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The Iconoclast
Thursday, 15 May 2008
Police apologise for 'fake' claim over Channnel 4 mosque documentary
The press seems unanimously in agreement of approval that Channel 4 is vindicated in their reporting. This is The Times
The Crown Prosecution Service and West Midlands Police will apologise in the High Court today for wrongly accusing a Channel 4 film of faking an exposé of Islamic extremism.
The producers of Undercover Mosque, a Dispatches investigation that showed preachers predicting jihad and calling for the murder of non-believers, have also accepted a six-figure libel settlement.
The programme, screened last January, showed footage gathered at a number of mosques in the West Midlands using hidden cameras. It included one preacher who praised the Taleban for killing British soldiers.
Another, Abu Usamah, a preacher at the Green Lane mosque in Birmingham, was filmed saying: “If I were to call homosexuals perverted, dirty, filthy dogs who should be murdered, that is my freedom of speech isn't it?”
However, instead of pursuing a prosecution of the preachers, police and the CPS began an investigation into the producers, accusing them of selective editing and distortion. The film-makers were accused of undermining community relations.
The police took the highly unusual step of referring Dispatches to Ofcom, the media watchdog.
Ofcom threw out the complaint. It found that the programme had “accurately represented the material it had gathered and dealt with the subject matter responsibly and in context”.
It was a “legitimate investigation, uncovering matters of important public interest”. Each quote was “justified by the narrative of the programme and put fully in context”.
Hardcash Productions, which made the film, joined Channel 4 in a libel complaint against the police and CPS over the “distortion” claim.
David Henshaw, the managing director of Hardcash Productions, said:  “They [the preachers] later claimed they had been taken out of context — but no one has explained the correct context for arguing that women are 'born deficient', that homosexuals should be thrown off mountains, and that ten-year-old girls should be hit if they refuse to wear the hijab.”  
West Midlands Police and CPS will apologise unreservedly for comments that they accept were incorrect and unjustified. They said that there was “no evidence that the broadcaster or programme-makers had misled the audience or that the programme was likely to encourage or incite criminal activity”.
MPs criticised the police and the CPS, which dropped any prosecution of Channel 4 because of “insufficient evidence”, for trying to censor television producers.
A spokesman for West Midlands Police said: “We have paid a sum agreed with the programme-makers into a charity of their choice.”
The substantial damages will be donated to the Rory Peck Trust, which supports the families of journalists killed in the line of work. The CPS declined to comment.
If ever there was a department not fit for purpose it is the Crown Prosecution Service. The regional prosecution services (like the Metropolitan Police Solicitors or MPS) which conducted prosecutions for each Police force prior to the early 80s were more efficient, better able to respond to local need, more flexible, quicker, than the inefficient, arrogant and self serving monolith that has responsibility currently.
Posted on 2:47 AM by Esmerelda Weatherwax
Comments
15 May 2008
Mary Jackson
Perhaps more people watched the documentary as a result of the publicity. Let's hope so.

15 May 2008
Send an emailPali

Vindication.

Wonder what's happening at those mosques these days?

It was clear that there was a big fuss and stink made by 'community leaders' to the 'community relations' panel of the West Midlands Police. They probably threatened belligerence and 'youth unrest' if something was not done about the nasty, Islamophobic documentary makers for daring to show what was being seen and spread in their mosques.

Birmingham is increasingly becoming a centre for jihadism. That the police there can bend to the will of Muslim activists is depressing. Let's just hope this is a one off, and the decent police officers of the West Midlands can now be free to do their job as bravely as they usually can, without meddling from ideologically minded CPS officers and others.

Oh, I hope the media gets hold of the name of the CPS lawyer who wrote those words of condemnation. Using their office for political posturing is obscene.



15 May 2008
Send an emailHugh Fitzgereald

Show the documentary again. And again. Let it be picked up, say, on the BBC channel, so around the world we can see it. And then why doesn't Fox or CNN run it?

Yes, let the whole Infidel world have a chance to see the documentary, and then another documentary about the West Midlands Police and their idiotic accusation, and the role of the Crown Prosecution Service, and then the suit by the producers, and the apology and  libel award won by them. End it all with a nice wraparound wrap-up, about the funding of mosques and madrasas, and what goes on in those mosques, and why certain groups are so quick to come to the defense of Muslims, and how important it is to learn what is taught, what is inculcated, and so on.  All delivered by someone who is steelily uncompromising, as he provides that  wraparound wrap-up.

Thesis, Antithesis, and then, a Synthesis that turns out to be one with the original Thesis.  Hegel might not approve, but he's dead.