European court of human rights says Arnaldo Otegi must be compensated after being wrongly imprisoned for insulting King Juan Carlos Spain must compensate the radical Basque separatist leader Arnaldo Otegi after wrongly sentencing him to jail for insulting King Juan Carlos, the European court of human rights has decided. The court in Strasbourg ruled on Tuesday that Spain must pay €23,000 (nearly £20,000) in compensation to Otegi for breaching his right to freedom of expression after he accused the Spanish monarch of protecting police torturers. Otegi made his comments after police raided and closed down the Basque-language Egunkaria newspaper in February 2003. The editor, Martxelo Otamendi, and other executives, claimed they were tortured. When Juan Carlos visited the Basque country soon afterwards, Otegi said that as “supreme head of the civil guard police force”, the monarch was effectively in command of those who had tortured Egunkaria staff. Otegi claimed the king “protects torture and imposes his monarchical regime on our people through torture and violence”. Three years later a Spanish court found him guilty of insulting the king, handing down a one-year suspended jail sentence and imposing costs. But the Strasbourg court has decided Otegi was within his rights as a politician to air his grievances against the king, though the torture allegations were never proved. Otegi’s remarks were “made in his capacity as elected member of and spokesperson for a parliamentary group …in the context of the recent closure of the Egunkaria newspaper and the complaint alleging ill-treatment”, the Strasbourg judges ruled. They accepted that his words “could be understood as contributing to a wider public debate on the possible responsibility of the state security forces in cases of ill treatment”. Spanish judges last year threw out a case alleging that Otamendi and other Egunkaria executives had collaborated with Eta. The decision came too late to save Egunkaria. Four civil guard police officers were found guilty last December of torturing members of an Eta unit that killed two people with a bomb at Madrid’s Barajas airport in 2006. Otegi is one of a group of separatist leaders now trying to persuade Eta to end four decades of terrorism. Spain European court of human rights Human rights Europe Eta Giles Tremlett guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Newt Gingrich has agreed to appear at a summit held by Texas megachurch pastor John Hagee. That name ring a bell? Here, let’s refresh your memory . Hagee’s last foray into presidential politics ended with then-candidate John McCain calling his views “crazy and unacceptable,” after some of his anti-gay and anti-Catholic…
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National Institute of Economic and Social Research says taxes amounting to 6% of GDP should be levied as soon as possible Taxes will need to rise by £20bn a year to offset the higher health costs and underfunded state pension commitments of the current generation of workers, according to a leading thinktank. Higher taxes amounting to 6% of GDP should be levied, starting as soon as possible, to prevent future generations suffering tax rises or cuts in services beyond anything contemplated by the Tory-led coalition government. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) warned that the total bill for pension and health costs for the UK’s rapidly ageing population will dwarf the government debts caused by the financial crisis and even the £800bn deficit built up over recent decades. It has said that the UK will need to find £7tn in taxes over the next 100 years on top of the taxes already expected, based on forecasts of growth, interest rates and inflation. A child born today will pay £68,000 more in taxes over their lifetime than they get back in pensions and health services. A child born in the next decade will need to pay £160,000 extra, the report said. It continued: “One might think that, in a steady state, the net contribution would be zero. However, there is a past history of pay-as you-go benefits, which has allowed earlier generations to receive more from the state than they have contributed over their lifetimes and it is inevitable that there is now a net contribution which has to be paid.” Martin Weale, one of the report’s authors and a member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, has argued that each successive generation is taking more out of the economy than it puts back. He said that a lack of saving by individuals and the government was leaving younger workers to pick up an increasingly large bill for pension and health costs. Rocketing land prices, leaving accumulated wealth in the hands of the over-50s, have also meant that younger workers are paying higher mortgage bills than the baby boomer generation, those born between 1947 and 1964. Baby boomers will begin retiring this year and will all be receiving a pension by 2030. NIESR said that its attempt to produce intergenerational accounts for the UK was based on a rate of interest of 3% and the current outlook for the economy established by the government’s independent fiscal watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility. The accounts, which detail assumptions made by the authors on long-term trends, show that “on plausible assumptions about future spending pressures, taxes and spending will need to adjust by about 6-6.5% of GDP over time, relative to the projections, to bring the generational accounts into balance”. “This is mostly driven by the upward pressure on spending, especially pensions and health, resulting from demographic pressures. It is not driven primarily by the rise in the national debt resulting from the recent recession, which has had a relatively modest impact on fiscal sustainability for the long term – if there was no national debt at all, the required rise would still be 5.5-6% of GDP.” Tax and spending State pensions Pensions State benefits Tax Economics Budget deficit Financial crisis Public sector pensions Public services policy Phillip Inman guardian.co.uk
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WikiLeaks suspect treated cruelly, says rights group, which accuses psychiatrists of ‘violating ethical duties’ A leading group of doctors in the US concerned with the ethical treatment of patients has questioned the role of military psychiatrists in Quantico, Virginia, where the suspected WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning is being subjected to harsh treatment that some call torture. The advocacy body Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has sounded the alarm over the role of psychiatrists at the brig in the marine base where Manning has been in custody since last July. The group sees the psychiatrists as trapped in a classic case of “dual loyalty”, where their obligations to the military chain of command may conflict with their medical duty to protect their patient. Christy Fujio, author of a forthcoming report on the issue, said the main concern was that psychiatrists were allowing Manning’s continuing solitary confinement. “Even if they do not officially approve it, by continuing to examine him and report back to the government on his condition, they are effectively taking part in security operations. Their failure to call it what it is – cruel and inhumane treatment – constitutes a violation of their ethical duties as doctors.” Manning, who has been charged with passing a mountain of digital US state secrets to WikiLeaks, is under a prevention of injury order (PoI) that requires him to be kept alone in a cell for 23 hours a day and checked every five minutes. Since earlier this month, he has also been stripped naked each night and made to parade in front of officers. Manning himself says the conditions amount to pre-trial punishment provoked by a sarcastic remark he made to guards. Official records kept at the brig, released recently by Manning’s lawyer, reveal that between last August and January military psychiatrists made no fewer than 16 recommendations to their military commanders that Manning should be taken off the PoI restrictions because he was no threat to himself. Typical of the entries was that of 29 October 2010, which stated that Manning “was evaluated by the brig psychiatrist and found fit to be removed from prevention of injury classification from a psychiatric standpoint”. Only once in that five-month period did the psychiatrists conclude that the prisoner should be subjected to the restrictions. Despite the clear medical opinion given, brig commanders have repeatedly ignored the advice and retained the harsh regime. That is in itself, PHR says, an indication that the US government is breaking its own clearly stated rules. The group’s Susan McNamara, a doctor who works with victims of torture from other countries, said Manning’s treatment appeared to be an extension of the interrogation tactics used against terror suspects in Guantánamo. “That is a huge problem, as it is designed to break a person down psychologically. Solitary confinement is a form of sensory deprivation, and if you are depriving a person of the human contact they need that can amount to torture.” She added: “In the US, if a patient was treated in a psychiatric hospital in the same way the military is treating Manning, the federal government would stamp all over it … [it] is disobeying its own rules.” The controversy over Manning’s treatment has reached to the heart of the Obama administration. This week, state department spokesman PJ Crowley resigned, having called the confinement “ridiculous and stupid” and warned it could damage the global standing of the US. Obama himself was forced to defend the regime, saying he had been “assured” by the Pentagon it was in Manning’s own interests. While the Quantico psychiatrists are given credit for having consistently argued that Manning should be removed from the current extreme regime, there are serious questions about whether they are doing enough to force change. Doctors have been under tight ethical guidelines to protect their patients since the framing of the Nuremberg ethic at the end of the second world war. More recently, the American Medical Association ruled that physicians “must oppose and must not participate in torture for any reason … Physicians should strive to change situations in which torture is practised or the potential for torture is great”. PHR has called on all doctors to avoid performing evaluations of patients in a manner that facilitates violations of human rights and condemns doctors who remain silent in the face of human rights abuses. The group believes the psychiatrists should act on their duty to report Manning’s cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and ensure, in line with their ethical duties, that he is kept in the least restrictive environment needed. Bradley Manning US military US national security Human rights United States Ed Pilkington guardian.co.uk
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Special forces say they are winning the battle against Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan Taliban leaders are being “decimated” by special forces in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan, where more than 9,000 British troops are deployed, US and UK commanders have said. They say the next few months will test the strength of the Taliban-led insurgency. “We will see what [the Taliban] bring back to the battlefield in the spring,” said Major General Richard Mills of the US marines, commander of nearly 30,000 British and US troops in Helmand. He was speaking via videolink to London. Echoing the comments, Brigadier George Norton, Mills’s deputy, said the coming months would reveal how resilient the insurgency is. Major General John Lorimer, chief military spokesman for the British chief of defence staff, General David Richards, said large caches of weapons and equipment for making improvised explosive devices were discovered by 1st battalion Royal Irish Regiment in Helmand last month. More than 500 soldiers of the regiment, using 15 helicopters, with fast jets providing cover, also took part in an assault on what was described as an insurgent haven in Helmand’s Nad-e-Ali district. It was the regiment’s biggest operation since it crossed the Rhine in 1945, the MoD said. Mills sidestepped the question when asked when the Afghan army and police would take responsibility for Helmand’s security. The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has said he will announce on 21 March the start of a process of transferring responsibility for security to Afghan forces. The process is due to end in 2014, when the British and US governments say their forces will withdraw from a frontline combat role. The number of UK and US forces in Afghanistan is likely to start being reduced later this summer, after a much-hoped-for success against the insurgency. The number will then be gradually reduced until the end of 2014, when the main task of all foreign troops there will be to train Afghan security forces. Taliban Afghanistan Military Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk
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Government troops close in on centre of resistance as western powers continue deliberations on whether to aid oppostion Libya’s revolution was facing collapse , as Muammar Gaddafi’s forces broke through the last major line of resistance before Benghazi, the heart of the uprising and the seat of the rebel administration. Gaddafi’s forces pushed back the rebels in an air and land assault on the town of Ajdabiya, as the regime moved to crush the revolution once and for all before foreign powers could agree measures in support of the uprising, including a no-fly zone. The rebels had pledged a vigorous defence of Ajdabiya but swiftly lost control of large parts of the town, including the strategically important coastal road, although pockets of fighting continued. The regime’s advance leaves the road open to Benghazi, 90 miles away, where there was growing alarm as word of the defeat spread. “The battle is lost. Gaddafi is throwing everything against us,” a rebel officer who gave his name as General Suleiman told Reuters. The revolutionary leadership promised a fight to the death but some Benghazi residents were fleeing to the Egyptian border last night amid considerable bitterness at the failure of western countries to back up vocal support for the rebels with practical help, including a no-fly zone and military equipment to fight Gaddafi’s better armed forces, some of them trained by the British army. “They have betrayed us,” Ahmed Malen, one of the revolutionary volunteers pasting anti-Gaddafi posters on walls in Benghazi. “If they kill us all, the west will have blood on its hands. They do not believe in freedom. They are cowards.” The regime’s strategy to defeat the rebellion before international support for the uprising could be galvanised seemed to be paying off as the US finally joined British and French support for a draft UN resolution imposing a no-fly zone over Libya. A vote on a draft motion is expected later this week or early next week, which is likely to be too late for the rebels. State television declared: “The town of Ajdabiya has been cleansed of mercenaries and terrorists linked to the al-Qaida organisation.” The defeat in Ajdabiya is the latest in a series of reverses that has seen the fortunes of the revolution rapidly set back after the initial successes that had many Libyans believing that Gaddafi’s regime was on the brink of collapse a fortnight ago. Many in Benghazi are now fearful of retribution by the regime’s agents and saying they have no choice but to fight for their survival. But the rebel army does not appear to have made any significant preparations for the city’s defence. The assault on Ajdabiya took on a familiar pattern with Tripoli’s forces first bombing and then shelling the town. Gaddafi’s army then came at the town from two sides. A call went out through mosques in the town and rebel fighters moved to the front but they said they were outgunned and began pulling back. Some of Ajdabiya’s 135,000 residents had already left. Others immediately piled in to cars and fled along with some of the rebel forces. The revolutionaries initially made a stand at the western entrance to the town but that swiftly collapsed and the street-by-street fighting promised by their military leader, Abdel Fattah Younis, two days ago failed to materialise. Younis, who was Gaddafi’s interior minister and who now has a $4m (£2.48m) bounty on his head, had said that the supply lines to Tripoli’s forces were overstretched and that its soldiers lacked the motivation for street fighting. But that proved to be an overly optimistic interpretation of the situation and Younis’s own, largely inexperienced fighters, many of whom are young men with no military experience, were overcome. Gaddafi’s seizure of Ajdabiya opens the way not only to Benghazi but to the eastern oil town of Tobruk and for the regime to take back control of Libya’s border with Egypt. The main coastal road divides at Ajdabiya, offering Gaddafi’s forces the opportunity to bypass Benghazi to seize towns to the east and then to lay siege to the rebels’ de facto capital from both sides. Libya Middle East Arab and Middle East protests Chris McGreal guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Libyan rebels lost their last western stronghold yesterday, the AP reports. According to witnesses, Moammar Gadhafi’s forces captured Zwara, which was the last city west of Tripoli formerly held by the rebels. The victory gives Gadhafi a complete hold on Libya’s western stretch of coastline, and though rebels still have…
Continue reading …Decades after making his name with Vietnam-era antiwar songs, Bob Dylan is set to perform in Vietnam for the first time, the AP reports. He’ll play in an 8,000-seat university stadium in Ho Chi Minh City, and planners expect the show to sell out. “Bob Dylan is a very…
Continue reading …Hawaiian Alvin Wong is the happiest person in America , based on Gallup data, but what about the unhappiest? The New York Times , using the same statistics relating to well-being, has found her, or at least described her. The least happy person in the US is a short, middle-aged, childless Muslim…
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1980s reggae star, who was awaiting trial for cocaine charges, dies from stab wounds, according to police The police watchdog is investigating the death of the British reggae star Smiley Culture, who has died during a Metropolitan police raid. The 48-year-old singer, whose real name was David Emmanuel, appears to have died on Tuesday from a stab wound sustained as officers visited his house to carry out an arrest warrant. The Press Association news agency reported, citing sources, that the wound may have been self-inflicted. A Scotland Yard spokesman said: “As part of an ongoing operation officers from the Metropolitan police service’s serious and organised crime command today attended a residential address in east Surrey to carry out an arrest warrant. “While they were at the address, an incident occurred during which a 48-year-old man died. Officers from Surrey police attended the incident and it has been formally referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.” The IPCC confirmed that it was looking into the death. A spokeswoman told the Guardian: “The IPCC are independently investigating the death of a man at 7am this morning. Metropolitan police officers went to a house in Warlingham to make an arrest. While they were there, it seems that the man suffered a stab wound and it seems he died at the scene.” Emmanuel, who shot to fame in the 1980s with songs such as Cockney Translation and Police Officer, spoke to the Guardian last year about the legacy of his one of his most famous singles. “Police Officer was a true story — the police used to take my weed. It was better than being arrested, and I made that into a hit … I was invited to meet the Queen, who said she listened to my records in the palace. “Although I paved the way for people like the Streets and Dizzee Rascal, I left the music business because I wasn’t rich.” Reggae Sam Jones guardian.co.uk
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