Sickening moment vile racist thug attacks Birmingham mosques with sledgehammer

That’s the headline from Birmingham Live.  The BBC MIdlands says – Birmingham mosque attacks: Man admits religiously aggravated damage. The Express and Star says Man pleads guilty after sledgehammer attack on five mosques. 

Drill a little further and we read that ‘the man’ is called Arman Rezazadeh, aged 34. And

Rezazadeh, a Muslim of Iranian descent who has lived in the UK for around 20 years, returned 30 minutes later and continued the attack,(on the Witton Islamic Centre on Witton Road, Aston,)  leaving all outside windows broken and causing £3,100 of damage.

I said when he was first arrested that it sounded to me like a Shia Muslim attacking a group of Sunni mosque. Nobody has brought up that connection yet. It’s a racist, a thug, (and he may well be all those) attacking a mosque. Which sets up in the readers minds an indigenous  local man, one of those nasty white gammon who vote Brexit. Horrible islamophobic xenophobes. Or xenophobic islamophobes; we are interchangable. The police even raised the spectre of the New Zealand murders. 

Ch Supt Kenny Bell said: “We fully understand the major impact that these attacks on sacred places of worship had on the Muslim community in Birmingham, especially as they happened just days after the appalling terrorist attack at mosques in Christchurch [New Zealand].

Anyway, Rezazden, Iranian born has pleaded guilty to damaging five mosques, all of which seem, according to the Salatomatic directory to be Sunni mosques. 

A major hate crime investigation was launched, with support from the West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit, and Rezazadeh handed himself in at Birmingham Central police station at around 1.30pm the following day.

In interview, Rezazadeh behaved erratically and initially denied responsibility. Rezazadeh, of Handsworth, Birmingham,was originally detained under the Mental Health Act but was later deemed fit to face legal proceedings.

Judge Andrew Nicol adjourned the case for four weeks for pre-sentencing reports to be prepared and Rezazadeh was released on bail.