Somali Criminal Courts are active in London! No need for British Justice!

THis article seems very interesting.

SOURCE: Mail Online

By FIONA BARTON and ALEX McBRIDE
Last updated at 11:23 10 February 2008

A brutal beating and justice meted out in a humble back street cafe: how sharia law already operates in Britain

Seated around a table in a small South London cafe, eight men talk quietly. They are discussing a vicious attack on a young man with a metal bar which left the victim with a shattered skull.

While other customers chat and sip tea, these men hear how the incident happened - the attack came after weeks of needling and jibes between the victim and perpetrator at a local factory where they both worked.

The victim is in hospital and lucky to be alive. The accused, who sits with the men in the cafe, is waiting to hear his fate.

There are no lawyers or policemen present and none of the majesty of the Old Bailey. But at a formica table in a Woolwich cafe, justice is being meted out with the same solemnity.

An alternative to the English judicial system is being enacted by elders of an immigrant population who are, quite literally, taking the law into their own hands.

And they are not alone. A Daily Mail investigation has uncovered evidence that parallel courts dispensing their own form of sharia law have been sitting in Sheffield, Milton Keynes, Manchester, Dewsbury, Birmingham and other towns where Britain's 43,000-strong Somali population and other Muslims have settled.

Somali criminal courts or "gars" are already dealing with stabbings and assaults committed by members of their clans.

For no matter how grave the charge, the cases always end with an apology and financial compensation for the victim's injuries.

The guilty are neither imprisoned nor punished in any other accepted way. There are no records of their crime and the only sanction is the shame they bring upon themselves and their family.

Like most of the Somalis who have settled in this deprived, grim Thames-side suburb, Aydraus, 30, is a Sunni Muslim and a member of the Isaaq, one of Somalia's four "noble" clans.

Somalis have lived in London, Cardiff and Liverpool for over a hundred years having arrived as sailors on merchant ships. But after the civil war in Somalia in the early 1990s, thousands more fled the anarchy and warlords to seek asylum here.

Britain now has the largest community in the world outside their native country.

Here in their new homeland, the importance of the clan structure has, if anything, grown stronger. For instance in Woolwich, young Isaaq men have formed their own gang and taken on Asian and West Indian gangs from other London boroughs in what has become a disturbing cycle of violence.

Aydraus, who was shot three times in the leg while trying to sort out a street fight, shrugs and says: 'When you have two kids fighting over stuff, they sometimes stab each other up or shoot. If that happens, the Somali community knows who it was straight away.

"The elders in the accused's family would call the victim's family and ask for a meeting.

"It is happening in Sheffield, Milton Keynes, Manchester, all over the country. It is very rare for families to call the police because they can come to an agreement within the community."

The 'gars' are held in the early evening with as many as 20 elders present - ten representing each family and mostly made up of extended family members.

"In the 10th century, we used to do this under a tree," Aydraus explains.

"But now we go to the victim's home or occasionally a restaurant for a meeting. It is a mark of respect that we go to them.

"The elders - the father and uncles and cousins of both victim and accused - discuss what happened. There are no arguments. The victim's family always accepts an apology from the family of the accused.

"Then, if there is any compensation to pay to the victim's family, they collect the money and pass it on. The money is paid by all the members of the accused's family - everyone pays a small amount so the father doesn't end up paying it all."