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Letters: The right to arrest war crime suspects

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 23:04:43 GMT

We are horrified at the proposals by justice secretary Kenneth Clarke to give the director of public prosecutions a veto over arrest warrants in private prosecutions for international crimes (Report, 22 July). The justice secretary's statement appeared to question the ability of magistrates themselves to weed out flimsy cases. To imply that any previous arrest warrants were issued without judges being satisfied of the existence of serious evidence against the person concerned is an insult to the British legal system and the senior magistrates that preside over such cases. Involving the DPP risks adding a political dimension to a legal decision and introduces a source of delay when urgent action may be required to stop a suspect escaping justice.

Since we call on other countries to uphold human rights and international law, our legal system also has to abide by those principles, in particular bringing to justice those responsible for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture and hostage-taking. It's no secret that this move is the result of pressure from the Israeli government to try to ensure that ex-ministers and military staff will not have to face warrants for their arrest on entering this country.

Rather than bending to pressure to change the existing law, our government should be issuing a statement of intent that all those responsible for serious international crimes, whatever their nationality, will be brought to justice if and when the evidence supports criminal prosecution. The proposed changes will apply to everyone, making it more difficult to prosecute all suspects, whether from Israel or any other country involved in systematic human rights violations. Britain must not be seen as a safe haven for anyone suspected of committing such grave international crimes.

Sir Geoffrey Bindman

Daniel Machover

Louise Christian

Alexei Sayle

Miriam Margoyles

Keith Sonnet Deputy general secretary, Unison

Hugh Lanning Deputy general secretary, PCS

Sally Hunt General secretary, UCU

Kevin Courtney Deputy general Secretary, NUT

Andy Dark Assistant general secretar, FBU

Tony Woodley Joint general secretary, Unite

Simon Dubbins International director, Unite

Betty Hunter General secretary, Palestine Solidarity Campaign

Rev Canon Garth Hewitt

Benjamin Zephaniah

Lindsey German Chair, Stop the War

Daud Abdullah Director, Middle East Monitor

Chris Doyle Director Council for Arab-British Understanding

Mohammed Sawalha British Muslim Initiative

Farooq Murad Secretary general, Muslim Council of Britain

Diana Neslen Jews for Justice for Palestinians

Diane Abbott MP

Jeremy Corbyn MP

Emily Thornberry MP

Bruce Kent

Karma Nabulsi

Ahdaf Soueif

Caryl Churchill

John Austin

Eleanor Kilroy

Karen Mitchell

Victoria Brittain

Sarah McSherry

Katherine Craig

Ian McDonald

Penny Maddrell

Jackie Alsaid

Andrew Sanger

David Halpin

Bill Benfield

Yvonne Ridley

Andy Newman

Mohammed Asif

• This letter was amended on 29 July 2010. In the original, Sir Geoffrey Bindman was incorrectly listed as a QC. This has been corrected.

Nazi death camp guard charged over 430,000 Jewish deaths

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:36:00 GMT

Ethnic German, now 88, to be tried in youth court because he was under 21 at the time

An 88-year old former Nazi death camp guard accused of participating in the murder of 430,000 Jews has been charged in a youth court because he was a minor at the time.

It has yet to be decided whether Samuel Kunz, a retired civil servant, who is No 3 on a list of most-wanted former Nazis, will be tried as a minor – which would attract a lesser sentence – or as an adult. He has been charged as a minor because he was under 21 at the time that the extermination programme for Polish Jews, Operation Reinhard, began in January 1942.

"The accused has been indicted on three criminal charges," said Christoph Goeke of Dortmund's state prosecutors. "Firstly, participation in the murder of 430,000 people in the death camp Belzec [in occupied Poland], secondly the single-handed murder of eight people, and thirdly the murder of two people."

Kunz, who lives close to the western German city of Bonn was informed about the charges last week.

Kunz, whose family is ethnic German, was born in August 1921 on the River Volga in Russia, and joined the red army. During the second world war he was captured by the Germans and given the choice of being interned at a POW camp or working with the Nazis.

He allegedly chose the latter and attended the SS training camp at Trawniki in Poland. He subsequently served as a camp guard at Belzec which was a centre of the extermination programme between January 1942 to July 1943 in which a total of 434,508 Jews were murdered, most of them gassed, according SS own records.

Belzec was seen as a murder factory to where prisoners were brought to be killed immediately. It was run by only around a dozen SS men and as many as 120 so-called helpers from Trawniki.

After the war Kunz applied for German citizenship. He worked as a technician for the building ministry. He has so far refused to comment on the charges. He has not been taken into custody because authorities see little danger that he will try to flee.

Investigators began questioning Kunz in January after his name came to light amid preparation for the trial of 90-year-old John Demjanjuk.

Demjanjuk is charged with taking part in the murder of 27,900 people at the Sobibor death camp in Poland. His trial in Munich, at which Kunz has also been called as a witness, is expected to last until December.

Kunz has given evidence at several trials since the 1960s, all related to Trawniki, but until now has never faced charges.

Efraim Zuroff, of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, called Kunz's indictment a "positive reflection" of the way in which "the German prosecution policy has considerably widened the circle of suspects".

Arizona police confused by disputed immigration law

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:39:14 GMT

Controversial legislative crack down on illegal workers could be reversed as early as next week at the court of appeal

Police in Arizona were thrown into confusion today when a controversial law cracking down on illegal immigration finally came into force, despite crucial parts being struck out at the last minute.

A ruling by a judge yesterday blocking two main elements of the law left police forces unsure how to react. Some officers said they would enact the parts that remained while others refused to have anything to do with it until the legal situation was clarified.

Latino groups staged protests throughout the state today against the law, which came into effect just after midnight yesterday.

The Arizona governor, Jan Brewer, was today planning to launch an appeal against the judge's ruling and to have the original law reinstated. That could be done by the court of appeal in San Francisco as early as next week.

She promised, if necessary, to take it all the way to the supreme court, though it would not be heard until the next session, beginning in October.

The row has highlighted the plight of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the US, of whom about half a million are thought to live in Arizona. Immigration is a matter for the federal government but the Arizona legislature took matters into its own hands by passing the legislation, which is opposed by the Obama administration.

The judge, Susan Bolton, yesterday ruled against the most inflammatory part of the legislation that would have allowed police to question suspects about their immigration status. Some warn this would lead to racial profiling.

Parts of the law that survived Bolton's ruling include a ban on "sanctuary cities", areas of the state that are relatively safe for illegal workers, and making it a criminal offence for an employer to knowingly take on illegal immigrants.

The police have been divided on the issue since the start, with some regarding illegal immigration as a low priority and also fearing that they could be open to law suits accusing them of racial profiling.

Others have welcomed the law, regarding illegal immigration - and the ability of drug smugglers to pass relatively easily over the border from Mexico - as a major problem. Sheriff Larry Deaver, head of Cochise County, on the border with Mexico, said todayhe would implement the law: "We have to win this. We have to stop the flow."

Trinidad and Tobago in a quandary over death penalty

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:24:18 GMT

Island paradise has such a high murder rate that the new government is considering restoring capital punishment

Over the course of four days beginning on 4 June 1999, Nankisoon Boodram (aka Dole Chadee) and eight of his criminal gang were hanged in Port of Spain, Trinidad, for the murder of one of their alleged associates and his family. I understand that on the day of Chadee's hanging, a man was murdered at a gas station one block away from the gallows and another was murdered in the sleepy fishing village of Mayaro. These, and the countless other murders which followed that weekend of hangings, are the examples given by opponents of the mandatory death penalty in Trinidad and Tobago to demonstrate the senselessness of government-sanctioned homicide as a deterrent for murder.

Capital punishment might still be on the statute book, but no one has been executed here since that same year, 1999. The debate over the death penalty has renewed since a new government was elected in May with a strong commitment to cutting the climbing murder rate.

However, the abolitionist voices appear to be in the minority in this twin-island republic where the new prime minister has predicted that there will be 550 murders by the end of the year. As a point of reference, in 2005 the murder rate in Trinidad was 19 times that in England and 16 times that in Canada . Violent crime is a terrifying reality in a nation of only 1.3 million people occupying two islands whose combined surface area is approximately 5,000 sq km. In the case of crime, you see, size matters.

In a small place, you know your neighbours. We know each other's licence plate numbers, telephone numbers and where we bank. There are only so many schools that your children might attend and places that you might frequent for a drink after work or a theatrical performance. Life is intimate. It is this intimacy that exacerbates the effects of crime.

In New York City, where I lived for years, I knew two people who had been mugged in the late 1970s and none since. In Trinidad, we all know people who have been robbed, kidnapped, raped or murdered. It is not a pretty picture for a place that is meant to look something like paradise. In this context, it is no surprise that many people have called for a resumption of the death sentence; these include a senior cabinet minister and recent acting prime minister, who says he believes it will make a dent on crime.

Trinidad and Tobago is one of only a few countries in the world where the penalty for all types of murder, whatever the circumstances, is death. However, as a university report reveals, the conviction rate for murder in Trinidad is so low, the death penalty is clearly not an effective deterrent.

Douglas Mendes, a University of the West Indies lecturer and abolitionist, adds that the most effective deterrent for crime is the speed of capture and conviction rather than the nature of the punishment. Gregory Delzin, another local attorney who has appeared in death-penalty cases since 1989, believes firmly that criminal activity is motivated by the benefits of crimes and not the consequences. The likelihood of the process of the law being invoked successfully is what creates respect for the law. Both advocates believe that if the local police force had the tools and personnel necessary to detect crimes quickly and apprehend wrong-doers, it would deny criminals the fruit of their labour and thereby reduce the criminal incentive. This would need to operate in tandem with a judicial system in which matters are dealt with expeditiously and a prison system which invests in rehabilitation.

In The Hanging Tree – Execution and the English People 1770-1868, the author, Vic Gatrell, reviews that period in English history when hanging was the preferred punishment for many crimes, including picking pockets, and where children could be executed for stealing. The great irony is that high rates of pickpocketing were recorded at these very public executions.

Stepping away from those most directly connected to the legal process, I asked a Trinidadian artist his view on the government's intention to conduct more hangings. "What we need to do," he said, "is plant 1,000 immortelle trees on the hills of San Fernando and ask everyone in Laventille to paint their houses white."

When you see yourself as beautiful, you don't want to do ugly again.

This seemed to me an artist's equivalent of the broken window criminological theory that if you raise the psyche of a community by fixing the small things, it will have a positive impact on the temptation to deface one's surroundings and even reduce the tendency to commit serious crimes. In this small place, perhaps this is where we should all start.

Maxine Williams is a lawyer with international and human rights experience

Full judgment: Tchenguiz v Imerman; Imerman v Imerman [2010] EWCA Civ 908

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:16:41 GMT

Read the judgment from the Court of Appeal that ruled that separated couples will no longer be able to use secretly obtained documents to reveal their spouse's hidden assets in divorce proceedings

Prosecutors call for human trafficking victims to testify

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:10:48 GMT

Authorities launch drive to boost conviction rate as China is revealed to be one of the main sources of trafficked people

Prosecutors have responded to criticism they are securing too few convictions for human trafficking by making a plea to victims to come forward and testify against their traffickers.

The director of public prosecutions, Kier Starmer, launched a draft policy on prosecuting a crime he described as "modern-day slavery" in a bid to increase the number of prosecutions for trafficking in England and Wales. Last year 102 people were prosecuted for sex trafficking and another 19 for labour trafficking.

The move comes as the Crown Prosecution Service announced a growing problem of trafficking into Britain from Nigeria, Vietnam and China, which are believed to be the major source of victims, after many years in which eastern Europe had that status. In particular young women and girls are being trafficked from Nigeria to work as prostitutes, while boys and young men from Vietnam are being used in cannabis farms located in converted homes in residential areas across Britain. Victims of both sex are being trafficked from China into prostitution and forced labour such as domestic slavery, the CPS said.

"It is important that those who help victims understand our role in dealing with human trafficking cases," said Starmer. "This new public policy will be the go-to guide on the prosecution process for support groups … and help them give informed advice to victims, which we hope will ultimately lead more victims supporting prosecutions. Combating human trafficking is a high priority for the CPS and the criminal justice system – we are committed to tackling and disrupting this modern form of slavery."

Campaigners for trafficking victims have been critical of the authorities' response to the crime.

"Over recent years the government has woefully underperformed in securing convictions for human trafficking," said Christine Beddoe, director of Ecpat UK. "There is no incentive for victims to come forward because of the lack of protection. Even recent efforts to improve the identification of victims through a national referral mechanism are being undermined by the Home Office's insistence on seeing too many of these exploited and vulnerable individuals as immigration offenders."

Victims are often reluctant to come forward because they fear retribution against themselves or their families back home and because they distrust the police, especially if they are from a country which suffers from a corrupt law enforcement system.

The CPS wants victims to know they will be protected through the prosecution process and to encourage them to come forward with vital evidence against the person or gang that exploited them in order to secure a conviction.

The draft policy states that victims can be screened from the defendant in court, public galleries can be cleared and the victim can give evidence through a TV link, even from abroad if they have returned to their home country.

Successfully prosecutions have proved difficult in recent years, partly because prosecutors must present juries with evidence that the suspected trafficker recruited the victim and moved them, which often requires evidence from the home country; that the victim has been forced into exploitation; and of the exploitation itself. To show all these, the victim's own evidence is a key starting point for investigators.

The CPS wants charities and support groups who assist victims of trafficking to explain to them how the prosecution system in the UK will protect them if they come forward, and is calling on agencies such as the Health and Safety Executive, the department of work and pensions and the UK Border Agency which come across trafficking victims to do the same.

What's faith got to do with it? | James Harris

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:29:58 GMT

Religious belief is associated with a belief in the sanctity of life, which makes constructive argument impossible

The question: Do we have a right to death?

Having been kindly invited to participate in this debate on assisted dying on CIF belief, I am in danger of biting the hand that feeds me, because the question I would like to raise is what has belief got to do with it?

You could argue that belief has nothing to do with the debate on assisted dying. Support or opposition to a change in the law is not pre-determined by faith. As a campaigner for a change in the law I am very aware that many of our supporters would describe themselves as religious. And for some, such as the Rev Professor Paul Badham, their faith helps inform their opinion that people should not have to suffer against their wishes at the end of life. I am also aware some people who do not hold a religious faith, such as Lord Carlile, are strongly opposed to a change in the law. This analysis is often promoted by opponents who are keen that they are not stereotyped as religious. But, despite the notable exceptions to the rule there is truth in the stereotype.
 
The 2010 British Social Attitudes Survey found that 71% of religious people and 92% non-religious people believe that a doctor should be allowed to end the life of a patient with an incurable disease. The discrepancy between these levels of support can be explained by the impact of religion, and specifically the principle of the sanctity of life on some people's views. A point that some people of faith are willing to acknowledge, in recent interview, Hilary White, a writer for LifeSiteNews.com, said:

"I'm being glib, but not inaccurate. While we like to say that the pro-life position can be apprehended and held by anyone with any religious affiliation or none, the reality is that in practice, there are certain factors that, shall we say, mitigate strongly against atheism or even simple modern secular irreligion allowing the pro-life position, at least in its fullness."

And these beliefs affect decision making. A 2009 survey by Professor Seale found that religious belief impacted on the end-of-life decisions doctors made on behalf of their patients. Those who said they were religious were less likely to take legal treatment decisions where they expected or intended to hasten their patient's death. This is a cause for concern, because for some doctors the sanctity of life may be a more pressing concern than the quality of the patient's death.

This position is difficult for me, because the sanctity of life is not an argument that some people of faith expose against a change in the law. They tend to put forward pragmatic arguments about potential safeguards, or perceived problems in other jurisdictions that have legalised and regulated assisted dying. The difficulty being that if I answer their concerns, which on the whole I think that I can, they are still left with an immutable opposition to a change in the law.

The retort is that advocates of change support providing terminally ill adults with the choice of an assisted death regardless of the arguments put forward by opponents. However we do listen. Lord Joffé, in seeking a way forward on the issue of assisted dying, has over time (as highlighted by his recent post on CIF Belief) revised the legislative framework he feels appropriate to ensure potentially vulnerable people are protected from abuse, whilst also ensuring people suffering at the end of their lives aren't forced to continue to suffer against their wishes.

As new legal cases come up, personal stories appear in the media and we debate the issue, but is anyone listening to each other? Maybe it's time to call a truce. Those on both sides of the debate who hold immutable views should declare them. This would leave the rest of us, religious and non-religious alike, to get on with the difficult, but not impossible task, of finding the right legal framework to deal with a specific problem: despite access to good quality care and treatment some people will suffer against their wishes at the end of life, so how do we enable them to have an assisted death, if that is their wish, without imposing such a choice on those who do not want it?

Compromise, between supporters and opponents can result in a law which achieves both. Failure to compromise will result in more cases of people taking desperate decisions at the end of their life, or suffering against their wishes, because of some people's unsubstantiated fears of creating a duty to die. 

Drawn swords and driving sheep

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:00:00 GMT

"I hear you're about to be made a freeman of the City of London," said UpTights today.

"Yes," said OldSmoothie puffing out his chest as if we were meant to be impressed. "Should help my case for becoming a people's peer as well."

"Yeh, right," said BusyBody. "Because being given some sort of masonic award for having eaten lots of dinners in an obscure City livery company is really in touch and down with the, er, people."

"What, are you in some way suggesting that it's a meaningless, out-dated and irrelevant title given by a group of pompous non-entities to one of their own?" asked UpTights sarcastically.

"Although when you put it like that, I can see why he might draw the parallel with the Lords," smiled TheVamp.

"But doesn't it come with all sorts of rights?" said TheCreep. "Like driving sheep over London Bridge and going about the City with a drawn sword."

"I'm afraid not," said HeadofChambers. "I once had to advise on these rights and I'm afraid they're all bunkum. Exemption from tolls on animals and a few other minor things were about your lot even back in the day."

"Oh don't worry Mr CreepyWeepy," said TheVamp with mock sympathy. "You can draw your sword for me any time you like."

With which he went bright red and disappeared into the corner of the room.

BabyBarista is a fictional account of a junior barrister practising at the English Bar, written by barrister and writer Tim Kevan. For more information and to read posts from the last few years visit babybarista.com. Cartoons by Alex Williams, author of 101 Ways to Leave the Law.

Time to review police use of 'joint enterprise'

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 06:59:43 GMT

The police are using this ancient concept to tackle urban gangs, but can it be fairly administered?

The centuries-old legal doctrine of "joint enterprise" has been taken up with enthusiasm by modern policemen and prosecutors. It provides one remedy for the increasingly intractable problem of how you prosecute urban gangs. However, its increased use also raises very real issues of fairness, as has been voiced by campaigners for reform, who were disappointed this week when permission to appeal was dismissed in the controversial case of Jordan Cunliffe , a partially blind teenager convicted of murder because he was present at the attack and did nothing to prevent it.

The concept of joint enterprise is not new. In the eighteenth century, if someone was killed as the result of a duel, the concept gave the authorities far-reaching powers to prosecute. They could convict not just the men taking part in the duel but also their supporters, those holding their coats and even doctors standing ready to attend to the wounded.

The most famous modern use of joint enterprise was in convicting Derek Bentley of shooting a police officer in 1952. The actual murder was committed by his accomplice, Christopher Craig. But, because Craig was only 16 at the time, he escaped hanging. Bentley was heard to utter the words "Let him have it", so he was convicted of murder under the principle of joint enterprise and hanged in 1953.

But the police appear to have stepped up the use of the doctrine in recent years to deal with the specific problem of urban gangs. Gangs are a big issue in the inner city. And this goes beyond the tabloid headlines. People feel menaced by them. Many of the most unpleasant phenomena of modern youth culture take place in gangs, notably gang rape.

In a gang, an under-educated young man finds friendship, family, possibilities for entrepreneurial activity and the bravado to commit horrific acts. Gangs are bad for the communities that they flourish in and bad for the young men involved. In certain communities, young men trying to keep their head down and pass their exams often find themselves on the fringes of criminal gangs because to do otherwise is to risk social ostracism.

But prosecuting gangs has proved an increasingly intractable task for the authorities. The gulf in culture, class and race between many gangs in modern urban Britain and the authorities trying to bring them to book makes it harder than ever to expect a penitent gang member to "crack" and tell the police all they know. On the contrary, I have had a number of instances in my own constituency where a whole gang sees someone murdered or raped, but nobody will admit to seeing anything.

This is where the joint enterprise concept starts to look attractive. The authorities are going out of their way to let young people know of its existence. In a police video presentation for young people, the policeman says: "If you are involved in a murder in any way, shape or form we will come to you. We will find you. We will come at a time when you don't expect us and we will enter your life. We will invade your home. Invariably your front door will be removed. We will enter. This will be in front of your parents and your family, possibly your friends, and we will change your life."

But, increasingly, concerns are being expressed about the use of joint enterprise against gang activity and whether it is fair. The (then) Lord Chief Justice Lord Philips set out his reservations in his Essex University/Clifford Chance lecture on reforming the law of homicide in 2008. The Law Commission has echoed these doubts.

As a strong supporter of civil liberties, but also as someone who has first-hand experience of the problems posed by gang culture in urban Britain, I can see both sides of the argument on the use of "joint enterprise". There can be no doubt that the law warrants review.

Diane Abbott is MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington

Romanians jailed for making their children beg and steal

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 18:30:33 GMT

Speranta Mihai amd Gheorghe Mihai plead guilty to child cruelty and benefit fraud for activities across south-east England

A Romanian couple who exploited their seven children as beggars and thieves in and around London have been jailed at Reading crown court for two and a half years for child cruelty.

Speranta Mihai, a Roma who lived in Slough and took her children, now aged between two and 16, begging and stealing across south-east England in a systematic operation, was sentenced by Mr Recorder Whittaker alongside her husband, Gheorghe Mihai, who pleaded guilty to child cruelty, benefit and tax fraud and money laundering.

The Mihais were arrested in a dawn raid by officers from Operation Golf, the Metropolitan police's investigation into what it believes is Europe's largest human trafficking ring. It is centering on the small Romanian town of Tandarei from which as many as 1,000 children have been trafficked across Europe for the purposes of benefit fraud, begging and theft.

In the year preceding his arrest, Gheorghe Mihai, 36, passed £47,000 through his bank accounts, including £35,000 in tax credits, housing and child benefit that he defrauded from the state.

When the police arrived, most of the children were found sleeping on the floor of the sparsely furnished house in the Berkshire town with little food.

Four required dental treatment and three suffered from infestations of headlice. One of the youngest children was later found to have scarring consistent with cigarette burns and another with a lesion. The injuries happened while the children were in their parents' care, the court was told.

The prosecution said the evidence added up to a general pattern of "neglect and cruelty" and that – despite defence denials that the children were trafficked from Romania for exploitation – the children had been brought to the UK expressly for that purpose.

Speranta Mihai, thought to be aged around 33, would take her children begging in Luton, Wembley, Southall, Soho, Hyde Park, Edgware Road and Oxford Street, as part of what the court heard was the Mihai "family business".

"It is an act of cruelty to bring children up in a life of crime," said Gareth Branston for the prosecution. "The Mihai family business is begging or stealing and that is the education they gave their children."

None of the children were in school and the couple were both convicted of child cruelty for failing to educate them. Speranta Mihai was convicted on a second count of child cruelty for "causing her children to be engaged in begging".

She was warned repeatedly by the authorities not to beg, but that turned out to be pointless, the prosecution said.

One day she was stopped by police at Edgware Road and placed on a train at Paddington back to Slough. Three hours later she was found begging with her children outside Bayswater underground station in London.

It was part of "a relentless pattern of movement to exploit their children as tools for begging and stealing", the prosecution said.

Members of the Mihai family were stopped by law enforcement agencies for begging and theft 99 times, following their arrival in the UK in 2007.

Their behaviour was consistent with "complex grooming and behaviour patterns that keep children locked in a cycle of exploitation", according to a statement read out in court from child trafficking expert, Christine Beddoe, the chief executive of ECPAT UK, the anti-trafficking charity.

The children are now in local authority care.

Officers from Operation Golf said the traffickers' own estimates suggest each child can earn as much as £100,000 a year in the UK. In recent years, as many as 100 lavish new homes have sprung up alongside the shacks and mud tracks of the Roma enclave in Tandarei, eastern Romania, thought to have been built with the proceeds of child exploitation.

In April, officers from Operation Golf made 18 arrests in Tandarei during dawn raids with Romanian police and senior members of a gang suspected of having trafficked 272 children, many to the UK. They found dozens of guns, including AK-47s, pump-action shotguns and rifles, travel documents, thousands of pounds in £50 denominations, and bundles of euros and local currency.

YouTube banned by Russian court

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:15:09 GMT

Court in Khabarovsk region orders internet provider Rosnet to block YouTube over ultra-nationalist video

Russia's blogosphere reacted with anger today after a regional court banned YouTube because it carried a single video containing "extremist" content.

The court in Komsomolsk-on-Amur in Khabarovsk region in the Russian far east ordered Rosnet, a local internet provider, to block YouTube as well as three online libraries and a website that archives deleted web pages.

The regional ban was made because YouTube hosted Russia For Russians, an ultra-nationalist video which was added to the justice ministry's federal list of banned extremist materials after a separate court decision in Samara region in November.

The other four sites – Web.archives.org, Lib.rus.ec, Thelib.ru and Zhurnal.ru – all carried copies of Hitler's Mein Kampf.

Anton Nosik, Russia's leading internet guru, condemned the decision. "The level of crassness in this court ruling is typical of legal proceedings concerning the internet in Russia," he said. Google, the owner of YouTube, said the ruling violated Russians' constitutional right to freedom of information.

Many bloggers also decried the ban, warning it could be a slippery slope to tighter censorship across the country.

"I can imagine it now," wrote Ghost82 on LiveJournal. "Russia in 2015, YouTube is banned everywhere. In search of a gulp of air, people travel to the border with Georgia where they will sit with their laptops and pay unimaginable sums to connect to the internet via powerful Wi-Fi transmitters for a taste of depraved western civilisation."

Alexander tweeted on RuTvit: "YouTube has been given to understand that Russia, Pakistan and North Korea have much in common."

An engineer with Rosnet said the company had suggested prosecutors should contact the portals concerned directly to request they take down the offensive material, rather than issuing a blanket ban. "They [prosecutors] remained deaf to these pleas," he told the Gazeta.ru news website. Rosnet is appealing the ruling.

While television is tightly controlled by the state, Russia's soft authoritarian government has so far done little to rein in the internet. Social media and blogging sites are popular and provide a vital outlet for opposition and civil movements.

However, a package of laws to be reviewed by parliament in October could give the security services new powers to close down sites at short notice.

The YouTube ruling is likely to be an embarrassment for President Dmitry Medvedev, who recently launched his own channel on the video-sharing site.

Other countries that have banned YouTube include China, Pakistan, Turky and Iran.

Letters: Protest at shocking Tomlinson decision

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:05:47 GMT

The shocking decision by the Crown Prosecution Service not to charge any officers over the death of Ian Tomlinson (Editorial, 23 July) exposes the root-and-branch corruption of the justice system. Rather than protecting the innocent, the police, CPS and Independent Police Complaints Commission have been shown to protect each other's backs. From the start, when the IPCC accepted the police line that no CCTV cameras witnessed the attack on Tomlinson, through Dr Freddy Patel's botched first postmortem, up to this latest scandal, the justice system has closed ranks to protect its own.

The fact that PC Simon Harwood, who struck Tomlinson before he died, had previously been investigated for alleged aggressive behaviour and yet was allowed to join the notoriously violent Territorial Support Group is an outrage. As revealed by the Guardian last November, 5,000 complaints were made about the activities of the TSG over four years, yet only nine were upheld.

Tomlinson's case is far from the first. Since 1969 over 1,000 people have died in police custody in Britain, yet not a single police officer has been charged with manslaughter or murder during this time. The Tomlinson family should be given public funding should they decide to continue the legal battle for justice for Ian – as should all families seeking justice for those who have died at the hands of the police. They should also have the right to see PC Harwood's disciplinary proceedings conducted in the open. We will be picketing the offices of the director of public prosectuions in London at midday today.

Patrick Ward United Campaign Against Police Violence, Samantha Rigg-David Sean Rigg Justice and Change Campaign, Janet Alder Sister of Christopher Alder, Saqib Deshmukh and Zia Ullah Justice for Habib "Paps" Ullah, Bob Crow General secretary, RMT, John O Miscarriages of Justice UK, Chris Knight and Camilla Power G20 Meltdown/Democracy Village, Andy Hewett and Teresa Delaney Co-conveners, Green Left, Martin Smith Socialist Workers party, Emily Apple Fitwatch, Anna Mazzola Hickman & Rose, Andy May Defend Peaceful Protest, Ian Bone, Jeff Parks Legal Defence & Monitoring Group

Half the Sky: how the other half suffer

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 23:06:23 GMT

Half the Sky has been described as 'a brutal awakening' and is a bestseller in the US. But can its accounts of violence and injustice to women in the developing world really come as such a surprise?

It's unusual for a book that takes its title and its epigraph – "Women hold up half the sky" – from Mao Zedong to receive such critical and popular acclaim in the US as Half the Sky, by Pulitzer-prizewinning American journalists Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. It's not until page 177 that we learn who actually said the words that figure on the dedication page simply as "Chinese proverb". Then it turns out that husband and wife team Kristof and WuDunn don't really believe them anyway, for the last words of the book urge us to "get on with it and speed up the day when women truly hold up half the sky."

Nothing in Half the Sky: How to Change the World is new or news, although it is sometimes made to appear so. In chapter 11 Kristof and WuDunn describe microcredit as a "revolution sweeping the developing world". The Grameen bank was pioneered in Bangladesh 44 years ago. It has been a proper bank since 1983, owned by more than 8 million borrowers, 97% of whom are women, with a loan collection rate of almost 98%. Kristof and WuDunn mention Muhammad Yunus, who won a Nobel prize for the idea in 2006, but only to describe the motivation of Roshaneh Zafar who set up the Pakistani version, Kashf, in 1996. Kashf has yet to reach its millionth client; meanwhile a variety of microfinance corporations followed the business plan of the Grameen bank and are now handling $25bn (£16bn) worth of loans. Kristof and WuDunn tend to pussyfoot around the reasons that the preferred clients for microcredit are female: firstly they suggest that poverty has greater impact on women; the business reason is that women's credit performance is better than men's; the moral reason that women don't spend the money on their own immediate gratification, but invest it in family, business and community.

Yet it would seem from the worldwide reaction to Half the Sky – since it was first published in the US in September it has sold over 200,000 hardback copies; the paperback has now been on the New York Times bestseller lists for seven weeks – that it has surprised people. Melinda Gates found it "a brutal awakening". Where can she have been? The jacket quote from Khaled Hosseini, bestselling author of The Kite Runner, nails what, to me at least, is worrisome about the book: for him it is "a savage indictment of gender inequality in the developing world". True: the developed world gets off scot-free.

We begin with the story of Cambodian Srey Rath, who went to Thailand to work, was forced into prostitution and traded to Malaysia, succeeded in escaping, was imprisoned under Malaysian anti-immigrant law, and released after a year only to be sold by the police to a trafficker who sold her on to a brothel in Thailand. The justification for prefacing Half the World with this story is that "Rath's saga offers a glimpse of the brutality inflicted routinely on women and girls in much of the world." Routinely? Though such cases are far too easy for journalists to find, the inference that they are routine indicts whole nations of criminal misogyny.

The trafficking of women from the European countries of Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Moldova and the Ukraine to other European countries, merits a sentence. We are never reminded that the US is a prime destination for trafficked individuals. Instead, the US appears as the potential saviour in practically all cases. When Rath finally escaped from the Thai brothel and returned to Cambodia she was put in touch with an American charity set up by a Newsweek journalist specifically to help trafficked girls; the charity gave her $400 to set herself up as a street trader.

The authors describe brutality towards women as "a malignancy that is slowly gaining recognition as one of the paramount human rights problems of this century." Raising awareness of brutality towards women is not a slow process; the problem is rather that the flash of outrage soon dissipates, to lie dormant until somebody or something triggers it again, while the vileness carries inexorably on, partly because the concerned public is unaware of its own misogyny.

Panic about trafficking has gripped the British on and off since the uproar about white-slaving in the 1880s, when ladies who "routinely" ill-treated their maids put on their hats and went to hear rousing denunciations of the evil foreigners who snatched beautiful young Englishwomen off the streets and sold them into prostitution. It is 100 years since the passing in the US of the White-Slave Traffic Act, usually called the Mann Act. When the UN general assembly adopted the convention for the suppression of the traffic in persons and of the exploitation of the prostitution of others in 1949, it was the culmination of a series of enactments designed to deal with what was perceived to be an international scourge. For Kristof and WuDunn the passing of the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 was "a milestone in raising awareness of international trafficking on the global agenda." As year on year the US fails to pay its UN dues, and most Americans are unaware of the existence of other hemispheres anyway, perhaps it was.

The book lays out "an agenda for the world's women focusing on three particular abuses: sex trafficking and forced prostitution; gender-based violence, including honour killings and mass rape; and maternal mortality, which still needlessly claims one woman a minute". Gender-based violence here includes wife-beating in Asia, but not wife-killing in Britain or America. "Rape has become endemic in South Africa" we learn – as if rape had not coexisted with apartheid. The solution is apparently a gadget called Rapex, "a tube, with barbs inside", which a woman puts in her vagina before she goes on a date. The Kristof and WuDunn slant on this craziness is that "the Rapex is a reflection of the gender-based violence that is ubiquitous in much of the developing world."

Misogyny is as real in the US as anywhere else on earth. People who think charity begins at home will be driven to apoplexy by the authors' certainty that the US has the answers. Global figures for domestic violence are cited, but examples of women whose sexual experience began with a rape "or attempted rape" are drawn from Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa. The evidence about the involvement of women soldiers in sexual violence is taken not from Abu Ghraib, but from Sierra Leone's civil war, from Haiti and Rwanda. In contemplating these horrors Kristof and WuDunn sometimes become downright owlish in their capacity for incomprehension.

"Women have suffered grievously in the genocides of Rwanda and Darfur. Men too … In Darfur, after interviewing several women who had been raped when leaving their camps to get firewood, we asked the obvious question: 'If women are raped when they get firewood… why don't the men collect firewood?'"

Answers on a postcard – and let's not forget that immediately after the war the population of Rwanda was 70% female. In a later chapter the authors sing the praises of Rwanda for having the highest share of women members of parliament, without appearing to suspect that this may also be a consequence of genocide. With no sign of a shudder they intone that Rwanda is "one of the least corrupt, fastest growing and best governed countries in Africa". One of them? You have to wonder what the others are.

Kristof and WuDunn have done the usual Pulitzer thing of finding specific cases to illustrate general points: "Frankly," they write, "we hesitate to pile on the data, since even when numbers are persuasive, they are not galvanising. A growing collection of psychological studies show that statistics have a dulling effect, while it is individual stories that move people to act." Individual cases cannot prove that behaviours are routine or ubiquitous. The authors state with confidence that: "No group systematically abuses young women more cruelly than mothers-in-law." Mothers-in-law do not form a group; the group with whom they identify is their extended family. Sure, a vicious mother-in-law can drive a young wife to self-harm and suicide, but in village society a wise mother-in-law knows that, if she is to build a strong cohesive family, she needs to earn the love of her daughters-in-law. In the developed world she wouldn't have the option.

"So while the primary purpose of a new movement on behalf of women is to stop slavery and honour killings," they write, "another is to expose young Americans to life abroad so that they, too, can learn and grow and blossom – and then continue to tackle the problems as adults." Nothing in this book would suggest to young Americans that their lifestyle perpetuates the poverty that lies at the root of developing-world brutality towards women. Do they know who made their jeans? Do they realise that they haven't the option of buying American-made, because if they do the Asian sweatshop worker will be thrown out of work? International aid programmes are infested with people seeking their own salvation at other people's expense; if Kristof and WuDunn have their way there will be a whole lot more of them.

A number of explanations for the intractable rate of maternal mortality that continues to bedevil the world are suggested – but poverty is left out. Doctors Allan Rosenfield and Deborah Maine wrote their seminal article on maternal mortality for the Lancet in 1985; in 1999 Rosenfield received a $50m grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to set up a programme called Averting Maternal Death and Disability. If brilliance and application had been enough Rosenfield might have done it. But mothers are still dying, and for the same reason: poverty. Poverty leads to illiteracy, low status, poor nutrition, teenage pregnancy, poor physical development, lack of infrastructure, and lack of resources and expertise. Multimillion-dollar programmes enter the scenario much too late. Meanwhile, as western doctors win awards for setting up humanitarian programmes in third-world countries, we harvest the doctors who trained in those same countries, whose skills are better adapted to the needs of rich patients than to those of their own rural poor.

The chapter entitled "Family planning and the 'God gulf'" argues that "secular bleeding hearts and religious bleeding hearts will have to forge a common cause" if there is to be "a successful movement on behalf of women in poor countries". The discussion of this issue is dominated by American policy in regard to support of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and any other family planning organisations that can be found to have supported abortion programmes. Kristof and WuDunn have no objection to the involvement of religious organisations in international programmes – indeed they counsel getting the Pentecostalists on board because they already have so much influence in the developing world. As far as they are concerned, dealing with the agonies of women is a matter for charity, which they sometimes misname as philanthropy. The love of humanity has to be a better motive for intervention than the love of God, you would think. Or even feminism, a word that the authors use very oddly, usually to pillory an attitude they find fundamentally unreasonable.

They praise the small Campaign for Female Education charity (Camfed) which was set up by Ann Cotton to fund girls' education, first in Zimbabwe, and now in Zambia, Tanzania and Ghana, because of what it doesn't do. "We highlight Camfed partly because we believe an international women's organisation needs to focus less on holding conventions or lobbying for new laws, and more time in places like rural Zimbabwe, listening to communities and helping them get their girls into schools."

Without feminism it's difficult to imagine how an international women's movement could get off the ground. Anyone would think that there was a naughty international women's organisation that did nothing but have conventions and lobby for new laws. The equal rights amendment was never ratified in sainted America; American feminists might find that embarrassing, but they gave up lobbying about it long ago. Funnily enough, when it comes to discussing microcredit, Kristof and WuDunn decide that new laws and more women in parliament are exactly what is needed.

The authors have no critique of globalism to offer, nor do they appear to grasp how western economic power keeps the developing world too poor to develop. Astoundingly, they suggest that what women need is more sweatshops. "The factories prefer young women, perhaps because they're more docile and perhaps because their small fingers are more nimble for assembly or sewing. So the rise of manufacturing has generally raised the opportunities and the status of women. The implication is that instead of denouncing sweatshops, we in the west should be encouraging manufacturing in poor countries, particularly in Africa and the Muslim world."

One of the best parts of the book, unexpected given its own brief, is the short discussion of female genital-cutting and the success of a grassroots organisation called Tostan in changing attitudes.

The impulse behind Half the Sky is a good one. Anyone who has endured the talkfests of the UN for decade after weary decade, and seen massive aid projects miss their mark and collapse in a welter of bad faith, will echo the authors' certainty that it is now down to ordinary people to do practical things for other ordinary people. It is tempting to believe that with "our loose change we can loosen chains" and that the internet will make real help possible as it has never been before. The only really enviable privilege that the privileged have is the chance to do good. Kristof and WuDunn make it sound easy. It's practically impossible, but Half the Sky does make you want to try.

Half the Sky: How to Change the World is published by Virago on 5 August

Fugitive tycoon Asil Nadir offered deal to return to Britain for trial

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 12:49:19 GMT

Judge gives Asil Nadir bail on condition he returns from northern Cyprus to face possible fraud allegations

Fugitive tycoon Asil Nadir was given bail today on condition he returns to Britain. Nadir is said to be willing to come back to face trial after fleeing to northern Cyprus 17 years ago in the face of fraud allegations.

Old Bailey judge Mr Justice Bean said he hoped his ruling would end the "legal limbo" which existed since Nadir fled Britain. He also quashed an arrest warrant for him and imposed 10 conditions on bail.

They included a requirement for Nadir to be at the Old Bailey for a hearing on 3 September .

Nadir, 69, was facing 66 counts of theft involving £34m fraud allegations in May 1993 when he flew from Britain to the Mediterranean island, which has no extradition treaty with the UK.

The Conservative party donor fled Britain after his Polly Peck business empire collapsed. He had appeared in court the previous year but had not technically surrendered to his bail.

So, the judge said, a subsequent arrest warrant, issued on the basis that he had breached his bail, was not valid.

His legal team told the court he was now willing to return to face trial if he was granted bail. The Serious Fraud Office had agreed not to oppose bail if the stringent conditions were imposed though it had argued he should return to the jurisdiction before being granted bail.

Victor Temple QC, for the SFO, said Nadir should return first and not use the court "as a bargaining chamber".

Nadir insists he will come back to Britain in time for a hearing at the Old Bailey in September.

The judge said: "Mr Nadir has indicated a wish to return to this jurisdiction to stand his trial. I think it is desirable that the legal limbo as to Mr Nadir's bail status be brought to an end and he be given the opportunity to show he does intent now to submit to the jurisdiction of this court."

Conditions

The conditions on bail are that he: be permitted to apply for a British passport to return to the UK; deposits £250,000 with the court as security; gives the SFO 72 hours notice of his return to Britain and identify which flight he will be on; surrenders his passport to the SFO within eight hours of landing; within eight hours he attends a location chosen by the SFO in order to be electronically tagged; report each week to a police station to be agreed; resides at an address in Greater London notified to the SFO; surrenders any other travel document or passports and undertakes not to apply for any more; does not travel to anywhere within the confines of any port or airport once in the jurisdiction; and that his bail runs until 3 September when he is required to attend the Old Bailey in person.

Nadir was charged with 66 counts of theft and false accounting in December 1990. On June 22, 1992, he pleaded not guilty to all counts at Chichester Rents – a special annexe of the Old Bailey.

On both that date and a later hearing in December 1992 he was not asked to surrender to the court and was neither granted bail nor remanded in custody.

A trial date was set but Nadir left Britain for northern Cyprus on 4 May 1993. (Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus does not have an extradition agreement with Britain.) Two days later a warrant was issued – apparently unlawfully.

Nadir's decision to abscond forced the resignation of Michael Mates, a junior minister in John Major's government, and provoked a political scandal.

In 2000 Nadir unsuccessfully tried to argue there was an abuse of process by the SFO and police in bringing the case against him.

His barrister William Clegg QC argued that Nadir had not breached bail by leaving the country because of the procedural error in 1992. "He is in a legal limbo as a result of quite fortuitously for him slipping through a web of legislation governing the granting and surrender of bail.

"He is an extremely lucky man to find himself in this position. We say the sensible thing to do is to arrange to get him back here. He has decided for whatever reason that he wants to come back and try to clear his name and stand his trial."

Mr Justice Bean agreed to quash the outstanding warrant before granting bail.

He said: "He probably thought when he left the country he was committing an offence of breach of the bail act but it turns out he was not. As it happens and more by Mr Nadir's good luck than anyone's judgment there is of today no valid warrant outstanding for his arrest."

Sue Wassef: My son is in an Egyptian jail for drug crimes he didn't commit

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 23:05:58 GMT

Sue Wassef's son Pierre was arrested in Cairo in 2007 and charged with drug trafficking. Coerced into a confession, he is now serving 25 years in prison. His devastated mother can only sit and wait

One Wednesday evening, nearly three years ago, Sue Wassef had the sort of phone call every parent dreads. It came from the British embassy in Cairo. "It's regarding your sons. They've both been arrested."

"I remember the time exactly, because I was on my way to my ladies' darts evening. It was 8.45pm," says Sue. "I stopped breathing. I just asked, 'What for?' They said drugs, and all I could say was, 'Do they still have hanging?'

"I started to hyperventilate. I  couldn't breathe. I couldn't speak. My life stopped that evening." And Sue's life is still on hold, because although her younger son, Philippe, was released several days after his arrest, Pierre is still in prison in Egypt serving a 25-year sentence.

Sue runs a large pub in north London. She is a warm, personable and energetic woman. She looks outwardly cheery and robust, sitting in the sun outside the pub, but she frequently cries when she talks about Pierre, and keeping going is clearly a great struggle. Both sons were born in England – Pierre is 30 and has a partner here, Kelly, and three young children. In 2005, their father, who is Eyptian, had a heart attack and both boys went over to Cairo to look after him. They helped on the family farm and worked as mechanics to help pay their father's hospital bills.

"Pierre is very close to his dad, although we are divorced," says Sue. "He loved living in Egypt. Kelly and the children had been over there and stayed on his father's farm. They loved their grandpa, who bought them a donkey. They loved the animals on the farm."

Pierre and Kelly had planned to move to Egypt to live there while their children were still small because they loved it so much.

While her sons were in Egypt, looking after their father, Sue rang them twice a day. On the day of their arrest, she had begun to worry. "I'd been unable to get through to them the night before and all that day, and I'd had a twinge of worry. They know what I'm like. I ring all the time, but I thought if anything was wrong their dad would have phoned me.

"Pierre had asked the embassy to let me know. He didn't want his father told, in case he had another heart attack. I didn't sleep that night. I don't think I've had a proper night's sleep since it happened." The campaigning human rights organisation Fair Trials International (FTI) has taken up Pierre's case and has many concerns about his treatment and conviction. They consider him "especially vulnerable as a foreigner who doesn't speak Arabic", and believe his "confession" was obtained through mental and physical coercion. He was "beaten, handcuffed to a stairwell and denied food, water, access to toilet facilities and sleep for approximately two days".

Frightened for the safety of his younger brother, who he had been forced to watch being beaten and threatened with the death sentence or 25 years in prison, Pierre confessed to the importation and sale of large quantities of cocaine. He was refused a solicitor until he had done so. According to FTI, "Pierre could not understand the papers he was made to sign … because his interpreter was blind [and he has had only] intermittent or no interpretation at all during his court hearings. Police accounts of the arrest differ wildly."

No drugs were found on the brothers or in their car. Pierre has withdrawn his confession, but there was widespread newspaper and television coverage of his arrest as an "international narcotics dealer" before his conviction, which FTI suggests denied him the presumpion of innocence.

It is agonising for Sue to be so far away from her son. She feels frightened, helpless and physically sick much of the time. But she has to keep the pub running in order to send money to her sons every week. The family spent £22,000 on Pierre's trial; he is hoping to appeal against his sentence, and Sue now needs to find £14,000 for the appeal. "I flew over about 10 days after his arrest. He was being held on remand at the police station, which had no facilities at all – no food, no bedding. His father and brother had to take him everything and were able to see him for four minutes a day. The conditions were horrendous. I cried and cried. I wouldn't put a dog in there. People were screaming and shouting, trying to get in to their family members, bringing them food. You don't know what people are saying. It's very intimidating. Pierre was in his cell 24/7, but the police were quite kind to him. The chief police officer could see it wasn't fair. He would let Pierre come out for three or four minutes and I could give him a kiss and a cuddle. This was my hardest time. At this stage he was upset and nervous, but at the back of his mind I'm sure he was thinking, 'This isn't happening. It's all a big mistake. I'm going to get out.'"

His family and solicitor also thought Pierre was innocent and would be released, but at his first trial, three months after his arrest, he was sentenced in absentia while he was present, but downstairs in custody. "That's illegal," says Sue. "You can't be sentenced in your absence if you're there. I was relieved to know that the solicitor registered this and Pierre was allowed a retrial, which is quite unusual."

Sue insists that her boys "have never been arrested or involved in drugs, ever". But Pierre was found guilty of trafficking, dealing and being a user. "He's none of those. Trafficking is a hangable offence. But according to Egyptian law, to traffic drugs you have to bring them across the border. Pierre hadn't left the country for two years."

The retrial took place two years later. "The solicitor listed all the police mistakes for two hours, then asked for a recess, then continued for another seven hours," says Sue. "He produced evidence that police documents had been doctored, witness statements ignored, no warrants were in place at the time of their arrest. When he had finished, all the other solicitors in court shook his hand. All the other prisoners wanted to be his client. He was so brilliant. But it made no difference. Pierre got 25 years again."

A few weeks ago Pierre was moved to a high-security prison on the desert road between Cairo and Alexandria. Having never seen it, Sue imagines the worst. "I want help. I don't want to wait for the embassy to tell me something's happened to my son and there'll be an investigation. In the remand prison, everyone was fantastic to him. The prisoners looked after each other. They shared food. There'd never be a prisoner who didn't eat.

"But the conditions in the desert prison are much tougher. He's sharing a cell with more than 20 people. I can't imagine what the heat's like. I'm terrified he'll get hepatitis. He's got problems with his teeth. Several are broken and infected. He's in considerable pain but it's difficult to get him medical help. His brother has been taking in antibiotics. You have to take everything in: antiseptic cream, medical wipes, disinfectant. We've asked the embassy to get him a dentist. I'm worried about his state of mind.

"I can't imagine how he must feel – in another country, in a strange prison system where you can't communicate properly. He still can't speak much Arabic and no one in the new prison speaks English. He must feel so cut off, so isolated. The only contact he now has with his family is through Philippe, who is allowed to speak to him for a few minutes when he takes in his food. He hardly knows how Kelly and his children are; his brother can't tell him much in the brief time allowed together. A lifelong friend of his has died in a motorbike accident since he's been in there. We didn't dare tell him. We thought it might push him over the edge.

"Prisoners wear white on remand and navy when they've been convicted. Pierre has told his dad that what really distressed him was seeing the area for people sentenced to death. They have to wear red. It worries me. What sort of psychological damage is being done?"

Pierre's incarceration is taking its toll on Sue, too. "Sometimes I don't feel I get any rest at all. I'm not with my partner any more, I work seven days a week, every night. I'm taking diazepam. Sometimes I go to bed really late but I still can't sleep. I sit down to a Sunday roast and I can't eat it because he's not having it. It takes over your whole life. You end up feeling guilty if you do anything nice. Every night I'm lying in my really comfortable bed thinking of him on the floor. I think about him all the time – in the bath, eating, sleeping – or trying to. He loves Only Fools and Horses. I can't watch it.

"He's a big lad – 6ft 2ins. He's very funny, witty, chatty – people love to be with him. He and Kelly have been together since he was 16. He loves his kids and was always playing with them, taking them out. Every penny he had he spent on his children.

"He can adapt himself to whoever he's with. Without a doubt, that's what has carried him through. I'm still ringing his brother two or three times a day. I go into panic mode if he doesn't answer.

"Pierre's children don't know what's happened to him. We haven't told them yet. We've said he's working in the desert and there's no satellite signal out there. But the oldest boy, Josh, is 11 now and he's not really wearing it. Kelly is a really good mother, but it's a nightmare for her.

"I took the children to a farm and Josh said, 'You know what, Nan, I see an aeroplane and I think, is my dad on that? One day he'll be on one of them, won't he?' I mustn't cry in front of him."

At the end of June, when I first met Sue, she had just had news that Pierre would at last see a dentist and that embassy staff would be allowed to take in a mobile phone so he could speak to his family. He was allowed 10 minutes to speak to Kelly and his oldest son.

FTI say they are hoping Pierre is given "a fair hearing on appeal and that the horrendous ordeal that he and his family are going through soon comes to an end." The British embassy, meanwhile, will "continue to provide consular assistance and remain in contact with the family".

fairtrials.net. If you wish to express your concern, write to Alistair Burt, parliamentary under-secretary of state for the Middle East and North Africa

EU turning blind eye to discrimination against Roma, say human rights groups

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 21:44:14 GMT

Criticism comes in wake of France's decision to expel illegal Roma immigrants and destroy hundreds of their encampments

The European Union was today accused of "turning a blind eye" as countries across Europe carried out a wave of expulsions and introduced new legislation targeting the Roma.

Human rights groups criticised the EU for failing to address the real issues driving Europe's largest ethnic minority to migrate in the first place and for choosing not to upbraid countries for breaking both domestic and EU laws in their treatment of them.

The criticism came after France announced it would round up and expel illegal Roma immigrants and destroy hundreds of their encampments.

Elsewhere, it emerged that the city of Copenhagen had requested Danish government assistance to deport up to 400 Roma, and that Swedish police had expelled Roma in breach of its own and EU laws.

In Belgium a caravan of 700 Roma has been chased out of Flanders and forced to set up camp in French-speaking Wallonia in the south.

Italy, which in 2008 declared a state of emergency due to the presence of Roma, and evicted thousands of them, mainly to Romania and Bulgaria, is continuing to implement the policy to this day.

Germany is in the process of repatriating thousands of Roma children and adolescents to Kosovo, despite warnings they will face discrimination, appalling living conditions, lack of access to education as well as language problems, because many of them were born in Germany and do not speak Serbian or Albanian.

In eastern European countries that are EU members, such as the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria, accounts are rife of widespread discrimination against Roma, including physical attacks.

Amnesty International said the EU had "turned a blind eye" to what it called a "serious breach of human rights" towards Europe's Roma, who are roughly estimated to number about 16 million.

"There is a clear and systemic programme of EU governments targeting Roma," said Anneliese Baldaccini, a lawyer at Amnesty's EU office.

The Budapest-based European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC), which monitors the situation of Roma in Europe, called on the EU to be "much more forthright" in pointing out to member states "the clear requirements of the free movement law".

"Poverty, discrimination and a whole host of things make life unbearable for Roma in their countries of origin," said the ERRC's executive director, Robert Kushen. "We would welcome strong EU involvement to address some of these issues," he said.

The campaign groups were responding to the European Commission's insistence this week that the issue was one for individual states to handle.

"When it comes to Roma and the possibility of expelling them, this is up to the member states to deal with – in this case France – and for them to decide how they are going to implement the law," said Matthew Newman, spokesman for the European justice commissioner, Viviane Reding.

French president Nicholas Sarkozy was this week accused of pursuing a "xenophobic" and "discriminatory" crackdown on the country's 400,000 Travellers, Gypsies and Roma – most of whom have French citizenship.

Interior minister Brice Hortefeux announced new measures including the dismantling of about 300 encampments and the "quasi-immediate" expulsion to Romania or Bulgaria of Roma with a criminal record.

Amnesty said the EU should penalise countries that have persistently failed to uphold the human rights of Roma. Among the harshest measures applicable under the charter of fundamental rights that came into force with the Lisbon treaty last year is the withdrawal of voting rights, or even expulsion from the union.

"The EU under the Lisbon Treaty...has the responsibility to address human rights within the 27 member states," said Amnesty's executive officer for legal affairs in the European Union, Susanna Mehtonen.

Campaign groups say the EU's failure to intervene calls into question its commitment to the Charter of Fundamental Rights that came into force with the passage of the Lisbon Treaty last year, and was heralded as a "new dawn" for human rights in Europe.

They have accused Brussels of cowardice when it comes to the Roma. While the commission has no competence to defend gay rights, either, it has frequently been ready to criticise homophobic legislation in eastern Europe – largely, it is believed, because gay rights are well established in western European countries, unlike the rights of Roma.

Russia to introduce 'draconian' Minority Report-style law

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:00:18 GMT

Legislation will give security services powers to arrest people for crimes they have yet to commit

Russian citizens can be issued official warnings about crimes that they have not yet committed under powers granted to the security services today.

President Dmitry Medvedev signed off on a new law giving the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB, the right to caution people suspected of preparing acts of extremism, or to jail them for obstructing the agency's work.

The powers appear similar to those enjoyed by Precrime, the police unit in the 2002 Hollywood film Minority Report. "This is a draconian law reminiscent of our repressive past," said Boris Nemtsov, a leader of the Solidarity opposition movement.

Rights activists had hoped Medvedev would rein in the security services, after his predecessor, Vladimir Putin, a former KGB colonel, stuffed his administration with hawkish veterans. The Kremlin's tough stance comes against the backdrop of a disparate but emergent civil movement protesting against corruption and authoritarian government.

Under the new provisions, the FSB will be able to echo Soviet practices. The punishment for ignoring a warning was unclear, but 15-day jail sentences are envisaged for "obstructing an FSB officer's duties". Sergei Ivanenko, a leader of the Yabloko party, called it "the law of a police state". He said: "If such a law exists in a democratic country then it is limited by a very powerful system of civil, public and parliamentary control. In our conditions it will mean absolute power for the security services."

Rights activists, who fear the measures could be used to stifle civil disobedience, had expressed optimism that Medvedev might step in to quash the legislation.

There have been signs of democratisation under Medvedev, while Putin, whom he replaced two years ago, has continued to promote a hardline image from his post as prime minister. But during a meeting with Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, a fortnight ago, Medvedev said: "Each country has the right to perfect its own legislation, including that which affects its special services." He added: "What's going on now – I would like you to know this – was done according to my own direct instructions."

Russia's police and security services have looked increasingly clumsy as they try to deal with inventive grassroots activists or single-issue protest groups. One group wears blue buckets on their heads in mimicry of the flashing blue lights on the cars of bureaucrats who terrorise the roads: police arrested several activists but had to let them go because they had committed no crime. Another organisation has been attacked while trying to stop destruction of a protected forest near Moscow.

"Medvedev may smile more than Putin but the face of power hasn't changed," said Eduard Limonov, an opposition politician who plans to run for president in 2012. "The Kremlin is still terrified there will be an Orange Revolution in Russia if people are allowed to gather on the streets."

This Saturday will be the first anniversary of protests started by Limonov and a coalition of activists known as Strategy 31. They meet in Triumfalnaya Square in Moscow at 6pm every 31st of the month to demonstrate in favour of Article 31 of the constitution: the right to free assembly.

Despite each rally being broken up by riot police, the protests have grown steadily, attracting more than 500 people in May. About 180 of them were arrested.

"Instead of thinking of new ways to suppress us, the authorities should listen to our concerns," said Limonov.

Yet democracy activists are often demonised as traitors or extremists in the state-dominated media. This week at its summer camp the Kremlin-backed Nashi youth movement put up a photograph of 83-year-old Lyudmila Alekseyeva, one of the organisers of Strategy 31, on a dummy wearing Nazi insignia.

On Saturday she will go to Triumfalnaya. The protest movement, she said, "will only grow in the face of repression."

Home Office bids to restrict jobs for asylum seekers

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:07:44 GMT

Limit sought so some asylum seekers can apply for work only in industries with staff shortages

Home Office ministers are trying to thwart the impact of a supreme court ruling lifting a work ban on 45,000 asylum seekers by severely restricting the jobs they can apply for.

The immigration minister, Damian Green, wants to bar the asylum seekers from more than 28.5m jobs and restrict them to industries in which there are official staff shortages.

Home Office officials are investigating the possibility of telling asylum seekers they can apply only for vacancies among 400,000 skilled jobs in shortage occupations – a tiny fraction of the jobs in the UK economy. Asylum seekers would have to be qualified maths teachers, chemical engineers, high-integrity pipe welders or even experienced orchestral musicians or ballet dancers to have any hope of being allowed to work. The conditions mirror the restrictions of the points-based immigration system which bans unskilled workers from outside of Europe from working in Britain.

This week's supreme court ruling said failed asylum seekers who made a second fresh claim for refugee status should be allowed to work if they had waited more than 12 months for a new Home Office decision.

The ruling is in line with an EU directive that lays down minimum standards for the reception of asylum seekers across Europe to ensure a dignified standard of living. The supreme court rejected the home secretary's argument that this group of asylum seekers should lose this protection because their initial application had been rejected.

Refugee welfare groups have been fighting for more than 10 years to lift the ban on asylum seekers being allowed to work in Britain while their applications are decided. This is the first time the courts have backed the principle.

Immigration barristers say the ruling will mean that tens of thousands of failed asylum seekers whose fresh applications are grinding their way through the system will be entitled to basic rights, including the right to work. The court said any problem with undeserving cases should be dealt with by resolving them promptly rather than by denying those involved their fundamental rights.

The Home Office says that up to 45,000 failed asylum seekers are likely to be affected by the ruling. Many of them are among the 450,000 "legacy cases", some dating back more than 10 years, which the Home Office is working through in a backlog exercise.

Green confirmed his intention to severely restrict the jobs open to asylum seekers who have waited more than a year for a decision.

He said: "I believe it is important to maintain a distinction between economic migration and asylum – giving failed asylum seekers access to the labour market undermines this principle."

He claimed the ruling would have only a short-term effect as "the long delays in the asylum system will be resolved by the summer of next year when all the older asylum cases are concluded".

Jonathan Ellis, director of policy and development at the Refugee Council, said the Home Office's response to the ruling was "disappointing".

"The supreme court ruled that this group of asylum seekers has the right to work under EU law – the government should not then limit this right down to a small number of asylum seekers who meet the requirements for national shortage occupations.

"The shortage occupation list is not designed for asylum seekers but rather economic migrants needing sponsorship to come to the UK. Asylum seekers who have waited so long for a decision should be allowed to work for local employers whenever their skills are needed."

Daily Mail and Sun pay out to Tamil hunger striker

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:06:30 GMT

Papers apologise to Parameswaran Subramanyam after falsely claiming he sustained himself with hamburgers during fast

A Tamil refugee who went on a 23-day hunger strike in Parliament Square last year has received an apology and almost £80,000 in damages from the Daily Mail and the Sun over false allegations that he secretly sustained himself with hamburgers.

Parameswaran Subramanyam, 29, became the public face of the 73-day Tamil protests in Westminster after he decided to stop eating in the hope of drawing the world's attention to what was happening to his people in the final stages of Sri Lanka's civil war.

He gave up his hunger strike on 30 April after the then foreign secretary, David Miliband, wrote him a letter explaining the "strenuous efforts" the government was making to bring about a ceasefire on the island. He then spent five days recovering in hospital.

Although his actions won him the support and admiration of many Tamils, their affection turned to animosity in October 2009 after the Daily Mail ran a story falsely claiming Subramanyam had broken the strike by eating burgers and had been caught doing so by a Metropolitan police surveillance team. The allegations were then repeated in a story published on the Sun's website, headlined "Hunger Striker Was Lovin' it".

Today, Subramanyam's solicitor, Magnus Boyd, told the high court that the articles had "[struck] at the heart of the claimant's integrity, undermining the single achievement for which he became known and respected".

He added: "As a direct result of the defendants' publications, the claimant was ostracised by the Tamil community and its supporters who believed that the claimant had betrayed them and that the claimant had in fact undermined the Tamil struggle globally."

Not only were the allegations false, said Boyd, the Met superintendent in charge of the policing operation had also confirmed that no video evidence existed because there had been no police surveillance team using the "specialist monitoring equipment" alluded to in the Daily Mail article.

Victoria Jolliffe, counsel for Associated Newspapers and News Group newspapers, told the court that both organisations had withdrawn the allegations and apologised "sincerely and unreservedly" to Subramanyam for the distress that had been caused.

He is understood to have accepted damages of £30,000 from the Sun and £47,500 from the Daily Mail. The newspapers will also pay his legal costs.

Subramanyam said he felt both organisations should have done more to check the story with the Met before running it. Had they done so, he said, "it would have become clear to them that the allegations they intended to publish were false".

He said he was still angry at his treatment by the Mail – and particularly its claim in court today that it had published the article "in good faith based on information that, at the time, was understood to be reliable".

Today's apology, he said, did not go far enough in repairing the damage done to his reputation.

"I have been shunned, publicly abused and received numerous extremely distressing and frightening telephone calls and text messages," he said. "I have received death threats and on occasions felt unable to leave my home for fear that I may be attacked."

"Ultimately, I feel the Daily Mail has used my apology and the court statement as an opportunity for it to absolve itself of any responsibility for publishing the false claims."

Siobhain McDonagh, the Labour MP for Mitcham and Morden, which is home to many Tamils, welcomed the news.

"Fasting was the sacrifice [Subramanyam] was making to bring the UK's attention to the plight of hundreds of thousands of Tamils being killed and injured by the Sri Lankan government," she said.

"To suggest that he had broken his fast in secret, at the height of the civil war was an insult to him, to his community and to those victims."

Boyd, a partner at solicitors' firm Carter-Ruck, said that the case showed how important an individual's reputation was.

"It's not just a concept," he said. "It has real meaning in people's lives. When someone's reputation is damaged, something very fundamental to them as people is damaged and I have seen it with Parameswaran. He has turned inside himself with this case."

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Singapore's reputation on the line as British author fights on

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 12:14:25 GMT

The trial of Alan Shadrake for criticising the death penalty has damaged Singapore's standing

Singapore's long-serving administration has won some time to ponder how it will deal with yet another self-inflicted blow to its global branding.

The reprieve came as a Singapore court today postponed a case against the British author Alan Shadrake for three weeks.

Shadrake, 75, faces contempt of court charges, after Singapore's Media Development Authority lodged a police report on 16 July against his book Once a Jolly Hangman: Singapore Justice in the Dock, which criticises the application of the death penalty. Published in neighbouring Malaysia, the book has sparked a criminal defamation investigation against the author in Singapore.

Shadrake rejected an offer of mitigation in exchange for an apology at today's contempt of court hearing and said he would fight on. This means more reputation damage is in store for the People's Action Party administration in the weeks ahead.

Local groups and international human rights NGOs such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Reporters without Borders have criticised the decision to prosecute the author.

News agencies, websites, blogs and social network sites are carrying news about the case around the globe and putting a sharp focus on censorship in Singapore.

The Shadrake affair comes as a Malaysian, Yong Vui Kong, faces execution next month for a drug-related offence committed when he was 19. The Malaysian foreign ministry, under pressure from the public, has written to the Singapore government to plead clemency for Yong, now 22.

Meanwhile, the British embassy in Singapore has chosen to play the Shadrake affair low key, opting to give the author quiet support without issuing public statements.

The timing of the two incidents has regalvanised a small group of activists and bloggers. Although most local NGOs and opposition parties have been characteristically silent, there is a high level of awareness of the two cases among the Singapore public.

The administration has spent large amounts of money on marketing Singapore internationally, most recently over the upcoming Youth Olympic Games. But at the same time it continues to damage Singapore's reputation with its censorship.

In keeping with tradition, one strategy used at today's court hearings was to threaten legal action against the media for publicising the alleged contemptuous remarks in Shadrake's book. That was a lost cause, given the information already circulating on the internet.

Singapore, like everyone else, has to increasingly contend with information disseminated by new media and is no longer able to ensure that only positive images of itself appear.

Meanwhile, the book in question is flying off the shelves at bookshops across the causeway in Malaysia.

James Gomez is deputy associate dean (international) and head of public relations at Monash University, Australia

Arizona immigration law blocked by judge in temporary victory for Obama

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 23:27:00 GMT

• Presidents's efforts to shoot down legislation succeed
• Several states wanted to adopt Arizona's draconian rules

A federal judge yesterday slapped down key elements of a controversial anti- immigration law in Arizona, handing a temporary victory to the Obama administration against a rising tide of anti-immigration feeling in the US.

Judge Susan Bolton granted a preliminary injunction which prevents implementation of two main elements of the legislation: the requirement that police determine the immigration status of people they arrest or question should they suspect them of being illegal, and the part of the new law that would make it a state crime for a foreigner to be in Arizona without registration papers.

The injunction will hold, Bolton said, until the courts have considered a lawsuit against Arizona by the federal government that seeks permanently to block the new law on the grounds that it is unconstitutional.

The temporary and partial reprieve marks success, in the short term at least, of attempts by the Obama administration to maintain federal control of immigration policy, against efforts by states, led by Arizona, to take the matter into their own hands. Several states have expressed support for Arizona's legislation that was due to come into effect today.

But the legal ruling risks a potential white backlash as opinion polls have shown consistently high support for the law across the United States. In the latest, by CNN and Opinion Research, 55% of those sampled said they were in favour of the SB 1070 law, although in response to a separate question 54% said they thought it would lead to greater discrimination against Hispanics.

Mark Krikorian, director of the Centre for Immigration Studies, a thinktank that supports tighter immigration controls, said a hardening of positions was likely in the wake of the ruling. "This will add fuel to the frustrations of states over the lack of federal government action in enforcing the immigration laws."

Police in Phoenix have added extra security around the central courthouse in expectation of large demonstrations, including crowds that supported the new law and are likely to be incensed by the partial block on it. Despite Bolton's ruling, thousands of Hispanic, trade unionists and religious activists are also expected to descend on Arizona to protest against the legislation.

More than 500 campaigners from California will be leading the charge, together with busloads of protesters from other states. Other demonstrations and pilgrimages to Arizona were being planned from New York, Chicago and Atlanta.

Under the terms of the original Senate bill (SB) 1070, Arizona police were obliged to investigate the immigration status of anyone they encounter – whether for a traffic violation, a neighbour dispute or any other minor matter – whom they suspected of not having proper documents.

The law threatened to wrestle immigration policy out of the hands of the federal government and fragment it across the US, with many other states already expressing interest in copying Arizona's example.

Paco Fabian, an immigration policy expert, stressed the temporary nature of the injunction. "Let's not forget that at any moment it could be lifted and the law will be back. That's why groups will continue to oppose it."

While some of the most draconian aspects of the law have been blocked, Hispanic groups are unhappy about sections including a provision to make it a crime for undocumented day labourers to get into an employer's vehicle and a vaguely-worded clause against the "transportation" and "harbouring" of illegal immigrants.

At the centre of the dispute stands Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa county, which covers Phoenix, the state capital. He has pioneered many policies now extended statewide under SB 1070, including regular raids by state troopers on factories and housing developments in which undocumented Hispanic immigrants are rounded up to be deported.

Arpaio promised to go ahead with a planned raid, his 17th in three years, involving 200 officers and volunteers. Arpaio has said he has all the powers he needs under existing laws and has vowed to expand his notorious "tent city" – an adhoc prison under canvas –to make way for more detained illegal immigrants.

He also threatened to come down hard on any protesters who got in the way of his tough policies, responding to rumours that Phoenix jail would be picketed today by activists by telling ABC News: "If anyone wants to block my jails they can have a little trip into the jails. We are not going to put up with any civil disobedience."

Police chiefs around Arizona expressed relief following the ruling, fearing accusation of racial profiling of Hispanics. "I am pleased that the aspects which we put forward as problematic for enforcement are precisely the aspects that Judge Bolton ruled on today," Tucson police chief Roberto Villaseρor told the Washington Post.

Skullduggery in divorce proceedings

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:06:04 GMT

Court of appeal's judgment in the Imerman case has huge implications for family lawyers – and snooping spouses

What skulduggery. The master of the rolls, Lord Neuberger, called it "an extreme case of wrongful access to confidential material" and regaled us with tales of how judges have for years turned a blind eye to spouses scrabbling around in dustbins, foraging in desk drawers, reading personal diaries and generally indulging in other dubious forms of "self-help" to get the best financial deals in divorce proceedings. The former wife's lawyers said the court of appeal's decision robbed women of protection previously afforded to them and declared the result a cheat's charter. "Wives have until now been allowed to produce an ace from their sleeve: a document proving the husband had lied about his finances was admissible even if improperly obtained," they said. The erstwhile husband said: "I was determined that my private papers could not be stolen and the perpetrators get away with it without retribution."

Yesterday's judgment in the Imerman case covered areas of law usually viewed as mutually exclusive: breach of confidence and the admissibility of evidence in divorce proceedings. The principle characters in this drama are: the brothers Tchenguiz, their sister Lisa (Mrs Imerman) and her ex Vivian Imerman. They are all fabulously wealthy, or as Lord Neuberger put it: "Both Robert and Victor Tchenguiz were and are in a substantial way of business, and Mr and Mrs Imerman each appears to have been independently rich."

Under scrutiny was the conduct of the Tchenguiz brothers who, fearing that Mr Imerman would conceal his assets in their sister's divorce proceedings, copied (with the help of the other defendants) between 250,000 and 2.5m pages of his documents stored on the server used by an office they had previously shared. The files were handed over to their lawyer (also a defendant) who passed them on to Mrs Imerman's lawyer. Mr Imerman said they'd invaded his privacy and he argued that, since the documents were acquired unlawfully, Mrs Imerman shouldn't be able to use them in divorce. The court of appeal agreed with him.

Divorce lawyers relying on the "Hildebrand rules", a set of principles peculiar to family proceedings, have for years been telling their clients to snoop and provided force wasn't used and electronic or snail mail wasn't intercepted – and as long as the sneaky spouse copied rather than stole documents – judges in the family division apparently approved of this. In the Imerman case the court tested the Hildebrand rules for compatibility with the law of confidence and found them wanting. While the court of appeal accepted that lawyers and judges are concerned about lack of candour in divorce cases, it found there was simply no legal basis for the rules.

Mr Imerman's article 8 rights were engaged and in accordance with the law of confidence, set in out in cases such as Naomi Campbell's against the Mirror, he had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his email correspondence and other documents stored on the server. The fact Robert Tchenguiz owned the server and had physical access to it didn't alter that. "Confidentiality is not dependent on locks and keys or their electronic equivalent," said Lord Neuberger.

There was also the possibility that some of the defendants had committed criminal offences under the Computer Misuse Act 1990 and the Data Protection Act 1998. The court thought that this sort of "unregulated self-help" in divorce proceedings couldn't be condoned.

As for Mrs Imerman, she could not be allowed to benefit – at least not at this point – said the court. Wives ought to apply for Mareva (freezing) orders or Anton Piller (search orders) if they have "substantial reasons" for suspecting that their husbands are not going to comply with their obligation to provide full and frank disclosure of their assets, said Lord Neuberger. The significant expense involved in making such applications is perhaps not such a problem for the wealthy Mrs Imerman, but in other cases it will be a huge obstacle.

It should be said that the documents themselves didn't disclose an intention to hide assets and at the time they were purloined Mr Imerman wasn't yet under an obligation to file details of his finances in the divorce proceedings. The court ordered that the files should be handed to his lawyers and they will need the court's permission to part with them. Mrs Imerman and her lawyers don't have access to the documents now, but they can't be expected to erase them from memory, the court said. If full and frank disclosure is not forthcoming it is possible that they might be justified in applying for an order for some of the documents to be produced.

The court of appeal said that where two parties are living together as spouses, civil partners or lovers, there may be room to argue that documents are not confidential: "If a husband leaves his bank statement lying around open in the matrimonial home, in the kitchen, living room or marital bedroom, it may well lose its confidential character as against his wife," said Lord Neuberger. "If the parties each had their own study, it would be less likely that the wife could copy the statement without infringing the husband's confidence if it had been left by him in his study rather than in the marital bedroom, and the wife's case would be weaker if the statement was kept in a drawer in his desk and weaker still if kept locked in his desk."

The implications are clearly far-reaching for family lawyers and their clients. I'm not a divorce lawyer, or even a divorced lawyer, and would be interested to hear from specialists how this ruling affects the advice they'll be giving in future.

• Afua Hirsch is away

Cuts 'would close supreme court'

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:21:06 GMT

Chief executive warns public spending cuts of 40% would mean court 'couldn't actually deal with any casework'

The UK supreme court would have to close for business if proposed public spending cuts of 40% were implemented, its chief executive has warned.

At a press conference to mark a first legal year for the highest court in the country, Jenny Rowe said: "As 62% of our costs are genuinely fixed, a 40% cut causes us some problems. We couldn't actually deal with any casework, in fact, with a 40% cut."

Rowe said that casework was a "priority" for the court, but that after being asked to come up with scenarios of cuts of 25 and 40%, its education and outreach projects looked most vulnerable.

Since its launch in October last year, the supreme court has heard a total of 67 appeals and handed down 62 judgments.

Lord Hope, deputy president of the court and one of the most senior judges in the UK, said the public had gained since the court's establishment.

"Our concern is that having started on this enterprise … we should be able to sustain that operation," he said. "It's a quite different operation from what we had before [in the House of Lords]. It's one which can't be maintained without resources."

It follows Hope's comments in a speech at Gresham College in London last month, where he warned that the government's proposed cuts could not be achieved "without serious prejudice" to the quality of the service given to the public.

Every department across Whitehall is being asked to draw up spending cuts scenarios of 25%-40%. The justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, has already announced plans to close 157 magistrates and county courts in England and Wales.

The supreme court took over from the House of Lords on 1 October 2009, when it was opened in what was Middlesex Guildhall in Parliament Square, following a £56m renovation.

The move from its traditional place at the heart of parliament was intended to underline the independence of the country's top judges and increase the transparency and accountability of the court, which now sees its key role as one of educating the public about what it does, as well as adjudicating cases.

Arizona's immigration law blocked by judge | Richard Adams

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:22:36 GMT

A federal judge blocks Arizona's controversial new immigration law, only hours before it was to come into effect tonight

A federal judge today blocked the most controversial measures in an Arizona immigration law, placing an injunction on new police powers only hours before they were to come into effect at midnight.

The ruling delighted the law's opponents, which require Arizona police to demand immigration documents from anyone they have stopped. In practice, say opponents, the new law would target Hispanics and subject them to racial profiling, as well as conflicting with existing federal law and wasting police time.

While the statute remains on Arizona's books, and will take effect at midnight tonight, the ruling by US district judge Susan Bolton means the most controversial provisions are suspended for the time being. That could mean appeals by both supporters and opponents going all the way to the US Supreme Court, according to legal experts.

In her 36-page ruling [pdf], Judge Bolton wrote: "There is a substantial likelihood that officers will wrongfully arrest legal resident aliens under the new [law]. By enforcing this statute, Arizona would impose a 'distinct, unusual and extraordinary' burden on legal resident aliens that only the federal government has the authority to impose."

The US Justice Department, civil rights groups and local police had all asked the court for an injunction by the Ninth US Circuit Court to stop the law – SB 1070 – from going into effect.

Specific sections of the law barred by the ruling include:

• Requiring a police officer to make a reasonable attempt to check the immigration status of those they have stopped

• Making it a crime for non-citizens to fail to carry immigration papers

• Creating a new crime of seeking to work while not a legal resident

• Allowing police to make arrests without warrants if there is a belief the person has committed an offense that allows them to be expelled from the US

In Washington, the Justice Department welcomed the decision: "While we understand the frustration of Arizonans with the broken immigration system, a patchwork of state and local policies would seriously disrupt federal immigration enforcement and would ultimately be counterproductive."

Arizona's governor Jan Brewer, who signed the legislation into law in April, said the state would make an expedited appeal against the ruling, telling the Associated Press: "It's a temporary bump in the road, we will move forward."

The ruling came as opponents were planning demonstrations throughout Arizona. One group of protesters planned to picket federal offices, and force officers to ask them their immigration status.

Illegal immigration remains a huge political controversy in parts of the US, and today's ruling will see it continue to be an issue in the midterm congressional elections in November, especially among Republican supporters of a crackdown on immigration violations.

Anonymity for defendants in rape cases never made sense

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:13:25 GMT

Coalition's U-turn on anonymity for alleged rapists is welcome, but it is likely to have more retrograde ideas

Until last weekend, government policy was to give anonymity to rape defendants. Protection from publicity was on the way for alleged rapists, though not for defendants in cases involving murder, paedophilia or burgling the homes of old ladies. Their names and alleged deeds would still be demonised publicly.

The justification? According to the justice minister, Crispin Blunt, sex crimes "are of an entirely different order". Why not anonymity for paedophiles then?

His boss Ken Clarke, gave another reason in the Commons on 15 June for giving anonymity to defendants in rape cases. He said it was "tit for tat" because the complainants were anonymous. Nobody has questioned the wisdom of that since 1976 when it became law. Its purpose – to give complainants the confidence to come to court – does not apply to defendants.

Blunt said in debate that anonymity for defendants had "nothing to do with the likelihood of acquittal" although David Cameron had earlier said that "we know that a lot of people are falsely accused". Research shows 3% of rape complaints may be false, mostly outed at the earliest stage, and there is no evidence that this is more than for other offences. Baroness Stern, in her recent review of rape reporting, acknowledged some figures around 8% for false complaints but added that "those we spoke to in the system [judges, police and CPS] felt they were very few".

Blunt promised two weeks ago that the policy on anonymity for rape defendants would be effected without delay or consultation. Ken Clarke said in June that "it is no good trying to sweep the issue from the field".

On Sunday, without delay and with no consultation, the issue was swept from the field, in a briefing to the Sunday Telegraph. Blunt will ask newspapers for a voluntary agreement instead.

The anonymity policy, part of the coalition agreement, never made sense. There is no reason to treat rape suspects preferentially. Women's groups made clear that it would deter complaints. Police said it would hinder investigation and stop them calling for other complainants to come forward in serial cases, such as that of the taxi driver John Warboys.

In recent years, convictions for rape have doubled, though the figures still need to improve. Support from sexual assault referral centres and independent advisers brings forward more complainants and helps them stay the course. Why put it all into reverse?

Defendant anonymity, rushed by backbench amendment into the final stages of 1976 Sexual Offences Act, was scrapped by a Conservative government in 1988 on the firm advice of the police and every judge on the influential Criminal Law Revision Committee.

If this is the coalition's idea of tackling rape, there are likely to be more retrograde ideas instead of the positive steps that are still needed for better justice.

On Sunday the News of the World reported allegations by Raoul Moat's former partner Sam Stobbart that he raped her a year after they broke up.

Stobbart says she let him into her home, too afraid to do otherwise. "He thought having sex with me was his right and he took it," she said.

Forty-five per cent of rape complaints are against current or former partners but few end in conviction. A previous relationship with the defendant is seen as an obstacle by police, because it is easy to allege that the complainant was tempted back to consensual sex.

The appeal court said, in a case called R v A: "It is common sense that a person who has previously had consensual intercourse with another … may on the occasion in dispute have been more likely to consent to intercourse … than if the other were a stranger."

As Stobbart's allegations suggest, this is not a safe assumption. Her case can now be seen with the understanding that Moat was violent, but if she had complained at the time it probably would not have proceeded.

Stobbart did not make a complaint. "I didn't even tell my mum until not long ago," she told the News of the World.

Most people assume that somebody who is raped will rush for help but those closely connected with victims know that many do not. They suffer self-loathing and a reaction that Stobbart summarised well when she described Moat's conduct as making her "feel sick inside".

Delay in lodging a complaint has been seen as weakening a case. Jurors are likely to assume that immediate reporting is the norm. The defence will say that the sex was consensual and some motive to "cry rape" came later.

The appeal court pronounced on this issue in R v D, last year, saying that judges should tell juries "to ensure fairness to the complainant" and that while some people may complain immediately, others may feel shame and shock and not complain for some time.

Police still seem to treat late complaints as a problem. That can only be because they haven't understood that the former one-sided defence approach will now be undercut by judges. Stobbart's late complaint would probably have put her, along with many other women, into a class of rape cases traditionally seen as hard to pursue.

As Baroness Stern found, the last government, with an active voluntary sector, developed policy and practice that could ease deficiencies in how public authorities tackle this endemic crime. This area needs continuing effort and the coalition seems a long way from understanding that.

Covertly found assets no longer valid in divorce

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 06:01:05 GMT

Separated couples no longer be able to use secretly obtained documents to reveal their spouse's hidden

Separated couples will no longer be able to use secretly obtained documents to reveal their spouse's hidden assets in divorce proceedings, the court of appeal has ruled.

Previously, a spouse who came across information showing their partner was hiding money could copy it and put it before the court – a protection called the Hildebrand rules that was intended to help the financially impoverished.

After the appeal court ruling that Lisa Imerman could not use information obtained by property tycoons Robert and Vincent Tchenguiz about the financial affairs of their sister's husband at her divorce hearing, spouses will now have to obtain a costly court order to freeze relevant assets, or else a search order.

The documents belonging to Vivian Imerman, the former owner of Del Monte foods, were downloaded from a computer in the office he had shared with the two brothers. Last year, the high court ordered the material to be returned to him – an order yesterday upheld by the master of the rolls, Lord Neuberger, who said the case demonstrated the conflict between the need to preserve Mr Imerman's right to confidentiality and a just resolution of family court proceedings.

Mr Imerman's lawyers said the "groundbreaking" ruling would revolutionise the disclosure of documents in family law cases. Withers solicitors, acting for Lisa Imerman, said the ruling had reversed a protection once given to the financially weaker partner.

China's newest export: convicts | Brahma Chellaney

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 06:59:44 GMT

The use of convict labourers on overseas projects is damaging China's international reputation

China has devised a novel strategy to relieve pressure on its overcrowded prisons: employ convicts as labourers on overseas projects in the developing world. The practice has exposed another facet of China's egregious human rights record which, when it comes to the overseas operations of Chinese companies, includes the government's failure to enforce its own regulations.

China executes three times as many people every year as the rest of the world combined. Amnesty International has estimated that, in 2007, China secretly executed on average "around 22 prisoners every day".

In addition to being the world's leading executioner, China has one of its largest prison populations. The 2009 world prison population list compiled by the International Centre for Prison Studies at King's College London, put the total number of inmates in Chinese jails at 1.57 million – larger than the population of Estonia, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritius, Swaziland, Trinidad & Tobago, Fiji or Qatar.

The forced dispatch of prisoners to work on overseas infrastructure projects raises new issues regarding China's human rights record. It also adds a new element – the dumping of convicts – to its trade and investment policy, which has been much criticised for dumping goods.

Thousands of Chinese convicts, for example, have been pressed into service on projects undertaken by state-run Chinese companies in Sri Lanka, a strategically important country for China as it seeks to enhance its regional position in the Indian Ocean. After providing Sri Lanka's government with offensive weapon systems that helped end the country's decades-long civil war, China has been rewarded with port-building, railroad, and other infrastructure projects.

Chinese convicts also have been dispatched to the Maldives, where the Chinese government is building 4,000 houses on several different islands as a government-to-government "gift" to win influence. So far, however, China has failed to persuade the country's president to lease it one of the 700 uninhabited Maldivian islands for use as a small base for the Chinese navy.

Chinese companies' operating practice for overseas projects, including in Africa, is to keep the number of local workers to a bare minimum and to bring in much of the workforce from China, some of which comprises convicts "freed" on parole for project-related overseas work. Convict labourers, like the rest of the Chinese workforce on such projects, are housed near the project site. That way, if any convict worker escaped, he would be easy to find in an alien setting.

In theory, such practices run counter to regulations promulgated by the Chinese commerce ministry in August 2006, in response to a backlash against Chinese businesses in Zambia following the death of 51 Zambian workers in an explosion at a Chinese-owned copper mine. These regulations called for "localisation," including hiring local workers, respecting local customs, and adhering to safety norms. During an eight-nation 2007 African tour, Chinese President Hu Jintao made a point of meeting with Chinese businesses to stress the importance of corporate responsibility in their local dealings.

Moreover, in October 2006, the state council – China's cabinet – issued nine directives ordering that Chinese overseas businesses, among other things, "pay attention to environmental protection", "support local community and people's livelihood cause" and "preserve China's good image and its good corporate reputation".

But Chinese regulations are sometimes promulgated simply to blunt external criticism, and thus are seldom enforced, except when a case attracts international attention. For example, in 2003 China enacted a law on environmental-impact assessments, which was followed in 2008 by "provisional measures" to permit public participation in such assessments. Yet Chinese leaders remain more zealous about promoting exports and economic growth than in protecting the country's air and water.

Similarly, the state council's 2006 nine directives to Chinese overseas companies have been subordinated to the drive for exports and growth, even when it imposes environmental and social costs on local communities abroad. Indeed, as part of the government's "going global" policy, Chinese companies are offered major incentives and rewards for bagging overseas contracts and boosting exports.

The use of convict labourers adds a disturbing new dimension to this strategy. But even before convicts became part of China's overseas development effort, some Chinese projects, especially dam-building schemes, were embroiled in disputes with local communities in Botswana, Burma, Pakistan, Ghana and Sudan. In fact, several small bombs exploded less than three months ago at the site of Burma's Myitsone dam, whose construction by a Chinese company in insurgency-torn Kachin state is displacing thousands of subsistence farmers and fishermen by flooding a wide swath of land.

Chinese companies cannot get thousands of prisoners released on their own, let alone secure passports and exit permits for them. It is obvious that the practice of pressing convicts into service on overseas projects has been instituted at the instance of the Chinese government.

Until the Chinese government's treatment of its own citizens and those of other countries is guided by respect for basic human rights and the rule of law, China is unlikely to command the respect that it seeks on the world stage.

• Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.

The Bundle: First Khmer Rouge genocide ruling – and should we tweet in court?

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:08:25 GMT

This week's best news stories, comment, analysis and blogs from guardian.co.uk/law

It's been a busy week at Guardian Law, with groundbreaking judgments in the UK and from around the world and some of the best legal affairs debate and comment. For wannabe solicitors, check out the podcast on breaking into the law from our Careers team.

Elsewhere on the site:

This week's top UK stories

• Torture inquiry judge does not have conflict of interest, government says
Legal charity Reprieve's demands for Sir Peter Gibson to step down rebuked in official response
• Home Office bids to restrict jobs for asylum seekers
Government ministers are trying to thwart the impact of a supreme court ruling lifting a work ban on asylum seekers
• Terror suspects could win damages after control orders ruling
Appeal court upholds judgment that quashed control orders against three men
• Deportation fast-track system for asylum seekers ruled illegal
Medical Justice, a group that helps detainees, wins case against government over removal of people with little or no notice
• Rape charge anonymity pledge dropped after protests by MPs
Justice minister says coalition will instead negotiate with Press Complaints Commission to influence newspapers and websites
• Government to target no win, no fee agreements
High costs of conditional fee arrangements have become a 'serious concern' particularly in NHS clinical negligence cases

This week's top stories from around the world

• UK government to be sued over Congolese 'conflict minerals'
Campaign group Global Witness claim British firms bought minerals from rebel militias
• Khmer Rouge chief jailer sentenced for war crimes
Kaing Guek Eav, or Comrade Duch, jailed for 35 years for his role in torture and killing of 16,000 inmates at Tuol Sleng prison
• Arizona immigration law blocked by judge in temporary victory for Obama
Presidents's efforts to shoot down legislation succeed
• Extradition of former Bosnian president to Serbia blocked
Judge in the case said he felt Serbian war crime charges against Ejup Ganic were 'being used for political purposes'

This week's top comment, feature and best of the blogs

• Thet Sambath writes that justice should not be vindictive, even though the Khmer Rouge took his family
• Diane Abbott writes that it's time to review police use of 'joint enterprise' to tackle gangs
• Former solicitor general, Vera Baird QC writes Anonymity for defendants in rape cases never made sense
• Following announcements last week on the law of universal jurisdiction, Michael Mansfield QC argues that it sends entirely the wrong message. Joshua Rozenberg in response, asserts that it will still be possible to obtain arrest warrants against visiting politicians, but not on the basis of flimsy evidence
• Neil Rose asks if the government's attack on CFA agreements means the end of 'have-a-go' litigation?
• Siobhain Butterworth asks whether live-blogging and Twitter could take court reporting into the 21st century?

Torture inquiry judge does not have conflict of interest, government says

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:03:02 GMT

Legal charity Reprieve's demands for Sir Peter Gibson to step down rebuked in official response

The government has hit back at a legal charity's "unwarranted and baseless" suggestion that the senior judge leading the inquiry into allegations of UK involvement in torture is too close to the security services to conduct an impartial investigation.

Last week, Reprieve wrote to Sir Peter Gibson, a former appeal court judge, asking that he recuse himself from the inquiry into claims of British complicity in the abuse of detainees abroad since the 9/11 attacks.

The 11-page letter, which was copied to the prime minister, said that Sir Peter's impartiality had been "fatally compromised" because he had spent the last four years overseeing the security services in his role as intelligence services commissioner (ISC).

It also questioned whether his repeatedly stated opinion that security services personnel were "trustworthy, conscientious and dependable" reflected a bias, and claimed that the secret investigation into allegations of misconduct he conducted at the previous government's request could prejudice his findings in the new inquiry.

Downing Street responded to the charity's claims by saying that David Cameron had full confidence in Gibson, whom he appointed to lead the inquiry earlier this month.

But Treasury solicitors representing Gibson have now written to Reprieve, which works against the death penalty around the world and acts against alleged violations of human rights, to reject what they describe as "a highly publicised attack that … is both unwarranted and baseless".

Their six-page letter begins by stating that Sir Peter – a privy councillor with 25 years' experience as a high court judge – brings "undoubted judicial experience, expertise and integrity" to the torture inquiry.

Sir Peter's role as ISC, it goes on, does not preclude him from leading the new investigation in any way: "It has been no part of Sir Peter's functions since he was appointed in 2006 to look into the actions of the intelligence agencies in relation to detainees held by other states or, specifically, into issues of alleged complicity in torture. To be quite clear, he has not examined individual cases in that respect."

The letter also points out that Sir Peter is not sitting as a judge trying litigation, nor conducting a statutory inquiry, and so has no legal duty to satisfy the tests of impartiality and independence that apply in such cases.

It concludes: "Sir Peter … rejects the suggestion that there is any warrant for a fair-minded and informed observer to have any concerns as to his impartiality in acting as chair of this inquiry."

Clive Stafford Smith, director of Reprieve, said that much of the government's response was irrelevant, adding that the charity was not questioning the judge's integrity.

He said: "The government does not address the central issue, which is how someone who has been intimately involved in the problems of the past, and who has four times expressed his view in written reports that all is well with the intelligence services, can now serve as the judge on this inquiry."

Real life is too complex | Onora O'Neill

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:30:00 GMT

I doubt whether we can draft assisted suicide legislation that is safe for human beings, with their full variety of situations

The question: Do we have a right to death?

When and why should we respect individual autonomy? Does respect for individual autonomy demand a minimal state that legislates sparingly in order not to infringe individual autonomy, and in particular does not regulate action "between consenting adults"? The answers we give to these questions raise difficulties for any attempt to legalise assisted suicide.

If autonomy is taken minimally as a matter of sheer choice, then a claim that assisted suicide should be legalised in order to respect individual autonomy would mean that any choice to die – even one that reflects momentary whim, clinical depression, false beliefs, or deference to others – should be respected. I doubt whether such positions have serious supporters.

But if autonomy is not taken minimally and is not equated with sheer choice, then legislation to make assisted suicide lawful can only be justified by showing why some specific non-minimal conception of individual autonomy should command attention and respect and be enshrined in legislation.

This I think has been recognised in part in the bills to legalise assisted suicide that have come before and been rejected by the House of Lords. These bills typically have sought to include what are spoken of as "safeguards" to ensure that a choice to die indeed reflects more than a minimal conception of individual autonomy, that might reflect momentary desire, lack of comprehension or lack of information. The difficulties lie in specifying clearly the form or degree of individual autonomy that should be required for this irrevocable choice to be lawful.

Incorporating a few "safeguards" into legislation cannot, I believe, address the real difficulty of protecting patients (or others) against the consequences of choices that are not well grounded being visited upon them. A convincing non-minimalist account of individual autonomy has to take account of many ways in which individual autonomy may be limited. And here I believe our debates remain wholly inadequate.

Much popular coverage of assisted suicide has been marred by reliance on two assumptions that obstruct clear thinking.

The first assumption is a tendency to think mainly about individual cases that are so miserable that we are tempted to feel that anything must be an improvement. But of course legislation has to be framed to be safe for all citizens, not tailored for hard cases while risking the lives of others. Unless we can reliably specify the cases for which the legislation is intended, it will not be feasible to legislate. We can only legislate safely if we can reliably pick out the adequately autonomous patient (whatever that may mean) from patients whose choice is not adequately autonomous. Thinking about hard cases is not enough unless we can find clear distinctions between those cases and others.

A second assumption which mars these debates is that the image of the autonomous patient is often coupled with another stereotypical figure, namely the wholly compassionate relative, friend, carer or physician. But realities are more complex. Even the most loving families and friends may be greatly burdened by caring for a very ill person, not to mention impoverished. Even compassionate professionals are unlikely to be wholly compassionate. Compassion is often and understandably mixed with frustration and even anger, and even with hopes and interests in another's death.

How are we to tell which requests for help to commit suicide express robust individual autonomy and which do not? How can we tell which choices express compliance with the (spoken or unspoken) desires of burdened carers and relatives, or of expectant heirs, whose compassion may be limited? How we to tell which families and professionals are "wholly compassionate"?

If we are to draft safe legislation to make assisted suicide lawful we would need to distinguish and disallow requests for help that reflect either momentary despair or clinical depression, or weary compliance with, indeed deference to, the desires of relatives, carers, and professionals. Even deferential and frightened choices are choices, so minimally autonomous.

In a world of idealised wholly autonomous patients, and of wholly selfless and compassionate families and professionals, legislation providing for assisted dying might, if ethically acceptable, not be risky. But we do not live in that world, and I doubt whether we can draft legislation that is safe for human beings with their full variety of situations and dependence on one another. The philosopher Bernard Williams was, I think, right to suggest that "we should not put too much weight on the fragile structure of the voluntary".