December 2, 2003
PC UK:
Prison officer sacked for bin Laden 'insult' (David Sapsted, 03/12/2003, Daily Telegraph)
A prison officer was sacked for making an allegedly insulting remark about Osama bin Laden two months after the September 11 attacks, an employment tribunal heard yesterday.Colin Rose, 53, was told he had to go because, although he did not know it, three Muslim visitors could have heard his "insensitive" comment about the world's most reviled terrorist.
The assistant governor at Blundeston Prison, near Lowestoft, Suffolk, gave him a ticking off at the time. But he was sacked after a six-month investigation.
Mr Rose, a former Coldstream Guardsman with a 21-year unblemished record in the Prison Service, is claiming unfair dismissal. [...]
When he returned after a fortnight, Jerry Knight, the prison governor, suspended him pending a formal inquiry.
He was sacked in May last year after a disciplinary hearing.
Mr Knight told the tribunal that the prison had a large Asian population, including many Muslims.
"On Sept 25, 2001, a staff notice was issued regarding the terrorist bombing of America, asking for staff to have continued sensitivity.
"I asked them to avoid inflaming the situation."
Inflame? You mean like fly a plane loaded with fuel into a building? Posted by Orrin Judd at December 2, 2003 10:05 PM
So disgusting. Please forgive me a self-referential moment. My Great-Grandfather, James V. Sherwen, was a Coldstream Guardsman in WWI. I never knew him, but his obituary that I have says he was a part of a 1000-man group that was ordered across the trenches through a chest-deep swamp. Nine hundred sixty-something of them were cut down when the Germans saw them coming. He's quoted as saying he watched the man to the left of, right of, in front of, and behind him die. Somehow he survived and after the war took his family, including his 3-year old son who would become my future grandfather, to America. I don't even know how to end this.
Posted by: Matt C at December 3, 2003 1:20 AMIt would seem that more than 3000 people are going to have to die before this business of respecting the hypersensitive thin-skin of your average peaceloving Muslim nonsense goes away.
Mat -- I have unbounded respect for anyone who went "over the top" in WWI.
Raoul -- I have no problem at all being sensitive to the rational sensibilities of "your average peaceloving Muslim." Refraining from saying mean things about bin Laden out of fear of offending prisoners is way outside that line.
Posted by: David Cohen at December 3, 2003 7:30 AMThe problem is not fear of hypersenstive peace-loving Muslims; it is the fear of what the average revenge-minded raging Muslim will do if the word 'Mohammed' is tainted in any way. For Christianity, Judaism, Buhddism, and every other religion, it doesn't matter. With Islam, you get fatwas and homicide bombers.
Imagine how fearful the prison authorities must be. Of course, the solution is to put them in tents, in a triple-fenced field, with outdoor toilets (just over the hill from the hog pens).
Jim:
Not sure there. It may be more a fear of violating progressive, establishment politically-correct dogma and being featured in the Guardian or hauled up before a human rights commission.
Posted by: Peter B at December 3, 2003 8:25 AMOh no!!
I've been known to make snide remarks about ..... Charlie Manson. And to top things off, about Timothy McVeigh.
Where's the witness protection program when I really need it?
Posted by: Larry H at December 3, 2003 8:28 AM