Author: AFP
Publication: Channel NewsAsia
Date: July 27, 2005
URL: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/160086/1/.html
British newspapers blasted the ingratitude
of two asylum seekers from east Africa who reaped the benefits of life
in London as children but then allegedly attempted to bomb the city last
week.
Police have named 27-year-old Muktar
Said Ibrahim from Eritrea and 24-year-old Yasin Hassan Omar of Somalia
as two of the four men suspected of trying to bomb three subway trains
and a bus on July 21, exactly two weeks after four successful suicide bombers
killed 52 people in a similar way.
"Gratitude!" screamed a banner headline
across the middle market Daily Mail.
"Their families came here seeking
asylum and were given homes, schooling and all the benefits of British
life. How do they repay us? By trying to blow us up," the right-wing newspaper
said.
Ibrahim, also known as Muktar Mohammed
Said, escaped war and famine in his home country to seek refuge with his
family in north London in 1992.
The press claimed, however, that
he soon turned to a life of crime, drug-taking and bullying.
He was arrested for a string of
armed robberies and sentenced to five years in prison in February 1996
where he learnt extremist views, newspapers said.
Police refused to comment on the
reports but, if correct, they will likely trigger questions about why the
Home Office granted Ibrahim British citizenship last year when a key condition
of naturalisation is that an applicant has no criminal record, the right-leaning
Daily Telegraph said.
"Bombers are all spongeing asylum
seekers," said another right-wing tabloid-style newspaper, the Daily Express,
in a front-page splash.
A similar tone was adopted by The
Sun, Britain's most widely read newspaper.
"This schoolboy's family fled African
war and famine. Britain gave them asylum, a home and citizenship. He repaid
us by trying to blow up a bus... SWORN ENEMY," it said across the front
page, next to a picture of Ibrahim.
The Daily Telegraph broadsheet said
it was intellectually and morally wrong to blame the invasion of Iraq,
the occupation of the West Bank, poverty, racism or the West's wealth for
inspiring terrorism.
"What is reasonable, however, is
to ask why modern Britain is breeding so many anti-British fanatics," it
said in an editorial entitled, "Ten core values of the British identity".
It noted that the four July 7 bombers
were also British nationals -- three of them British-born men of Pakistani
origin and the fourth from Jamaica.
"Many countries try to codify their
values in law. Some oblige their citizens to speak the national language;
others make it a criminal offence to show disrespect to the national flag,"
the newspaper said.
Britons, however, prefer simply
to set out "in general terms, the non-negotiable components of our identity,"
it said, listing 10 values that included the rule of law, the sovereignty
of the crown in parliament, the pluralist state, personal freedom and the
"British character".
"As police continue a fast-moving
manhunt for the two men yesterday -- along with two unknown accomplices
-- details emerged of a lifestyle that veered between the fringes of legality
and the deeply religious," wrote the left-wing Independent in a news story.