Ex-soldier jailed for burning Koran in Carlisle

A former soldier has been sentenced to 70 days in prison for setting fire to a copy of Muslim holy book the Koran in the centre of Carlisle.

Andrew Ryan had previously admitted religiously aggravated harassment and theft of a Koran from a library. The 32-year-old, of Summerhill, said he had been "shocked" watching a Muslim burning a poppy on Remembrance Day.

Shoppers and schoolchildren witnessed the burning, outside the old Town Hall, on 19 January.

Sitting at Carlisle Magistrates' Court, District Judge Gerald Chalk described it as a case of "theatrical bigotry". He said: "It was pre-planned by you as you stole the book deliberately. You went out to cause maximum publicity and to cause distress."

Ryan struggled with security guards in court after the sentence was passed. While being handcuffed he shouted: "What about my country? What about burning poppies?"

About 10 people were in court to support Ryan, and as they left the court they shouted "do you call this justice?".

After sentencing, Insp Paul Marshall, of Cumbria Police, said: "This incident was highly unusual for Cumbria as we have such low levels of hate crime in the county."

BBC

No prosecution for burning Koran

Seven men accused of burning a Koran in a pub car park and posting the video online will not be prosecuted.

Wendy Williams of the Crown Prosecution Service said the majority of people would find the inflammatory incident "repugnant". But she added there is not enough evidence to create a realistic chance the men would be convicted of any offence.

Mrs Williams said: "If any further evidence comes to light and is sent to us, we will look at it."

Police arrested seven men on suspicion of inciting racial hatred after a video recording was posted on YouTube last September. It showed a group of young men in hooded tops or wearing scarves over their faces pouring petrol on a book and setting it alight. They cheered as the book bursts into flames during the incident in a car park behind a Gateshead pub.

Those involved later told police they did not intend to offend anyone and very few people saw what happened at the time.

The men may have been copying Terry Jones who threatened to burn the holy book on September 11. The Florida-based pastor sparked an international outcry but did not go ahead with the provocative plan.

Prosecutors said police could not identify who recorded the video and posted it online and there was not enough evidence those involved were threatening anyone. They added that the men could not be charged with a religiously aggravated public order offence because they could not prove anyone was there who was distressed.

Belfast Telegraph

Carlisle man arrested after 'Koran burning' in city centre

A police officer next to the burning book

A man has been arrested after he allegedly burned the Koran holy book and made an anti-Islamic speech yesterday in Carlisle city centre.

One eye witness who spoke to the News & Star described seeing the man standing in the city centre, near to the market cross, loudly making anti-Islamic pronouncements in front of a large crowd. He then set fire to the book he was holding, which said the witness was a Koran, before discarding it and hurrying away.

Police arrived at the scene a short time later and are now investigating. A spokesman for the force confirmed that a man has been arrested.

The incident came just a day before a controversial American preacher, who had threatened to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in new York, was told he would barred from visiting the UK.

A spokesman for Cumbria police said today: “Just after midday on Wednesday, January 19, police received reports that a Koran was being burned by a man in Carlisle city centre. Police have seized the remains of the book and a 32-year-old male has been arrested on suspicion of using racially aggravated threatening words or behaviour. The man remains in police custody where he is helping officers with their inquiries.”

Police confirmed that the man was arrested at his home address in Carlisle.

A woman who saw the book burning incident said: “There was a big crowd gathered in the city centre and he was basically burning the Koran in the middle of town. He was carrying the book around while it was burning and then threw it on the floor for a second and then left. He was shouting anti-Islamic comments. People were horrified. It was a bit shocking to see that in Carlisle city centre. The whole thing lasted about three or four minutes.”

Meanwhile, Pastor Jones said today that he was disappointed to be barred from the United Kingdom, describing his exclusion from the country as “unfair”. Speaking after the Home Office announced it would not allow him to enter the UK, he insisted he was not against Muslims or Islam, only the “radical element of Islam.”

News and Star

Nazi book-burnings had lasting impact on Prescott's Kaus family

The events would change his life forever, but for 9-year-old Peter Kaus living in comfort in Vienna, Austria, the 1933 Nazi book-burnings barely registered a ripple

"That was in Germany," Kaus, now 83 and living in Prescott, said of that long-ago assault on free speech. "Austria had its own problems."

So even though his mother, Gina Kaus (pictured, left), was among the authors whose books German Chancellor Adolph Hitler burned and banned, Kaus said his life went on much as it had before - at least for a time.

"I knew that money was getting tight," Kaus said of the years that came after the book-burnings. His mother had been a popular author in Germany, so Hitler's ban dried up much of her readership.

Even so, Kaus said his mother and her friends were more apt to discuss recent advances in psychoanalysis than political goings-on hundreds of miles away.

"I was aware of a problem, but I didn't associate that with Germany; I associated it more with the rising anti-Semitism in Austria," Kaus said recently as he reflected on this week's arrival of the national exhibition, "Fighting the Fires of Hate: America and the Nazi Book Burnings" at Yavapai College. See a review of the show in The Scene.

Indeed, Kaus and his daughter, Prescott Library Director Toni Kaus, both have been particularly mindful recently of the events that helped to set their family's course for the next 75 years. Their tie to the Nazi book-burnings came up at a recent Prescott City Council meeting when David Hess, president of the local Jewish Foun-dation, emphasized the "very personal con-nection" that the Kaus family and the Prescott Library have with the historical event.

As the overseer of one of the community's largest repositories of books, Toni Kaus has an obvious bond with the written word.

"I really did grow up with a family where my parents and I always loved books. There were shelves of books everywhere," she remem-bers of her early years.

So it is understandable that she views the hard-ships of her grandmother and father in 1930s Vienna with special pain.

"It did end people's careers," Toni Kaus said of the book-burnings. "They couldn't be published."

For Gina Kaus, who was Jewish, the book-burnings were just an early taste of the persecution that ultimately would drive her and her young family from Vienna to Paris and, finally, to Hollywood. Like her father, Toni Kaus said the impact of the Nazi book-burnings was not central to her life growing up in Southern California.

With her grandmother living nearby, Toni said she grew close to the woman she describes as fascinating and adventurous. After her move to America in about 1940, and before her death in the mid-1980s, Gina Kaus went on to have a successful career writing and translating screenplays.

While family members were well aware of the history that caused the move from Europe, Toni Kaus said they did not dwell on it.

"I've always known my grandmother was an author," she said.

What she was not always aware of, however, was that Gina Kaus was a victim of the Nazi book-burnings. That fact became painfully obvious to Toni when, as an adult in the 1990s, she visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. There, in a display about the book-burnings.

"My grandmother's name is etched in the glass. It gave me a chill to see that," she said.

And even though Peter Kaus downplays the impact of the Nazi book-burnings on his life, the memories of his early years in Vienna still can evoke strong emotions.

"We lived in a very comfortable apartment near the opera in Vienna," he recalls nostalgically. "My mother had a pretty steady routine - she slept late, and then she went to her favorite coffee house, where she talked to people."

While his mother was Jewish, his father was Italian Catholic - a fact that helped to buffer young Peter from some of the blatant anti-Semitism that was growing in Austria throughout the 1930s. For instance, his mother, who Peter describes as a "very smart lady," enrolled him in Catholic schools to help protect him from harassment. Later - to further shield themselves from the Nazi persecution - the family donned the fascist pins of Italy to aid them in their escape from Austria.

"I wasn't really scared," Peter Kaus says of those days. "I felt reasonably immune, because nothing physical ever happened to me."

Even so, he has bitter memories of the seemingly overnight conversion of many Austrians to Nazism after Germany annexed the country in the late 1930s. He remembers Nazis forcing Jews to clean anti-Nazi graffiti off the sidewalks with toothbrushes, for instance, as well as people cheering in the streets after the German arrival.

Perhaps because of those final memories, Toni Kaus said her father always had positive views about his move to America where he would go on to become a physicist.

The Daily Courier