As the investigation into the Parsons Green Tube bombing enters its second week, police are still trying to establish who was behind this latest terror attack.
No, it wasn’t those pesky Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists again, or Far Right extremists, or the provisional wing of Ukip, trying to stir up hatred against immigrants after the Brexit vote.
So who was it? Go on, have a guess.
Correct. It was undoubtedly another attempted Islamist atrocity on British soil, even if, mercifully, it misfired.
An Iraqi Kurd called either Bilal Mohammed or Mahdi Ramadi was arrested in South Wales over the Parsons Green bomb (pictured)
The six people arrested so far are all innocent until proven guilty. No evidence has been presented against any of them. None has yet been charged and last night two of them were released after being questioned for several days.
No-one is suggesting that the police simply rounded up the usual suspects. The terrorists responsible for the Westminster Bridge and Borough Market attacks were all British nationals and not asylum-seekers.
Yesterday, police arrested a 17-year-old at an immigration hostel in Thornton Heath, South London.
Earlier this week, they nicked three men in South Wales and one who was trying to leave the country at the Port of Dover.
Three of the four addresses detectives are searching are described as providing temporary accommodation for asylum-seekers.
A woman who lives near the Thornton Heath property said it was used as a ‘halfway house for people with a question mark over their immigration status’.
Another neighbour said it was occupied by young men of Middle Eastern appearance, who always seemed to be coming or going.
One of the houses in Newport raided by anti-terror officers is privately owned, but operated by the Home Office. The owner’s husband said: ‘It’s a government-run property. They put asylum-seekers in. We wouldn’t know who was in or out of there.’
Yahyah Farroukh, 21, was arrested as part of the investigation into the Parsons Green bomb but was released without charge
Of course, it would be wrong to jump to conclusions about the Parsons Green suspects.
We don’t know a great deal about any of them, other than the fact that the 18-year-old suspected of planting the bomb was a child refugee who had been living with an elderly foster couple in Sunbury-on-Thames and had a reputation for being ‘troublesome’.
Another, an Iraqi Kurd called either Bilal Mohammed or Mahdi Ramadi, who was arrested in South Wales, is said to be a part-time computer student who also worked as a freelance painter and decorator. He is reported to have been known to police and smiled when they pinned him to the ground.
As far as the rest of them are concerned, details are sketchy. Police are giving little away, apart from their ages. I emphasise, all may be victims of mistaken identity with rock-solid alibis. But, apart from a 48-year-old released last night, all conform to the stereotype of so-called refugees who have been arriving in Britain from the Middle East in recent years.
As I have been pointing out since the invasion of Europe started a few years ago, most of these ‘asylum-seekers’ are able-bodied young men of military age about whom we know next to nothing.
In the case of the Iraqi Kurd arrested in Newport, he goes by two different names. (Mahdi Ramadi sounds like a four-star desert inn resort.)
To be blunt, are we confident that he’s an Iraqi Kurd, and not some other nationality?
The truth is that the powers-that-be don’t bother to ask too many questions of these asylum-seekers, who all claim to be fleeing civil war back home. Right from the Off, I’ve been asking: where are all the women? If you were fleeing tyranny and certain death wouldn’t you bring your wives, mothers, sisters and daughters with you, instead of abandoning them to their fate?
Only recently, the European immigration authorities were forced to concede what this column has maintained all along — that most of these predominantly male ‘refugees’ are economic migrants, pure and simple.
Yet politicians both in continental Europe and here in Britain would rather give all these asylum-seekers the benefit of the doubt.
Background checks vary from cursory to non-existent. It’s more difficult for a council estate resident in one of the London boroughs to get a parking permit than for a foreign ‘refugee’ to get the keys to a council house in London. Humanitarian posturing always comes before security, as far as the ‘Refugees Welcome’ flag-wavers are concerned. They’re even prepared to roll out the red carpet for 23-year-old ‘child’ refugees with five o’clock shadows, no matter how ‘troublesome’.
But it’s the rest of us who have to live with the consequences of their reckless virtue-signalling. Remember when Bob Geldof and Pixie Balls-Cooper boasted that they would be welcoming Syrian refugees into their own homes?
That never happened, did it? Instead, asylum-seekers are shoved into scruffy hostels and halfway houses in suburban South London and Newport, South Wales, where the politicians can conveniently forget all about them.
It’s hardly surprising that when Britain doesn’t exactly turn out to be a land of milk and honey, some of these young men are seen as easy prey by terrorism’s hard-line recruiting sergeants.
Police outside the home in Thornton Heath where the latest arrest was made in the Parsons Green tube bombing probe
Far from showing gratitude to the benevolent Western democracies that have given them sanctuary, they may become cannon fodder for those who are intent on doing us harm.
Don’t blame the security services if one of these terrorists gets through, as the Tube bomber did last week. They’re already overstretched, dealing with countless plots and thousands of potential jihadists — hundreds of whom have been allowed to return home from fighting alongside Islamic State and have now vanished under the radar.
The tireless efforts of anti-terror officers on the ground are constantly undermined by the stupidity of the politicians and the opportunism of the professional yuman rites lobby.
Disgustingly, within hours of last Friday’s attack, it was politicking-as-usual for Labour, desperate to blame Parsons Green on the ‘Tory cuts’ to police budgets.
We should just think ourselves lucky that the bucket bomb was so ineptly constructed that it didn’t explode with more devastating effect, claiming perhaps dozens of lives and maiming goodness-knows-how-many more.
But of equal concern is the way in which, reports of arrests aside, the story has slipped so far down the news agenda that it’s virtually invisible.
Nothing to see here. Move along. Until the next time.
We don’t know yet who was responsible, but you can bet your life when the culprits are eventually identified and convicted there will be a procession of useful idiots queueing up to excuse their murderous intent.
It’ll be nothing to do with Islam, obviously, even if the defendants stand in the dock screaming ‘Allahu Akbar!’
If it does turn out to be a recent ‘refugee’, we’ll be told it was all our fault, anyway, because of Britain’s foreign policy in the Middle East; or because we hadn’t done enough for him once he’d come here genuinely seeking asylum; or because he was a vulnerable ‘child’ who had been ‘radicalised’ after experiencing ‘racism’ here . . .
You choose. We’ve heard it all before and we’ll hear it all again after the next attack, too.
And when it happens, who do you think will be behind it: the Trans-wossnames, the provisional wing of Ukip, or a bunch of deranged Islamist jihadis?
Go on, have a guess.
As a general rule of thumb, the more elaborate and expensive the wedding, the shorter the marriage. So I was amused by a couple of matrimonial stories this week.
Conservationists are concerned about the growing practice of releasing butterflies at weddings, instead of throwing confetti. Apparently, you can buy a box of ten for £120. Who knew?
The last time I remember anyone releasing butterflies was Mick Jagger at the Stones’ free concert in Hyde Park in 1969, a few days after Brian Jones died.
In other developments, there’s a growing trend for selfish couples to hold their weddings in exotic locations, which can cost their guests a small fortune in hotel and travel costs.
Ben Farina and Clare Moran think they have come up with a compromise. They’re charging their friends £150 a pop for a three-night stay at a hotel and spa in Derbyshire’s Peak District, telling them to look on it as a mini-break as well as a wedding.
You do wonder why they’re bothering, since they’ve already been together for six years and have two kids.
Maybe they’ve been saving up for the butterflies.
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