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MEAN STREETS MEDIA
Friday, October 31, 2014
TUCSON AZ ( Police release sketch of Tumamoc Hill assault suspect )
TUCSON- University of Arizona Police have released a composite sketch of the man they say assaulted a female on Tumamoc Hill Monday morning.
According to University of Arizona Police Sergeant Filbert Barrera, the female was at Tumamoc Hill around 7:30 a.m., when a Hispanic male ran into the female, knocking her to the ground. The man then attempted to pin her to the ground.
Barrera said the female was able to get away from the man and yell for help.
The suspect is in his 40s, between 5 feet 7 inches and 5 feet 9 inches tall, and weighs between 150 and 170 pounds.
He was last seen wearing light brown shorts and a grey hooded sweatshirt.
Anyone with information is asked to call 911 or 621-8477.
A 14-year-old Nigerian girl accused of murdering her 35-year-old husband with rat poison
Gezawa (Nigeria) (AFP) - A 14-year-old Nigerian girl accused of murdering her 35-year-old husband by putting rat poison in his food could face the death penalty, Nigerian prosecutors said Thursday.
The trial of Wasila Tasi'u, from a poor northern Nigeria family, has sparked a heated debate on the role of underage marriage in the conservative Muslim region, especially whether an adolescent girl can consent to be a bride.
Prosecutors at the High Court in Gezawa, outside Nigeria's second city of Kano, filed an amended complaint that charged Tasi'u with one count of murder over the killing of Umar Sani two weeks after their April wedding in the village of Unguwar Yansoro.
Lead prosecutor Lamido Abba Soron-Dinki said that if convicted, the charge is "punishable with death" and indicated the state would seek the maximum penalty.
Nigeria is not known to have executed a juvenile offender since 1997, when the country was ruled by military dictator Sani Abacha, according to Human Rights Watch.
Tasi'u entered the court wearing a cream-coloured hijab and was escorted by two policemen.
Her parents, who have condemned their daughter's alleged act, were in the public gallery -- the first time the three were in the same room since Tasi'u's arrest in April, her legal representatives said.
The English-language charge sheet was translated into Hausa for the accused by the court clerk.
Tasi'u refused to answer when asked if she understood the charges.
The case was adjourned for 30 minutes so the charges could be better explained to the defendant, but when the alleged offences were read again Tasi'u stayed silent, turned her head to the wall and broke down in tears.
"The court records (that) she pleads not guilty," Judge Mohammed Yahaya said, apparently regarding her silence as equal to a denial of the charges and adjourned the case until November 26.
Activists, including in Nigeria's mainly Christian south, have called for Tasi'u's immediate release, saying she should be rehabilitated as a victim and noting the prospect that she was raped by the man she married.
But in the north, Islamic law operates alongside the secular criminal code, a hybrid system that has complicated the question of marital consent.
The affected families have denied that Tasi'u was forced into marriage, arguing that girls across the impoverished region marry at 14 and that Tasi'u and Sani followed the traditional system of courtship.
According to Nigeria's marriage act, anyone under 21 can marry provided they have parental consent and so evidence of an agreement between Tasi'u and her father Tasiu Mohammed could undermine claims of a forced union.
But defence lawyer Hussaina Aliyu has insisted the case is not a debate about the role of youth marriage in a Muslim society.
Instead, she has argued that under criminal law a 14-year-old cannot be charged with murder in a high court and has demanded that the case be moved to the juvenile system.
Nigeria defines the age of adulthood as 17 but the situation is less clear in the 12 northern states under Islamic law, where courts theoretically have the right to consider people under 17 as legally responsible.
Guidelines for how courts should blend Islamic and secular legal codes have not been well defined.
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Sunni prisoner beaten severely at Ghezel Hesar Prison in Karaj
Posted on: 30th October, 2014
HRANA News Agency – The family of Seddigh Mohammadi, a Sunni prisoner suffering from psychological illnesses awaiting execution in Iran, say they found bruising and evidence of beating on his body during a recent visit to the prison.
According to the report of Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), the family had finally been allowed to visit Seddigh Mohammadi in Ghezel Hesar prison last week, after a year of being prohibited from visiting the prison.
During the visit, during which Seddigh was separated from the family behind glass, the family noticed that Seddigh’s legs were bruised and one of his teeth had been broken.
The family also said that Seddigh Mohammadi had been forced to remain in solitary confinement for 40 days without reason.
The family complained about his injuries and suspected beatings to the Head of Unit 2 of the prison, Hossein Ghadami, as well as the Head of Security, Iraj Haghighi. However, following threats from Prison Security towards Seddigh Mohammadi, the family was forced to withdraw their complaints.
Seddigh Mohammadi was previously beaten by prison guards before being transferred to solitary confinement on 12 August 2014, after he complained about prison guards who had insulted his Sunni religious beliefs. The attack in August left him with severe bruising to his body and a wound to his head.
Seddigh Mohammadi, originally from Javanroud in the Kermanshah province of Iran, was arrested in June 2010, before being sentenced to death after being convicted of Moharabeh ‘enmity against God’.
The Supreme Court originally overturned his death sentence, along with that of another Sunni prisoner, Hadi Hosseini, in December 2013 due to their psychological illnesses. The move came after the men ended a 7-week long hunger strike, with officials promising to provide a retrial in the Revolutionary Court in Sanandaj.
However, the men did not receive retrials as promised, and in May 2014 the Supreme Court confirmed their death sentences once again. Their cases were sent to the Office for the Implementation of Sentences, and the men are at risk of execution.
ISIS kills 220 from opposing Iraqi tribe
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants executed at least 220 Iraqis in retaliation against a tribe’s opposition to their takeover of territory west of Baghdad, security sources and witnesses said.
Two mass graves were discovered on Thursday containing some of the 300 members of the Sunni Muslim Albu Nimr tribe that ISIS had seized this week. The captives, men aged between 18 and 55, had been shot at close range, witnesses said.
The bodies of more than 70 Albu Nimr men were dumped near the town of Hit in the Sunni heartland Anbar province, according to witnesses who said most of the victims were members of the police or an anti-ISIS militia called Sahwa (Awakening).
“Early this morning we found those corpses and we were told by some ISIS militants that ‘those people are from Sahwa, who fought your brothers the ISIS, and this is the punishment of anybody fighting ISIS’,” a witness said.
The insurgents had ordered men from the tribe to leave their villages and go to Hit, 130 km (80 miles) west of Baghdad, promising them “safe passage”, tribal leaders said. They were then seized and shot.
A mass grave near the city of Ramadi, also in Anbar province, contained 150 members of the same tribe, security officials said.
The Awakening militia were established with the encouragement of the United States to fight al Qaeda during the U.S. “surge” offensive of 2006-2007.
Washington, which no longer has ground forces in Iraq but is providing air support for Iraqi forces, hopes the government can rebuild the shaky alliance with Sunni tribes, particularly in Anbar which is now mostly under the control of ISIS, a group that follows an ultra-hardline version of Sunni Islam.
But Sunni tribal leaders complain that Shi’ite Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has failed to deliver on promises of weapons to counter ISIS’s machineguns, sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and tanks.
Sheikh Naeem al-Ga’oud, one of the leaders of the Albu Nimir tribe, said: “The Americans are all talk and no action.”
ISIS was on the march in Anbar this year even before it seized much of northern Iraq in June. As the
government and fighters from the autonomous Kurdish region have begun to recapture territory in the north, ISIS has pressed its advances in Anbar, coming ever closer to Baghdad.
government and fighters from the autonomous Kurdish region have begun to recapture territory in the north, ISIS has pressed its advances in Anbar, coming ever closer to Baghdad.
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