Murdoch press smears proven untrue

Two British newspapers, the Sun and the News of the World, run by the Rupert Murdoch owned News International are responsible for running two bogus stories about Muslims.

The first centred on claims that Muslims tried to scare four British soldiers from moving to a home in wealthy Datchet near Windsor.

The second smeared a young Muslim shot by police during a “terror” raid on his home in Forest Gate, East London, in June 2006.

The Windsor story hit the headlines on 7 October, when the Sun led on claims that “Muslim yobs” were “hounding” four British army officers, recently returned from Afghanistan, from a house they were due to move into. The story claimed that phone threats were made to their barracks.

It was claimed that bricks were thrown through the windows and that the drive was daubed with “messages of hate” including the words “fuck off”.
A Tory MP, Philip Davies, was quoted saying, “If anyone should fuck off, it’s the Muslims doing this sort of thing.”

Despite this the story has been proven untrue. Thames Valley police have since confirmed there is “no evidence” to suggest Muslims were responsible for the vandalism and the barracks “did not receive any threatening calls from Muslims or people claiming to be Muslims”.
A short piece setting the record straight appeared in the local paper, the Windsor Express. It was picked up on the www.ministryoftruth.org.uk website and circulated on a few other sites, including Islamophobia Watch.

The fact that the story has turned out to be a complete fabrication has not stopped it going around the world, being quoted by right wing publications as proof that “Muslim extremism” is running rampant in Britain and that we face a race war fuelled by a “clash of civilisations”.
The Forest Gate smear came in the wake of the botched police raid last June. The raid was followed by a series of mysterious leaks, providing material for press stories vilifying the brothers.

This all served to distract from the central point - that an innocent man had been shot and a home destroyed after 250 police officers had swooped upon a house early in the morning.
Both brothers were released on 9 June without charges, following questioning for a week. The lengthy search of the house had uncovered no explosives or chemical weapons.
Then, on 30 July, the News of the World claimed “officers had unearthed a haul of vile kiddie sex pictures on the family’s computer”. Having being shot and falsely arrested Mohammed was being accused of child sex crimes.

Again, the claims have proved groundless. Forensic police examination of a Dell computer, an external hard drive and a 3G mobile phone found in the house allegedly turned up 44 indecent images. But last week the Crown Prosecution Service admitted 21 of the images were “deleted”. The remaining 23 were “embedded” images that “could have been inadvertently downloaded by the user on the ‘coat-tails’ of other files” without the men’s knowledge.

What really puzzled the CPS was that some of the “deleted” images were stored on the 3G phone, which would have required specialist knowledge. “There was no evidence that Mr Kahar had possession of, or access to, equipment or the technical knowledge to do so,” concluded the CPS.

It was not even clear if it could be proved when the images were downloaded, created or deleted.

This article has been partially taken from the Socailist Worker online: http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=10063