“The women and two children in the house are totally innocent and should not be punished. We shouldn’t face collective punishment.” That’s how this case should be decided. If they really are completely innocent, they should not be punished. But if they hold to the same jihad ideology, the place could end up being used as a jihad base again.
“Family of Al Qaeda terrorist set to be evicted from the home they own because ‘he used it as a base to recruit jihadists,'” by Lucy Buckland for the Daily Mail, November 7:
The family of a convicted terrorist could lose their home after police claimed he used the property as a base to recruit for Al Qaeda.
Greater Manchester Police wants to use British anti-terror laws to seize the house belonging to Munir Farooqi.
It would be the first time the powers have been used in such a way. Farooqi’s family have branded the police ‘inhumane’.
Farooqi, 54, is serving four life sentences for soliciting mass murder after trying to recruit two undercover police officers for jihad in Afghanistan.
Now police want to prove he used his home in Longsight, Manchester, as a secret Al Qaeda recruiting school to brainwash a string of people to convert to Islam.
If a court accepts the £200,000 Victorian home was used as a base to commit the offences, the family’s property will be seized, which they claim will leave three generations homeless.
The Farooqi family are to use Human Rights laws in an attempt to thwart the action.
About 5,000 people have signed an online and paper petition which calls on the British public to oppose what they called ‘collective punishment.’
Farooqi’s daughter Zulaika, 28, said: ‘Leaving three generations of a family homeless, including an eight-month-old baby, is disgusting; it’s not British law, it’s just wrong and inhumane.’
His son Harris, 27, who also faced terror charges but was found not guilty, said: ‘The women and two children in the house are totally innocent and should not be punished. We shouldn’t face collective punishment.’
During his September court case, it was proved father-of-three Farooqi would predominantly target lonely young British men down on their luck as he peddled fanatical Islamic manuals, books and DVDs at his book stall in Longsight Market in Manchester.
Followers included a former British soldier, an estate agent, a shop assistant and members of a local crime gang who became bewitched by Farooqi’s blend of Islamic rhetoric and his ‘rare friendly face’ towards non-Muslims.
Over a two-year period Farooqi tried to persuade people visiting his stall to travel to training camps and battlefields abroad to fight the government, and British and coalition soldiers serving in Afghanistan.
He himself boasted of being a ‘veteran Taliban solder of high status’ and used his background to brainwash volunteers to join up.
Farooqi was arrested in November 2009 after two white undercover policemen infiltrated the recruiting school and underwent radicalisation ceremonies in the basement of his terraced home in Longsight, Manchester.
“Radicalisation ceremonies”? What? Farooqi sounds like a standard believer in the Qur’an:
During the undercover investigation one of the detectives taped Farooqi boasting: ‘If we die, we win.You have Allah on your side, how can we lose?
‘You know Jihad is not about you giving your life away. If we’re going to go there you make sure you take at least 40 or 50 people with us so we’ve done something.
‘I went for the work of Allah and he can use me again like he did before. You know when you’ve tasted honey? Then you only want more.
‘That’s what I’d do until Allah takes me from this earth and when I wake up in the morning I think to myself, when will that day come.’
Today Greater Manchester Police confirmed it would be applying to have the house confiscated using clause 23a of the Terrorism Act 2000, which says that if a person is convicted, the police can apply to the courts for a forfeiture order….