An alleged murderer told the court he “highly regret[s] his actions” on the night Zahwa Mukhtar died but had no intention to harm her and didn’t think she was injured.

Duane Owusu delivered a fatal blow to Zahwa’s neck that led to her falling backwards and hitting her head on the ground in Chadwell Heath Lane, Romford.

Moments before, the 27-year-old was allegedly pushed from a parked Mercedes when events continued to escalate inside the car.

Zahwa Mukhtar murder trial continues

Giving evidence at his trial on Thursday, Owusu denied hitting Zahwa with his fist and said he “shoved her” so she didn’t stop him from getting back into the car.

He said: “I had no reason to cause her serious harm. I was basically looking after her the whole night, stopping all the fights, making sure that she was alright. I just wanted her out of the car to deescalate the situation.”

He later added: “I’m not going to punch a woman…Because I wanted her out of the car, I just shoved her out the way. If I had punched her that would have caused some sort of injury. That’s not what my intention was.”

The incident was captured on CCTV outside a care home in the early hours of Saturday 16 August last year. It shows two kicks aimed towards Zahwa’s face while she’s on the ground near the rear passenger side door, where she’d been sitting on the defendant’s lap in the overcrowded car.

Henrietta Paget KC, prosecuting, summarised what Owusu had told jurors earlier.

She said: “I was getting my other leg out of the car. I tried to sweep her leg out of the way to create distance from the car because I felt like I couldn’t close the car door, and I didn’t want the car door to hit her leg, and I didn’t want us driving off and the wheel going over her feet.”

Later addressing what Ms Paget suggested was a “savage attempt to stamp her face”, Owusu said: “100 per cent not” and claimed he only wanted to “push her legs out the way”.

How the night allegedly began for Zahwa

Owusu and his group had come from a house rave and Zahwa was socialising in Stoke Newington Road, north London, when the two parties crossed paths.

When he left the rave, Owusu was “tipsy and lively” but wasn’t drunk. He told the court he’d taken a swig of white rum before going in, a quarter of an ecstasy pill and had smoked cannabis earlier in the day.

“I was happy,” he said and called himself a “people [person]”.

“I just talk to random people if I’m in a good mood,” he explained when shown footage of himself.

The 36-year-old first encountered Zahwa while trying to deescalate a tense situation between one of his group and another man, Owusu told jurors.

He said: “This is when I remember seeing Ms Mukhtar, she’s holding on to my arm saying, ‘Brother, please stop. These guys, they’re going to stab you. These guys are going to stab you’. At that point when she was saying that, I was thinking, why is she saying that? Who is this? I don’t even know her.”

Alleged tension

The court heard evidence earlier in the trial about Zahwa’s interactions with the group and her suddenly jumping into the car.

Owusu said Zahwa had asked the driver if she could “chill” with the group, some of whom were going back to Dagenham to continue the party at one of their homes. He denied having a sexual interest in the victim.

He said: “I didn’t have an issue with her coming so I said to come and sit in the back.”

But once inside the car, Owusu described several fights between Zahwa and two other women, Paige Allen and Abigail Winter, beyond hair pulling, and which he had to break up.

“Little girly stuff,” he said, but blows were allegedly thrown, which escalated at a petrol station. The defendant said Abigail had dragged Zahwa to the ground and both women attacked the victim.

He led Zahwa away because she was angry and had tried to both calm her down and protect her, Owusu said. The two women didn’t want her back in the car, but “I couldn’t just leave her there like that,” Owusu stated.

The situation changed

The court then heard Zahwa’s demeanour changed. “She started being abusive and biting her nails, threatening to stab people,” Ms Paget said.

With Zahwa on his lap, the defendant could see she took out her phone and began scrolling through contacts, which worried him.

He said: “I was thinking, I hope she’s not trying to ring someone and escalate the situation saying she’s been attacked by two girls. I was just thinking the worst at that point.”

Then she began filming the women. Answering what was so bad about Zahwa doing this, Owusu said he believed it could provoke further conflict.

He said: “It felt awkward. It felt weird. You just said you’re going to stab them, you’re going to kill them, and then you’re going to take a video of them. I thought that was a bit weird.”

After he asked the driver to “Please stop the car,” Owusu claimed he “snatched the phone” and threw it out as bait to get Zahwa out. His intention was to book her an Uber, he told the court.

“At what stage did you call her a ‘dumb bitch’?” Ms Paget asked.

“I don’t remember saying that,” the defendant replied.

“I highly regret my actions”

Owusu told jurors Zahwa fell from the car when he loosened her grip from his gilet attempting to get her off his lap. He denied throwing her from the vehicle.

The defendant also said he didn’t see Zahwa on the ground after the incident, but had heard one of the other women saying that she was.

He said: “I highly regret my actions that night. I feel bad that I showed a lack of interest because at that point then, I was still concerned with her getting back in the car. I didn’t want problems to escalate.”

Until he was arrested, Owusu didn’t know Zahwa had died, he told the court. He’d been informed about the heavy police presence outside his home and conversations being had with neighbours, which led him to assume the worst.

He said: “I was just trying to recollect how I pushed her. Starting to think, did she hurt herself? Did something happen after we left her there? I was just praying, I hope it’s not nothing too serious.”

Michael Borrelli KC, defending, explained Owusu’s searched the internet for information that weekend, such as ‘Incident Chadwell Heath girl found unconscious’, to no avail.

He said: “I was just so depressed, I was scared, I was praying. I remember being that stressed on the phone and the emotions I was going through at that moment that I completely slept the whole day until the next day.”

Mr Borrelli asked: “At any point during that incident outside the care home did you deliberately hurt Ms Mukhtar?”

“No,” he said.

Owusu, of Althorne Way, Dagenham, denies murder and manslaughter.

The Old Bailey trial continues.

Featured image via the Canary

Alvi Choudary, a young British-Asian man, was arrested earlier this week for a burglary in Milton Keynes. The only problem? He’s never even entered the city, which lies 100 miles from his home in Southampton. Nevertheless, racist AI facial recognition technology placed him at the scene of the crime.

The news comes after calls from Labour to increase the use of AI in both policing and the court system. On top of that, just two days ago — 24 February — a police chief in charge of AI use admitted that a new £115m national police data centre will produce biased and racist results.

AI facial recognition — Wrongful arrest

Choudary appeared on Good Morning Britain to talk about what happened to him. He explained to presenters Kate Garraway and Richard Madeley that he was held in custody for around 11 hours before police would even speak to him or hear evidence against his arrest.

Adding insult to injury, the arrest turned out to be due to a custody photo taken of Choudary some four years previously. This, too was a wrongful arrest. And, despite the fact that officers assured him at the time that his DNA and information would be removed from the system, his photograph was kept on record.

It was this photo that police AI facial recognition software matched to an image of the suspect. As it turned out, the suspect didn’t resemble Choudary in the slightest. The police officers were laughing at this racist error even as they released Alvi.

Madeley then asked why asked why exactly the AI technology performs so poorly for BAME individuals. Akiko Hart, the director for the human rights organisation Liberty explained that:

It’s because the AI is trained on white faces. And so, essentially, you are more likely to be misidentified if you are young, you are more likely to be misidentified if you’re a woman, and obviously we’ve seen there’s really shocking statistics about how you’re more likely to be misidentified if you’re Asian, if you’re Black, and 250 times more likely to be misidentified if you’re a black woman. And that is because of the way the AI is trained.

AI racism

Choudary‘s wrongful arrest is a case-in-point for the problems being caused by the increasing use of AI in the justice system. However, Labour remain hellbent on pushing AI into policing and the courts, in spite of its well-documented biases.

Earlier this month, on 12 February, the Ministry of Justice announced plans to use predictive policing to overhaul the youth justice system. Part of the proposal was to use “machine learning and advanced analytics” to “support early, appropriate intervention” in youth crime.

At the time, the Canary published an article on how this initiative would automate the discrimination that had already been part of the lives of racialised individuals for decades.

Then, on 24 February, justice secretary David Lammy proudly announced that Labour was also pushing AI use into the courts. He stated:

we are going to invest more in our in-house Justice AI Unit – a specialist team within my department, forward-deployed to the frontline, working with staff to tackle the challenges they face.

Over £12 million in additional funding in the next financial year will expand our AI capabilities, putting this powerful tool, finally, into the hands of staff.

A problem, here and now

On that same day, 24 February, police AI lead Alex Murray acknowledged that a new £115m police data centre would produce discriminatory results. However, he also tried to assure the public that the police would work to reduce that discrimination.

As if, that is, they’ve ever done the work of addressing their non-digital discrimination. Beyond that, the police even have form for neglecting to reduce or act on bias in their AI use already.

On the failure of a previous police venture in facial recognition technology, the Association for Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC) stated that:

System failures have been known for some time, yet these were not shared with those communities affected, nor with leading sector stakeholders.

As Alvi Choudary’s wrongful arrest clearly demonstrated, AI racism in policing is not a problem to deal with in the future. It is already here, and it’s already affecting people’s lives. 

Labour and the police know that this is a problem; they know it’s racist. But never mind — they’re going ahead with it anyway. Oh, and they’ll try to mitigate the risk, honest.

Featured image via 3DIVI

Police have arrested a man after he allegedly tried to set fire to a Muslim community centre in Worcestershire. Footage posted on X by the 5Pillars news site seems to show a white male setting a shed alight.

5Pillars posted:

A Muslim community centre in Worcester, which is owned by Worcester Mosque, was firebombed this morning.

A white male has been arrested and police say they found several petrol cans around the centre.

They added:

A far right march is due to take place in Worcester on Saturday.

5Pillars‘ tweet showed footage of an individual setting a fire before running away. Another angle in the same video shows firefighters inspecting the damage to the shed after the fire had gone out.

BREAKING: A Muslim community centre in Worcester, which is owned by Worcester Mosque, was firebombed this morning.

A white male has been arrested and police say they found several petrol cans around the centre.

A far right march is due to take place in Worcester on Saturday. pic.twitter.com/Tjfid0ZJwI

— 5Pillars (@5Pillarsuk) February 26, 2026

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One X user said this was part of a pattern of attacks:

First it was Manchester Central Mosque, then Worcester. The Islamophobes in this country are not even pretending anymore, they have dropped the mask completely and would go any length with to cause havoc. Our mosques need to be on high alert and extra vigilant. https://t.co/nwef8c2QWz

— Abdullah (@Lanre_banjo) February 26, 2026

Several others blamed the attack squarely on far right figures like Tommy Robinson and Rupert Lowe. Both of whom have made careers out of peddling anti-Muslim hatred:

You bastards are the fucking reason for this. @TRobinsonNewEra @RupertLowe10 https://t.co/unPMAfRReC

— Maavi The Poet (@ThePoetMaavi) February 26, 2026

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Other parties like Restore and Reform UK were to blame. And that anyone who thinks they are the answer is either plain wrong or deeply sick:

All the right wing pricks like Reform and Restore are responsible for this. Anyone who thinks they are the answer to the country’s problems is either deeply misinformed or a cruel evil person https://t.co/JQMVc8pJ7O

— Clobbering Man Punk (@harrythepratt) February 26, 2026

A view that is hard to disagree with on the evidence:

These acts of Islamophobia did not start increasing in a vacuum – the RACIST scapegoating of Muslims whipped up by far-right charlatans like @Nigel_Farage and @reformparty_uk has contributed MASSIVELY to this current climate.

Racist rhetoric has consequences. https://t.co/1yAKUbmOem

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— Canary (@TheCanaryUK) February 26, 2026

As Al Jazeera reported on 16 February, anti-Muslim feeling seems to be in overdrive and getting worse. They interviewed a Muslim single mother in Basildon who told them about living in fear:

After being racially abused while walking through her favourite park, she stopped going there altogether. Women, she said, are increasingly changing their daily routines, constantly watching over their shoulders.

Racism now permeates every aspect of their lives, she added.

Another told the outlet her own child:

was isolated on the playground and subjected to racial slurs. Months later, she broke down in tears in front of her mother, explaining the abuse she had suffered.

The child was eventually removed from school.

And on 25 February a man was arrested after entering a Manchester mosque with an axe. He was found to be carrying a range of other weapons and eventually arrested:

The mosque said:

greater resources are urgently needed to address this growing and real risk.

Anti-Muslim feeling is a core tenet of modern far-right politics, but centrist parties like Labour are more than willing to lean into it too. This divisive politics cannot be allowed to flourish further. It needs to be challenged wherever it is found.

Featured image via the Canary

The coast guard in Cuba have exchanged fire with what they say was a US infiltration force on 25 February. The shoot-out off the island’s north coast killed four and wounded six aboard the US-linked vessel. Survivors were arrested.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, an avid Cuba hawk, has been cautious in his comments so far. And the Cuban authorities maintain those on the speedboat fired first. Now the Cubans said those aboard planned:

an infiltration with terrorist aims.

A coast guard commander was also wounded. The BBC reported:

The Cuban authorities said they had established that all 10 of those on board the speedboat were Cuban nationals residing in the US.

They also identified an 11th person they said had been arrested and had confessed to being part of the alleged plot.

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The Cuban authorities claims those captured had:

prior records involving criminal and violent activity.

The BBC said:

Handguns, assault rifles and improvised explosive devices were recovered from the speedboat, along with other tactical gear, according to the statement.

BBC Verify said it had been unable to pinpoint the ownership of the boat.

Cuba: Bay of Pigs 2.0?

The incident will recall the failed 1961 US invasion attempt in the Bay of Pigs. The US is currently sanctioning Cuba even more aggressively than usual in a bid to unseat the government. The situation is so dire that Mexico is shipping humanitarian aid into the island nation.

President Donald Trump is determined to reshape the hemisphere, by force where necessary. Case in point, the US attack of Venezuela in January, and subsequent kidnapping its president.

Marco Rubio, the hard-right scion of Cuban migrants, is know for his rabid views on the Cuban regime. But he seemed reserved in his public comments. Rubio, who is in the Caribbean for international talks, said he was waiting for verifications:

Rubio was less reserved in the hours after the 3 January bombing and special forces raid on Venezuela.

He told reporters then that Cuba was:

run by incompetent, senile men, and in some cases not seen now, but incompetent nonetheless.

Rubio said:

In some cases, one of the biggest problems Venezuelans have is they have to declare independence from Cuba.

Adding:

They tried to basically colonize it from a security standpoint. So, yeah, look, if I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned at least a little bit.

There is no doubt the US wants Cuba – once part of the US empire – back under its control. And American covert actions are hardly a rarity in Latin America. A similar-sounding operation was mounted against Venezuela in 2020. It also failed. Two former US special operations soldiers were among those jailed. Details are hazy, but the playbook seems eerily familiar.

Featured image via the Canary

A group in Kettering has sent an invoice to North Northants council for £18,000. This is in respect of the removal of over 500 illegally displayed flags on lampposts, which the council itself declined to remove.

As the invoice shows, they’re charging £36 a pop:

As the invoice also shows, they’re probably not 100% serious. Unless those actually are their real bank details.

The war of the flags

For anyone who’s already forgotten, the summer of 2025 saw a new sport break out across the UK. Rival teams of DIY enthusiasts took it in turns to shin up lampposts and either attach or remove flags.

Generally the flaggers claimed they were expressing patriotism. Although their activities often centred on areas close to hotels where asylum seekers lived. And sometimes they defaced the flags with slogans such as “Stop The Boats”.

Those removing the flags occasionally pointed to the alleged illegality of hanging them on street furniture. Some felt they made the area look shabby, often being hung with no regard for formality or aesthetic impact. One council had a bit of a dilemma over whether to prioritise the flags or Christmas decorations.

Jamie Driscoll made the point in the Canary that flags, in themselves, are largely a tool of tribalism. This can be a relatively harmless phenomenon. But in the case of the flag wars it became damagingly divisive.

The Kettering Flagdowners say:

Flags for Kettering are hiding their nasty and divisive right wing agenda behind a cynical veneer of ‘patriotism’.

They add that many other local authorities across the country have been routinely removing such items. And in some cases those responsible for putting them up have themselves received invoices for the cost of removal.

The Flagdowners call upon North Northants council to take down all illegally displayed flags on street lights and to invoice Flags for Kettering (who have illegally been putting them up) for the costs of removal.

Featured image via the Canary

Pentagon-funded think tank RAND says ‘seeming victory’ could become a ‘decisive defeat’ in Gaza when global ‘public opinion’ finally catches up to Israel.

Of course, the military think tank never actually calls what is happening in Gaza a genocide, or that Israel is committing war crime after war crime. The concern it has is with the bad PR Israel’s “kinetic operations” are generating and their “strategic” impact on Israel.

Kinetic warfare is defined as the deliberate use of — or credible threat to use — physical violence and/or physically disruptive actions to undermine security, damage confidence in democratic governance, and/or destabilise democratic society.

RAND, which works directly for the U.S. Army, Air Force, and Department of Homeland Security, in its commentary seemingly condemns Israel’s lack of engagement with counterinsurgency models that the US used in the Malayan Emergency, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. It says:

Unlike their U.S. counterparts, the Israeli security establishment never embraced the population-centric counterinsurgency model. Indeed, some Israeli analysts were openly disdainful of it, partly because they believed that trying to win hearts and minds among the Palestinian population was impossible.

Oct. 7 only reinforced this long-standing belief. Polls taken a couple months after the terrorist attack showed that more than seven in 10 Palestinians surveyed supported the Hamas attack. And so Israel tried a different, far more kinetic, method in Gaza.

In RAND’s words, could the IDF have “stemmed some of the loss of international support” by embracing the “‘hearts and minds’ side of counterinsurgency”

Here is what RAND never says: maybe Palestinians don’t want their “hearts and minds” won by a settler colony. People will always oppose colonialism. Colonialism cannot be wished away with military jargon like “mow the lawn” or managed with counterinsurgency manuals. People want their freedom. Full stop.

Before October 2023, Israel Called It ‘Mowing the Lawn’

“Mowing the Lawn” or “Mowing the Grass” emerged in Israeli political culture around the turn of the century, according to a study, as the military-political strategy defined as regularly targeting Palestinian leadership, facilities, and infrastructure to control their growth like a lawnmower controls grass growth.

Even the New York Times (more aptly, the New York Crimes) pointed out in 2014 that “critics say the use of such terminology is dehumanizing to Palestinians and tends to minimize the toll on civilians as well as militants,” as Israeli officials were open about their aims with such tactics.

Yoav Galant said in a radio interview in 2014:

This sort of maintenance needs to be carried out from time to time, perhaps even more often

In RAND’s analysis, October 7 proved that “mowing the grass” never worked as Hamas couldn’t be “deterred, nor contained, nor appeased.” Hence, came Israel’s carpet bombing and bulldozers.

Not featured in RAND’s analysis: the barbarity, illegality, and utter lack of morality baked into the “mowing the grass” approach from the start. RAND is worried about whether the strategy worked or not.

Normalising Counterinsurgency

Counterinsurgency theory, or COIN in Pentagon-speak, is the military doctrine of fighting insurgency by winning over the population with ” a series of economic and political inducements.”

It assumes the problem is insurgency against the occupation, not the occupation. Further, it assumes that this problem can be solved by “economic and political inducements,” i.e., corruption, bribery, and propaganda.

Of course, the USA has a rich history of COIN. It has practiced this theory against Americans themselves, too.

J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI called it COINTELPRO. In 1967, the FBI quietly unleashed the covert surveillance operation targeting “subversive” civil rights groups and Black leaders. The objective, according to an FBI memo: to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralise” the Black freedom movement.

The UK has its own practitioners. Morgan McSweeney, until recently a key figure in Keir Starmer’s inner circle, learned the playbook well.

As Paul Holden’s The Fraud, serialised by the Canary, reveals, McSweeney used Labour Together funding to infiltrate Corbyn-supporting Facebook groups, trawling for posts to weaponise. He then fed the most damaging examples to friendly journalists at the Sunday Times.

Morgan McSweeney also told his fellow saboteurs, “kill the Canary before the Canary kills us“.

This is the awful truth about RAND’s commentary: it normalises colonialism in sterile military jargon, reducing questions of life, death, and freedom to matters of tactical efficiency. It treats Palestinians as “the population” to be managed, not a people demanding liberation.

Featured image via Aljazeera

We need winter sun to keep us elevated

What do we do when there is no sun?

Help and support:

Ukraine has opened its first drone factory in the UK. The facility, near a US military base in Suffolk, will mass produce unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for the war with Russia. Arm firm Ukrspecsystems will fulfill the  contract.

UK’s Minister for Defence Readiness Luke Pollard attended the opening. He told those assembled:

We’ve been supporting Ukraine with training of military personnel for quite a few years now, but for Ukraine to stay in the fight having more assured and resilient industrial production is essential.

That’s what this factory provides, so it is a really important step in the UK-Ukraine partnership, making sure we can keep Ukraine in the fight for longer as we get towards what I hope will be peace.

The UK is also building an arms manufacturing hub in Ukraine.

Ukraine arms base

The British government has said that a three-year fully funded deal has been struck between Ukraine and the UK.

Defence secretary John Healey said on 16 January:

An Armed Forces is only as strong as the industry that stands behind them.

Healy said the new deal ensured even small UK arms firms could get involved. This was all framed as “supporting Ukraine” “and securing peace”:

This new centre will supercharge that effort and ensure British companies, no matter how small, can support Ukraine in the fight today and help secure the peace we hope to see tomorrow.

The National Armaments Director Group will manage the centre. The current director is Rupert Pearce, appointed in October 2025.

The BBC said the new drone factory in Suffolk:

It is also close to Elmsett Airfield, near Ipswich, which will be used to train drone pilots and test out the machines before they are deployed to soldiers on the frontline.

The factory will make up to eight types of UAV to send on to Ukraine. Militarisation is accelerating across Europe. President Donald Trump’s demands that European nations stop relying on the US have compounded this. In the clamour to rearm, there is very little space to discuss what a more just and less war-like economy might look like.

Featured image via the Canary