type of transportation arrangement as well as the quality of feeding.
The issue of paying additional SAR2000 in favour of pilgrims that are
performing the pilgrimage for a second or a third time adds to the cost
of private hajj packages, Alhaji Butu said. He also mentioned as another
reason for the hike in rates, the number of days a company decides to
keep its pilgrims in Madeenah and the location of the hotel. The AHUON
President advocated for a long-term lease by the government through
NAHCON of some hotels in Saudi Arabia. This intervention, according to
Butu, will make Hajj packages cheaper as Hajj operators can guarantee
accommodation way ahead of the season ‘at a reduced cost’.
Biometrics
The Acting National President of AHUON then raised an issue, which
should concern anyone who has anything to do with Umrah and Hajj; the
issue of the biometrics enrolment exercise. The Saudi Arabian Embassy in
Nigeria has newly introduced this measure to reduce the time Nigerians
spent on queue on arrival in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They
contracted the task of recording the fingerprint and face of every Saudi
visa to an Indian company called VFS Tasheel.
Alhaji Salihu Butu explained how the biometric enrolment exercise began
and how AHUON wrote to all stakeholders, including the Senate, about the
dangers the exercise portended. There were meetings with the Embassy
officials and the leadership of the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria
(NAHCON) as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, pleading that if
the biometrics enrolment must be done, there should be modifications, as
the then proposed deployment method would be cumbersome and
disenfranchise many Nigerians from performing Umrah and Hajj.
The pleas did not yield any change in the mode of deployment and the
result is that as at today, if you wish to get an Umrah visa, you can
only get an appointment to enrol your biometrics at the VFS Tasheel
office after two weeks at the least. When you get to the centre, it
takes anywhere between 6 hours and 3 days to reach your turn. Nigerians
now bring their mats to the VFS offices to endure an inhuman wait. They
do not have enough furniture for the applicants to sit on and they have
only two to three computers for enrolling hundreds of people per day.
There are currently only 3 centres in Nigeria. The whole of the South
has just one centre in Lagos while the whole of the North has two
centres in Abuja and Kano respectively. The centres are ill-equipped and
poorly staffed to handle a large crowd. To worsen things, their
computers sometimes have long down times.
AHUON had long suggested that its members be allowed to buy the
enrolment devices and get their staff trained by VFS to handle the
enrolment in their offices. The Association advocated for at least a
centre for each major city in the country if the first suggestion does
not work. For some unexplainable reason, those who should be alarmed at
these developments have kept quiet. Remember that the current
mind-boggling bottleneck at the enrolment offices is child’s play
compared to what will happen during Umrah and Hajj.
The situation can mean at least 70% of Nigerian intending pilgrims will
be prevented from performing Hajj through the delays. Alhaji Butu
pleaded with the Committee to expedite action on the matter. They should
visit the centres for themselves and see what a mess the whole thing
has become. AHUON has written yet another letter to the Saudi Embassy,
which we suspect does not know how bad things are at the centres. The
letter complained about the inefficient and ineffective manner the
biometric enrolment is being conducted presently. There has been no
response to the letter. Time is not our friend on this issue; Nigerians
may experience a bitter Hajj year with the way things are going. Those
who should take action should
Read More at: https://leadership.ng/2018/02/01/senate-public-hearing-hajj-3/
Read More at: https://leadership.ng/2018/02/01/senate-public-hearing-hajj-3/
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