Anni Dewani honeymoon murder pair to go on trial in South Africa next year
September 20, 2011 No Comment
Men accused of plotting with Shrien Dewani to kill his wife on their honeymoon will face murder trial in Cape Town Two men accused of plotting with a British businessman to kill his wife during their honeymoon will go on trial in South Africa next year. Xolile Mngeni and Mziwamadoda Qwabe were allegedly hired by Shrien Dewani to murder his wife, Anni , in a fake carjacking in Cape Town. A British judge ruled last month that Dewani, 31, should be extradited to South Africa to face trial. He strongly denies any involvement in his wife’s murder and is fighting against the decision to send him to South Africa. Mngeni, 23, and Qwabe, 25, appeared at Wynberg regional court in Cape Town accused of murder, kidnapping and aggravated robbery. The two men, who are also accused of illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition, were told they would face trial at Western Cape high court. Mngeni, who has a malignant brain tumour, was helped into the dock by his co-accused before they were committed for trial. During their last hearing, the court undertook to decide whether to abandon the charges against Mngeni because of his condition, meaning they would only proceed with the case against Qwabe. But there was no mention of his tumour at the committal hearing. Previously the men’s lawyers have alleged to the Guardian that both were tortured by the police. Anni Dewani, 28, was shot dead in an apparent carjacking in the impoverished Gugulethu township on the outskirts of Cape Town last November. Her husband and Zola Tongo, the taxi driver, were ejected from the vehicle. Dewani was implicated in his wife’s murder by Tongo, 31, who claimed in a plea bargain that Dewani had offered him 15,000 rand (£1,400) to arrange the killing. Tongo has been sentenced to 18 years in jail for murder, kidnapping, robbery with aggravating circumstances and perverting the course of justice. A pre-trial hearing has been scheduled in the high court for 10 February for Mngeni and Qwabe. This is to ensure there are no unforeseen hitches that could delay the legal process. A date for the trial has yet to be set. During the extradition hearing in London over the summer, Dewani’s legal team argued he was too ill to return and claimed his human rights would be infringed if he was ordered to go to South Africa because of the conditions he would face in prison. Dewani has been diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder and severe depression. Psychiatrists who have treated Dewani at a medium-secure psychiatric hospital in Bristol warned there was a “high risk” he would commit suicide if he was returned to South Africa. Experts in the South African penal system called by Dewani’s lawyers during the hearing said some prisons were overcrowded, understaffed and rife with diseases, including TB and HIV/Aids. There was a shortage of medical staff and sick prisoners sometimes struggled to get access to the care and medicine they needed. Members of Anni Dewani’s family are keen for Shrien Dewani to return to South Africa to face trial. Dewani murder case South Africa Africa Steven Morris guardian.co.uk
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Georgia man who insists he was wrongly convicted of killing a police officer in 1989 set to be executed on Wednesday Georgia’s pardons board has rejected clemency for death row inmate Troy Davis, who has attracted high-profile support for his claim that he was wrongly convicted of killing a police officer in 1989. According to his defence lawyers, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles on Tuesday rejected Davis’s request for clemency after hearing hours of testimony from his supporters and prosecutors. “I am utterly shocked and disappointed at the failure of our justice system at all levels to correct a miscarriage of justice,” Brian Kammer, one of Davis’s attorneys, said after the decision was announced. Davis is set to die on Wednesday for the murder of off-duty Savannah officer Mark MacPhail, who was killed while rushing to help a homeless man who was being attacked. It is the fourth time in four years his execution has been scheduled by Georgia officials. Davis was convicted at a 1991 trial almost exclusively on the basis of nine witnesses who all said they had seen him carry out the shooting. Davis was present at the scene, but has always insisted that another man, Sylvester Coles, attacked the homeless man and shot MacPhail when he intervened. The murder weapon was never found, and there was no DNA or other forensic evidence. In the years since the trial, seven of the nine witnesses have come forward and recanted their evidence, saying they were put under pressure to implicate Davis by the investigating police. Other witnesses have come forward to say they had heard Coles confess to killing the officer. The parole board heard from one of the jurors who originally recommended the death penalty for Davis. Brenda Forrest told the panel she no longer trusted the verdict or sentence: “I feel, emphatically, that Mr Davis cannot be executed under these circumstances,” she said, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The board also heard from Quiana Glover, who testified she had heard Coles confess in June 2009 to having been the killer, at a party where he had been drinking heavily. Following the arguments for clemency, members of MacPhail’s family and the prosecution side were expected to call for the execution to go ahead. Brian Evans, a death row specialist at Amnesty International’s US branch, said the extraordinary outpouring of support for Davis was partly of a reflection of changing attitudes in America towards executions. Opinion polls suggest the US has softened its view from its once-hardline, pro-capital punishment position, and is now fairly evenly divided between defenders of the death penalty and those who see life without parole as a satisfactory alternative. State of Georgia Capital punishment United States Human rights guardian.co.uk
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Rebecca Leighton, who was freed without charge over patients’ deaths, speaks about her experience on ITV’s This Morning A nurse who was held on remand for six weeks on suspicion of being responsible for the deaths of patients at Stepping Hill hospital has spoken of her ordeal and criticised her portrayal by the media following her arrest. In her first interview, with ITV’s This Morning programme on Tuesday, Rebecca Leighton described being arrested by police as absolutely horrendous, and said she was too scared to walk down the street alone because of public hostility. Leighton, from Heaviley, Stockport, said she had “pleaded” with the police after her arrest not to stop looking for the real culprit in the investigation. “I pleaded with the police, every day, all the time: ‘Just don’t stop looking. Don’t stop with me because if you do then surely the person that has done these horrific things is still going to be out there,’” she said. “It worried me so much that the patients, everybody, were still going to be affected by it all.” She believes the media were responsible for public hostility towards her, which resulted in a judge refusing her bail at Manchester crown court on 5 August. She was released from Styal prison in Cheshire, where she spent six weeks on remand, on 2 September, after the Crown Prosecution Service dropped all the charges against her. “Because of how the media have portrayed me to be … they could not be any more wrong, people have formed an opinion about me, so I believe it [the bail refusal] was for that reason,” she said. She said: “It’s hard to even say about having a normal life because even now my life is not normal. “I am living at my parents’, I am not living where I was living. I’m not working. I can’t go outside my house without people taking pictures of me. “I can’t walk down the street on my own because I’m a bit scared. Someone has always got to be with me all the time. It’s far from normal.” She said nursing was all she had ever done, adding: “I am so passionate about my job and looking after patients. That’s what I do. That’s what I have worked so hard for. “All this attention has been totally out of my control and I have been left now to try and sort everything out myself.” She said she wished her name had not been published in the media before she was charged. Police arrested the nurse in July after her fingerprints were apparently found on bags of saline fluid that had been contaminated with insulin at the Stockport hospital. Greater Manchester police have established that insulin was present in three patients – Tracey Arden, 44, Alfred Derek Weaver, 83, and Arnold Lancaster, 71 – who all died in July. Speaking of her arrest, she said: “Obviously I was asleep in bed because I was meant to be in work the next day. The police banged on the door. I thought the police wanted to ask further questions. “They came up to my flat. I was not expecting what was to come at all. I couldn’t believe what was happening. Even though I’d been arrested, I thought I’d be home in time for teatime.” She initially refused to have a solicitor present during questioning as she felt she had nothing to hide. But a police officer advised her to have a solicitor with her. “I just couldn’t make sense. I couldn’t string a sentence together. I just couldn’t understand what was going on, why it was me that was arrested, any of it. None of it made sense to me,” she said. “It was hard. I learned, obviously, through what I had been through, not to look too far down the line as to which way my life is going to go. “I just had that little bit of faith that this is going to end and it has got to end because surely they have got to realise at some point that it is not me.” She defended her portrayal in pictures posted on her Facebook page that were published in the press, saying she was “just being any normal 27-year-old girl” who goes out with her friends. “I was just out with my friends having a good time,” she said. “I have got a big group of friends and the media portrayed it to be that work got in the way of my social life. “Ask any of my friends – my friends will tell you that I never used to go out half as much as they wanted me to because I had a choice of working and I ended up working because that is what I loved.” She said she would love to go back to her life as it had been before, adding: “Anything bad that happens, you’ve got to turn it into a positive.” Last week, the Nursing and Midwifery Council revoked the suspension of her nursing registration with certain conditions. But she remains suspended on full pay by Stepping Hill while inquiries continue into allegations that she stole medication. Nursing Crime Television Health Helen Carter guardian.co.uk
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Singer Tony Bennett has sold over 50 million album copies but that success doesn't seem to have required much common sense or decency. In a recent interview, the veteran crooner sounded appalingly similar to controversial left-wing minister Jerremiah Wright, stating, among other things that America “caused” 9/11 to happen. In what was supposed to be an interview about his latest music collection, Bennett took a turn far afield when he began lashing out at U.S. foreign policy, creating a grotesque moral equivalence between Al Qaeda terrorists who deliberately inflict mass civilian casualties and America:
Continue reading …Palestinians: we are already recognised as a state by two-thirds of the globe
September 20, 2011 No Comment
UN delegation claims member countries comprising 75% of the world’s population are in favour of its bid for full statehood Interactive: which countries already recognise Palestinian? Almost two-thirds of the UN’s member states – representing more than 75% of the world’s population – already formally recognise the Palestinian state in some form, according to information posted by Mahmoud Abbas’s administration and foreign ministries around the world. The Palestinian president is pressing forward with plans to formally request UN membership this Friday, despite attempts at a diplomatic compromise by many western states and a US pledge to veto the membership bid. Raising Palestine to full statehood would need to pass the UN security council – where it is subject to veto – and then a vote at the general assembly, comprising all 193 UN member states. However, the general assembly can raise Palestine’s status from “permanent observer” to “non-member observer state”, a largely symbolic vote, without security council approval. Analysis by the Guardian corroborates reports that such a vote would be extremely likely to be passed. Statements on government websites, from the Arab League, Palestinian administrations and elsewhere suggest that in some form, often with caveats, 126 UN member states already grant formal diplomatic recognition of a Palestinian state. The majority of these countries, 105, also formally recognise the state of Israel. The countries that recognise Palestine comprise around 5.5bn of the world’s population of 7bn – more than 75% – but based on World Bank GDP figures make up less than 10% of the world’s economy, highlighting the global rift on what remains a highly contentious topic. Countries which do not yet formally recognise Palestine are overwhelmingly concentrated in western Europe and North America. No western European democracy currently recognises Palestine as a state, but some newer EU members have previously recognised statehood. The UN is unlikely to vote on Abbas’s proposals for a period of several months even if the resolution is tabled as planned. Envoys from the Middle Eastern Quartet – the US, UN, EU and Russia – are meeting through the week to work on compromise plans to place before Abbas and the Israeli government. The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, urged Abbas not to put proposals for statehood before the UN, warning such a course of action was “not the best way forward”. • Methodology: The graphic is based on countries that are recognised as full UN members who have independently formally acknowledged Palestine as a nation state. The countries who have given this formal recognition do not necessarily agree on borders or other factors in statehood, and may have recognised Palestine at any point between 1988 and 2011. • Figures for population estimates and GDP are taken from the World Bank datastore, using the most recent year for which data was available (typically 2010). Palestinian territories Middle East Mahmoud Abbas Israel United Nations James Ball guardian.co.uk
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International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook says slow, bumpy recovery could be jeopardised by Europe’s debt crisis or over-hasty attempts to cut America’s budget deficit • IMF cuts growth forecast for UK The International Monetary Fund warned on Tuesday that the United States and the eurozone risk being plunged back into recession unless policymakers tackle the problems facing the world’s two biggest economic forces. In its half-yearly health check, the Washington-based fund said the global economy was “in a dangerous place” and that its forecast of a slow, bumpy recovery would be jeopardised by a deepening of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis or over-hasty attempts to rein in America’s budget deficit. “Global activity has weakened and become more uneven, confidence has fallen sharply recently, and downside risks are growing,” the IMF said as it cut its global growth forecast for both 2011 and 2012. The IMF also cut its growth forecasts for the UK economy and advised George Osborne to ease the pace of deficit reduction in the event of any further downturn in activity. The IMF’s World Economic Outlook cited the Japanese tsunami and the rise in oil prices prompted by the unrest in north Africa and the Middle East as two of a “barrage” of shocks to hit the international economy in 2011. It said it now expected the global economy to expand by 4% in both 2011 and 2012, cuts of 0.3 points and 0.5 points since it last published forecasts three months ago. “The structural problems facing the crisis-hit advanced economies have proven even more intractable than expected, and the process of devising and implementing reforms even more complicated. “The outlook for these economies is thus for a continuing, but weak and bumpy, expansion.” The IMF said it expected the strong performance of the leading emerging nations to be the main driving force behind growth in the world economy of 4% in 2012, 0.5 points lower than it had been anticipating three months ago. China’s growth rate is forecast to ease back slightly, from 9.5% in 2011 to 9% in 2012, while India is predicted to expand by 7.5% in 2012 after 7.8% growth in 2011. Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to continue to post robust growth, up from 5.2% in 2011 to 5.8% in 2012. The rich developed countries, by contrast, are forecast to grow by just under 2%, slightly faster than the 1.6% pencilled in by the IMF for 2011. “However, this assumes that European policymakers contain the crisis in the euro periphery area, that US policymakers strike a judicious balance between support for the economy and medium-term fiscal consolidation, and that volatility in global financial markets does not escalate.” “The risks are clearly to the downside,” the IMF added, pointing to two particular concerns – that policymakers in the eurozone lose control of the sovereign debt crisis, and that the US economy could weaken as a result of political impasse in Washington, a deteriorating housing market or a slide in shares on Wall Street. It said the European Central Bank should consider cutting interest rates and that the Federal Reserve should stand ready to provide more “unconventional support”. It said: “Either of these two eventualities would have severe implications for global growth. The renewed stress could undermine financial markets and institutions in advanced economies, which remain unusually vulnerable. Commodity prices and global trade and capital flows would likely decline abruptly, dragging down growth in developing countries.” The IMF said that in its downside scenario, the eurozone and the US could fall back into recession, with activity some three percentage points lower in 2012 than envisaged. Currently, the fund is expecting the US to grow by 1.8% in 2012 and the eurozone by 1.1%. “In the euro area, the adverse feedback loop between weak sovereign and financial institutions needs to be broken. Fragile financial institutions must be asked to raise more capital, preferably through private solutions. If these are not available, they will have to accept injections of public capital or support from the European Financial Stability Fund, or be restructured or closed.” The IMF urged Republicans and Democrats in Washington to settle their differences: “Deep political differences leave the course of US policy highly uncertain. There is a serious risk that hasty fiscal cutbacks will further weaken the outlook without providing the long-term reforms required to reduce debt to more sustainable levels.” IMF Global economy Economics Larry Elliott guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Democracy Now is covering the Occupy Wall Street protests. Read the rest of the transcript here: Demonstrators are marching on Wall Street today on the third day of a campaign dubbed “Occupy Wall Street,” which began on Saturday when thousands gathered in New York City’s Financial District. Inspired by the massive public protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and Madrid’s Puerta del Sol Square, hundreds have slept outside near Wall Street for the past two nights. We play a video report on the protest by Democracy Now!’s Sam Alcoff and get a live update from the streets from Nathan Schneider, editor of the blog “Waging Nonviolence.” We also speak with David Graeber, an anthropologist who participated in the activities. “If you look at who showed up [in Egypt and Spain], it was mostly young people, and most of them were people who had gone through the educational system, who were deeply in debt, and who found it completely impossible to get jobs,” says Graeber. “The system has completely failed them… If there’s going to be any kind of society worth living in, we’re going to have to create it ourselves.” You can donate funds here , or send them a pizza from here via their website.
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As high court decides upon legality of Sheikh Raed Salah’s detention, home secretary admits tougher line on extremism The home secretary, Theresa May, has defended her decision to exclude the Palestinian political activist Sheikh Raed Salah from Britain, insisting that she will take pre-emptive action against those who encourage extremism. A high court judge is to decide whether Salah’s arrest and detention was illegal and if he should be entitled to damages for false imprisonment. Salah, 52, is leader of the northern branch of the Islamic movement in Israel, and was detained in London in June after it emerged he had been allowed to enter Britain despite an exclusion order being issued against him. Salah, a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, is on bail pending the outcome of his legal challenge. The home secretary, speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, defended her action and acknowledged the hardening in the coalition government’s approach to those who it believes “encourage extremism”. “I think it is right that we have taken a slightly different stance over the last 18 months, as a new government, in looking at this because we believe that the issue of words that are said – what people actually say and how they are able to encourage others through the words that they say – is an important issue for us to address,” she said. “That’s why we have perhaps taken some decisions in relation to individuals that might not have been taken in the past.” She said it was important for the government’s Prevent strategy to look not only at violent extremism, but other kinds of extremism as well. “If we are able to do that, I think [that] enables us to operate at an earlier level rather than simply waiting until people have gone down the route of violent extremism,” she said. The high court ruling in the Salah case will test the legality of this pre-emptive approach to excluding overseas political activists branded as extremists by the home secretary. Mr Justice Nicol reserved judgment after a two-day hearing on whether Salah’s arrest and detention was legal and he should be entitled to damages. Salah is claiming he was falsely imprisoned because he was “confined without lawful authority”. Salah flew to Britain on 25 June intending to stay for 10 days to attend meetings and public engagements. It is believed he was “waved through at [the] border” and was detained three days later when it emerged the home secretary had issued a deportation order, saying Salah’s presence in Britain was “not conducive to the public good”. Salah’s defence told the high court that the police who arrested him at a London hotel failed to explain in Arabic why they were detaining him. Terrorism policy UK security and terrorism Immigration and asylum Palestinian territories Middle East Israel Human rights Alan Travis guardian.co.uk
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Bill Bailey gets straight to the point – the world as we know it is ending. According to something he read on a website. But why are people panic-buying trampolines? Bill Bailey
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European court of human rights says removal would breach right to family life in ruling that could curtail Home Office powers The Home Office’s ability to deport individuals who have committed crimes may be curtailed by a European court judgment banning the removal of a Nigerian man convicted of rape. The Strasbourg court ruled that the 24-year-old man, known as AA, would have his right to family life “violated” if he was sent back to Nigeria. He lives with his mother, a nurse, in England. In its finding, the court declared: “The applicant’s deportation from the United Kingdom would be disproportionate to the legitimate aim of the ‘prevention of disorder and crime’ and would therefore not be necessary in a democratic society.” How much of a precedent the case will set was not immediately clear. The man was convicted of rape at the age of 15 but parole reports showed he had responded “positively” to rehabilitation and was subsequently deemed to pose a low risk of reoffending. Welcoming the decision, the Aire Centre, the legal centre which took the case to the European court of human rights, described it as a “resounding victory”. The young man has obtained both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in the UK since leaving school, it said. A spokeswoman added: “There has been the most spectacular rehabilitation of a juvenile offender. The blanket approach [to deportation] taken by the UK was totally inappropriate.” The Home Office did not comment immediately on the judgment. Last year about 5,000 “foreign national criminals” were deported from the UK at the end of their sentences. In its judgment, the court explained: “The fact that the applicant was a minor when he committed the offence does not preclude his deportation given the seriousness of the offence in question. “[But that] consideration must be carefully weighed against the applicant’s exemplary conduct and, as the evidence before the court demonstrates, commendable efforts to rehabilitate himself and to reintegrate into society over a period of seven years. “In such circumstances, the [UK] government are required to provide further support for their contention that the applicant can reasonably be expected to cause disorder or to engage in criminal activities such as to render his deportation necessary in a democratic society. “However, the government have neither cited other relevant concerns nor submitted any documents capable of supporting such a contention.” European court of human rights Immigration and asylum Human rights Owen Bowcott guardian.co.uk
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