Three Cleveland Women, Missing 10 Years, Found Alive

“Help me, I’m Amanda Berry … I’ve been kidnapped and I’ve been missing for 10 years. And I’m here, I’m free now.”

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SUMMARY
On May 6, 2013, three women from Cleveland, Ohio – Amanda Berry, Georgina “Gina” DeJesus, and Michelle Knight – were rescued from their nine- to eleven-year captivity after Berry escaped and contacted police. They were freed from a house owned by Ariel Castro, the suspect in their kidnappings. A six-year-old daughter of Berry, born while she was captive, was also rescued.

Knight disappeared in Cleveland in 2002 at age 21, Berry in 2003 at 16, and DeJesus in 2004 at 14. While captive, the women had multiple pregnancies, at least one live birth (Berry’s daughter), and multiple miscarriages. The women were at times bound with chains and rope.

Ariel Castro was arrested on May 6, 2013, shortly after the women were freed. On May 8, Castro was charged with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape, charges that carry prison sentences of 10 years to life. On May 9, Castro’s bail was set at $8 million. Additional charges are pending, including aggravated murder (for terminating the pregnancies), attempted murder, assault, a charge for each instance of rape, and a kidnapping charge for each day each victim was held captive. The case received front-page news coverage worldwide.

THE ABDUCTIONS

Michelle Knight
Michelle Knight was last seen on August 22, 2002, when she left her cousin’s house. She disappeared near West 116th Street and Lorain Avenue, on a day she was to appear in court for a child custody case concerning her son. She was 21 years old at the time of her disappearance. Police put far fewer resources into the Knight case than the Berry or DeJesus cases, partly because they had very few leads, and due in part to the fact that she was an adult, and was believed to have run away. Knight’s removal from the National Crime Information Center database, 15 months after she disappeared, has been criticized, although police and the FBI maintain that her inclusion or exclusion had no bearing on her rescue.

According to a report by officers who found Knight, she accepted a ride from Castro, but he instead drove her to his house. She was tied up in his basement and beaten, and was eventually moved upstairs to a locked room.

Before she escaped, police and family members came to believe that Knight may have left on her own, frustrated after losing custody of her son. Her mother thought she had once seen her with an older man at a shopping plaza on West 117th Street.

Amanda Berry
Amanda Marie Berry went missing on April 21, 2003, at age 16, one day before her 17th birthday. She was believed to have made it home from her job at a Burger King at West 110th Street and Lorain Avenue, and she changed from her uniform at her family’s apartment, but no one witnessed her there. She left money and all her clothes at home. She was known to have had plans to celebrate her birthday the next day. Berry has told police that after her shift a Burger King, she accepted a ride home from Castro, who said he had a son who worked there as well. She called her family to say she was getting a ride home, but instead was taken to Castro’s house and imprisoned.

Police initially considered Berry a runaway, until a man used her cell phone to call her mother, Louwanna Miller, claiming the teenager would return in a few days and that they were married. Miller searched for her daughter for three years, but died in 2006 of heart failure.

Berry was featured in a 2004 segment of America’s Most Wanted, which re-aired in 2005 and 2006 and linked her to Gina DeJesus, who at that point had subsequently also gone missing in Cleveland. They were profiled on The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Montel Williams Show, where self-described psychic Sylvia Browne told Miller in 2004 that her daughter Amanda was dead, and that she was “in water.” Browne received significant media criticism for her prediction being “false and potentially damaging.”

Before her disappearance, Berry had been in a gifted program at John Marshall High School, but had switched to an online home school program in which she was on track for early graduation.

Gina DeJesus
Georgina “Gina” Lynn DeJesus went missing at age 14. She was last seen at a pay phone at about 3 p.m. on April 2, 2004, as she headed home from her middle school at West 105th Street and Lorain Avenue. She and suspect Ariel Castro’s daughter Arlene Castro had called Ariel’s wife, Grimilda Figueroa, asking to have a sleepover at DeJesus’ house, but Figueroa said they could not. Berry and DeJesus disappeared within five blocks of each other, perhaps even on the same block.

DeJesus said Castro offered her a ride to his house to see his daughter, her friend. Instead she was taken captive.

No AMBER Alert was issued the day DeJesus disappeared, because no one had witnessed her being abducted. The lack of an AMBER Alert angered her father, Felix DeJesus, who said in 2006 that he believed the public would listen even if the alerts become routine.
A week after Gina’s disappearance, police released a sketch and description of an Hispanic man aged 25 to 35, 5 ft 10 in (1.78 m) tall, weighing 165 to 185 pounds (75 to 82 kg), with green eyes and a pencil-thin beard. The suspect had been seen near her school driving a light blue or white car, and asking for Gina.

DeJesus was featured on America’s Most Wanted in 2004, 2005, and 2006, and the television program also linked her to Berry. The disappearances received regular media attention over the years, as recently as 2012, while family and others held vigils and searched for DeJesus and Berry. Ariel Castro was identified by Gina’s family in video footage of two of these vigils and he reportedly participated in a search party and tried to get close to the family. Police kept an active investigation open, offering a $25,000 reward for information on their location.

THE DISCOVERY
On May 6, 2013, Knight, DeJesus, Berry, and a previously unknown 6-year-old female child of Berry were found in a home at 2207 Seymour Avenue, in the residential Tremont neighborhood 3 miles (4.8 km) from where the three young women had disappeared. Neighbor Angel Cordero responded to the noise of a woman screaming, but was apparently unable to communicate with the women inside the house, since he spoke little English.

Another neighbor, Charles Ramsey, joined Cordero at the door and said that a woman, later identified as Berry, told him that she was being kept in the house with her baby against her will. Because the door was locked, Ramsey and Cordero together kicked a hole in the bottom of it, and she crawled through, carrying her daughter. Berry was wearing a jumpsuit, white tank top, rings, and mascara.Upon being freed, she went to the house of another Spanish-speaking neighbor and called 9-1-1, saying, “Help me, I’m Amanda Berry … I’ve been kidnapped and I’ve been missing for 10 years. And I’m here, I’m free now.”

Several responding officers crawled in the broken bottom of the front door and searched the house with guns drawn. One of the officers saw a pair of eyes peeking through a slightly opened upstairs bedroom door. Michelle Knight fled the room and leapt into the arms of an officer, repeatedly saying “you saved me”. Soon DeJesus entered the hall from another room. The women were able to walk out of the home and all three women and the child were taken to MetroHealth Medical Center. They were all released from the hospital by the next morning, although Knight later returned for unspecified reasons.

INVESTIGATION DEVELOPMENTS
A suspect, Ariel Castro, was arrested on May 6, 2013, and charged with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape on May 8. Two brothers of Castro’s were also initially taken into custody, but they were released a few days later after police announced that they had no involvement in the kidnappings.

Police said that, based on victim interviews, the women were initially kept in chains and ropes in the basement before being locked in upstairs rooms. They were only twice taken outside, in disguise, and only as far as the garage. An unnamed police source said the young women had multiple miscarriages and at least one live birth. WKYC reported that the women were raped repeatedly by their captor, and beaten severely when they became pregnant. According to The New York Post, one young woman had three miscarriages, and Knight may have suffered hearing loss from the beatings. According to a police report obtained by CBS News, Michelle Knight had five miscarriages caused by starvation and beatings by Castro to her stomach.

The suspect is believed by police to have fathered Berry’s 6-year-old daughter, and the suspect’s DNA has been obtained to compare against the girl’s DNA. The girl was at times taken from the home, and visited the suspect’s mother, calling her “grandmother”. Castro’s DNA is being tested on a high priority basis so it can be compared to unknown DNA in other crimes.

Various law enforcement officers searched Ariel Castro’s property collecting evidence. A cadaver dog was used, but no human remains were discovered. The criminal investigation is ongoing as the Cleveland Police Department faces public scrutiny and questions about how it handled the women’s abductions.

Reprint, primary source: Wikipedia (verified through other reliable news sources)

Related: Amanda Berry’s 9-1-1 Call  (Audio)

Transcript of Amanda Berry’s 9-11 Call (Text)

An Open Letter to Charles Ramsey from a Fellow Cleveland Resident –By Eris Zion Venia Dyson | Guardian UK

 

Savita Halappanavar Denied Abortion, Dies from Blood Poisoning at Irish Hospital -By Shawn Pogatchink | HuffPost UK

Savita Halappanavar (Photo: Irish Times)

DUBLIN — The debate over legalizing abortion in Ireland flared Wednesday, November 14th after the government confirmed that a woman in the midst of a miscarriage was refused an abortion and died in an Irish hospital after suffering from blood poisoning.

Prime Minister Enda Kenny said he was awaiting findings from three investigations into the death of Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old Indian woman who was 17 weeks pregnant. Her case highlighted the legal limbo in which pregnant women facing severe health problems can find themselves in predominantly Catholic Ireland.

Ireland’s constitution officially bans abortion, but a 1992 Supreme Court ruling found the procedure should be legalized for situations when the woman’s life is at risk from continuing the pregnancy. Five governments since have refused to pass a law resolving the confusion, leaving Irish hospitals reluctant to terminate pregnancies except in the most obviously life-threatening circumstances.

The vast bulk of Irish women wanting abortions, an estimated 4,000 per year, simply travel next door to England, where abortion has been legal on demand since 1967. But that option is difficult, if not impossible, for women in failing health.

Halappanavar’s husband, Praveen, said doctors at University Hospital Galway in western Ireland determined she was miscarrying within hours of her hospitalization for severe pain on Sunday, Oct. 21. He said over the next three days, doctors refused their requests for an abortion to combat her surging pain and fading health.

The hospital declined to say whether doctors believed Halappanavar’s blood poisoning could have been reversed had she received an abortion rather than waiting for the fetus to die on its own. In a statement, it described its own investigation into the death, and a parallel probe by the government’s Health Service Executive, as “standard practice” whenever a pregnant woman dies in a hospital. The Galway coroner also planned a public inquest.

“Savita was really in agony. She was very upset, but she accepted she was losing the baby,” he told The Irish Times in a telephone interview from Belgaum, southwest India. “When the consultant came on the ward rounds on Monday morning, Savita asked if they could not save the baby, could they induce to end the pregnancy? The consultant said: `As long as there is a fetal heartbeat, we can’t do anything.’

“Again on Tuesday morning … the consultant said it was the law, that this is a Catholic country. Savita said: `I am neither Irish nor Catholic’ but they said there was nothing they could do,” Praveen Halappanavar said.

He said his wife vomited repeatedly and collapsed in a restroom that night, but doctors wouldn’t terminate the fetus because its heart was still beating.

The fetus died the following day and its remains were surgically removed. Within hours, Savita was placed under sedation in intensive care with blood poisoning and he was never able to speak with her again, her husband said. By Saturday, her heart, kidneys and liver had stopped working. She was pronounced dead early Sunday, Oct. 28.

The couple had settled in 2008 in Galway, where Praveen Halappanavar works as an engineer at the medical devices manufacturer Boston Scientific. His wife was qualified as a dentist but had taken time off for her pregnancy. Her parents in India had just visited them in Galway and left the day before her hospitalization.

Praveen Halappanavar said he took his wife’s remains back to India for a Hindu funeral and cremation Nov. 3. News of the circumstances that led to her death emerged Tuesday in Galway after the Indian community canceled the city’s annual Diwali festival. Savita Halappanavar had been one of the festival’s main organizers.

Opposition politicians appealed Wednesday for Kenny’s government to introduce legislation immediately to make the 1992 Supreme Court judgment part of statutory law. Barring any such bill, the only legislation defining the illegality of abortion in Ireland dates to 1861, when the entire island was part of the United Kingdom. That British law, still valid here due to Irish inaction on the matter, states it is a crime punishable by life imprisonment to “procure a miscarriage.”

In the 1992 case, a 14-year-old girl identified in court only as “X” successfully sued the government for the right to have an abortion in England. She had been raped by a neighbor. When her parents reported the crime to police, the attorney general ordered her not to travel abroad for an abortion, arguing this would violate Ireland’s constitution.

The Supreme Court ruled she should be permitted an abortion in Ireland, never mind England, because she was making credible threats to commit suicide if refused one. During the case, the girl reportedly suffered a miscarriage.

Demonstrators in Delhi protest over the death of Savita Halappanavar, who was refused an abortion in Ireland. The Indian ambassador to Ireland said the dentist would still be alive in India. Photo: Raveendran/AFP/Getty Images

Since then, Irish governments twice have sought public approval to legalize abortion in life-threatening circumstances – but excluding a suicide threat as acceptable grounds. Both times voters rejected the proposed amendments.

Legal and political analysts broadly agree that no Irish government since 1992 has needed public approval to pass a law that backs the Supreme Court ruling. They say governments have been reluctant to be seen legalizing even limited access to abortion in a country that is more than 80 percent Catholic.

An abortions right group, Choice Ireland, said Halappanavar might not have died had any previous government legislated in line with the X judgment. Earlier this year, the government rejected an opposition bill to do this.

“Today, some 20 years after the X case, we find ourselves asking the same question: If a woman is pregnant, her life in jeopardy, can she even establish whether she has a right to a termination here in Ireland?” said Choice Ireland spokeswoman Stephanie Lord.

Coincidentally, the government said it received a long-awaited expert report Tuesday proposing possible changes to Irish abortion law shortly before news of Savita Halappanavar’s death broke. The government commissioned the report two years ago after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Ireland’s inadequate access to abortions for life-threatening pregnancies violated European Union law.

The World Health Organization, meanwhile, identifies Ireland as an unusually safe place to be pregnant. Its most recent report on global maternal death rates found that only three out of every 100,000 women die in childbirth in Ireland, compared with an average of 14 in Europe and North America, 190 in Asia and 590 in Africa.

Reprint: Savita Halappanavar Dead: Irish Woman Denied Abortion Dies From Blood Poisoning -By Shawn Pogatchink | HuffPost UK

Related: Savita Halappanavar Abortion Row: Call For Public Inquiry To Be Taken To European Court of Human Rights | HuffPost UK

Hundreds of Irish Women Forced to Come to Britain for Abortions -By Henry McDonald | Guardian UK

 

The Modern US Army: Unfit for Service? -By Matt Kennard| Guardian UK

 
My journey into the dark underworld of the US military begins on a rainy Tuesday morning in March 2008, with a visit to Tampa, Florida. I am here to meet Forrest Fogarty, an American patriot who served in the US army for two years in Iraq. Fogarty is also a white supremacist of the serious Hitler-worshipping type.
 
We meet in his favorite hangout, the Winghouse Bar & Grill. In our brief phone call, I’d asked how I would recognize him. “Just look for the skinhead with the tattoos,” he said. And sure enough, sitting straight to my right as I walk in is a youngish-looking man, plastered in tattoos, with cropped hair and bulging biceps. “You’re British, right,” he says, as we order. “I remember seeing black guys with British accents in Iraq, shit was so crazy.”
 
Fogarty tells me he was bullied at his LA high school by Mexican and African-American children, and was just 14 when he decided he wanted to be a Nazi. He has no qualms about flaunting his prejudice. When black people come into the bar, he emits a hiss of disapproval. “I just don’t want to be around them,” he tells me. “I don’t want to look at them, I don’t want them near me.”
 
As a young man, Fogarty was obsessed with Ian Stuart Donaldson, the legendary singer in the British band Skrewdriver, who is hero-worshipped in the neo-Nazi music scene. At 16, he had an image from one of Skrewdriver’s album covers – a Viking carrying an axe, an icon among white nationalists – tattooed on his left forearm. Soon after, he had a Celtic cross, an Irish symbol appropriated by neo-Nazis, emblazoned on his stomach. A few years later, he started his own band, Attack, now one of the biggest Nazi bands in the US. But it was never his day job. “I was a landscaper when I left school,” he says. “I kind of fell into it. I didn’t give a shit what I was doing, I was just drinking and fighting.”
 
For the next eight years he drifted through jobs in construction and landscaping, and began hanging out with the National Alliance, at the time one of the biggest neo-Nazi organizations in the US. He soon became a member. He had always seen himself as a fighter and warrior, so he resolved to do what two generations of Fogartys had done before him: join the military.
 
Fogarty was not the first extremist to enter the armed forces. The neo-Nazi movement has had a long and tense relationship with the US military. Since its inception, the leaders of the white supremacist movement have encouraged their members to enlist. They see it as a way for their followers to receive combat and weapons training, courtesy of the US government, and then to bring what they learn home to undertake a domestic race war. Not all far-right groups subscribe to this vision – some, such as the Ku Klux Klan, claim to prefer a democratic approach – but a large portion see themselves as insurrectionary forces. To that end, professional training in warfare is a must.
 

 
The US military has long been aware of these groups’ attempts at infiltration, but it wasn’t until 1996 that supremacist and neo-Nazi groups were specifically banned from the military, after the murder in 1995 of two African-Americans by a neo-Nazi paratrooper stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Fogarty was recruited the year after.
 
He knew that the tattoo he had riding up his forearm could be a problem when it came to enlistment. In a neo-Nazi underworld obsessed with secrecy, racist tattoos remain one of the clearest indicators of extremism for a recruiter, and in an effort to police the matter, the US military requires recruits to explain any tattoos. “They just told me to write an explanation of each tattoo and I made up some stuff and that was that,” he says.
 
Soon after Fogarty was approved, his ex-girlfriend and mother of his eldest child contacted the military. According to Fogarty, she sent a dossier of pictures to his military command that showed him at white supremacist and neo-Nazi rallies, as well as performing his racist rock with Attack. “They hauled me before some sort of committee, and showed me the pictures. I just denied it.” The committee, he says, “knew what I was about, but they let it go because I’m a great soldier”.
 
Fogarty remained in the reserves, until finally, in 2004, he was sent where he had always wanted to go: Iraq. Before he left for the Middle East, he joined the Hammerskin Nation – described by the Anti-Defamation League as the “the most violent and best-organised neo-Nazi skinhead group in the United States”.
 
Fogarty maintains that a good portion of those around him were aware of his neo-Nazism. “They all knew in my unit,” he says. “They would always kid around and say, ‘Hey, you’re that skinhead!’” He was confident enough of his carte blanche from the military that during his break from service in 2004, he flew not to see his family in the US but to Dresden, Germany, to give a concert to 2,500 skinheads, on the army’s budget.
 
When he was at Camp Victory in Baghdad, Fogarty even says a sergeant came up to him and said, “You’re one of those racist motherfuckers, aren’t you?” I ask how the sergeant knew about his racism. “The tattoo, I suppose. I can’t hide everything – people knew, even the chain of command.”
 
Another white supremacist soldier, James Douglas Ross, a military intelligence officer stationed at Fort Bragg, was given a bad conduct discharge from the army when he was caught trying to mail a sub-machine gun from Iraq to his father’s home in Spokane, Washington. Military police found a cache of white supremacist paraphernalia and several weapons hidden behind ceiling tiles in Ross’s military quarters. After his discharge, a Spokane County deputy sheriff saw Ross passing out fliers for the neo-Nazi National Alliance. And in early 2012, a photo emerged of a 10-strong US marine scout sniper unit posing for a photo with a Nazi SS bolts flag in Sangin, Afghanistan.
 
According to the military, the symbolism was unknown to the soldiers. “Certainly, the use of the ‘SS runes’ is not acceptable and scout snipers have been addressed concerning this issue,” marine corps spokesman Captain Gregory Wolf said.

 

The magnitude of the problem within the military is hard to quantify. The military does not track extremists as a discrete category, coupling them with gang members, and those in the neo-Nazi movement claim different numbers. The National Socialist Movement claimed 190 of its members are inside. White Revolution claimed 12. In white supremacist incidents from 2001 to 2008, the FBI identified 203 veterans. Because the FBI focused only on reported cases, its numbers don’t include the many extremist soldiers who have managed to stay off the radar. But its report does pinpoint why the white supremacist movements seek to recruit veterans – they “may exploit their accesses to restricted areas and intelligence or apply specialized training in weapons, tactics, and organizational skills to benefit the extremist movement”.

 

The report found that two army privates in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg had attempted in 2007 to sell stolen property from the military – including ballistic vests, a combat helmet, and pain medications such as morphine – to an undercover FBI agent they believed was involved with the white supremacist movement (they were convicted and sentenced to six years in prison). It also found multiple examples of white supremacist recruitment among active military personnel, including a period in 2003 when six active-duty soldiers at Fort Riley were found to be members of the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations, working to recruit their army colleagues and even serving as the Aryan Nations’ point of contact for the State of Kansas.

 

The degree of impunity encountered by Fogarty and countless other extremists has caused tensions within the military. The blind eye turned by the recruiters angered many investigators whose integrity was being compromised. Hunter Glass was a paratrooper in the 1980s and became a gang cop in 1999 in Fairville, North Carolina, next to Fort Bragg. “In the 1990s, the military was hard on them, they could pick and choose,” he recalls. The change came after 9/11. “The key rule nowadays is ignore it until it becomes a problem,” Glass tells me. “We need manpower. So as long as the man isn’t acting out, let’s blow it off.” He recounts one episode in early 2005 when he was requested by military police investigators at Fort Bragg to interview a soldier with blatant skinhead insignia – SS lightning bolts and hammers. Glass worked with the base’s military police investigators, who filed a report. “They recommended that he be kicked out,” he recalls, “but the commanding officers didn’t do anything.” He says there was an open culture of impunity. “We’re seeing guys with tattoos all the time … As far as hunting them down, I don’t see it. I’m seeing the opposite, where if a white supremacist has committed a crime, the military stance will be, ‘He didn’t commit a race-related crime.’ “

 

By 2005, the US had 150,000 troops deployed in Iraq and 19,500 in Afghanistan. But the military wasn’t prepared in any way for this kind of extended deployment – and just two years into the war in Iraq, people were talking openly about the fact that it had reached breaking point. The slim forces needed fattening up and what followed constituted a complete re-evaluation of who was qualified to serve – a full-works facelift of the service unheard of in modern American history. In the relatively halcyon days of the first Gulf war in 1990, the US military blocked the enlistment of felons. It spurned men and women with low IQs or those without a high school diploma. It would either block the enlistment of or kick out neo-Nazis and gang members. It would treat or discharge alcoholics, drug abusers and the mentally ill. No more. While the Bush administration adopted conservative policies pretty much universally, it saved its ration of liberalism for the US military, where it scrapped many of the regulations governing recruitment.

 

Many of the wars’ worst atrocities are linked directly to the loosening of enlistment regulations on criminals, racist extremists, and gang members, among others. Then there are the effects on the troops themselves. Lowering standards on intelligence and body weight, for example, compromised the military’s operational readiness and undoubtedly endangered the lives of US and allied troops. Hundreds of soldiers may have paid with their lives for this folly.

 

Excerpt, read: The Modern US Army: Unfit for Service? -By Matt Kennard| Guardian UK

Related: U.S. Military Battling White Supremacists, Neo-Nazis In Its Own Ranks| Reuters via HuffPost

 

Rape of Young Girls in the Congo Still Unpunished -By Emmanuel Chaco| TrustLaw – IPS

KINSHASA – A rash of recent rape cases has sparked local criticism of the weakness of the justice system in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where inadequate resources and simple incompetence mean survivors of sexual violence hold little hope of obtaining justice.

“In the final week of July, we recorded more than 12 cases of rape committed against very young girls – some of the victims were just six years old,” said Father Jean Okutu, the parish priest at Sacré Cœur Church in Mushie Territory.  “The perpetrators were adults, all civilians.”

A total of 16 rapes of young girls have been reported in recent weeks in this remote administrative district of western DRC, and the mothers of the survivors have joined forces to complain about the failure of the local and provincial judicial system to prosecute their assailants.

Maria T.*, whose eight-year-old daughter was one of the victims, told IPS that despite being treated at the Sacré Cœur parish dispensary, her little girl still complains of pain in her genitals and abdomen. “We have to go to a bigger medical centre to be sure that we won’t face more consequences later on. But we don’t have money,” she said.

Elodie K.’s ten-year-old daughter was also raped. “We need strong measures to protect young girls in Mushie. We also need the identities of all the victims to be carefully protected to ensure that they can grow up normally and have a chance to get married one day,” she said.

“The government should even consider relocating these children, or letting them study overseas at the state’s cost, to ensure they are protected from taunts and isolation by other children their age.”

According to Bandundu’s attorney general, André Mvunzu, the province has already put in place a programme to fight impunity for sexual violence.

“Twelve perpetrators of the rapes recently recorded in Mushie have been arrested and are currently in detention there. They will face trial and the court’s rulings will send a clear message to all,” he told IPS.

Mushie resident Jean Pierre N.* is skeptical. “When we hear the attorney general on the radio, we get the impression that he doesn’t have a clue about how his own judicial administration is working. Of the 12 accused that he stated are in detention, eight have escaped – including the two men who raped my daughter.”

Nzundu told IPS that security at Mushie’s prison needed to be improved, as it was not the first time detainees had escaped.

Jacques Katchelewa is head of a non-governmental organization working to promote gender equality and food security in Mushie. He fears that if the judicial system fails them, the families will turn to informal arrangements for compensation for the crimes committed against their daughters.

“This runs counter to the law in terms of ending sexual violence,” he said. “The only way victims and families can get justice is if the local court is strengthened. In Mushie, the court has just one magistrate who cannot, all by himself, sit and rule on cases of sexual violence. We need to reinforce the team of judges.”

Congolese law requires a panel of three judges to hear such cases.

Father Okutu shares Katchelewa’s concerns about the effectiveness of the justice system in Bandundu. “I’ve appealed for justice to be served in these rape cases. The provincial attorney general has responded by sending a second magistrate to support the one who is here.”

Mushie’s local prosecutor’s office is subordinate to the provincial attorney general’s office in the provincial capital, the city of Bandundu, 500 kilometres away. It is intended to bring justice a bit closer to the people, but it lacks resources – as do local residents.

“The victims’ families are too poor to pay court costs. I’ve already had to take on the cost of medical care for most of the girls,” Okutu told IPS.

“Litigants who experience problems should write to the Minister for Justice and Human Rights and to the High Council of the Judiciary to explain their difficulties in order to obtain justice and so that magistrates will be deployed to Mushie,” said Jean Paul Nyumba, an advisor to the justice minister’s office.

But Nyumba, himself a lawyer, lamented the fact that there is a shortage of magistrates in many parts of the country while there are many idle magistrates in the capital, Kinshasa.

Joseph Ntayondezandi Mushagalusa, a lawyer and former national attorney general, said a dose of realism is required.  “The problems with the justice system are the same across the country,” he told IPS.

For example, Mushagalusa told IPS, “Even with the recruitment of 2,000 new magistrates in March 2012, the DRC’s judiciary has only 4,000 members. With the population standing at nearly 80 million, we have just one judge for every 20,000 residents of DRC.

“And that’s without accounting for the many magistrates who are not working, such as those who are assigned new posts, but for unresolved logistical and practical reasons, never report to their new assignments or abandon them.”

The provincial governor, Jean Kamisendu Kutaka, has appealed for help from the broader population. “Everyone needs to help the government fight against the different forms of criminality that are raging in the province. It calls for more vigilance. Every citizen has the obligation to expose crimes. It’s the only way to make criminals afraid,” he said.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is “the rape capital of the world”, according to the United Nations (Photo: AFP).

Reprint:  Rape of Young Girls in the Congo Still Unpunished -By Emmanuel Chaco| TrustLaw – Inter Press Service

Related: Foreign Policy, Akin-Style: How the U.S. Denies Abortions to Women Raped in War -By Akila Radhakrishnan & Kristina Kallas| The Atlantic

• UN Official Calls DR Congo ‘Rape Capital of the World’| BBC

• Study: 48 Women are Raped Every Hour in the Congo -By Jo Adetunji| Guardian UK

• Annie Rashidi-Mulumba’s Shocking Letter from the Congo| The Daily Beast (Letter, April 14, 2010)

• Symbol of Unleashed Congo: Male Rape Victims -By Jeffrey Gettleman| NYT

 

The Absurd and Outrageous Trial of Pussy Riot -By Marsha Lippman| The New Yorker

The trial of Pussy Riot, which opened in Moscow, on July 30th, and is expected to conclude with a verdict on Wednesday, has been an outrageous, astonishing, biased, exhausting, ridiculous, and at times comic spectacle. But at the end of the day it boils down to an unapologetic demonstration of force by the state. The three women, members of a punk-rock band who fell victim of the state’s repressive machine, showed, in contrast, spiritual and moral strength.

The young women of Pussy Riot are being tried for “hooliganism” and inciting “religious hatred,” on the basis of a “punk prayer” they performed in Moscow’s Christ the Savior cathedral. For this performance, called “Our Lady, Chase Putin Out!” the prosecutor on Tuesday demanded three years in a labor camp for each defendant.

The women insist that their act was artistic and political in nature—and, indeed, politics is why they are being prosecuted, as part of a broader crackdown by Vladimir Putin’s government. Throughout the trial, though, the judge, Marina Syrova, consistently removed or ignored any mention of politics. In a characteristic exchange, one of Pussy Riot’s lawyers asked one of the “injured parties,” “Was Putin’s name pronounced in the cathedral?”; the judge responded, “Question dismissed.” Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, one of the three women, said in written statement that the main point of the performance was “a protest against illegitimate elections and Patriarch Kirill’s endorsement of President Putin.” “I thought the church loves all its children, but it appears that the church only loves those who vote for Putin,” wrote another band member, Maria Alekhina, in hers. Both statements, along with one from the third woman, Yekaterina Samutsevich, were read by a defense lawyer, and ignored by the judge.

Instead of politics or art, the prosecution, with full compliance of the judge, was fully focused on the pretense that the issues were ones of faith, God, the church, believers’ offended feelings—even the devil.

Excerpt, read: The Absurd and Outrageous Trial of Pussy Riot -By Marsha Lippman| The New Yorker

Related: Meeting Pussy Riot -By Henry Langston| VICE

The Pussy Riot Trial Exposes a Russian Court System in Crisis -By Natalia Antonova| Guardian UK

Punk Band Pussy Riots’s Courtroom Drama Grips Russia -By Agnence France-Presse| Raw Story

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5 Year Israeli Blockade Causes Healthcare Crisis in Gaza| Guardian UK (Video)

Medical staff and the parents of patients discuss the effect of five years of Israeli blockade and Hamas rule on Gaza’s healthcare system. Power cuts and shortages of drugs and equipment mean patients are suffering. Those in urgent need of medical care often seek treatment in Israel — but permission to travel is not always granted.

Gaza Healthcare System in Crisis -By Rawles, Payne-Frank, & Schembri| Guardian UK

 

Aung San Suu Kyi Accepts Nobel Peace Prize 21 Years Later -By Peter Beaumont| Guardian UK

Photo: Daniel Sannum Lauten/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

In an event hailed as the “most remarkable in the entire history of the Nobel prizes”, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese democracy campaigner, delivered her acceptance speech for her peace prize in Oslo’s vast City Hall more than two decades after it was awarded.

Given the prize in 1991 – but by then under house arrest by Burma’s military junta – it was left to her two sons, Alexander and Kim, to travel to Norway to receive the peace prize that year. Able to travel freely after 21 years, Aung San Suu Kyi stood in front of a packed hall, in which Norwegian dignitaries rubbed shoulders with Buddhist monks in saffron robes and Burmese guests in traditional costumes, to deliver her long-delayed acceptance speech in a moment of high emotion.

Commended in the original citation for her “non-violent struggle” as “one of the most extraordinary examples of civil courage in Asia in recent decades”, the 66-year-old activist, elected to the country’s national assembly during its fragile political transition, recalled with typical self-effacement the moment at which she heard she had been awarded the peace prize.

“I heard the news on the radio one evening. I’ve tried very hard to remember what my immediate reaction to the announcement of the award had been. I think it was something like: ‘Oh … so they’ve decided to give it to me’.”

Aung San Suu Kyi arrived in Norway from Switzerland, her first stop on a two-week tour of Europe. The journey is her first in Europe since 1988, when she left her husband and two young sons in England to visit her ill mother in Burma and became the focal point for the nascent democracy movement.

She made a wide-ranging, deeply personal lecture, which touched on her feelings of isolation under house arrest, the Buddhist concept of suffering, human rights and her hopes and fears for her country’s future, and the importance of the peace prize itself.

“It did not seem quite real because in a sense I did not feel myself to be quite real at that time,” she said. “Often during my days of house arrest it felt as though I were no longer a part of the real world.

“There was the house which was my world, there was the world of others who also were not free but were together in prison as a community, and there was the world of the free; each was a different planet pursuing its own separate course in an indifferent universe.

“What the Nobel peace prize did was to draw me once again into the world of other human beings outside the isolated area in which I lived, to restore a sense of reality to me. This did not happen instantly, of course, but as the days and months went by, and news of reactions to the award came over the airwaves, I began to understand the significance of the Nobel prize. It had made me real once again.

“What was more important, the prize had drawn the attention of the world to the struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma. We were not going to be forgotten. When the Nobel committee awarded the peace prize to me, they were recognizing that the oppressed and the isolated in Burma were also a part of the world, they were recognizing the oneness of humanity … The Nobel peace prize opened up a door in my heart.”

Talking about the motivation in a period during which she was separated from her family and her British husband, the academic Michael Aris, died, she said: “If I am asked why I am fighting for democracy in Burma, it is because I believe that democratic institutions and practices are necessary for the guarantee of human rights.

“When I joined the democracy movement in Burma, it never occurred to me that I might ever be the recipient of any prize or honour. The prize we were working for was a free, secure and just society where our people might be able to realise their full potential.”

Aung San Suu Kyi appeared impossibly small, entering the City Hall wearing a purple jacket and flowing lilac scarf to the sound of a trumpet fanfare.

Thorbjørn Jagland, chairman of the Nobel committee, who introduced her, said: “Today’s event is one of the most remarkable in the entire history of the Nobel prizes … We hope that Liu Xiaobo [the Chinese political activist] will not have to wait as long as you have before he can come to Oslo.”

Jagland recalled how, when the peace prize celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2001 with more than 30 laureates in attendance, “we left one chair empty [for her]“.

Reprint: Aung San Suu Kyi Accepts Nobel Peace Prize -By Peter Beaumont| Guardian UK

 

Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak Sentenced to Life in Prison -By Conal Urquhart | Guardian UK

Egypt’s former president Hosni Mubarak has been sentenced to life in prison after a court convicted him on charges of complicity in the killing of protesters during last year’s uprising that forced him from power.

Habib el-Adly, Mubarak’s minister of the interior, was also jailed for life but Mubarak’s sons Gamal and Alaa were cleared of corruption.

People at the court in Cairo reacted with pleasure at the first sentences and then angrily to the acquittal of Mubarak’s sons and six interior ministry officials and police chiefs. The crowd chanted: “False judgements. The people want to clean the judicial system,” and fights broke out inside and stones were thrown at riot police outside the court.

Hear the Guardian’s Jack Shenker at the trial in Cairo. Link to this audio

Mubarak, 84, the first Arab leader to be tried in his own country, remained silent inside a court cage while his once-powerful sons appeared nervous and had dark circles under their eyes. His elder son, Alaa, whispered verses from the Qur’an.

In sentencing, Judge Ahmed Rifaat described Mubarak’s era as “30 years of darkness” and “a darkened nightmare” that ended only when Egyptians rose up to demand change. “They peacefully demanded democracy from rulers who held a tight grip on power,” he said.

Rifaat, who was presiding over his last court session before he retires, said Mubarak and Adly did not act to stop the killings during 18 days of mass protests that were met by a deadly crackdown of security forces on unarmed demonstrators. More than 850 protesters were killed in Cairo and other major cities.

Egyptian TV reported that Mubarak would be transferred from the hospital suite where he has been detained to Torah prison in south Cairo but he may have the right to appeal.

It is unlikely the judge’s verdict will put an end to uncertainty and instability in Egypt. Within minutes of the verdict, young men were pulling barricades on to Tahrir Square. The verdict could damage the chance of Ahmed Shafiq, Mubarak’s former prime minister, in the second round of the presidential election on 16-17 June when he runs against the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi.

Outside there were celebrations, with many chanting: “God is greatest.” Soha Saeed, the wife of one of those killed in the uprising that toppled Mubarak on 11 February 2011, shouted: “I’m so happy. I’m so happy.”

As the news of the sentence initially came through to hundreds of protesters and relatives of victims outside the court compound, jubilation erupted with dozens of anti-Mubarak protesters jumping up and down and waving Egyptian flags and their fists in the air.

Scuffles then broke out between Mubarak supporters and opponents inside and outside the courtroom, reflecting the deep polarization of the country after more than a year of turmoil. Helmeted riot police also clashed with protesters.

Some inside the court raised banners that read: “God’s verdict is execution.”

Rock throwing and fighting left at least 20 people injured, and a police official said four people had been arrested. Thousands of riot police and officers riding horses had cordoned off the building to prevent protesters and relatives of those slain during the uprising from getting too close. Hundreds stood outside, waving Egyptian flags and chanting slogans demanding “retribution”. Some spread Mubarak’s picture on the ground and walked over it.

Mubarak is seen in the defendant’s cage as the judge reads out the verdict condemning him to life imprisonment (Photo: AP).

The Muslim Brotherhood issued an immediate statement after the verdict calling for a retrial. “The public prosecutor did not carry out its full duty in gathering adequate evidence to convict the accused for killing protesters,” said Yasser Ali, official spokesman for the Mohamed Morsi campaign.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Mubarak’s jailing sent a powerful message to Egypt’s future leaders that they are not above the law, but that the acquittal of the four officials pointed to a failure to properly investigate the killing of protesters.

“These convictions set an important precedent, since just over a year ago seeing Hosni Mubarak as a defendant in a criminal court would have been unthinkable,” said Joe Stork, HRW’s deputy Middle East director. “But the acquittal of senior ministry of interior officials for the deaths and injuries of peaceful protesters leaves police impunity intact and the victims still waiting for justice.”

Egyptian state TV reported that Mubarak suffered a “health crisis” on his way to Torah prison and that it took escorts 30 minutes to persuade him to leave the aircraft and enter the prison’s hospital. It is the first time Mubarak has been held in a prison since he was detained.

During his trial, Mubarak was held in a presidential suite in a hospital on the outskirts of Cairo. Doctors treating him have said he is weak and has lost weight from refusing to eat. They have also said he suffers from severe depression.

Reprint: Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak Sentenced to Life in Prison -By Conal Urquhart | Guardian UK

Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak Sentenced to Life in Prison | Al Jazeera (Video)

Hosni Mubarak Trial Ends In Chaotic Scenes of Violence | Guardian UK (Photos)

 

UN: United States Should Return Stolen Lands to Indian Tribes -By Chris McGreal | The Guardian

A United Nations investigator probing discrimination against Native Americans has called on the US government to return some of the land stolen from Indian tribes as a step toward combatting continuing and systemic racial discrimination.

James Anaya, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, said no member of the US Congress would meet him as he investigated the part played by the government in the considerable difficulties faced by Indian tribes.

Anaya said that in nearly two weeks of visiting Indian reservations, indigenous communities in Alaska and Hawaii, and Native Americans now living in cities, he encountered people who suffered a history of dispossession of their lands and resources, the breakdown of their societies and “numerous instances of outright brutality, all grounded on racial discrimination”.

“It’s a racial discrimination that they feel is both systemic and also specific instances of ongoing discrimination that is felt at the individual level,” he said. Anaya said racism extended from the broad relationship between federal or state governments and tribes down to local issues such as education.

“For example, with the treatment of children in schools both by their peers and by teachers as well as the educational system itself; the way native Americans and indigenous peoples are reflected in the school curriculum and teaching,” he said.

“And discrimination in the sense of the invisibility of Native Americans in the country overall that often is reflected in the popular media. The idea that is often projected through the mainstream media and among public figures that indigenous peoples are either gone or as a group are insignificant or that they’re out to get benefits in terms of handouts, or their communities and cultures are reduced to casinos, which are just flatly wrong.”

Close to a million people live on the US’s 310 Native American reservations. Some tribes have done well from a boom in casinos on reservations but most have not.

Anaya visited an Oglala Sioux reservation where the per capita income is around $7,000 a year, less than one-sixth of the national average, and life expectancy is about 50 years.

The two Sioux reservations in South Dakota – Rosebud and Pine Ridge – have some of the country’s poorest living conditions, including mass unemployment and the highest suicide rate in the western hemisphere with an epidemic of teenagers killing themselves.

“You can see they’re in a somewhat precarious situation in terms of their basic existence and the stability of their communities given that precarious land tenure situation. It’s not like they have large fisheries as a resource base to sustain them. In basic economic terms it’s a very difficult situation. You have upwards of 70% unemployment on the reservation and all kinds of social ills accompanying that. Very tough conditions,” he said.

Anaya said Rosebud is an example where returning land taken by the US government could improve a tribe’s fortunes as well as contribute to a “process of reconciliation”.

“At Rosebud, that’s a situation where indigenous people have seen over time encroachment on to their land and they’ve lost vast territories and there have been clear instances of broken treaty promises. It’s undisputed that the Black Hills was guaranteed them by treaty and that treaty was just outright violated by the United States in the 1900s. That has been recognized by the United States supreme court,” he said.

Anaya said he would reserve detailed recommendations on a plan for land restoration until he presents his final report to the UN human rights council in September.

“I’m talking about restoring to indigenous peoples what obviously they’re entitled to and they have a legitimate claim to in a way that is not devisive but restorative. That’s the idea behind reconciliation,” he said.

But any such proposal is likely to meet stiff resistance in Congress similar to that which has previously greeted calls for the US government to pay reparations for slavery to African-American communities.

Anaya said he had received “exemplary cooperation” from the Obama administration but he declined to speculate on why no members of Congress would meet him.

“I typically meet with members of the national legislature on my country visits and I don’t know the reason,” he said.

 

Last month, the US justice and interior departments announced a $1 billion settlement over nearly 56 million acres of Indian land held in trust by Washington but exploited by commercial interests for timber, farming, mining and other uses with little benefit to the tribes.

The attorney general, Eric Holder, said the settlement “fairly and honorably resolves historical grievances over the accounting and management of tribal trust funds, trust lands and other non-monetary trust resources that, for far too long, have been a source of conflict between Indian tribes and the United States.”

But Anaya said that was only a step in the right direction.

“These are important steps but we’re talking about mismanagement by the government of assets that were left to indigenous peoples,” he said. “This money for the insults on top of the injury. It’s not money for the initial problem itself, which is the taking of vast territories. This is very important and I think the administration should be commended for moving forward to settle these claims but there are these deeper issues that need to be addressed.”

Reprint: UN: United States Should Return Stolen Lands to Indian Tribes -By Chris McGreal | The Guardian

 

UK Police Face Racism Scandal After Black Man Records Abuse -By Paul Lewis | Guardian UK

Scotland Yard is facing a racism scandal after a black man used his mobile phone to record police officers subjecting him to a tirade of abuse in which he was told: “The problem with you is you will always be a nigger”.

The recording, obtained by the Guardian, was made by the 21-year-old after he was stopped in his car, arrested and placed in a police van the day after last summer’s riots.

The man, from Beckton, east London, said he was made to feel “like an animal” by police. He has also accused one officer of kneeling on his chest and strangling him.

In the recording, a police officer can be heard admitting he strangled the man because he was “a cunt”. Moments later, another officer – identified by investigators as PC Alex MacFarlane – subjects the man to a succession of racist insults and adds: “You’ll always have black skin. Don’t hide behind your colour.”

The Independent Police Complaints Commission referred the case to the Crown Prosecution Service on the basis that three officers, including MacFarlane, may have committed criminal offences.

The CPS initially decided no charges should be brought against any of the police officers. However on Thursday, the service said it would review the file after lawyers for the man threatened to challenge the decision in a high court judicial review. MacFarlane has been suspended.

The inquiry began after the victim handed his mobile phone to a custody desk in Forest Gate police station and told officers he had been abused.

Earlier, he had been driving through Beckton with a friend when he was stopped by a van containing eight police officers from Newham borough. London’s streets were flooded with police who had been drafted in to contain the rioting.

The officers arrested the man on suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs and told him he was being taken to a police station to be searched. After being taken into the van, the man was also arrested for missing a previous magistrates court appearance. No further action is to be taken in relation to the suspected driving offence.

It was once inside the van and handcuffed that the man said he was assaulted by police. He described having his head pushed against the van window and said one officer placed his knees on his chest and began strangling him. “I couldn’t breathe and I felt that I was going to die,” he said.

The man said he decided to turn on the recording facility of his phone after MacFarlane allegedly made sexually explicit references about his mother and telling him he would be “dead in five years”.

In the recording, the man sounds agitated; he raises his voice to complain about his treatment and in places insults the arresting officers. The verbal exchange lasts several minutes.

When the man tells an officer: “you tried to strangle me”, the officer replies: “No, I did strangle you.” The officer adds that he strangled him “‘cos you’re a cunt” and that the man had been “kicking out”. In relation to the strangling, the officer says: “Stopped you though, didn’t it?”

Minutes later MacFarlane, who is white, begins abusing the man. After a period of silence, he can be heard telling him: “The problem with you is you will always be a nigger, yeah? That’s your problem, yeah.”

The man reads out MacFarlane’s badge number and complains that he had subjected him to racist comments: “I’ll always be a nigger – that’s what you said, yeah?”

MacFarlane replies: “You’ll always have black skin colour. Don’t hide behind your colour, yeah.” He adds: “Be proud. Be proud of who you are, yeah. Don’t hide behind your black skin.”

Shortly before the recording ends, the man can be heard saying: “I get this all the time.” He then tells the officer: “We’ll definitely speak again about this … It’s gonna go all the way, it’s gonna go all the way – remember.”

The man’s lawyer, Michael Oswald, said: “By his own efforts our client has put before the CPS exceptionally strong evidence and we share his astonishment that the CPS have reached a decision that no police officer should be prosecuted on the basis of that evidence. We do welcome their agreement to review that decision and we now await the outcome of that review.”

The CPS initially said charges should not be brought against MacFarlane because the remarks did not cause the man harassment, distress or alarm.Grace Ononiwu, deputy chief crown prosecutor for CPS London, said: “Lawyers for [the complainant] have written to the CPS and asked us to review our decision. I have considered the matter personally and directed that all the evidence should be reconsidered and a fresh decision taken by a senior lawyer with no previous involvement in this matter.”

Speaking to the Guardian, the 21-year-old was visibly shaken when recounting the ordeal. “It’s hard to explain, but it makes you feel like a piece of shit – it makes you feel not even human,” he said.

“I was glad that I had it on the recording. I knew that if I had it saved I could show that I had been abused. It’s not right. We’ve just got different skin colour – underneath it we’re all the same.”

The Metropolitan police confirmed in a statement that it received a complaint on 11 August about alleged “racial” remarks and oppressive conduct.“These are serious allegations; any use of racist language or excessive use of force is not acceptable.” The force said it had referred the case to the IPCC and that one officer had been suspended.

MacFarlane’s solicitor, Colin Reynolds, said: “The officer has been the subject of an investigation, has co-operated in that and been advised he is not to be the subject of criminal proceedings.”

Estelle du Boulay, director of the Newham Monitoring Project, said: “Sadly, the shocking treatment of this young man at the hands of police officers – both the physical brutality he describes and the racial abuse he claims he suffered – are by no means unusual; it compares to other reports we have received. What makes this case different is the victim had the foresight and courage to turn on a recording device on his mobile phone.”

She compared the incident to the case of Liam Stacey, a student who was jailed for 56 days for posting offensive comments on Twitter after the on-pitch collapse of the Bolton Wanderers footballer Fabrice Muamba.

On Friday Swansea crown court rejected an appeal from Stacey, who used racist terms against other Twitter users.

When the student was sentenced in a magistrates court on Tuesday a senior lawyer at the CPS, Jim Brisbane, said: “Racist language is inappropriate in any setting and through any media. We hope this case will serve as a warning to anyone who may think that comments made online are somehow beyond the law.”

Reprint: UK Police Face Racism Scandal After Black Man Records Abuse -By Paul Lewis | Guardian UK