Shaima Jastaina sentenced to 10 lashes after being found guilty of driving without permission A Saudi woman has been sentenced to be lashed 10 times with a whip for defying the kingdom’s prohibition on female drivers. It is the first time a legal punishment has been handed down for a violation of the longtime ban in the ultraconservative Muslim nation. Police usually stop female drivers, question them and let them go after they sign a pledge not to drive again. But dozens of women have continued to take to the roads since June in a campaign to break the taboo. The sentence comes two days after King Abdullah promised to protect women’s rights and decreed women would be allowed to participate in municipal elections in 2015. Abdullah also promised to appoint women to the all-male shura council advisory body. The mixed signals highlight the challenge for Abdullah, known as a reformer, in pushing gently for change without antagonising the powerful clergy and a conservative segment of the population. Abdullah said he had the backing of the official clerical council. But activists saw Tuesday’s sentencing as a retaliation from the hardline Saudi religious establishment that controls the courts and oversees the intrusive religious police. “Our king doesn’t deserve that,” said Sohila Zein el-Abydeen, a prominent female member of the governmental National Society for Human Rights. She burst into tears in a phone interview and said: “The verdict is shocking to me, but we were expecting this kind of reaction.” The driver, Shaima Jastaina, who is in her 30s, was found guilty of driving without permission, activist Samar Badawi said. The punishment is usually carried out within a month. It was not possible to reach Jastaina, but Badawi, in touch with Jastaina’s family, said she had appealed against the verdict. Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that bans women – both Saudi and foreign – from driving. The prohibition forces families to hire live-in drivers, and those who cannot afford the $300 to $400 (£190 to £255) a month for a driver must rely on male relatives to drive them to work, school, shopping or the doctor. There are no written laws that restrict women from driving. Rather, the ban is rooted in conservative traditions and religious views that hold giving freedom of movement to women would make them vulnerable to sins. Activists say the religious justification is irrelevant. “How come women get flogged for driving, while the maximum penalty for a traffic violation is a fine, not lashes?” Zein el-Abydeen said. “Even the prophet [Muhammad's] wives were riding camels and horses because these were the only means of transportation.” Since June, dozens of women have led a campaign to try to break the taboo and impose a new status quo. The campaign’s founder, Manal al-Sherif, who posted a video of herself driving on Facebook, was detained for more than 10 days. She was released after signing a pledge not to drive or speak to media. Since then, women have been appearing in the streets driving their cars once or twice a week. Until Tuesday, none had been sentenced by the courts. But recently, several women have been summoned for questioning by the prosecutor general and referred to trial. Najalaa al-Harriri, a housewife, drove twice, not out of defiance, but out of need, she said. “I don’t have a driver. I needed to drop my son off at school and pick up my daughter from work.” “The day the king gave his speech, I was sitting at the prosecutor’s office and was asked why I needed to drive, how many times I drove and where,” she said. She is to stand trial in a month. After the king’s announcement about voting rights for women, Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Abdel Aziz Al Sheik blessed the move and said: “It’s for women’s good.” Al-Harriri, who is one of the founders of a women’s rights campaign called My Right My Dignity, said: “It is strange that I was questioned at a time the mufti himself blessed the king’s move.” Asked if the sentencing would stop women from driving, Maha al-Qahtani, another female activist, said: “This is our right, whether they like it or not.” Saudi Arabia Middle East Women Gender Feminism Equality guardian.co.uk
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Former Metropolitan police commissioner to head party’s ‘independent review’ into the future of policing in Britain Lord Stevens, the former Metropolitan police commissioner, is to chair Labour’s “independent review” into the future of policing, the shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, is to announce. The appointment is a boost for the credibility of the review, which risks being seen as a Labour party operation. Stevens is reported to have been courted by David Cameron to run as the Tory candidate for London mayor in 2006 and has in the past advocated the return of the death penalty. Cooper will tell the Labour conference on Wednesday that the review is to “bring some coherence and vision to the ideologically motivated, chaotic and piecemeal approach to police reform undertaken by this government.” Kathleen O’Toole, a former Boston police commissioner, and Tim Brain, the former Gloucestershire chief constable and an expert on police finance, are also to serve on the review. Although the timetable has yet to be decided it is expected to report before Labour draws up its next general election manifesto. The review follows repeated calls from the main police organisations for a royal commission to examine the fundamental purposes of policing in Britain. Both Sir Hugh Orde of the Association of Chief Police Officers and Paul McKeever, the chairman of the Police Federation, renewed their calls at a Labour fringe meeting yesterday and observed that when the last had reported in 1961 it was before the advent of colour television. McKeever revealed the home secretary, Theresa May, had refused to meet them since she addressed their annual conference in May. The federation warned her that the cuts would lead to riots on the streets and demanded to know how she slept at night. Cooper is to tell the conference that the time had come to set up a heavyweight independent review: “The government has refused to do so. So we will.” She says the inquiry would work with the police and take evidence from experts at home and abroad and look at how policing needs to change to respond to the crime challenges of the 21st century. “It will be led by someone who started as a beat officer in Tottenham and rose to be commissioner of the Metropolitan police. I am grateful to the much respected Lord John Stevens for agreeing to chair this important independent review.” Stevens has presided over several major inquiries since he retired as Met Commissioner in 2005 including into collusion between the British army and loyalist terrorists, into the death of Princess Diana and allegations of corruption in football. Stevens was appointed by Gordon Brown as his adviser on international security issues in 2007 as part of his policy of bringing non-Labour outsiders into Whitehall. The shadow justice secretary, Sadiq Khan, is also to announce that a Labour government would introduce a “victim’s law” along the lines advocated by the victims’ commissioner, Louise Casey, to honour the rights of families of homicide victims. “We are committed to delivering effective justice, and treating victims with respect and dignity, supporting victims through all stages of the process, including the deeply traumatic experience of when a case reaches court,” says Khan. Police Labour Metropolitan police Yvette Cooper Alan Travis Sandra Laville guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Briton jailed in Australia 26 years after killing and incinerating girlfriend
September 27, 2011 No Comment
Stephen Hutton, who strangled Sandra White and left body in burning caravan, gets four years but is up for parole next week A British man who strangled his girlfriend and then burned her body in a small Australian town 26 years ago has been sentenced to four years in jail. Stephen Hutton of Hampshire was extradited to Australia in 2009 to face charges in the 1985 death of Sandra White. White’s remains were found in a burned-out caravan in Yandoit, north-west of Melbourne. Officials were initially unable to determine a cause of death. Police reopened the case in 2005 and Hutton became a suspect. Hutton pleaded guilty in the supreme court of Victoria to manslaughter and was sentenced on Wednesday. He will be eligible for parole next week due to time served. Hutton and his lawyer blamed mental illness for the crime, arguing that he has schizophrenia. Australia guardian.co.uk
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Bacterium traced back to cantaloupes from Colorado farm is blamed for infections in 72 people across 18 states A listeria outbreak linked to cantaloupes from Colorado has killed 13 people and infected 59 others, US health officials have said. The foodborne outbreak is the deadliest in the United States in more than a decade, exceeding the 2008-2009 salmonella outbreak from tainted peanuts that killed nine and infected more than 700 people in the United States, according to the Centres for Disease Control (CDC). So far 18 states had reported infections from one of the four strains of listeria involved, the CDC said. Of the 13 deaths, four were in New Mexico, two in Colorado, two in Texas and one each in Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma. The CDC said it had traced the outbreak to cantaloupes grown at Jensen Farms in Granada, Colorado, after finding Listeria monocytogenes in a sample from there. The company issued a recall on 14 September of its Rocky Ford-brand cantaloupes. The fruit was shipped to at least 17 states. The Food and Drug Administration has advised consumers to throw out the recalled melons. Listeria bacteria thrive in low temperatures. Outbreaks are usually associated with deli meats, unpasteurised cheeses and smoked refrigerated seafood. It is the deadliest listeria outbreak in the US since 1998 when contaminated hot dogs and deli meats killed 32 people and made 101 sick. People with weakened immune systems are most vulnerable to listeria. Pregnant women are 20 times more likely than healthy adults to get listeriosis and people with Aids are nearly 300 times more likely, the CDC says on its website. United States Food safety guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Bacterium traced back to cantaloupes from Colorado farm is blamed for infections in 72 people across 18 states A listeria outbreak linked to cantaloupes from Colorado has killed 13 people and infected 59 others, US health officials have said. The foodborne outbreak is the deadliest in the United States in more than a decade, exceeding the 2008-2009 salmonella outbreak from tainted peanuts that killed nine and infected more than 700 people in the United States, according to the Centres for Disease Control (CDC). So far 18 states had reported infections from one of the four strains of listeria involved, the CDC said. Of the 13 deaths, four were in New Mexico, two in Colorado, two in Texas and one each in Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma. The CDC said it had traced the outbreak to cantaloupes grown at Jensen Farms in Granada, Colorado, after finding Listeria monocytogenes in a sample from there. The company issued a recall on 14 September of its Rocky Ford-brand cantaloupes. The fruit was shipped to at least 17 states. The Food and Drug Administration has advised consumers to throw out the recalled melons. Listeria bacteria thrive in low temperatures. Outbreaks are usually associated with deli meats, unpasteurised cheeses and smoked refrigerated seafood. It is the deadliest listeria outbreak in the US since 1998 when contaminated hot dogs and deli meats killed 32 people and made 101 sick. People with weakened immune systems are most vulnerable to listeria. Pregnant women are 20 times more likely than healthy adults to get listeriosis and people with Aids are nearly 300 times more likely, the CDC says on its website. United States Food safety guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Bacterium traced back to cantaloupes from Colorado farm is blamed for infections in 72 people across 18 states A listeria outbreak linked to cantaloupes from Colorado has killed 13 people and infected 59 others, US health officials have said. The foodborne outbreak is the deadliest in the United States in more than a decade, exceeding the 2008-2009 salmonella outbreak from tainted peanuts that killed nine and infected more than 700 people in the United States, according to the Centres for Disease Control (CDC). So far 18 states had reported infections from one of the four strains of listeria involved, the CDC said. Of the 13 deaths, four were in New Mexico, two in Colorado, two in Texas and one each in Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma. The CDC said it had traced the outbreak to cantaloupes grown at Jensen Farms in Granada, Colorado, after finding Listeria monocytogenes in a sample from there. The company issued a recall on 14 September of its Rocky Ford-brand cantaloupes. The fruit was shipped to at least 17 states. The Food and Drug Administration has advised consumers to throw out the recalled melons. Listeria bacteria thrive in low temperatures. Outbreaks are usually associated with deli meats, unpasteurised cheeses and smoked refrigerated seafood. It is the deadliest listeria outbreak in the US since 1998 when contaminated hot dogs and deli meats killed 32 people and made 101 sick. People with weakened immune systems are most vulnerable to listeria. Pregnant women are 20 times more likely than healthy adults to get listeriosis and people with Aids are nearly 300 times more likely, the CDC says on its website. United States Food safety guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Bacterium traced back to cantaloupes from Colorado farm is blamed for infections in 72 people across 18 states A listeria outbreak linked to cantaloupes from Colorado has killed 13 people and infected 59 others, US health officials have said. The foodborne outbreak is the deadliest in the United States in more than a decade, exceeding the 2008-2009 salmonella outbreak from tainted peanuts that killed nine and infected more than 700 people in the United States, according to the Centres for Disease Control (CDC). So far 18 states had reported infections from one of the four strains of listeria involved, the CDC said. Of the 13 deaths, four were in New Mexico, two in Colorado, two in Texas and one each in Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma. The CDC said it had traced the outbreak to cantaloupes grown at Jensen Farms in Granada, Colorado, after finding Listeria monocytogenes in a sample from there. The company issued a recall on 14 September of its Rocky Ford-brand cantaloupes. The fruit was shipped to at least 17 states. The Food and Drug Administration has advised consumers to throw out the recalled melons. Listeria bacteria thrive in low temperatures. Outbreaks are usually associated with deli meats, unpasteurised cheeses and smoked refrigerated seafood. It is the deadliest listeria outbreak in the US since 1998 when contaminated hot dogs and deli meats killed 32 people and made 101 sick. People with weakened immune systems are most vulnerable to listeria. Pregnant women are 20 times more likely than healthy adults to get listeriosis and people with Aids are nearly 300 times more likely, the CDC says on its website. United States Food safety guardian.co.uk
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Bantar Gebang, a sprawling, mound of Jakarta’s rotting rubbish is home for 2,000 families
Continue reading …George Wright, fugitive US hijacker, caught in Portugal after 40 years
September 27, 2011 No Comment
George Wright escaped jail in 1970 after eight years for murder, then hijacked plane to Algeria as part of militant group A 1970s militant who escaped from a murder sentence in New Jersey and carried out one of the most brazen hijackings in US history has been captured in Portugal after more than 40 years as a fugitive. There was a sudden break in the case only last wek when police matched his fingerprint to a resident ID card. George Wright, 68, was arrested on Monday by Portuguese authorities in a town near Lisbon at the request of the US government, said a member of the fugitive task force that had been undertaking a renewed search since 2002. Wright was convicted of the 1962 murder of a service station owner in Wall, New Jersey. Authorities said Wright and three associates had already committed multiple armed robberies by 23 November 1962 when he and another man shot and killed Walter Patterson, a decorated second world war veteran and father of two. Wright received a 15- to 30-year sentence and had served eight years when he and three other men escaped from the Bayside State Prison farm in Leesburg, New Jersey, on 19 August 1970. The FBI said Wright then became affiliated with an underground militant group, the Black Liberation Army, and lived in a “communal family” with several of its members in Detroit. On 31 July Wright, dressed as a priest and using the alias the Rev L Burgess, hijacked a Delta Air Lines flight from Detroit to Miami accompanied by three men, two women and three small children from his group. They included Wright’s companion and their two-year-old daughter, according to Associated Press reports at the time. When the plane landed at the Miami airport the hijackers demanded a $1m ransom to free the 86 people on board. After an FBI agent delivered a 32kg (70lb) satchel of money – wearing only a pair of swimming trunks, as per the hijacker’s instructions – the passengers were released, according to AP. The hijackers then forced the plane to Boston, where an international navigator was taken aboard. The group flew on to Algeria where they sought asylum. They were taken in by Eldridge Cleaver, the American writer and activist, who had been permitted by Algeria’s socialist government to open an office of the Black Panther Movement in that country in 1970 after the Algerian president at the time professed sympathy for what he viewed as worldwide liberation struggles. Algerian officials returned the plane and the money to the US at the request of the American government and briefly detained the hijackers before letting them stay. Coverage of the hijackers’ stay in Algeria said their movements were restricted. The Algerian president ignored their calls for asylum and requests to give them back the ransom money. The group eventually made their way to France, where Wright’s associates were tracked down, arrested, tried and convicted in Paris in 1976. France refused to extradite them to the US where they would have faced much longer sentences. According to news reports at the time, the defence hailed the light sentences they were given as “a condemnation of American racism” after the jury found “extenuating circumstances” in their actions, apparently agreeing with the defence’s assertion that the hijacking had been motivated by “racial oppression in the United States”. Wright remained at large and his case was among the top priorities when a New York-New Jersey fugitive task force was formed in 2002, according to Michael Schroeder, a spokesman for the US Marshals Service who worked with New Jersey’s FBI and other agencies on the task force. The US corrections department brought all its old escape cases to the task force, Schroeder said, and investigators started on them afresh. They looked at reports from the 1970s and interviewed Wright’s victims and the pilots of the plane he hijacked. They had age-enhanced sketches made and tried to track down any communication he may have made with family in the US. The address in Portugal was one of several on a list they compiled. But Schroeder said there was nothing about it that made it seem especially promising. “It was another box to get checked, so to speak,” he said. That changed last week when details started falling into place with the help of authorities there. “They have a national ID registry,” Schroeder said. “They pulled that. That confirmed his print matched the prints with the DOC. The sketch matched the picture on his ID card.” By the weekend US authorities were on a plane to Portugal. On Monday Portuguese police staking out the home had found Wright. Schroeder said he has not been told what, if anything, Wright said when he was caught. Wright made an initial court appearance in Portugal on Tuesday, according to US justice department Spokeswoman Laura Sweeney. He was arrested for extradition on the New Jersey murder charge and would serve the remainder of his sentence on that charge if returned to the US. United States guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …George Wright, fugitive US hijacker, caught in Portugal after 40 years
September 27, 2011 No Comment
George Wright escaped jail in 1970 after eight years for murder, then hijacked plane to Algeria as part of militant group A 1970s militant who escaped from a murder sentence in New Jersey and carried out one of the most brazen hijackings in US history has been captured in Portugal after more than 40 years as a fugitive. There was a sudden break in the case only last wek when police matched his fingerprint to a resident ID card. George Wright, 68, was arrested on Monday by Portuguese authorities in a town near Lisbon at the request of the US government, said a member of the fugitive task force that had been undertaking a renewed search since 2002. Wright was convicted of the 1962 murder of a service station owner in Wall, New Jersey. Authorities said Wright and three associates had already committed multiple armed robberies by 23 November 1962 when he and another man shot and killed Walter Patterson, a decorated second world war veteran and father of two. Wright received a 15- to 30-year sentence and had served eight years when he and three other men escaped from the Bayside State Prison farm in Leesburg, New Jersey, on 19 August 1970. The FBI said Wright then became affiliated with an underground militant group, the Black Liberation Army, and lived in a “communal family” with several of its members in Detroit. On 31 July Wright, dressed as a priest and using the alias the Rev L Burgess, hijacked a Delta Air Lines flight from Detroit to Miami accompanied by three men, two women and three small children from his group. They included Wright’s companion and their two-year-old daughter, according to Associated Press reports at the time. When the plane landed at the Miami airport the hijackers demanded a $1m ransom to free the 86 people on board. After an FBI agent delivered a 32kg (70lb) satchel of money – wearing only a pair of swimming trunks, as per the hijacker’s instructions – the passengers were released, according to AP. The hijackers then forced the plane to Boston, where an international navigator was taken aboard. The group flew on to Algeria where they sought asylum. They were taken in by Eldridge Cleaver, the American writer and activist, who had been permitted by Algeria’s socialist government to open an office of the Black Panther Movement in that country in 1970 after the Algerian president at the time professed sympathy for what he viewed as worldwide liberation struggles. Algerian officials returned the plane and the money to the US at the request of the American government and briefly detained the hijackers before letting them stay. Coverage of the hijackers’ stay in Algeria said their movements were restricted. The Algerian president ignored their calls for asylum and requests to give them back the ransom money. The group eventually made their way to France, where Wright’s associates were tracked down, arrested, tried and convicted in Paris in 1976. France refused to extradite them to the US where they would have faced much longer sentences. According to news reports at the time, the defence hailed the light sentences they were given as “a condemnation of American racism” after the jury found “extenuating circumstances” in their actions, apparently agreeing with the defence’s assertion that the hijacking had been motivated by “racial oppression in the United States”. Wright remained at large and his case was among the top priorities when a New York-New Jersey fugitive task force was formed in 2002, according to Michael Schroeder, a spokesman for the US Marshals Service who worked with New Jersey’s FBI and other agencies on the task force. The US corrections department brought all its old escape cases to the task force, Schroeder said, and investigators started on them afresh. They looked at reports from the 1970s and interviewed Wright’s victims and the pilots of the plane he hijacked. They had age-enhanced sketches made and tried to track down any communication he may have made with family in the US. The address in Portugal was one of several on a list they compiled. But Schroeder said there was nothing about it that made it seem especially promising. “It was another box to get checked, so to speak,” he said. That changed last week when details started falling into place with the help of authorities there. “They have a national ID registry,” Schroeder said. “They pulled that. That confirmed his print matched the prints with the DOC. The sketch matched the picture on his ID card.” By the weekend US authorities were on a plane to Portugal. On Monday Portuguese police staking out the home had found Wright. Schroeder said he has not been told what, if anything, Wright said when he was caught. Wright made an initial court appearance in Portugal on Tuesday, according to US justice department Spokeswoman Laura Sweeney. He was arrested for extradition on the New Jersey murder charge and would serve the remainder of his sentence on that charge if returned to the US. United States guardian.co.uk
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