HRW cites multiple reports of torture that emerged during the Formula 1 grand prix held in Bahrain in April. They include accounts of activists and women subjected to electric shocks and forced into signing confessions.In addition, the organization harks back to the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry report, issued in November 2011 that stated five activists had died in custody of torture since uprisings began against the Sunni ruling class.“If the latest allegations are brushed aside it will be yet more evidence suggesting that Bahrain’s justice system is a haven for torturers,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Bahrain’s allies should apply serious pressure on Bahrain to investigate and hold accountable anyone responsible for brutally torturing activists.”Bahrain has blocked the entry of the UN’s special rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez, from coming to probe police abuses of power. His visit, which was scheduled to begin on May 8, was indefinitely postponed by the Bahraini authorities.“This is the second time that my visit has been postponed, at very short notice. It is, effectively, a cancellation as no alternative dates were proposed, nor is there a future road map to discuss,” said Mendez, expressing his “disappointment” over the announcement.Protests against the Bahrain’s oppressive Sunni royal family have become commonplace. The country’s 70 per cent Shia claim they are discriminated against and call for a transfer to a democratic system of government.This comes as six tweeters were jailed on Wednesday for insulting King Hamad and ‘misusing the right to free expression.’ According to prosecutors, they posted comments on their Twitter feeds that undermined “the values and traditions of Bahrain’s society towards the king.”The Bahraini capital, Manama, was hit by mass protests during the grand prix. Activists branded the event “a race for blood” and claimed it was a ploy by the Bahraini authorities to “whitewash” the country’s poor human rights reputation.One of the highest-profile cases of human rights abuses to come out of Bahrain is that of activist Nabeel Rajab, who openly attacked the country’s government following an interview on RT for Julian Assange’s show The World Tomorrow. Nabeel was sentenced to three years in jail for ‘participation in an illegal assembly’ and ‘calling for a march without prior notification.’Since the beginning of the uprisings against the Bahraini monarchy in 2011, Human Rights Watch has calculated that at least 80 people have been killed and thousands arrested. … Read More
Italy: six-year jail term demanded at Berlusconi sex trial
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Italian prosecutors have called for Silvio Berlusconi to be given a six-year jail sentence and a lifetime ban on holding public office at his latest court trial.
The former prime minister and centre-right leader is accused of paying for sex with Karima El Mahroug – better known as “Ruby the Heartstealer” – when she was under 18.
He is also alleged to have abused his power of office by pressing for her to be released when she was held by police on theft charges.
‘‘The closing arguments of public prosecutor Boccassini are surreal. They’re based on the destruction of all evidence that shows Berlusconi’s innocence,” said Anna Maria Bernini, from Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party.
Massimo D’Alema, from Italy’s Democratic Party, commented: ‘‘I don’t think that the future of the government should depend on these court verdicts – and the other verdicts that perhaps will come.”
Berlusconi, 76, allegedly paid for sex with El Mahroug during the now notorius “bunga bunga” parties. They both deny the allegations.
The sentencing demands come after Berlusconi lost an appeal against a four-year sentence for tax fraud.
More about: Italy, Justice, Silvio Berlusconi
Copyright © 2013 euronews
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Turkey – Officials trying to control coverage of border town bombings
Reporters Without Borders condemns the drastic restrictions that a magistrate’s court in Reyhanli, a southern town on the Syrian border, has imposed on media coverage of two lethal car bomb explosions in Reyhanli on 11 May, outside its town hall and post office. “The ban imposed by the Reyhanli magistrate’s court is disproportionate and violates the right to information,” Reporters Without Borders said. “The bombings are among the deadliest in recent Turkish history. How could information about (…) … Read More
Obama ‘prefers Guantanamo status quo’
Twenty-four hunger strikers are now receiving enteral feeds, with three people “being observed in the detainee hospital,” according to Guantanamo Bay Public Affairs Director Lieutenant Colonel Samuel E. House. His most recent report put the official number of hunger strikers at 100.Although Guantanamo Bay remains open over four years after Obama pledged to close it, the President continues to voice his disapproval of the detention center.In his first public response to the ongoing hunger strike, Obama said it was “not a surprise” that there are “problems in Guantanamo.”"It is critical for us to understand that Guantanamo is not necessary to keep America safe. It is expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us in terms of our international standing. It lessens cooperation with our allies on counterterrorism efforts. It is a recruitment tool for extremists. It needs to be closed,” he said in an April 30 statement.The next day, Obama announced that he was considering hiring a new State Department official to oversee options for a future transfer of the prison’s detainees once it closes.Earlier this month it has been revealed that keeping Guantanamo Bay running is costing the US some $150 million a year.Medea Benjamin, author of the book “Drone Warfare,” shared her thoughts with RT on why the Obama never kept his promise to shut down the notorious detention facility.RT: President Obama pledged to close Guantanamo when he assumed office in 2009. But over four years later, it’s still open. Why?Medea Benjamin: People around the world are saying if the President of the United States says the prison should be closed, why is it still open? That’s a very logical question to ask. I think that the politics in the US is so partisan that the President is concerned already about who is going to be running in the next presidential election as the democratic candidate, the Congressional elections, wanting to make sure that as many democrats as possible win. The President doesn’t want to be seen as soft, and national security issues. He doesn’t think the American people care enough about this issue. And so he prefers to keep the status quo. The status quo means that desperate men are dying and are being tortured by being force-fed. That is not a status quo that we, the American people, should allow, if we want to continue to call ourselves a democracy.RT: The prisoners’ hunger strike has been going on for over two months now, but there’s very little information coming from most media outlets. So what’s really going on there now?MB: The prisoners who have had a chance to get messages out to their lawyers have described the terrible situation that they are in being strapped down for several hours having these tubes stuffed down the nose and into their stomach. They say it feels like a razor going down their bodies. This is another form of torture, and these prisoners have already endured years of torture in Guantanamo.RT: The hunger strike doesn’t seem to be obtaining the prisoners’ goals, especially since you mention they are being force-fed. So why are they continuing to starve themselves?MB: I think these inmates, or prisoners, as really what we should call them, are desperate and many of them are determined just to keep the hunger strike going. It’s difficult for them, because some of them are in isolation and they don’t know if other prisoners are continuing the hunger strike; are they being told that the other prisoners had stopped the hunger strike? I’m sure it’s a tremendous dilemma for them. But a number of those who have been able to speak through their lawyers have said they would rather die than live in these terrible conditions without ever knowing if they are going to be released.RT: President Obama says he still believes the prison should be closed. Do you think he was sincere in his statement last month? Does he have the power to do more than he is?MB: Obama is lacking the moral courage, he’s lacking the political will, he blames Congress, but really he has the power to release those prisoners who have already been cleared for release; demand a speedy and fair trial for the other ones and bring them into the US and close down the shameful prison of Guantanamo. We just have to force him to do it. We, the American people, the global community.RT: What should be done with the prisoners in the unlikely event that Guantanamo is shut down sometime in the near future?MB: One is to take the majority of prisoners, 86 of them, who have already been cleared by the US government – that means they have been found not to be guilty, not to be harmful to anybody – they should be released. The majority of them are from Yemen. The government of Yemen says they are totally prepared to take them back. There are other prisoners from countries like the United Kingdom that could certainly handle the return of prisoners. So those cleared for release should be released. The others should be sent to a prison in the US and should be tried in US courts just as other criminals are tried, many of them convicted and sentenced to life in prison. … Read More
‘Kosovo is Serbia’: Thousands protest implementation of ‘normalizing ties’ deal
Signed in Brussels in mid-April, “the landmark agreement between Belgrade and Pristina” is seen by ultra-nationalists as Serbia’s recognition of Kosovo that declared independence in 2008.The protest was called by northern Kosovo Serb political leaders who also fiercely oppose the implementation of the 15-point pact. Serbia’s Parliament backed the deal in a 173-24 vote on April 26. Protesters gathered at Republic Square in downtown Belgrade at 12:44 local time (10:44 GMT) as a symbolic reference to UN Security Council Resolution 1244. Signed in June 1999 it placed Kosovo under transitional UN administration (UNMIK) and authorized KFOR, a NATO-led peacekeeping force. Many of those who attended the rally were wearing flags and chanted “Kosovo is the heart of Serbia” and “Treason!” referring to the government, which protesters are calling to reject the Brussels agreement. Banners unfolded above the crowd read “Serbia comes before everything else”, “We will liberate Kosovo”, “Kosovo is Serbia”, and “We will not give up Kosovo”.Reports on the number of protesters vary with local InSerbia news saying up to 10,000 people attended the rally, while AFP reported about 3,000 people.Top officials of the ultra-nationalist Democratic Party of Serbia, the country’s former Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, dignitaries from the Serbian Orthodox Church and officials, who strongly oppose the deal, addressed protesters from the stage. “We are just one of you, ordinary Serbs who have been forced by world powers, and recently by our own authorities, to fight and defend the lives of our children, our homes and holy places,” Slavisa Ristic, the Mayor of Zubin Potok, a city in northern Kosovo, said from the stage.He called the Brussels agreement a betrayal of Serbia, adding the government was intent on “selling Kosovo and the Serbian people”, local B92 news reported. After the protest was over at 15:00 local time, demonstrators headed toward to the Serbian Government building, where they chanted “Traitors” and “You sold Kosovo!”They then continues their way towards the Russian embassy, where when arrived they started chanting “Serbia, Russia, We do need Union!” InSerbia news said. The agreement reached during the EU-mediated negotiations between Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic and his Kosovo counterpart Hashim Thaci, provides for the merger of the four Serb municipalities in the north (North Mitrovica, Zvecan, Zubin Potok and Leposavic) subject to Kosovo law.This urban district would have powers over economic development, education, healthcare and town planning.Under the new deal, Serbs in northern Kosovo will have their own police and appeal court.Both sides also agreed to not block each other’s efforts to seek EU membership.Prior to the deal, Serbia rejected an agreement proposal because the terms did not “guarantee full security and protection of human rights to the Serb people in Kosovo”.The move is widely regarded as a step towards Serbia’s entry into the European Union. EU lawmakers called on the European Council to grant Belgrade long-anticipated candidate status at a session in March. However, Kosovo remains the main obstacle to accession.Belgrade and Pristina have seen sporadic ethnic tensions over sovereignty, as the Kosovo region has a Serbian population of over 220,000. The most serious in recent years was in 2004, when dozens of Serbian Orthodox churches across Kosovo were set on fire. In 2011 Kosovo Serbs proved their resistance against Pristina’s control, constructing barricades to prevent authorities from entering their enclave in a bid to show their opposition Kosovo’s independence, insisting the province – which has a majority Albanian population – was still part of Serbia. The both sides managed to agree that the border would be jointly policed. … Read More
US diplomat ‘stunned and embarrassed’ by hushed reaction to Benghazi attack
During a six-hour hearing with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Gregory Hicks told lawmakers he spoke with J. Christopher Stevens at the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Hicks said Stevens sounded frantic and communicated a quick “Greg, we’re under attack” before the call was lost.Hicks, who was in Tripoli at the time, added that he had requested air support from a US Air Force base in Aviano, Italy and later for ground troops to fend off Libyan insurgents but was denied by the State Department in both instances. Fearing their consulate would be the next to be overrun, Hicks and his aides began destroying communications equipment with an ax, according to The New York Times. “None of us should ever experience what we went through in Tripoli and Benghazi,” he said. The diplomat claimed that his later pleas for answers about what happened and what could be improved were swept under the rug and out of the news cycle, perhaps for fear of a political backlash in the heat of the presidential election. One example he cited was that several of the people who were directly involved in the attack were never interviewed about what happened.“I’ve been effectively demoted from deputy chief of mission to desk officer,” Hicks said.“They stopped short of interviewing people who I personally know were involved in key decisions,” said Eric Nordstrom, who works in the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security.The Benghazi attack has become a point of bitter contention between the Obama administration and Congressional Republicans, who assert that the nation’s Democratic leadership was slow to respond to the attack and has since attempted to cover up what truly happened on the eleventh anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Hicks testified that he got a sense that he “needed to stop the line of questioning” after he asked superiors why then-UN ambassador Susan Rice initially blamed the anger that led to the attack on a YouTube video, not terrorists. “I was stunned,” he said of her explanation. “My jaw dropped and I was embarrassed.” After his relations with bosses turned frosty, Hicks said, he was told not to speak with a congressman investigating the attack. Upon defying that order Hicks claimed to receive an angry phone call from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills.Republicans have claimed that the issues they’ll uncover during the hearings this week will be enough to undercut Obama’s ability to lead the US. “This is a subject that has, from its beginning, been subject to attempts to politicize it by Republicans,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Wednesday. If White House officials are anxious for the story to disappear they should prepare to be disappointed. A cursory glance at a recent Google trends report, highlighted by Foreign Policy Magazine, reveals that based on their Internet searches, Americans care more about the Benghazi attack now than when it actually happened. On the week September 9-15, 2012 “Benghazi” as a search query scored 24 out of 100 peak interest points. The term then peaked at 100 points during the week preceding the presidential election, then dipped before rising again to 64 points this week. … Read More
Fox News host on Benghazi: ‘We’re getting a little lopsided’ by favoring Republicans
Fox News host Megyn Kelly admitted on Wednesday that the conservative network’s coverage of that day’s Benghazi hearings had been a “little lopsided” after Democratic lawmakers were repeatedly cut off for commercial breaks. Following opening statements, Fox News aired all of…
