Falconio and Lees

The 1,500km Stuart Highway between Alice Springs and Darwin is named for the Scottish explorer John McDouall Stuart who led the first successful expedition to cross Australia from south to north. Also named for him is Central Mount Stuart, close to being most central point in Australia.

Bradley John Murdoch was convicted of the murder of Peter Falconio near this remote spot on Bastille Day, 2001. Murdoch is now serving 28 years in prison for Falconio's death. Peter Falconio was a British backpacker who went missing, presumed dead on a lonely road in the Northern Territory, Australia. On his last day, he was travelling north with his girlfriend Joanne Lees. They were in a VW combie van heading towards the Devils Marbles and Tennant Creek.

Near a supply stop called Barrow Creek, the pair was halted by a man waving a flag by the side of the road. They stopped the car and talked to him. The man said there was something wrong with their exhaust. Falconio got out of the van to investigate with the man. When Falconio and the man went to the back of the van, Lees heard a shot. Falconio was dead. The man then grabbed Lees, tied her wrists together and put a sack over her head. He dragged her to his car and threw her in. She escaped out the back of the car and fled into the darkness of the bushes. The man searched for her with the help of a cattle dog. She eventually made it to the dwellings at Barrow Creek where she raised the alarm.

When the police arrived at the scene, they could find no trace of Falconio’s body. Once the news leaked to the public, the media coverage was instant and massive. Here was a photogenic British tourist who had suffered a great loss and survived a great ordeal. It was also a mystery tale.

It was to be another two years before the police charged a man for Falconio’s murder. His name was Bradley John Murdoch, from Western Australia and he was already in police custody on a rape charge. Lees recognised his photograph. Then the police found a DNA match. Murdoch was immediately charged with murder. He was extradited to the Northern Territories after being acquitted of the rape charge.

The road to a jury took another two years. In October 2005, Murdoch went on trial. The prosecutor Rex Wild said Lees positively identified Murdoch one day before the start of the trial but it was only as a result of seeing his face on a BBC website which was outside Australian jurisdiction. Wild went on to recount what happened that night four years earlier. He said Murdoch was a marijuana supplier who was on a cross-country drug run. The police found blood at the scene that was confirmed as Falconio’s. The found one witness, a woman, who testified to the existence of the second car at Barrow Creek. There was no evidence of bullets found at the scene of the crime either inside or outside the van. They argued the evidence of the shot Lees heard may have been wiped away accidentally by police when dusting for fingerprints. There was no gun either. Police spent a week hoovering a 300,000 square metre area with metal detectors but never found a murder weapon.

They brought in a character witness James Hepi. Hepi was a business partner of Murdoch. He testified he and Murdoch moved marijuana around the country. He told how Murdoch regularly carried a gun. The judge didn’t like Hepi and ordered the jury to disregard his “unreliable testimony”. They brought in one of Murdoch’s former girlfriends. She told the court he had to get rid of someone on a drug trip. She also said Murdoch matched the description of the man described by Lees. But the judge liked her testimony as little as he liked Hepi’s and told the jury to ignore it.

They then brought in a forensic anatomist. He testified Murdoch was the man on CCTV footage at a truck stop 200km south in Alice Springs in the early hours of the morning after the murder. Some of Murdoch’s friends also said it could be him leaving the truck stop. Despite defence saying it could have been anyone, Judge Ross Martin, NT chief justice made another character judgement and ordered the jury to accept that the footage was Murdoch. Although Martin was establishing Murdoch’s whereabouts in Alice, he was not saying that made him guilty. The footage showed the man leaving the store barely minutes before police walked in.

The prosecution introduced testimony by Murdoch. After the murder was shown on the news, he boasted to friends how easy it would have been to attack Lees and kill her making hand ties from cable wires. The statement was not denied by the defence but they said it was merely a hypothetical. A Barrow Creek petrol attendant told of a man who bought petrol that night. The man was tall and slim and had a moustache. He drove a white four-wheel drive and he bought ice, milk and water to go with the fuel.

Rex Wild QC told the court where Murdoch was going with the ice, milk and water that night. He travelled north on the Stuart Highway. He murdered Falconio, and looked in vain for Lees. He did an about turn and went back to Alice. He then set out north again, this time veering off on the Tanami Track for the long journey to Broome in Western Australia. As it was the dry season, experts testified he could make the journey in 16 hours. Murdoch, helped by amphetamines, made it Fitzroy Crossing in 20. Wild said Murdoch had made substantial changes to his car in the weeks after the incident.

The defence case brought Lees to stand. She admitted she had cable ties in the back of the car. She denied she used the cables to bind herself. She admitted both Falconio and her were heavy marijuana smokers and occasionally used ecstasy. Their last joint was barely twenty minutes prior to the incident. Murdoch wasn’t the only one on camera in Alice’s restaurant on the night of the attack. Lees and Falconio were there too. Lees and Murdoch may have bumped into each other and swapped DNA. There were doubts about the time of events described by Lees. She would have had to drive at 176kph from Alice for the time of the accident to be corrected. The Stuart Highway has unlimited speed but not in an 80kph maximum VW combie van. The defence also cast doubts on Lees' fidelity to Falconio. Lees admitted to the existence of “Nick”, another lover in Sydney.

They cast doubt on the hand ties, too. Murdoch was shown the ties in prison in South Australia where he may have contaminated them before they were examined for DNA. As a result, the hand ties could not be used in evidence. Lees said the attacker had a cattle dog but Murdoch’s dog is a dalmation cross. Wild had argued either she had gotten mixed up or more bizarrely Murdoch had borrowed someone else’s dog. Murdoch didn’t match the initial description Lees had given to the police after the crime. Lees’ doctor couldn’t find any evidence to match the head wound she claims she got in the scuffle.

The defence talked about Peter Falconio. Although here on a working visa, he was taxed at the more favourable rate of an Australian resident. Should he ever get around to his legal duty and present a tax return he would owe the local tax office somewhere between three to five grand in Aussie dollars. An anonymous phone caller to police said Falconio made enquiries in England on the day of his death. He was looking for advice on how to avoid paying the bill and also looked at how he might fake his own death. Police dismissed the evidence as inconclusive. The DNA laboratories weren’t accredited and the sketch artist was inexperienced. Most crucially, there was no body. The blood at the scene is the only trace left of Peter Falconio.

Bradley John Murdoch took the stand. He said he was set up by James Hepi, his former business partner who planted DNA evidence, possibly from cigarette butts to frame him. Murdoch claimed he would have been 600kms away in the tiny settlement of Yuendumu at the time of the murder. Four people testified Murdoch refuelled when he got to Fitzroy Crossing in Western Australia twenty hours after the incident. It meant he would have had to travel 1,700kms in 20 hours non-stop on rough corrugated dirt roads. Throw the earlier Alice Springs picture in and it becomes 2,000kms in 17 hours.

He explained why he refitted his car shortly after the murder. He was an ex-mechanic and it was his hobby to rebuild cars. His addiction to amphetamines cost him his two front teeth. This is now his most distinguishing feature but Lees didn’t notice. Ten people approached police to say they saw Falconio alive after the incident. They concluded by arguing Falconio faked his death and he and Lees met a third person unknown who took Falconio alive from the mostly bloodless scene. There was no murder. Hepi had the motive of easier sentencing in order to dob Murdoch in.

The prosecution then made its conclusion. Murdoch believed Falconio and Less were following him because he feared they might tell the police about his drug operation. He stopped them and killed Falconio but Lees escaped. He searched for five hours but gave up. He buried Falconio in an unknown grave and drove back to Alice prior to driving to Broome.

On December 13, 2005, the jury took 8 hours to convict Murdoch of Falconio’s murder. Judge Martin sentenced him to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 28 years. The appeal of Bradley John Murdoch v R is set down for hearing before the NT Court of Criminal Appeal on 12 December 2006, for 3 days.

Yunus win the peace prize

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize has gone to Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank. The 87th naming of the award was announced yesterday in Oslo. Yunus and the bank won the award for their work in advancing economic and social opportunities for the poor, particularly women. The committee cited their efforts to help “create economic and social development from below”.

The prize is shared between Yunus and the bank. Yunus is a Bangladeshi economist who has been praised for his novel method of “microcredit” which has helped poor women advance their lives and escape from poverty. Microcredit is the extension of small loans typically from $60 to $140 to entrepreneurs too poor to qualify for traditional bank loans. He founded the Grameen Bank with a charter to help the “poorest of the poor” living without any capital in crowded rural Bangladesh. It has 6.6 million borrowers, 97% of which are women. It provides services in 70,000 villages across the country.

Yunus and the bank will share the prize of 10 million Norwegian kronor (approx $2 million) as well as the gold medal and associated diploma. Yunus told the Nobel Foundation by phone: “I’m absolutely delighted. I cannot believe it has really happened. Everyone was telling me that I would get the prize but it came as a surprise. It is fantastic news for the people that have supported us”.

Yunus won it ahead of this year’s favourite Finnish president Martii Ahtisaari who was heavily backed following his efforts to secure a 2005 peace deal between Indonesia and its separatist Sumatran province Aceh. The five member committee would not comment on who else was considered for the award except to state it received 191 nominations for the award. The committee chair Ole Danbolt Mjoes said Yunus’s efforts had clear results. He said “we are saying microcredit is an important contribution that cannot fix everything, but is a big help.” He went on to compliment Yunus saying he was creative and “his head is in the right place”.

The 65 year old economist was born in the rural part of Chittagong province. In his school years he was an active boy scout and travelled abroad to scout jamborees. He completed an MA in economics in Dhaka University in 1961 and went to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee to gain his doctorate. He stayed on there to be an assistant professor of economics at Middle Tennessee State University before returning home to newly independent Bangladesh to become a full professor of economics at Chittagong University. The country underwent an extreme famine in 1974 in which thousands died. "We tried to ignore it," Yunus told PBS, "But then skeleton-like people began showing up in the capital, Dhaka. Nothing in the economic theories I taught reflected the life around me. How could I go on telling my students make believe stories in the name of economics? I needed to run away from these theories and from my textbooks and discover the real-life economics of a poor person's existence." Yunus moved to the village of Jobra to study the poor. Yunus found that very small loans could make a significant difference in a poor person's ability to survive. He established a rural economic program as a research project. His first loan consisted of $27 of his own money, which he lent to women in a village near Chittagong to make bamboo furniture.

In 1976, Yunus founded the Grameen Bank (which means "of rural area" in Bengali). The bank uses a system of "solidarity groups" to ensure repayment. These groups apply together for loans and its members act as co-guarantors of repayment. With the sponsorship of the central bank of the country and support of the nationalised commercial bank, the bank grew to service other areas around the country. In addition to microcredit, it offers housing loans as well as financing for fisheries and irrigation projects, venture capital, textiles as well as traditional bank services. The Grameen microcredit model has spread to 23 countries. Many micro financing projects follow Yunus’s emphasis on lending specifically to women. Grameen’s stated goal is to reverse the age-old vicious circle of "low income, low saving & low investment", into the cycle of "low income, injection of credit, investment, more income, more savings, more investment, more income". In 1983, the project was transformed into an independent bank by government legislation. Now Grameen is owned by the rural poor whom it serves. Bank borrowers own 90% of its shares, while the remaining 10% is owned by the government.

Australia's contempt laws

Contempt is a large body of law that affects journalists in many ways. Contempt laws date back to the middle ages when court authorities often faced physical threats. Modern contempt law is premised on the need to preserve the dignified administration of justice. Unlike other areas of the law, contempt has provisions for summary trials and unlimited sentencing powers and does not need to prove criminal intent. This essay will firstly look at the implications of sub judice contempt before going on to discuss effective defences against it. It will then examine some of the other forms of contempt. The essay will conclude with a discussion of contempt restrictions when reporting the courts.

The object of sub judice law is to avoid “trial by media”. The most common reason for media being in sub judice contempt is publishing material which might prejudice a jury. In Australia a case is sub judice (under a judge) when it is “pending”. The word “pending” is ill-defined and journalists should consider the matter pending from the time of arrest. A criminal case is deemed to be no longer pending when there is an acquittal or when all appeals have been exhausted or expired. When deciding whether a publication is in contempt, the courts will look to its “tendency” to interfere with justice. “Tendency” relates to potential effect of publication and takes into account factors of prominence, locality, timeliness and the use of images.

There are two main defences to a sub judice contempt charge. They are: fair report, and overriding public interest. Fair and accurate reporting is the cornerstone of the principle of open justice and the public right to know what is happening in courtrooms. The public interest defence offers a less certain immunity. The 1937 Bread Manufacturers case established a defence to allow media to discuss matters of overriding public importance even if in breach of sub judice rules. However, the defence does not provide protection if the matter reported is of direct consequence to the case. In Hinch v Attorney General for the State of Victoria (1987), the defendant’s appeal based on the Bread Manufacturers defence was dismissed. Hinch had the right to suggest that Glennon be suspended from his job while on trial, his mistake was to infer guilt and publicise Glennon’s prior conviction. In Mason CJ’s judgement, the prior conviction statement led to a serious risk of prejudice to jurors who might assume propensity to the crime.

Contempt of court can occur in other ways. In R v Dunbabbin, ex parte Williams, the High Court defined contempt directly related to critical court reporting. It defined “scandalising the court” to mean publication of material calculated to impair confidence in the court. This usually means publishing scurrilous or personal abuse of courts or judges. The defence is truth and fair comment. Other forms of contempt are contempt in the face of court (improper behaviour in a courtroom) and disobedience contempt which is failure to comply with a court order. Media workers in Queensland also need to be aware of the seriousness of the Jury Act which imposes two year imprisonment on anyone who discloses, seeks out or publishes information about jury deliberations.

Publication of court events is vital in order that justice be seen to be done. Exposure to public scrutiny offers a safeguard against abuse of the courts’ considerable powers. However media workers enjoy no formal rights to a place in Australian courtrooms. Media rooms and benches are a privilege which could be withdrawn at the court’s discretion. Moreover, open justice occasionally conflicts with the right to a fair trial and the due administration of justice. In Australia, victims of sexual offences cannot be identified. Sometimes that means the accused cannot be identified either if doing so would provide clues as to the identity of the victim. Similarly children charged with criminal offences cannot be identified, with minimum age of identification varying across jurisdictions. The Family Law Act goes further and bans identification of all parties and witnesses involved in a family law matter. Some courts have appointed media relations officers whose role is media liaison and public education. Journalists should use this valuable resource wherever available.

Failed nations and artificial borders

The Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw knew a thing or two about nationalism. He was probably thinking of the tragedy of his own country when he wrote “A healthy nation is as unconscious of its nationality as a healthy man is unconscious of his health. But if you break a nation’s nationality, it will think of nothing else but getting it set again”.

Alberto Alesina, William Easterly and Janina Matuszeski presumably also agree with that sentiment. The trio work for the US National Bureau of Economic Research and their thoughts on crooked nationhood are in an intriguing article they wrote called “Artificial States”. The paper examines the problems caused when political borders do not coincide with a division of nationalities desired by people who live there. The quote from Shaw is in the document’s introduction.

The paper looked at two measures of artificiality. The first looked at how borders split ethnic groups into adjacent countries. The second looked at the straightness of land borders assuming that the straighter the border, the more artificial it was likely to be. The paper showed that these two measures were commensurate with political and economic success. In other words, the more crooked or squiggly a border was, the more organic it was likely to be.

Artificial borders were created, in the main, by Europeans. Former colonial powers or war-winners bequeathed nice straight lines to the new owners with little or no regard for the make-up of the ethnic, religious or linguistic groups on the ground. Europeans had no time for these niceties. Instead territory was given to groups despite rival claims, coherent groups were often split, and sometimes large combinations were created of amorphous groups.

The borders that created the most friction tended to be drawn in straight lines based on longitude and latitude. Non-artificial boundaries are usually more squiggly and based on geographical features such as rivers and mountains or are long-term divisions carved out by different peoples. The researchers found that political instability, violence and war correlated with their measure of artificial states.

Examples of problematic borders abound across the globe. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles which formally ended World War One, was a political compromise between the winning powers. Ethnic boundaries and nationality were ignored in a shameless land grab and it set the seeds for a large number of future conflicts including World War Two. The map of today’s Middle East is also mostly the result of Versailles. Britain had earlier promised Emir Faisal an independent Arab emirates in the old Ottoman Empire. But this plan was gazumped by the secret Sykes-Picot agreement which divvied up the empire into British and French spheres of influence. Faisal was offered a new kingdom called Iraq cobbled together from three Ottoman provinces that were respectively Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni. In Lebanon, the French supported the Maronite Christians and bolstered their kingdom with Muslim areas around Beirut, Tripoli and Sidon.

The partition of India and Pakistan was another artificial border. Prior to the Raj, Hindus and Muslims alike ruled kingdoms of either religion. Muslims were in a minority in every region except in the extreme north east and north west. Ghandi and Nehru wanted a unified Indian state but Mohammed Ali Jinnah campaigned for a separate Muslim state which would somehow emerge out of the patchwork of Muslims scattered across the country. He ended up with a “moth-eaten” Pakistan with two pieces a thousand miles apart. The Bengali "East Wing" survived the disinterest of Islamabad and a genocidal repression before finally gaining independence as Bangladesh in 1971.

Africa too has many artificial boundaries. Prior to decolonisation, states had to prove control of their territory to gain international recognition. Virtually all the new African states would have failed this test. But by the late 1950s, the rules had changed. So-called “letterbox sovereignty” ruled. The international community decided that who ever opened mail from the UN, the IMF or the World Bank would be deemed the government. These new states were run by little more than a few educated agitators supported by a remnant colonial army surviving on a foreign aid budget. The new rulers had no incentive to change the system that had put them into power. One of the earliest resolutions adopted by the Organisation of African Unity in the 1960s was to treat colonial boundaries as sacrosanct. It remains a fundamental plank of the African Union.

Like Africa, Latin America is bulging with artificial boundaries. Until the early 19th century the entire continent of South America (with the exception of Portuguese Brazil) was under the colonial power of Spain. The Spanish divided the continent into a series of captaincies, viceroyalties and presidencies. Liberators such as Simon Bolivar and Jose de San Martin drove out the Spanish but the newly independent states agreed among themselves to keep their national boundaries in line with colonial administrative divisions.

Old grievances about the east bank of the Rio de la Plata between Spain and Portugal were carried on by the successor nations Argentina and Brazil and the disputed territory eventually became the buffer nation of Uruguay. Indigenous groups were also split across countries with no regard for their fate. Although the US and Canada (as well as many of their states and provinces) had straight borders, this was due to the (apparent) emptiness of these areas at the time the maps were drawn.

The researchers used a scale-invariant fractal measure to determine the straightness or squiggliness of any given border. Coastlines were disregarded from the analysis. The other key measure focussed on percentage of ethnic groups split across countries. The survey then looked at the top third of ethnically partitioned states and compared that to the top third of “straightest” border states and found 13 nations in both categories. These 13 so-called “most artificial” states were: Chad, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Guatemala, Jordan, Mali, Morocco, Namibia, Niger, Pakistan, Sudan and Zimbabwe. They then measured economic and political success based on 2002 figures per capita income, health of political institutions based on criteria of accountability, stability, violence, rule of law and corruption, and quality of life (mortality, literacy, immunisation rates, clean water access). The only important variable not considered was war, which the researchers surprisingly believed was not a major factor. They acknowledge however it would be useful to include in future analysis.

The conclusion was there was a strong correlation between artificial borders and political and economic success. The researchers believe they have offered a new means of making a determination on “failed states”. The legacy of the artificial boundaries bequeathed by colonisers are a significant hindrance to the political and economic development of independent states that inherited the colonies. The trouble is: try telling that to the leaders of those states.

SBS dancing with the devil

Australian public broadcaster SBS has made a major operating change this week. For the first time, advertising breaks will appear mid-program, rather than just before and after TV shows. The time limit is currently five minutes of advertising each hour and must occur in “natural breaks” in programs.

The change occurs because SBS were losing too many viewers in the long ad breaks that were scheduled between programs. Although there is no increase in the overall amount, the change will be more lucrative for the network. SBS says it generated $29 million in revenue, on top of the Federal Government's basic funding, last year When Shaun Brown, the broadcaster's managing director, announced the move in June, he said it would raise an extra $10 million in the first year, because ads in the middle of programs were more valuable.

SBS (Special Broadcasting Service) started test broadcasting in 1979 in Sydney as a foreign language service for that city’s multi-cultural population. It was based on the success of Radio stations 2EA in Sydney and 3EA in Melbourne. These stations started in 1975 initially as a temporary service to explain government health services in various languages but they took off in their own. By the end of the decade the then Malcolm Fraser Liberal administration realised there was an audience for multi-language television and SBS was born. Throughout the eighties, it slowly expanded its reach out of Sydney and Melbourne and onto Brisbane, Adelaide, Canberra and Newcastle. Because it was broadcast on the UHF frequency, it wasn’t easy to get reception and many regions received poor coverage. A plan to amalgamate SBS with the ABC, the other public broadcaster was turned down by the Hawke Labor government in 1987. By the early nineties it had established itself in all the Australian state capitals and many regional centres.

The network now gets on average about 3-5% of the nightly Australian TV audience. In 1991 it started to place advertisements. Since then, these ads have provided 15% of its funding from the five minutes an hour of advertising the network has been allowed. The advertising quotient was put in place under 1991 SBS Act and the law needs to be amended if they are to increase the overall amount of advertising on the station. In 1990, SBS started its long association with football when it broadcast its first World Cup from Italy. Its nightly flagship World News is another core offering.

British-born Shaun Brown was brought in from TVNZ to be the head of SBS television in January 2003. He redefined its goals, looking for a broader audience with more younger viewers and more women. Brown explained why: "If you break our audience into four, very broad parts - men over 50, men under 50, women over 50, women under 50 - since 2001, three of those blocks have been in decline. The only area that's been in growth is men over 50”. He dropped the introductions to movies citing the concept of presenters as "slightly old-fashioned". He wanted to move SBS away from its heavy factual content towards a “more balanced programming”. Critics saw this as dumbing down of the network and have alleged that foreign language movies, arts coverage and documentaries have been marginalised. Two of its highest profile presenters, film critics Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton quit to go to the ABC in 2004. Pomeranz who had been a writer-producer for SBS since its inception, told the ABC why left the rival network: "All organisations go through change and SBS is heading in a new direction. As a passionate supporter of public broadcasting, I did not feel comfortable with this new direction”.

SBS has borrowed most of its new commercial break guidelines from the British media regulator Ofcom. The new guidelines defines a “natural break” in drama or comedy as follows:"(i) there is an obvious and dramatically significant lapse of time in the action, or (ii) there is a change of scene, with a significant break in the continuity of action." Whereas, a natural break for documentary or information program is: (i) a change f topic, (ii) a change of method or treatment, (iii) recorded inserts in live programs, or (iv) new participants in a discussion program are introduced. It also goes on to define natural breaks for entertainment, programs with prizes, music programs, news and current affairs, sport, outside broadcast, acquired programs and overseas broadcasts. For 30 minute programs, there will be 2 breaks and for 60 minute programs there will be three breaks.

Its another step on the long slippery road to full commercialisation. Expect SBS to lobby the government to increase the 5 minute an hour limit sometime after the next election.

Menezes, murdered for his Mongolian Eyes

Britain continues to deal with police bunglers in time honoured fashion – by promoting the culprits. Last month, Cressida Dick was recommended for promotion to Metropolitan Police deputy assistant commissioner. She was the police commander in charge of the “shoot-to-kill” operation that led to the pointless death of Jean Charles de Menezes after the London bombings last year.

The Brazilian Menezes was the classic case of the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was shot seven times in the head on a tube train at Stockwell station on 22 July, 2005 by an anti-terrorist squad. They were acting on a tip-off a day after the failed explosions on London’s transport system. Police had been on hair-trigger alert since the 7 July bombings two weeks earlier which caused havoc on London’s peak hour transit system. That morning three bombs exploded within a minute of each other on London Underground tube trains. A fourth bomb exploded on a bus nearly an hour later in Tavistock Square. The 7 July bombings killed 56 people including four suicide bombers, and also sent the city's transport and mobile telecommunications infrastructure into chaos. A fortnight later, terrorists struck again at London Transport with bombs. This time, only the detonator caps fired and the bombs themselves did not go off. No one has come up with a convincing explanation for the simultaneous failure of four bombs on tubes and a bus, though everyone is grateful. There were no injuries and the bombers escaped.

London Police mounted a major manhunt for the attempted bombers. One of the rucksacks they left at the scene held clues. It contained a gym membership card belonging to Hussain Osman, suspected of a bomb attack at Shepherd's Bush tube station. In addition, the number plate of a vehicle spotted at a suspected terror training camp in central Wales had been tracked to a Tulse Hill address. It was a three-storey block of flats in Scotia Road. The suspect address was No 21 on the third floor of the block; De Menezes lived a few doors down at No 17. Police immediately staked out the premises. On the following morning surveillance officers saw a man emerge from the communal entrance to the flats. That man was Jean Charles de Menezes.

Menezes was a 27-year-old electrician. He was born in the small town of Gonzaga in the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil. He moved to Sao Paulo to live with his uncle at the age of 14, attended high school and became a qualified electrician. He moved to London in 2002 and had lived and worked legally in the UK. He spoke excellent English and lived in the Tulse Hill flat with two of his cousins. That morning Menezes had received a phonecall to fix a broken fire alarm in Kilburn. As he left the building a surveillance officer compared him to the CCTV footage photo of the bombers. In his own words, felt "it would be worth someone else having a look", but "was in the process of relieving himself". Because he was urinating, he didn’t immediately turn on a video camera to send pictures of Menezes to operational headquarters. And so, on the officer’s ambiguous word, Police thought they had positively identified a suicide bomber.

They tracked Menezes as he walked from his flat to the bus stop. Plain clothed officers followed him aboard the bus. He got off at Brixton underground station. However Menezes found Brixton was still closed after the drama of the day before. He quickly reboarded the same bus before it pulled away. The officers tracking him stated they were satisfied that they had the correct man, as he "had Mongolian eyes similar to Osman Hussain's". Hussain was the Ethiopian suspect from the previous days bombing captured on CCTV. On this Asiatic resemblance, Menezes’s fate was sealed.

Cressida Dick, the Police Commander immediately authorised her officers to prevent Menezes from entering a train. S019 took control of the operation. S019 are Specialist Firearms Command, the armed branch of the Metropolitan police. Menezes continued on to Stockwell unaware he was being trailed by armed units. He rang a work colleague to say he was running late due to the tube station closures. He entered Stockwell station, picked up a free newspaper and used his Oyster Card (London Transport’s electronic ticketing system so called because "the oyster protects a pearl in much the same way that the card protects the cardholder's money") to pay his fare. He slowly descended the escalator to the platform. A train was arriving so he ran the last few metres to catch it. Menezes boarded the train and found a free seat.

What happened next is not entirely clear. Sue Thomason, a freelance journalist from south London, was on the train. She said she heard 11 shots in 30 seconds. She initially feared terrorists had opened fire on commuters and ran for her life along the station platform. One of the surveillance officers, code named "Hotel 3", said he followed Menezes onto the train. He sat near him and waited for the firearms officers from S019 to arrive. When they showed up, Hotel 3 got up. He the blocked the door from closing with his foot and shouted out “he’s here!” pointing to Menezes. The firearms officers boarded the train and challenged the Brazilian. In a panic he stood up and advanced towards them. Hotel 3 grabbed him, pinned his arms against his torso, and pushed him back into the seat. Hotel 3 told his version of what happened next: "I then heard a gunshot very close to my ear and was dragged away onto the floor of the carriage. I shouted 'police' and held up my hands. I was then dragged out of the carriage by an armed officer who appeared to be carrying a long-barrelled weapon. I heard several gunshots as I was being dragged out."

Horrified commuters scrambled away from the train and fled the platform. One of the last to leave said it was empty apart from four or five men in plain clothes who were standing over the body of Menezes. The operation bore all the hallmarks of a Special Forces “shoot to kill” operation. The newly formed Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR), trained by SAS officers had carried out the hit.

The only problem was that almost immediately they knew they had got the wrong man. He wasn’t carrying a bomb. His driver’s licence didn’t match the name they were expecting. Met commissioner Sir Ian Blair went on the offensive and publicly declared that there were "direct links" between the shooting and the investigation into the bombers.

Meanwhile Menezes’s friend De Avila was waiting for him in Kilburn. He rang his mobile regularly during the day without an answer. The police finally rang him in the early hours of the following morning. Detectives arrived at his house. ‘The detective wouldn't tell me what had happened to him," said De Avila, "but he said: 'We suspect this person is a terrorist'". De Avila refused to believe them. "I know him," he said. "We have a social life together. He doesn't come from Muslim peoples. I told him he was a Catholic.” De Avila’s testimony was the final nail in the police case. They killed the wrong man.

It suited the Police to continue the public line they had shot a suspected terrorist. Ian Blair requested the Home Office to delay an investigation while they concentrated on finding the 21 July attackers. The police also issued an incorrect statement Menezes was followed by surveillance officers and his "clothing and behaviour added to their suspicions". They claimed Menezes had refused to respond to police shouts and had jumped over the barrier. But the Met CCTV footage didn’t support that and that footage has now mysteriously disappeared.

At 5pm the following day, Scotland Yard formally admitted the victim was not linked to the anti-terrorism operation. A second statement four hours later revealed the name of Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian national. The Brazilian government released a statement expressing its shock at the killing, saying that it looked forward "to receiving the necessary explanation from the British authorities on the circumstances which led to this tragedy."

That explanation has yet to arrive. The first part of the enquiry has now concluded but its findings have not been released to the public. The second part on Ian Blair’s handling of the aftermath is continuing. Osman Hussain was arrested in Rome in July and extradited to Britain to face charges of attempted murder. Menezes was the only victim in the end. Bombing tubes is cowardly and vicious and Britain is right to vigorously seek justice. But paranoia, fear and incompetence show that a shoot-to-kill policy should never be supported as a means of fighting suburban terrorism.

Anna Politkovskaya slain

The crusading Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead in front of her Moscow apartment on Saturday night. She was carrying grocery bags, returning from the supermarket, when she was gunned down. The 48 year old mother of two children had received many death threats for her vociferous criticism of the corruption in Russian society and she was one of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s harshest critics. Her murder on his 54th birthday bore all the hallmarks of a contract killing. Politkovskaya was shot twice, once in the head, and the weapon thrown at her feet. A pistol and four bullets were found near her body and a murder investigation has been launched. Police are investigating using a surveillance tape of the street.

At the time of her death she was working on a story about torture in Chechnya, where a Kremlin-backed leader has taken control. The article was to be published today, according to her newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, one of the few independent media outlets in Russia. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Russia is the third deadliest country in the world for journalists over the past 15 years, behind only the conflict-ridden countries of Iraq and Algeria. Their report shows that 42 journalists had been killed in Russia since 1992, many of them murdered in contract-style executions and most of them unsolved by Russian authorities.

Politkovskaya was born Anna Mazepa in 1958 in New York. Her Ukrainian parents were Soviet diplomats stationed at the UN headquarters. As a result, she had a freer childhood than most Soviet citizens. She knew the world beyond the Iron Curtain and also had access to banned books, which she read voraciously. She studied journalism at Moscow State University where she graduated in 1980. Her first job was with the Izvestia newspaper. Izvestia was the companion piece to Pravda. Whereas Pravda (Russian for truth) was the official organ of the Russian Communist Party, Izvestia (Russian for news) was the official views of the Soviet government.

She embraced the freedoms offered by glasnost and perestroika and by 1998 she was working for Obschaya Gazeta. They sent her to Chechnya to interview then President Maskhadov. She was to return repeatedly to the dangerous triangle between Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia. She covered most of these fifty visits for another publication, Novaya Gazeta, a periodical renown for its critical coverage of the Russian administrations of Yeltsin and Putin. She made her name by writing long and vivid reports on the plight of the civilian population in Chechnya who were immersed in war since 1994. In 2000 the FSB (the former KGB) arrested her in the Chechnyan capital Grozny and kept her in a pit for three days without food or water. Her reports from the front were held in such high regard by Chechnya, that the terrorists holding 850 hostages in the Moscow theatre siege of 2003 asked for her to be their intermediary with the Russian authorities. Politkovskaya rushed home from a media awards ceremony in Los Angeles to answer the call. She spent the next two days carrying water and fruit juice to the hostages and she reported their feelings of doom and dejection to the world. Their feelings were justifiable. Russian special forces armed with gas, stormed the theatre. They killed 41 terrorists and 129 hostages in a botched shootout. She also tried to go to Beslan to report on the school hostage crisis later that year. But she became ill which prompted allegations that she had been poisoned to prevent her from reaching the school. 331 people died in the siege.

Tributes have poured in since her death. The former president Mikhail Gorbachev said of the crime: "It’s a strike against all the democratic independent press, a terrible crime against the entire country, against all of us." A US State Department spokesman said the US was "shocked and profoundly saddened by the brutal murder". The Council of Europe's secretary-general, Terry Davis, said he was deeply concerned about the circumstances in which Politkovskaya lost her life. The suspiciously quiet Kremlin has not joined in the chorus of condemnations. Russian political analyst Anna Zelkina is doubtful the murder investigation will succeed. She told the BBC "There is this series of politically motivated murders like hers. I'm afraid that there will be less and less people who would be taking the risk to report... [she's] a very difficult person to replace."

She was remembered and respected in Australia for her appearance in May to large crowds at the Sydney Writers' Festival. She was here to promote her book A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya. Politkovskaya has herself become a victim of that dirty war.

No amnesty on human rights abuses

Yesterday, Amnesty International (AI) announced its concerns about the widespread impunity of perpetrators of domestic violence in Georgia. They also announced a rally in Dublin next week to pressure the international community into protecting the civilians caught up in the deadly conflict in Darfur, Western Sudan. Two days ago they claimed Libyan police opened fire on political prisoners, killing one and wounding at least nine others. AI has a strong worldwide presence and is not afraid to use it.

Founded in 1961, Amnesty International (AI) is probably the most famous human rights organisation in the world. In 1948 the UN General Assembly, fresh from the horrors of World War II, agreed on a Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). However with the power of the state paramount, the UN had no means of enforcing these rights. Many people continue to suffer as a result of brutish government treatment across the world. Two such people were Portuguese students who were sentenced to seven years imprisonment in 1960 for remarks that were critical of the Salazar Portuguese dictatorship. The students had raised their wine glasses in a toast to freedom. British lawyer Peter Benenson read about the plight of the students and got together with other authors, academics and lawyers to write an article in Britain’s Observer newspaper. Called “The Forgotten Prisoners”, the article hailed those globally who were “imprisoned, tortured or executed because of opinions or religion unacceptable” to their governments thus violating the principles of articles 18 and 19 of the UDHR. The article launched 'Appeal for Amnesty, 1961', the aim of which was to mobilize public opinion in defence of those who Benenson described as "Prisoners of Conscience". The article was reprinted in newspapers throughout the world. In July that year, the first international meeting was held. It had delegates from Belgium, UK, France, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland and the United States who decided to establish "a permanent international movement in defence of freedom of opinion and religion." The first AI groups were founded in the UK, West Germany, Netherlands, France, Italy and Switzerland. Within a year they had 1,200 cases documented in their Prisoners of Conscience Library.

In 1963, the great Irish jurist Sean MacBride was elected Chairman of the newly established International Executive Committee (IEC) and Benenson himself became president of the organisation a year later. It also received a boost when the UN gave AI consultative status in 1964. MacBride won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974 in recognition of his lifelong work for human rights. Three years later AI achieved its pinnacle by also winning the Peace Prize. The committee cited them for “"having contributed to securing the ground for freedom, for justice, and thereby also for peace in the world". Its membership rose 15,000 in 1969 to 200,000 ten years later.

By the 1980s its successes were creating a number of enemies despite its ontribution to peace in the world. The USSR alleged that AI spied on it, Morocco denounced it as a defender of criminals, and Argentina banned AIs annual report. By the 1990s, the growing humanitarian crisis of the world’s refugees was taking centre stage in AI’s thinking. AI concentrated on those forced to flee because of human rights violations. It was instrumental in the creation of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (1993) and the International Criminal Court (2002). The new century has posed new problems for the organisation as it approaches its 50th birthday. In the 9/11 aftermath, new AI Secretary General, Irene Khan reported that a senior US government official had said to Amnesty International delegates: "Your role collapsed with the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York". It has been heavily criticised by many in the US media for its “vitriolic condemnations” of the US especially in relation to the Guantanamo detainees.

AI now has more than 1.8 million members, supporters and subscribers in over 150 countries and territories in every region of the world. Major policy decisions are taken by an International Council made up of representatives from all national sections. It works best in the areas of least hope. Its latest report on Sudan, tells us “The people of Darfur are crying out for security. Thousands of civilians have been killed, tortured and raped, and hundreds of thousands have been forcibly displaced since 2003”. AI continues to play a crucial NGO role in reminding us of our most chronic human rights issues. Now more than ever, Peter Benenson's freedom of opinion needs its doughty defenders.

Morales mauls the media

Bolivian President Evo Morales showed the international media a clean pair of heels on Wednesday. The fit and avid football player and his team of former Bolivian world cup players recorded a 12-1 victory over a team of journalists from The Associated Press, Efe, Reuters and other foreign groups. Morales added to the damage by converting a penalty. While Morales won this time, he hasn't always had it his own way in his battles against Bolivia’s international press corps. "Some journalists treat me as if I'm ignorant, or crazy, and the press never reports this," Morales said. "Some foreign journalists come here just to offend me." Morales has often expressed his desire to open more government-friendly media outlets, and has announced plans to create numerous community radio stations in small towns throughout Bolivia.

Juan Evo Morales Ayma turns 47 on 26 October. Popularly known simply as Evo, he claims to be Bolivia’s first indigenous leader since before the Spanish Conquest 470 years ago. His political party Movimento Al Socialismo (known as MAS which is also Spanish for ‘more’) was founded in 1997 and has had a spectacular rise to power. It came from nowhere to come second in the 2002 elections with 19.4 % of the valid presidential vote and 14.6% of the valid uninominal vote, which gave it 27 out of 130 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and eight out of 27 seats in the Senate. Morales credited then U.S. ambassador Manuel Rocha for the success of MAS: "Every statement [Rocha] made against us helped us to grow and awaken the conscience of the people." None of the other candidates would agree to enter a debate with Morales and his “minor party”. Morales turned that into a positive by saying “"The one who I want to debate is Ambassador Rocha — I prefer to argue with the owner of the circus, not the clowns."

Rocha and the US State Department cautioned the other parties not to enter a coalition with MAS. Instead they became the strongest opposition party. In October 2003, Evo played a central role in the violent demonstrations demanding the nationalisation of the energy sector that led to the resignation of President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada. The cause was the Bolivian Gas War, a huge social conflict based on the exploitation of the country’s vast natural gas reserves. In the 1990s, the government had awarded generous contracts to 26 foreign companies in a consortium called Pacific LNG. The plan called for a pipeline to the Chilean coast where the gas would be exported to the US and elsewhere. Opponents argued that exporting the gas as a raw material would give Bolivia only 18% of the profits. When the army killed seven protesters against the plan in September 2003, the Bolivian Workers Confederation and the leader of the indigenous party declared an indefinite general strike. Morales and MAS eventually took part and organised the protests in the capital in 2005.

Morales was well prepared for the December 2005 election. He formed a ticket with Alvaro Garcia Linera whose elegance and middle class background formed a striking contrast with the Aymara Indian common look of Morales. The combination was a success. Morales won 54% of the vote and was declared outright winner without a congressional vote. The new president has been openly hostile to US and foreign interests.

In May this year he fulfilled on an election pledge and signed a decree nationalising the gas industry. He threatened to evict foreign companies unless they sign new contracts within six months giving Bolivia majority control over the entire production chain. The decree impacts about 20 foreign oil companies, including Spain's Repsol, Petrobras of Brazil, Britain's BP and French group Total.

Morales’ power base is Bolivia's cocalero movement – a loose federation of coca leaf-growing campesinos who are resisting the efforts of the US to eradicate coca in the province of Chapare in southeastern Bolivia. In front of an audience of 20,000 cocaleros shortly after his election win, Morales told them ,"the fight for coca symbolises our fight for freedom. Coca growers will continue to grow coca. There will never be zero coca." This was a reference to the US backed “Plan Dignidad” (Dignity Plan) which the 2000 Bolivian government supply-side exercised to rid the rid the country of illegal coca which is a key ingredient of cocaine. However the indigenous Aymara and Quechua peoples have traditionally chewed coca leaves as a dietary supplement. Its consumption in the form of leaves and tea is part of daily life for Bolivia's peasants, miners and workers. They saw Plan Dignidad as an attack on their way of life. Morales says he supports an anti-drug policy but not an anti-coca policy, "there will be zero cocaine, zero drug trafficking, but not zero coca".

Toowoomba Days

Today, Woolly Days went to Toowoomba to research a university project into what has been happening there since the recent vote against the proposal to treat recycled sewage for drinking water. Located 130kms west of Brisbane, Toowoomba is Australia’s second largest inland city after Canberra and has a population of about 110,000 people. Toowoomba is spectacularly sited 700 metres above sea level on the crest of the 3500km long Great Dividing Range which separates Australia’s crowded eastern seaboard from the sparsely populated harsh outback lands of the interior.

Toowoomba was originally a swamp near the settlement of Drayton. The swamp was drained in the 1850s and quickly overtook Drayton as the premier settlement of the district. Drayton is now a suburb of Toowoomba. The town is currently in colourful bloom after September’s Carnival of Flowers. The festival is Toowoomba’s premier annual attraction. It started in 1950 when a crowd of 50,000 people crowded the main street on opening day to watch spectacular procession of decorated floats, bands, marchers and machinery. The carnival lasts for a week and features prize gardens, decorated homes and street entertainment. This year the council protested after one of the competitors in the festival was known to be a serial infractor of Toowoomba’s strict water policies. The council has asked organisers to change the rules so that only those adhere to water policies be allowed compete in future.

Water, of course, was the great debate that brought Toowoomba to national and international attention. In July the voters had their say and rejected the recycling proposal by margin of about 20%. The proposal was heavily backed at three levels of government, by city mayor Di Thorley, Queensland Premier Peter Beattie and Federal parliamentary secretary for Water, Malcolm Turnbull. The proposal had $460,000 of funding allocated and was conducted as a major campaign. There were blind taste tests and education sessions in shopping centres, home shows and Garden fests. Chemists appeared on talkback radio segments. They had TV and newspaper ads to explain the process and more ads to encourage the “yes” vote. They printed and distributed 45,000 copies of the water usage leaflet. They even conducted a debate on Phillip Adams' national radio program Late Night Live.

But it was all to no avail. Significant sections of the local population were opposed to the idea. They were led by local land developer and ex-mayor Clive Berghofer, the wealthiest man in Toowoomba. A Berghofer anti-proposal advertisement read “People won't come here; others will leave. Property values will drop and jobs will go.” Though disappointed, the council have abided by the decision and have stated categorically that there will no retreated sewage used for drinking water in the city.

Notwithstanding the vote Toowoomba continues to face critical water shortages. It was forced to go on to Level 5 water restrictions after the vote. Level 5 is the highest restriction in Queensland water system. By contrast Brisbane is at now level 3 but about to go to level 4 at the end of October. Toowoomba’s move to level 5 was delayed until 26 September to avoid media competition with the Carnival of Flowers. It means that Toowoomba residents are now banned from watering gardens, cars or lawns with hoses or buckets. They will be able to bucket grey water from their laundry, shower or bath on to their gardens. Its three dams (Cressbrook, Perseverance and Cooby) are at a precarious 20.3 per cent capacity. That is supplemented by bores that supply up to 20 per cent of demand. Drilling of new bores has started as well at a cost of $3 million as well as a project to tap into the Great Artesian Basin which is expected to cost $6 million. Toowoomba will also take part in the Queensland Government’s Home Water Wise service and rebate scheme. The scheme enables government approved plumbers to inspect homes and fix leaky taps and replace inefficient shower-heads. Consumers can also obtain rebates for items such as rainwater tanks and grey water systems.

But even with the new bores and rebate schemes, Toowoomba will still be facing the prospect of empty reservoirs by 2008. An end to the draught seems too much to rely on. The recycling scheme may yet be forced onto its unwilling citizens.

The battle for Chad's oil

The Central African country of Chad is the scene of an intriguing battle of wills involving a corrupt local government, big oil, Darfur and the World Bank. Chad is one of the world’s newest oil exporters and produces 160,000 barrels of crude oil a day which amounts to 6.7 million gallons of oil (there are 42 gallons to the barrel according to BP.) That’s a lot of oil but nowhere near the big league players. In 2004 middle ranking countries such as the UK and Venezuela both produced over two million barrels a day and top-dog Saudi Arabia produced ten million a day. Nonetheless Chad’s oil industry is a significant part of the economy of the 5th poorest country in the world. The landlocked former French colony in the “dead heart of Africa” is now looking to take more control of its oil industry.

On 26 August, President Idriss Déby announced he was kicking the US oil company Chevron and Malaysian-owned Petronas out of the country for non-payment of taxes. Together these two companies own 60% of the consortium running Chad's $4bn oil pipeline. In a statement on state radio he gave the companies a deadline of 24 hours to start making its exit plans. Deby claimed the international companies had avoided paying tax and Chad would now take over the running of its own oil fields.

Chad is one of the newest oil exporting countries in the world, first coming online in 2003. It is not a member of OPEC and uses its oil revenues to subsidise its most poor agricultural economy. Chad has long been handicapped by its landlocked position, poor communication networks, high energy costs, scarce water and a history of political instability. The oil finds are starting to transform a country that previously relied on foreign aid and capital for public and private sector projects. Exxon-Mobil led the consortium that included Chevron and Petronas. The 1000 km oil pipeline was partially funded by the World Bank and links its southern oilfields to terminals on the Atlantic Ocean via Cameroon. In the two years from 2003-2005 Chad earned $US 307 million in oil revenues which amounts to 12.5% on each barrel exported.

However, at least $30 million of this was diverted to buy arms to keep Deby in power. This has placed them directly in conflict with the World Bank and its new President ex-Bush staffer Paul Wolfowitz. According to Forbes, Chad is now the most corrupt country in the world. Idriss Deby has been in power since a coup in 1990. He graduated from the army where he was Commander-in-Chief in the 1980s. He was forced to flee to Libya and Sudan after being accused by then-president Hissène Habré, but organised an insurgent group which eventually took the capital, N'Djaména in December 1990. He has since been elected three times as president in 1996, 2001 and May this year. Each victory occurred under a cloud of electoral irregularity and the opposition boycotted the latest May poll.

Chad fought a costly war with its western neighbour Sudan between 2005 and early this year which was an overflow from the catastrophic Darfur conflict. The conflict started with a border incursion by Sudan which killed 100 people in the Chadian town of Adre. It escalated to involve troops from countries, as well as France and independent military groups such as the notorious Janjaweed group responsible for many of the atrocities in Darfur. In February the two sides signed a peace agreement in Libya. The accord lasted just two months until rebel forces attacked the Chad capital N'Djamena. Deby kept control but was forced to dig deep into his oil reserves to finance his campaigns.

In July, Chad and the World Bank signed a Memorandum of Understanding under which the Government of Chad has committed 70 percent of its budget spending to priority poverty reduction programs, and provided for long-term growth and opportunity by creating a stabilization fund. In September Chevron announced they would pay an unspecified amount of additional taxes in return for being allowed to stay in the country. Though Deby has declared Chad's newly created oil company, Société des Hydrocarbures du Tchad (SHT), should have a 60% stake in the oil pipeline, the country does not yet have the capacity to run its own industry.

What Chad desperately needs now is a lasting peace so that the agreement hammered out with the World Bank can be honoured for its long suffering people. With Darfur still in turmoil, it looks a doubtful prospect.

Black Sharia

Relatives of 36 year old Briton Mirza-Tahir Hussain face another anxious wait as Pakistani authorities asked a court on Monday to fix a new date for his execution. In 1988, half Hussain’s lifetime ago, the then 18-year-old from Leeds, was arrested for murder while visiting Pakistan. Another 18 years later he remains on death row at Rawalpindi’s Adiala prison. He was convicted for the murder of a taxi driver - a crime he vehemently denies. He is awaiting death despite been acquitted of all charges by Pakistan's high court ten years ago. But Hussein was tried a second time, this time according to Islamic Sharia Law. Sharia Law is the Muslim world version of civil action. And in this court he was re-convicted and given the death penalty.

In his secular court trial, the acquitting judge criticised the police investigation which led to his arrest. The judge said he was the victim of a "shameless" set-up by police who fabricated evidence. Mirza-Tahir Hussain was due to be hanged last Wednesday but the date was delayed after Tony Blair mentioned the matter in a meeting with Pakistan’s President Musharraf last week. However Musharraf told ITV’s Sunday Edition that he could not reverse the Sharia court’s decision. “I’m not a dictator,” he said. “I can’t violate a court judgment, whether you like the court or not.”

Executions do not take place during Ramadan, which celebrates the month Allah revealed the first verses of the Koran to Muhammad. Nor can it occur in the three-day Eid-Al-Fitr celebration which follows. This means that Hussain cannot now be hung before 27 October. He was originally due to be hanged on 3 May, but the execution was stayed three times by Musharraf, while his family launched last-ditch efforts to negotiate with the victim's family. Under Sharia law, the victim’s heirs can pardon a condemned man in return for compensation or "blood money”. They have so far refused.

Mirza-Tahir was born in Pakistan and the family moved to Britain when he was 8 years old. They settled in Leeds where his father worked in a car factory. His brother Amjad told the Guardian: "It was strange at first but we adjusted quickly," he said, "At that age, you don't carry much cultural baggage. My brother was a typical Yorkshire lad. He loved cricket and football. He had a lot of friends. When he finished school he joined the Territorial Army and did his A-levels part-time at a local college. He wanted to join the regular army."

But Mirza-Tahir never joined the army. In December 1988, he decided to go to Pakistan to visit relatives. It was his first trip alone. Mirza-Tahir caught a plane to Pakistan’s biggest city Karachi and stayed overnight with an aunt. The following day, he travelled to Rawalpindi in northern Pakistan by train and from there, at night, took a taxi to go to his family's village. According to Mirza-Tahir, the driver, Jamshed Khan, stopped the car in the middle of nowhere and brandished a gun. Khan forced Hussain to get out of the car where he tried to sexually assault him. Hussain fought back and in the scuffle, the gun went off, killing the driver. In a state of shock, he then drove the taxi in the dark to the nearest highway patrol police checkpoint. There he told them his story and was promptly arrested.

He was taken to Rawalpindi where he was interrogated and tortured. He was not allowed a lawyer. They tried to pin other crimes on him, although he was in England at the time. Most crucial to the case, there was no identifiable motive except self-defence. Nevertheless, his first trial in September 1989 at Islamabad secular court found him guilty of murder. Hussain was sentenced to death. His lawyer appealed to the High Court where the death penalty was revoked and a retrial ordered. In 1994, Mirza-Tahir was sentenced to life imprisonment. Again, he appealed and finally in 1996, the high court acquitted him of all charges.

Unfortunately for Hussain, his ordeal was not over. Pakistan’s dual legal system kicked in. The secular courts are based on English common law and follow the British legal tradition. But Pakistan also has Sharia courts to adjudicate on matters of Islamic law, such as sexuality and social issues such as theft. Because he was charged with the theft of the taxi, he could be retried under Islamic law. His earlier acquittal had no force in this court. In May 1998 three Islamic judges found him guilty on a 2-1 vote (the dissenter objected in the strongest terms but was overruled) and the death penalty was re-imposed. The Hussain family then negotiated with Jamshed Khan's family, who near the wild border with Afghanistan. The Khan family would not be swayed by blood money. Hussain remains on death row to this day.

Supporters say Sharia Law was introduced to protect the five important indispensables in Islam (religion, life, intellect, offspring and property). The term Sharia derives from the Arabic verb shara'a, which connects to the idea of "system of divine law; way of belief and practice" (45:18) in the Koran. The comprehensive nature of Sharia law is due to the belief that the law must provide all that is necessary for a person's spiritual and physical well-being. Pakistan, Indonesia, Sudan and Bangladesh among others have Sharia law to deal with so-called family matters. India also has a separate legal system for its Muslim, based on Sharia. Western countries with Muslim populations such as Canada and Australia have also requested Sharia courts be set up for Muslim social issues. The punishments prescribed by Sharia are often seen as unusually being barbaric and cruel. Islamic scholars argue that, if implemented properly, the punishments serve as a deterrent to crime.

Islamic women are often viewed as being oppressed because of the strict morality and dress codes required by Sharia. In 2002, an Islamic court in Nigeria upheld a sentence of death by stoning for a woman accused of adultery. The Koran is viewed as a document that awards authority to husbands over their wives. Husbands can verbally admonish wives for infractions, before refraining from sex if further punishment is required. And if that doesn’t work he may “beat her lightly” (Koran 4:34). Most interpretations of Sharia allow the death penalty for homosexual acts. Acceptable means of execution included burning, throwing from tall buildings, and stoning. While Sharia proclaims itself as fundamental to Islamic moral values, opponents see it as the instrument by which Political Islam seeks to control the Muslim world. Hussain is another of its victims, patiently awaits his hanging for stealing a dead man’s taxi to talk to the police.

Georgia throws out the Russians

Russia and Georgia are currently embroiled in a spying controversy. The drama started last Wednesday when Georgia arrested four Russian army officers. They accused them of spying for Russian military intelligence and sent police to surround Russian army headquarters in the Georgian capital. The army headquarters controls two Russian bases which are relics from Soviet times due to be withdrawn in 2008. They were still surrounded by Georgian police on the weekend. The bases, part of Moscow's Cold War defences, have themselves been a source of tension between the two states. As a result, Russia pulled out some of its officials from Georgia on Friday as the crisis mounted between the two former Soviet states.

Georgia initially charged the four Russians soldiers with spying. Georgia also sought a fifth Russian officer in connection with the alleged spy ring who was in hiding inside the Russian base. Russia retaliated by cancelled a planned meeting between the deputy foreign ministers of the two countries in Moscow due to be held on Friday. Russia then recalled its ambassador from Georgia and ordered a partial evacuation of personnel from the country. White House spokesman Tony Snow confirmed President Bush had discussed the matter with Russian President Putin but a spokesman for the latter said no third party should be involved in the row.

Pro-Western Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili came to power in the 2003 "Rose Revolution". That peaceful revolution overthrew long-term president Eduard Shevardnadze whose regime was seriously tainted by corruption. Shevardnadze claimed victory in a rigged election in November 2003. As a result, massive anti-governmental demonstrations started in the central streets of the capital Tbilisi and spread to the major cities and towns of Georgia. On the day the new parliament was due to open, opposition supporters led by Saakashvili with roses in their hands seized the parliament building. They interrupted a Shevardnadze speech and he was forced to flee the building with the help of his bodyguards. Shevardnadze later declared a state of emergency but he did not get the support of the military. The Russians mediated peace talks between him and the opposition which resulted in Shevardnadze’s resignation. New elections were called in January 2004 and Saakashvili won comfortably.

Georgia’s foreign policy was proclaimed strongly pro-Western. Saakashvili’s pursuit of NATO membership is of particularly concern to Russia. He has publicly attacked Moscow, saying it supports separatists who control two regions of his country in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Georgia has a 700km mostly mountainous border with Russia and it a troubled area. Abkhazia is on the Black Sea and proclaimed independence after a war in the early 1990s. It remains largely de facto independent of Georgia and maintains control over a large part of its territory, although it is not recognized internationally as a separate nation. South Ossetia is also a self-proclaimed republic on the Russian border. A third area, Adjara, in the south (and also on the Black Sea) has proclaimed its independence in last two years.

Despite its apparent Balkanisation, Georgians remain a strong proud nation. Georgians call themselves Kartvelebi, their country Sakartvelo and their language Kartuli. All these names derive from a legendary chief named Kartlos whose life and times were documented in the medieval Georgian chronicles, Kartlis Cxovreba. The name Georgia, used in English and many other languages is derived from the Greek word for farmer. Two years after coming into power, the Rose Revolution government enjoys high popular support and benefit from a broad public consensus over the objectives and goals of the democratic transition. But they need the support of the Western world to stop the interference from Mother Russia.

Brisbane 1, Melbourne 1

Its all square after yesterday’s intercity sporting squabble between Brisbane and Melbourne. But it wasn't reported that way in any of the Australia media. Their sports pages today were dominated by last night’s rugby league grand final. Even Melbourne’s parochial Aussie Rules dominated Herald Sun (Australia’s biggest selling newspaper) reported the Brisbane Broncos 15-8 win over their hometown team Melbourne Storm. That result won the Queensland clubs its sixth Australian rugby league grand final at Sydney’s Olympic stadium.

There were 80,000 in attendance (not a full house) to watch that game. For the third year in a row, the final was played at night time, not because it suited either set of fans, (it didn’t, it is a long weekend in Sydney but not in Brisbane or Melbourne) but because Channel Nine so decreed so that the game would take place in peak TV rating time. Earlier that day down in Melbourne, 25,000 people turned up to watch a top of the league football (soccer, the name of the sport, must always remain bracketed in multi-football Australia) clash between the Melbourne Victory and the Queensland Roar. The home team won 4-1 to continue its 100% record after six games in the A-League.

Their rugby league cousins were expected to make it a southern double. They had won the “minor premiership”, the home-and-away season that in most other countries establishes a team’s credentials for it to be declared the best. But not in Australia. Here finishing first merely gives you a favourable handicap to get to the grand final. Here, regardless of sport (league, union, Aussie Rules, football, basketball, netball and probably tiddlywinks), it comes down to one game as a decider. It’s a peculiarly Aussie notion of a “grand final”. You must win a decider. And in the league decider, Brisbane were the better team. Its not the first time either. The Brisbane Broncos were formed as an expansion club in a Sydney league in 1988 and by the time they reached adulthood they were playing in their sixth premiership decider. Like all previous five times, Brisbane won. And the enigmatic Wayne Bennett has coached all six deciders.

This one had its controversial moments. In the first half two dubious penalties gave Brisbane four easy points. But it was a second defining moment which put video refereeing in the spotlight. Brisbane were leading 14-8 when the admirably woolly headed Matt King dived over the line for what would have been his second try. But the video referee wrongly ruled that teammate Ryan Hoffman had knocked the ball on in trying to grab the kick in the preceding play. Brisbane captain and talisman Darren Lockyer sealed the game with a field goal leaving Melbourne seven points adrift and two scores adrift with less than ten minutes to go. Brisbane probably deserved the win, if only to celebrate the farewell appearance of its improbably suave square-jawed prop Shane Webcke. Webcke is the proverbial brick shithouse around a country manor. He was also a Brisbane legend for 12 years and it was his fourth appearance in a grand final. Although players and officials alike pretended it wasn’t about him, he easily dominated the media coverage before and after the game.

The earlier A-league clash between Melbourne and Brisbane also had its share of dodgy refereeing decisions. The game was played at Melbourne’s Docklands stadium which was designed for Aussie Rules and has a capacity of 50,000. It was Melbourne’s second ever game at the stadium after pulling in 40,000 for their win over Sydney FC a few weeks ago. Though the crowd wasn’t quite as impressive this time round, it was still a rousing atmosphere for the 100% league leaders. Melbourne’s skipper is journeyman Kevin Muscat who was renowned as a hard man when playing in the lower English leagues for Millwall. His most famous international moment was scoring the winning penalty for Australia v Uruguay in the World Cup qualifier at the MCG in 2001. He was at it again against the Roar scoring twice from the spot after very soft decisions against the visitors.

Brazilian striker Fred came back from a three match ban to also score a goal. He is not the same Fred that scored against Australia for Brazil in the world cup. The more famous Fred plays for Lyon in France. But the fact that two Freds are scoring goals internationally is a bit of a worry for those that prefer their Brazilian names to have more of a poetic ring about them. Fred may have a prosaic name but he is an integral part of Melbourne Victory’s push to become a force in the round ball game in this country. Barely one day before, the West Coast Eagles and Sydney Swans renewed their astonishingly tight rivalry in the wonderful AFL grand final with the Eagles gaining revenge for the previous year’s defeat by 1 point. But with no Melbourne team in the decider for the third straight year, the Victory are ideally placed to capitalise on the World Cup fever that struck Australia back in June. Melbourne remains Australia’s sporting capital and there are 3 million sports-mad fans waiting to hop on a successful bandwagon.

For now its congratulations to the Broncos and the West Coast Eagles. But watch out for the Victory and Roar. And watch out too for Benito Carbone. Late this afternoon, the little Italian genius, out here on a 4 game contract, destroyed Adelaide on his Sydney FC debut today, scoring one and making two other goals. And now Adelaide have signed Romario...viva calcio!

Pink Franchise

The Pink Panther had everything going for it. It had the great name, it had Mancini’s theme and it had Monsieur Sellers playing himself playing Clouseau. It also had a famous jewel thief chasing a famous diamond called the pink panther. It also had the famous pink panther himself, he of the credits, a road accident victim on the way to Vatican in his first film, and eventually star of his own cartoon. I loved the pink panther, the panther I mean. Basically he was just a black panther who was pink. But he was mostly silent. So this isn’t about him.

It’s about the franchise. The French put it best. “Même si la franchise a débuté dans les années 60, celle-ci se refuse encore de mourir”. Almost 43 years on, it is now middle aged. Sellers’ detective spawned a host of imitation products, eventually ditching all the cast of the first film except Clouseau. Sellers’ death didn’t stop Clouseau. Roger Moore, Alan Arkin, Steve Martin and Geoffrey Rush have all played him and Roberto Mantigni invented his son. Others will follow as long as someone thinks “la franchise” is making money. Sooner or later, a female clouseau will emerge.

The male Clouseau was bumptious and accident prone from the first. Sellers accent when speaking English was plainly French. Oui, but it was not exaggerated. The plainness would go in later episodes as his accent became sillier and more “pronuanced”. Diphthongs went wild every time Sellers opened his mouth. Monkeys became minkies in the Sellersverse. But in the first film, "The Pink Panther", he is almost restrained and very much aware of his power as l'inspecteur. Sellers remarked that Clouseau knew he was a buffoon; but he has an incredible knack for survival. Sellers lived the part of the role while on set and this would have enjoyed hamming it up as well as exercising genuine power. A French police inspector is no laughing matter, monsieur. There is now no role of “inspector” in any French Police force. In France, the Corps de commande et d'encadrement (Command and Management Corps) corresponds approximately to the lower commissioned ranks of a military force, or to what the British still call “inspector”. This lot were previously known as “officiers de la paix” (officers of the peace) if they were they were in uniform but were "inspecteurs" if they were detectives. This change of name is likely to be the work of Clouseau!

Clouseau, the detective, combined native dim-wittedness with the important knack of being the wrong place at the right time. In "The Pink Panther" he is fortunate enough to catch the crooks in a road accident. Comic-style in the sixties without seatbelts, no-one gets killed. However his glory is shortlived. He was defeated by the prosecution lawyer who calls him as their only witness. Clouseau is set up to take the hit and gets imprisoned himself as the culprit. And yet, despite this overwhelming bungle, he emerges the other side, proud to be a hero. He took the one thing he could from the thief: his reputation.

This idea informs all the films that follow. Clouseau absorbs both the reputation and the identity of the diamond. The second film is indeed, “A Shot in the Dark”. It wasn’t a Clouseau film for starters. It was based on “L’idiote” a comic mystery by Marcel Achard. Achard was a French journalist and dramatist. Achard was most famous because of his birth. Achard need the dispensation of the pope and the president to be born. His father married his sister's daughter. Achard had his relatives all confused and as a result his plays were sentimental and melancholic. It was Blake Edwards first film after he directed The Pink Panther. Sellers on screen persona had so entraced Edwards he wanted to immediate re-write “A Shot in the Dark” to remove the melancholy and include Clouseau. Closeau as L'idiote was too irresistable. It was re-done in haste. Barely months after The Pink Panther was a hit, A Shot in the Dark was re-promoted as Clouseau’s second on-screen adventure. Clouseau had two new doubtful allies. Bert Kwouk was Cato, a servant so evil and so well-trained, he could be relied to attack his boss at the most inconvenient time to keep him always on his toes.

And then there was Clouseau’s own boss. Herbert Lom was the picture of hate for the “protégé” he knew was a bumbling clown. His Dreyfus was a choleric Commissioner. He too has had his rank expunged from the gendarmes. There is no role called Commissioner in the French Police (the ex-inspecteurs get promoted to brigadier-majors and beyond). Dreyfus’s paroxysms of rage against the filthy good luck of his inferior office eventually turned him totally psychotic in later episodes. But the early brilliance of Cato and Dreyfus meant they stayed in the franchise. Producers were loving this. The second film outsold the first. They clamoured for more. Sellers wouldn’t sign up for a third trip in 1968 so neither would Edwards. Cato and Dreyfus aren’t there either. It went ahead anyway with Alan Arkin as Monsieur bumble. He is Clouseau in name only, honest but without the ineffable magic of the original. Nor was director Bud Yorkin a Blake Edwards who could coax genius out of his star. The film is about Clouseau on holidays in England. As a result M. Clouseau wasn’t himself. He wasn’t Sellers.

And so it was a rare fourth film in a franchise that could as justifiably take the tag of “Return”. It took 12 years but "The Return of the Pink Panther” was a true comeback. It wasn't bolted on to a French play. It wasn't a cipher. And it heralded the return of Edwards, Sellers, Dreyfus and Cato in only the second film to have the "Pink Panther" name. All seven films that followed have kept the Pink Panther in the title. The Pink Panther struck again, the Pink Panther had revenge, he had romance. Sellers died in 1980. But even after his death, Clouseau was still "On the Trail of the Pink Panther" thanks to Sellers ghostly outtakes. A year later, Roger Moore took on Clouseau in "The Curse of the Pink Panther." He was cursed, but Clouseau spawned a son. Ten years later Benigni grew up to be the British-French detective's Italian-French "Son of the Pink Panther". In so-now 2006, it is deemed barbarous to dream up new ideas. So we finally have the remake. Clouseau is now the American-French detective Steve Martin. And MGM have announced a sequel with Kevin Kline as the new Dreyfus. The Pink Panther series has been totally re-booted. 2008 is the remake of the return.

La franchise se refuse encore de mourir.