The British National Party has said that it will hold a rally in honour of its first claimed martyr, whose Asian killer was jailed for eight years for manslaughter yesterday.
Keith Brown, a father of eight and friend of the party leader, Nick Griffin, was stabbed to death by his neighbour Habib Khan, a Muslim community leader. A judge said that the dead white man and his skinhead son had both been involved in acts of racial aggression towards the Khan family.
The BNP said that it will hold a rally in Stoke-on-Trent on September 20 to protest about the case and Staffordshire Police’s handling of the long-running neighbours’ dispute. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) announced that it had cleared the force of any blame.
Officers had dealt with more than 100 complaints in five years from the feuding families.
Khan, 49, had been cleared of murder but was found guilty of manslaughter after a jury heard that he stabbed Mr Brown, 52, with a kitchen knife during a row on the pavement.
Judge Simon Tonking said that although Khan was acting in defence of his own son, his action in stabbing Mr Brown went beyond that which was reasonable. Khan had to be punished with “a significant custodial sentence”.
Julia Barker, the mother of Mr Brown’s children, said: “There has been no justice done. We knew it wasn’t going to get done. They are always crying out this racial abuse. They attacked our family. Mr Khan had a panic button put in, Mr Brown didn’t. Both should have been treated equal. When it was our family, nothing was done. The police let our family down as far as I am concerned. Me and the rest of my children will never be able to forget what happened that day. It is a disgrace. He’s got away with it.”
The far Right has portrayed Mr Brown as the “first nationalist victim of Islamic jihad against Great Britain”. Stoke’s BNP councillors shouldered the coffin at his funeral, which is posted on YouTube.
Michael Coleman, a BNP councillor in Stoke, where the far-right party is now placed second only to Labour in the popular vote, said: “We have a man here who has been murdered in the street. It is an outrageous betrayal of justice. Staffordshire Police . . . go softly with ethnic minorities [unlike] the indigenous population. We won’t put up with being treated like this.”
An IPCC investigation released yesterday cleared the force of any blame. Len Jackson, a commissioner, said: “The evidence suggests that on a number of occasions Staffordshire Police attempted to resolve the issues between Mr Brown and Mr Khan. However, no one could have anticipated that this long-running neighbour dispute would have such a tragic outcome.” The Khans were given a panic button after Mr Brown’s teenage son Ashley beat his middle-aged Asian neighbour unconscious.
The police had attempted mediation between the two families but found Mr Brown “immovable”.
The IPCC discovered that the BNP became involved when one of Mr Brown’s friends suggested that a BNP councillor could help with the neighbours’ dispute. The BNP alleged that police had refused to study a homemade DVD offered to them showing a member of Khan’s family kicking Mr Brown’s knee. However, the IPCC said that the DVD only showed a young Asian man apparently making a kicking motion. Mr Brown is off screen, no contact can be seen and, although there is good audio, no sound comes from Mr Brown.
Minutes of that meeting between police and the BNP describe the DVD as showing an argument about the location of a fence and make no mention of any crime.
The Browns claimed that the police ignored incidents where the Khans poisoned their puppy and cut their brake leads, but no records of such complaints were discovered.
Times Online
August 30, 2008
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4 comments:
Sounds like the Police failed both parties here and I suspect it will be the catalyst for a whole lot of trouble.
I thought I remember Nick Griffin's BNP once said they had given up marching and yet they've started again.
Hope AFA march against the fash, as (whose ever memory they claim to be marching against), the district cannot be lost to race hate.
I trust that the Court of Appeal will deal with this unjust conviction and sentance.
And NO ! anon. The Police did not fail both parties. They failed the Khans.
Old Sailor
Old Sailor, what ever way we put it, and believe me i hate the far right as much as you do, a man died.
If it were the failure of the police, which is sometimes the unjustified call, i sincerely hope that the police up there will now make sure that asians and anyone else from the bme community are persuaded to follow through on prosecutions against anyone making a racial attack against them.
Far too often the victims of racial attack refuse to press charges, even though the police will explain to them quite rightly that it means the perp gets away with it and may well do more harm next time.
I have no doubt whatsoever that Mr Khan and his family suffered badly with neighbours like that, but perhaps if they had taken the brave step in the first place Mr Khan would not have had to take such a drastic step.
Which means that he and his family will now suffer many years of unhappiness.
BME familys really need our support and help not only politically but so that they know they will have friends who will help them when they decide to press charges.
tulip
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