Iranian human rights lawyer sentenced to 6 years in jail
created 02/20/2013 - 22:17
GVF — A court in Iran has sentenced human rights lawyer to six years in prison, sources report.
According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court sentenced Mohammad Seifzadeh to six years in prison.
Seifzadeh, who is currently being held in Rajaei Shahr prison, was recently hospitalised for kidney problems.
The human rights lawyer had already begun serving out a previous two-year sentence. The latest court ruling means that he will be facing eight years behind bars.
A 28-year-old woman in Osaka has been arrested for illegally disposing of the body of her newborn daughter last October, police said Friday.
The woman, who has been named as Tomoko Takiguchi, is accused of disposing of the body of her daughter shortly after birth, NTV reported. According to police, the body of a month-old baby girl was found in an irrigation channel near Takiguchi’s former Kashiwara home last Oct 13. An autopsy revealed that the child had died of suffocation. DNA tests later showed the child to be Takiguchi’s daughter.
According to neighbors, Takiguchi appeared to be pregnant in August of last year, but was not seen in public with the child after giving birth, NTV reported. Takiguchi was arrested on Thursday and questioned by police about the circumstances in which her daughter died.
Police were quoted by local media as saying that Takiguchi denies disposing of her daughter’s body, telling investigators that she nursed her daughter for a week and then the child was kidnapped. Police said no kidnapping was reported.
Three thousand Iranian women being trained as ninja warriors say they will
use their martial arts skills to defend the country if necessary.
Scores of black-clad female "ninja" fighters whose ages range from 5 to 56
are just a handful of 3,000 women in Iran who are being trained
as lethal warriors at a school in Tehran.
"We train women to have strength and ability. We have to do everything in our
power to protect our homeland," said Akbar Faraji, who runs the school.
One of the fighters who has been training for over 13 years said, "Our aim is
for Iranian women to be strengthened and if a problem arises, we will definitely
declare our readiness to defend our Islamic homeland."
Iran has proclaimed advances in nuclear technology, including new centrifuges
able to enrich uranium, a move that has heightened its confrontation with the
West over suspicions it is planning to make nuclear weapons.
On Friday, the Home Secretary, William Hague told The Telegraph that Iran's
pursuit of weapons of mass destruction could trigger a “new Cold War.”
Beijing: A 17-year-old son of a senior Chinese military General was formally charged on Sunday in a gang-rape case.
Li Tianyi, the son of Mr Li Shuangjiang, dean of the music department of the People's Liberation Army Academy of Arts, was formally charged by the Beijing police in the gang-rape case, state-run Close Circuit Television (CCTV) reported.
Li Tianyi was arrested along with four others on Wednesday after a woman accused them of raping her.
The woman filed a report on February 19, saying she had been drinking with Li Tianyi and others at a bar in Haidian after which they went to a hotel where they raped her.
Li Shuangjiang, 74, built his reputation in past decades by singing popular patriotic songs.
It is not the first time that junior Li has gotten in trouble.
In September 2011, Li Tianyi, then 15-year-old, was caught driving a BMW without a driving license or car plate after he viciously attacked a couple following a traffic dispute.
The teenager was kept at a juvenile camp for one-year of re-education, but let off after six months raising questions in the media on how children of the influential people were being treated differently.
While highlighting the case, the state-run channel also narrated the increasing number of incidents involving the children of rich and influential people breaking law and attempting to subvert the rules
Palestinian who died in Israeli jail 'was tortured'
A Palestinian prisoner who died in an Israeli jail was tortured to death, a
Palestinian official has claimed, dismissing Israeli accounts of an apparent
heart attack.
Palestinians take cover during
clashes with Israeli troops in the West Bank city of Hebron, following the death
of Arafat JaradatPhoto:
AP
9:00PM GMT 24 Feb 2013
Arafat Jaradat's autopsy showed torture resulting
from fractures in his body and skull while his heart was in good condition, said
Issa Qaraqaa, the minister in charge of prisoner affairs, citing a Palestinian doctor who took
part in the autopsy.
"These results prove Israel killed him," Mr Qaraqaa told a news conference.
Jaradat died on Saturday in an Israeli jail from what prison authorities
initially said appeared to have been a heart attack.
The 30-year-old man from Sair near Hebron in the West Bank was arrested last
Monday for alleged involvement in a November 2012 stone-throwing incident which
injured an Israeli, according to Israel's Shin Bet domestic intelligence
service.
Palestinians said he was a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed
wing of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement.
Jaradat's body was transferred to a hospital in Hebron late on Sunday after
an autopsy at Israel's national forensic institute near Tel Aviv in which the
Palestinian doctor participated.
He was to be buried at noon on Monday.
An Israeli police spokesman had no comment on the autopsy results or
investigation into Jaradat's death, and would only say that "the subject is
still under examination."
Photo credit: from the Facebook page of Sarmad Alladin
London: The death of 18-year-old student from Hyderabad has led to university authorities warning students against taking unprescribed drugs as they could prove "lethal". Reports say that Sarmad Alladin died after apparently taking bodybuilding pills.
Alladin was living in university accommodation in Surrey, while attending the University of Creative Arts. He was taken to the hospital in the early hours of the morning on February 13 and was declared dead. Newspaper reports say that Sarmad Alladin died after taking bodybuilding pills.
His father arrived in the UK on Friday, his mother had reached earlier. As they and his friends deal with the tragedy, a very personal loss, tributes have been pouring in on the social networking site Facebook.
Alladin, was the son of a Hyderabad-based millionaire, it has been reported. His last post on Facebook before he died was about the banned pills Dinitrophenol (DNP). He had earlier posted pictures that showed him flexing his muscles.
"Police are investigating the circumstances surrounding the incident. At this stage the death is being treated as unexplained," a statement from the police said.
A friend of the family told NDTV that the parents were still very shocked and shaken. They are now awaiting the post-mortem report.
For Manjit Thandi, a school teacher who taught the boy a few years ago this was devastating news. Ms Thandi taught Sarmad when he first arrived in the UK and has fond memories of the time he was in her class.
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Police on Saturday found the black SUV used as a getaway car in a pre-dawn shooting and crash that killed an aspiring rapper in a Maserati and two people in a taxi on the Las Vegas Strip, and named a 26-year-old man as the prime suspect.
Ammar Harris was being sought in connection with the shooting and six-vehicle chain-reaction carnage Thursday on the neon-lit boulevard near the Bellagio, Caesars Palace, Bally's and Flamingo resorts, police said.
"His location is unknown," police Capt. Chris Jones said of Harris, who sometimes goes by the name Ammar Asim Faruq Harris. Police say he has been arrested for working as a pimp.
Police released a photo that was taken when Harris was arrested last year on pandering, kidnapping, sexual assault and coercion charges. The disposition of that case was not immediately known.
The photo shows Harris with tattoos on his right cheek and words on his neck above an image that appeared to depict an owl with blackened eyes. Jones warned that Harris should be considered armed and dangerous.
In 2012, a human rights advocate in Colombia was reportedly assaulted every 20 hours and assassinated every five days.
The NGO "Somos Defendores" (We are Defenders) released its annual report on human rights advocacy in Colombia last week, and the news was not good.
There was a 49% increase in individual assaults on human rights advocates (HRAs) in 2012 compared to 2011, and of the total number of attacks, 19% resulted in a homicide and 14% in physical assault. While the majority of attacks came in the form of threats, 69 HRAs were murdered and 50 were beaten. The director of Somos Defensores, Diana Sanchez, said that this was partly due to a flawed government protection strategy.
"The [government] policy focuses on physical protection [for HRAs], but protection goes far beyond the physical, and there also needs to be a focus on prevention and policy measures...[like] the research and monitoring of those actors which are targeting different sectors of society," Sanchez told Colombia Reports.
Sanchez pointed out that many of the HRAs most at risk are in remote and troubled areas, particularly the Colombian departments of Nariño, Valle del Cauca, Choco, Cauca and Antioquia.
While Sanchez did state that the government has engaged -- and continues to engage -- in disucssions over how best to tackle the precarious position of HRAs in Colombia, she said that so far it has "failed to provide a political climate which prevents agression towards [human rights] leaders."
Palm Springs woman charged with threatening President Obama
She is accused of threatening the President via Twitter and Facebook
POSTED: 04:47 PM PST Feb 22, 2013 UPDATED: 05:19 PM PST Feb 22, 2013
twitter
NEW ORLEANS, La. -
A California woman has been indicted on a charge she posted threatening statements about President Barack Obama and his family on her Twitter feed and Facebook page while she was visiting New Orleans.
Friday's one-count indictment charges 32-year-old Felisha Monet Mitchell of Palm Springs with threatening the president, a charge punishable by a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Click the box on the left to view a one of the threatening tweets.
Others (not pictured) include:
"@BarackObama my grass roots don't speak, we will kill you."
"I will be happy when I'm president and Obama is dead this year"
"Whoever kills him is getting a monetary award not jail time cause America surrenders duh. That's the risk"
Federal prosecutors say Mitchell used her cellphone to post the alleged threats in January.
Mitchell was arrested earlier this month and ordered held in custody.
Her Twitter handle, @MonetChic, is still active, and every tweet in question can still be accessed by the public.
Bogota police Wednesday discovered more than three tons of marijuana valued on the street at almost $1.7 million.
The pot was stashed inside a truck parked inside a fruit warehouse.
The seizure comes after a five-month investigation into drug distribution in the city and marks the largest seizure within Bogota in a decade, reported a police commander to El Colombiano.
Agents received tips from locals about the warehouse situated in the Patio Bonito neighborhood in southwestern Bogota. The truck contained three thousand packages of marijuana weighing one kilo each, according to colonel Camilo Cabana with the metropolitan police.
No suspects have been apprehended related to this seizure.
It is believed that the delivery was targeted for the street known as "el Bronx," to subsequently be distributed in different "ollas" or "pots" of the city, reported El Tiempo. The pun does not function in Spanish.
Last year 358 tons of marijuana were confiscated in Colombia. So far this year 40 tons have been seized, said general Luis Perez, director of the anti-narcotics police
A 13-year-old boy was killed on Saturday after refusing to give 200 pesos (ten cents) to a thief in Colombia's capital city of Bogota.
According to police, the boy, Nicolas Acosta Piña, was waiting for some friends in the capital's Kennedy district when two young men approached him and asked for a 200 peso coin. When the boy said he did not have the coin, one of the robbers stabbed him eight times.
The perpetrators fled the scene, but friends of the boy chased down and caught the alleged murderer, while others helped the 13-year-old boy to the hospital.
The victim was taken to a local hospital in Kennedy, but doctors were unable to save him due to the severity of the stabbing.
The perpetrator, aged 16, was placed under arrest on Saturday and confessed to the crime. He allegedly said that the attack occurred in part because he was in "a state of unconciousness" due to marijuana consumtion.
A judge ordered that the 16-year-old suspect be sent to a correctional center while a formal ruling is made.
The judge said the perpetrator had a criminal record that included assault charges and illegal drug possession. According to reports, he recently fled from a drug rehabilitation center.
Initital reports indicated that the 16-year-old could spend between four and eight years in prison for the crime of stabbing the young Nicolas to death.
The following is a release from the National Park Service:
The National Park Service is seeking the public's assistance in the investigation of a crime that occurred in Coronado National Memorial on February 1, 2013. At approximately 5 p.m., unknown subjects vandalized rocks located near the entrance of Coronado Cave.
Anyone with any information about the vandalism is encouraged to contact the park at 520-366-5515, ext. 2532 and leave a confidential message.
Remote cameras placed in the area to monitor resource activity captured photos of the individuals. The NPS is seeking help in identifying these two people who may be able to provide information for the investigation. Anyone that can provide the identity of these people is also asked to contact the park at 520-366-5515, ext. 2532.
The NPS is entrusted with the preservation and protection of America's national treasures. Your assistance today will help ensure the special features of the memorial continue to be preserved for future generations to enjoy.
Last August, the director of CAIR St. Louis, Faizan Syed, wrote about his ideas for monitoring social media titled Social Media Task Force. Sayed wants to create a Muslim youth association who would aggresively monitor the media. What really stood out was this statement under the section “I have few suggestions to make in this regard” (5th bullet):
“Report anti Islamic and anti Muslim content on the internet to appropriate authorities to take action to remove it and go after those who post it online and prosecute and take actions according to the Shariah ruling.”
Take action according to the Sharia ruling? Humm… in some countries this could mean death.
KANSAS.com(h/t Creeping Sharia) The Islamic Society of Wichita has rezoned about five acres of land near its mosque at K-96 and Woodlawn. The society sought general office zoning in preparation for development that could include an apartment complex, an office complex, a medical clinic and a financial institution.
“It’s not about making money,” says Muhammad Aamir Usmani, director of the society’s board of development. “It’s about supporting our existing services.” (That’s what Muslim separatists always say in every country in which they plan to demand their own Islamic state within a state sometime in the future)
Usmani says the society first started building on the almost 9-acre property in 2000. “Initially, we had a gym,” he says. It served as a multipurpose building. Then, the group added a mosque and a school followed by another building.
The latest building is a new school for pre-K through eighth grade. Fundraising is under way for a high school to be built on the second floor. (The real funding likely will be laundered from Saudi Arabia) “Our goal is to start ninth (grade) in August,” Usmani says. He says while there are tuition fees, the society still needs to raise money for education and outreach programs to the community (aka DAWAH – promotion of Islam throughout the non-Muslim community).
Muslims were outraged when the anti-sharia bill was signed into law by Governor Sam Brownbeck
“We need to keep doing that and possibly expand it. . . . There are a lot of programs that are supported by the community.” Usmani says 600 to 800 people regularly attend the mosque. (But with Obama importing hundreds of thousands of Muslims every year, they need to prepare)
“There’s a lot of expenditure.” That’s why he says the society is seeking additional sources of revenue. (That’s right, keep pretending that you are not funded by foreign entities) “We need to make sure we start raising some funds so we can support our services to the community.” A 2-story apartment complex is a possibility.
The bodies of a man and a woman were found inside a charred vehicle parked in
a Juárez neighborhood late Wednesday night, state officials said.
The man was decapitated and his head was found on top of the car, a 1990 Jeep
Cherokee left at Leona Vicario and Ricardo Flores streets in the Manuel Valdez
neighborhood, said a spokesperson for the Chihuahua Attorney General's Office in
Juárez.
Forensic experts did not know the victims' ages or other details. The
investigation continues.
Marisela Ortega Lozano maybe reached at mortega@elpasotimes.com; 542-6077.
Syria claims in unconfirmed report that its forces downed an Israeli unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) near the border with Lebanon.
AAFont Size
By Chana Ya'ar
First Publish: 2/21/2013, 12:48 PM
Israeli drone
Flash 90
Syria claims its forces have downed an Israeli unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) near the border with Lebanon.
A report broadcast Wednesday on Syria's state-run Mayadeen TV claimed government forces shot down the drone over the village of Deir al Ashayer, about 15 miles west of Damascus and not far from where an alleged Israeli strike on a chemical weapons processing plant took place last month.
A separate report published by the Damas Post quoted local witnesses who said they saw a surface-to-air missile fired from Syria hit the drone, and burning wreckage falling from the sky over the eastern Lebanese village of Yanta.
The event was not reported in the Syrian state-run SANA news agency, and there was no comment by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's office.
On Wednesday there were numerous reports in Lebanese media about Israeli warplanes conducting “mock raids” over southern Lebanon, and multiple reconnaissance flights over towns and villages around the country.
A week ago, four Israeli warplanes were spotted flying in Lebanese air space on what appeared to be intelligence-gathering missions. Two of the planes appeared above Kafrkila village, and then circled over various regions before leaving several hours later from above Rmeish village. Two others began at the same starting point but circled a different route before leaving some time later from over Aima Sha'ab village.
Arizona Lemon Law – If your car's not up to par, Pryor Ramirez & Amar. Free case review.
Nagpur: Within a week after the rape and murder of three minor girls of a family in Bhandara, a 14-year- old girl was allegedly raped by a teacher inside school premises in the district.
46-year-old Yadav Borkar, a government school teacher, allegedly raped the girl in the school premises at Golati village in Lakhandur taluka of Bhandara district two days ago, police said.
After the complaint was filed today, Borkar surrendered before the police and was arrested.
Syrian opposition withdraws from talks over 'shameful' international silence
on Aleppo
The main Syrian opposition grouping has said it turned down invitations to
visit Washington and Moscow to protest what it described as the "shameful"
international silence over destruction of the ancient city of Aleppo by Syrian
missile strikes.
The regime is said to have used
Scuds in Aleppo.Photo:
REUTERS
12:02AM GMT 23 Feb 2013
A statement late on Friday by the Syrian National Coalition, an umbrella
group of opposition political forces, said it also had suspended participation
in a Friends of Syria conference of international powers due in Rome next month
to protest the attacks it said have caused many civilian casualties.
"Hundreds or civilians have been killed by Scud missile strikes. Aleppo, the
city and the civilisation, is being destroyed systematically," the statement
said.
"The Russian leadership especially bears moral and political responsibility
for supplying the regime with weapons," it added, referring to Moscow's status
as a leading ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
