Germany: Muslim youth violence a problem, says Merkel

Via Deutsche Welle:

Chancellor Angela Merkel has waded into a contentious debate on immigration in Germany as Bundesbank board member Thilo Sarrazin, unfazed by widespread criticism of his views on race, threatened to fight his dismissal.

Speaking to German weekly Bild am Sonntag, Angela Merkel said it would be wrong to play down statistics that show religious Muslim youths in Germany to be more prone to violence than the rest of the population.

“This is a big problem and we can talk about it openly, without arousing suspicions of xenophobia,” Merkel said in the interview published on Sunday, September 5.

But Merkel warned against automatically linking certain religions with violence.

“This is misleading,” she said. “Violence among young people is often a sign that they see no perspective for themselves. All that helps is education, education, education.”

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Belgium: Prisoner goes amok after losing Ramadan privileges

Another incident of extreme violence in a Limburg prison. Last Saturday a warden was beaten by Jamal El Khaoui (20), AKA ‘the Little Pirate’, in the juvenile prison in Tongeren, incapacitating him from work for six weeks.

“It’s time that the management stops with policy of pampering detainees. We demand that aggressive prisoners get more severe sanctions,’ say the personnel.

“The incident happened Saturday afternoon,” says a colleague of the beaten warden. “One of our wardens caught El Khaoui, who’s in the middle of Ramadan, smoking. But the rule in our prison is that whoever smokes during Ramadan, Ramadan is immediately over for him.”

Bruised Ribs

The prisoner couldn’t live with that. At least five wardens tried to keep the prisoner under control, but even that didn’t succeed. The prisoner managed to get hold of a chair with which he beat down a warden. In the hospital it turned out that the warden suffered several severely bruised ribs, and would be incapacitated from work for 4-6 weeks.

Rapes

El Khaoui is not a little boy. ‘The Little Pirate’ raped at least five women around the Antwerp Sportpaleis when he was 17. He was first arrested when he was 12, reports Het Belang van Limburg.

Source: HLN (Dutch)

VRT has a video report on the incident (in English), though they avoid any mention of Ramadan.

Copenhagen: Ramadan is cause of riots, says police

Twelve youth were caught by the police Sunday evening in Nørrebro in Copenhagen, after setting fires and overturning a car, and driven home to their parents. The police are blaming the lack of sugar balance.

The police are out in mass in the area around Sjællandsgade and Stevnsgade, where the trouble broke out.

“It’s now Ramadan and it is our impression that the unstable eating patterns combined with the fact that the youth have nothing to do in the evening causes problems. We see this every year. But nobody was injured and nobody was really arrested,” says Mads Firlings of the Copenhagen police.

Police expect that the troubles will die out now that the police is present in the area.

Source: Ekstrabladet (Danish), h/t Astute Bloggers

Bremen: Immigrants responsible for 70% of juvenile crimes

In her book “Das Ende der Geduld” (When Patience comes to an End), Berlin juvenile court judge Kirsen Heisig (48) describes the increase in youth violence. Most multiple offenders are young Turks and members of the Lebanese family clans, two groups which both Bremen and Heisig’s investigations suffered from.

Former juvenile court judge Hans-Gerd Fischer and social worker Friedhelm Stock met yesterday in Bremen for a discussion on the book.

Judge Fischer: “71% of the youth crimes are committed by immigrants. Until now nobody wanted to say anything, so as not to look like a xenophobe. Thus we allowed a parallel society, which is readying huge problems for us.”

Social worker Stock: “Many immigrants experience violence very early. Among the families we serve, 25% of the foreign men beat their wives. Among our German clients, it’s six percent.” [Ed: According to a gov't study in 2004, 25% of German women and 50% of immigrants women suffered from domestic violence]

Fischer says one solution would be fast sentencing. “In Bremen it takes many months until young criminals appear before a judge. They should be tried and punished immediately.”

Judge Heisig fought for this model. She committed suicide two month ago, but many want to continue her battle, hopefully also in Bremen.

Source: BILD (German), h/t Bicouac-ID

See also: Germany: Religious Muslim youth more violent

France: Attacked for eating on Ramadan

He was eating breakfast on the terrace of a restaurant in the center of Lyon on the weekend of August 15th, when three youth jumped him because he didn’t observe the fast of Ramadan. The father of the Senegalese family from Vénissieux was hit on the head with a glass bottle, and then beaten with a chair. Rushed to the hospital with a fracture to the back of his head, the victim was operated on. The attack was caught on CCTV, but the images are of poor quality and it is impossible to identify the attackers. The Lyon prosecutor opened a preliminary investigation. According to our sources, the manager of the kebab (restaurant), fearing reprisals, wants to testify anonymously.

Three days later, a young Jewish woman lodged a complaint for being assaulted in a supermarket in Toulouse. The victim said she was taken to task for buying food during the fast. The young woman argued that she was Jewish, which just made her attackers angrier. They called her a ‘dirty Jew’, hit her on the head, and roughly pushed her down. A guard witnesses the events, without intervening. Questioned by the investigators about his passivity, the man explained that he observed Ramadan and hurried to leave in order to eat after sunset.

Source: Le Point, h/t Bivouac-ID

See also: Brussels: Ramadan rage attacks

Norway: ‘Neither Christians nor Jews could have done something like this’

Members of the Islamic community in Fredrikstad saw red when a swastika and ‘oink Allah’ were painted on the mosque in the city center. [Update: I translated as-is, but looking at the picture, it actually says "oink" and "Allah is a [picture of a pig]” ]

Those who came extra early for the afternoon prayer Thursday were shocked when they saw what was done in what they call pure provocation.

Husein Hasanaid was there early. He thinks it’s sad that a few want to cause problems for many.

“We don’t want to cause problems to anybody, and then this happens,” he says.

Sveral passers-by stop and shake their heads at the crime.

Mohammed Hamzaoui, spokesperson for the Islamic association in Fredrikstad also does so.

“Why would somebody do something like this. Of all the things that can provoke, this is the worst. People come here to have peace around them. He says that he was really mad when he was told on the phone what had happened.

“Here we try as best as we can to behave nicely, and tell all those who come here that you should respect Norwegian society, laws and regulations. This shows that there are extremists everywhere.”

It’s not the first time that the mosque was vandalized. Several times it suffered from graffiti and broken windows. In addition, members have had to suffer racist remarks in the six years they’ve been in the center of town. He doesn’t hide that they are considering moving to new premises outside the city center, even though they had invested many hours in renovations.

“All members will react harshly. You can bully me, my children or my parents. But to write that way about Allah, then we see red. I’m am so upset and provoked.”

To have both the swastika and pig linked to Allah’s name, is the worst thing, he says.

“Neither Christians nor Jews could have done something like this. This is somebody who has neither respect nor faith,” he says.

The matter will be reported to the police.

“That this happens in the middle of Ramadan is especially difficult. In this month we reinforce our faith, so we will paint over it as fast as we can,” he says.

Source: Fredriksstad Blad (Norway)

UK: Nine jailed for forcing 14 year old into prostitution

Via the Press Association:

Nine men have been jailed after a 14-year-old girl was preyed upon and forced into prostitution.

The vulnerable teenager was targeted with vodka and cigarettes after she was spotted wandering the streets before she was made to have sex with a string of Asian men, Greater Manchester Police said.

The child went missing from home in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, on two occasions in February 2008 before she told officers she had been sexually exploited.

Over the following weeks the girl was spoken to by a specialist team of officers, police said. She was able to identify the places she was taken and the men who had abused her.

The convictions for various offences, including sexual activity with a child, controlling a child prostitute, facilitating child prostitution and paying for sexual services with a child, can be reported following the acquittal of another man at Manchester Crown Court who faced charges in connection with the case.

The girl, who is white, had to testify in separate trials involving the men and was eventually excused further evidence after a third hearing when psychologists ruled there were fears for her mental and physical well-being.

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Denmark: Holiday welfare-fraud

Many welfare recipients go on vacation via Germany to avoid their trip abroad being registered in Denmark. This allows the welfare recipients to go on vacation without fear of losing their benefits, though it’s illegal and is considered benefit fraud.

A few less-sophisticated leave via airports in Denmark, where the risk of being discovered by tax inspectors is much higher.

According to the Tax Authority and the municipalities that Jyllands-Posten spoke with, there are two types of holiday-cheats:

Ethnic Danes who go on ’sun-vacations’ for a few weeks without declaring it.

The other group is people of a non-Danish background who go on vacation to their homeland for up to four months without notifiynig the municipality that they’re going home.

The municipalities and the Tax Authority don’t know how much money is fraudelenty paid in welfare in such a way, but both estimate the amount is severla million kroner.

Kjeld Petersen is a customs consultant for the Tax Authority’s smuggling inspectors in Billund airport, and he knows some people cheat on their welfare on vacations.

he says that in the past four years they’ve had a lot of success with their inspections, but people discovered that it’s too dangerous to depart from Billund and Copenhagen and they now drive to Hamburg or Frankfurt and depart from there. There’s no inspection there, and inspectors don’t stand at the German border every day, so there’s a minimal risk of being caught.

If a couple is receiving welfare benefits, they could get together over 26,000 kroner a month. And the total can quickly run up if they leave Denmark for a few months.

Kjeld Petersen says they have cases involving 100,000 kroner. Most recently were a Somali and Nigerian who left Denmark for 3-4 months and fraudulently received 72,000 kroner.

Marianne Lyngholm-Pedersen works in the inspection group in Kolding municipality. Due to vacation welfare-fraud, they established and formalized cooperation with the customs agents in Billund airport. She urges citizens to tip municipalities if they know of welfare fraud.

She says they rely heavily on reports from citizens. Some of these people, for example those who go on vacation in the Balkans, drive very often. The authorities don’t know about them, and they don’t get their passports stamped when they drive. But she knows that it happens. They fill the car, and off they go.

Source: Jyllands-Posten (Danish), h/t Uriasposten

France: Sarkozy vows to crach down on foreign-born criminals

Via AFP:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed Friday to crack down on foreign-born criminals, pushing his “war on crime” amid fear of violence between police and immigrant minorities.

Sarkozy vowed to strip foreign-born individuals of their French nationality if they attack police or public officials, in the wake of deadly shootings and other violence between police and suspects in largely immigrant districts.

His declaration coincided with evidence of violent behaviour by the authorities themselves: a video of French police violently evicting Africans from a squat in a suburb of Paris.

The video, published on the website DailyMotion and broadcast by CNN news, shows police dragging screaming African women along the ground, including one with a baby in a sling on her back beneath her and another apparently pregnant.

The local Seine-Saint-Denis police authority rejected charges of brutality and said the eviction in La Corneuve, north of Paris, was carried out “in relatively good conditions.”

Struggling in the opinion polls after his government was implicated in a financial scandal and in the wake of a spate of violent unrest, Sarkozy on Friday announced a headline-grabbing package of security measures.

Top of the list, in a week when Sarkozy had already threatened to expel foreign Roma minorities who commit crimes, was a vow to tighten nationality rules for other non-French-born criminals.

“Nationality should be stripped from anyone of foreign origin who deliberately endangers the life of a police officer, a soldier or a gendarme or anyone else holding public authority,” Sarkozy said.

Michel Tubiana of the French Human Rights League said Sarkozy was “singing the old tune of the 1930s, aimed at stirring up hatred against foreigners” — a reference to fascist persecution in Europe between the World Wars.

Speaking in the eastern city of Grenoble, scene of recent clashes between police and armed rioters, Sarkozy said that foreign minors who commit crimes would henceforth find it harder to get citizenship on coming of age.

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Netherlands: Gays try to exploit minors, get extorted by Moroccans

The minors who extorted money from gays in the area of Bergen op Zoom in the Netherlands, apparently did so to dozens of victims. Five victims lodged complaints by the police, but according to the local branch of the gay interest organization COC, many of the victims don’t dare go to the police.

According to Peter Verhaegh, chairman of the COC in Bergen op Zoom, the victims tried to contact minor boys on the internet. Since that’s criminal, many victims are reluctant to lodge complaints, he said Friday.

Verhaegh says that anonymous reports show that the Moroccan perpetrators had victims from all over the Netherlands and Belgium. Dozens were victimized.

The men contacted the three 16-year-olds via chat-sites. Two of them are currently in custody. In the area of Bergen op Zoom they were then confronted with the printouts of the chats with the minors and threatened that those would be handed over to the police.

The victims were then forced to draw out money and in some cases hand over their watches and phones too. In some cases they lost 750 euro.

Source: Trouw (Dutch)