Iran to protest Britain violent crackdown

Iranian university students plan to gather outside the British embassy in Tehran to protest against violent operations by the UK police and government on protesters in the recent unrest across England.

The protest gathering will be held on Sunday afternoon and demonstrators will chant slogans against Britain's hostile policies against the oppressed Britons, Mehr news agency reported. 

The unrest in Britain began on August 6 in the north London suburb of Tottenham after a few hundred people gathered outside a police station to protest against the fatal shooting and killing of a black man, Mark Duggan, by the police. 

The protests have spread to England's major cities like Birmingham, Liverpool, and Bristol. Several people have also been killed during the government-ordered crackdown on protests. 

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has strongly condemned the violent attacks, saying, “The true opposition in Britain is the people that are pushed to the ground and beaten on London streets and slain and yet no one hears their voice." 

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Muslims to stage protest in Birmingham

The Muslim community in Birmingham has announced it will hold a peaceful protest on Sunday in memory of the three Muslims killed during the unrest.

The protest is planned to begin at 3:00pm BST at Summerfield Park in Dudley Road where the three Muslim men were mown down by a speedy car outside a mosque in Britain's second-largest city Birmingham's Winson Green area. 

Haroon Jahan, 21, Shazad Ali, 30, and Abdul Musavir, 31, were part of an 80-strong group tasked with patrolling Dudley Road throughout night for fear of unrest affecting their mosque and the property of their community members due to the failure of police to rein in the raging violence. 

Some 200 people from Birmingham's Asian community held a vigil outside the hospital where one of the victims was taken for treatment. Birmingham's Muslims also said prayers as they gathered to grieve their loss in the holy month of Ramadan. 

US cop advising UK on crackdown

British Prime Minister David Cameron's new crime advisor says the UK police may want to adopt US methods to tackle the recent unrest but adds that they must deal with the underlying causes.

US "supercop" Bill Bratton, who is to begin advising Cameron in September about his experiences in dealing with gang crime and street violence, said that some of the crime-fighting methods used in the United States might also work in Britain. 

After withering criticism of his leadership during the unrest that recently swept across Britain, Cameron decided to hire the former New York and Los Angeles police chief to help the Tory-led coalition government handle the crisis. 

"I'm being hired by the British government to consult with them on the issue of gangs, gang violence, and gang intervention from the American experience and to offer some advice and counsel on their experience," Bratton said. 

Poll: unrest questioned PM leadership

A great portion of the British public say the government should stop the planned cuts to police numbers while there is a general outrage about the Prime Minister's response to the recent unrest.

A survey carried out in the aftermath of the trouble that flared in London last weekend and plagued other cities over the following days found that 54 percent of voters believe PM David Cameron "failed to provide the necessary leadership to take control of the rioting in London early enough". 

This is while 46 percent were also pessimistic about Cameron's qualification to continue to run the country. 

Based on the online poll by ComRes from 2,008 adults, a great majority of the public (71 percent) think the police cutbacks should be reversed. 

The results also showed that around four in five (78 percent) of the British population want automatic prison terms for all the offenses related to the unrest, even the most minor ones. 

This comes as a separate study of business leaders in London by the polling agency showed the unrest has damaged voter confidence in a group of officials with 29 percent saying they no longer trust London mayor Boris Johnson as they did before. Just one percent said their perception of Johnson improved after the unrest. 

Only 16 percent of business leaders said the police are well resourced to protect their businesses in case of more troubles with nine percent, saying they will reduce their investment in London due to the unrest. 

Media misled on Mark Duggan death

The British police watchdog has admitted that it may have deceived journalists into believing that officers killed black man Mark Duggan by live bullets after he fired at the police.

The police in north London Tottenham area shot dead the 29-year-old father of four last Thursday in an incident that triggered the worst civil unrest in Britain for decades while the media were quick to label Duggan a gangster that first fired at officers before they killed him. 

However, the Independent Police Complaints Commission said in a statement that the police fired all the shots and that a bullet lodged in an officer's radio, formerly reported to have been fired by Duggan's gun, was a “jacketed round” and police issue.