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Devastated
family of murder victim tells Home Secretary:
'MAKE OUR STREETS SAFE'
Police forensic teams investigate the site of the murder
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HOME secretary Charles Clarke was last night (Wednesday)
confronted by relatives of a murdered teenager and told to make
the streets safe.
The family of Mahir Osman, 18, quizzed Mr Clarke in Inverness
Street, just 100 yards from the spot where their “good,
hard-working” son became Camden’s third murder victim
in a month.
His father, Abdirahman, demanded justice, as relatives questioned
why 25 suspects were released by police without charge on Monday
morning.
Fatima Osman, Mahir’s aunt, said that efforts to beat crime
in the heart of Camden Town had failed, telling Mr Clarke: “You
need to clean up the streets. It is up to the politicians to
make the streets safe before things like this happen. We can’t
have knives in the street. You have to do something.”
As detectives, who say they are confident of bringing murder
charges, continued their trawl through evidence, the Home Secretary
told Ms Osman: “You are a million per cent correct. I want
to do everything I can to help the police carry out their investigation.
Those decisions are rightfully for the courts. The one thing
that I can absolutely guarantee is that the police will work
very, very, very hard to try and establish what the situation
is and to find the people who did this.”
Mr Clarke was on a Labour Party walkabout meant to promote the
Town Hall’s tough new stance on drug-dealing in Camden
Town and hail the ferocious use of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders
to clamp down on troublemakers.
He stopped and read messages at the row of tributes left in
Camden High Street which mark the spot where Mahir was attacked
(full story opposite), before touring streets where cannabis
and crack cocaine dealing remains rife despite a slew of police
and council crackdowns.
Mr Clarke also paused at the former headquarters of the Camden
Town Neighbourhood Advice Centre in Greenland Road, controversially
closed by the Town Hall more than two years ago and still not
transformed into a long-promised police base.
At one stage, Councillor Piers Wauchope, leader of the Conservatives
in Camden, interrupted the event and claimed he had been offered
cannabis six times on a short walk through Camden Town.
Later, at a meeting dominated by hand-picked Labour supporters
at the Queen’s Crescent Community Centre in Gospel Oak,
Mr Clarke said that it was time for new initiatives but insisted
that the government’s past strategy had not failed.
He was asked whether that stance applied in Camden where two
teenagers and a woman have been stabbed to death in just four
weeks.
Mr Clarke later told the New Journal: “There is a problem
that needs to be addressed. Have we abolished crime? No we haven’t.
Do we need to do a lot more to fight crime? Yes we do. Do we
need to create partnerships that work more effectively? Yes
we do. Do we need different initiatives to prevent crimes like
stabbings? Yes we do. If you say to me that we have a state
of affairs which proves that what we have done in the past has
failed – I simply don’t accept that.”
He hinted that he could call for a knife amnesty in Camden and
said that Camden Town’s cannabis peddlers would face a
rougher ride.
Mr Clarke said: “It is clear that cannabis is a serious
problem and in the past the eye has been taken off the ball
when dealing with people who consume it, deal it and produce
it.” |
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