Race attacks soar after terror strike

RACIST incidents across Scotland have soared following the terrorist attack on Glasgow Airport.

New figures reveal a surge in cases of violent attacks, abuse and harassment in the four weeks after the car bombing, with the worst cases including attempts to blow up an Asian shop and a mosque.

The biggest increase has been recorded in the Strathclyde region, where there were more than 250 incidents, of which more than 10% were directly linked to the airport attack on June 30.

Politicians and Muslim leaders in Scotland said the attacks showed that a minority of people were targeting Asians because they wrongly believed they are potential terrorists.

Other members of the Asian community claim that the real number of attacks is much higher, with many incidents going unreported to the police.

According to the latest statistics, the number of racially motivated attacks dealt with by Strathclyde Police rose from 201 in June to 258 in July. Of these, 31 had definite links to the airport bombing.

On average, the force was called to deal with more than nine incidents every day during July. Many of them involved name-calling or offensive graffiti, but there were also cases of physical violence, stone-throwing and verbal threats.

Lothian and Borders Police said there was an increase of 29 racist incidents on the 116 reported incidents in June, although a spokesman pointed out that the force did not differentiate between victims' nationalities or religions. Tayside Police recorded 40 racist incidents in July, of which half a dozen were directly connected to the airport attack.

Last night, Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said racism in any form would not be tolerated. He told Scotland on Sunday: "The attack at Glasgow Airport was perpetrated by individuals and not by communities.

The Muslim community in Scotland has expressed its outrage at what was attempted in [the attack on] Glasgow."

In the worst incident, an apparent copycat attack, a newsagents in the Riddrie area of Glasgow's East End was targeted three days after the airport incident.

A stolen vehicle was driven repeatedly into the steel shutters in front of Smithycroft Newsagents. When the driver failed to break through, eyewitnesses told police, he attempted to set fire to the vehicle with matches, and eventually threw a gas canister into the wreckage, which burst into flames, causing a massive blast which almost gutted the shop.

The shop's owner, Ashfaq Ahmed, was not on the premises at the time. He is now trying to rebuild his business and spoke of his shock at the attack. Born in Pakistan, but brought up in and around Glasgow, 40-year-old Ahmed considers himself to be "100% Scottish". He said: "This is happening all over the UK. It is not just Scotland."

A Strathclyde Police source said they were investigating links between the shop incident and the airport attack.

Mohammed Tariq, who has run the Bathgate Mosque and the Sarajia Islamic Studies Centre in West Lothian for more than 20 years, is convinced the entire Asian community is being unfairly blamed for the actions of a few unconnected radicals. He said: "People have seen terrorism at Glasgow Airport and now they are looking at us and thinking we are terrorists."

Tariq has had his own brush with racist thugs in the aftermath of the terror attack, when a "petrol bomb-like" device was thrown towards the study centre in Bathgate.

The makeshift device landed in an estate agent's shop next door, but failed to detonate.

Sohaib Saeed, of the Islamic Centre of Edinburgh Trust, indicated that the real number of attacks could be considerably higher than the official figures. He said: "It may be for fear, but it may well be that they consider what they have gone through too insignificant to involve the police."

A spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland said they were aware of the rise in racially motivated crimes and promised any such incidents would be "vigorously and robustly investigated".