In a fresh statement last night, the Prime Minister insisted the nation should honour “those brave servicemen and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our country” and declared: “Any attempt to use this location to cause further distress and suffering to those who have lost loved ones would be abhorrent and offensive.”
Mr Brown’s comments came on the day the Ministry of Defence said that a soldier from a regiment, which was allegedly heckled by a group of Muslim men in Luton last year, was the first member of British forces to die in the conflict this year.
The soldier, from the 1st Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment, died while on foot patrol in the Nad-e Ali area of Helmand province on Sunday.
Meanwhile, after David Cameron, the Conservative leader, had condemned the proposed march by Islam4UK as “completely unacceptable”, Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, called for the group to be banned, accusing it of wanting to “whip up hatred”.
He added: “I have already called for members of this group to be prosecuted for some of their activities and the Government should now ban this group altogether.”
East Kilbride Labour MP Adam Ingram, a former armed forces minister, told The Herald: “It is an outrage that people should even consider besmirching the good name of our service personnel in such a way. It would also be an insult to the good people of that town, who show their respect in a very significant way for each death.
“This march and demonstration have no place in our democracy.”
The cross-party fury came as a court in Luton heard how a group of seven Muslim men, aged between 19 and 32, told soldiers at a homecoming parade in the town to “burn in hell” and branded them rapists, murderers and baby killers. They all deny the charge of using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress during the parade for the 2nd Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment
in March.
In Wiltshire, civic leaders have urged Anjem Choudary of Islam4UK -- a branch of the extremist al Muhajiroun movement -- to reconsider his plan, while a Facebook site, dedicated to preventing it had attracted around 300,000 members at the time of going to press last night.
Islam4UK says it is planning to have 500 members parading with empty coffins, symbolising Muslim victims, through Wootton Bassett, a small community that regularly sees hundreds of local people lining the main street as the bodies of the UK fallen are driven through it from nearby RAF Lyneham. No date has been set.
James Gray, the local MP, claimed those who turned out regularly to pay their respects to the dead soldiers would say the protesters were “foolish people making a silly point”.
Wiltshire Police said the force was aware of the “significant community concern” caused by the proposed march and could “in exceptional circumstances” apply to have it banned.
Mr Choudary, 42, a former lawyer, explained the planned march would be held “not in memory of the occupying and merciless British military” but of the Muslims, who had been “murdered in the name of democracy and freedom”.
He said the event would be peaceful with “symbolic coffins” carried to honour Muslim victims but stressed it would not coincide with the return of any dead soldier’s body.
He said: “The sad reality of the situation is that if we were to hold it somewhere else it would not have the media attention it has now. We want to create a sense of awareness about it.”
Meanwhile, Major-General Andrew Mackay, who led the successful British recapture of Musa Qala from the Taliban, said the MoD was “institutionally incapable” of adapting to the rapid changes required to fight modern wars such as that in Afghanistan.
His comments came in a report co-authored and published by the MoD’s Defence Academy in Oxfordshire. Major-General Mackay, who resigned from the Army last year, said the military had “consistently failed” to understand the motivations
of local Afghans.
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