A man has been convicted of murder and attempted murder after driving a van into a group of Muslims near a north London mosque in a terrorist attack.

A jury concluded that Darren Osborne intended to kill as many Muslims as possible and had been “brainwashed” after gorging on extremist rightwing propaganda online.

A jury of eight women and four men took one hour to convict the father of four. Osborne, who had denied both charges, nodded in the dock as the verdict was read out but showed little emotion. He will be sentenced on Friday.

Sherry Johnson was 11 when her mother told her she was going to get married. The bridegroom was nine years older and a deacon in the strict apostolic church that her family attended.
He was also the man who had raped her and made her pregnant. “They forced me to marry him to cover up the scandal,” Johnson says

Much of the sexual abuse that takes place in Independent Fundamentalist Baptist, or IFB, churches involves adult men targeting 14- to 16-year-old girls. If caught, the teenage victim may be forced to repent the "sin" of having seduced an adult man.

Diversity was considered a value in itself
For a long time, the conception of multiculturalism has had a major impact on integration policy: regardless of what was hiding behind various cultures - diversity was considered a value in itself. The various cultures should exist side by side on equal terms and everybody's obedience to liberal Western values was rejected. I understand that at first glance, it may seem tolerant and cosmopolitan, when diversity is so accepted and rewarded.
But I'm scared by where such a multiculturalism has us led to.

Yet it’s still hard for Swedish authorities to be frank about what’s going on. It’s widely known that gang members are mainly first- and second-generation immigrants, and problems are rampant in what police euphemistically refer to as ‘vulnerable areas’. Thus the gang wars serve as a constant reminder of Sweden’s failed migration and integration policies. This is a problem for the government (and even the opposition) in a country that prides itself on being a ‘humanitarian superpower’. And yet politicians, in government and opposition, seem particularly concerned that violence in immigrant suburbs is a PR problem, a threat to the image of Sweden, and that the remedy is spin.

To that end, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs has launched a page on its official website, purporting to address claims that no one is making, such as ‘the high level of immigration means that the system in Sweden is on the verge of collapse’. No one says collapse; but charges of trouble or violence are hard to deny if you pick up a newspaper. Another official campaign says the ‘no-go zones’ are in fact ‘go-go zones’. Try telling that to Gordon Grattidge, head of the paramedics union Alarm/Ambulansförbundet. He once told me that members are not allowed to enter some Swedish neighbourhoods without police protection.

Firefighters face the same reality. In November, some 50 cars were torched in a garage in a mainly immigrant suburb in Uppsala. Despite citizens repeatedly calling the emergency services, it took three hours before the fire department showed up — protected by police equipped with riot gear and machine-guns.

Perhaps you will have read that Sweden has banned outdoor Christmas lights for religious reasons (it hasn’t); or that one of the country’s biggest shopping malls is a no-go zone for police (it isn’t); or that it’s no longer safe to go jogging after dark without an armed police escort (the local police inspector responded that “not much happens here, but people are affected by what is happening elsewhere in the world and can feel unsafe when it’s dark”). This alternative narrative about Sweden reached a peak of publicity in February 2017 when President Trump spoke at a rally in Florida about his plans to implement stricter immigration rules in the US.

Shortly afterward, the British nationalist politician-turned-radio host Nigel Farage backed up the US president’s words by declaring on his drive-time show that the southern Swedish city of Malmö is “now the rape capital of Europe and, some argue, perhaps it is the rape capital of the world.” In fact, since 2012 the rate of reported rapes (per 100,000 of population) in Malmö has been below the Swedish national average.


This extraordinary focus on Sweden isn’t really an attack on the country itself. It is about using Sweden as a weapon in a far wider clash of values. The “Good Sweden” reputation is built on the qualities listed by Prince William and is amplified globally by brands such as Ikea, H&M, Volvo, and Spotify. At its core is a set of progressive principles—equality, secularism, openness, and transparency—that make the country an outlier in international surveys and a thorn in the side of those who oppose the ideals of Scandinavian social democracy.

Flowers are still arriving at the roadside for Pamela Mastropietro. It is just over two weeks since this troubled blonde 18-year-old went missing here, only to resurface in a pair of suitcases left in a ditch.

No sooner was an illegal immigrant arrested for her killing than a local neo-fascist took it upon himself to drive around town in broad daylight shooting anyone who looked vaguely foreign.

Six African migrants were injured — though no one has left any flowers for them.

‘It’s like being in a horror story,’ says Anna, a neighbour of the private apartment block where Pamela was murdered.

The suspected killer was paying £600 a month for a flat in a complex with a private garden, entryphones and a tidy marble hall. Like everyone else around here, Anna wonders how a failed asylum seeker could afford it.

It has been widely reported that the man was a known drug-dealer who applied for asylum and was rejected, but had simply remained in Italy. That is confirmed to me by Macerata’s mayor, Romano Carancini, who says the migration system needs speeding up so failed asylum seekers are not left eking out a criminal existence.