Have You Seen This Woman?
It's bad enough that our country hosts unknown numbers of foreign extremists. Do we really have to turn ourselves into a global laughing stock, too?
The first arrest photo - what’s colloquially called a mug shot - was probably taken in Belgium around 1843. By the end of that decade they were regularly being taken in Britain and Australia, and the familiar modern format - front and side photos of the arrested person, often with a height scale or a board containing their personal details - was established by 1900. Mug shots are now a routine part of arrest procedures for any professional police force, because they’re extremely useful. Having a recent, official photograph of the suspect makes it easier to keep track of them in the custody system. It’s a useful tool when working with witnesses - show them a dozen mug shots and see if they pick the right one. And of course later on, when the same person’s a suspect in another crime, you have a good, clear photo of them. Best of all, mug shots are really easy to take. After all, how hard is it to take a photo of a prisoner that shows their face?
Oh wait.
This is West Midlands Police’s official mugshot of a “Warwickshire woman” called Farisha Jami. Jami came to Britain from Afghanistan in 2008 to join her husband, another reminder - as if we need one - that allowing in one immigrant is actually giving all their relatives a foot in the door too. She’s also a reminder that many immigrants don’t integrate into our society, and may in fact be violently opposed to it. Jami showed her opposition by joining several online groups run by Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), the ISIS branch in Afghanistan. She was closely enough involved that some of these groups made her an administrator. She shared ISKP propaganda and training manuals, and also collected over 7,000 violent jihadi videos, and distributed them online. When she was arrested she was trying to book one-way tickets to Afghanistan for herself and her four children, who she planned to “martyr”, i.e. kill, probably by volunteering them as suicide bombers.
On 13 February Jami was convicted of two counts of preparing acts of terrorism at Leicester Crown Court. Because of the degenerate nature of her crimes, particularly the fact she intended to get her own children killed, the verdict was reported by several media outlets. Some of these reports were illustrated with West Midland Police’s initial mug shot, which showed Jami’s face. So far, so good.
On Friday, however, Jami was back in court for her sentencing hearing (she hasn’t been sentenced yet, because the judge is waiting on a probation report) and her lawyer made an astonishing complaint. Matthew Brook KC whined that his client suffered “considerable distress” because the media had used an image showing her without her head covered.
Well, so what if it caused her considerable distress? She’s a convicted terrorist, and it’s in the nature of being convicted of terrorism offences that things are going to happen to you that you won’t particularly like. If you want to avoid those things there’s a really simple option: Just don’t be a terrorist.
We’re Not A Serious Country Anymore
As Jami had sat through the whole trial in a simple headscarf that left her face uncovered, her sudden insistence on a photograph of her in the face-concealing niqab strikes me as simple bloody-mindedness. Far from showing remorse for her actions, she’s just being difficult. But, unbelievably, West Midlands Police immediately caved in and released the photo of her - well, presumably her - in a niqab.
This is just bonkers. A mug shot is an identification photograph. How are you supposed to identify someone from a photo that just shows two eyes peering out through a slit in a hood? I really can’t comprehend the mentality of whoever at West Midlands Police decided to release this ridiculous image. It’s pointless. If they didn’t have the moral courage to just say “We understand she doesn’t like it, but bad decisions have consequences”, it would have been better to release no photograph at all. By publishing this useless image they’ve just made themselves look like weak, pandering fools. It could be anyone under that hood. West Midlands Police deserve every bit of the ridicule this photo has brought down on their heads.
Macron and a few others in EU have banned the pillow cases from being worn in public.
But in U.K. it’s all fine. An ISIS terrorist being tracked by security services managed to give them the slip by going into a mosque and coming out dressed like that to then get out of U.K. to go and fight with ISIS.
A spokesperson for West Midlands Police stated that they felt it was important that the public knew the person was 5’ 4” tall, and that’s why they released this mugshot.
Unfortunately they failed to notice that the mug they had identified was the West Midlands Police 👮