Britains role in supplying information to an American military “kill list” in Afghanistan is being subjected to legal challenge amid growing international concern over targeted strikes against suspected insurgents and drug traffickers.An Afghan man who lost five relatives in a missile strike started proceedings against the Serious Organised Crime Agency Soca and the Ministry of Defence demanding to know details of the UKs participation “in the compilation, review and execution of the list and what form it takes”.
JENIN (Ma’an) — Former hunger striker Bilal Diab was released from Israeli jail to his home in the northern West Bank on Thursday, as part of an agreement to end his 77-day strike.
Diab, 27, told reporters he carried a message from Palestinians in Israeli jails to immediately end the factional division between Hamas and Fatah.
He also called for political leaders to work to free all prisoners, in particular those held before the 1993 Oslo Accords.
Hundreds of Palestinians gathered at the al-Jalama crossing in the northern West Bank to greet the released prisoner.
Diab, from Kafr Rai village near Jenin, said his delight at being released was diminished because of thousands of prisoners left behind.
He was detained in August 2011 given a six month administrative detention order, which was renewed in February.
Three members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot said Vladimir Putin’s Russia was the one on trial as they delivered closing arguments on Wednesday in a case seen as a key test of the powerful president’s desire to crackdown on dissent.
“This is a trial of the whole government system of Russia, which so likes to show its harshness toward the individual, its indifference to his honour and dignity,” Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, one of the trio on trial said in an impassioned statement. “If this political system throws itself against three girls … it shows this political system is afraid of truth.”
The judge set 17 August as the day she would deliver a verdict against the women, charged with hooliganism motivated by religious hatred following an anti-Putin performance in a Moscow cathedral.
Prosecutors have asked for a three-year sentence, arguing that the women sought to insult all of Russian
Pussy Riot members, from left, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich sit in a glass cage at a court room in Moscow. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP
Orthodoxy and denying they were carrying out a political protest.
Tolokonnikova called the charges against them a “political order for repression” and denounced Putin’s “totalitarian-authoritarian system”, insisting Pussy Riot were an example of “opposition art”.
“Even though we are behind bars, we are freer than those people,” she said, looking at the prosecution from inside the glass cage where she and her two bandmates, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich, have spent the nine-day trial. “We can say what we want, while they can only say what political censorship allows.
“Maybe they think it wouldn’t be wrong to try us for speaking against Putin and his system, but they can’t say that because it’s been forbidden,” she said, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the revolutionary words “No Pasaran”.
Couching their case in the long plight of political prisoners in the country, the three women urged Russians to reject Putin’s system and embrace freedom.
Alyokhina, 24, compared the trial to the Soviet Union’s persecution of Joseph Brodsky, when the young poet was charged with being a “social parasite”, becoming a global cause celebre that highlighted the government’s farcical control over culture.
“We are not guilty – the whole world is talking about it,” Alyokhina said, hours after Madonna became the latest, and biggest, star to come to the women’s defence.
“I am not scared of you,” Alyokhina told the court. “I’m not scared of lies and fiction, or the badly formed deception that is the verdict of this so-called court. Because my words will live, thanks to openness.
“When thousands of people will read and watch this, this freedom will grow with every caring person who listens to us in this country.”
Lawyers for Pussy Riot have been expecting a guilty verdict and three-year sentence, but said that was called into question following the judge’s delay in issuing her decision. Lawyer Nikolai Polozov said growing international attention, including recent messages of support from the likes of Madonna and Yoko Ono, had had their effect. “To take a quick decision under such pressure is very dangerous for the authorities, so they’ve taken a time out,” he told the Guardian. “No matter what the verdict is, we have won,” he added.
Each woman ended her closing statement to loud applause from the Russian journalists sitting in the courtroom.
Yekaterina Samutsevich is seen here being escorted into court Russian prosecutors have asked for three years’ in prison for three women musicians accused of inciting religious hatred during a protest in a cathedral. The three members of the punk band Pussy Riot played a song attacking Russian leader Vladimir Putin in front of an altar […]
The Free Pussy riot campaign has gone global, hitting at the heart of oppression, semi slavery and open violence against women, in the sexist macho State and the medieval inquisitorial evil church. update https://thefreeonline.wordpress.com/2012/07/31/ God-is-punishing-jailed-pussy-riot-mothers-says-patriarch Аction […]
The trial continues of 3 women from the punk band Pussy Riot. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Mariya Alekhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich were taken into custody in February after singing a protest song against Putin in Moscow. They have spent already 5 months without bail for nothing more than playing a song in a church without permission. Their […]
Trial Update. Tuesday. Witnesses were called who swore they were outraged by Pussyriot playing in a church…. God is judging Pussy Riot, says Russian church leader.
Informamos que la compañera afiliada a la CNT, María Jesús Vila Calviño, conocida comoChus, residente en Fuerteventura, ha iniciado desde la noche del martes una huelga de hambre indefinida para protestar, no sólo por su situación personal (desempleada, sin cobrar prestaciones ni ayuda económica de ningún tipo, sin techo por no poder pagar alquiler), sino por la de tantas y tantas personas que se encuentran en similares (o peores) condiciones.
Por este motivo, Chus se ha instalado frente al edificio de la Delegación de Gobierno de Puerto Cabras (Fuerteventura), donde permanecerá día y noche con el apoyo de amigos/as, compañeros y compañeras. Hasta el momento ha recibido la visita del Consejero de Bienestar Social del Cabildo de Fuerteventura y de la Concejala de Cultura del Ayuntamiento de La Oliva. El Delegado de Gobierno ha instado a la Policía Municipal de Puerto del Rosario a que la desalojen de la plaza pública en la que se encuentra acampada. Por otra parte, Cruz Roja de Fuerteventura ha comunicado que no puede prestarle apoyo en estos momentos por falta de personal, aun así está organizando turnos entre personas voluntarias para poder atender las necesidades de Chus. Las muestras de apoyo del pueblo de Fuerteventura han sido impresionantes y Chus está francamente emocionada.
María Jesús asegura que su decisión “es necesaria como medida de presión” para conseguir el cambio “radical” de la política social ejercida por el Gobierno que, según la huelguista, “todavía no ha entendido” que las cifras emitidas por los medios son personas, añadiendo que “si dejan morir a la gente de hambre, tirada en la calle lo verán con sus ojos”.
Adjuntamos la carta que la compañera ha presentado en la Delegación de Gobierno de Puerto Cabras, El Cabildo de Fuerteventura y el Ayuntamiento de Puerto Cabras (Puerto del Rosario), en la cual expresa claramente lo que le ha llevado a tomar esta drástica decisión.
Serious Organised Crime Agency Soca and the Ministry of Defence demanding to know details of the UKs participation “in the compilation, review and execution of the list and what form it takes”.
The Free 