Category: news

A petrol bomb has been thrown at a car in County Londonderry overnight.

It happened in the Killyvalley Park area of Garvagh. It was reported to police at about 0200 GMT on Saturday.

The car was badly damaged by flames and it is understood a nearby house was also scorch damaged.

Police said they are treating the attack as a sectarian hate crime.

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Former home secretary Jack Straw has been accused of “stereotyping” after suggesting some men of Pakistani origin see white girls as “easy meat”.

The Blackburn Labour MP spoke out as two Asian men who abused girls in Derby were given indeterminate jail terms.

Keith Vaz, chairman of the home affairs select committee, said it was wrong to “stereotype an entire community” and a proper inquiry was needed.

A Barnados spokesman said vulnerable children of all races were at risk.

Mohammed Shafiq, director of the Muslim youth group the Ramadhan Foundation, rejected any suggestion that the abuse was “ingrained” in the UK’s Pakistani commuinity.

On Friday, Mohammed Liaqat, 28, and Abid Saddique, 27, were jailed at Nottingham Crown Court for raping and sexually abusing several girls aged between 12 and 18.

The judge in the case said the race of the victims and their abusers was “coincidental”.

But, in an interview for the BBC’s Newsnight programme, Mr Straw said there was a “specific problem” in some areas where Pakistani men “target vulnerable white girls”.

He called on the Pakistani community to be “more open” about the abuse.

Mr Straw said: “Pakistanis, let’s be clear, are not the only people who commit sexual offences, and overwhelmingly the sex offenders’ wings of prisons are full of white sex offenders.

“But there is a specific problem which involves Pakistani heritage men… who target vulnerable young white girls.

“We need to get the Pakistani community to think much more clearly about why this is going on and to be more open about the problems that are leading to a number of Pakistani heritage men thinking it is OK to target white girls in this way.”

Mr Straw added: “These young men are in a western society, in any event, they act like any other young men, they’re fizzing and popping with testosterone, they want some outlet for that, but Pakistani heritage girls are off-limits and they are expected to marry a Pakistani girl from Pakistan, typically.

“So they then seek other avenues and they see these young women, white girls who are vulnerable, some of them in care… who they think are easy meat.”

But Helen Brayley, from University College London’s Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science, said people should not draw hasty conclusions.

Ms Brayley, who wrote the first independent academic analysis of child sex trafficking, said: “When you jump in with thinking about race too quickly, you can miss a whole load of other things that are happening in other areas.

“So by racially stereotyping this early on without a national scoping project…we don’t know what the situation is in other areas around the country, that you might be leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy of if people are looking for Asian offenders, they will only find Asian offenders.”

Mohammed Shafiq, director of the Muslim youth group the Ramadhan Foundation, said it was important that people stopped throwing accusations and worked together.

“There is a perception that some of these young men do not see white girls as equal, as valuable, of high moral standing as they see their own daughters, and their own sisters, and I think that’s wrong,” he said.

“It’s a form of racism that’s abhorrent in a civilised society.”

But he added: “These gangs that operate are criminals. There’s nothing in their culture, there’s nothing in their religion to suggest that this sort of thing is ingrained.

“And for Jack Straw, a former home secretary, to suggest that this somehow is ingrained within young Pakistani men, I think is quite dangerous.”

Mr Vaz, who said he represented many men of Pakistani origin in his Leicester constituency, told the BBC’s Today programme: “What I don’t think we can do is say that this is a cultural problem. One can accept the evidence which is put before us about patterns and networks but to go that step further I think is pretty dangerous.”

He added: “Why didn’t Jack Straw say something about this (before)? He has represented Blackburn for 31 years, he’s been the home secretary.”

Martin Narey, chief executive of Barnardo’s, called for more research to be carried out.

He said: “I don’t think this is so much about targeting white girls – because black girls are also victims – it’s about targeting vulnerable, isolated girls.”

Sheila Taylor, who is Chair of the National Working Group for Sexually Exploited Children and Young People, said the issue needed deeper examination.

“I do think it’s really key, now that we have identified some forms of sexual exploitation, that we use the opportunity to push the door open for all forms of sexual exploitation, especially that which is happening to people like boys and young men, where it often goes under the radar.”

Liaqat and Saddique were the ringleaders of a mainly Asian gang which groomed and abused vulnerable girls.

Many of the gang’s victims were given alcohol or drugs before being forced to have sex in cars, rented houses or hotels across the Midlands.

Saddique, from Normanton, Derby, was jailed for at least 11 years and Liaqat, from the Sinfin area of the city, was locked up for a minimum of eight years.

Six other men had already been sentenced for their part in the abuse.

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An F16 jet fighter aircraft has made an emergency landing at Glasgow Prestwick Airport after suffering a fuel leak.

The airport activated its emergency response programme and alerted local fire, police and ambulance services. The alarm was raised at about 1200 GMT.

A spokesman said the US F16 aircraft landed safely, accompanied by another F16, and the emergency services were stood down shortly afterwards.

The jets were flying from Spangdahlem air base in Germany.

They were among a group of aircraft heading from Germany back to the US.

Two ambulances attended along with three appliances from Strathclyde Fire and Rescue Service.

The airport spokesman added: “Prestwick plans and prepares regularly for such an emergency and we are relieved it ended well.”

The Ministry of Defence said it had no involvement with the incident.

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Two people have been killed in overnight riots linked to food price increases and unemployment in Algeria, officials say.

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Chilean miner Edison Pena has fulfilled a lifelong ambition by singing Elvis Presley songs at the singer’s home in Memphis.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.