Unions fear use of British Airways-style tactics after employers’ group suggests that hospital trusts take legal advice Hospitals are being advised to consider blocking tactics to thwart as many as 700,000 staff taking industrial action on 30 November as part of the public sector day of action over pensions. Guidance from NHS Employers to the 400 hospital trusts and other care providers in England that it represents recommends they seek legal advice on preventing strikes. A document called Managing Industrial Disputes: Guidance for Employers in the NHS advises them to decide “if the unions may be acting unlawfully” and consider taking court action, depending on the risks and costs. Unions fear the advice will see hospitals seeking court orders to frustrate strikes by claiming that ballots have not been conducted in accordance with Britain’s tough employment laws. “This guidance does incite employers to consider using British Airways-style tactics and to try and trip unions up with legal technicalities,” said Rachael Maskell, a national officer for health with the union Unite, which represents about 100,000 NHS staff. BA has used trade union laws over the past 18 months to challenge strike ballots by cabin crew in the high court. Under the 1992 Trade Union and Labour Relations Act industrial action is illegal unless unions have complied with a range of legal responsibilities such as telling employers how many staff they are balloting, the result of the ballot and what type of action is planned, where and when. In 2009 a 12-day Christmas strike by BA cabin crew affiliated to Unite was thrown out because a ballot of more than 12,000 crew included 900 votes cast by employees who had taken voluntary redundancy, technically rendering their papers invalid. In 2010 a national rail strike at Network Rail by the RMT union was halted on a similar basis, when it transpired that the RMT had polled signal workers at defunct signal boxes. “We would be extremely concerned if this guidance could be interpreted as intimidating or designed to thwart the democratic process that trade unions are going through with their members,” said Lesley Mercer, director of employment services at the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists, which will decide next week whether to ballot its 35,000 members in the NHS about joining the day of action. Unions have recently been updating their records of members and of employers that would be affected by industrial action. Dean Royles, the director of NHS Employers, said that as well as wanting to minimise the impact on patient care, NHS organisations “will also want to ensure any action planned is lawful”. He also warned unions that “trade unions should be aware that the significant cost of industrial action – caused by factors such as the need to fill gaps in the workforce and reschedule elective operations – will only make it harder for the NHS to avoid job losses.” NHS Health Public sector pensions Public services policy Trade unions Public sector cuts Public finance Public sector pay Denis Campbell Dan Milmo guardian.co.uk
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Top 9/11 lawyer teams up with Milly Dowler solicitor to pursue possible bribery lawsuit in US courts A prominent New York lawyer who represents several families of victims of 9/11 has confirmed that he is exploring the possibility of a class action lawsuit against News Corporation on behalf of victims of its phone-hacking activities. Norman Siegel, a former head of the New York civil liberties union, said he was actively investigating legal options in both federal and New York state courts in regard to allegations that News Corp employees bribed police in the UK. He is working alongside a second New York lawyer, Steve Hyman, and in tandem with Mark Lewis of the UK firm Taylor Hampton, who represented the family of Milly Dowler. “The allegations of phone hacking and bribery against News Corporation are serious and substantial, and we will approach this initial exploration with that same seriousness,” Siegel said. Siegel has advised 9/11 families on the ongoing FBI investigation into allegations that News of the World reporters tried to break into the phone records of 9/11 victims soon after the terrorist outrages. In August he met the US attorney general, Eric Holder, to demand a full inquiry into the allegations, which were first aired by the Daily Mirror. The cross-Atlantic team of lawyers will be seeking to find out whether a class action on behalf of victims of NoW phone hacking can be launched in the US. They will also be exploring the possibility of extracting witness statements from News Corp directors, including Rupert Murdoch and his son James, in advance of any class action being lodged with the courts. However, legal experts said any action would face an uphill battle under anti-bribery laws. Mike Koehler, a specialist in anti-bribery legislation based at Butler University in Indianapolis, said that recourse to the courts was severely restricted for private claimants. The main anti-bribery law, the Foreign Corrupt Practices act, was introduced to prosecute US-based companies, of which News Corp is one, from using bribery to acquire an unfair business advantage overseas. But the courts have taken the view that any prosecution should be primarily carried out by either the Department of Justice or the financial watchdog Securities and Exchange Commission. Koehler said attempts have been made in the past to use the FCPA to launch lawsuits on behalf of private shareholders, but with only limited success. “Some of the cases have been settled for their ‘nuisance value’ – in other words: to get rid of them – but by and large these cases haven’t been very successful,” he said. John Coffee, a law professor at Columbia University, also cautioned that a class action on behalf of phone-hacking victims in the UK would face hurdles in the US. “The injuries are just too diverse and variable for this to be susceptible to class treatment.” One avenue the lawyers will be pursuing is to seek witness statements from News Corp directors, including the Murdochs. This could also be legally problematic, experts warned, as any civil action is likely to be overshadowed in the courts by the ongoing criminal investigation into News Corp activities. Earlier this week Bloomberg reported that the justice department has written to News Corp asking for information relating to the allegations that News of the World staff bribed British police in exchange for tips for stories. Phone hacking September 11 2001 News Corporation Rupert Murdoch United States Ed Pilkington guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Top 9/11 lawyer teams up with Milly Dowler solicitor to pursue possible bribery lawsuit in US courts A prominent New York lawyer who represents several families of victims of 9/11 has confirmed that he is exploring the possibility of a class action lawsuit against News Corporation on behalf of victims of its phone-hacking activities. Norman Siegel, a former head of the New York civil liberties union, said he was actively investigating legal options in both federal and New York state courts in regard to allegations that News Corp employees bribed police in the UK. He is working alongside a second New York lawyer, Steve Hyman, and in tandem with Mark Lewis of the UK firm Taylor Hampton, who represented the family of Milly Dowler. “The allegations of phone hacking and bribery against News Corporation are serious and substantial, and we will approach this initial exploration with that same seriousness,” Siegel said. Siegel has advised 9/11 families on the ongoing FBI investigation into allegations that News of the World reporters tried to break into the phone records of 9/11 victims soon after the terrorist outrages. In August he met the US attorney general, Eric Holder, to demand a full inquiry into the allegations, which were first aired by the Daily Mirror. The cross-Atlantic team of lawyers will be seeking to find out whether a class action on behalf of victims of NoW phone hacking can be launched in the US. They will also be exploring the possibility of extracting witness statements from News Corp directors, including Rupert Murdoch and his son James, in advance of any class action being lodged with the courts. However, legal experts said any action would face an uphill battle under anti-bribery laws. Mike Koehler, a specialist in anti-bribery legislation based at Butler University in Indianapolis, said that recourse to the courts was severely restricted for private claimants. The main anti-bribery law, the Foreign Corrupt Practices act, was introduced to prosecute US-based companies, of which News Corp is one, from using bribery to acquire an unfair business advantage overseas. But the courts have taken the view that any prosecution should be primarily carried out by either the Department of Justice or the financial watchdog Securities and Exchange Commission. Koehler said attempts have been made in the past to use the FCPA to launch lawsuits on behalf of private shareholders, but with only limited success. “Some of the cases have been settled for their ‘nuisance value’ – in other words: to get rid of them – but by and large these cases haven’t been very successful,” he said. John Coffee, a law professor at Columbia University, also cautioned that a class action on behalf of phone-hacking victims in the UK would face hurdles in the US. “The injuries are just too diverse and variable for this to be susceptible to class treatment.” One avenue the lawyers will be pursuing is to seek witness statements from News Corp directors, including the Murdochs. This could also be legally problematic, experts warned, as any civil action is likely to be overshadowed in the courts by the ongoing criminal investigation into News Corp activities. Earlier this week Bloomberg reported that the justice department has written to News Corp asking for information relating to the allegations that News of the World staff bribed British police in exchange for tips for stories. Phone hacking September 11 2001 News Corporation Rupert Murdoch United States Ed Pilkington guardian.co.uk
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Scientists react with disbelief and calls for more experiments after results suggest neutrinos can travel faster than light Scientists around the world reacted with cautious shock on Friday to results from an Italian laboratory that seemed to show that certain subatomic particles can travel faster than light. If true, the finding breaks one of the most fundamental laws of physics and raises bizarre possibilities including time travel and shortcuts via hidden extra dimensions. Scientists at the Opera (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus) experiment in Gran Sasso, Italy, found that neutrinos sent through the Earth to its detectors from Cern , 730km away in Geneva, arrived earlier than they should have. The journey would take a beam of light around 2.4 milliseconds to complete, but after running the Opera experiment for three years and timing the arrival of 15,000 neutrinos, the scientists have calculated that the particles arrived at Gran Sasso 60 billionths of a second earlier, with an error margin of plus or minus 10 billionths of a second. The speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458 metres per second, so the neutrinos were apparently travelling at 299,798,454 metres per second. A cornerstone of modern physics is the idea that nothing can travel faster than light does in a vacuum. At the turn of the 20th century, Albert Einstein encapsulated this idea in his theory of special relativity, which proposes that the laws of physics are the same for all observers and led to the famous equation E=mc 2 , indicating that mass and energy are equivalent. Brian Cox, a professor of particle physics at the University of Manchester, urged caution. “If you’ve got something travelling faster than light, then it’s the most profound discovery of the last 100 years or more in physics. It’s a very, very big deal,” he said on BBC 6 Music on Friday . “It requires a complete rewriting of our understanding of the universe.” Professor Jim Al-Khalili at the University of Surrey said it was most likely that something was skewing the results. “If the neutrinos have broken the speed of light, it would overturn a keystone theory from the last century of physics. That’s possible, but it’s far more likely that there is an error in the data. So let me put my money where my mouth is: if the Cern experiment proves to be correct and neutrinos have broken the speed of light, I will eat my boxer shorts on live TV.” At the Gran Sasso lab, where the results were measured, Opera co-ordinator Antonio Ereditato said his team was “recovering from the shock” of the discovery. “We are competent experimentalists, we made a measurement and we believe our measurement is sound,” he said. “Now it is up to the community to scrutinise it. We are not in a hurry. We are saying, tell us what we did wrong, redo the measurement if you can. There will be all sorts of science fiction writers who will give their own opinions on what this means, but we don’t want to enter that game.” If the measurements are shown to be correct, physicists will have to modify their understanding of special relativity to take the results into account. Fortunately, there are several theories that could help explain the Italian team’s results by showing how neutrinos might appear to travel faster than the speed of light when, in reality, that is not the case. Heinrich Paes at Dortmund University and colleagues believe it might be possible for neutrinos to move through hidden, extra dimensions of space and effectively take shortcuts through space-time. “The extra dimension is warped in a way that particles moving through it can travel faster than particles that go through the known three dimensions of space. It’s like a shortcut through this extra dimension. So it looks like particles are going faster than light, but actually they don’t.” Another potential explanation for the observation was given by Alan Kostelecky at Indiana University, who has devoted his career to violations of the limiting speed of light. He proposed in 1985 that an energy field that lies unseen in the vacuum might explain the finding. The field allows neutrinos to move faster through space than photons, the particles that make up light. “It may very well be that neutrinos travel faster than light does in that medium. It is not at all unreasonable that that would be the case.” Professor Dave Wark, leader of the UK group on the T2K neutrino experiment in Japan, cautioned that scientists would “require a very high standard of proof and confirmation from other neutrino experiments around the world”. Susan Cartwright, senior lecturer in particle astrophysics at Sheffield University, said there were many potential sources of error in the Opera experiment. “The sort of thing you might worry about is have they correctly accounted for the time delay of actually reading out the signals? Whatever you are using as a timing signal, that has to travel down the cables to your computer and when you are talking about nanoseconds, you have to know exactly how quickly the current travels, and it is not instantaneous.” Cartwright works on T2K, which sends neutrinos over a 295km distance. “We could certainly check this, but MINOS [the neutrino experiment at Fermilab in the US] are in a better position because we are still doing repairs after the earthquake that struck Japan.” Professor Jenny Thomas of University College London, and a spokesperson for the MINOS neutrino experiment, said if the discovery was proved correct, it “would overturn everything we thought we understood about relativity and the speed of light”. Ereditato said the Opera team was going through a mix of feelings. “There is excitement, adrenaline, because you feel you have hit something hot. Another feeling is exhaustion. A third feeling is let’s look again and again and think of other checks we have not yet done.” Particle physics Physics Ian Sample Alok Jha guardian.co.uk
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It is understood Mishcon de Reya lawyer asked to to go to the Met with allegations made by Goody’s mother The Metropolitan police are to be asked to investigate allegations that reality TV star Jade Goody’s phone was hacked while she was dying of cancer. It is understood Charlotte Harris, the Mishcon de Reya lawyer representing several phone-hacking claimants, has been asked to represent her and to go to the Met with the allegations made by Goody’s mother, Jackiey Budden. Budden believes both her and her daughter’s phones were hacked, but did nothing about it until July this year when she read about murder victim Milly Dowler’s phone messages being intercepted by the News of the World. She could not understand how journalists were getting hold of information and, when she read the Dowler story, believed it could have been through phone-hacking. “She [Jackiey] will be going to the police. She believes her phone was hacked by the News of the World, and Jade’s. Jade told me ‘I’m convinced my phone is being hacked’,” said Max Clifford, who handled Goody’s PR after she was diagnosed with cervical cancer in August 2008. “Jade had said to me on many occasions that someone had been bugging her phone because of stuff that was coming out in the papers. She would say, ‘I’ve had these conversations and there’s no way any of these people would have revealed them’,” added Clifford. “This was all while she was ill. I think it’s absolutely disgusting.” Clifford said Goody was convinced calls she made to her mother in August 2008 from the Big Brother set in India to tell her she had cancer had been hacked. “She said to me ‘I think my phone is being bugged’,” he added. The PR man, who settled his own News of the World phone-hacking action for more than £1m last year, said the former Big Brother contestant was an obvious target – in the months between being diagnosed and her death in March 2009, there was “a feeding frenzy” and “immense interest” in getting exclusives about her personal life. If the allegations against the News of the World are substantiated, it would increase the duration of the now defunct News International title’s allegedly illegal activities. Up to now the News of the World has been implicated in phone-hacking allegations up to mid 2006 when Glenn Mulcaire, the phone investigator who formally worked for the title, was arrested. Mishcon de Reya said it “could not confirm” whether or not it had been instructed by Budden. News International declined to comment, but a spokeswoman said the company continued to cooperate fully with police investigation. Goody lived the last seven years of her life in the spotlight, with every twist and turn documented or exposed in the tabloids from her first appearance in Channel 4′s Big Brother in 2002, when she was branded “Miss Piggy” by the tabloids, to the day she died. Her on-off relationship with the father of her two children, a miscarriage, and then her cancer were all covered in minute detail by the tabloids, with 140 stories alone featuring Goody in the News of the World between diagnosis and her death seven months later. But she also regularly co-operated with the now defunct News International paper in “buy-ups” – deals in which she would talk about her life in exchange for payment. In a separate development on Friday, the actress Sienna Miller revealed that she accused her mother, her sister and her former boyfriend Jude Law of selling stories about her to the press because she could not understand how journalists were getting information about her private life. “I changed my mobile number three times in three months. There were clicks on the line. I would pick up the phone and it would drop, there were messages I would never get, coupled with articles [containing private information] coming out every week. “So I started to do tests. I would leave messages on people’s phones, like we’re going to rent this house or whatever, and it would appear next day in the papers,” she told the Independent . • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”. • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook Phone hacking News of the World National newspapers Newspapers Jade Goody James Robinson Lisa O’Carroll guardian.co.uk
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It is understood Mishcon de Reya lawyer asked to to go to the Met with allegations made by Goody’s mother The Metropolitan police are to be asked to investigate allegations that reality TV star Jade Goody’s phone was hacked while she was dying of cancer. It is understood Charlotte Harris, the Mishcon de Reya lawyer representing several phone-hacking claimants, has been asked to represent her and to go to the Met with the allegations made by Goody’s mother, Jackiey Budden. Budden believes both her and her daughter’s phones were hacked, but did nothing about it until July this year when she read about murder victim Milly Dowler’s phone messages being intercepted by the News of the World. She could not understand how journalists were getting hold of information and, when she read the Dowler story, believed it could have been through phone-hacking. “She [Jackiey] will be going to the police. She believes her phone was hacked by the News of the World, and Jade’s. Jade told me ‘I’m convinced my phone is being hacked’,” said Max Clifford, who handled Goody’s PR after she was diagnosed with cervical cancer in August 2008. “Jade had said to me on many occasions that someone had been bugging her phone because of stuff that was coming out in the papers. She would say, ‘I’ve had these conversations and there’s no way any of these people would have revealed them’,” added Clifford. “This was all while she was ill. I think it’s absolutely disgusting.” Clifford said Goody was convinced calls she made to her mother in August 2008 from the Big Brother set in India to tell her she had cancer had been hacked. “She said to me ‘I think my phone is being bugged’,” he added. The PR man, who settled his own News of the World phone-hacking action for more than £1m last year, said the former Big Brother contestant was an obvious target – in the months between being diagnosed and her death in March 2009, there was “a feeding frenzy” and “immense interest” in getting exclusives about her personal life. If the allegations against the News of the World are substantiated, it would increase the duration of the now defunct News International title’s allegedly illegal activities. Up to now the News of the World has been implicated in phone-hacking allegations up to mid 2006 when Glenn Mulcaire, the phone investigator who formally worked for the title, was arrested. Mishcon de Reya said it “could not confirm” whether or not it had been instructed by Budden. News International declined to comment, but a spokeswoman said the company continued to cooperate fully with police investigation. Goody lived the last seven years of her life in the spotlight, with every twist and turn documented or exposed in the tabloids from her first appearance in Channel 4′s Big Brother in 2002, when she was branded “Miss Piggy” by the tabloids, to the day she died. Her on-off relationship with the father of her two children, a miscarriage, and then her cancer were all covered in minute detail by the tabloids, with 140 stories alone featuring Goody in the News of the World between diagnosis and her death seven months later. But she also regularly co-operated with the now defunct News International paper in “buy-ups” – deals in which she would talk about her life in exchange for payment. In a separate development on Friday, the actress Sienna Miller revealed that she accused her mother, her sister and her former boyfriend Jude Law of selling stories about her to the press because she could not understand how journalists were getting information about her private life. “I changed my mobile number three times in three months. There were clicks on the line. I would pick up the phone and it would drop, there were messages I would never get, coupled with articles [containing private information] coming out every week. “So I started to do tests. I would leave messages on people’s phones, like we’re going to rent this house or whatever, and it would appear next day in the papers,” she told the Independent . • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”. • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook Phone hacking News of the World National newspapers Newspapers Jade Goody James Robinson Lisa O’Carroll guardian.co.uk
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Osborne said that eurozone must implement measures agreed in July to support troubled members of the single currency George Osborne warned on Friday that the leaders of the eurozone had six weeks to end their political wrangling and resolve the continent’s crippling debt crisis. Speaking in Washington, the chancellor said that the turmoil in the world’s financial markets meant there was now “a far greater sense of urgency” and mounting pressure on Europe from the G20 group of developed and developing nations. “There is a sense from across the leading lights of the eurozone that time is running out for them. There is a clear deadline at the Cannes summit [G20] in six weeks time”, Osborne said. “The eurozone has six weeks to resolve this political crisis.” With global financial markets again in jittery mood, the chancellor said “bad politics” were leading to “bad economics” in the eurozone. “We need political solutions that can help resolve the economic problems.” He added that the eurozone needed to implement the package of measures agreed in July to provide financial support for troubled members of the single currency, as well as ensure banks had enough capital to withstand market pressures. “I wouldn’t say all the pieces of the jigsaw are in place”, Osborne said, adding that the members of the eurozone had to supplement monetary union with closer fiscal ties. While the government had no intention of joining monetary union, the chancellor said it was in Britain’s interests that the eurozone worked. “The break-up of Europe would be bad for Britain”. The chancellor said Europe needed to show that it had enough firepower to convince the markets it was getting ahead of the curve, and made it clear that the €400bn (£350bn) European Financial Stability Facility needs to be beefed up. “I am not sure it is adequate”, Osborne said. The chancellor refused to speculate on whether Greece would be forced to default on its debts, but said the government had contingency plans in the event that the worst-affected eurozone country did capitulate. “I have made it a priority for the Financial Services Authority and the Bank of England to make sure that the UK banking system is adequately capitalised and have sufficient liquidity to deal with all eventualities. We have stress-tested sovereign write downs.” Osborne admitted that the darkening international economic outlook would have repercussions for the UK but insisted that he had no intention of amending his tough deficit reduction plans. It was up to the Bank of England, he added, to support demand over the coming months. “A credible fiscal plan allows you to have a looser monetary policy than would otherwise be the case. My approach is to be fiscally conservative but monetarily active.” His comments come amid signs from Threadneedle Street that it will re-start its quantitative easing programme over the coming months. The Bank pumped £200bn of electronically-created money into the economy between early 2009 and early 2010 in an attempt to lift the economy out of recession. Asked how bad the situation in the UK would have to get before he would consider changing course, Osborne said: “The UK is taking appropriate action. It is very clear what has got to happen. We are sticking to the plan. “These discussions in Washington are about the eurozone and the challenges there not about market pressures on the UK. We have got ahead of the curve and have credibility.” The chancellor said the heavily-indebted state of Britain meant he could not simply “pull a lever” to boost demand. “This was a different sort of recession and it is a different sort of recovery”, he said. The chancellor said there was a certain amount of flexibility built into his budget plans because weaker growth would allow the automatic stabilisers – a bigger budget deficit caused by higher benefit payments and lower tax receipts – to kick in. The government would announce supply side reforms of the economy to remove obstacles to growth over the coming months. European debt crisis European banks George Osborne IMF Economics Global economy Greece Europe Bank of England Banking Financial crisis Global recession Larry Elliott guardian.co.uk
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Coroner gives first spontaneous combustion verdict in 25-year career after man found dead in unexplained circumstances An Irish pensioner found burnt to death at his home died from spontaneous human combustion, an inquest has concluded. The West Galway coroner, Kieran McLoughlin, said there was no other adequate explanation for the death of 76-year-old Michael Faherty, also known as Micheal O Fatharta. He said it was the first time in his 25 years as a coroner that he had returned such a verdict. An Irish police crime scene investigator and a senior fire officer told the inquest in Galway that they could not explain how Faherty burned to death. Both said they had not come across such a set of circumstances before. The assistant chief fire officer, Gerry O’Malley, said fire officers were satisfied that an open fire in Faherty’s fireplace had not been the cause of the blaze. No trace of an accelerant was found at the scene, and there was no sign that anyone else had entered or left the house in Ballybane, Galway city. The inquest heard that asmoke alarm in the home of Faherty’s neighbour Tom Mannion had gone off at about 3am on 22 December last year. Mannion said he went outside and saw heavy smoke coming from Faherty’s house. He banged on the front door but got no response, and then banged on the door of another neighbour. Gardai and the fire brigade arrived quickly at the scene. Garda Gerard O’Callaghan said he went to the house after the fire had been extinguished and found Faherty lying on his back in a sitting room, with his head closest to the fireplace. The rest of the house had sustained only smoke damage. O’Callaghan told the coroner that the only damage was to Faherty’s remains, the floor underneath him and the ceiling above. . The inquest heard that fire officers had been unable to determine the cause or the origin of the fire. The state pathologist, Prof Grace Callagy, noted in her post-mortem findings that Faherty had Type 2 diabetes and hypertension, but concluded he had not died from heart failure. His body had been extensively burned and, because of the extensive damage to the organs, it was not possible to determine the cause of death. McLoughlin said: “This fire was thoroughly investigated and I’m left with the conclusion that this fits into the category of spontaneous human combustion, for which there is no adequate explanation.” Ireland Europe Henry McDonald guardian.co.uk
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Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini describes Knox team’s criticism of Italy’s national police forensic service and its findings as slander The Italian prosecutor who put Amanda Knox in jail has accused her and her lawyers of using the same tactics as the Nazis and asked the court that will decide her appeal not to be swayed by a campaign designed to discredit Italian justice. In an emotional closing address on Friday, during which he also showed the jurors grisly crime scene footage of the dead British student, Meredith Kercher, the prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini, described criticism by Knox’s defence of Italy’s national police forensic service and its findings as slander. But then, he added, slander had played an important role in the case. Knox, he said, had slandered the police and her employer, Patrick Lumumba. After she was arrested for Kercher’s murder four years ago, the American student claimed she was slapped by police during her interrogation and made a statement, which she later withdrew, naming the Congolese bar owner Lumumba as the murderer. “Slander, slander and some of it will stick,” declared Mignini. “It’s what the noted propaganda minister of the Nazis used to say in the 1930s.” Earlier, he told the court: “Our judicial system has been subjected to a systematic denigration by a well-organised operation of a journalistic and political nature.” Knox is appealing against a 26-year sentence. Her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, the son of an Italian doctor, is also challenging his 25-year sentence. Their convictions have been widely questioned in the US media. But, in court, the biggest setback for the prosecution came in June when two court-appointed Italian experts made scathing criticisms of the crucial forensic evidence used to convict the two alleged killers. Kercher was found stabbed to death four years ago at the age of 21 in the flat she shared with Knox while they were both studying at Perugia’s university for foreigners. A third man, Rudy Guede, a small-time drugs peddler from the Ivory Coast, has also been convicted of the murder, which the lower court decided arose from a four-way sex game resisted by Kercher. The national sensitivities that have always lurked below the surface of this tangled affair had also surfaced earlier when Giancarlo Costagliola, the associate chief prosecutor of Perugia, said he and his colleagues were victims of an “obsessive” media campaign helped by American ignorance of the Italian justice system. With Knox’s mother, father and stepfather sitting just a few feet away, he said the outcry over the alleged failings in the case against her “makes everyone feel like the parents of Amanda Knox”. Looking at the two judges and six jurors (technically lay judges), he went on: “We hope, in deciding, you will feel a little like Meredith Kercher’s parents.” The Leeds university student was, he said, someone who was “clever, serious and very tied to her family and whom these kids from rich families prevented from living”. Knox had entered the court for the start of the prosecution summing-up looking tense and serious, her face notably pallid. Amanda Knox United States Meredith Kercher Europe Italy John Hooper guardian.co.uk
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FSB using psychological techniques developed by KGB to intimidate and demoralise diplomatic staff, activists and journalists Russia’s spy agency is waging a massive undercover campaign of harassment against British and American diplomats, as well as other targets, using deniable “psychological” techniques developed by the KGB, a new book reveals. The federal security service (FSB’s) operation involves breaking into the private homes of western diplomats – a method the US state department describes as “home intrusions”. Typically the agents move around personal items – opening windows, or setting alarms – in an attempt to demoralise and intimidate their targets. The FSB operation includes bugging of private apartments, widespread phone tapping, physical surveillance, and email interception. Its victims include local Russian staff working for western embassies, opposition activists, human rights workers and journalists. The clandestine campaign is revealed in Mafia State, a book by the Guardian’s former Moscow correspondent Luke Harding, serialised in Saturday’s Weekend magazine. The British and American governments are acutely aware of the FSB’s campaign of intimidation. But neither has publicly complained about these demonstrative “counter-intelligence” measures, for fear of further straining already difficult relations with Vladmir Putin’s resurgent regime. Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel, was head of the FSB. British sources admit they have files “five or six inches thick” detailing FSB break-ins and other incidents of harassment against Moscow embassy staff. “Generally we don’t make a fuss about it,” one said. So pervasive is the FSB’s campaign the British government is unable to staff fully its Moscow embassy. The intrusions are designed to “short-tour” diplomats so they leave their posts early, the source said. Despite a recent improvement in US-Russian relations, the FSB has also targeted US diplomats and their families. In a 2009 confidential diplomatic cable leaked by WikiLeaks, the US ambassador in Moscow John Beyrle complains that the FSB’s aggressive measures have reached unprecedented levels. Mafia State recounts how the KGB first became interested in “operational psychology” in the 1960s. But it was the Stasi, East Germany’s sinister secret police, that perfected these psychological techniques and used them extensively against dissidents in the 1970s and 1980s. These operations were given a name, Zersetzung – literally corrosion or undermining. According to former Stasi officers the aim was to “switch off” regime opponents by disrupting their private or family lives. Tactics included removing pictures from walls, replacing one variety of tea with another, and even sending a vibrator to a target’s wife. Usually victims had no idea the Stasi were responsible. Many thought they were going mad; some suffered breakdowns; a few committed suicide. It was Erich Honecker, East Germany’s communist leader, who patented these methods after concluding that “soft” methods of torture were preferable to open forms of persecution. The advantage of psychological operations was their deniability – important for a regime that wanted to maintain its international respectability. Putin spent the late 1980s as an undercover KGB officer based in the east German town of Dresden. Harding was himself the victim of repeated FSB break-ins, and last November was, in effect, expelled from Russia when the foreign ministry said it was not renewing his journalist’s accreditation. Mafia State also reveals: • FSB officers privately admit the agency was involved in the assassination of dissident spy Alexander Litvinenko. They regret, however, the bungled way it was carried out. • The British embassy in Moscow has a “polonium” chair sat on by Andrei Lugovoi, the chief suspect in the Litvinenko murder. Uncertain what to do with it, officials have locked it in a room in the Kremlin. • Russia’s footballing union knew a week before a vote in December that Fifa’s executive committee would give Russia, rather than England, the 2018 World Cup The FSB never explained why they targeted Harding with such zeal. Other western correspondents have also suffered from occasional “home intrusions”, but on a much lesser scale. Russia Europe Alexander Litvinenko Vladimir Putin guardian.co.uk
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