Muslim woman wins headscarf court battle

Published: 23 Oct 2016 13:27 GMT+02:00

A Swiss court has ruled against a company that fired a longtime employee after she began wearing the Muslim headscarf, marking one of the first such rulings in Switzerland, media reported on Sunday.

A regional court in Bern ruled last month that a 29-year-old Serbian woman was fired without just cause from a dry cleaning business, and ordered the company to dish out back-pay and damages to her, the Le Matin Dimanche weekly reported.

The woman, identified only as Abida, was fired in January 2015 from a job she had held for six years, after she began wearing the Muslim headscarf, it reported.

Her employer in Bern had told her the headscarf violated hygiene rules, and told her to remove it or be let go.

She reportedly offered to wash her headscarf daily or wear disposable headscarves, but her employer refused.

The Bern court ruled that the company had violated her constitutional right to freedom of expression, according to the paper.

It said wearing a headscarf can only be grounds for termination in cases where it makes it impossible to carry out duties described in the employment contract or if it "substantially affects" the working environment.

The case is one of the first of its kind in Switzerland, Le Matin Dimanche said, pointing to only one other known case dating back to 1990, when a machine manufacturer in the east of the country was also faulted for firing a woman for wearing a headscarf.

Spanish police nab French hitman in devil costume

Published: 05 Nov 2016 14:47 GMT+01:00

A fugitive hitman on France's most-wanted list has been arrested in Spain disguised in a devil's costume at a Halloween celebration, police said on Friday.

Officers arrested Hamid Hakkar, 47, on Monday in the port of Malaga in southern Spain along with two Spaniards suspected of helping him hide, police said in a statement.

   

"He was disguised as a devil to blend in among the party-goers," the statement said.

   

Police released a photo of the red mask with black horns and sharp teeth which the man was wearing at the time of his arrest along with a black cape and wig.

   

The authorities said the man of Algerian background is on France's most-wanted list for murder, drug trafficking and money laundering.

 

In 2005 Hakkar was sentenced by a French court to 15 years in jail after finding him guilty of the murder of a minor drug trafficker.

   

He has been on the run since November 2013 when he did not return to a jail in northern France after being granted a temporary leave.

   

Hakkar -- who went by the name "Julio" -- was jailed for two years in 2010 for his role in helping Italian bank robber Antonio Ferrara escape from a French jail.

Basque terror group leader seized in French town

Published: 05 Nov 2016 14:11 GMT+01:00

The most senior ETA leader still at large was arrested Saturday in southwest France, Spanish authorities said, dealing another major blow to the embattled Basque separatist group.

Mikel Irastorza, 41, was found in a home in the French town of Ascain, in the Pyrenees region bordering Spain, the interior ministry said in a statement.

 

The couple housing Irastorza -- a 59-year-old Basque exile and his 56-year-old wife -- were also taken into custody, French sources said.    

 

Anti-terrorism prosecutors in Paris authorised the arrests and the three are due to appear before a judge in the French capital. On Friday French authorities opened a preliminary investigation into alleged criminal association with a terrorist organisation.

 

The Spanish statement said the raid, led by French security forces working with Spanish police, was aimed at the "leadership structure of ETA".

 

Irastorza was described by the ministry as "currently the most senior leader of the terrorist group ETA still at large". Spain said other arrests could follow.
   

Founded in 1959, ETA waged a violent decades-long campaign for an independent Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwestern France, and is blamed for the deaths of more than 800 people.
   

It declared a ceasefire in October 2011 but has refused to give up its weapons, and is seeking to negotiate its dissolution in exchange for amnesties or improved prison conditions for the roughly 350 ETA members held in both countries.
   

Spain's new Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido, who was only appointed on Thursday, welcomed the arrest.

Moscow Urges West to Define Enemy in Syria, Terrorists or Russia

MOSCOW - Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu urged the West on Tuesday to decide who to fight with in Syria, the terrorists or Russia.

Shoigu made his statements during a press conference with the Russian Armed Forces senior officers.

"It is time that our Western colleagues decide who to actually fight against: the terrorists or Russia," the minister was quoted by Russian media

The defense minister was commenting on the refusal of several countries to allow Russian navy ships, led by aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov and heading from the eastern Mediterranean to the coast of Syria, to bring fuel and supplies.

Moscow requested permission from Spain to anchor Russian ships in the Spanish city of Ceuta, but it withdrew this request after the Spanish authorities asked for clarification on the nature of the military participation in Syria.

"To eliminate terrorists in Syria, it is necessary to work together rather than put a spoke into partners' wheel. The gunmen use this for their own benefit," Shoigu explained, according to TASS.

On Aleppo, Shoigu added that Russia has not been using warplanes in Aleppo for 16 days, condemning that the militants killed dozens of civilians for trying to approach the humanitarian corridors.

United States Strengthens Security on California-Mexico Border

SAN DIEGO – The U.S. Border Patrol has created a special unit to supplement its agents on the eastern area of the border between San Diego and Mexico, where the presence of criminal organizations engaged in the trafficking, kidnapping and extortion of undocumented immigrants has been detected.

“Multiple smuggling organizations are responsible for threatening our Nation’s security through persistent human smuggling on Otay Mountain,” Chief Patrol Agent Richard A. Barlow said in a statement. “We will flex our enforcement posture toward these exploited areas to weaken and ultimately eliminate these criminal enterprises.”

The special unit’s Commander Matthew Dreyer, with more than 20 years in the Border Patrol, told EFE that the area is the most difficult terrain to cover in the San Diego area because of the cliffs, steep peaks, canyons, scrub and other conditions that make it hard to get around.

Traffickers use this route because they think they won’t be seen on their hike north and often don’t tell their victims about the risks of the terrain – and when the Border Patrol is about to catch up with them, the guides tend to flee, leaving their victims somewhere they’ll be unlikely to escape. That way they use the terrain to their own advantage, Dreyer said.

In the same area but south of the border, cases of extortion, kidnapping and rape of migrants have been reported.

For that reason, U.S. authorities work closely with the Federal Police of Mexico in order to wipe out those crimes.

For agent Daniel Parks, this collaboration is an example of the solid relations maintained by security agencies across the border.

They often meet to share information that will allow them to pounce on the people traffickers and combine their strategies for use in their respective jurisdictions.

By patrolling the border together, moving together toward the east, each on his own side of the border, there’s nowhere the criminals can go to get away, Parks told EFE.

Now it becomes clear that the fight for border security does not begin and end with the border wall, Parks said, adding that the only way to fight and defeat this problem at its point of origin, on the traffickers’ route to the border, on the border itself or farther into the United States, is by working closely with the Mexican government.

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