Ouattara calls on fighters in Ivory Coast to lay down their arms and promises dignified treatment for Gbagbo The president-elect of Ivory Coast has heralded “the dawn of a new hope” after the arrest of his rival Laurent Gbagbo. In a television address to the nation, Alassane Ouattara, said his predecessor would receive “dignified treatment”, and called on fighters in Ivory Coast to lay down their arms. “After more than four months of post-electoral crisis, marked by so many human lives lost, we are finally at the dawn of a new era of hope,” Ouattara said on Monday night. He said Gbagbo, his wife Simone and the rest of the former president’s entourage would be investigated by Ivorian authorities. The president-elect added that he intended to establish a truth and reconciliation commission and called on all fighters to put down their arms. The UN’s top human rights body on Tuesday appointed three independent experts to lead an investigation into allegations of serious abuses by both sides. After the dramatic events of Monday night, the streets of Abidjan appeared quiet and calm on Tuesday morning. Sporadic shooting was heard from the French military base in Abidjan in the early hours, but on a smaller scale than in recent days. A convoy of French military vehicles left the base at around 8am local time. It is hoped a massive humanitarian rebuilding project can now begin. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said it is planning airlifts in the coming days to provide life-saving food assistance to tens of thousands of internally displaced people in Ivory Coast and refugees in neighbouring Liberia. “We need to open up a humanitarian lifeline to the many Ivorians who are now the victims of alarming shortages of food, water and other basic needs,” said WFP’s executive director Josette Sheeran. After four months of growing crisis which threatened to tip Ivory Coast into a civil war, Gbagbo was finally detained on Monday night by forces loyal to Oauttara at the presidential compound . French troops and UN peacekeepers, who had earlier struck Gbagbo’s home in Abidjan, from the air, provided crucial support. One of Ouattara’s top military aides described to the Guardian the final assault by the rebel New Forces, now renamed the Republican Forces . “It was a big battle from midnight until the afternoon,” said Cisse Sindou, the group’s deputy leader. “The militias were everywhere. We had to advance on the residence from 1.5km away. The French troops didn’t want to be on the ground in the last 1.5km. “The Republican Forces got into the garden of the residence. There were no heavy tanks left there after the UN and French air strikes. But the garden was full of militias. There was some resistance from these militias outside the bunker, not inside.” He continued: “We won the battle. We had to have a strategy to keep Mr Gbagbo alive. President Ouattara and Prime Minister [Guillaume] Soro had made clear that he should be taken alive.” “Our military intelligence knows well the structure of the bunker. Gbagbo was believed to have been holed up with 50 family members and supporters. Sindou said he went quietly once he knew the game was up. “We just went in the bunker and got him. When your guard is reduced, what resistance can you put up?” Gbagbo, who had been hiding in the bunker for a week, was interrogated and then taken to the Golf hotel, where Ouattara has been based under UN protection since early December. The two rivals came face to face, but Ouattarra did not speak, Sindou said. He added that a presidential swearing in ceremony would be held soon. He said Ouattara may move the seat of government away from Abidjan, to the Ivory Coast’s official capital, Yamoussoukro. “The important thing now is to secure Abidjan, clean up the streets and deal with those militias. You cannot let the people suffer.” Abidjan – the country’s main city – has been the scene of fierce fighting for the past week after Ouattara’s forces swept down from the north, his stronghold. Following the arrest, Ouattara’s appointed prime minister Soro called on these troops to switch sides. “To all the forces, I make a last appeal to rally [with us] … there cannot be a manhunt,” he said, in an address to the Ivorian people on French television. But some analysts warned that the conflict, which has cost more than 1,500 lives, would be difficult to end, especially because of the French role in removing Gbagbo. The former president, once a history professor and who studied at the Sorbonne, had portrayed the conflict as a fight against foreign forces, and France’s Licorne peacekeepers in particular. “This is just the start of the crisis,” said Kwesi Aning, head of research at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Centre in Ghana. “The role of French Licorne forces undermines Ouattara’s credibility. There may be a lull for a couple of months, but certainly there will be attacks to try to reverse this defeat.” The deep divisions in Ivory Coast, which has been split into north and south since the brief 2002 civil war, mean that Ouattara will have to tread carefully in his handling of Gbagbo, who over the past decade stoked xenophobia aimed at Ivorians whose parents or grandparents came from neighbouring countries. And for all his failings, which included repeatedly postponing elections to stay in power, Gbagbo still commanded a lot of support, winning 46% of the vote in November. Alassane Ouattara Laurent Gbagbo Ivory Coast David Smith Xan Rice Adam Gabbatt guardian.co.uk
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Director Simcha Jacobovici’s film, The Nails of the Cross, claims nails used to crucify Christ have been found in Jerusalem tomb From the Turin Shroud to the “Jesus towel” , which will arrive at the British museum in June, there are dozens of artefacts claimed to have been part of the Biblical story of Christ. Now a new film suggests that the nails used to crucify Jesus have been found in a Jerusalem tomb . Canadian-Israeli director Simcha Jacobovici’s The Nails of the Cross is the veteran investigator’s second film claiming to have discovered artefacts linked to Christ. He also directed 2007′s The Lost Tomb of Jesus. But experts have poured scorn on the latest findings, suggesting that the film is little more than a publicity stunt. However, this time around, Jacobovici says he has historical and archaeological context for his claims. “What we are bringing to the world is the best archaeological argument ever made that two of the nails from the crucifixion of Jesus have been found,” he told Reuters. “Do I know 100% yes, these are them? I don’t.” The Nails of the Cross suggests the artefacts were found in the grave of Jewish high priest Caiaphas, who according to the New Testament sent Jesus to his death after handing him over to the Romans. They disappeared centuries ago but were later tracked by Jacobovici to the Tel Aviv laboratory of an anthropologist who is an expert on ancient bones. “If you look at the whole story, historical, textual, archaeological, they all seem to point at these two nails being involved in a crucifixion,” said the director. “And since Caiaphas is only associated with Jesus’s crucifixion, you put two and two together and they seem to imply that these are the nails.” The Israel Antiquities Authority, which oversaw the excavation of the tomb – it has since been resealed – cast doubt upon suggestions that the grave was definitively the burial place of Caiaphas, and said nails are commonly found in such locations. “There is no doubt that the talented director Simcha Jacobovici created an interesting film with a real archaeological find at its centre,” said a spokesman. “But the interpretation presented in it has no basis in archaeological findings or research.” Documentary Religion Ben Child guardian.co.uk
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I travelled the length and breadth of the capital in preparation for this Sunday’s London Marathon • Read all Dave Hill’s blogposts charting his training here I have a fistful of reasons for entering Sunday’s London Marathon . They include being in the grip of a combined death wish and mid-life crisis, though I never, ever mention that in public. Another reason is a sense of duty: how can any self-respecting London blogger and commentator be worthy of the description without having taken part in the capital’s greatest sporting and mass participation event? Then there’s a campaigning itch to scratch: I’ve written a lot about the capital’s deepening and deeply troubling housing crisis of late, so it seems fitting to be raising money for the distinguished national housing charity Shelter . And preparing for the marathon provided me too with a pretext for doing something I might otherwise never have got round to – travelling the mighty length and breadth of Greater London on foot. The experience of Running London – and, in parts, walking it with an open A-Z and a slight limp – has been partly what the Victorians might have called an improving experience , partly a lot of fun and never less than a journey of enlightenment. I embarked on the endeavour upon leaving the gentlemen’s toilet of a shopping mall in Uxbridge last August and have never looked back, except to ensure that I wasn’t being followed by sheep or vigilantes in the wilds of Barnet and when seeking to confirm my strong suspicion that I’d just jogged past one of the metropolis’s finest poets under a railway bridge in Herne Hill . I have passed through all 32 of London’s boroughs and the City . I completed the physical part of the task when I arrived in Upminster last Wednesday. The writing part will be all over by Thursday. From Uxbridge in the far west to Upminster in the far east. It has a certain U-ish symmetry, don’t you think? Yet my route was often barely planned, a failing I shall dignify by stressing the benefits that can accrue from acts of spontaneity, such as chancing upon the suburban sewage works that emit the legendary ” Mogden pong ” and accidentally falling off the edge of urban civilisation into the seething badlands others know as “Surrey”. The beauty of travelling by foot, even at anything up to a practically silky seven miles per hour – no, really – is that you devote more curious attention to what’s in front of your nose, such as a junction in Tooting that bears the curiously US Deep Southern name of Amen Corner and those streets in Bayswater named after Russian cities. Why are these things so? No one has yet explained the Amen Corner to me, though a reader called BalticPro explained Moscow Road and St Petersburgh Place in a learned comment here . In a place as vast and varied as London you stumble endlessly upon evidence of the city’s endless, restless state of change – the discordancies of Docklands, the bared layers of the past next to the trunk road into Bexley – but also pockets of seemingly sealed institutions such as a noted school in Harrow-on-the-Hill. You find Chislehurst’s celebrated “caves” and tranquil river walks right next to the roaring North Circular Road. You stumble over traces of popular culture history everywhere: the Wandsworth roundabout where part of A Clockwork Orange was filmed; the non-existent part of Cheam where Tony Hancock never lived; the Hounslow pub where Jimi Hendrix, reputedly, played his first London gig straight after stepping off a plane. I re-found all sorts of personal memories, strewn liberally from Ladbroke Grove to Crystal Palace to Upper Street . Perhaps it is because I migrated to the big, bad city that I’ve never lost my sense of wonder about living here. I’m not sure how motivating that sentiment will be if and when I get beyond the 20-mile mark on Sunday , with Canary Wharf looming to my left and the finish line on the Mall seeming a long lifetime away. I hope I can reach it without walking, crawling or lying down, but should perhaps remind myself that for we amateurs it’s the taking part that’s meant to count. Last year’s London Marathon, the first sponsored by Virgin, was completed by more than 36,000 people – a record for the event and a gigantic increase from the 6,000 who completed the inaugural run in 1981. The elite race is now established in the international athletics calendar . The rest of it is a London and national institution, whose surpluses have this year supported £5.3m-worth of sports facilities across the capital and whose participants have raised some £500m for hundreds of charities since it began. Shelter asks its sponsor runners to raise a minimum of £1,600. I’ve managed to reach that figure quite comfortably, thanks very largely to the generosity of readers of my blog , subscribers to my weekly newsletter and people who follow me on Twitter . Pledges and donations now total nearly £2,600. If you’d like to help push that beyond the £3,000 mark, please visit my Virgin Money giving page . Many thanks. • Read all Dave Hill’s blogposts charting his run through every London borough here London Marathon London Running Dave Hill guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …I travelled the length and breadth of the capital in preparation for this Sunday’s London Marathon • Read all Dave Hill’s blogposts charting his training here I have a fistful of reasons for entering Sunday’s London Marathon . They include being in the grip of a combined death wish and mid-life crisis, though I never, ever mention that in public. Another reason is a sense of duty: how can any self-respecting London blogger and commentator be worthy of the description without having taken part in the capital’s greatest sporting and mass participation event? Then there’s a campaigning itch to scratch: I’ve written a lot about the capital’s deepening and deeply troubling housing crisis of late, so it seems fitting to be raising money for the distinguished national housing charity Shelter . And preparing for the marathon provided me too with a pretext for doing something I might otherwise never have got round to – travelling the mighty length and breadth of Greater London on foot. The experience of Running London – and, in parts, walking it with an open A-Z and a slight limp – has been partly what the Victorians might have called an improving experience , partly a lot of fun and never less than a journey of enlightenment. I embarked on the endeavour upon leaving the gentlemen’s toilet of a shopping mall in Uxbridge last August and have never looked back, except to ensure that I wasn’t being followed by sheep or vigilantes in the wilds of Barnet and when seeking to confirm my strong suspicion that I’d just jogged past one of the metropolis’s finest poets under a railway bridge in Herne Hill . I have passed through all 32 of London’s boroughs and the City . I completed the physical part of the task when I arrived in Upminster last Wednesday. The writing part will be all over by Thursday. From Uxbridge in the far west to Upminster in the far east. It has a certain U-ish symmetry, don’t you think? Yet my route was often barely planned, a failing I shall dignify by stressing the benefits that can accrue from acts of spontaneity, such as chancing upon the suburban sewage works that emit the legendary ” Mogden pong ” and accidentally falling off the edge of urban civilisation into the seething badlands others know as “Surrey”. The beauty of travelling by foot, even at anything up to a practically silky seven miles per hour – no, really – is that you devote more curious attention to what’s in front of your nose, such as a junction in Tooting that bears the curiously US Deep Southern name of Amen Corner and those streets in Bayswater named after Russian cities. Why are these things so? No one has yet explained the Amen Corner to me, though a reader called BalticPro explained Moscow Road and St Petersburgh Place in a learned comment here . In a place as vast and varied as London you stumble endlessly upon evidence of the city’s endless, restless state of change – the discordancies of Docklands, the bared layers of the past next to the trunk road into Bexley – but also pockets of seemingly sealed institutions such as a noted school in Harrow-on-the-Hill. You find Chislehurst’s celebrated “caves” and tranquil river walks right next to the roaring North Circular Road. You stumble over traces of popular culture history everywhere: the Wandsworth roundabout where part of A Clockwork Orange was filmed; the non-existent part of Cheam where Tony Hancock never lived; the Hounslow pub where Jimi Hendrix, reputedly, played his first London gig straight after stepping off a plane. I re-found all sorts of personal memories, strewn liberally from Ladbroke Grove to Crystal Palace to Upper Street . Perhaps it is because I migrated to the big, bad city that I’ve never lost my sense of wonder about living here. I’m not sure how motivating that sentiment will be if and when I get beyond the 20-mile mark on Sunday , with Canary Wharf looming to my left and the finish line on the Mall seeming a long lifetime away. I hope I can reach it without walking, crawling or lying down, but should perhaps remind myself that for we amateurs it’s the taking part that’s meant to count. Last year’s London Marathon, the first sponsored by Virgin, was completed by more than 36,000 people – a record for the event and a gigantic increase from the 6,000 who completed the inaugural run in 1981. The elite race is now established in the international athletics calendar . The rest of it is a London and national institution, whose surpluses have this year supported £5.3m-worth of sports facilities across the capital and whose participants have raised some £500m for hundreds of charities since it began. Shelter asks its sponsor runners to raise a minimum of £1,600. I’ve managed to reach that figure quite comfortably, thanks very largely to the generosity of readers of my blog , subscribers to my weekly newsletter and people who follow me on Twitter . Pledges and donations now total nearly £2,600. If you’d like to help push that beyond the £3,000 mark, please visit my Virgin Money giving page . Many thanks. • Read all Dave Hill’s blogposts charting his run through every London borough here London Marathon London Running Dave Hill guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …I travelled the length and breadth of the capital in preparation for this Sunday’s London Marathon • Read all Dave Hill’s blogposts charting his training here I have a fistful of reasons for entering Sunday’s London Marathon . They include being in the grip of a combined death wish and mid-life crisis, though I never, ever mention that in public. Another reason is a sense of duty: how can any self-respecting London blogger and commentator be worthy of the description without having taken part in the capital’s greatest sporting and mass participation event? Then there’s a campaigning itch to scratch: I’ve written a lot about the capital’s deepening and deeply troubling housing crisis of late, so it seems fitting to be raising money for the distinguished national housing charity Shelter . And preparing for the marathon provided me too with a pretext for doing something I might otherwise never have got round to – travelling the mighty length and breadth of Greater London on foot. The experience of Running London – and, in parts, walking it with an open A-Z and a slight limp – has been partly what the Victorians might have called an improving experience , partly a lot of fun and never less than a journey of enlightenment. I embarked on the endeavour upon leaving the gentlemen’s toilet of a shopping mall in Uxbridge last August and have never looked back, except to ensure that I wasn’t being followed by sheep or vigilantes in the wilds of Barnet and when seeking to confirm my strong suspicion that I’d just jogged past one of the metropolis’s finest poets under a railway bridge in Herne Hill . I have passed through all 32 of London’s boroughs and the City . I completed the physical part of the task when I arrived in Upminster last Wednesday. The writing part will be all over by Thursday. From Uxbridge in the far west to Upminster in the far east. It has a certain U-ish symmetry, don’t you think? Yet my route was often barely planned, a failing I shall dignify by stressing the benefits that can accrue from acts of spontaneity, such as chancing upon the suburban sewage works that emit the legendary ” Mogden pong ” and accidentally falling off the edge of urban civilisation into the seething badlands others know as “Surrey”. The beauty of travelling by foot, even at anything up to a practically silky seven miles per hour – no, really – is that you devote more curious attention to what’s in front of your nose, such as a junction in Tooting that bears the curiously US Deep Southern name of Amen Corner and those streets in Bayswater named after Russian cities. Why are these things so? No one has yet explained the Amen Corner to me, though a reader called BalticPro explained Moscow Road and St Petersburgh Place in a learned comment here . In a place as vast and varied as London you stumble endlessly upon evidence of the city’s endless, restless state of change – the discordancies of Docklands, the bared layers of the past next to the trunk road into Bexley – but also pockets of seemingly sealed institutions such as a noted school in Harrow-on-the-Hill. You find Chislehurst’s celebrated “caves” and tranquil river walks right next to the roaring North Circular Road. You stumble over traces of popular culture history everywhere: the Wandsworth roundabout where part of A Clockwork Orange was filmed; the non-existent part of Cheam where Tony Hancock never lived; the Hounslow pub where Jimi Hendrix, reputedly, played his first London gig straight after stepping off a plane. I re-found all sorts of personal memories, strewn liberally from Ladbroke Grove to Crystal Palace to Upper Street . Perhaps it is because I migrated to the big, bad city that I’ve never lost my sense of wonder about living here. I’m not sure how motivating that sentiment will be if and when I get beyond the 20-mile mark on Sunday , with Canary Wharf looming to my left and the finish line on the Mall seeming a long lifetime away. I hope I can reach it without walking, crawling or lying down, but should perhaps remind myself that for we amateurs it’s the taking part that’s meant to count. Last year’s London Marathon, the first sponsored by Virgin, was completed by more than 36,000 people – a record for the event and a gigantic increase from the 6,000 who completed the inaugural run in 1981. The elite race is now established in the international athletics calendar . The rest of it is a London and national institution, whose surpluses have this year supported £5.3m-worth of sports facilities across the capital and whose participants have raised some £500m for hundreds of charities since it began. Shelter asks its sponsor runners to raise a minimum of £1,600. I’ve managed to reach that figure quite comfortably, thanks very largely to the generosity of readers of my blog , subscribers to my weekly newsletter and people who follow me on Twitter . Pledges and donations now total nearly £2,600. If you’d like to help push that beyond the £3,000 mark, please visit my Virgin Money giving page . Many thanks. • Read all Dave Hill’s blogposts charting his run through every London borough here London Marathon London Running Dave Hill guardian.co.uk
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Key defector expected to go to Libya conference in Qatar after being questioned over Lockerbie bombing Moussa Koussa, the former Libyan foreign minister who defected to Britain, is being allowed to leave the country after being questioned by Scottish police about his role in the Lockerbie affair, the Guardian can reveal. Koussa is expected in the Qatari capital of Doha on Wednesday where an international conference on the future of Libya is being held with representatives from the Benghazi-based opposition. Koussa is said to be seeking to establish whether he has a role to play in the rebel movement along with other senior defectors from the Gaddafi regime – perhaps by brokering a deal between Tripoli and Benghazi. It is believed he has links with some fo the leading rebel figures including Mahmoud Jibril the opposition leader. It is understood Koussa spent a week being debriefed by officials from MI6 at a safe house before being allowed to go free. He was questioned by Dumfries and Galloway police about the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in which 270 people died, though was he was not a suspect. William Hague, the foreign secretary, had insisted that Koussa would not be given immunity from prosecution. He was helped to defect by MI6 after leaving Tripoli for Tunisia on what was initially described as a private visit. It is expected that he will return to the UK in the next few days after the trip to the Middle East. The hope in Whitehall is that Koussa’s lenient treatment by the UK authorities will send a positive signal to other would-be Libyan defectors as part of a broader strategy of eroding Muammar Gaddafi’s position. On Monday Koussa made his first public statement since leaving Libya 12 days ago. “I ask everybody to avoid taking Libya into civil war,” he told the BBC. “This would lead to so much blood and Libya would be a new Somalia. More than that, we refuse to divide Libya. The unity of Libya is essential to any solution and settlement.” Speaking in Arabic, Koussa made no reference in his statement to questions about his past and any knowledge or involvement in the Lockerbie bombing. It is understood he has a lawyer representing him. Koussa’s links to the UK go back to the period when he was deputy foreign mister in the mid 1990s and was involved in talks that revealed past support by the Gaddafi regime for the IRA. He was head of Libya’s foreign intelligence service in the 1990s – after the Lockerbie bombing. He was involved in still inconclusive talks about the murder of Constable Yvonne Fletcher in 1984. In 2003 he played a pivotal role in talks about surrendering Libya’s programme for weapons of mass destruction – the decision which paved the way for Gaddafi’s temporary rehabilitation with the west. In 2009 he took part in negotiations over the controversial return home of the convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbasset al-Megrahi. In the early 1980s when he headed the London embassy, Koussa was thrown out of the UK after announcing plans to kill anti-Gaddafi dissidents. Moussa Koussa Libya Foreign policy MI6 Lockerbie plane bombing Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Global terrorism UK security and terrorism Scotland Air transport Ian Black guardian.co.uk
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Key defector expected to go to Libya conference in Qatar after being questioned over Lockerbie bombing Moussa Koussa, the former Libyan foreign minister who defected to Britain, is being allowed to leave the country after being questioned by Scottish police about his role in the Lockerbie affair, the Guardian can reveal. Koussa is expected in the Qatari capital of Doha on Wednesday where an international conference on the future of Libya is being held with representatives from the Benghazi-based opposition. Koussa is said to be seeking to establish whether he has a role to play in the rebel movement along with other senior defectors from the Gaddafi regime – perhaps by brokering a deal between Tripoli and Benghazi. It is believed he has links with some fo the leading rebel figures including Mahmoud Jibril the opposition leader. It is understood Koussa spent a week being debriefed by officials from MI6 at a safe house before being allowed to go free. He was questioned by Dumfries and Galloway police about the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in which 270 people died, though was he was not a suspect. William Hague, the foreign secretary, had insisted that Koussa would not be given immunity from prosecution. He was helped to defect by MI6 after leaving Tripoli for Tunisia on what was initially described as a private visit. It is expected that he will return to the UK in the next few days after the trip to the Middle East. The hope in Whitehall is that Koussa’s lenient treatment by the UK authorities will send a positive signal to other would-be Libyan defectors as part of a broader strategy of eroding Muammar Gaddafi’s position. On Monday Koussa made his first public statement since leaving Libya 12 days ago. “I ask everybody to avoid taking Libya into civil war,” he told the BBC. “This would lead to so much blood and Libya would be a new Somalia. More than that, we refuse to divide Libya. The unity of Libya is essential to any solution and settlement.” Speaking in Arabic, Koussa made no reference in his statement to questions about his past and any knowledge or involvement in the Lockerbie bombing. It is understood he has a lawyer representing him. Koussa’s links to the UK go back to the period when he was deputy foreign mister in the mid 1990s and was involved in talks that revealed past support by the Gaddafi regime for the IRA. He was head of Libya’s foreign intelligence service in the 1990s – after the Lockerbie bombing. He was involved in still inconclusive talks about the murder of Constable Yvonne Fletcher in 1984. In 2003 he played a pivotal role in talks about surrendering Libya’s programme for weapons of mass destruction – the decision which paved the way for Gaddafi’s temporary rehabilitation with the west. In 2009 he took part in negotiations over the controversial return home of the convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbasset al-Megrahi. In the early 1980s when he headed the London embassy, Koussa was thrown out of the UK after announcing plans to kill anti-Gaddafi dissidents. Moussa Koussa Libya Foreign policy MI6 Lockerbie plane bombing Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Global terrorism UK security and terrorism Scotland Air transport Ian Black guardian.co.uk
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Lu Qing’s summons to Beijing office suggests authorities may seek to bring tax-related charges against detained artist Chinese tax officials have summoned the wife of detained artist Ai Weiwei for questioning, bolstering the theory that authorities may seek to bring tax-related charges against him. Lu Qing spent about an hour at the tax office in Beijing. She was asked to take documents with her, but was unable to do so as they had already been confiscated by police, according to Radio Television Hong Kong. Officials have said that Ai is under investigation on suspicion of economic crimes , but police have yet to inform the family that they are detaining him. He has not been seen since the morning of 3 April, when officials stopped him at Beijing airport . Relatives and supporters say the allegations are a pretext for detaining him because of his political and social campaigning. Economic cases have been brought against several activists in the past. “The police officer who led the searches of his workshop was from state security. That says a lot,” his sister Gao Ge told Reuters. “If this is just an ordinary investigation, why haven’t we heard from Ai Weiwei?” Supporters of the artist said another of his collaborators, architect and designer Liu Zhenggang, had been missing since police took him away at 11pm on Saturday. The Guardian has been unable to verify the claim independently. No one has been able to contact Ai’s friend Wen Tao, 38, since he was reportedly detained on the same day as the artist. On Monday assistants from the studio said Ai’s accountant and driver, Ms Hu and Zhang Jingsong – also known as Xiao Pang – had gone missing . The artist’s detention has sparked an international outcry. The Chinese government said on Tuesday it was unhappy with overseas support for him. “The Chinese people also feel baffled – why do some people in some countries treat a crime suspect as a hero?” foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a regular news briefing. “The Chinese people are unhappy about this. No matter what influence they have had, they will be punished according to the law.” Ai Weiwei China Human rights Tania Branigan guardian.co.uk
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Clegg rejects suggestion by leader of the Liverpool Liberal Democrats to ‘sever ties’ with the Conservatives Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, has rejected a call from a senior Liberal Democrat councillor to pull out of the coalition government. Warren Bradley, the leader of the Liberal Democrats in Liverpool, said he was “tired of defending the indefensible” and urged Clegg to act “before we disappear into the annals of history”. In a private email to Clegg, leaked to the Liverpool Echo , Bradley said long-serving Lib Dem councillors in Liverpool were going to lose their seats in the 5 May elections “not because of their record, but because of your record and the perception of what we as Liberal Democrats now are”. Bradley, who was council leader until last year’s election, warned the party leader: “Unfortunately the boil is about to come to a head and burst (probably on election night) when we lose some very well respected and experienced colleagues from Liverpool city council.” Bradley said the Lib Dems needed to “reconsider what and who we are before we disappear into the annals of history as a political party who promised so much hope, yet failed because they wanted control and power”. The party had “deserted their followers”, he said. He told Clegg: “I hope you take this in the spirit it is meant, liberal principles have to shine through, we have to be independent and we have to sever ties from the coalition; if we fail to do this, we have only our parliamentarians to blame.” But Clegg said Bradley was wrong. The Lib Dem leader told ITV’s Daybreak: “These are very difficult times, and I’m not denying we’re having to make controversial decisions, as anybody would who had come into power after the election last May, because we’re cleaning up a terrible mess that was left behind. “I think actually, Warren Bradley and everyone in Liverpool knows what it’s like to clean up the mess left by Labour, that’s exactly what Liberal Democrats in Liverpool had to do.” A Lib Dem spokesman said Bradley’s email “simply does not reflect the views of the wider Liberal Democrat membership”. He said: “Moving from a party of protest to a party of power has brought with it some very difficult decisions but we cannot hide from the fact the country is borrowing an extra £400m every single day – the cost of a new primary school every 20 minutes.” He added: “Liberal Democrats are proud to be fighting, as always, on our strong record in local government and now for the first time in 65 years, on delivering in national government. “Despite these very difficult times, the Liberal Democrats are delivering on proposals to help people in Liverpool and across the whole of the north-west.” Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Vince Cable, the business secretary, said digging the country out of the “enormous economic hole” would take time but the government would succeed, including in cities such as Liverpool. “That’s a long-term project, it’s going to take the five years of this parliament,” he said. “We’ve got to show stamina, this is a marathon not a sprint and I would recommend to Warren Bradley, who is an admirable Liberal Democrat, that he concentrates on the excellent record of the Liberal Democrats of restoring Liverpool after the terrible mess it was in. “They should really concentrate on that and the mistakes made by the Labour council and not give up because this is a long-term project but we will turn the British economy around, and the Liberal Democrats in Liverpool and everywhere else will benefit from that.” Liberal Democrats Liberal-Conservative coalition Local government Liverpool Local politics Nick Clegg guardian.co.uk
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• Former Home Office pathologist Freddy Patel giving evidence • Inquest has heard that cause of death will be ‘controversial’ • Ian Tomlinson died at the G20 protests in London in 2009 • Follow live coverage throughout the day 10.58am: Hewitt: “Did you have any evidence before you to suggest that Ian Tomlinson had suffered an injury as a result of an assault or crush injuries or anything of that sort?” Patel: “No, I didn’t have any direct evidence. But because it was a Section 19 [routine postmortem], it was upgraded to a Section 20 [suspicious death case] – now you can have a Section 20 without involvement of the police and so I feel that I may have queried why are the police attending and [I] would have been informed by the coroner’s officers that they would like to rule out whether [Tomlinson] had suffered any injuries as a result of an assault and there was a big crowd there, whether he suggested any crush injuries related to the protesters in the public disorder.” 10.55am: Freddy Patel has just revealed police gave him additional information moments before he conducted the postmortem. Patel took contemporaneous notes in a 21-page booklet. The jury now has this, and Hewitt is talking through what he wrote while conducting the examination. The postmortem took place at 5pm. Detective Superintendant Tony Crampton, the City of London police officer leading the inquiry, was present along with three other police officers. The police gave him additional information (to that included in the fax) before he began examining the body. The additional information was that [Tomlinson] was found collapsed outdoors on the pavement but there were no police officers nearby – when I say nearby I mean in the immediate vicinity of the body. There was a lot of broken glass bottles and a lot of protesters were using sticks and there were a lot of sticks around the body where it was found. That was the information I was given before we went into the mortuary. Important: I should note that none of the footage or photographs shown to the jury so far have shown protesters “using sticks” or sticks in the immediate vicinity of the body after collapse. The jury saw one photograph showing an unbroken bottle although bystanders heard other bottles breaking nearby. 10.34am: To assist his examination, Patel received information from the coroner’s office via fax. It included basic biographical details, and stated Tomlinson had collapsed two days earlier on Cornhill. The pathologist was told bystanders saw Tomlinson “went blue” and police, “who were nearby, due to the demonstration”, administered first aid. The fax gave details of Tomlinson’s medical problems and stated he was an alcoholic who had been a “rough sleeper in the city of the last 20 years” who had recently secured accommodation at a hostel. 10.28am: Alison Hewitt , counsel for the inquest, is questioning Patel. He said that the postmortem examination on Tomlinson’s body took place on Friday 3 April – two days after his death. He explained it would have occurred the previous day, but there was a delay. If I remember correctly the postmortem was done on the Friday. On the Thursday morning I received a call from the mortuary – there was a body and the coroner would like a postmortem … As far as I remember it was going to be a routine postmortem examination, or Section 19. I got to the mortuary on the Thursday, and one of the police officers who had come to do identification was also present. Then I was informed by the coroner’s officer that due to some legal arguments or whatever, the postmortem couldn’t go ahead that day. Patel said that by the time he did get round to doing the postmortem, he was told it had been “upgraded” to a “Section 20″ (forensic examination in a suspicious death case). 10.17am: Dr Freddy Patel has taken the stand. He is wearing a stripey red tie and is resting his hands on a file of papers he has taken with him. He listed his qualifications, and said that in April 2009, at the time of his examination of Tomlinson’s body, he was on the Home Office list of accredited forensic pathologists. Patel has explained the different between a “Section 19″ (routine) postmortem, and a “Section 20″ (forensic) case, which takes place in suspicious death cases. 10.12am: The jury has entered – we’re about to start. 10.09am: Quick reminder: it has been widely reported that Dr Freddy Patel has twice been suspended by the General Medical Council (GMC) in recent months. A fortnight ago, he was suspended for four months over his botched postmortem which led to a delayed murder investigation into a serial killer. The case concerned his 2002 examination of the body of Sally White – the first victim of “Camden Ripper” Anthony Hardy. He found she had died of natural causes (a heart attack) despite blood staining her clothing, bedding and a wall at Hardy’s flat. The GMC also found Dr Patel had falsified his CV. The earlier suspension, in September last year, concerned professional failings in three other postmortem examinations . 9.58am: We are entering the third week of the inquest into the death of Ian Tomlinson. Today, Dr Freddy Patel, the pathologist who controversially concluded the newspaper seller died of a heart attack caused by coronary heart disease, takes the stand. The inquest is entering a new phase: medical evidence. So far the jury of 11 has mainly heard evidence about the circumstances surrounding Tomlinson’s death at the G20 protests. The focus has been his encounter with Metropolitan police officer Simon Harwood, who has accepted the father of nine posed no threat to him when he struck with a baton and pushed him to the ground. Here is a quick recap of the nine days we’ve had so far: Day 1: The Tomlinson inquest opened with detailed footage showing the newspaper seller’s last moments alive . The judge told jurors to anticipate “controversy” over divergent medical opinions and stressed that Harwood was not “on trial”. Day 2: The jury heard how Harwood was a van driver in the Met’s territorial support group (TSG) who strayed from his post without the knowledge of his supervisor. He had several confrontations with protesters and bystanders in the minutes leading up to his encounter with Tomlinson. Day 3: A New York investment fund manager said he believed Harwood was trying to make an example of Tomlinson when he pushed him to the ground. Chris La Jaunie, who shot crucial video footage of the incident, told jurors the newspaper seller was not being confrontational . Day 4: A police officer who witnessed Harwood pushing Tomlinson said she had been “shocked by the forcefulness” of the shove . She said she did not believe the newspaper seller posed a threat. Day 5: In the opening day of his evidence, Harwood said he “feared for his life” in the minutes leading up to his encounter with Tomlinson. The newspaper vendor’s relatives left the courtroom in tears when Harwood announced he wanted to “help the family at this difficult time”. Day 6: Harwood told the jury he was “amazed” when Tomlinson fell to the ground and was accused of lying under oath. He conceded the father of nine posed no threat to him and offered a partial apology “if it is the case” his actions led to Tomlinson’s death . Day 7: In his final day of evidence, the police officer said he believed Tomlinson had been “almost inviting a physical confrontation” . He also said he believed his training allowed him to baton a person who posed no threat. Harwood eventually appeared to retract much of his earlier testimony. Day 8: A City worker who saw Tomlinson collapse less than three minutes after his encounter with Harwood said he heard him tell a bystander: “The fuckers got me.” A medical student who went to Tomlinson’s aid told how she was pushed out of the way by police. Day 9: Paramedics and doctors gave evidence about the failed attempts to resuscitate Tomlinson in the hour following his collapse. Amid divergent accounts, one ambulance worker said his initial assessment was that the father of nine could have been dying of internal bleeding. Ian Tomlinson Police London Protest G20 Paul Lewis guardian.co.uk
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