NEW GAY HATE ENQUIRY FOR COPS

16-06-2008

West Midlands Police has already been forced to hand over £100,000 in libel costs after cocking up its investigation of Channel 4’s Undercover Mosque programme......now it’s being investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission after failing to prosecute one of the homophobic preachers featured on the programme.

The Stirrer has discovered that local gay rights activist Philip Rolle has lodged an official complaint to the IPCC in which he refers to comments made by Abu Usamah during secret filming at the Green Lane mosque in Small Heath.

Usamah says: “If I were to call homosexuals perverted, dirty, filthy dogs who should be murdered, that is my freedom of speech isn’t it?”

Rolle, from Redditch, writes, “I am a gay man and I often go to gay pubs in Birmingham, within the West Midlands Police Force area. The statement by Abu Usamah is a clear incitement to hatred of the minority group to which I belong.

"I am appalled that West Midlands Police are not pursuing a prosecution of him.

"Their failure to do seems to have been based on a belief that the programme was a distortion of events. However, that has turned out to be the opposite of the truth.

"Now that the Dispatches programme has been found to be accurate, I would have expected a full police investigation to be commenced into the activities at Green Lane Mosque, with a view to identifying and prosecuting any person who incites hatred and violence.

"I am not reassured that this is happening. If it is not, then I submit that West Midlands Police are failing in their duty to uphold the law and this should be investigated by the IPCC.

"Given other events in Birmingham, the suspicion also arises that West Midlands Police failed to deal with this matter appropriately because of homophobia within the Chief Constable's team.

"One manifestation of homophobia is that words or acts derogatory to homosexuals are ignored or downplayed for no substantive reason. That seems to be exactly what has happened here."

The focus of his complaint is Assistant Chief Constable Anil Patani who also attracted the ire of The Stirrer in a recent Birmingham Mail column (http://tinyurl.com/3lsrj2).

West Midlands Police have so far shown rather more desire to prosecute the film-makers than the inflammatory preachers - a decsion which has proved costly in both PR and financial terms (see link here).

Just three months ago, Rolle made another allegation of homophobia against the Force to the IPCC, after a bungled raid on the Fountain pub in Wrentham Street (see link here).

View the letter here