Syrian refugees in Turkey: ‘People see the regime is lying. It is falling apart’
June 9, 2011 No Comment
Bloodied but defiant, those who have fled the besieged town of Jisr al-Shughour damn the rule of Bashar al-Assad As the blood from a gunshot wound oozed down his right thigh, Abu Majid shook his fist: “You know what dictatorships are like in the Middle East,” he said. “Syria was the strongest of them all, like an iron ball. Well it isn’t any more.” The 39-year-old elder from the besieged Syrian town of Jisr al-Shughour fled with his wife and children to southern Turkey after he says he was shot last Saturday in a battle – the fiercest yet during the three-month uprising. Since fleeing, he has kept in contact with men who stayed in Syria, and others among the several thousand who have crossed the border as government forces prepare for what many fear will be a full-scale assault on a largely abandoned town that was, until Saturday, home to 41,000 people. After five days away from his homeland, Abu Majid is convinced that the four decades of unshakable autocracy he left behind are now steadily unravelling. He is sure that the government’s claim that armed locals killed 120 government forces through ambushes and assaults in Jisr al-Shughour over the weekend will soon be proved wrong. He is sure, too, that those who oppose the rule of President Bashar al-Assad now outnumber his supporters. But he says Assad’s government is stirring sectarian chaos as it tries to claw back the legitimacy it lost during street demonstrations across the country, which it regularly crushed through violence. “We never thought in sectarian ways before all this happened,” he said. “And now people are talking about Sunnis, Alawites, Shias, Christians. You can say many things about us, but you can’t say that Syria was ever like Iraq or Lebanon. This is leading the country into the unknown.” Officials in southern Turkey said that about 2,500 Syrians, many from Jisr al-Shughour, had crossed the border. Despite being told by their hosts not to speak publicly about the uprising, refugees are still willing to talk about the events of last weekend, which Damascus has tried to cast as an armed rebellion that it had no choice but to put down. “There was a desertion,” said Abu Majid. “I saw it with my own eyes. There were a large number of strangers in town on Saturday. I don’t know who they were, they were big men, many of them bearded and most in civilian clothes. They started shooting at the people and some of the security forces tried to join us. They were killed – there were many of them killed.” In beds alongside him in Antakiya’s government hospital, three other Syrians, also nursing wounds, chimed in. They had all been shot in earlier clashes on 20 May at a village 10 miles south of Jisr al-Shughour. “Assad has never liked our area,” said one of the men. “He tried to get us then and they were the first moments of what eventually happened on the weekend.” A second man, whose three-week-old groin wound seeped a tangerine slime, said that Jisr al-Shughour and the Sunni Arab area that surrounds it has long been considered by the Assad regime, which is made up of a clan all from a minority Alawite Muslim sect, to be potentially disloyal. “When they decided to turn this into a sectarian problem, it was easy to attack our area and them blame us for attacking them. They are liars and they are starting to pay for their lies.” Syrians learned almost 30 years ago what to expect when the army descends en masse on a village. In 1982, between 10,000 and 40,000 people were killed by the military of Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, in the wake of an Islamic uprising. The UN has cautioned against anything like a repeat. Navi Pillay, the UN’s high commissioner for human rights, accused Syrian leaders of trying to “bludgeon its population into submission”. Turkey said on Thursday that it would not close its border to refugees fleeing Syria, and by nightfall the flow of people crossing the border that snakes between the two countries appeared to have increased. In the village of Guvecci in the deep south, minivans were shuttling along a bitumen road between the countries, disgorging dozens of men, women and children who then made their way along dirt roads that wove between olive groves. Along the highway south to Turkey’s southernmost extremities and north to Antakiya, police and military officers were stationed by mid-morning in an attempt to make sure that all refugees were ushered into makeshift camps – and away from waiting press. Hundreds of white tents had been erected in the town of Yayladagi and mattresses were piled in the back of lorries in anticipation of a further influx. Several hundred people remained in a no-man’s land near Guvecci on Thursday, apparently unsure whether to proceed to Turkey or to go back to their villages. Locals told the Guardian that up to 200 refugees had returned to Turkey on Thursday, in fear of ramifications from their exit. “They wouldn’t say whether they had been threatened,” said one man, Ibrahim Kerdje. On the road north, ambulances regularly passed by, taking casualties to hospitals in Antakiya, where the Turkish government has promised to treat wounded refugees free of charge. Allowing Syrians to cross the border, but not to speak, appears to be an extension of a delicate balancing act as Ankara tries to please the west by discharging its humanitarian obligations, while appeasing Damascus by trying to prevent the scrutiny it fears. On Wednesday, the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said: “We hope that Syria softens its stance towards civilians as soon as possible and makes the steps it is taking for reforms more convincing for civilians, for a transformation.” The wounded in the hospital ward were not convinced. “It won’t always be closed like it has been,” said Abu Majid as he leaned against a walking frame. “People now are clearly seeing the lies of the government. Every house in Syria has someone connected to the military of the intelligence service. That is how they have stayed so strong. “So people can see that the government is lying to them when they say that people in a place like Jisr al-Shughour have the ability to attack an army and kill so many people. It is impossible. For this to happen the regime has to be falling apart. Assad has to go, 100%. There is no returning to the time before 15 March.” Syria Turkey Refugees Middle East Arab and Middle East unrest Martin Chulov guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …After a review of petition signatures, the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board has approved recall elections for three Democrats. Via ThinkProgress : The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, which oversees elections in the state, has now green-lit three recalls targeting Democratic state Sens. Dave Hansen, Jim Holperin and Robert Wirch — but it was a close call, as the board grappled all through the day with a topic that isn’t discussed too much in the media: Alleged election fraud that is perpetrated by Republicans . It’s nice to see a focus on the GOP brand of election fraud, particularly in the form of paid petition gatherers, a topic I’ve written about before after seeing what they’ve done here in California. JSOnline: Memos to the board lay out the specific challenges to petition signatures enumerated in the three senators’ challenges to the petitions, and they do make recommendations on how to dispose with those challenges. Bottom line: These individual challenges leave enough valid signatures in each recall effort to force an election. That would be 15,636 valid signatures against Hansen (compared with 13,852 needed to force an election); 19,446 for Holperin (compared with 15,960 needed); and 17,139 for Wirch (13,537 needed). But there’s a separate memo that deals at length with the Democrats’ allegations that there was substantial fraud employed in collecting signatures against the senators. Among the claims: Circulators misstated their addresses on the petitions, misled some of the signers, and illegally certified petitions that had been collected by others. The board’s staff leaves open several options for the board: To follow a rule that only individual signatures could be thrown out, and not whole pages of signatures (this was a rule argued for by Republicans replying to the Democratic challenges); to throw out those pages of signatures collected by certain circulators alleged to have committed fraud; or to throw out the entire petitions because the whole process was tainted by fraud. Here’s a textbook description of how those professional gatherers operate: Democrats had used their ten-day response period, after Republican activists had submitted the completed petitions, to conduct extensive phone surveys of the people whose names were on the forms. Along the way, they produced affidavits from people alleging various dirty tricks, ranging from claims that they were misled into signing — being told that it was to support the legislator in question, or to recall Walker, etc — to claims from some individuals that they did not sign their names at all, but were forged as having done so (possibly by getting their names from the phonebook). Most notoriously, the Dems found the purported signature of a man who had been dead for 20 years, but whose name was still in the phonebook (by peculiar circumstance, he was the father of a very liberal current Democratic state representative). In addition, they found a married couple for whom the signatures were clearly written in the same hand — but both people have signed affidavits that neither of them actually did sign. Bottom line: Even if the pages were tossed which had fraudently obtained signatures, there would be enough signatures for the recall. The Republican State Senators’ recall election will be held July 12, and the Democrats’ recall election will be held July 19.
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Country recovering from collapse of its banks and government is using social media to get citizens to share their ideas It is not the way the scribes of yore would have done it but Iceland is tearing up the rulebook by drawing up its new constitution through crowdsourcing. As the country recovers from the financial crisis that saw the collapse of its banks and government, it is using social media to get its citizens to share their ideas as to what the new document should contain. “I believe this is the first time a constitution is being drafted basically on the internet,” said Thorvaldur Gylfason, member of Iceland’s constitutional council. “The public sees the constitution come into being before their eyes … This is very different from old times where constitution makers sometimes found it better to find themselves a remote spot out of sight, out of touch.” Iceland’s existing constitution dates back to when it gained independence from Denmark in 1944. It simply took the Danish constitution and made a few minor adjustments, such as substituting the word “president” for “king”. In creating the new document, the council has been posting draft clauses on its website every week since the project launched in April. The public can comment underneath or join a discussion on the council’s Facebook page . The council also has a Twitter account , a YouTube page where interviews with its members are regularly posted, and a Flickr account containing pictures of the 25 members at work, all intended to maximise interaction with citizens. Meetings of the council are open to the public and streamed live on to the website and Facebook page. The latter has more than 1,300 likes in a country of 320,000 people. The crowdsourcing follows a national forum last year where 950 randomly selected people spent a day discussing the constitution. If the committee has its way the draft bill, due to be ready at the end of July, will be put to a referendum without any changes imposed by parliament – so it will genuinely be a document by the people, for the people. Given that it was intended to go to a referendum, Gylfason said, the idea was that the public should be involved from the start of the process and not just at the end. Social media is seen as a way of making that happen with Iceland’s population among the world’s most computer-literate. Two-thirds of its people are on Facebook. Gylfason said he had been pleasantly surprised by the level of discussion. “There’s been a lot of goodwill for what we are trying to do. The public have added much to our debate. Their comments have been quite helpful and they have had a positive effect on the outcome.” Gylfason, an economics professor at the University of Iceland, said the draft bill would include checks and responsibilities for parliament and provisions for separation of powers intended to prevent a repeat of the financial crisis. It would also contain significant changes in the way MPs are elected and judges appointed. Iceland Europe Internet Financial crisis Global recession Social media Crowdsourcing Facebook Social networking YouTube Flickr Haroon Siddique guardian.co.uk
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Hospitals and primary care trusts alerted to security breach, but no patient’s medical records accessed during incident The NHS has been warned to beware of computer hackers after it was targeted by the same group that conducted cyber assaults on Sony and Nintendo. Hospital trusts and primary care trusts (PCTs) across England have been alerted to the security breach by Connecting for Health, the Department of Health’s IT branch, after one PCT was hacked. The perpetrators were self-styled international “pirate-ninja” hackers LulzSec, who describe themselves as “the world’s leaders in high-quality entertainment at your expense”. They gained attention recently when they penetrated the security of entertainment corporations. No patient’s medical records were accessed during the incident, the department stressed. It described it as “a local issue” and “quite a low-level” lapse in IT security which only affected part of the website of an unnamed NHS organisation – one of England’s 150 or so PCTs. “This is a local issue affecting a very small number of website administrators. No patient information has been compromised. No national NHS information systems have been affected. The Department has issued guidance about how to protect and secure all information assets,” a departmental spokeswoman said. “We are confident that there was no damage done and no harm done in terms of patient information or anything else.” The breach was uncovered by the magazine Health Service Journal. LulzSecclaimed to have obtained the passwords “months ago”. Earlier this month, LulzSec hacked in to the website of Sony Pictures Entertainment and exposed information from 37,000 users, including names, passwords, birthdates and email addresses. It also hacked into a webserver belonging to Nintendo in the US. The group claims it contacted the NHS on Wednesday to alert them to its breach of IT security. A version of LulzSec’s message with details of the passwords blanked out, and posted on Twitter, said that it said: “Greetings… we’re a somewhat known band of pirate-ninjas that go by LulzSec. Some time ago, we were traversing the internet for signs of enemy fleets. While you aren’t considered an enemy – your work is of course brilliant – we did stumble upon several of your admin passwords. We mean you no harm and only want to help you fix your tech issues.” In other tweets it added that “we never planned to exploit those passwords. We sit on admin passwords for many things” and that they “Blacked out some important areas until they fix the problem.” NHS Health Hacking Data and computer security Data protection Denis Campbell guardian.co.uk
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IAEA vote rules against Syria for failure to co-operate with inquiry into suspected nuclear project at Dair Alzour site The UN’s nuclear watchdog has referred Syria to the security council for failure to co-operate with an enquiry into its suspected covert nuclear weapons programme. The decision, by a 17-6 vote at the 35-nation governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), increases Syria’s isolation. It reflects a formal judgment that it is not in compliance with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) after an IAEA report found that a site known as Dair Alzour, bombed by Israel in 2007, was “very likely a nuclear reactor” for producing plutonium, which Syria should have declared. However, the security council referral is unlikely to lead to sanctions in the near future. The council is not required to act, and both Russia and China have signalled that they would oppose punitive measures. Both powers voted against Syria’s referral, which had been proposed by the US and 12 allies at the IAEA board meeting in Vienna. Russia described the resolution as “untimely and not objective”, and complained that its suggestions for changes to its resolution had been ignored. The Russian ambassador to the IAEA, Grigory Berdennikov, said that there may have been some Syrian wrongdoing, but that Dair Alzour no longer posed a threat to international security. China agreed that the matter could be dealt with within the IAEA. The resolution against Syria passed by a majority of 17 to six, with 11 abstentions and one absentee. The political split on the board will be a troubling for a UN body which has generally sought consensus. Syria has insisted that the building in Dair Alzour was a non-nuclear military installation. But an initial IAEA inspection of the site in June 2008, nine months after it was bombed by Israeli warplanes, found traces of uranium and graphite. The IAEA report presented to the board this week said that Syria did not provide an adequate explanation for their presence, nor did the government in Damascus give permission for further inspections. Satellite photographs of the site showed extensive efforts to destroy evidence, removing wrecked equipment and burying the ruins of the building in soil. The inspectors judged that the Dair Alzour building closely resembled a type of gas-cooled, graphite-moderated reactor used by the North Koreans to produce plutonium for their nuclear weapons. Syria United Nations Nuclear weapons Non-proliferation treaty (NPT) Russia China Julian Borger guardian.co.uk
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MP for North West Leicestershire, 46, released on bail after arrest on suspicion of sexually assaulting a 29-year-old woman Andrew Bridgen, the Conservative MP for North West Leicestershire, has been released on bail after being arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting of a 29-year-old woman. The 46-year-old newly-elected MP was arrested at an address in central London in the early hours of Thursday. It is understood the woman was an employee on the parliamentary estate, but not in Bridgen’s office. A spokesperson for the Metropolitan police said: “A 46-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of sexual assault against a 29-year-old woman at an address in SW1 in the early hours of Thursday 9 June. The man has been bailed to return on a date in mid-July.” Bridgen – who is regarded as being on the right of the Conservative party – won the North West Leicestershire seat with a 12% swing from Labour at the 2010 election. A key marginal, it had been held by Labour since 1997. In 2010 there was also a sizeable Liberal Democrat vote. Bridgen has been a low-profile MP since he won the seat in May. He is a member of the regulatory reform committee and holds no other official posts in parliament. His most high-profile intervention came on Tuesday when he defended the Conservatives’ NHS reforms, saying: ‘If we fail to go through with these reforms, we are caving in to Stalinist protectionist elements.” On Tuesday he joined Twitter , where news of his arrest emerged. On his parliamentary website he lists business and enterprise, civil liberties, law and order and the armed forces as his interests. Bridgen is a married father of two. He trained as a Royal Marines officer before returning to his family’s successful agricultural business, which sells pre-washed vegetables. He is currently the non-executive chairman of his own company, AB Produce plc. He was previously the east Midlands chairman of the Institute of Directors, and served on the East Midlands Regional Assembly as a business representative. A spokesman for the Conservative party said: “This is a matter for the police.” Conservatives Crime Polly Curtis guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …If you haven’t heard about the DropFox initiative , now is a good time to learn about it. It’s the same effort that was undertaken with the StopBeck campaign — pressure advertisers to drop their ads on Fox News in order to make their bias and hate cost something. Today, it has cost Fox something to continue down the path of right-wing lies and hate, because Orbitz has agreed to review their advertising across the entire Fox News network. As a pro-LGBT company, advertising on the notoriously homophobic Fox News is damaging their brand. Courage Campaign : After nearly 200,000 members of the Courage Campaign, Media Matters for America, Equality Matters, CREDO Action and the League of Conservation Voters asked Orbitz to stop funding Fox News’ homophobic rhetoric with their advertising, Orbitz agreed to become the first company in America to review their advertising on not just the worst Fox News programs, but the ENTIRE network. This sets the standard for other companies. Orbitz said their review will take weeks, not months. Can you sign up to help us “trust but verify” that Orbitz does not go on Fox News, and make sure more pro-LGBT companies do not fund Fox News? Let’s keep up the pressure on Fox. There’s a list of some of their major advertisers here , and you can send a letter asking them to drop Fox here . Update: Alternet reports that this is the first of several upcoming initiatives: Specifically, LGBT groups are asking organizations to drop their advertising from the network because of Fox’s acceptance of figures who have made grossly unjust anti-gay statements, and its far from fair-and-balanced reporting on “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Environmental groups are making the same request, citing the network’s repeated parroting of scientifically disproven climate-change denial. Other issue-related campaigns will be rolled out in coming weeks and months , says Angelo Carusone at DropFox (a subset of Media Matters for America), which was behind the successful “Stop Beck” campaign and is spearheading the more recent efforts.
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CPS stands accused of misleading courts over the collapse of a trial against six environmental activists A senior judge is to conduct an independent inquiry into evidence that prosecutors suppressed secret surveillance tapes recorded by the undercover police officer Mark Kennedy, the Guardian can reveal. The director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, has requested an independent investigation into claims, as disclosed on Tuesday, that the CPS misled courts over the collapse of a trial against six activists accused of conspiring to break into Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station . Starmer said in a statement: “In light of growing concerns about the non-disclosure of material relating to the activities of an undercover police officer in the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station cases, I have decided that I will set up an independent inquiry, conducted by a senior legal figure, to work in tandem with the Independent Police Complaints Commission inquiry into the matter which began in January 2011.” The IPCC has been looking at allegations that vital evidence was withheld from lawyers respresenting the activists. Starmer added : “The two inquiries will have full access to all the available evidence, whether held by the police or the CPS, and will share information. They will also share their provisional findings before final reports are drawn up.” When the trial was abandoned in January, the CPS told the court that “previously unavailable information” had come to light just two days earlier that undermined its case against the activists. However, the Guardian detailed how the supposedly new information – the Kennedy tapes – had been in the CPS’s possession for more than a year. Prosecutors appear to have taken part in a number of high-level meetings with police about Kennedy’s potentially explosive surveillance tapes, but withheld them from defence lawyers. In what could be a major miscarriage of justice, the withholding of the tapes may also have led to the wrongful conviction of 20 other activists who were convicted of planning to break into the same power station in December. Their case is now before the court of appeal. Starmer had already authorised two internal inquiries into accusations that prosecutors suppressed secret surveillance tapes, which was being dealt with as a “disciplinary” matter, but was under growing pressure to refer the matter to an independent body. Both his predecessor as DPP, Ken Macdonald, and Vera Baird, the former solicitor general, called on Wednesday for an independent figure to investigate the controversy. Starmer’s decision is understood to have followed a number of high-level discussions, which have included the attorney general, Dominic Grieve, and senior police officials. Senior CPS officials are also concerned that there may also have been serious failings by police. The six activists whose trial collapsed are known as the “deniers” because they told investigators they had never agreed to take part in the occupation of the Nottinghamshire power station in 2009. Kennedy, who developed growing sympathies for the activists after living among them for seven years, later revealed he secretly recorded conversations that heavily supported their case. “The truth of the matter is that the tapes clearly show that the six defendants who were due to go on trial had not joined any conspiracy,” Kennedy said. But his surveillance tapes were never disclosed to the defence lawyers – despite formal requests. On Wednesday, Macdonald and Baird both told BBC Newsnight that the controversy was extremely serious and warranted a full and independent inquiry. The former DPP said an inquiry conducted by an independent figure was “much more likely to get at the truth”. He also expressed concern over the case of the 20 activists who were convicted at the end of last year after conceding they planned to break into Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station. During the trial they argued their actions were defensible to avert climate change. The prosecution told the jury that the 20 campaigners, known as the “justifiers”, were in fact seeking publicity and did not genuinely believe their occupation of the Nottinghamshire plant would prevent large-scale carbon emissions. In April, Starmer said that the 20 convictions might be unsafe in light of the failure to disclose Kennedy’s evidence, and formally urged the activists to challenge the verdicts at the court of appeal. Macdonald said: “We are looking here at a position in which a number of people who might have otherwise have been acquitted, might have been convicted, through the absence of this material,” Macdonald said. “When it is that serious, I think you need an inquiry that is going to command public confidence.” He added: “If the prosecution don’t disclose their evidence fairly and appropriately, defendants don’t get fair trials. We saw in the 70s and 80s the effects of non-disclosure – terrible miscarriages of justice … That is the gravity of this situation and that is why I feel the inquiry needs to be independent.” Baird described the situation as “very, very, grave”. “You have maybe a bunch of people who should never have been prosecuted – at all – have been convicted … It is profoundly wrong that this occurred, and we need to find the culprits.” She added it was wrong for the CPS to “investigate themselves”. “It is the need for the public to be satisfied that this is being thoroughly investigated by somebody who has no axe to grind. The CPS blamed the police originally, the police are now blaming the CPS. We need somebody remote from both of them to get to the bottom of this.” In his statement this afternoon, Starmer also said the two inquiries working in tandem “will provide independent scrutiny of the actions of both the police and the CPS in relation to the disclosure issues arising from the Ratcliffe on Soar power station cases. It is an arrangement supported by the IPCC and the Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire. Until the two inquiries report, it is important that no conclusions are drawn about any individuals involved in this matter.” The latest inquiry announced by Starmer will be the eighth formal investigation to be launched in response to the Guardian’s ongoing investigation into Kennedy and three other undercover police officers. In addition to Kennedy, it has emerged that police officers known as Lynn Watson, Mark Jacobs and Jim Boyling were given new identities to live for several years among activists. Kennedy, Jacobs and Boyling are all accused of having long-term sexual relations with activists; Boyling even married an activist he met while living undercover. Inquiries are under way by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, the Independent Police Complaints Commission and the Serious Organised Crime Agency. Police forces have also opened internal disciplinary investigations. However, activists argue that only a full public inquiry can address the breadth of concerns about the operation run by the National Public Order Intelligence Unit. Mark Kennedy Police UK criminal justice Paul Lewis Rob Evans guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Politico Erroneously Tags Retiring Rep. Dan Boren as ‘Conservative Democrat’
June 9, 2011 No CommentWhether it's deliberate obfuscation or just plain laziness is up for debate, but the media have a penchant for misleading news consumers with the meme that Blue Dog Democrats are politically “conservative.” While the Blue Dog caucus is decidedly more moderate than Democrats as a whole — you could individual members are “conservative for a Democrat” — they rarely if ever qualify as conservatives when you look at the entirety of their voting records. Take Rep. Dan Boren (D-Okla.), who on Tuesday announced he will not seek reelection in 2012. Noting that “Another Blue Dog bites the dust,” Politico staffers Alex Isenstadt and David Catanese noted that “one more conservative House Democrat is packing it in,” which is just “the latest blow to the party’s moderate-conservative wing, a faction that is beginning to look like the nearly extinct Gypsy moth Republicans of the Northeast.” But a look at Boren's American Conservative Union scores shows he's moderate at best, with a lifetime average ACU score of 49.83 percent (100% being pure conservative and 0% being pure liberal). What's more, in the first two years of Obama's terms, Boren has trended more liberal than his lifetime average, with 44 and 38-percent scores for 2009 and 2010 respectively. It's also instructive that other Blue Dogs that Isenstadt and Catanese quoted — former Reps. John Tanner (D-Tenn.) and Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.) — also had dismally-low ACU scores. Tanner's lifetime score was 39.40 conservative but his 2009 and 2010 scores were below that average at 20 and 17 respectively. Pomeroy had single-digit scores in the Obama era, eight and four in 2009 and 2010 respectively, well below his already liberal 21.18 percent lifetime average. Tanner and Boren both voted against final passage of ObamaCare , whereas Pomeroy voted for it.
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High court judge rules that Steven Neary, 21, should have been allowed to go home from care unit A local authority unlawfully detained a 21-year-old autistic man by keeping him in a care unit and refusing to allow him to return home, a high court judge has ruled. Mr Justice Peter Jackson made the ruling in a dispute over the care of Steven Neary, of Uxbridge, north-west London. The judge was told, during a week-long hearing at the court of protection in London, that Neary’s father, Mark, had been involved in a care battle with the London borough of Hillingdon for more than a year. Lawyers said the dispute started after Steven Neary went into a “positive behaviour unit” in December 2009. His father told the court that he viewed the move as temporary and thought his son would be home by late January last year. He said he felt “powerless”. The council said care staff had concerns about Steven Neary’s “challenging” behaviour and weight, and argued that the move was intended to be for a longer period. He stayed at the unit for about a year, returning to his father’s home last December following a court order. His father, a counsellor, said he hoped the judge’s ruling would help people fighting similar battles with local authorities. “I’m relieved, tearful, satisfied,” he said. “I feel vindicated. Since this got out I have heard there are a lot of other people in similar positions. “Hopefully people will read this judgment and be prepared to fight for the rights of their kids. “I knew Steven should be at home because I know Steven. But there was always more of them than there was of me. But once the legal people got involved they agreed that he should be at home. “I don’t think Steven really understands what it has all been about. For him he just likes seeing his pictures of himself on television and the internet.” The judge concluded that Hillingdon council’s use of a “deprivation of liberty” order unlawfully deprived Steven Neary of his freedom. The court of protection, which deals with issues surrounding vulnerable people, normally sits in private. But in a preliminary hearing Jackson had ruled that journalists could report on the proceedings and that parties involved could be identified. The judge, sitting in London, made the order following an application brought by five media organisations. Jackson said in that ruling: “Steven’s circumstances are already in the public domain to a considerable extent. “If the claims made by Mr Neary are made out … the facts deserve to be known to the public. If they are not made out, it may be right for the record to be corrected. “There is no evidence whatever that Steven has suffered from the publicity that has already been generated. His life has not been destabilised and he has not been made anxious by the coverage so far.” Social care Local government Autism guardian.co.uk
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