Today's Top Islamic News (DAILY)

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UK photographers protest against anti-terror law
Sun, 24 Jan 2010 10:34:34 GMT

An AP photo of British photographers staging a gathering in central London's Trafalgar Square on January 23, 2010.
Around 2,000 British photographers have staged a rally in London, protesting the UK's new controversial terrorism laws that warrant stop and search by police.

The photographers gathered in London's Trafalgar Square on Saturday to express their discontent over the country's Terrorism Act 2000, which grants the police further authority to impinge on photographers' privacy.

The demonstrators said Terrorism Act 2000 is not being “sensibly” implemented by law enforcement officers, according to BBC.

They waved placards reading, "I am a photographer, not a terrorist" and flashed their cameras in a symbolic gesture.

"We're coming together to show solidarity and to show that we won't be intimidated" by the implementation of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act, CNN quoted Jonathan Warren, a self-employed photographer and a founder of Saturday's campaign, as saying.

Last week, the European Court of Human Rights ruled against the "coercive powers" of the counter-terrorism law and identified the Act as a breach of human rights.

Participants at the rally reported repeated police intrusion of their activities on grounds of fighting 'terrorism.'

British media say under the new legislation, police stopped and searched around 36,000 people between April and June last year alone.

GHN/JG/DT

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Is UK child torture case a sign of social disintegration?
Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:06:41 GMT

British child welfare activists have asked the attorney general to double the sentence of the two brothers convicted in the Edlington torture case, which was one of a number of incidents that have raised serious concerns about social and moral decay in the UK.

The 11- and 10-year-old brothers, whose names have not been disclosed for legal reasons, were handed down an indeterminate sentence on Friday for a prolonged "sadistic" attack on two innocent children in Edlington, near Doncaster, last April.

The horrific description of the case was published in a detailed report on the Persian service of BBC entitled “Where is the broken society in Britain leading to?”

According to the report, the two will face a minimum of five years in detention. However, they may never be released since they are regarded as a high risk to the public. One is believed to be in danger of becoming a psychopath.

One of the victims of the Edlington attack nearly died during the incident, but the two brothers have shown no remorse for what they did.

The savagery of the attack, which has been described as unprecedented in British history, has caused a great deal of public outrage.

Before handing down their sentences, the judge said that the attack was carried out with “chilling detachment” by the boys, whose tools of choice were “aggression, extreme violence and sexual degradation.”

The pair had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to charges of committing intentional grievous bodily harm, robbery, and forcing a child to engage in a sexual act.

The court heard how they came across their two young victims at a playground and lured them to a secluded area with the promise of showing them a dead fox.

Once there, the brothers subjected them to a vicious 90-minute attack using branches, sharpened sticks, barbed wire, broken glass, rocks, and pieces of metal.

Both victims were repeatedly hit with tree branches and fists as they lay cowering on the ground, the court heard. Their faces were stamped on and heavy rocks were dropped on their heads.

At one point, the battered and bloodied victims were forced to take off their clothes and perform sexual acts together.

One of the victims eventually sustained a deep wound to his arm, into which a lit cigarette was placed by the older brother. When the terrified nine-year-old victim asked to use the toilet, he was forced to urinate on his friend's face.

The court heard that as the attack reached its climax, the younger victim was ordered to kill himself. He then placed a stick into his own mouth and shoved it into his throat.

The older victim was left for dead after a piece of a broken sink was dropped on his head. He could not be interviewed by police until 10 days after the assault due to the seriousness of his injuries.

According to the graphic BBC report, the court also heard details of a strikingly similar attack carried out by the brothers on a choirboy in Edlington a week earlier.

The court was told how he too was lured to a secluded spot, this time with the promise of observing a "massive toad," and how he was beaten and stamped on. The brothers have pleaded guilty to a charge of assault causing physical harm over the incident.

On that occasion, their 11-year-old victim was apparently saved from an even worse fate by the intervention of a passerby. However, the next time the two chose a far more secluded location for their plans.

A brief section of video footage shot by the older brother on a mobile phone stolen from the victims was a key part of the prosecution's evidence.

The Doncaster Children's Safeguarding Board, which conducted an independent investigation into the case, has spelled out a long list of failings by the South Yorkshire town's social services. However, only a summary of their findings has been released.

Although a serious case review found that agencies missed 31 opportunities to take action that would have prevented the crime, only one member of the staff has faced any disciplinary action.

The parents of the two assailants, whose "toxic" upbringing turned them into individuals who could commit such vicious acts, will also face prosecution for child neglect and abuse, police announced on Friday.

The BBC report contends that the Edlington brothers' case has raised debates over the status of families and childcare in Britain.

David Cameron used the case to back his contention that Britain is in danger of becoming an irresponsible society.

Within an hour after the court sentences were issued, the Tory leader claimed that the case was symptomatic of the levels of social breakdown.

Meanwhile, Labour MPs have criticized Cameron for linking the Edlington case to his campaign claim that Britain is a "broken" society.

Labour insists that, based on the statistics, crime rates are dropping in the country.

But every time there is a high-profile case, such as the shooting of a 10-year-old boy called Reece in Manchester, the murder of Jamie Bulger by two 10-year-olds, or the Baby Peter torture killing, political debates resume.

Constance Briscoe, who began working as a cleaner and dressmaker and went on to study law, becoming one of Britain's few Black judges, accuses the politicians of playing around with such issues.

She argues that British politicians do not recognize the problem, stressing that there are currently families in Britain which have not had an employed member in the past three generations.

Justice Briscoe believes that the political parties use these cases to undermine their rivals but never really do anything to address the heart of the problem.

The BBC report pointed out that crime rates vary in different British cities. For example, in the city of Manchester alone, seven armed assaults take place per day. In 1995, there were 2,743 armed assaults that were recorded by the police. That figure, however, reached 7,298 between 1995 and 1996.

Stabbing crimes, mostly common among teenagers, are a main problem in Britain, causing serious concern among British citizens.

Two thirds of the British people feel insecure and endangered, according to social statistics, the report said.

Sir Michael Caine, a well-known British actor who grew up poor, has warned about the ongoing situation and the promotion of a lazy society with the help of the government.

"It seems that no one seeks to find a solution… We have some 350,000 people addicted to heroin and crack at present. They do not work and live with the help of the government," he said.

Many sociologists in Britain believe that for young people, families are an important factor in the continuation or the end of a life of crime.

For example, in the Edlington attack, the elder brother, who was 11 years old, took drugs and drank when he was nine years old.

He had previously been sentenced in several criminal cases. The two boys watched pornographic and horror films at home from the time they were six and seven years old. Their father used to violently assault their mother.

Experience shows that most people with such backgrounds later enter the security or military services, the BBC report said.

It seems that it will be very difficult to resolve Britain's social problems.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has described Britain as a damaged country in moral terms.

MJ/SF/MB/HGL

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Kingdom donates $50m for Haiti quake relief
Sultan Al-Tamimi | Arab News


JEDDAH: Saudi Arabia will donate $50 million in aid to earthquake-devastated Haiti. “On instructions from Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, the Kingdom will donate $50 million to assist the Haitian people,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Osama Nugali said Monday.

The cash donation is thought to be the largest given by a Middle Eastern country, although some have made significant donations in kind. The funds will be channeled through the United Nations.

Last week, the secretary-general of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, urged all OIC member states and Islamic organizations to provide help to Haiti following the Jan. 12 earthquake.

Meanwhile, the Riyadh-based Arab Gulf Program for United Nations Development Organizations (AGFUND) has become one of the first organizations in the Kingdom to donate to Haiti, with a contribution of $100,000. “The contribution is an extension to the role of the Arab Gulf Program and its humanitarian stand in alleviating the suffering of victims, and it is in response to the urgent call from the Haitian government for humanitarian assistance,” AGFUND spokesman Abdul Latiff said.

Other Middle Eastern countries have chipped in. The United Arab Emirates said a plane carrying 77 tons of basic relief supplies has been sent by the government to Haiti. Jordan sent six tons of relief supplies to Haiti shortly after the quake hit. A field hospital was also dispatched there to help treat survivors, including members of Jordan’s 700-strong peacekeeping contingent in Haiti. Three Jordanian peacekeepers were killed and 23 wounded in the quake.

The United Nations said Monday it has so far received pledges of more than $270 million in emergency relief funding for Haiti, representing nearly half of its target. The funds are meant to go toward food, medication, water and tents for three million people affected by the earthquake, which according to the Haitian government, claimed around 150,000 lives.

Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive urged donors Monday to swing behind his nation’s massive reconstruction, as aid groups called for Haiti’s billion-dollar foreign debt to be wiped clean.

“I just want to say that the people of Haiti will need to be helped to face this colossal work of reconstruction,” Bellerive told international officials as closed-door talks in Montreal began.

“The government of Haiti wants to assure the entire world that it will remember and be worthy of the exceptional sympathy that it receives,” he added. The talks are aimed at defining key strategies to rebuild the country from the ground up in the wake of the quake.

An umbrella group of Canadian and Haitian aid organizations called on donors to cancel more than $1 billion in foreign debt. “We hope that you use the weight of your governments to convince international financial institutions to cancel Haiti’s entire foreign debt,” said Eric Faustin, director of Rocahd, the Coalition of Canadian-Haitian Development Organizations.

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Editorial: Greek economy
Arab News


The Greek economy is in far deeper trouble than ever before in modern times. This euro zone country is currently four times over the deficit limit that was required when it adopted the currency in 2001.

Its total debt now comfortably exceeds its entire GDP for the year. Its international credit rating is sliding, so making it technically harder and certainly more expensive to seek fresh loans. Greece, not its old rival Turkey, is now clearly the Sick Man of Europe and the alarming signs are that it is not going to be recovering any time soon.

At the core of Greece’s economic troubles is dishonesty, pure and simple. Greeks do not pay their taxes. Taxmen can and often are bribed to go away.

The unofficial black economy is traditionally reckoned to account for 30 percent of GDP but some observers think this assessment is far too conservative.

Greece’s public sector accounts for around half of GDP but measured against the private sector, its workers are markedly less productive and often distinctly better paid. All governments, but particularly each socialist PASOK administration, have used the civil service and nationalized industries as a source of patronage. This is in itself dishonest, in that it means government money is often being invested not where it will have the greatest economic benefit, but rather the biggest political pay back.

Dishonesty has become ingrained in the system. Finance officials in Brussels along with colleagues in the European Central Bank (ECB) in Bonn, were appalled and angered to discover last month that even the official financial data, which underpin Greece’s credit rating and its reports to its fellow euro zone countries, had been falsified.

The irony is that the wheels finally started to come off the Greek economy just as PASOK won an election last October bringing George Papandreou back to power.

With no further place to hide, the new government was forced to accept radical cuts to its bloated expenditure and vow to raise revenues. This latter could be achieved simply by collecting the taxes that are actually due.

Cutting revenues is the harder part. Political violence is rarely far from the surface, notably in the capital Athens. Farmers are already protesting deep cuts and unions have called a one-day national work stoppage, as a warning of a general strike. Few Greeks seem prepared to bite the economic bullet and accept the discomfort of wide-ranging economic and fiscal reforms.

Meanwhile, ECB officials watched with concern earlier this month as investors rushed to buy up a new Greek bond issue. It was four times oversubscribed for the very good reason that it is paying at twice the rate of a similar German bond. Better still for investors, the currency in which the Greeks will be settling this and previous bonds is the solid and stable euro. Yet Greece itself is very far from being solid and stable. There is a difficult contradiction here. Consequently, the euro zone may be facing the biggest challenge to its currency since it was established 11 years ago.

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Drug firms’ role highlighted
Rodolfo C. Estimo Jr. | Arab News


RIYADH: Prince Khaled bin Sultan, assistant minister of defense and aviation for military affairs, on Monday stressed the importance of the role played by drug companies in Saudi society as well as in other countries.

He was addressing the two-day Ministry of Defense and Aviation Conference at the King Faisal Hall in the Riyadh Inter-Continental Hotel, which was focusing on medical services. Prince Khaled said that the event aims to maintain and provide good health to residents in the Kingdom. “This event takes place because of your continuous research. In fact, it has become a landmark in the medical field because of your untiring efforts and your keenness to do what is best for health and for humanity,” he told participants, which included scientists, doctors, medical representatives, and delegates from the GCC countries as well as the Middle East.

He added that he was particularly interested in the conference as it also focused on the health and well-being of Saudi soldiers.

He cited the example of Saudi soldiers who were involved in defending the Kingdom’s borders in the south against infiltrators in November last year.

“These soldiers risked life and limb to safeguard the border of the Kingdom,” he said. Over 100 died in the fighting.

Prince Khaled also emphasized the importance of conducting more research into nanotechnology, claiming it would play an important role in the future.

“If and when it’s available to us, we should take advantage of it. Nanotechnology is revolutionary. It can provide us with an alternative cure for various ailments instead of the antibiotics that we are using at present,” he said.

He added that nanotechnology could help treat obesity and diabetes. “These are two silent killers not only in the Kingdom but also everywhere else. But rather than tapping into nanotechnology products when they are already available, I urge one and all to observe and practice a healthy lifestyle,” he said.

Prince Khaled thanked the companies behind the conference, which includes pharmaceuticals company Pfizer as the main sponsor. The company also received an award for supporting the event over the years.

Other sponsors include Roche, Cigalah Group, Astra Zeneca, Riyadh Pharma, GSK, NUPCO, Saudi Airlines, Saudi Export Company-Lilly and Abdulrahman Al-Gosaibi Co.

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US role in Haiti relief efforts provokes concerns
Veronica Sardon | DPA

The growing US military deployment in Haiti is provoking mixed feelings in the Caribbean country and beyond. There is relief that someone might actively combat lawlessness on the streets of Port-au-Prince in the wake of last week’s devastating earthquake. But there are serious concerns that the quake-related aid operation could become an open-ended military intervention.

Help is still desperately needed with an estimated 200,000 dead and 1 million homeless, but even aid is subject to political and ideological interpretation. “We fully support military involvement in logistics and security, but it needs to be under the umbrella of the UN,” Penny Lawrence, aid and development charity OXFAM’s director for Britain, told the German Press Agency DPA. “The rhetoric on coordination is right, but in practice it is proving challenging.”

Benoit Leduc of Doctors Without Borders more bluntly said that his organization was concerned about the “militarization of aid” and “the extreme confusion of distributing food with a gun.” On the ground, many Haitians are happy about the arrival of US Marines.

“The Americans are our only hope. I think they will deactivate the gangs,” said Wawa, a 38-year-old former gang member who commands respect in Port-au-Prince’s dangerous shantytowns. Yet even Haitians themselves are afraid that once American troops are in place their own needs might be relegated. By Thursday, there were rumors of a plan to oust refugees from Haiti’s national stadium in Port-au-Prince to make space for US troops to land helicopters, for example.

Critics have denounced US forces in control of the city’s airport for prioritizing military flights over civilian flights. Commander Buck Elton, air operations chief for the US military in Haiti, insisted that the landing plan is evenly divided between demands. He told reporters that on Wednesday, for example, there were 43 international aid aircraft, 55 US civilian aid aircraft and 51 military aircraft.

Aid organizations around the world have politely criticized what analyst Seumas Milne defined as the US military’s “shockingly perverse priorities” in the British daily The Guardian.

Loris de Filippi, emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders’ Choscal Hospital in the Cite Soleil neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, complained about a Haiti-bound aid plane being diverted to the Dominican Republic. “We have had five patients in Martissant health center die for lack of the medical supplies that this plane was carrying,” De Filippi said. “We were forced to buy a saw in the market to continue amputations. We are running against time here.”

Taiwanese media called US rescue teams “bullies” for pushing a Taiwanese search group out of various sites including a UN building, even as the Asian team had located survivors and was working to get them out of the rubble. Others have claimed that US forces gave preference to the evacuation of US citizens and that they generally favored security “rather than humanitarian aid,” as Paris-based Le Monde put it.

“The United States government is using a humanitarian tragedy to militarily occupy Haiti,” Chavez complained. “Cuba has more doctors in Haiti than the United States.”

Analysts around the globe were guessing at the intentions of US President Barack Obama in his deployment of US troops in Haiti.

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Ethiopian jet with 90 people crashes into sea
Agencies

BEIRUT: An Ethiopian Airlines plane carrying 90 people caught fire and crashed into the sea minutes after taking off from Beirut early Monday. At least 34 bodies were recovered.

The cause of the crash was not immediately known. Lebanon has seen stormy weather since Sunday night, with crackling thunder, lightning and rain.

The Lebanese Army said the plane had broken up in the air before plummeting into rough seas and hopes of finding any survivors faded 17 hours after the crash. Witnesses described the impact as a “flash that lit up the whole sea” and a “ball of fire.”

Lebanese President Michel Suleiman said he did not think the plane had been brought down deliberately, emphasizing “a sabotage attack is unlikely.” Weeping relatives streamed into Beirut’s airport to wait for news on their loved ones. One woman dropped to her knees in tears; another cried out, “Where is my son?”

Andree Qusayfi said his 35-year-old brother, Ziad, was traveling to Ethiopia for his job at a computer company, but was planning to return to Lebanon for good soon. “We begged him to postpone his flight because of the storm,” Qusayfi said, his eyes red from crying. “But he insisted on going because he had work appointments.”

Zeinab Seklawi said her 24-year-old son Yasser called her as he was boarding. “I told him, ‘God be with you,’ and I went to sleep,” Seklawi said. “Please find my son. I know he’s alive and wouldn’t leave me.”

The Boeing 737-800 took off around 2:30 a.m. and went down 3.5 km off the coast, said Ghazi Aridi, public works and transportation minister. “The weather undoubtedly was very bad,” Aridi told reporters at the airport.

The plane was carrying 83 passengers and 7 crew. Aridi identified the passengers as 54 Lebanese, 22 Ethiopians, one Iraqi, one Syrian, one Canadian of Lebanese origin, one Russian of Lebanese origin, a French woman and two Britons of Lebanese origin. The wife of Denis Pietton, the French ambassador to Lebanon, was on the plane, according to the French Embassy.

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Evidence on Kelly death sealed for 70 years
Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:55:43 GMT

Dr. David Kelly was found dead in the woods near his Oxfordshire home.
The official heading an inquiry into the suspicious death of a British weapons inspector who cast doubts on the main argument for invading Iraq has secretly ordered all evidence locked up for 70 years.

Lord Hutton, who chaired the 2003 inquiry, which controversially concluded that Doctor David Kelly's death has been a suicide, secured a 70-year seal on all major evidence, including medical records — none of which had ever been made public.

The unprecedented move was revealed last week, sparking fresh uproar and allegations of a government cover-up — considering that by 2073 anyone with the least interest, or stake, in the case will probably be long dead.

Kelly was mysteriously found dead in the woods near his Oxfordshire home in July 2003, just days after his name was leaked as the source of a pre-war BBC documentary that undermined the now-notorious 45-minute dossier as highly exaggerated.

The clandestine restrictions came to light when a group of 13 doctors challenging the Hutton verdict received a letter from the Oxfordshire County Council in answer to their calls to see the postmortem file.

"It fits in with the subversion of due process we have seen for six years. It is extraordinary…I am shocked but not surprised by this," the Daily Mail quoted Dr. David Halpin, one of the group of 13 doctors, as saying on Saturday.

The revelations may prompt calls on the country's ongoing inquiry into the Iraq war, to question former British premier Tony Blair, who is to give evidence later this week, on the issue.

Blair penned a clinching introduction to the dossier, claiming spies had proved “beyond doubt” that the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that he could launch within 45-minutes.

ZHD/HGH/MMN

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Rwanda's genocide leader 'lives freely in France'
Sun, 24 Jan 2010 10:55:27 GMT

Rwandan Callixte Mbarushimana
A Rwandan rebel leader belonging to Armed Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) and accused of genocide is reportedly living as a free man in a suburb of Paris.

Callixte Mbarushimana, executive secretary of the FDLR rebel group, coordinates the rebels' daily activities in Rwanda and its neighboring countries, AP reported Saturday.

Based on the report, the 46-year-old former UN employee is able to regularly send out press releases from his apartment in the French capital.

FDLR is one of several groups accused of creating instability in the African nation as many of its members are accused of taking part in Rwanda's genocide.

The Genocide was the 1994 mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Rwanda's Tutsis and Hutu political moderates by the Hutu dominated government.

An estimated 800,000 people were massacred in the genocide.

French Foreign Ministry has refused to extradite Mbarushimana to Rwanda whose men are accused of killing at least 700 civilians last year.

"France does not extradite the citizens of countries which apply the death penalty, as was the case in Rwanda, or whose justice systems do not fully guarantee their rights," French Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bernard Valero said.

Relations between two countries have reached a new low as Rwanda's government accuses France of playing an active role in the 1994 genocide.

The FDLR group is also accused of decapitating several hundred people a few months ago in the village of Busurungi in DR Congo.

The war, centered mainly in eastern DR Congo, has involved nine African nations and directly affected the lives of 50 million Congolese.

An estimated 5 million people died in Congo from disease and hunger as a result of the civil war which raged from 1998 to 2003.

JR/DT

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'Enough fighting in Afghanistan,' says NATO chief
Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:09:26 GMT

General Stanley McChrystal, Commander of the International Security Assistance Forces and Commander of US forces in Afghanistan attends a meeting in Kabul, Afghanistan, January 20, 2010.
Ahead of a London conference on Afghanistan which will discuss a US-proposed military surge, US and NATO's top military commander in Afghanistan calls for an end to combat.

In an interview with The Financial Times published on Monday, US General Stanley McChrystal said that he hoped an increase in the international presence in the war-torn country would intimidate the Taliban into accepting a political deal.

"As a soldier, my personal feeling is that there's been enough fighting," McChrystal was quoted as saying.

"I believe a political solution to all conflicts is the inevitable outcome — and it's the right outcome," he added, arguing that many Taliban militants thought al-Qaeda was a negative influence.

McChrystal went on to suggest that the dialogue would offer even Taliban leaders a chance to be involved in the government on the condition that they lay down their arms.

He also urged participants in the London conference, which opens on Tuesday, "to walk out of London with a renewed commitment, and that commitment is to the right outcome for the Afghan people."

This is while a communiqué leaked to The Times newspaper on Monday suggested that the conference will conclude on an agreement that sees international forces remaining in the war zone for yet another five years.

ZHD/MMN