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Wednesday, 10 March 2010

Rajib Karim and the Tyneside Terror Plot

Oh, what would we do without the impartial and ever-enlightening BBC which does its best to deliver us all of the salient facts?! This evening it reports that:

A Tyneside man has been charged with a series of terror offences, police in London have said.
Rajib Karim, aged 30 and of Newcastle, has been accused of committing three offences under the Terrorism Act.
The three charges span a four-year period, from 13 April 2006 to 25 February this year, and relate to offences inside and outside of the UK.
He is due to appear before London's City of Westminster Magistrates' Court on Thursday.
A spokesman for the Metropolitan police said Karim had been charged following advice from the Crown Prosecution Service Counter Terrorism Division.
Karim faces two charges of engaging in conduct in preparation of terrorist acts and one charge of fundraising for the purposes of terrorism.
Notice any omissions? Rajib Karim: a traditional Geordie name, undoubtedly. Dig a little further and a Daily Telegraph report reveals that Mr Karim worked in a BA call centre and that he has also been accused of “preparing acts of terrorism abroad, thought to be the Yemen, and sending money to others “knowing or having reasonable cause to suspect that it would or might be used for the purposes of terrorism.””

So, the Telegraph edges a little closer to the truth, but still insists on referring to Mr Karim as being “from Newcastle.” Strangely, the religious inclination of the gentleman is not mentioned in either report. It’s touching how coy, how shy our media can be at times. Such a tease!

Somehow though, I don’t think that the Yemen has many links with Irish republican or loyalist splinter cells, Marxist-Leninist revolutionary movements (not these days at any rate), bomb-throwing anarchists, phantasmagorical far-rightists or unabomber-style anti-industrial deep greens. No. Mr Karim, it seems to me, is not motivated by these strands of terroristic ideology. Could anybody kindly suggest what may have underpinned Mr Karim’s intended atrocity? I really am at an utter loss. What could motivate a dyed-in-the-wool Geordie like Rajib Karim (ah, the name is so redolent of ancient Northumbria that you can almost imagine the Venerable Bede penning an entry on the arrival of the Karims sometime around 732!) to plan an act of violence against his fellow Newkie Brown-swilling men-about-“toon”? Perhaps Mr Karim could provide the basis for a new Viz character, spouting a suitably anodyne catchphrase such as "bombs oot for the lads!"?

2 comments:

  1. I was thinking along the lines of neo-post-industrial nihlism, or perhaps, post-modern antidestabishmentarianist angst... or ...

    At first, I was thinking radical islamic zealotry, but that's so obvious I'm absolutely certain the authorities would have covered that angle first. Right?

    Surely...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hello Kirby. My apologies for not replying until now, but I've only just spotted your comment.

    Thanks for your suggestions. As for "radical Islamic zealotry" well, perhaps there might be just a smidgen of an inkling of that at play in this case? You've probably not spotted them, but I've only (thankfully, owing to their vicious content) received a couple of comments from Muslims on this blog: one threatening to cut all of our "white bastard" heads off, and another bragging of his alleged sexual conquests of Englishwomen whom he terms "slags". Charming fellows both of them I'm sure. Now, I wonder what could be the source of their attitudes: "neo-post-industrial nihilism" or some rather more traditional ideology that originated in a certain hot, dry and dusty part of the globe?

    ReplyDelete

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