Army surrounds building after insurgents burst in disguised as police officers and take hostages including mayor Iraqi insurgents are holding a town mayor and other people hostage in a police station after bursting in disguised as police officers, opening fire and blowing up an explosives vest, Iraqi officials said. The Iraqi army was surrounding the police station in the town of al-Baghdadi, 125 miles west of Baghdad in Anbar province, said the deputy provincial governor, Dhari Arkan. It was not immediately clear how many people were being held inside the station, or whether the attackers had made any demands. The ongoing standoff in western Iraq’s Anbar province demonstrates the vulnerability of the Iraqi security forces at a time when American troops are swiftly drawing down their presence after more than eight years of war. The attackers broke into the police station wearing police uniforms to disguise themselves and immediately opened fire, provincial police officials said. Then one of the insurgents blew himself up, the officials said. Among the hostages is the mayor of al-Baghdadi, whose office is on the second floor of the police station, according to the officials. The mayor of the nearby town of Hit, Hikmat Juber, confirmed the attack and hostage standoff. He said officials working on the second floor of the building where some provincial offices were located had also been taken hostage. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media. Anbar province has been a hotbed of Iraq’s insurgency for years. Sunni militants aligned with terror groups such as al-Qaida often attack the local police and military, whom they see as traitors and supporters of the Shia-led government. Under a 2008 agreement, all American forces must leave Iraq by the end of this year, although US and Iraqi officials have been discussing whether to have a small US military presence in Iraq into next year. Iraq Middle East guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Army surrounds building after insurgents burst in disguised as police officers and take hostages including mayor Iraqi insurgents are holding a town mayor and other people hostage in a police station after bursting in disguised as police officers, opening fire and blowing up an explosives vest, Iraqi officials said. The Iraqi army was surrounding the police station in the town of al-Baghdadi, 125 miles west of Baghdad in Anbar province, said the deputy provincial governor, Dhari Arkan. It was not immediately clear how many people were being held inside the station, or whether the attackers had made any demands. The ongoing standoff in western Iraq’s Anbar province demonstrates the vulnerability of the Iraqi security forces at a time when American troops are swiftly drawing down their presence after more than eight years of war. The attackers broke into the police station wearing police uniforms to disguise themselves and immediately opened fire, provincial police officials said. Then one of the insurgents blew himself up, the officials said. Among the hostages is the mayor of al-Baghdadi, whose office is on the second floor of the police station, according to the officials. The mayor of the nearby town of Hit, Hikmat Juber, confirmed the attack and hostage standoff. He said officials working on the second floor of the building where some provincial offices were located had also been taken hostage. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media. Anbar province has been a hotbed of Iraq’s insurgency for years. Sunni militants aligned with terror groups such as al-Qaida often attack the local police and military, whom they see as traitors and supporters of the Shia-led government. Under a 2008 agreement, all American forces must leave Iraq by the end of this year, although US and Iraqi officials have been discussing whether to have a small US military presence in Iraq into next year. Iraq Middle East guardian.co.uk
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In a speech delivered in near-perfect Italian, Knox asks judges to clear her and Raffaele Sollecito of Meredith Kercher’s murder Her voice choked with emotion – at times, to the point she was unable to continue until she had caught her breath – Amanda Knox has pleaded with the judges who will decide whether to clear her and her Italian former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, of the murder of Meredith Kercher. “I want to go home to my life,” she told the court. “I don’t want to be deprived of my life, my future, for something I have not done.” At the end of an intensely emotional plea, delivered entirely without notes and in near-perfect Italian, she said very quietly: “Do justice.” Though she almost broke down completely at the start, and her delivery was even more charged with tension than at her trial, Knox’s words were clearer and simpler than then. Crucially, she flatly denied the key prosecution accusation: that she killed Kercher, her British flatmate. Standing in a packed but hushed courtroom, her hands raised with her fingertips touching, almost as if in prayer, the 24-year-old said: “I am not what they say [I am]. And I did not do the things they said I did. I didn’t kill. I didn’t rape. I didn’t rob.” Knox’s sister, Deanna, wept – as did one of the young American’s lawyers, Maria del Grosso. Dressed in a green shirt, black hooded jacket, black trousers and boots, the University of Washington student – who is serving a 26-year sentence for the murder – said she had good relations with all her three flatmates, even if she was a bit untidy and inattentive. “I lived my life above all with Meredith. She was my friend. She was always kind to me,” she said. Kercher’s death had made her frightened and disbelieving, she said; the person “who had the bedroom next to me was killed. And if I had been there that evening, I would be dead. Like her. The only difference is that I was not there. I was with Raffaele.” Her appeal took a dramatic turn in June when two independent, court-appointed experts dismissed the key forensic evidence against the appellants. Quite the most damaging remaining evidence is a statement Knox gave to police on the morning of 6 November 2007, at the end of an all-night interrogation, in which she put herself in the house at the time of the murder. In the statement, which she subsequently retracted, she also claimed the murderer was Diya “Patrick” Lumumba, her employer at a local bar, who was later shown to be innocent. Knox entreated the two professional and six lay judges to take into account the way she was at the time: “I had never suffered. I did not know tragedy. I didn’t know how to deal with it.” Her only experience of tragedy was through the television, she said. Her mistake had been to put her faith in the police. “I trusted them blindly, and when I made myself available, to the point of exhaustion in those days, I was betrayed,” Knox said. “On the night of 5-6 November, I wasn’t just stressed and pressurised, I was manipulated.” Earlier, her former boyfriend had made a stumbling, but nevertheless moving, appeal for his own freedom. “I’ve never done anyone any harm. Never. In my whole life,” Sollecito told the court. He said he had thought the accusation would somehow evaporate. “Instead of which, it’s not been like that. I’ve had to put up with, go on in, a nightmare,” he said. He had spent more than 1,400 days in prison during which, like Knox, he had been confined “for almost 20 hours [a day] in a space measuring two-and-a-half metres by three”. He ended by asking to give the judges a bracelet, inscribed with the words “Free Amanda and Raffaele”, which he said he had not taken off since the day it was given to him, and which had yellowed with age in the meantime. It was, he said, “a concentrate of various emotions: desire for justice, and the effort, the path we have followed in this dark tunnel towards a light that seemed ever further away”. Amanda Knox Meredith Kercher Italy Europe United States John Hooper Tom Kington guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …In a speech delivered in near-perfect Italian, Knox asks judges to clear her and Raffaele Sollecito of Meredith Kercher’s murder Her voice choked with emotion – at times, to the point she was unable to continue until she had caught her breath – Amanda Knox has pleaded with the judges who will decide whether to clear her and her Italian former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, of the murder of Meredith Kercher. “I want to go home to my life,” she told the court. “I don’t want to be deprived of my life, my future, for something I have not done.” At the end of an intensely emotional plea, delivered entirely without notes and in near-perfect Italian, she said very quietly: “Do justice.” Though she almost broke down completely at the start, and her delivery was even more charged with tension than at her trial, Knox’s words were clearer and simpler than then. Crucially, she flatly denied the key prosecution accusation: that she killed Kercher, her British flatmate. Standing in a packed but hushed courtroom, her hands raised with her fingertips touching, almost as if in prayer, the 24-year-old said: “I am not what they say [I am]. And I did not do the things they said I did. I didn’t kill. I didn’t rape. I didn’t rob.” Knox’s sister, Deanna, wept – as did one of the young American’s lawyers, Maria del Grosso. Dressed in a green shirt, black hooded jacket, black trousers and boots, the University of Washington student – who is serving a 26-year sentence for the murder – said she had good relations with all her three flatmates, even if she was a bit untidy and inattentive. “I lived my life above all with Meredith. She was my friend. She was always kind to me,” she said. Kercher’s death had made her frightened and disbelieving, she said; the person “who had the bedroom next to me was killed. And if I had been there that evening, I would be dead. Like her. The only difference is that I was not there. I was with Raffaele.” Her appeal took a dramatic turn in June when two independent, court-appointed experts dismissed the key forensic evidence against the appellants. Quite the most damaging remaining evidence is a statement Knox gave to police on the morning of 6 November 2007, at the end of an all-night interrogation, in which she put herself in the house at the time of the murder. In the statement, which she subsequently retracted, she also claimed the murderer was Diya “Patrick” Lumumba, her employer at a local bar, who was later shown to be innocent. Knox entreated the two professional and six lay judges to take into account the way she was at the time: “I had never suffered. I did not know tragedy. I didn’t know how to deal with it.” Her only experience of tragedy was through the television, she said. Her mistake had been to put her faith in the police. “I trusted them blindly, and when I made myself available, to the point of exhaustion in those days, I was betrayed,” Knox said. “On the night of 5-6 November, I wasn’t just stressed and pressurised, I was manipulated.” Earlier, her former boyfriend had made a stumbling, but nevertheless moving, appeal for his own freedom. “I’ve never done anyone any harm. Never. In my whole life,” Sollecito told the court. He said he had thought the accusation would somehow evaporate. “Instead of which, it’s not been like that. I’ve had to put up with, go on in, a nightmare,” he said. He had spent more than 1,400 days in prison during which, like Knox, he had been confined “for almost 20 hours [a day] in a space measuring two-and-a-half metres by three”. He ended by asking to give the judges a bracelet, inscribed with the words “Free Amanda and Raffaele”, which he said he had not taken off since the day it was given to him, and which had yellowed with age in the meantime. It was, he said, “a concentrate of various emotions: desire for justice, and the effort, the path we have followed in this dark tunnel towards a light that seemed ever further away”. Amanda Knox Meredith Kercher Italy Europe United States John Hooper Tom Kington guardian.co.uk
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In a speech delivered in near-perfect Italian, Knox asks judges to clear her and Raffaele Sollecito of Meredith Kercher’s murder Her voice choked with emotion – at times, to the point she was unable to continue until she had caught her breath – Amanda Knox has pleaded with the judges who will decide whether to clear her and her Italian former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, of the murder of Meredith Kercher. “I want to go home to my life,” she told the court. “I don’t want to be deprived of my life, my future, for something I have not done.” At the end of an intensely emotional plea, delivered entirely without notes and in near-perfect Italian, she said very quietly: “Do justice.” Though she almost broke down completely at the start, and her delivery was even more charged with tension than at her trial, Knox’s words were clearer and simpler than then. Crucially, she flatly denied the key prosecution accusation: that she killed Kercher, her British flatmate. Standing in a packed but hushed courtroom, her hands raised with her fingertips touching, almost as if in prayer, the 24-year-old said: “I am not what they say [I am]. And I did not do the things they said I did. I didn’t kill. I didn’t rape. I didn’t rob.” Knox’s sister, Deanna, wept – as did one of the young American’s lawyers, Maria del Grosso. Dressed in a green shirt, black hooded jacket, black trousers and boots, the University of Washington student – who is serving a 26-year sentence for the murder – said she had good relations with all her three flatmates, even if she was a bit untidy and inattentive. “I lived my life above all with Meredith. She was my friend. She was always kind to me,” she said. Kercher’s death had made her frightened and disbelieving, she said; the person “who had the bedroom next to me was killed. And if I had been there that evening, I would be dead. Like her. The only difference is that I was not there. I was with Raffaele.” Her appeal took a dramatic turn in June when two independent, court-appointed experts dismissed the key forensic evidence against the appellants. Quite the most damaging remaining evidence is a statement Knox gave to police on the morning of 6 November 2007, at the end of an all-night interrogation, in which she put herself in the house at the time of the murder. In the statement, which she subsequently retracted, she also claimed the murderer was Diya “Patrick” Lumumba, her employer at a local bar, who was later shown to be innocent. Knox entreated the two professional and six lay judges to take into account the way she was at the time: “I had never suffered. I did not know tragedy. I didn’t know how to deal with it.” Her only experience of tragedy was through the television, she said. Her mistake had been to put her faith in the police. “I trusted them blindly, and when I made myself available, to the point of exhaustion in those days, I was betrayed,” Knox said. “On the night of 5-6 November, I wasn’t just stressed and pressurised, I was manipulated.” Earlier, her former boyfriend had made a stumbling, but nevertheless moving, appeal for his own freedom. “I’ve never done anyone any harm. Never. In my whole life,” Sollecito told the court. He said he had thought the accusation would somehow evaporate. “Instead of which, it’s not been like that. I’ve had to put up with, go on in, a nightmare,” he said. He had spent more than 1,400 days in prison during which, like Knox, he had been confined “for almost 20 hours [a day] in a space measuring two-and-a-half metres by three”. He ended by asking to give the judges a bracelet, inscribed with the words “Free Amanda and Raffaele”, which he said he had not taken off since the day it was given to him, and which had yellowed with age in the meantime. It was, he said, “a concentrate of various emotions: desire for justice, and the effort, the path we have followed in this dark tunnel towards a light that seemed ever further away”. Amanda Knox Meredith Kercher Italy Europe United States John Hooper Tom Kington guardian.co.uk
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The most powerful millimetre/submillimetre-wavelength telescope in the world opens for business and reveals its first image
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Chancellor says solution to crisis vital to UK national interest as he prepares to address Tory conference The chancellor, George Osborne, has said an effective resolution to the eurozone debt crisis would be the “single biggest boost” the UK economy could receive. Osborne, who is under increasing pressure to stimulate economic growth in the face of the Treasury’s repeatedly downgraded forecasts, said the government was prepared to help families and businesses struggling in the difficult economic climate “where we can”. He announced measures to freeze council tax for a further year, invest in mobile phone masts and support British science. But he warned that the government was “not awash with money” and would cut “no more and no less” than it said it was going to, ruling out further tax cuts for businesses beyond those he has already announced until Britain’s finances were back in shape. In his keynote speech to the Conservative party conference in Manchester, Osborne will call on Britons to show a “can-do attitude” and promise them that the country will overcome its problems. Asked what more he could do to help business and growth, the chancellor said the single biggest boost to the country’s recovery lay in Europe. He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: “It’s nothing I can announce, actually – it is the resolution of the euro crisis. “That single thing would do more to boost the British economy than any single thing else in the world at the moment. So it is a vital national interest … that we get the euro crisis resolved.” As eurozone finance ministers meet in Luxembourg on Monday, Osborne said they should agree to increase the size of their bailout fund. “[It] doesn’t matter how they do it, but they need to get more resources into it,” he added. He said they also needed to deal with their weak banks, which were “a real drag on growth across the European continent”, and make a swift decision – and “stick by that decision” – on how they will deal with the problems facing Greece. As he looked ahead to the G20 summit in Cannes in November, Osborne warned: “If we come out of that meeting with the eurozone crisis still unresolved going into the winter, going into Christmas, then I think that will be terrible not just for Britain, not just for Europe, but for the entire world economy. “This instability is really debilitating at a time when, frankly, we’ve got lots of other challenges as well.” He insisted the government was not sitting on the sidelines as he announced plans to extend the council tax freeze in England for a further year. The freeze in 2013, estimated to be worth to £1.50 a week for the average household, cost £800m and is in line with a Conservative manifesto commitment to freeze the tax for two years . The money has been found from underspending across Whitehall, and will also be made available to the devolved executives in Scotland and Wales to enable them to make similar offers to keep council tax down, Osborne said. Osborne said the government was keen to help in any way if spare money was found, telling Today: “It [the council tax freeze] is a way of saying that we can help you where we can. “These are very difficult times – we know utility bills are going up, the oil price is up around the world, we have got these enormous debts we have to pay off. But if we are able to find resources to help, we will help.” He faced down calls from the business sector to cut corporation tax to 15%. The coalition has already cut the main rate of corporation tax from 28% to 26%, and has pledged further reductions, to 23%, by 2015. But Simon Walker, the director general of the Institute of Directors, said this was “not enough” and argued that a 15% rate was a key measure that could “make the UK one of the most competitive advanced economies in the world by 2020-25″. Osborne said: “Of course the business community would like us to go even further, and I would like to go even further if I had the money. But I am not a believer in deficit-funded tax cuts … The tax reductions we make have to be part of a properly costed government programme that is also getting the deficit down. “I believe in lower taxes, I would like to have permanently lower taxes. I think permanently lower taxes do boost growth. But you can’t fund, when you have got a huge budget deficit, a permanently lower tax rate because you end up having to put the tax up next year as the international money markets swirl around you and say, ‘Hold on, how is Britain going to pay its debts?’.” Osborne is expected to announce additional support for the stalled project to build the new Mersey Gateway bridge between Runcorn and Widnes. He also said the cash for science would include help in developing commercial uses in computing for the ultra-thin material graphene, which won two University of Manchester scientists the Nobel physics prize after they discovered it in 2004. Around £150m will be spent on mobile phone networks to enable companies to connect 6 million people living in remote areas that currently have little or no signal, he added. Conservative conference 2011 Conservative conference George Osborne Economic policy Tax and spending Conservatives European debt crisis European banks Recession Economics Hélène Mulholland guardian.co.uk
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Defence secretary Leon Panetta says Israel needs to focus on diplomacy as well as security, ahead of his Middle East trip The US has warned that Israel is becoming increasingly isolated in the Middle East, and said the country’s leaders must restart negotiations with the Palestinians and work to restore relations with Egypt and Turkey. In a blunt assessment made by Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, as he was travelling to Israel, he said the ongoing upheaval in the Middle East makes it critical for the Israelis to find ways to communicate with other nations in the region in order to have stability. “There’s not much question in my mind that they maintain that (military) edge,” Panetta told reporters travelling with him. “But the question you have to ask: is it enough to maintain a military edge if you’re isolating yourself in the diplomatic arena? Real security can only be achieved by both a strong diplomatic effort as well as a strong effort to project your military strength.” Panetta is scheduled to meet Israeli and Palestinian leaders this week, and then travel to a meeting of Nato defence ministers in Brussels. His visit comes as negotiators push for a peace deal by the end of next year, increasing pressure for the resumption of long-stalled talks. The Pentagon chief said Israel risks eroding its own security if it does not reach out to its neighbours. “It’s pretty clear that at this dramatic time in the Middle East, when there have been so many changes, that it is not a good situation for Israel to become increasingly isolated. And that’s what’s happening,” he said. Panetta said the most important thing now is for Israel and its neighbours “to try to develop better relationships so in the very least they can communicate with each other rather than taking these issues to the streets.” His visit comes at a particularly critical and fragile time. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has asked the UN to recognise an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, areas captured by Israel in the 1967 six-day war. The US opposed the UN bid, saying there is no substitute for direct peace negotiations. But with Israel continuing to build settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, Abbas says there is no point in talking. Some 500,000 Jewish settlers now live in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. The US, Britain, France and other UN security council members are likely to try to hold up consideration of the application while they press for a resumption of long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, diplomats said. Negotiators for the Quartet (UN, US, EU and Russia), are asking both the Israelis and the Palestinians to produce comprehensive proposals on territory and security within three months. Israeli officials have welcomed parts of the proposal, but have also expressed concerns about the timetable for some discussions. They also have refused to endorse the 1967 prewar borders as a basis for the future Palestinian state – something President Barack Obama has endorsed. The Palestinians, meanwhile, have said they won’t return to talks unless Israel freezes settlement building and accepts the pre-1967 war frontier as a baseline for talks. The Quartet is urging both sides to avoid “provocative actions.” Just last week, Israel approved the construction of 1,100 new housing units in an area of Jerusalem built on land captured in 1967, a move that drew widespread international condemnation. Panetta said he wants to stress to both sides that instead of setting conditions or pursuing other approaches, “the most important thing they can do is go to the negotiating table. That would be a tremendous signal to the world that both the Israelis and the Palestinians want to try to find a solution to these problems. I don’t think they really lose anything by getting into negotiations.” Panetta is scheduled to meet with the Israeli defence minister, Ehud Barak, and the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, as well as Abbas and the Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad. His visit to Israel comes six months after his predecessor, Robert Gates, travelled to the region to meet with Israeli leaders and make a journey to the West Bank to talk with Fayyad. The US has said it would veto the Palestinians’ UN request, despite the high political cost in the Arab world. However, Washington would not need to use its veto if the Palestinians fail to get the support of at least nine of 15 council members. Palestinian officials have said they believe they have eight yes votes, and are lobbying for more support. Israel Middle East US foreign policy United States Palestinian territories guardian.co.uk
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Amanda Knox and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, make final pleas in their appeal against convictions for murdering the British student Meredith Kercher 9.31am: Speaking in Italian, in a halting voice, Knox almost immediately breaks down in tears and is told by the judges that she can take a break. She instead take a deep breath and continues, still sounding shaky. She immediately mentions Kercher: Over the past four years I have lost a friend in the most brutal way, in an unexplained manner. Also, my trust in the police has been betrayed. 9.28am: After reminiscing about first meeting Knox, who he describes as “sunny and sweet”, Sollecito begins summing up with a dramatic flourish. He points to a bracelet he wears, saying it bears the message, “Amanda and Raffaele free”, saying he had never taken it off in prison. He then removes it. It;’s now Knox’s turn to speak. 9.22am: Sollecito says he “and Amanda” – he is very much tying together their fates – have spent 20 hours a day for the past 1,400 days in cells measuring around 2.5m by 3.5m. Both their families have made “huge sacrifices” to assist them, he adds. This is a very emotional appeal so far, with little mention of the evidence. 9.20am: Interesting point in a tweet from the BBC’s Daniel Sandford : No mention of the victim Meredith Kercher yet from Raffaele. #amandaknox 9.17am: Sollecito is now describing life in prison: Every day, in prison, by the end of the day, you feel dead, Every day is like that. He is dismissing as “totally untrue” reports that he has tried to implicate Knox in the crime. So far his statement is quite fractured, and very emotional. 9.14am: Ghirga has finished, and Raffaele Sollecito, the co-defendant and Knox’s former boyfriend, is addressing the judges. He is clearly nervous, and much more halting than the lawyer. He explains that the case feels like a nightmare from which he cannot wake. He tells them: I have never harmed anyone, never, ever in my life. 9.12am: Here’s a picture of Knox entering court before. 9.07am: Back with the lawyer’s address, he has been telling the judges that the knife identified as the weapon which killed Kercher is not compatible with the wounds which killed the British student. He is now winding up his address. 9.06am: The BBC’s Daniel Sandford, also in court, meanwhile tweets this : Raffaele is quietly reading his personal address to the court, rehearsing it while #amandaknox lawyer adresses judges and jury 9.03am: John Hooper has tweeted this initial thought on the lawyer’s address: #amandaknox lawyer Ghirga less impressive, more strident than in his moving address on her behalf last week. 8.56am: Luciano Ghirga, Knox’s lawyer, is now addressing the panel of judges in a courtroom so packed that some members of the media are standing. He is discussing the knife used as evidence by prosecutors, and saying Knox faced significant hostility from police. Her eventual statement suggested “intense suggestion”, he says. 8.54am: The BBC website has a live stream of the hearing here . 8.45am: John Hooper has just filed an updated story which further explains what will be happening today: Both appellants are expected to plead in person for their appeals to be upheld and their sentences to be overturned. The frescoed and vaulted 14th century courtroom was packed with jostling camera crews and reporters as proceedings began more than a half an hour behind schedule. Today’s proceedings were to due to open with a final rebuttal from Knox’s lawyer, Luciano Ghirga. After the personal statements by the American student and her ex-lover, the two professional judges will retire together with six lay judges who are to help them reach a decision. He also has this, on Italian opinion about the case: Local auguries for their appeal were inconclusive, but showed up a division that did not bode well for the appellants. A survey among Italian university students, carried out by the web site Universinet.it, found that the 6,130 respondents split almost evenly between those who thought the couple were innocent (44 per cent), and those who thought they were guilty (48 per cent), with the remainder uncertain. But the balance of opinion was starkly different according to gender. Only 21 per cent of men thought Knox and Sollecito should continue to serve their sentences. Among women, the proportion rose to 68 per cent. The poll, reported by the Italian news agency Ansa, is particularly relevant in the light of the predominantly female panel that will reach a decision. Both the professional judges, who will cast three votes between them, are men. But the lay judges, who have six ballots, include five women. 8.39am: Knox and Sollecito have now arrived in the courtroom. TV coverage shows Knox in close consultation with her lawyers. Knox, as you would expect, looks nervous. 8.17am: You can follow John’s Twitter updates from today’s events here . He’s also just tweeted a small list of other useful people to follow for the day. 8.10am: After a tortuous, four-year legal process, we are finally here: today we should learn whether Amanda Knox might be freed following an appeal against her conviction for killing the British student Meredith Kercher . An eight-member panel of judges in Perugia, Italy, will decide whether Knox, now 24, and her 27-year-old former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, 27, will be acquitted of the gruesome 2007 crime or whether they should serve their sentences, 26 years and 25 years respectively. There is a third option, that the judges could decide to reduce their sentences. John Hooper has provided all the background in this story . He and my other colleague in Italy, Tom Kington , are both in Perugia, and will be sending me updates. What is set to be a dramatic day will open with Knox and Sollecito making their final appeals for freedom. A verdict from the panel, comprising six lay judges and two professional judges, should come some time this evening. This is one of the more sensational court cases of recent years, taking in as it does a photogenic main defendant variously portrayed as a temptress witch or an innocent, faithful woman in love , and a shocking crime incorporating allegations of sex games gone wrong. But whatever today’s drama, and the eventual verdict, it’s worth remembering throughout that at the centre of events remains a 21-year-old Leeds University student , the youngest of four children, who went to Perugia at the start of September 2007, full of excitement at what lay ahead, and was dead just eight weeks later. As Kercher’s mother, Arline, told the original trial: “It’s such a shock to send your child to school and for them to not come back.” Amanda Knox Meredith Kercher Italy Europe United States Peter Walker guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Shell oil paid Nigerian military to put down protests, court documents show
October 3, 2011 No Comment
Secret papers reveal that in the 1990s the oil giant routinely worked with the army to suppress resistance to its activities Shell has never denied that its oil operations have polluted large areas of the Niger Delta – land and air. But it had resisted charges of complicity in human rights abuses. Court documents now reveal that in the 1990s Shell routinely worked with Nigeria’s military and mobile police to suppress resistance to its oil activities, often from activists in Ogoniland, in the delta region. Confidential memos, faxes, witness statements and other documents , released in 2009, show the company regularly paid the military to stop the peaceful protest movement against the pollution, even helping to plan raids on villages suspected of opposing the company. According to Ogoni activists, several thousand people were killed in the 1990s and many more fled that wave of terror that took place in the 1990s. In 2009, in a New York federal court , that evidence never saw light during the trial. Shell had been accused of collaborating with the state in the execution in 1995 of writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and other leaders of the Ogoni tribe. Instead, Shell paid $15.5m (£9.6m) to the eight families in settlement . Among the documents was a 1994 letter from Shell agreeing to pay a unit of the Nigerian army to retrieve a truck, an action that left one Ogoni man dead and two wounded. Shell said it was making the payment “as a show of gratitude and motivation for a sustained favourable disposition in future assignments”. Brian Anderson, the director of Shell Nigeria during those years, said in 2009, after the New York settlement, the company had “played no part in any military operations against the Ogoni people, or any other communities in the Niger Delta, and we have never been approached for financial or logistical support for any action”. But he conceded that Shell had paid the military on two occasions. The company has been sued many times over its conduct in Nigeria. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) say oil companies working in the delta, of which Shell is the largest, have overseen a “human rights tragedy”. Most of the alleged human rights abuses, they say, follow the companies’ refusal to abide by acceptable environmental standards. Despite the flood of lawsuits, cases can be delayed for years. Very few people are able to take on the oil giant, which has 90 oil fields in the delta where it has operated since the 1950s. Increasingly, though, international groups are using courts in Europe and the US against big oil companies. Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary SPDC admitted liability last month in a British court for two oil spills in 2008 around Bodo , which has severely affected the lives of 69,000 people. The company is negotiating a settlement. A similar case is being heard in a Netherlands court for three other spills. In 2009, Amnesty international said oil companies in Nigeria had fostered a “human rights tragedy” with continual oil spills, gas flaring and waste dumping. “The people of the Niger Delta have seen their human rights constantly abused by oil companies that their government cannot or will not hold to account,” said Audrey Gaughran, the group’s global issues director. HRW investigators visited the Niger Delta in 1997. Their report , in 1999, said: “People are brutalised for attempting to raise grievances with the companies; in some cases security forces threatened, beat, and jailed members of community delegations even before they presented their cases.” Nigeria Africa Royal Dutch Shell Oil Oil and gas companies Human rights John Vidal guardian.co.uk
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