OSLO, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Norwegian police expanded their charges on Thursday against four men suspected of firing shots at an Oslo synagogue at the weekend to include a charge of terrorism, police said.
Being convicted of terrorism for creating fear in a population can lead in Norway to up to 21 years in prison.
The four men, aged between 20 and 30, were arrested on Tuesday and charged with having fired at least 10 shots at the synagogue in central Oslo with an automatic weapon, or of having taken part in the incident early on Sunday.
The police have not identified the men nor said where they are from, but have said they are of various ethnic backgrounds.
No one was hurt in the shooting, which was the most serious in a series of attacks in recent months on the synagogue which belongs to the Mosaic Religious Community.
"The charge is expanded to apply also to Penal Code section 147a -- ban on terror," the Oslo police district said in a statement.
The police said they would ask a court on Friday to allow the men to be kept jailed.
Norwegian authorities say terrorists had planned to bomb US and Israeli embassies
Associated Press Published:Â 09.22.06, 19:33Â
Four men suspected in connection with an attack on an Oslo synagogue are also accused of plotting to blow up the US and Israeli embassies, and killing Israel's ambassador, media reports said Friday.
The four were arrested Tuesday in connection with an attack on the Mosaic Religious Community synagogue. The Jewish house of worship was hit with at least 10 bullets early Sunday. No one was injured.
Police said Thursday that charges against them were being expanded to include plotting terrorism but gave no other details. They were seeking a court order Friday to continue holding the men for questioning.
Defense attorney Vegard Aaloekken confirmed to the state radio network NRK that the new charges include allegations of a terror plot against embassies.
The charges were in part based on recordings from an electronic bug in one suspect's car, NRK and other major Norwegian news media said.
NRK and other major Norwegian news media said the suspects discussed blowing up the embassies and decapitating the Israeli ambassador to Norway, Miriam Shomrat.
"There is something about gathering weapons and that buildings were to be blown up," he told NRK, refusing to say more.
"We are deeply concerned about the emerging information on these planned terrorist attacks in Norway," US Ambassador Ben K. Whitney said in a statement. "We are watching developments closely."
Police have been tightlipped about the investigation and refused to disclose names and personal details about the four suspects, other than saying they all are in their 20s.
One of the suspects, a 29-year-old Norwegian of Pakistani descent, was briefly held in Germany in June on suspicion of planning an act of terrorism against the soccer World Cup.
He was released without charges. He also was charged last week with firing gunshots at the home of a Norwegian journalist in Oslo earlier this year, reports said.
09-24-2006, 02:28 PM (This post was last modified: 09-24-2006, 02:30 PM by Naresh.)
<b>Mudy Ji :</b>
The Mills of the Lord Grind Slowly â but they Grind Exceedingly Small.
<b>What the Leadership of 850 Million Indian Hindus could not think of has been Publicly Aired by a Leader of about Forty Million Spanish Christians :</b>
<b>MADRID, Sept 23 : Former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar on Friday defended Pope Benedict XVIâs comments about Islam,<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'> saying the pontiff had no need to apologise and asking why Muslims never did, according to newspaper reports published on Saturday.
âWhy do we always have to say sorry and they never do?â Mr Aznar told a conference in the United States.</span>
<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>âIt is interesting to note that while a lot of people in the world are asking the pope to apologise for his speech, I have never heard a Muslim say sorry for having conquered Spain and occupying it for eight centuries.â
He was referring to the Muslim conquest of much of the Iberian peninsula, which lasted from the eighth to the 15th century.</span></b>
Mr Aznar, Spainâs right-wing prime minister from 1996 to 2004, took the country into the US-led invasion of Iraq, despite overwhelming public opposition.
His government was voted out of office following a terrorist attack in Madrid in March 2004, in part because of fears that his policies had made Spain more vulnerable.
Addressing Fridayâs conference in Washington on âglobal threatsâ, Mr Aznar said: âWe are living in a time of war... Itâs them or us. The West did not attack Islam, it was they who attacked us.
<b>âWe must face up to an Islam that is ambitious, that is radical and that influences the Muslim world, a fundamentalist Islam that we must confront because we donât have any choice.
<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>âWe are constantly under attack and we must defend ourselves,â he said.</span>
<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>âI support Ferdinand and Isabella,â he proclaimed, in reference to the medieval Catholic monarchs who drove Muslims out of Spain in 1492.</span></b>
The pope sparked outrage across the Muslim world with a speech in his native Germany on Sept 12, <b>in which he quoted a medieval Christian emperor as <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>saying that the Islamic concept of jihad was âevil and inhumanâ.</span> âAFP</b>
Look at who our so called Arab friends are supporting:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Pakistan gets OIC support on Kashmir dispute
New York, Sep 21 (IANS) In a show of support for Pakistan's position on the Jammu and Kashmir dispute with India, the Organisation of Islamic conference (OIC) reiterated that the resolution of the dispute was the necessary condition for the normalisation of relations between the two south Asian neighbours.
"Alleviating the sufferings of Kashmiris would remain a matter of priority for the OIC," OIC secretary general Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu observed while addressing the meeting of OIC Contact group on Jammu and Kashmir on the sidelines of UN General Assembly on Wednesday, reported Online news agency.
The meeting was attended by foreign ministers of Pakistan, Turkey and representatives of Saudi Arabia, Niger and Azerbaijan. The Chairman of All Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC), Mirwaiz Omar Farooq and prime Minister of Pakistani Kashmir, Sardar Antique Ahmed Khan also participated the meeting.
Thanking the OIC countries for the consistent support to the "legitimate cause" of the Kashmiri people, the Foreign Minister of Pakistan Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri said his country was committed to the peace process with India and floating "out of the box solution ", which dictated flexibility and courage on the part of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
He stated that the solution of the Kashmir dispute must be acceptable to Pakistan, India and the people of Jammu and Kashmir.
The OIC meeting was also addressed by APHC chairman and the leader of Pakistani Kashmir. The establishment of the Contact Group reflected the collective will of the OIC member countries to have the dispute resolved in accordance with the wishes of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, said Farooq.
Saudi Arabia reiterated its support for the Kashmiri people's right of self-determination.
Turkey said the Jammu and Kashmir dispute concerned not only the OIC but the international community as a whole.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->He also said the Council on American-Islamic Relations would likely contact the dealer to âoffer some kind of cultural or sensitivity awareness training.â<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I think mullah-log should retaliate with "crusading sales".
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->
<b>"They are fascists of an Islamic sort, pure and simple."</b>
Make no apologies for the use of âIslamic fascism.â It is the perfect nomenclature for the agenda of radical Islam, for a variety of historical and scholarly reasons.
That such usage also causes extreme embarrassment to both the Islamists themselves and their leftist âanti-fascistâ appeasers in the West is just too bad.
First, the general idea of âfascismâ â <b>the creation of a centralized authoritarian state to enforce blanket obedience to a reactionary, all-encompassing ideology </b>â fits well the aims of contemporary Islamism that openly demands implementation of sharia law and the return to a Pan-Islamic and theocratic caliphate.
In addition, Islamists, as is true of all fascists, privilege their own particular creed of true believers by harkening back to a lost, pristine past, in which the devout were once uncorrupted by modernism.
True, bin Ladenâs mythical Volk doesnât bath in the clear icy waters of the Rhine untouched by the filth of the Tiber; but rather they ride horses and slice the wind with their scimitars in service of a soon to be reborn majestic world of caliphs and mullahs. Osama bin Laden sashaying in his flowing robes is not all that different from the obese Herman Goering in reindeer horns plodding around his Karinhall castle with suspenders and alpine shorts.
Because fascism is born out of insecurity and the sense of failure, hatred for Jews is de rigueur. To read al Qaedaâs texts is to reenter the world of Mein Kampf (naturally now known as jihadi in the Arab world). The crackpot minister of its ideology, Dr. Zawahiri, is simply a Dr. Alfred Rosenberg come alive â a similar quarter-educated buffoon, who has just enough of a vocabulary to dress up fascist venom in a potpourri of historical misreadings and pseudo-learning.
<b>Envy and false grievance, as in the past with Italian, German, or Japanese whining, are always imprinted deeply within the fascist mind.</b> After all, it can never quite figure out why the morally pure, the politically zealous, the ever more obedient are losing out to corrupt and decadent democracies â where âmixing,â either in the racial or religious sense, should instead have enervated the people.
<b>Second, fascism thrives best in a once proud, recently humbled, but now ascendant, people.</b> They are ripe to be deluded into thinking contemporary setbacks were caused by others and are soon to be erased through ever more zealotry. What Versailles and reparations were to Hitlerâs new Germany, what Western colonialism and patronizing in the Pacific were to the rising sun of the Japanese, what the embarrassing image of the perennial sick man of Europe was to Mussoliniâs new Rome, so too Israel, modernism, and Americaâs ubiquitous pop culture are to the Islamists, confident of a renaissance via vast petro-weatlh.
Such reactionary fascism is complex because it marries the presentâs unhappiness with moping about a regal past â with glimpses of an even more regal future. <b>Fascism is not quite the narcotic of the hopeless, but rather the opiate of the recently failed now on the supposed rebound who welcome the cheap fix of blaming others and bragging about their own iron will.</b>
Third, while there is generic fascism, its variants naturally weave preexisting threads familiar to a culture at large. Hitlerâs brand cribbed together notions of German will, Aryanism, and the cult of the Ubermensch from Hegel, Nietzsche, and Spengler, with ample Nordic folk romance found from Wagner to Tacitusâs Germania. Japanese militarismâs racist creed, fanaticism, and sense of historical destiny were a motley synthesis of Bushido, Zen and Shinto Buddhism, emperor worship, and past samurai legends. Mussoliniâs fasces, and the idea of an indomitable Caesarian Duce (or Roman Dux), were a pathetic attempt to resurrect imperial Rome. So too Islamic fascism draws on the Koran, the career of Saladin, and the tracts of Nasserites, Baathists, and Muslim Brotherhood pamphleteers.
Fourth, just as it was idle in the middle of World War II to speculate how many Germans, Japanese, or Italians really accepted the silly hatred of Hitler, Mussolini, or Tojo, so too it is a vain enterprise to worry over how many Muslims follow or support al Qaeda, or, in contrast, how many in the Middle East actively resist Islamists.
Most people have no ideology, but simply accommodate themselves to the prevailing sense of an agendaâs success or failure. Just as there werenât more than a dozen vocal critics of Hitler after the Wehrmacht finished off France in six weeks in June of 1940, so too there wasnât a Nazi to be found in June 1945 when Berlin lay in rubble.
It doesnât matter whether Middle Easterners actually accept the tenets of bin Ladenâs worldview â not if they think he is on the ascendancy, can bring them a sense of restored pride, and humiliate the Jews and the West on the cheap. Bin Laden is no more eccentric or impotent than Hitler was in the late 1920s.Yet if he can claim that his martyrs forced the United States out of Afghanistan and Iraq, toppled a petrol sheikdom or two, and acquired its wealth and influence â or if he got his hands on nuclear weapons and lorded it over appeasing Westerners â then he too, like the Fuhrer in the 1930s, will become untouchable. The same is true of Iranâs president Ahmadinejad.
Fifth, fascism springs from untruth and embraces lying. Hitler had contempt for those who believed him after Czechoslovakia. He broke every agreement from Munich to the Soviet non-aggression pact. So did the Japanese, who were sending their fleet to Pearl Harbor even as they talked of a new diplomatic breakthrough.
Al-Zawahiri in his writings spends an inordinate amount of effort excusing al Qaedaâs lies by referring to the Koranic notions of tactical dissimulation. We remember Arafat saying one thing in English and another in Arabic, and bin Laden denying responsibility for September 11 and then later boasting of it. Nothing a fascist says can be trusted, since all means are relegated to the ends of seeing their ideology reified. So too Islamic fascists, by any means necessary, will fib, and hedge for the cause of Islamism. Keep that in mind when considering Iranâs protestations about its âpeacefulâ nuclear aims.
We can argue whether the present-day Islamic fascists have the military means comparable to what was had in the past by Nazis, Fascists, and militarists â I think a dirty bomb is worth the entire Luftwaffe, one nuclear missile all the striking power of the Japanese imperial Navy â but there should be no argument over who they are and what they want. <b>They are fascists of an Islamic sort, pure and simple.
And the least we can do is to call them that: after all, they earned it.</b>
<i>â Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author, most recently, of A War Like No Other. How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.</i><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Just for everyone's information, these Turks and Arabs are very anti-Hindu. When I was in Turkey, a Muslim store keeper was making some insulting comments about Hindu deities to me. They is some superficial friendly attitude with Indians because Bollywood movies are popular there, but they think Indians are dark skinned and therefore inferior, and also the average Turk is as fanatic a Muslim as it gets.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>The Left and the Jihad </b>
Fred Halliday
8 - 9 - 2006
The left was once the principal enemy of radical Islamism. So how did old enemies become new friends? Fred Halliday reports. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Muslim teacher in carol concert tirade is made Ofsted inspector
By WAYNE FRANCIS
Last updated at 22:00pm on 30th September 2006
A hardline Muslim teacher who caused a furore by denouncing pupils for celebrating Christmas has been made a Government schools inspector.
Israr Khan's Ofsted appointment was described by a former colleague as 'absolutely astonishing'.
Mr Khan, now headmaster of an Islamic school, launched into his tirade during a concert rehearsal at Washwood Heath Secondary School in Birmingham in 1996 after the choir including around 40 Muslim youngsters, had sung a number of popular Christmas songs, including carols.
He leapt from his seat, yelling: "Who is your God? Why are you saying Jesus and Jesus Christ? God is not your God - it is Allah."
As children in the audience began booing and clapping, a number of choir members - both white and Asian - walked out, some in tears.
Mr Khan, a maths teacher, was asked to work from home pending an investigation but there was no disciplinary action.
It has been claimed that Washwood Heath school was then a 'hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism'. Rashid Rauf - the airline terror bomb suspect whose extradition is currently being sought from Pakistan - was a pupil there at that time.
Mr Khan left Washwood Heath a year later to found the independent Islamic Hamd House Preparatory School in Small Heath, Birmingham, where he is headmaster.
Earlier this year, he was appointed as a governor of Anderton Park Primary School, in Sparkbrook, Birmingham.
A former Washwood Heath colleague laughed openly when told of Mr Khan's role as an Ofsted inspector where he has the responsibility for passing or failing schools.
He said: "Given the man's history, it's absolutely astonishing. It's just the cheek of the man that he's been able to reach that position. He always was an extremely clever man.
"He gave me many insights into the Islamic cause and their hatred of the US and the Western World. He had a big support base among some of the Muslim parents.
"But there were some very influential, radical elements at Washwood Heath at that time and Israr Khan was very close to all that."
Earlier this year, Anderton Park, where 99.5 per cent of the pupils are Asian, received a dismal Ofsted report which branded its teaching and its achievements as inadequate.
One Muslim father, who asked to be known only as Mohammed, said: "As a governor, Mr Khan will be able to exert a great deal of influence over the school and its policies.
"By his previous actions, he seems to represent what I would call a hardcore attitude to Islam."
Mr Khan declined to comment about his appointment, waving questions away at his large home in Moseley, Birmingham.
An Ofsted spokesman said: "Israr Khan was appointed as an additional inspector via a highly competitive recruitment and selection process. He has undergone all the relevant security checks."
<!--QuoteBegin-Bharatvarsh+Oct 2 2006, 05:51 AM-->QUOTE(Bharatvarsh @ Oct 2 2006, 05:51 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Mr Khan, now headmaster of an Islamic school, launched into his tirade during a concert rehearsal at Washwood Heath Secondary School in Birmingham in 1996 after the choir including around 40 Muslim youngsters, had sung a number of popular Christmas songs, including carols.
He leapt from his seat, yelling: "Who is your God? Why are you saying Jesus and Jesus Christ? God is not your God - it is Allah."
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Good question. I absolutely concur. Now you see why it is important not to put kids in convent schools.
My wife still remembers her time in convent schools. She used to consume the wafer that the parish priest gave - a very Catholic rite, sing on the choir and play in the Church. None of this is doing any good long-term for Hinduism.
10-02-2006, 09:03 AM (This post was last modified: 10-02-2006, 09:03 AM by Bharatvarsh.)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Good question. I absolutely concur. Now you see why it is important not to put kids in convent schools.
My wife still remembers her time in convent schools. She used to consume the wafer that the parish priest gave - a very Catholic rite, sing on the choir and play in the Church. None of this is doing any good long-term for Hinduism.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Agreed but how many Hindus would get up and question their kids singing xtian songs, a lot of the morons would even oppose who those question such nonsense.
<!--QuoteBegin-Bharatvarsh+Oct 2 2006, 09:03 AM-->QUOTE(Bharatvarsh @ Oct 2 2006, 09:03 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Good question. I absolutely concur. Now you see why it is important not to put kids in convent schools.
My wife still remembers her time in convent schools. She used to consume the wafer that the parish priest gave - a very Catholic rite, sing on the choir and play in the Church. None of this is doing any good long-term for Hinduism.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Agreed but how many Hindus would get up and question their kids singing xtian songs, a lot of the morons would even oppose who those question such nonsense.
[right][snapback]58327[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
There is a difference: In the case of this Israr Khan, it appears the students were in a publicly funded non-religious school. So, Israr Khan has a point.
OTOH, our idiots join their children into a <b>convent school</b>. These fools have no leg to stand on - if they don't like it, they can remove their kids from convents. <i>But no, they won't learn English properly then</i>. <!--emo&:angry:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/mad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='mad.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->UK: Hundreds In Mosque Battle - Youth Stabbed
The underlying tension between Muslims and non-Muslims erupted last night in Preston into a large scale battle on the streets of northern England. The trouble began on Clarendon Street in Avenham in Preston, Lancashire, outside the Jamia Masjid mosque at around 9 pm.
Youths began to throw stones at cars parked outside the mosque, while Asian (from Indian subcontinent) worshippers were inside the building. Those inside the mosque heard their cars being hit and about 200 Muslims came out. The fracas that ensued led to one 16-year old Asian youth being stabbed, though his injuries were not serious.
According to the Lancashire Evening Post the disturbance lasted four hours in all. After the youth was stabbed, ambulance crews were turned back by police, who decided the situation was too dangerous for them enter the scene.
The fighting continued until the early hours of this morning, and police brought back-up officers from Lancaster and Burnley. A total of 100 officers were deployed, stated Chief Supt Mike Barton, divisional commander for the area. He said: "Some people I spoke to at the mosque insisted it wasn't racial but I think some people at the mosque believe it was. Until we actually find the offenders and speak to them, and because some people believe it to be racial, then that's how we'll treat it."
The news is also carried by the BBC and 24 Dash.com. While Britain's politically correct police refuse to state the obvious, one should assume, taking a cue from some of from the mosque members, that the incident may not have been racially motivated, but religiously motivated.
Chief Supt Mike Barton said: "These problems are being caused by a small group of criminals in the area who are intent on intimidating the local community. This incident of stone throwing is an example of that and as you can expect, people are unhappy with being victimised....As a result of the large number of people on the streets a decision was made to deploy more police officers into the area to offer reassurance and prevent any disorder."
Inspector Simon Hayes, Lancashire Police's force incident manager, called the fighting "community tension" with youths in a "confrontational mood". He said: "As a result of that, there was a high-level policing operation to reassure the public and disperse these groups. There was no major disorder or serious incident."
If there was no "major disorder or serious incident" one wonders why ambulances were turned away when a young man became stabbed, for fear of ambulance crew-members' safety?
A mosque member said that it was not a mosque issue but a community issue. He said: "It is the month of Ramadan and that is the only reason the mosque has been brought into this."
Police are boosting their patrols in the neighbourhood, and employing video cameras to gather evidence. They have said that anyone who launches reprisals will be arrested.
On July 22 a young Asian man was stabbed to death in fighting between white and Asian youths on the Callon Estate in Preston. Bottles, knives and baseball bats were used in the fighting, and four Asian and white individuals ended up in hospital. 20-year old Shezan Umraji died from his wounds.
When that incident happened, police spokesman claimed: "I can understand why people might think there is a racial element at play but so far, as far as I know, there is nothing to indicate that this was a race crime."
Now a similar incident, where a mosque is attacked, suddenly becomes a racial incident, even though it seems more like a situation which developed from an instance of religious hate crime.
Amazingly, police made no arrests last night.
A 33-year old mother of 3 children who lives on Clarendon Street said: "It's getting ridiculous and for the past two nights there's been fighting."
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Thinkers support critic of prophet
Charles Bremner, Paris
October 04, 2006
INTELLECTUALS are rallying around a French philosophy teacher forced
into hiding after writing an article describing the prophet Mohammed
as a ruthless warlord and mass murderer.
Robert Redeker, a writer who teaches at a high school near Toulouse,
has been under police protection, moving between secret addresses,
since threats against him appeared on Islamist websites last week.
His home address was published with calls to murder.
"You will never feel secure on this earth. One billion, 300million
Muslims are ready to kill you," one message said.
One threat came from a contributor to al-Hesbah, an internet forum
that is viewed as a channel for al-Qa'ida.
Despite the threats, the Government has offered Redeker, 52, limited
support.
More than 20 stars of the French intelligentsia, including
philosophers Bernard-Henri Levy, Alain Finkielkraut and Andre
Glucksmann, urged the Government to offer more help.
Redeker, who is on the editorial board of Les Temps Modernes, a
review founded by Jean-Paul Sartre, has said he cannot afford his
accommodation and other costs in hiding. "I cannot work, I cannot
come and go. I have to hide," he said. "So ... the Islamists have
succeeded in punishing me on the territory of the Republic as if I
were guilty of a crime of opinion."
Redeker stirred anger with a commentary in Le Figaro on September
19. He deplored the furore over the Pope's references to Mohammed.
Redeker called him "a merciless warlord, a looter, a mass murderer
of Jews and a polygamist". The Koran, he said, was a book of
incredible violence.
The teacher and his supporters have been angered by the qualified
backing from Education Minister Gilles de Robien, who voiced
solidarity with the teacher but added he should have been "careful,
moderate and sensible".
Similarly, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin said: "Everyone has
the right to express his views freely, while respecting others, of
course." Mainstream Muslim groups deplored the threats and appealed
to believers not to play into the hands of provocateurs.
<b>Muslims are waging civil war against us, claims police union</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Radical Muslims in France's housing estates are waging an undeclared "intifada" against the police, with violent clashes injuring an average of 14 officers each day.
Interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy was warned of an 'intifada'
As the interior ministry said that nearly 2,500 officers had been wounded this year, a police union declared that its members were "in a state of civil war" with Muslims in the most depressed "banlieue" estates which are heavily populated by unemployed youths of north African origin.
It said the situation was so grave that it had asked the government to provide police with armoured cars to protect officers in the estates, which are becoming no-go zones.
The number of attacks has risen by a third in two years. Police representatives told the newspaper Le Figaro that the "taboo" of attacking officers on patrol has been broken.
Instead, officers â especially those patrolling in pairs or small groups â faced attacks as soon as they tried to arrest locals.
Senior officers insisted that the problem was essentially criminal in nature, with crime bosses on the estates fighting back against tough tactics.
The interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, who is also the leading centre-Right candidate for the presidency, has sent heavily equipped units into areas with orders to regain control from drug smuggling gangs and other organised crime rings. Such aggressive raids were "disrupting the underground economy in the estates", one senior official told Le Figaro.
However, <b>not all officers on the ground accept that essentially secular interpretation. </b>Michel Thoomis, the secretary general of the hardline Action Police trade union, has written to Mr Sarkozy warning of an "intifada" on the estates and demanding that officers be given armoured cars in the most dangerous areas.
He said yesterday: "We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists. This is not a question of urban violence any more, it is an intifada, with stones and Molotov cocktails. You no longer see two or three youths confronting police, you see whole tower blocks emptying into the streets to set their 'comrades' free when they are arrested."
He added: "We need armoured vehicles and water cannon. They are the only things that can disperse crowds of hundreds of people who are trying to kill police and burn their vehicles."
However, Gerard Demarcq, of the largest police unions, Alliance, dismissed talk of an "intifada" as representing the views of only a minority
............
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
In India we call it riots between two groups <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->