The asylum process is currently about finding fault instead of being the fact-finding enterprise it is supposed to be The ongoing protest by Iranian asylum seekers against the Home Office is an indictment of the failures of the current asylum system. While each case needs to be assessed individually, it also needs to be assessed fairly. Undoubtedly there are reasons why the men starving themselves in Croydon were refused asylum. The problem is how those reasons are arrived at. As the Refugee Council reported in November , the current system is not working. First, a few statistics for those who imagine a horde of “bogus” claimants is overrunning the country. The UKBA statistics for asylum in 2010 reveal that overall, the number of applicants was down 15% on 2009, with 17,790 applications made for asylum last year. The UK therefore received around 7.5% of all applications for asylum in the 27 EU states last year, ranking 14th in terms of asylum applications per head of population. We are not being swamped by asylum seekers. Around 75% of asylum applications decided in 2010 by the Home Office were refused. Of those who appealed the refusal, 27% were allowed. Make of that what you will. What drives people to starve themselves to possible death is a sense of injustice about the process itself. It is helpful, if simplistic, to think of an asylum case as having two distinct sides. There is the subjective account given by the individual, and then there is the objective situation in the country of origin. The construction of a subjective account begins when an individual is first encountered by the immigration system. This may be at a port, in a police station, or at an asylum screening unit. Any “age-disputed” case is first referred for an age-assessment, an extremely controversial process in which social workers aim to establish whether a person is over or under 18. This is a process fraught with error, and rarely takes any account of the trauma that a person has experienced. A negative assessment by social services, who will bear the burden of looking after anyone they themselves find to be a child, gives the immigration service a first reason to treat the person as incredible. One-nil to the state – this is an adversarial process. The idea of credibility, or rather a lack thereof, forms the basis of the interview process. An asylum interview generally lasts between three and six hours, and it is not a pleasant experience. If by the end of it there is anything that can be presented by the Home Office as evidence of an inconsistent narrative, then asylum is refused and the applicant accused of lying. Evidence of torture, post-traumatic stress, and documentary evidence in support of a claim can be disregarded. The aggression and suspicion levelled at applicants can be extremely upsetting. Value is placed on coherent narrative, over and above overwhelming physical evidence. So it may be that you have diagnostic scars across your body, but if you appear to have been inconsistent in recalling this traumatic, often shameful, event, then you are deemed to be lying. An appeal to the tribunal in such a case must account for all the reasons raised for refusal by the Home Office. This usually involves expensive expert evidence regarding scars, psychological trauma, document verification, specific country of origin information, and so on. It is expensive and requires hard work from legal representatives, working on very tight legal aid budgets, to succeed. Under the detained “fast-track” process, obtaining such evidence is practically impossible. Without effective legal representation, problems are often compounded rather than corrected. In the second half of the equation – objective country conditions – asylum seekers are generally divided into categories of claimants and their cases examined in line with the findings of “country-guidance” cases given by the tribunal. These are generally translated by the Home Office into its operational guidance notes. The trouble is that if a person is already deemed to be not credible, however bad the situation in their home country, then the guidance will not help them. The government is committed to reviewing the process by which asylum claims are dealt with. The Asylum Improvement Project aims to improve decision making and cut the costs of the National Asylum Support Service . The first step must surely be to end the culture of disbelief and the hostile and aggressive interrogations of asylum seekers; currently a fault-finding exercise instead of the fact-finding enterprise it is supposed to be. The next step should be to ensure access to legal representation and medical assessment before the process begins, and to give asylum-seeking children the benefit of the doubt rather than subjecting them to the same pressures as adults. Finally, this is a question of principle and of basic human decency. The UK bombs Libya and Afghanistan in the name of human rights. We tried the same thing in Iraq, and talk of sanctions or even bombing of Iran is never entirely off the agenda. While the victims of such regimes remain far away, we encourage them to fight and martyr themselves for values we say we share. When they arrive here seeking shelter, the approach should be the same. Immigration and asylum Iran Middle East Bernard Keenan guardian.co.uk
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Lying on the silvery sand is an object the approximate size and shape of a small, slightly squashed jam doughnut. But the similarity ends there, for in colour and fragility it can only be compared to the best of meringues. Maybe it is its name that brings food similes so readily to mind, for what has washed up among the razor shells is the remainder of a sea potato, which despite its name is not a vegetable at all but a sea creature, a heart urchin. Unlike other types of sea urchin, heart urchins do not roam the undersea rocks but lead a more secretive life. They are specialised burrowers that spend their days hidden under the sand beneath the sea’s surface, breathing and feeding by means of a narrow mucus-coated tube. The remains usually found on the beach bear so little resemblance to the living animal that it is difficult to imagine how the creature got its name. Only on the rare occasions when one is cast ashore, soon after death before the spines are lost, do we get any real idea of what lurks within the burrow. These yellowish brown spines all point in the same direction; they are also short and rather soft so the creature does have, with a stretch of the imagination, something of the appearance of a soggy furry potato. What we more often find, though, is the white test or shell. A groove at one end gives the characteristic shape for which this type of urchin is named. One surface is pierced by five V-shaped bands of small double perforations radiating from the centre, marking where the creature’s tube feet once emerged. The other surface reveals a smooth five-pointed star, its branches separated by the fine stippling of hundreds of tiny nodules. The fragile sea potato shells are easily shattered by the sea, but this morning I find several that are virtually intact; they are as lovely as fine matt-glazed ceramics. Rural affairs Christine Smith guardian.co.uk
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Since the Law Society’s 2009 warning that the profession was oversubscribed student numbers have fallen, possibly too far The recession-hit legal profession has spent the past couple of years trying to deter wannabes from joining its swollen ranks. “We’re not telling people not to be a solicitor, but we are warning them about the risks and cost implications attached,” said the Law Society in 2009, as it launched a campaign urging students to think twice about a career in law. On the whole it has worked. Although the bar remains oversubscribed, enrolments on the legal practice course (LPC) – the year-long course law graduates must take to become solicitors, which can cost more than £13,000 – fell by 20% last year, as a belief that the country is over-lawyered took hold at schools and universities. Hartlepool sixth form college A-level law student Claire Watson, whose teachers cautioned her against pursuing a legal career, sums up the sentiment: “I’ve been told there are too many lawyers and that it’s very hard to get a job.” But could the warnings have gone too far? Last week the College of Law (CoL), one of the main providers of the LPC, drew attention to a possible impending shortage of rookie solicitors. According to the CoL’s research, the number of LPC graduates is now falling faster than the number of trainee jobs, meaning a shortfall of trainees could arise as early as this year. By 2012, the CoL says, there could be 14% more traineeships than there are graduates eligible to fill them. Of course, it’s in the interests of the CoL — a private law school operating in a highly competitive legal education market — to come up with findings like these. But history suggests it may have a point. As the profession emerged from the recession of the early 1990s, an oversupply of law graduates morphed rapidly into a shortage between 1995 and 1997. This wasn’t a big deal at first, as there was a backlog of jobless graduates from previous years to fill the empty places. If the CoL’s predictions prove correct, this process is likely to repeat itself: good news for the thousands of LPC graduates currently without training contracts. The concern is what happens after that. In the late 1990s and 2000s a pay war ensued — which saw junior solicitor salaries rocket from £30,000 to as much as £100,000 — as firms fought it out for the best graduates. Another wave of dramatic pay inflation looks unlikely this time around, though, thanks to a vast pool of cheap potential recruits in emerging markets like India — overlooked in the past, but increasingly seen as a desirable option by London law firms whose outlook has become far less Anglo Saxon-centric. Already Clifford Chance has hired a number of lawyers from its legal process outsourcing centre in Gurgaon, India. If this trend accelerates, there could be serious consequences for the future of the profession in this country. CoL chief executive Nigel Savage believes the Law Society needs to change tack fast to prevent a drift away from law among British graduates. “They should be sending out a much more positive message, but unfortunately the mood is still doom and gloom,” he says, adding that he believes there is a lack of “strategic thinking” from legal professional bodies on the issue of graduate recruitment. Professor Richard Moorhead from Cardiff Law School agrees: “It’s a confidence thing. The more doubt the profession shows about its ability to provide students with a safe route into employment, the more it will lose people.” However, the Law Society thinks its message of caution continues to be appropriate. Chief executive Desmond Hudson sees it as his obligation “to inform students about the realities of the expensive and demanding qualification process”. These realities, he adds, “are true regardless of the interpretations given to available or predicted statistics”. Hudson also challenges the CoL to publish the amount of its LPC students who secure training contracts – data that many law schools refuse to provide. This tension between the liberals and conservatives of the UK legal profession is long-running; Savage, who is close to several City law firms, has railed against the Law Society throughout a career spanning roles at various law schools. The stakes in this latest dispute could be the highest yet. Alex Aldridge is a freelance journalist who writes about law and education Solicitors Students Higher education Alex Aldridge guardian.co.uk
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More than 160 police raid squat occupied by opponents of new Tesco Metro in Stokes Croft area Eight police officers have been injured after a riot erupted in Bristol overnight, sparked by a raid on a squat occupied by opponents of a newly opened Tesco Metro store. More than 160 officers in riot gear, reinforcements from neighbouring forces and officers on horseback were involved in the operation, which began shortly after 9pm. Four people have been arrested, Avon and Somerset police said, because they posed “a real threat to the local community” in the Stokes Croft area of the city. Petrol bombs were found, the force said. “Police arrested three people on suspicion of public order offences and another person on suspicion of threats to cause criminal damage with intent to endanger life.” Superintendent Ian Wylie added: “There have been several significant incidents in this building during the past few days, which have caused serious concerns to police and local residents. “The safety of the public is paramount in a situation of this kind and we took the decision to carry out a robust and swift operation, following intelligence received about the criminal intentions of those who were occupying the building.” Clashes began when lines of officers closed off Cheltenham Road, a main route into the city centre, and protesters began throwing bottles at them. The disturbances continued through the evening and up to 4am on Friday. Many in the local community had objected to the opening of a new Tesco store on Cheltenham Road and the shop was severely damaged in the riot. The area is close to the St Paul’s area, where some of Britain’s first inner-city riots erupted in 1980. Assistant Chief Constable Rod Hansen said: “When 300 people congregated and a small minority from that group started small fires and throwing bottles, stones and other items at officers, we used well-rehearsed plans, which involved the use of officers from neighbouring forces to control what had become a volatile situation.” Eight police officers and a number of protesters were injured. None of the injuries are believed to be serious. Duncan Birmingham, an arts lecturer who lives nearby, told the Guardian he had seen lines of police in riot gear. “There were police horses and police vans from Wales,” he said. “There was a crowd who had put rubbish bins across the road and were throwing bottles. “But there were also people going to nightclubs, dressed up in party gear. Tesco has been trashed. The windows have been put in and there’s paint everywhere. There’s been massive opposition to Tesco opening . The store had been boarded up until it opened last week. There’s another Tesco about half a mile away in each direction.” Clare Milne, who lives nearby and has been organising the planning campaign against the store, said she had not been told why there was a police raid on the squatted building. “Our campaign has been peaceful but we have been telling the police and the council that if they go ahead and open [the supermarket] this is what will happen. Our community is well known for having people who if they are silenced will act in a way that will ensure they will be heard.” Police Protest Tesco Supermarkets Retail industry Owen Bowcott guardian.co.uk
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US senator meets opposition leaders in Benghazi as Barack Obama authorises use of armed Predator drones US senator John McCain, one of Congress’s most vocal supporters of military intervention in Libya, said rebels fighting Muammar Gaddafi’s troops were his heroes and praised their efforts to overthrow the dictator. The most senior Republican on the Senate armed services committee made the remarks during a visit to Benghazi yesterdayon Friday, before a meeting with opposition leaders to assess the situation on the ground. He is the most senior US official to visit the rebel-held eastern city. McCain’s trip comes as the defence secretary, Robert Gates, announced that Barack Obama has authorised the use of armed Predator drones against Gaddafi’s forces. It is the first time drones will be used for airstrikes since the US handed control of the operation to Nato on 4 April. The rebels had complained that allied airstrikes under Nato were largely ineffective in halting Gaddafi forces. McCain called for US military intervention in Libya in February, weeks before the UN security council authorised military action to protect civilians and impose a no-fly zone. When Obama acted with limited congressional consultation, McCain defended the president, saying he could not wait for Congress to take even a few days to debate the use of force. If he had “there would have been nothing left to save in Benghazi”. But when the US handed operational control to Nato – and withdrew combat aircraft – McCain criticised the administration. “For the United States to withdraw our unique offensive capabilities at this time would send the wrong signal,” he said. The US must not fail in Libya, he added, saying he spoke as someone experienced in a lost conflict, a reference to his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. McCain has also pushed for the arming of rebels, saying the US and its partners cannot allow Gaddafi to consolidate his grip on key areas of the country and create a military deadlock. Libya John McCain Muammar Gaddafi United States Middle East Obama administration US politics guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …US senator meets opposition leaders in Benghazi as Barack Obama authorises use of armed Predator drones US senator John McCain, one of Congress’s most vocal supporters of military intervention in Libya, said rebels fighting Muammar Gaddafi’s troops were his heroes and praised their efforts to overthrow the dictator. The most senior Republican on the Senate armed services committee made the remarks during a visit to Benghazi yesterdayon Friday, before a meeting with opposition leaders to assess the situation on the ground. He is the most senior US official to visit the rebel-held eastern city. McCain’s trip comes as the defence secretary, Robert Gates, announced that Barack Obama has authorised the use of armed Predator drones against Gaddafi’s forces. It is the first time drones will be used for airstrikes since the US handed control of the operation to Nato on 4 April. The rebels had complained that allied airstrikes under Nato were largely ineffective in halting Gaddafi forces. McCain called for US military intervention in Libya in February, weeks before the UN security council authorised military action to protect civilians and impose a no-fly zone. When Obama acted with limited congressional consultation, McCain defended the president, saying he could not wait for Congress to take even a few days to debate the use of force. If he had “there would have been nothing left to save in Benghazi”. But when the US handed operational control to Nato – and withdrew combat aircraft – McCain criticised the administration. “For the United States to withdraw our unique offensive capabilities at this time would send the wrong signal,” he said. The US must not fail in Libya, he added, saying he spoke as someone experienced in a lost conflict, a reference to his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. McCain has also pushed for the arming of rebels, saying the US and its partners cannot allow Gaddafi to consolidate his grip on key areas of the country and create a military deadlock. Libya John McCain Muammar Gaddafi United States Middle East Obama administration US politics guardian.co.uk
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Environmental groups fear oil industry is not prepared for potentially catastrophic impact of oil spills in the Arctic The fight to stop the global oil industry exploring the pristine deep waters of the Arctic has been dubbed the new cold war, and early on Friday it escalated as environmental activists from 12 countries occupied the world’s second largest rig on its way from Turkey to Greenland to drill among the icebergs. The protesters found the 52,000-tonne semi-submersible platform Leiv Eiriksson at around midnight, steaming due west at a stately six knots in the sea of Marmaris, heading for the Dardanelle straits and the open Mediterranean. It took four more hours for Greenpeace to bring in its inflatables and a further 50 minutes in the choppy moonlit sea to intercept it. Even from three miles away, the Chinese-built mobile rig, which specialises in drilling in extreme environments, looks huge. From 100ft away in the pale dawn light it is a 15-storey industrial castle, bristling with cranes, derricks, gangways, chains, spars, girders, pipes, helipads and radar. Just 10 years old, it is already rusting and its paintwork is streaked from years of drilling in harsh west African, north Atlantic and Asian waters The Greenpeace boats approached the vessel cautiously in the three foot swell, like fleas to the backside of an elephant. At exactly 5.31am, the 11 climbers began to leap on to its hull and headed for a ladder. The plan was to stop the vessel in its tracks not by taking over the bridge, but by radioing the captain and asking politely. Fat chance. “This is Greenpeace, this is Greenpeace. I’m informing you that we have put climbers on your rig. I ask you stop your vessel”, asked Korol Diker, a Turkish campaigner, on a VHF channel. But the elephant barely registered. “I do not recognise you”, came the captain’s cutting reply and the Leiv Eiriksson steamed on. Undaunted, the climbers made it to a gangway 80ft over the vessel’s starboard stern. As four crewmen peered over the side from 30ft above them, and two more ambled over, seemingly unconcerned, the climbers made a cat’s cradle of rope to hang banners and a tent from. You can understand why the captain did not want to stop. The Scottish oil company Cairn Energy has hired the Leiv Eiriksson for around $500,000 a day and the company, run by Sir Bill Gammell, the former international rugby player, plans to spend more than $500m (£300m) in the next few months looking for oil in some of the most dangerous and coldest waters in the world. Any major delay could cost it millions and set back its plans for the Arctic by a year, because drilling is only possible in the July-October “summer window” when the ice has retreated. Cairn, which will be the only company to drill deep wells offshore in the Arctic this year, holds 11 licences in Baffin Bay covering over 80,000 square kilometres. It plans to drill four exploratory wells to depths of around 5,000ft, the deepest ever attempted in the Arctic. It is taking the Leiv Eiriksson and the Ocean Rig Corcovado – a drill ship now stationed near Aberdeen – as well as a fleet of backup vessels. Last year the company claimed it had struck oil in Baffin Bay after drilling several 300ft wells. But it later admitted that it had found no significant quantities . The venture, say environmentalists, is just the start of what is planned to be a risky offshore oil rush. Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and others have licences to explore in Baffin Bay, mostly above the Arctic circle. Others, including BP and Rosneft, plan to extract oil offshore from Siberia, Alaska and elsewhere in the Arctic. The US government estimates there are 90bn barrels of oil, around 13% of the world’s undiscovered reserves. But for Greenpeace and others the risk of a devastating spill is is too great, raising the spectre of the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989 when more than 1m barrels of oil were spilt, and the $40bn disaster in the Gulf of Mexico last year . “Any Arctic spill would be very difficult, if not impossible, to contain and clean up. The company has not released a detailed spill response plan for the Arctic waters. Its latest environmental impact assessment says it has not been possible to model oil behaviour on ice. Failing to consider the impact of ice on a potential Arctic oil spill renders the EIA [the US Energy Information Administration] unfit for purpose,” said Greenpeace campaigner Ben Ayliffe. Other leading environment groups, including the respected US thinktank Pew , plus NGOs Oceana and WWF, have all said that the oil industry is not prepared for a major pollution incident. “This is the most controversial rig in the world because it is the only one destined to begin risky offshore drilling in the very deep waters of the Arctic this year. We have stopped it because it’s blazing a trail for other major oil companies and sparking the start of a dangerous new Arctic oil rush.” Cairn, which could not be contacted, says it has prepared comprehensive oil spill plans, and has put up a bond of $2bn. Activists are now expected to dog the progress of the slow-moving Leiv Eiriksson as it passes Greece, Italy, France and Spain on its passage through the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic. The platform is scheduled to stop in Britain to pick up supplies before the last leg of its journey to Greenland in June. Oil Energy Oil spills Fossil fuels Oil Greenpeace Activism Arctic Cairn Energy Energy industry Royal Dutch Shell Exxon Mobil Chevron BP John Vidal guardian.co.uk
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Environmental groups fear oil industry is not prepared for potentially catastrophic impact of oil spills in the Arctic The fight to stop the global oil industry exploring the pristine deep waters of the Arctic has been dubbed the new cold war, and early on Friday it escalated as environmental activists from 12 countries occupied the world’s second largest rig on its way from Turkey to Greenland to drill among the icebergs. The protesters found the 52,000-tonne semi-submersible platform Leiv Eiriksson at around midnight, steaming due west at a stately six knots in the sea of Marmaris, heading for the Dardanelle straits and the open Mediterranean. It took four more hours for Greenpeace to bring in its inflatables and a further 50 minutes in the choppy moonlit sea to intercept it. Even from three miles away, the Chinese-built mobile rig, which specialises in drilling in extreme environments, looks huge. From 100ft away in the pale dawn light it is a 15-storey industrial castle, bristling with cranes, derricks, gangways, chains, spars, girders, pipes, helipads and radar. Just 10 years old, it is already rusting and its paintwork is streaked from years of drilling in harsh west African, north Atlantic and Asian waters The Greenpeace boats approached the vessel cautiously in the three foot swell, like fleas to the backside of an elephant. At exactly 5.31am, the 11 climbers began to leap on to its hull and headed for a ladder. The plan was to stop the vessel in its tracks not by taking over the bridge, but by radioing the captain and asking politely. Fat chance. “This is Greenpeace, this is Greenpeace. I’m informing you that we have put climbers on your rig. I ask you stop your vessel”, asked Korol Diker, a Turkish campaigner, on a VHF channel. But the elephant barely registered. “I do not recognise you”, came the captain’s cutting reply and the Leiv Eiriksson steamed on. Undaunted, the climbers made it to a gangway 80ft over the vessel’s starboard stern. As four crewmen peered over the side from 30ft above them, and two more ambled over, seemingly unconcerned, the climbers made a cat’s cradle of rope to hang banners and a tent from. You can understand why the captain did not want to stop. The Scottish oil company Cairn Energy has hired the Leiv Eiriksson for around $500,000 a day and the company, run by Sir Bill Gammell, the former international rugby player, plans to spend more than $500m (£300m) in the next few months looking for oil in some of the most dangerous and coldest waters in the world. Any major delay could cost it millions and set back its plans for the Arctic by a year, because drilling is only possible in the July-October “summer window” when the ice has retreated. Cairn, which will be the only company to drill deep wells offshore in the Arctic this year, holds 11 licences in Baffin Bay covering over 80,000 square kilometres. It plans to drill four exploratory wells to depths of around 5,000ft, the deepest ever attempted in the Arctic. It is taking the Leiv Eiriksson and the Ocean Rig Corcovado – a drill ship now stationed near Aberdeen – as well as a fleet of backup vessels. Last year the company claimed it had struck oil in Baffin Bay after drilling several 300ft wells. But it later admitted that it had found no significant quantities . The venture, say environmentalists, is just the start of what is planned to be a risky offshore oil rush. Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and others have licences to explore in Baffin Bay, mostly above the Arctic circle. Others, including BP and Rosneft, plan to extract oil offshore from Siberia, Alaska and elsewhere in the Arctic. The US government estimates there are 90bn barrels of oil, around 13% of the world’s undiscovered reserves. But for Greenpeace and others the risk of a devastating spill is is too great, raising the spectre of the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska in 1989 when more than 1m barrels of oil were spilt, and the $40bn disaster in the Gulf of Mexico last year . “Any Arctic spill would be very difficult, if not impossible, to contain and clean up. The company has not released a detailed spill response plan for the Arctic waters. Its latest environmental impact assessment says it has not been possible to model oil behaviour on ice. Failing to consider the impact of ice on a potential Arctic oil spill renders the EIA [the US Energy Information Administration] unfit for purpose,” said Greenpeace campaigner Ben Ayliffe. Other leading environment groups, including the respected US thinktank Pew , plus NGOs Oceana and WWF, have all said that the oil industry is not prepared for a major pollution incident. “This is the most controversial rig in the world because it is the only one destined to begin risky offshore drilling in the very deep waters of the Arctic this year. We have stopped it because it’s blazing a trail for other major oil companies and sparking the start of a dangerous new Arctic oil rush.” Cairn, which could not be contacted, says it has prepared comprehensive oil spill plans, and has put up a bond of $2bn. Activists are now expected to dog the progress of the slow-moving Leiv Eiriksson as it passes Greece, Italy, France and Spain on its passage through the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic. The platform is scheduled to stop in Britain to pick up supplies before the last leg of its journey to Greenland in June. Oil Energy Oil spills Fossil fuels Oil Greenpeace Activism Arctic Cairn Energy Energy industry Royal Dutch Shell Exxon Mobil Chevron BP John Vidal guardian.co.uk
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Click here to view this media From the BBC – British journalist Tim Hetherington dies in Libya : An award-winning British photographer has been killed while covering the conflict in the Libyan city of Misrata. Liverpool-born Tim Hetherington, 40, is said to have been killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack. His family said he would be “forever missed”. US photographer Chris Hondros, 41, was also killed, and two others, including Briton Guy Martin, were injured. Mr Hetherington, who co-directed Oscar-nominated war documentary Restrepo, was working for Vanity Fair magazine. In a statement on the magazine’s website , his family said: “It is with great sadness we learned that our son and brother, photographer and filmmaker, Tim Hetherington was killed in Misrata, Libya, by a rocket-propelled grenade. “Tim will be remembered for his amazing images and his Academy Award-nominated documentary Restrepo.” They added: “Tim was in Libya to continue his ongoing multimedia project to highlight humanitarian issues during time of war and conflict.” And here’s more from Human Rights Watch: A Tribute to Tim Hetherington .
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Jury found that the Barbie toymaker had stolen trade secrets from a smaller rival, MGA Entertainment The Bratz dolls have beaten Barbie in a plastic cat fight of epic proportions. A US jury has found that Barbie toymaker Mattel had stolen trade secrets from a smaller rival, MGA Entertainment, and awarded the house of Bratz $88.4m (£53.5m). The battle of the dolls has been ongoing since 2006 and the verdict will come as a bitter blow to Mattel. Both sides have spent millions of dollars fighting over the rights to the controversial line of bestselling pouty-lipped dolls that became a global phenomena. Mattel had argued that the dolls’ designer Carter Bryant developed the Bratz concept while working for it in the late 1990s and secretly took the idea to MGA. MGA denied the claims and countersued, accusing Mattel of corporate espionage, using spies with fake business cards and dummy invoices to gain access to MGA’s ideas. MGA also accused Mattel of threatening to scupper business deals with retailers and media firms if they did business with Bratz. Bryant has always argued he came up with the idea for Bratz while living with his parents, in between stints working for Mattel. Multi-ethnic and trendy, the Bratz styled themselves as “the girls with a passion for fashion!” They became a huge hit in the mid-2000s, making $1bn in annual revenue at the height of their popularity, spawning real life clothes ranges and even a movie in which four actors struggled like “colour-blind drag queens” to “replicate their plastic precursors’ range of expression,” according to the Guardian review. The dolls also sparked a furious debate about the sexualization of young girls. But it was the impact on Barbie’s bottom line that had Mattel reaching for their lawyers. Mattel said in court that the more demure Barbie had lost more than $300m in profit as a result of the Bratz dolls’ success. The case has been in and out of court for years. The original trial in 2008 found in favour of Mattel and awarded the company $100m in damages. The trial judge also ordered MGA to turn over the Bratz franchise to Mattel. But in July 2010, an appeals court in San Francisco threw out the original decision after deciding the value of the Bratz line had “overwhelmingly” been created by MGA and that the original decision had failed to take into account all the development that had gone into the line after Bryant’s original creation. The jury in the latest trial considered both Mattel and MGA’s claims and concluded that Mattel did not own the idea for the Bratz line or any of the sketches that led to their creation. Isaac Larian, chief executive of MGA, cried while listening to the verdicts. Last autumn MGA celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Bratz line with the release of a new generation of slightly less pouty dolls. The latest incarnation has generated only lacklustre sales. Barbie has seen a bounce-back in sales, although Mattel has seen revenues eaten up by legal costs. United States Intellectual property Dominic Rushe guardian.co.uk
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