Mission & Justice

Paul Daley; 18/5/08

A week before the last election, Kevin Rudd placed on record his unambiguous views about a crime that many Australians have come to regard as perhaps the most shameful recent episode in Australian diplomacy. On November 16 last year, NSW deputy coroner Dorelle Pinch referred the case of the Balibo Five — the Australia-based journalists murdered by the Indonesian military in East Timor in 1975 — to the Commonwealth Attorney-General for possible war crime prosecutions. This move followed four separate Australian inquiries that amounted to nothing, and three decades of official intransigence here and in Indonesia. Finally, it seemed, officialdom had leapt the gaping moral abyss that for decades has underpinned a pragmatism-ahead-of-human rights approach to Canberra’s sacrosanct bilateral relationship with Indonesia. Justice might finally be achieved, damn the diplomatic implications.

(more…)

Kathy Marks; 16/5/08

All of the Pitcairn men convicted of raping and sexually assaulting young girls on the remote South Pacific island are expected to be free by Christmas, after serving less than two years in a prison that some of them helped build. Eight men, all descendants of the Bounty mutineers who settled on Pitcairn in the 18th century, were convicted at trials held on the island in 2004 and in New Zealand in 2006. A ninth pleaded guilty. Six received prison sentences, which they began serving in late 2006 after their final appeal was rejected by the Privy Council in London, the highest court for British Overseas Territories. Despite the severity of their crimes, which included gang-raping a 10-year-old, the islanders were given jail terms of only two to 6½ years.

(more…)

15/5/08

Britain has bowed to pressure and said it will open an independent inquiry into the death of an Iraqi hotel worker who was beaten and died in British custody in southern Iraq in 2003. The move follows years of legal wrangling in which the family of Baha Musa and eight other Iraqis who survived the beatings have sought justice. All nine suffered 36 hours of violent interrogation before Musa died with 93 injuries, including a broken nose and ribs. Britain’s ministry of defence admitted in March that its troops tortured and breached the human rights of the men detained at a Basra hotel. The ministry apologised to Musa’s family and the other men, opening the way for potentially large compensation claims.

(more…)

Jonathan Power; 12/5/08

Once again the CIA and MI6 are publishing dire warnings of the vitality of Al-Qaeda. Once again the Islamic world as a whole is being tarnished by association. US presidential contender John McCain is saying that America needs a leadership to confront the transcendent challenge of our time: The threat of radical Islamic terrorism. And the words still ring in our ears from Samuel Huntington’s treatise, “The Clash of Civilizations”, the book that in many ways triggered this paranoia that infects the politicians, the press and the public discourse. “The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism, it is Islam”, he wrote.

(more…)

8/5/08

Iraqis employed at the British embassy in Baghdad’s Green Zone claim to have been sexually abused, the Times has reported. The British Foreign Office has received complaints from an Iraqi cleaner and two cooks that a culture of sexual harassment, abuse and bullying exists at the embassy, the report said Thursday. Accusations have been made against British employees of the US service company KBR which was responsible for catering at several embassies in Baghdad.

(more…)

Michael McKenna; 9/5/08

The Immigration Department has blocked the release of documents relating to the Mohamed Haneef case as his second-cousin was yesterday deported from Britain for withholding information from police investigating last year’s failed bomb plots in London and Glasgow. A week after the opening of the Rudd government inquiry into the bungled case, Dr Haneef’s lawyers launched court action to overturn the Immigration Department’s decision to refuse the release of large numbers of documents under Freedom of Information because it may jeopardise future investigations and discourage bureaucrats from giving frank advice to ministers.

(more…)

Ian Sample; 7/5/08

Breast-fed babies are more intelligent than those raised on formula milk, the most comprehensive study of the issue has found. The study involved nearly 14,000 children aged over 6½. At the age of 6½, children who had been exclusively breastfed scored 7.5 points higher in verbal intelligence tests and 5.9 points higher in overall IQ tests. Teachers also rated the breastfed children better at reading, writing and mathematics. The finding, which confirms earlier research, raises the question of whether it is breast milk itself or associated maternal care that boosts intelligence

(more…)

3/5/08

A Sudanese cameraman with the Arab satellite news channel al-Jazeera arrived home early yesterday after being detained without charge for six years at the United States-run Guantanamo Bay military prison. A US air force plane carrying Sami al-Haj landed at a state security terminal in Khartoum. He was greeted by his family before being taken to hospital for medical checks, a watching photographer said. Mr Haj, who was held without charge at the prison in Cuba, arrived with two other Sudanese nationals also detained at Guantanamo, al-Jazeera said.

(more…)

Ian Cobain; 30/4/08

Britain’s Security Service, MI5, has been accused of “outsourcing” the torture of British citizens to a notorious Pakistani intelligence agency in an attempt to obtain information about terrorist plots and to secure convictions against al-Qaeda suspects. A number of British terrorism suspects who have been arrested in Pakistan at the request of British authorities say their interrogation by Security Service officers, shortly after brutal torture at the hands of agents of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), has convinced them that MI5 colluded in the mistreatment. Those men have given detailed accounts of their alleged ordeals at the hands of the ISI over the past four years. Some of them appear to have been taken to the same secret interrogation centre in Rawalpindi, where they say they were repeatedly tortured before being questioned by MI5.

(more…)

Kathy Marks; 29/4/08

Nine women involved in the Pitcairn Island rape trials are considering a class action against the British Government to seek compensation for the abuse they suffered growing up in the remote South Pacific territory. At trials on the island in 2004 and in New Zealand in 2006, eight Pitcairn men were convicted of raping and sexually assaulting young girls, while a ninth man pleaded guilty. Six were given prison sentences, and three are still in jail on Pitcairn - which was settled by mutineers from the Bounty in 1790 and has a population of about 50. In Britain, victims of crime are compensated under a statutory scheme that sets amounts based on the severity of the suffering. But the scheme does not apply to residents of Britain’s overseas territories, although they hold British citizenship. The Pitcairn victims have instructed a New Zealand QC, Bruce Corkill. He wrote to representatives of the New Zealand-based British Governor of Pitcairn, George Fergusson, in September asking that a parallel scheme be set up for the island.

(more…)