National Front lays wreaths at Cenotaph

The National Front has laid wreaths at the Cenotaph in a move which the Royal British Legion said "desecrated" the monument to Britain's war dead

Hundreds of members of the far Right party marched through the streets of Westminster to the London memorial on Remembrance Sunday. It emerged last night that they placed four poppy wreaths following the official ceremony attended by the Queen.

The Royal British Legion last night condemned the act saying that they had not been given permission to place the tributes, which were laid alongside those presented by Gordon Brown, the prime minister, and David Cameron, the Tory leader.

Robert Lee, the legion's spokesman said: "This is a terrible and unfortunate desecration of one of the nation's most important and treasured monuments. There was no official formation representing the National Front at the ceremony in any shape or form. Someone must have come there afterwards and placed these wreaths on the official pile."

A news item on the party's website reported that more than 200 members had marched from Victoria in London to the historic site on Sunday. It said that the event "passed off with dignity and peacefully" despite threats of disruption. It said the group observed a two minute silence at the Cenotaph before members laid the wreaths on behalf of the main, ex-servicemen's, youth, and Yorkshire branches of the party. It concludes saying the march was a "sure sign of a revitalised and resurgent NF".

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which organises the official ceremony at the Cenotaph, said the National Front had not been allocated an official place for wreaths but had not broken any rules by leaving them later. Only political parties with six or more seats in the Commons are allowed a space, however there is nothing to stop individuals or organisations from placing tributes after the service, a spokesman said.

Telegraph

France shocked by attack on Muslim war graves

ABLAIN-SAINT-NAZAIRE, France (AFP) — Vandals desecrated 148 Muslim graves in France's biggest war cemetery, hanging a pig's head from one tombstone and daubing slogans insulting France's Muslim justice minister, officials said Sunday.

President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed "profound outrage" at the "sordid" attack on the Muslim quarter of the Notre Dame de Lorette cemetery, near the northern town of Arras on Saturday night. He vowed that those responsible would be punished.

The cemetery is France's biggest military graveyards and commemorates tens of thousands of victims of a series of long and bloody battles for control of northern France at the start of World War I.

The attack came almost exactly a year after a similar incident in which neo-Nazi vandals scrawled swastikas on 52 of the cemetery's Muslim graves.

"This is the most inadmissible kind of racism and the president of the republic shares the pain of France's entire Muslim community," said a statement issued by the presidency. France's Muslim community is Europe's largest at around five million. "This hateful act is also a attack on the memory of all veterans of World War I, beyond the faith of each one," the statement added.

The state prosecutor for Arras, Jean-Pierre Valensi, said "the slogans directly target Islam and they gravely insult Rachida Dati, the justice minister," who is the daughter of north African immigrants. He said a pig's head was hung from one of the graves.

Dati issued a statement condemning a "hateful act" that "hurts the memory of our dead, of the veterans who gave their lives for France".

"Through its racist connotations, it is an assault on the values of the republic and an insult to all French people."

Muslim community leaders were allowed to visit the scene on Sunday. "This is shameful to see," said the regional head of the French Council for the Muslim Religion, Bahssine Saaidi. "We need to work together... to stop this problem of racism," he added.

"These are probably the tombs of heroes who fell in combat. This is a hateful, scandalous act, an insult to all Muslims," Dalil Boubaker, rector of the Paris mosque, told France Info radio.

The MRAP anti-racism group said the attack was "a worrying sign of an ill that is gaining ground with a degree of impunity: islamophobia" and warned that France needed to face up to the problem.

SOS Racism said it was taking legal action to demand the dismantling of the neo-Nazi group behind the April 2007 attack on the cemetery.

Two youths aged 18 and 21, both members of the group, were jailed for a year over that attack. A 16-year-old also received a six-week prison sentence.

The Elysee said Sarkozy had called for a swift inquiry and "for those responsible for this act to be punished as they deserve."

Around 100 French gendarmes were at the site to gather evidence. Jean-Marie Bockel, the secretary of state for veteran's affairs, said the government would review security at Notre Dame de Lorette.

"This is horrific, and for the 90th anniversary of the end of the 1914-1918 war. This is worse than the last time, it is abominable," said Jean-Paul Doue, one of 3,800 volonteer honorary guards at the cemetery.

Inaugurated in 1925, the Notre Dame de Lorette cemetery houses the remains of some 40,000 soldiers, half of them in named graves. The Muslim quarter includes 576 tombs, grouped together and turned towards Mecca.

Prior to 2007, there were four incidents involving the desecration of Muslim graves in northern and eastern France in 2004, and one in 2003.

There have also been several attacks on Jewish graves in cemeteries across France in recent years.

AFP

Nazi attack on Scottish war graves

Vandals have painted swastikas and Nazi symbols over graves of Scottish soldiers who died in the Battle of the Somme.

French police are hunting the vandals who attacked the graves of 32 soldiers killed during the First World War in the battle for Contalmaison. The incident has resulted in thousands of pounds' of damage in an attack described by a Scottish historian as an "appalling desecration" days before Remembrance Sunday.

Peake Wood Cemetery, near the village of Contalmaison, records 103 fallen Allied soldiers and is one of many small plots scattered across battlefields, each with their distinctive white headstones administered by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGS). The cemetery marks the spot from which the final assault was made on Contalmaison on 1 July, 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme and the scene of much heavy fighting by Scottish battalions.

The site is yards from a memorial to McCrae's Battalion, the celebrated Edinburgh unit formed with a large number of professional footballers, many from Heart of Midlothian FC.

Captain Lionel Coles, the Watsonian commander of the footballers' company, 16th Battalion the Royal Scots, was killed on the edge of the cemetery. Jack Alexander, who wrote the history of the battalion and who serves on the committee of the charitable trust that cares for the memorial that was erected in 2004, said he was disgusted by the vandalism. "As we move towards Remembrance Sunday, this appalling desecration is not the kind of thing we expect to see," he said.

The CWGC was notified of the attack last week and immediately arranged for the graffiti to be removed. Peter Francis, a spokesman, said: "It took a whole day. We were shocked and very, very angry."

Jacky Tonnel, the mayor of Fricourt district, which includes the cemetery, said: "I am outraged. Nothing like this has ever happened in Fricourt before and I can't understand it. I don't know if it was some kind of stupid game, whether it was adults or youths who did this, but one thing is for sure: it is scandalous and unacceptable."

Sir George McCrae raised his battalion of troops in less than a fortnight, thanks largely to the keenness with which many Hearts players enlisted. The club was top of the league when war broke out in 1914 and its players were renowned as some of the best footballers anywhere. But just four years later, there was barely a player left who had survived unscathed.

Contalmaison, just outside the town of Albert, was reached by McCrae's force in July 1916.

Scotsman