'Human error' led to addresses being placed in wrong field when sending survey to victims over standard of service

The role of the former Sun editor Rebekah Brooks is expected to come under fresh scrutiny after four of the paper's current and former journalists were arrested on Saturday in connection with an investigation into corrupt payments to police.

Detectives with Operation Elveden, the Metropolitan Police's investigation into illegal payments to officers, raided the Sun's offices in Wapping, east London, morning after receiving information from News Corp, the parent company of News International, which owns the paper. A serving police officer in the Met's Territorial Policing command was also arrested at his place of work and questioned at a police station.

In a statement, News Corp said: "Metropolitan Police Service officers from Operation Elveden arrested four current and former employees from the Sun newspaper. Searches have also taken place at the homes and offices of those arrested. News Corporation made a commitment last summer that unacceptable news gathering practices by individuals in the past would not be repeated."

It is understood that staff and management at the Sun had no warning of the operation. The four Sun journalists arrested were Mike Sullivan, the paper's crime editor; the former managing editor, Graham Dudman; an executive editor, Fergus Shanahan; and Chris Pharo, a news desk executive. They all worked under Brooks, who edited the Sun from January 2003 to September 2009, when she became chief executive of News International. ...

Protests continue on Wall Street as the Occupy movement continues to spread. Follow the latest developments here

5.22pm: A class action lawsuit has been filed in Manhattan federal court today against Mayor Bloomberg and the New York police department, over the mass arrests on the Occupy Wall Street Brooklyn march on Saturday, according to NY Daily News.

Reporter Oren Yaniv tweeted that the action was filed this afternoon.

More than 700 protesters were arrested on Saturday. There were claims that demonstrators were misled into thinking it was ok for them to walk on the road section of Brooklyn Bridge, as opposed to remaining on the footpath, although others claimed police did warn protesters, at least initially, that they should remain in the pedestrianised zone. ...

Occupy Wall Street protests reach Boston, LA, St Louis and Kansas City, and are planned in cities across US and abroad

... The original call by the Canadian magazine Adbusters to occupy Wall Street drew hundreds of protesters on 17 September and 2,000 attended a march the following Saturday. But the movement, which organisers say has its roots in the Arab spring and in Madrid's Puerta del Sol protests, has been galvanised by recent media attention.

Last week, the Guardian reported that a NYPD police officer had been filmed spraying four women protesters with pepper spray. On Saturday, a peaceful march on Brooklyn bridge intended as a call to the other four boroughs of New York to join in resulted in 700 arrests. Some protesters claim the police trapped them.

There are now two investigations, including an internal police inquiry, into the pepper spraying incident.

Bruner said the protest had snowballed in the last few days: "The American people have realised that the American dream has been assassinated and the murderer is still on the loose." ...

Majority of 88 detainees who have died since start of uprising against regime said to have been tortured

A police detective has been arrested on suspicion of leaking details about Scotland Yard's phone-hacking investigation.

The man has not been charged but he has been suspended by the Metropolitan police.

The Met also on Friday arrested a 35-year-old man, who Sky News named as former News of the World reporter Dan Evans, on suspicion of phone hacking. He has been released on police bail.

Evans was suspended by the paper more than a year ago after being named in a civil case against the now defunct tabloid's publisher, News International subsidiary News Group Newspapers, brought by interior designer Kelly Hoppen.

Sue Akers, the force's deputy assistant commissioner, who is leading the investigation into phone hacking at the News of the World, said: "I made very clear when I took on this investigation the need for operational and information security. It is hugely disappointing that this may not have been adhered to."

Akers added: "The MPS [Met] takes the unauthorised disclosure of information extremely seriously and has acted swiftly in making these arrests." ...

Police watchdog says it led media to believe shots were exchanged but Duggan was carrying gun that was never used

Riots not condoned by Chavez Campbell but says youths with no jobs, no money and no future were ripe for causing mayhem

Alexandra Topping
Friday 12 August 2011

At 6ft 3in, with a loose gait and a large kit bag slung over his shoulder, 18-year-old Chavez Campbell is a striking figure as he walks past the boarded-up shops in Wood Green, north London. Last Saturday, riots erupted here, rampaging youths shattered shopfronts and filled their arms with anything they could grab.

A week before it began, Campbell, in an interview with the Guardian about cuts to youth services, predicted what would happen. Asked what he thought the future held, he said, simply: "There'll be riots."

Looking at his words again, he said: "I did see the riots coming and the government should have seen it coming, too. Jobs are hard to get and, when they do become available, youths don't get the jobs. There is nothing to do, they are closing youth clubs so the streets are just crazy. They are full of people who have no ambitions, or have ambitions but can't fulfil them."

Campbell, who has recently left college and is struggling to find a job, represents a voice that has been rarely heard in the maelstrom of recent days. He saw the riots explode, but went home to stay safe. He thinks the government has to take some responsibility, claiming cuts and poverty played a role, but he also thinks the rioters were wrong and should be punished. He is not an academic, nor an expert, just a young person from a disadvantaged area trying to get on with his life.

Being poor is not an excuse, he argues, but it might help explain why there was such widespread looting of goods such as trainers, gadgets and clothes. "It doesn't justify it but they think: 'I ain't got no money for this, I ain't got no money for that, I can't get a job but I need it.' The only way they are going to get it is stealing. They are going to be ruthless and do anything they can to get it. This was fun for them." ...

David Cameron is facing growing cabinet pressure to rethink the coalition's policing cuts in the wake of the deaths of three young Birmingham men, who were hit by a car during violent disturbances in the city.

As the Police Federation warned of a "catastrophe" if similar riots erupted after the cuts were introduced, a senior government source said the Home Office would be advised to take a fresh look at its plans to cut £2bn from police funding over the next few years. "The optics have changed," the source told the Guardian. ...

"The optics have changed"??? What the fuck does that mean? Is it some kind of conservative jargon?

UK riots: day four aftermath live

• Serious disorder in Manchester and west Midlands
• Murder inquiry launched in Birmingham after car hits three men
• Calm night in London as police maintain control

Mark Duggan, whose shooting by police sparked London's riots, did not fire a shot at police officers before they killed him, the Independent Police Complaints Commission said on Tuesday.

Releasing the initial findings of ballistics tests, the police watchdog said a CO19 firearms officer fired two bullets, and that a bullet that lodged in a police radio was "consistent with being fired from a police gun".

One theory, not confirmed by the IPCC, is that the bullet became lodged in the radio from a ricochet or after passing through Duggan.

Duggan, 29, was killed last Thursday in Tottenham, north London, after armed officers stopped the minicab in which he was travelling.

The IPCC said Duggan was carrying a loaded gun, but it had no evidence that the weapon had been fired. It said tests were continuing.

The officer who fired the fatal shots has been removed from firearms duties, which is standard procedure, pending the IPCC investigation. ...

• Clashes between looters and police across London
• Violence spreads to Birmingham, Bristol and Liverpool
• Fires in Clapham, Croydon, Enfield and Peckham
• Prime minister returns early from holiday
• Twitter movement #riotcleanup gets under way

• Full-scale alert as violence spreads across capital
• Disorder breaks out in Birmingham city centre
• Prime minister, mayor and home secretary return

There has been a second night of rioting across London, with violence erupting in several of the capital's boroughs, from Brixton in the south to Enfield and Islington in the north and Walthamstow to the east.

What police are calling "copycat criminal activity" – some of it apparently part of an orchestrated plan – has so far resulted in 100 arrests.

Sunday night's rioting followed disturbances on Saturday night in Tottenham, which came after the fatal shooting by police of Mark Duggan, 29, on Thursday.

In a statement on Monday morning, the Metropolitan police said they were shocked at the levels of "disgraceful violence" that had left 35 officers injured.

"Officers responding to sporadic disorder in a number of boroughs made more than 100 arrests throughout last night and early this morning.

"This is in addition to the 61 arrests made on Saturday night and Sunday morning … Officers are shocked at the outrageous level of violence directed against them. At least nine officers were injured overnight in addition to the 26 injured on Saturday night.

"We will not tolerate this disgraceful violence. The investigation continues to bring these criminals to justice."

Shops in Enfield Town and the A10 retail park were vandalised and looted, and there were reports of two vehicles set on fire.

Mounted police were seen chasing groups of masked youths, some carrying sticks, away from stores, while lines of riot police readied themselves for trouble.

At 9.30pm on Sunday Met police and reinforcements from Kent began turning the whole of Enfield into a "sterile area". Hundreds of riot police arrived with vans and police dogs, charging at groups of teenagers who disappeared into sidestreets, smashing cars and shop windows as they ran.

A large crowd of youths moved off westwards, with some teenagers saying the plan was to go to nearby Ponders End. A retail park and shops were attacked, among them a closed Tesco Extra store. Workers inside described hearing windows smashing as dozens of youths poured into the store. "They left carrying TVs, alcohol – they were stuffing trolleys," said one shop assistant.

Unlike the previous night's disturbances, this time riot police appeared on the scene in large numbers. Their stance was also more aggressive, with baton charges and dogs used to disperse crowds. ...

Doubts have emerged over whether Mark Duggan, whose death at the hands of police sparked the weekend's Tottenham riots, was killed during an exchange of fire .

The Guardian understands that initial ballistics tests on a bullet, found lodged in a police radio worn by an officer during Thursday's incident, suggested it was police issue – and therefore had not been fired by Duggan.

On Saturday night 26 police officers were injured, eight requiring hospital treatment, in clashes with around 300 rioters in Tottenham that saw buildings and vehicles torched, shops looted and residents forced to flee their homes.

Police have arrested 55 people as a major investigation began into the escalation of violence, which followed a peaceful demonstration to demand "justice" for Duggan, 29, a father of four shot dead on Thursday evening after being stopped in a taxi near Tottenham Hale. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has launched an inquiry into the shooting.

Initial reports from the IPCC were that during an apparent exchange of fire police officers from C019 fired two shots and Duggan died at the scene. The suggestion was that officers could have come under fire from a minicab carrying Duggan. Much of this assumption came from the fact that a bullet had lodged in a police radio worn by an officer at the scene – raising speculation he might have been fired at from the vehicle. A non-police issue handgun was also recovered at the scene where Duggan was shot dead in Ferry Road.

The latest developments come as one community organiser suggested the handgun recovered was found in a sock and therefore not ready for use. It is likely to fuel anger on the streets of Tottenham and elsewhere in London if it provides evidence that officers were not under attack at the time they opened fire on Duggan.

The IPCC said on Sunday: "We await further forensic analysis to enable us to have a fuller and more comprehensive account of what shots were discharged, the sequence of events and what exactly happened. In the meantime we would request people are patient while we seek to find answers to the questions raised by this incident."

Gutted buildings were still smouldering in Tottenham on Sunday evening. Firefighters dealt with 49 primary fires receiving 264 999 calls between 9.30pm on Saturday and 4.30am on Sunday. ...

Asked if the Metropolitan police were slow to respond to the Tottenham riots, commander Adrian Hanstock replied: "No, not at all." That account, given outside Scotland Yard on Sunday morning, did not correlate with events that had unfolded several miles away in north London hours earlier.

What began as a gathering of around 200 protesters demanding answers over the death of Mark Duggan, who was shot dead by police on Thursday, culminated 12 hours later in a full-scale riot that saw brazen looting spread across north-London suburbs.

By 5.00am, at Tottenham Hale retail park, teenagers were still emerging from shops into the dawn sunshine, stuffing bags and trolleys with stolen goods and running into back streets.

Some officers had apprehended a handful of looters; others had their phones out and were taking pictures of a burnt-out car.

At exactly the same time, looting was taking place nearly two miles away, on Wood Green high street, where approximately 100 people had spent hours burning cars and breaking into high-street shops. Some were even filling suitcases.

As for police – who had claimed to have "contained" disturbances six hours earlier – there was none in sight.

By Sunday night police said there had been 55 arrests, and 26 police officers injured. Yet what marked the weekend's disturbances were not the number of people hurt but the scale of property destruction. ...

The violent riot that tore through a deprived north London neighbourhood and injured more than two dozen police officers has cast a pall over Britain's capital, spreading malaise through a city preparing to host the Olympic Games.

A peaceful protest against the fatal police shooting of a 29-year-old man degenerated into a Saturday night rampage, with rioters torching a double-decker bus, destroying patrol cars and trashing a shopping mall. Twenty-six police officers were injured, with eight of them being briefly hospitalised.

Looters descended on London's Tottenham area around midnight, setting buildings alight, and piling stolen goods into cars and shopping carts. Sirens could be heard across the capital as authorities rushed reinforcements to the scene. Police reported 46 arrests.

"This is just a glimpse into the abyss," former Metropolitan Police Commander John O'Connor told Sky News television yesterday. "Someone's pulled the clock back and you can look and see what's beneath the surface. And what with the Olympic Games coming up, this doesn't bode very well for London." ...

Leading lawyers feel client information may have been intercepted after their names were found in Glenn Mulcaire's file

Owen Bowcott
Monday 25 July 2011

Now it's the turn of lawyers and the legal process to be sucked into the phone-hacking vortex. The Law Society has even suggested justice itself is under threat, implying messages could have been intercepted with the intention of influencing court cases.

Several prominent solicitors fear their mobile phones have been hacked. Some have been formally informed of the risk by police after detectives discovered their numbers among a private investigator's notes.

Graham Shear, of Berwin Leighton Paisner who has represented celebrities such as Robbie Williams and Jude Law, is one of those who has lodged a claim against the News of the World for damages over breach of privacy.

"In January this year I was contacted by senior officers in Operation Weeting [the Metropolitan police inquiry into phone hacking]," Shear said. "They told me that, contrary to what had been said previously, a number of my clients were referred to in documents from [Glenn] Mulcaire's file. My name was among them."

If messages had been intercepted, he said, it would have been a breach of confidential relationship with clients.

The media lawyer Mark Stephens expressed similar anxieties. "I asked [Scotland Yard] if I'd been hacked - they came back to me in 90 minutes and said yes," he told Channel 4 News. "It confirmed my worst suspicions, that I was in Mulcaire's notebook. There is nothing I can do about it, but the important thing is to ascertain which client [was the target] so I can advise them. My concern is for them, not myself." ...

Media Titan Loses Closest Ally
POSTED July 14, 2011

LONDON (The Borowitz Report) – In a blow that many insiders saw as the last straw for embattled media titan Rupert Murdoch, Satan today returned Mr. Murdoch’s soul to him and demanded his money back.

“Rupert Murdoch has done my bidding for decades, but that relationship is now terminated,” read the terse statement from the Prince of Darkness, who close associates said has been “disgusted” by Murdoch’s recent activities.

Purchased by Satan in Melbourne, Australia in 1951, Mr. Murdoch’s soul is estimated to have a current value of nine dollars (US).

Around the media world, observers were stunned by this latest setback for Mr. Murdoch, who in Satan is losing one of his closest and most powerful allies.

But according to Ian Langramstone, who at his post as the University of Nottingham has studied Mr. Murdoch’s relationship with Satan for years, the slap in the face from the Lord of Misrule should not come as a surprise.

“Satan never wants to be the last one to desert a sinking ship,” said Mr. Langromstone. “He always takes his lead from British politicians.”

In what many saw a tacit admission of the depth of his current problems, Mr. Murdoch today cancelled plans to purchase the remainder of the British government that he does not already own. ...



Ta much, dear Anneliese

Yemeni forces have opened fire on demonstrators in three major cities, killing at least 18 and wounding hundreds in one of the fiercest bouts of violence witnessed in nearly three months of popular unrest aimed at toppling President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The clashes between a defected faction of Yemen's army and the republican guard, have raised fears that Yemen may be reaching a critical juncture as public fury continues to mount at the president's refusal to step down.

Violence broke out in the capital when a throng of 2,000 protesters tore away from the main sit-in area at Sana'a University and surged en masse towards the cabinet building in downtown Sana'a with shouts of "God is great" and "Allah rid us of this tyrant".

As they neared their destination they were halted by republican guards who, after trying to disperse them with tear gas and water cannons, began firing live rounds at the crowd.

Soldiers positioned on the balconies and roofs of nearby houses rained bullets down on the angry mob of protesters, who responded by hurling chunks of broken-off paving slabs.

The standoff, which lasted for around four hours, climaxed when soldiers loyal to a defected general, Major Ali Mohsin, arrived in pickup trucks and began returning fire at Saleh's troops.

It was the first time the two sides have clashed in the capital since Mohsin declared his support for the opposition in late March.

Local press reported that a lieutenant colonel, Yahya Muhammad al-Ansi, belonging to the rebel general's first armoured division, was killed in the clashes. ...

Ian Tomlinson death: IPCC rules Met officer 'reckless' in conduct

Detective Inspector Eddie Hall falsely claimed Tomlinson fell down before encountering PC Simon Harwood

Iran helping Syrian regime crack down on protesters, say diplomats

Claim comes as four women shot dead by security forces in first use of violence against an all-female demonstration

Syrian tanks move into city of Homs

12-year-old boy reported killed as residents describe hearing gunfire and shelling

Riots have swept across the Ugandan capital, Kampala, in the biggest anti-government protest in sub-Saharan Africa so far this year.

Security forces have launched a brutal crackdown, opening fire on unarmed civilians with live rounds, rubber bullets and teargas. Two people have been killed, more than 120 wounded and around 360 arrested. Women and girls have been among those beaten, according to witnesses.

Two weeks of growing unrest – sparked by rising food and fuel prices – have gained fresh impetus after the violent arrest of the opposition leader Kizza Besigye on Thursday. Critics say President Yoweri Museveni, in power for 25 years, is losing his grip. They claim his wildly disproportionate crackdown on Besigye's "walk to work" protests smacks of panic and is sowing the seeds of popular revolt.

"I thought the police were going to kill me," said Andrew Kibwka, 18, after police with heavy sticks rained blows on him. "I was telling them I'm harmless but they just carried on. I did nothing to provoke them. They beat me because I was running away."

Some point to the political earthquakes in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, and wonder if the aftershocks could reach tyrannies south of the Sahara. Already there are pockets of unrest from Burkina Faso to Senegal to Swaziland. Even South Africa, reputed anchor of the continent, is tormented by deadly protests over poor public service delivery.

In Uganda there is an inchoate revolution struggling to be born. Protests have spread to several towns, leaving seven people dead and hundreds in jail. The riots, in which roads have been barricaded with burning tyres and vehicles pelted with rocks, mark a new level of defiance. Facebook and Twitter, which the government unsuccessfully tried to block, are reverberating with dissent. Museveni's heavyhanded attempts to put out the fire only appear to be fanning its flames. ...

Syrian security forces opened fire on a demonstration on Friday in the coastal city of Latakia – the heartland of the ruling elite – wounding at least five people as thousands took to the streets in several places across the country, witnesses said.

President Bashar al-Assad's regime has stepped up its deadly crackdown on protesters in recent days by unleashing the army along with snipers and tanks. On Friday protesters came out in their thousands, defying the crackdown and using it as a rallying cry.

A witness in Latakia said about 1,000 people turned out for an anti-government rally when plainclothes security agents with automatic rifles opened fire. He said he saw at least five people wounded. Like many witnesses contacted by the Associated Press, he asked that his name not be used for fear of reprisal.

Other demonstrations were reported in Banias and in the north-eastern city of Qamishli.

The government had warned against holding any demonstrations on Friday. Syrian state television said the interior ministry had not approved any "march, demonstration or sit-ins" and that such rallies sought only to harm Syria's security and stability.

Many of the protests were held in remembrance of more than 50 people killed in the last week alone in Deraa, a southern city at the centre of the revolt. Deraa has been under military siege since Monday when thousands of soldiers stormed in backed by tanks and snipers.

A devastating picture has been emerging from the city – which is largely sealed off, without electricity and telephones – as residents flee to neighbouring countries. ...

The Metropolitan police has admitted that during the first four years of the phone-hacking affair it warned only 36 people they may have been targeted by the News of the World's private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.

Scotland Yard's latest inquiry, which was launched in January, is believed to be contacting up to 4,000 people whose names and personal details were found in Mulcaire's possession during the original police investigation in 2006.

The disclosure of the number – which Scotland Yard had previously insisted on keeping secret – exposes the Met to the complaint that it breached an agreement with the director of public prosecutions that it would warn all "potential victims" in the affair.

It will also revive criticism that it has consistently played down the scale of criminal activity commissioned by the News of the World.

Scotland Yard has previously repeatedly refused to disclose the number of victims it had warned, rejecting applications under the Freedom of Information Act on the grounds that releasing it would necessarily disclose the identities of those warned, and that this would breach their privacy.

However, in a sharp change of policy, the Met's acting deputy commissioner, John Yates, volunteered that during the 2006 inquiry police had warned 28 people they may have been victims; and that after the Guardian revived the affair in July 2009 they warned eight more.

In a letter to John Whittingdale, chairman of the culture, media and sport select committee, Yates – who was responsible for dealing with the hacking affair for nearly 20 months – gave no explanation for the failure to inform more than 36 potential victims. He said: "I have accepted that more could and should have been done in relation to those who may have been potential victims." ...

The White House is preparing to introduce new sanctions against the Syrian regime in response to a military crackdown that saw tanks and armoured cars deployed against protesters on Monday.

The Obama administration condemned "the brutal violence used by the government of Syria", describing it as deplorable, and adding: "The United States is pursuing a range of possible policy options, including targeted sanctions, to respond to the crackdown and make clear that this behaviour is unacceptable."

Human rights groups estimate that about 350 people have died so far in Syria, 100 of them on Friday. Troops mounted a major assault Monday on Deraa, the city where the uprising began a month ago, and Douma, a suburb of Damascus.

It was apparently the first time that tanks have been used. Ammar Qurabi, head of the National Organisation for Human Rights in Syria, who is in exile in Egypt, was quoted by Reuters as saying at least 18 people died in Deraa alone.

The US, having announced sanctions unilaterally, is putting pressure on the UK and other European countries to impose sanctions against the Syrian regime.

The US treasury department and other American agencies are discussing freezing the assets of senior officials accused of human rights abuses and banning them from travelling to the US or doing business there. Such sanctions are mainly symbolic, as the US has long had stringent measures in place against Syria and has little trade with the country. Sanctions by European countries, with whom Syria has extensive trade, would have more impact and several members of the Syrian government have assets in Europe. ...

Bahrain accused of systematic attacks on doctors

Medical workers targeted because they have evidence of security force atrocities, claims US-based human rights group

Syria troops kill protesters in country's bloodiest day of turmoil

Dozens reportedly killed as live bullets and teargas used against rallies after Friday prayers

... Tomlinson, a newspaper seller, collapsed and died less than three minutes after being hit with a baton and pushed to the ground by a police officer, PC Simon Harwood, during the demonstrations near the Bank of England.

He had been trying to get home from work at around 7.20pm on 1 April 2009 when he encountered the Metropolitan police officer.

Paramedics were unable to resuscitate Tomlinson, a father of nine, who was pronounced dead more than an hour later.

Prof Kevin Channer, a heart expert at Royal Hallamshire hospital, was asked by the inquest to analyse chart readings from a defibrillator that was used on Tomlinson by paramedics.

Channer's expert evidence, contained in a report to the inquest, was that the electrocardiogram (ECG) data obtained by paramedics as they fought to resuscitate Tomlinson was inconsistent with an arrhythmic heart attack. The heart pulse data was however consistent with the 47-year-old dying of internal bleeding, Channer said.

The medical cause of Tomlinson's death has proved a key area of controversy in his inquest, which is now in its fourth week. ...

Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated across Yemen on Sunday, denouncing President Ali Abdullah Saleh for saying women should not take part in protest rallies.

At least 10 people were shot and wounded in Sana'a by forces loyal to the president, doctors said, and around 200 were overcome by teargas. Clashes were also reported to have taken place in Dhamar, just south of the capital.

In a speech on Friday, Saleh had condemned the mingling of men and women at demonstrations, saying it violated Islamic law. The comments enraged many Yemenis and prompted the youth movement to call for mass protests, on what they called a day of honour and dignity.

There was a significant turnout, with more than 100,000 people – including significant numbers of women – taking to the streets in Taiz, and tens of thousands more marching in Ibb, Aden, Shabwa and other cities. Demonstrators also demanded the president step down.

Abdel-Malek al-Youssefi, a youth movement activist and organiser, said the protests could be "the last nail in Saleh's coffin".

Yemen has been racked with anti-government demonstrations for the past two months. The protesters are calling for steps to improve livelihoods and open up the country's restricted political life.

A young woman first led anti-Saleh rallies on a university campus in January, but women did not begin taking part in large numbers until early last month.

While Yemen has conservative social and religious traditions, women can vote, run for parliament and drive cars, unlike in neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

Near-daily protests and defections by key allies in the military, powerful tribes and diplomatic corps have failed to bring an end to Saleh's 32-year autocratic rule. A crackdown on protesters by government forces has killed more than 120 people, according to Yemeni rights groups, but has not deterred the crowds from gathering.

Last week, the six-nation Gulf Co-operation Council suggested Saleh transfer power to his deputy, seeking an end to the unrest. The opposition criticised the proposal for not suggesting that the power transfer should be immediate. Opposition members are expected in the Saudi capital on Sunday to explain their position to Riyadh and other Gulf mediators. ...

Senior officers policing protests in London last month focused too heavily on kettling to contain activists, Liberty says. The rights group, which had 120 observers, including two inside Scotland Yard's special operations room (SOR), for the TUC march on 26 March, said the tactic was "under near constant consideration" when potential trouble emerged.

"In the SOR, there seemed to be a continual expectation that a containment would be imposed at some point," Liberty's report said, adding that the tactic "does appear seriously to undermine the relationship of trust and confidence between peaceful protesters and the police".

The report added: "The possibility of mass containment of peaceful protesters has undoubtedly had a chilling effect on many people's rights to freedom of expression and assembly." ...

Thousands may sue over police kettling at G20 protests

High court rules way in which police kettled up to 5,000 demonstrators at G20 protests in April 2009 was illegal

Briton dies in Dubai police custody after 'severe beatings'

Foreign Office demands full investigation after death of Lee Brown during detention in Dubai over a row at luxury hotel

Yemen’s embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh has lost the backing of his closest allies in the Arab world who called on him to pass power to his vice president to ensure the country’s “unity, safety and stability.”

The Gulf Cooperation Council urged for the transition of power to Vice President Abduraboo Mansur Hadi and the creation of an opposition-led national unity government, Abdel Latif al Zayyani, secretary general of the GCC, told reporters in the Saudi capital Riyadh late yesterday. The group renewed its invitation to Saleh’s government and Yemen’s opposition to hold GCC-brokered talks in Riyadh.

“It has seemed more and more likely over the past week that Saleh would have to pass on power, whether in the two months that the opposition has called for or by the end of the year as the ruling party has said,” Abdul Ghani Aryani, an independent political analyst, said in a telephone interview from Sana’a. “With the GCC formally backing the transition, it will probably be at some point in between.”

In Yemen, the poorest Arab country, anti-government protests mirroring those across the Middle East and North Africa, are entering their third month. Saleh’s army, government and much of his tribal base have abandoned him as violent clashes between security forces and protesters calling for his removal escalated. At least 662 Yemenis, including 24 children, have been killed in the civil unrest since Feb. 18, the United Nations’ children’s fund said yesterday. ...

The actor Leslie Ash has spoken out for the first time against the Metropolitan police for failing to investigate claims that a private investigator working for the News of the World had hacked into her mobile phone, even though the force had held evidence since 2006 that he had targeted her along with her husband and two children.

Ash, a former star of Men Behaving Badly, told the Guardian: "I feel I've really been let down. I can't understand their behaviour at all." Ash and her husband, the former footballer Lee Chapman, are suing the News of the World for breach of privacy after the Met confirmed in January that in a 2006 raid on the investigator Glenn Mulcaire, it had seized notepads in which he had recorded their mobile phone numbers and those of their two sons.

Despite holding that information, which Ash said includes phone numbers for her GP, bank and a teacher at her sons' school, Scotland Yard failed to tell her that she was a target.

"The police were actually withholding evidence," she said. "I've been brought up to trust the police. It's not a good time for the police at the moment."

Ash became a regular in the headlines as soon as she appeared in the hit laddish comedy Men Behaving Badly, but tabloid pressure reached its peak when cosmetic surgery left her with inflamed lips in 2003 and when she contracted a form of MRSA in hospital the following year.

Her family feared she would die. Now Ash says that messages left on mobile phones belonging to her and her children at that time were used by newspapers. ...

Security forces fired shots and used teargas to disperse up to 4,000 protesters in the volatile Syrian city of Deraa on Monday as frustration mounted at the slow pace of promised reforms.

Despite the widespread presence of security forces, protesters appeared to consolidate their positions in Deraa in the deep south and in the northern port city of Latakia, which are the two main fronts in the challenge to the Syrian regime.

According to human rights activists, more than 150 people have been killed in 11 days of unrest, which have seen protesters calling for increased freedoms.

Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, who has not been sighted during the protests, is expected to deliver a speech within days.

The government has pledged to lift an almost five decade old emergency law, which – among other things – severely limits citizens' rights to demonstrate. That and other reforms are yet to be implemented.

A witness said demonstrators in Deraa had converged on a main square chanting "no to emergency laws". ...

The News of the World has revealed that its computers have retained an archive of potentially damning emails, which hitherto it had claimed had been lost.

The millions of emails, amounting to half a terabyte of data, could expose executives and reporters involved in hacking the voicemail of public figures, including former deputy prime minister John Prescott, actor Sienna Miller, and former culture secretary Tessa Jowell.

The archived data is likely to include email exchanges between the most senior executives, including former editor Andy Coulson, who resigned as David Cameron's media adviser in January, as well as three former news editors – Ian Edmondson, Greg Miskiw, and Neville Thurlbeck – implicated in the affair by paperwork seized from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who was on the News of the World's books. Edmondson was sacked in January. Miskiw and Thurlbeck were interviewed by police last autumn. No charge has been brought against any of them. Coulson and the three former news editors have all denied all involvement in criminal activity.

MPs on the home affairs select committee are likely on Tuesday to ask about the emails to John Yates, acting deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police, when they question him over allegations he misled parliament in evidence he gave about the number of hacking victims originally identified by Scotland Yard. Yates told the committee six months ago the Met had only identified "10 to 12" individuals in a 2006 inquiry because the Crown Prosecution Service advised it to adopt a narrow legal definition of what constituted an offence. The Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, has said that prosecuting counsel never adopted this narrow definition.

Several News of the World journalists have since been linked with phone hacking after victims began legal battles, raising questions about why Scotland Yard failed to conduct a more comprehensive inquiry. Only one reporter, former royal editor Clive Goodman, was convicted of a crime along with Mulcaire. Both men were sentenced to jail terms in January 2007. ...

A sixth police officer has been unmasked as an undercover spy in the protest movement as it emerged that Mark Kennedy, who spent seven years posing as an environmental activist, is considering suing Scotland Yard.

In an interview with the Guardian Weekend magazine, Kennedy, who went "rogue" and offered to help environmental campaigners accused of planning to break into a power station, says he has suffered severe post-traumatic stress disorder and has been suicidal. His lawyers have been instructed to consider legal action against the police.

The latest officer was reported to have been embedded in an anti-capitalist group for four years under the fake name of Simon Wellings. Newsnight on BBC2 reported that his true identity was discovered through a police blunder.

Wellings inadvertently phoned a campaigner with the Globalise Resistance anti-capitalist group on his mobile phone while discussing photographs of demonstrators with another officer at a police station.

The call was recorded on the campaigner's answerphone and Wellings is heard being pressed to identify protesters at demonstrations, according to Newsnight. He is recorded saying: "She's Hanna's girlfriend – very overt lesbian – last time I saw her, hair about that long, it was blonde, week before it was black."

The infiltration of police spies became controversial after the identification of Kennedy and four others who had posed as members of a variety of political groups including environmental, anti-racist and anti-globalisation campaigns.

The infiltration is the subject of four official investigations after police chiefs and ministers admitted the undercover operations had gone "badly wrong".

Kennedy believes that other undercover officers have been similarly ostracised. "The way the police handled the whole extraction .. is absolutely thoughtless from a psychological point of view and from a safety point of view."

He argues that the damage caused by such undercover work is too great, and that the police should rely more on electronic rather than human intelligence. ...

Syria's government pledged to consider protesters' "legitimate demands" after thousands took to the streets for the funerals of nine people killed by the military.

Rights activists described Wednesday's shootings in the southern city of Daraa as a massacre, claiming that more than 100 people may have been killed when troops fired on a mosque in the early hours and throughout the day.

With protests called for after Friday prayers, Buthaina Shaaban, adviser to President Bashar al-Assad, announced that the government would consider ending Syria's emergency law and revise legislation for political parties and the media. Similar reform pledges have been announced in the past, and are unlikely to satisfy protesters.

In Deraa, funeral-goers chanted "God, Syria, Freedom" and "The blood of martyrs is not spilt in vain!", Reuters news agency reported. Some reports said that up to 20,000 people attended, but this could not be verified. The city has been cordoned off.

Deraa's hospital reported receiving 37 bodies from Wednesday's violence. YouTube videos apparently showed bloody scenes at the mosque.

Electricity and communications in the city were cut before the attack, which sources said was by a unit of forces headed by the president's brother, Maher al-Assad.

"This is a crime against humanity because forces opened fire on unarmed civilians without any warning," said Radwan Ziadeh, head of the Damascus Centre for Human Rights and a visiting scholar at Harvard University. ...

The extraordinary public clash between the Metropolitan police and the director of public prosecutions during which each side has implied that the other has misled parliament continued with controversial claims before a Commons committee.

The quarrel continued as new claims were made that private investigators working for newspapers may have targeted the families of Milly Dowler, the Surrey schoolgirl who was abducted and murdered in March 2002, and of Holly Chapman, one of the two 10-year-old girls murdered by Ian Huntley in Soham in August 2002.

The Met-DPP clash continued at a special session of the Commons culture, media and sport committee, where Scotland Yard's acting deputy commissioner, John Yates, conceded for the first time that the original 2006 inquiry into phone hacking at the News of the World should have done more, and that police had failed to do enough for victims of hacking.

Asked if he accepted that the affair had seriously damaged the reputation of the Metropolitan police, he said: "I would certainly say that it has been very challenging for us. We are working extremely hard to put that right."

But it was his evidence on the legal advice provided by the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, that was most controversial. The immediate focus of the dispute is an arcane point of law.

Its underlying significance is the light it may shed on the question of whether Scotland Yard has tried to hide the truth about the number of people whose phones were hacked by journalists and private investigators working for the NoW.

In his evidence, Yates listed a series of occasions on which prosecutors had advised police that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Ripa) made it an offence to intercept voicemail only if the message had not already been heard by its intended recipient.

He said this advice had been given repeatedly during the original inquiry in 2006: "It permeated every aspect of the investigative strategy." It was on this basis, Yates added, that he had previously told parliament that police had found only 10 to 12 victims of the hacking, even though the emerging evidence now suggests there were many more.

Yates's evidence directly clashes with a written submission from Starmer last October to the home affairs select committee. Starmer said the question of how to interpret Ripa had not arisen during the original inquiry.

Prosecutors had attached no significance to the point in preparing charges or presenting the facts, he said. "It is evident that the prosecution's approach to Ripa had no bearing on the charges brought against the defendants or the legal proceedings generally," he wrote. ...

Syrian police have sealed off a southern city after security forces killed at least five protesters.

Residents of Daraa were being allowed to leave but not enter the city , said prominent Syrian rights activist Mazen Darwish.

The cordon seemed aimed at choking off any spread of unrest after earlier clashes and emotional funeral processions for the dead.

President Bashar Al-Assad, who has boasted that his country is immune to the demands for change that have already toppled leaders in Egypt and Tunisia, sent a delegation to the southern city to offer his condolences to families of the victims, according to a Syrian official.

Serious disturbances in Syria would be a major expansion of the region's unrest. Syria, a predominantly Sunni country ruled by minority Alawites, has a history of brutally crushing dissent.

Security forces launched a harsh crackdown on Friday's demonstrations calling for political freedoms. Protests took place in at least five cities, including the capital, Damascus. But only in Daraa did they turn deadly. ...

The growing number of public figures suing the News of the World won a major high court victory when a judge said Scotland Yard must hand over a mass of phone-hacking evidence that has never before been disclosed.

The ruling by Justice Geoffrey Vos, who was appointed this week to handle the 14 phone-hacking cases currently going through the courts, means the Metropolitan police will be forced to pass reams of documents seized from Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who worked for the News of the World, to lawyers acting for the politicians, celebrities and football figures who are suing the paper. They include Sienna Miller, Paul Gascoigne, Steve Coogan and the former culture secretary Tessa Jowell.

Vos ruled on Friday that the Met must give unredacted documents – including Mulcaire's emails, address and contacts books, and phone bills – to another hacking victim, the football agent Sky Andrew. The decision sets a precedent for the other hacking cases and has far-reaching implications for the NoW, police and other litigants. It will lead to a flood of hacking documents being released to other claimants, all of whom are seeking copies of papers seized by police in a 2006 raid on Mulcaire's home. ...

Dr Freddy Patel, the former Home Office pathologist suspended for incompetence in a series of high profile autopsies, has been found guilty of misconduct after failing to spot that a murder victim had been suffocated.

The 63-year-old forensic examiner now faces being struck off the medical register.

A disciplinary panel of the General Medical Council (GMC) ruled that his "fitness to practise was impaired" because of his reluctance to consider asphyxiation in the murder case, the falsification of his professional CV, and his failure to redress previous professional shortcomings.

Over the last 18 months, Patel's work has come under intense scrutiny. He has been criticised for suggesting the newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson died of natural causes during the G20 protests in 2009.

Last summer Patel was suspended from practice for three months after the GMC found him guilty of misconduct or "deficient professional performance" in other cases. A disciplinary panel in effect banned him from carrying out postmortem examinations involving suspicious deaths.

In its latest findings the GMC told Patel that his clinical approach was not "sufficiently in line with the required standard of a competent pathologist".

In relation to his inaccurate CV, it said he had "acted in a way that was dishonest and liable to bring the profession into disrepute" and that the failings were "deliberate rather than inadvertent". ...



Believe it or not, as the article continues it actually gets worse.

The News of the World phone-hacking scandal is set to reach a new peak of embarrassment for the paper and for Scotland Yard with the naming of the sixth and most senior journalist yet to be implicated in illegal news-gathering.

A BBC Panorama programme claims that Alex Marunchak, formerly the paper's senior executive editor, commissioned a specialist snooper who illegally intercepted email messages from a target's computer and faxed copies of them to Marunchak's News of the World office.

The embarrassment is heightened by the fact that the target was a former British army intelligence officer who had served in Northern Ireland and was in possession of secrets which were deemed so sensitive that they had been suppressed by a court order.

Rupert Murdoch's News International, which owns the News of the World, has claimed repeatedly that only one of its journalists – the former royal correspondent, Clive Goodman – was involved in illegal news-gathering. When Goodman was jailed in January 2007, Scotland Yard chose not to interview any other journalist or executive on the paper.

And Panorama reports that the illegal interception of emails happened in July 2006, when the prime minister's former media adviser Andy Coulson was editing the paper. ...

Yemeni security forces have killed four people and wounded hundreds more in the second day of a harsh crackdown on anti-government protests, witnesses said. One of the dead was a 15-year-old student.

The assault with gunfire and tear gas was the toughest yet by the government in a month of protests aimed at unseating the president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in power for 32 years. An ally in the Obama administration's fight against al-Qaida, Saleh had appeared to be one of the Arab leaders most threatened by the regional unrest inspired by revolts in Egypt and Tunisia.

The violence began with a pre-dawn raid on a central square in the capital, Sana'a, where thousands of pro-democracy protesters have been camped out.

Eyewitnesses said security troops surrounded the square with police cars and armoured personnel carriers shortly after midnight and began calling on protesters through loudspeakers to go home. At 5am, security forces attacked, firing bullets and tear gas.

One protester died from a bullet to the head, which may have come from a sniper on the rooftop of a nearby building, witnesses said.

"We were performing dawn prayers when we were surprised by a sudden hail of bullets and tear gas," said Walid Hassan, a 25-year-old activist. "The protesters began throwing rocks at security ... it was total mayhem, a real battlefield."

A few hours later, another protester was shot dead in a nearby street. In the city of Dar Saad in the southern province of Aden, police used live fire and tear gas to disperse a crowd of several thousand, killing one demonstrator. ...

A man cleared of murder can be named as a private investigator with links to corrupt police officers who earned £150,000 a year from the News of the World for supplying illegally obtained information on people in the public eye.

Jonathan Rees was acquitted of the murder of his former business partner, Daniel Morgan, who was found in a south London car park in 1987 with an axe in the back of his head. The case collapsed after 18 months of legal argument, during which it has been impossible for media to write about Rees's Fleet Street connections.

The ending of the trial means it is now possible for the first time to tell how Rees went to prison in December 2000 after a period of earning six-figure sums from the News of the World.

Rees, who had worked for the paper for seven years, was jailed for planting cocaine on a woman in order to discredit her during divorce proceedings. After his release from prison Rees, who had been bugged for six months by Scotland Yard because of his links with corrupt police officers, was rehired by the News of the World, which was being edited by Andy Coulson.

The revelations call into question David Cameron's judgment in choosing Coulson as director of communications at 10 Downing Street in May 2010. Both he and the deputy prime minister had been warned in March 2010 about Coulson's responsibility for rehiring Rees after his prison sentence.

Nick Clegg had been informed in detail about Jonathan Rees's murder charge, his prison sentence and his involvement with police corruption – and that he and three other private investigators had committed crimes for the News of the World while Coulson was deputy editor or editor.

In September 2002 the Guardian published a lengthy exposé of Rees's involvement with police corruption and illegal newsgathering. But since April 2008 the press have been prevented from revealing Rees's connections with the News of the World, or placing it in the context of News International's denials about any knowledge of illegal activity on behalf of the company. ...

The money came pouring in. Jonathan Rees worked from a dingy office in south London. He lived in a cramped flat upstairs. He was divorced, overweight and foul-mouthed but his business was golden: he traded information. His sources may have been corrupt. His actions may have been illegal. But the money kept coming – from one golden source in particular. As Rees himself put it: "No one pays like the News of the World do."

There was only one problem with Rees's lucrative business. He had caught the eye of Scotland Yard's anti-corruption command who strongly suspected that he was paying bribes to various serving officers and, with great care and some skill, they had managed to place a covert listening device inside his office.

It was that bug which recorded him gloating about the pay he received from the News of the World. It also recorded the vivid detail of an empire of corruption, run with casual ease by Rees and his business partner, Sid Fillery – and liberally greased with cash from the News of the World and other Fleet Street titles. The News of the World alone was paying him more than £150,000 a year.

The listening device was placed in Rees's office in mid-April 1999. It did its job for only six months. In that short time, it provided one highly revealing chapter in a long tale of promiscuous criminality. Further chapters were provided by three other private investigators, all of whom worked separately for the News of the World, all of whom finally ended up in court, all of whom were publicly linked with illegal news-gathering.

Over the following years, the Guardian published a lengthy exposé of Rees's involvement with corrupt police and the procurement of confidential information for the News of the World; the Sunday tabloid's assistant editor is believed to have been arrested and accused of paying bribes to police and other key workers, although he was never charged; the paper was named in a London court as the paymaster for the purchase of information from the police national computer; Rees was jailed for a conspiracy to frame an innocent woman and then accused of conspiracy to murder.

And yet the man who became the prime minister's media adviser, Andy Coulson, has always maintained in evidence to parliament and on oath in court that he knew nothing of any illegal activity during the seven years he spent at the top of the News of the World. The entire story unfolded without ever catching his eye. In the same way, the prime minister and his deputy were happy to appoint Coulson last May to oversee the communication between the British government and its people, even though they were already fully aware of all the essential facts.

It begins with the bug....

Nick Davies, the Guardian journalist who revealed the News of the World had made a series of legal payments to hide the full extent of the phone-hacking scandal, wrote to the paper's former editor Andy Coulson on 23 February last year.

He put a series of allegations to Coulson, who was then head of the communications for the Conservative party. At the time of Davies' letter, the Guardian could not reveal the full extent of the phone-hacking affair because one of the private investigators who had worked for the paper was facing a murder charge.

The email containing the charges was sent two months before the general election. Both David Cameron and Nick Clegg – later to be prime minister and deputy prime minister – knew about the allegations. Despite that, Cameron appointed Coulson as his director of communications in Downing Street in May 2010. Coulson resigned in January this year. ...

... The witness, speaking on condition of anonymity because he feared government reprisal, said police in the area opened fire and at least one protester was injured.

The Reuters news agency reported one witness as saying police fired percussion bombs to disperse the crowd of around 200 people.

Last week Saudi Arabia banned public protests following demonstrations by minority Shia groups.

The ruling came after widespread demonstrations in the Middle East – including those that led to the downfall of regimes in Egypt and Tunisia – and two weeks of Shia agitation in Saudi Arabia itself, during which 22 people were arrested.

A statement issued by the country's council of senior clerics at the time said: "The council ... affirms that demonstrations are forbidden in this country. The correct way in sharia [law] of realising common interest is by advising, which is what the Prophet Muhammad established.

"Reform and advice should not be via demonstrations and ways that provoke strife and division, this is what the religious scholars of this country in the past and now have forbidden and warned against."

The statement made clear the council's stance against political parties, which are banned as they are deemed to be not in keeping with Islam.

The TaxPayers' Alliance said Cumbria Police had ''wasted money'' by paying a marketing firm £10,880 to create the ''Safer Stronger Cumbria'' logo.

A force spokeswoman defended the spending, saying the ''brand and logo'' had helped police ''leave a footprint that people can easily recognise''.

Earlier this year, the Plain English Campaign (PEC) - which campaigns for better use of English by public bodies - said such police branding slogans served no purpose and should be scrapped.

PEC officials said the police service had nothing to sell and the word ''police'' told people all they needed to know.

The amount spent on the slogan was revealed after a local newspaper - the North West Evening Mail, which is based in Barrow - asked police questions under freedom of information legislation.

''Taxpayers want their money focused on fighting crime,'' said Matthew Sinclair, director of the TaxPayers' Alliance.

''It is absurd that Cumbria Police have spent thousands on rebranding, a waste of money that will do nothing to make Cumbria safer or stronger.

''If they want to build trust, they should be working to convince the public that they aren't distracted by this kind of presentational nonsense.'' ...

Tensions are mounting in the Syrian capital, Damascus, after the third peaceful demonstration in three weeks was violently dispersed on Wednesday. There are increasing reports of intimidation and blocking of communications by secret services in the wake of violent unrest in neighbouring Arab countries.

Fourteen people were arrested and several people beaten by uniformed and plainclothes police on Tuesday after about 200 staged a peaceful sit-in outside the Libyan embassy to show support for Libya's protesters.

Witnesses said at least two women were among those beaten.

The demonstrators carried placards reading "Freedom for the people" and "Down with Gaddafi", and chanted slogans such as "Traitors are those that beat their people."

Witnesses said authorities warned the group to disperse but they reconvened shortly afterwards in the central neighbouring suburb of Sha'alan. When they tried to march back to the embassy they were met with a heavy police presence.

Several witnesses told the Guardian there were nearly twice as many secret and uniformed police as protesters. Some protesters were punched, kicked and beaten with sticks..

All present had their identities recorded. Fourteen people were detained but later released, Human Rights Watch in Beirut confirmed.

"They hit two girls, I saw them on the ground crying," said a witness who was briefly detained.

"There were so many of them, we didn't know where they all came from."

Under emergency law, public congregations are banned in Syria. This kind of protest is very rare but last Friday 1,500 people took part in a seemingly spontaneous demonstration outside the central Hamidiyah souq. It was reportedly in protest at the police beating of a local shop owner, rather than being directed at the government. People chanted "The Syrian people will not be humiliated", "Shame, shame" and "With our soul, with our blood, we sacrifice for you Bashar" in reference to the country's president, Bashar al-Assad. Syria's interior minister has promised an investigation. ...

So many messages are being examined by Scotland Yard's phone-hacking inquiry that it is difficult to identify every mention of a celebrity's name among "hundreds of intercepts", lawyers for the police have claimed.

The proliferation of legal actions generated by complaints against the News of the World is also in danger of congesting the courts with "parallel claims", the judge hearing applications for disclosure in three cases has implied.

Official recognition of the scale of the problem came as three more alleged victims of the practice of hacking into voicemail messages sought high court orders granting them access to documents that may substantiate claims for damages. Lawyers for Paul Gascoigne, George Galloway and Mick McGuire, former deputy chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, were granted permission to see relevant sections of transcripts.

The notebooks are among material seized by the Metropolitan police from the convicted private investigator Glenn Mulcaire who was employed by the newspaper.

Gascoigne and McGuire's applications were supported by Newsgroup Newspapers, owners of the News of the World, because, the court heard, the company "wishes to show it was not involved in the interception of information" relating to them.

Explaining the need for efficient case management, Mr Justice Vos told the court: "There have been numerous parallel applications with different counsel and solicitors ... raising identical or nearly identical points". He wanted to avoid duplication, he said.

At least 14 cases were already before the courts, agreed Jeremy Reed, counsel for Gascoigne and McGuire. There is speculation there will be many more, he added.

Lawyers for Gascoigne requested that any intercepted messages "about him or concerning him" should be included in the disclosure order because private information about his medical treatment had been obtained by hacking into other people's phones.

Edwin Buckett, representing the Met, said that would mean the police "having to listen to every transcript to see if Mr Gascoigne is mentioned". There are "hundreds of intercepts", he said. "It makes it so wide, it's difficult to comply with."

The judge ordered the police to hand over anything in the transcripts that was "about or concerning" Paul Gascoigne.

The names of more journalists may appear after the judge ordered that ''redactions'' – the blanked-out sections in the transcripts handed to the claimants – should not hide the names of employees of the News of the World.

The three claimants were also granted access to information on breaches of privacy gathered by the Information Commissioner's Office during its Operation Motorman inquiry into the matter. ...

Idi Amin finished up in Saudi Arabia. Mobutu Sese Seko went to Togo then settled in Morocco. Mengistu Haile Mariam, author of Ethiopia's Red Terror, is living out his days in Zimbabwe. And so, if the once unthinkable should happen and the dictator falls in Libya, whither Muammar Gaddafi?

Burkina Faso, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Venezuela and Zimbabwe are among the contenders floated by analysts if the self-declared "doyen of Arab leaders, king of kings of Africa and imam of all Muslims" was forced to seek asylum. Saudi hospitality has previously been extended to ousted Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif and overthrown Tunisia's Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. But its relations with Libya have been strained for years; in 2009 Gaddafi told King Abdullah: "You are propelled by fibs towards the grave and you were made by Britain and protected by the US."

Venezuela is a stronger candidate having had close ties with Libya of late. Gaddafi was seen shopping on a Venezuelan island during a summit 18 month ago. President Hugo Chavez has visited Libya several times and a football stadium there was named in his honour.

But Gaddafi also has a long history with the rest of Africa, which intensified after he switched from promoting Arab unity to buying influence at the African Union – debts he may now seek to call in. Adekeye Adebajo, executive director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution at Cape Town University in South Africa, said: "He has enough friends to be able to find a safe haven in many parts of Africa, but obviously there would be a lot of people scared to take him."

Adebajo noted Gaddafi's past involvement in funding rebel movements in Liberia and Sierra Leone. "A lot of insecure African leaders would be nervous to have him on their territory." ...

Libya and Bahrain protests – Saturday 19 February

• Dozens reported killed in deadly crackdowns
• Video shows Libya protester shot in head
• Iran opposition calls for more demonstrations

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is confronting the most serious challenge to his 42-year rule as leader of Libya by unleashing his army on unarmed protesters.

Unlike the rulers of neighbouring Egypt, Gaddafi has refused to countenance the politics of disobedience, despite growing international condemnation, and the death toll of demonstrators nearing 100.

The pro-government Al-Zahf al-Akhdar newspaper warned that the government would "violently and thunderously respond" to the protests, and said those opposing the regime risked "suicide".

William Hague, the UK's foreign secretary, condemned the violence as "unacceptable and horrifying", even as the Libyan regime's special forces, backed by African mercenaries, launched a dawn attack on a protest camp in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi.

Britain is scrambling to extricate itself from its recently cosy relationship with Gaddafi, initiated by then prime minister Tony Blair in 2004. That rapprochement saw Libya open its doors to British oil companies in exchange for becoming a new ally in the "war on terror" while Britain sold Gaddafi arms.

Hague's outspoken comments came a day after the government revoked arms export licenses to both Bahrain and Libya for their use of deadly force against protesters calling for a change in the regime.

With internet services in Libya shut off for long periods, foreign journalists excluded and access already blocked to social networking sites, Gaddafi appeared determined to quell a revolt centred in the country's east, which has long suffered a policy of deliberate economic exclusion.

Libya has also jammed the signals of Al-Jazeera, the Arab broadcaster to the country. Reports from inside the country claimed pro-regime forces had deliberately aimed at protesters' heads. ...

Violence in Bahrain and Libya: live updates

• Bahrain: dozens injured as shots fired at protesters
• Libya: reports claim up to 50 killed
• Obama condemns violent attacks on protesters
• Egypt: protesters return to Tahrir Square
• Yemen: crowds demonstrating in Sana'a and Taiz ...

Ali Ismail had helped wash the body of a dead protester for burial and he was already talking of more blood. "We will go to them and they will attack us," he said of Bahrain's riot police. Within hours he was proved correct.

Just after 5.30pm on Friday, central Manama again erupted in gunfire and screaming. Up to 200 demonstrators had attempted to march on Pearl Square, the scene of Thursday morning's savage assault that left three dead. Just over a mile from the central Bahrain landmark, soldiers and police opened fire, killing at least one more protester and leaving 50 others wounded.

"We don't care if they kill 5,000 of us," a protester screamed inside the forecourt of the Salmaniya hospital, which has become a staging point for Bahrain's raging youth. "The regime must fall and we will make sure it does."

Just before dusk, riot police advanced on the hospital, apparently chasing protesters who had attempted to link up with the group bound for Pearl Square. Sound grenades cracked in the distance, gradually getting closer as protesters beat a retreat to the only place in Manama where they now feel safe to gather in numbers.

Within minutes, the bitter scent of tear-gas had wafted into the hospital grounds, sparking panic that the riot police were coming for them there as well. The police backed off and the crowd in the hospital swelled to at least 7,000 people, all of them chanting anti-regime slogans that they would not have dared to utter a month ago.

"Down with the king, down with the Khalifas," they cried, referring to the kingdom's ruling family. Anger among the overwhelmingly Shia Muslim demonstrators towards the Sunni dynasty that has ruled Bahrain for more than 200 years is now virulent.

"They have done nothing for us in the past except discriminate against us," said one nurse, sobbing against a hospital gurney. "Now their new trick is to kill us."

Inside the hospital I saw a young man being wheeled into a makeshift trauma room, which is usually used to conduct angiograms. The gurney was soaked in blood and he had been shot in the head.

"There are at least two bullets. I don't think he will live," said a young doctor as he left the room.

He didn't.

The man's death takes to at least five the number killed during clashes with police since Wednesday. Scores more have been injured. Most of those brought to the emergency ward had wounds from rubber bullets, although at least one youth had a gaping wound to his calf that specialists said was caused by a live round. ...

Violence in Libya and Bahrain has claimed scores of lives and left many more injured as the two Arab countries were united by popular protests that continue to shake the status quo and sound alarm bells across the region and the world.

Just a week after Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, was forced to stand down, dozens of Libyans were reported killed by Muammar Gaddafi's security forces. Meanwhile Bahraini troops shot dead at least one protester and wounded 50 others after mourners had buried four people who were gunned down on Thursday in the worst mass unrest the western-backed Gulf state has ever seen.

"We don't care if they kill 5,000 of us," a protester screamed inside the forecourt of the Salmaniya hospital, which has become a staging point for Bahrain's raging youth. "The regime must fall and we will make sure it does."

Crown Prince Sheikh Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa went on television to promise a national dialogue once calm has returned. But Bahrain's most senior Shia cleric, Sheikh Issa Qassem, condemned attacks on protesters as a "massacre" and said the government had shut the door to such dialogue.

But while the unrest in Bahrain was broadcast instantly around the world, the unprecedented bloodshed in the remote towns of eastern Libya was far harder for global media to cover.

Amid an official news blackout in Libya, there were opposition claims of 60 dead as diplomats reported the use of heavy weapons in Benghazi, the country's second city, and "a rapidly deteriorating situation" in the latest – and the most repressive – Arab country to be hit by serious unrest.

Libyans said a "massacre" had been perpetrated in Benghazi, al-Bayda and elsewhere in the region. Crowds in the port city of Tobruk were shown destroying a statue of Gaddafi's Green Book and chanting "We want the regime to fall," echoing the slogan of the uprising in Egypt.

Umm Muhammad, a political activist in Benghazi, told the Guardian that 38 people had died in the city. "They [security forces] were using live fire here, not just tear gas. This is a bloody massacre – in Benghazi, in al-Bayda, all over Libya. They are releasing prisoners from the jails to attack the demonstrators." Benghazi's al-Jala hospital was appealing for emergency blood supplies to help treat the injured. ...

A BBC journalist was held for 15 hours at Bahrain international airport before having her equipment confiscated, amid radical anti-government protests in the country.

The BBC declined to name the detained producer, but confirmed that she was allowed into the country on Friday after having her equipment – including her mobile phone – confiscated indefinitely.

Bahrain security forces have tightened restrictions on journalists entering the country in the past 24 hours, as tens of thousands of protesters intensify calls for the downfall of the country's ruling monarchy. Hadeel Al-Shalchi, Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, said 16 foreign journalists, including those from the BBC, ABC and CNN, were being held at Bahrain airport on Friday.

Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times columnist, said on Twitter on Thursday: "Bahrain barring journalists from entry at airport. King Hamad doesn't want witnesses to his brutality."

Political unrest has swept across the Middle East this week in the aftermath of last Friday's events in Egypt where president Hosni Mubarak was ousted. Attempts to break up the protests by security forces in Yemen, Libya, and Bahrain have been largely fruitless.

Attempts by Bahrain security forces to obstruct journalists had remained relatively non-violent, but on Friday that situation showed signs of escalating as government forces in a helicopter fired on a reporter and cameraman who were filming the unfolding violence in Manama's Pearl Square, according to the New York Times. There were also reports of sniper fire from rooftops in the square. ...

Riot police firing tear gas and rubber bullets have stormed a landmark square occupied by anti-government protesters in Bahrain's capital Manama, driving out demonstrators and destroying a makeshift encampment that had become the hub for demands to bring sweeping political changes to the kingdom.

The main opposition group Al Wefaq said at least two people were killed in the pre-dawn assault on Pearl Square, which was littered with flattened tents, trampled banners and broken glass. There was no official word on deaths or injuries.

After police regained control of the plaza, they chased protesters through sidestreets and put a ring of vehicles around the area with blue lights flashing in the darkened city just as the dawn call for prayers rang out.

The blow by authorities marked a dramatic shift in tactics. It appeared Bahrain's leaders had sought to rein in security forces after clashes on Monday that left at least two people dead and brought sharp criticism from Western allies, including the US – which operates its main naval base in the Gulf from Bahrain. ...

Three large energy companies have been carrying out covert intelligence-gathering operations on environmental activists, the Guardian can reveal.

The energy giant E.ON, Britain's second-biggest coal producer Scottish Resources Group and Scottish Power, one of the UK's largest electricity-generators, have been paying for the services of a private security firm that has been secretly monitoring activists.

Leaked documents show how the security firm's owner, Rebecca Todd, tipped off company executives about environmentalists' plans after snooping on their emails. She is also shown instructing an agent to attend campaign meetings and coaching him on how to ingratiate himself with activists. The disclosures come as police chiefs, on the defensive over damaging revelations of undercover police officers in the protest movement, privately claim that there are more corporate spies in protest groups than undercover police officers.

Senior police officers complain that spies hired by commercial firms are – unlike their own agents – barely regulated.

Sir Hugh Orde, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, which until recently ran the secretive national unit of undercover police officers deployed in protest groups, said in a speech last week that "the deployment by completely uncontrolled and unrestrained players in the private sector" constituted a "massive area of concern".

Revelations about Mark Kennedy and three other undercover police officers in protest groups caused a furore last month and led to four official inquiries into their activities.

Now a Guardian investigation has shed new light on the surveillance of green campaigners by private security firms whose intrusive operations include posing as activists on mailing lists and infiltrating full-time agents into campaign groups over many years. ...

At 8.04pm, an agent using the conspicuous alias Vandango007 received an email setting out the details of his deployment. The message had come from Rebecca Todd, chief executive of Vericola, a company spying on environmental campaigners on behalf of some of Europe's largest power companies.

It was September 2009, and green activists involved in the Climate Camp network were planning a major demonstration against Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire, owned by one of Todd's clients, the energy company E.ON. A meeting to plan the protest was being held at London's SOAS university, and Todd wanted someone on the inside.

"Hola Carlos," she wrote to Vandango007 – whose real name is Carl Bishop – in an email providing details of the rendezvous. "It should only last 2 hours … same people that you have met before."

Todd, 33, gave Bishop tips on how to explain his recent absence from the group. "Apologise for delay in getting back to them – you have had girlfriend issues!!!! That sounds better than family or work issues!!!" She added: "Use your own wording – do your own thing be yourself. Do not mention that your [sic] going to Munich – obviously they hate short haul flights." She signed off the email: "Over and out!"

The email was one of dozens of Vericola communications leaked to the Guardian as part of the ongoing investigation into surveillance of the protest movement.

Much of the evidence was gathered by environmental activists, who have been quietly investigating suspicious activities in their movement.

The disclosures come after four inquiries were launched into undercover police activities after a month of revelations concerning undercover officer Mark Kennedy and three other police spies.

Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, which ran the secret police unit Kennedy worked for, said he was "staggered" that espionage conducted in the private sector had not prompted similar outrage. In a speech last week he highlighted "the deployment by completely uncontrolled and unrestrained players in the private sector".

Privately, senior officers claim there are "without question" more corporate spies embedded in the protest movement than police officers. Among their number are former police officers cashing in on their surveillance skills for a host of companies that target protesters. ...

A juror in a controversial trial of environmental activists has castigated police for withholding covert recordings that he said could have led to them being declared not guilty.

Jezz Davis, 39, a construction worker, took the rare step of speaking out after hearing revelations that Nottinghamshire police allegedly suppressed surveillance tapes of activists convicted of conspiring to shut down one of Britain's biggest power stations for a week.

He told the Guardian the police's behaviour was "outrageous" and "corrupt" and left him "feeling betrayed by the British judicial system".

His criticism is likely to intensify the disquiet about police conduct in the trial. Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, has ordered an investigation into the safety of the convictions, while the Independent Police Complaints Commission is scrutinising the police's alleged failure to disclose the tapes to court.

Mark Kennedy, the 41-year-old undercover officer who infiltrated the environmental movement for seven years, says he secretly recorded a private meeting of the activists before the planned invasion of the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire. He is alleged to have played a key role in organising the planned break-in of the power station for four months.

Davis told the Guardian that there was "no question" that the tapes should have been heard in court. "When called for jury service, you assume with good faith that all relevant evidence will be presented. The absence of potentially verdict-changing evidence is utterly outrageous."

"It just exposes the corruption in what is meant to be the system that you trust, that you place your faith in to do things by the book. They are the law. If you can't trust the law, who can you trust ?"

He said revelations about Kennedy's activities – which emerged after the trial – "turned everything on its head", as it became clear police knew through their spy about the planned action long before "but did nothing about it". He said it amounted to "prolonged entrapment".

The jury delivered guilty verdicts on the 20 activists in December after a trial lasting more than three weeks. The activists had relied on a legal strategy – known as "necessity", in which they admitted they were conspiring to shut the power station but said they did so to prevent death and serious injury caused by carbon dioxide emissions and climate change. The prosecution argued that the activists were lying and were intending to pull off a publicity stunt.

The activists, who are seeking to overturn their criminal convictions, say Kennedy's tapes would have supported their case in court as their intentions, recorded at the private meeting before the planned break-in, would rebut the prosecution's position. ...

The reopened police investigation into phone hacking by News of the World journalists has identified a number of new potential victims, including Lord Prescott, the former deputy prime minister, the Guardian has learned.

Just a fortnight after reopening their inquiry, in the wake of an 18-month campaign by the Guardian, police said a re-examination of the evidence they had held for years, but failed to fully investigate, combined with new evidence from the Sunday tabloid, had thrown up an "important and immediate new line of inquiry". The new investigation, they said, had already established "reasonable evidence" that up to 20 people, mainly prominent public figures, were targeted by the paper.

The development represents Scotland Yard finally beginning to take the lid off the phone-hacking scandal. More than five years after they first started to investigate the illegal interception of voicemail messages by a private investigator working for the News of the World, the Met announced that its new inquiry would:

• Review all the decisions made by their two previous inquiries.

• Contact thousands of public figures who have never been told that their personal details were recorded by the private investigator.

• Warn some public figures that they had previously been misled when they asked the Yard for information.

Police had been dismissive of Prescott's suspicions that he had been targeted, but the head of the new investigation, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers, saw Prescott on Wednesday. He was told that invoices recovered by police showed he was targeted by Glenn Mulcaire, the private eye used by the NoW, who was an expert in phone hacking. They also have notes made by Mulcaire about Prescott, who as deputy prime minister was in possession of highly sensitive information. After his briefing by the police chief, Prescott told the Guardian that previous police investigations had been "completely inadequate".

The new evidence is understood to show that Prescott was targeted in April 2006, the month he admitted to having an affair with his diary secretary Tracey Temple. In a statement Prescott told the Guardian: "I can confirm that at her request I met Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers today. She informed me that significant new evidence relating to phone hacking and myself had been discovered and that they were investigating it. I think this proves my long-held belief that the original Met police investigation into Mulcaire and News International was completely inadequate and failed to follow all the evidence. I now look forward to the Met police finally uncovering the truth." ...

Undercover policing operations should be authorised in advance by a judge, the head of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) said today.

Sir Hugh Orde, the Acpo president, said the change was needed to restore public confidence in the system after concerns about the role played by the ex-Metropolitan police constable Mark Kennedy, who spent seven years posing as an environmental activist.

Orde said the benefits of judicial oversight of future operations would "far outweigh the additional administrative burden".

Speaking at a policing seminar held by the human rights group Liberty in central London, he said: "The current system of retrospective inspection is, in my judgment, no longer sufficient to secure the confidence of right thinking people that such interference with citizens' rights – with its foreseeable collateral intrusion on many – is appropriate.

"Therefore, the solution must take the form of some independent pre-authority that is already a common feature in other areas of policing in this country.

"It is not for me to suggest the level or form, but I do believe that an additional element of judicial oversight, in keeping with our traditions of accountability to the rule of law, need not be over-bureaucratic and the benefit would far outweigh the additional administrative burden."

Control of the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), to which undercover officer Kennedy belonged, was transferred from Acpo to Scotland Yard last Monday. ...

The security services were unable to identify the ringleader of a terrorist gang before it struck London on 7 July 2005, despite having his picture and having seen him associating with other terrorist suspects, the inquest into the 52 deaths heard today.

Mohammad Sidique Khan was spotted by MI5 on the periphery of another terror plot as early as 2003, and was seen with suspected terrorists. Khan was groomed through contact with other suspected terrorists progressing from "an associate of terrorists to prime conspirator and murderer", said Hugo Keith QC, counsel to the inquests, in a statement assessing whether the attacks could have been prevented.

Security services did not believe Khan was a high priority and did not connect different pieces of information relating to him, including training at terrorist camps and having an interest in "martyrdom operations". Various sources pointed towards an individual in the West Yorkshire area, but the authorities never uncovered Khan's full name until he led the biggest mass murder on UK soil.

Several different men linked to different terrorism plots were shown photographs of Khan before the attacks, but they failed to recognise him. Khan was also linked to a number of different vehicles – a blue BMW, a green Honda Civic, and a green Vauxhall Astra – used to hold or travel to meetings with suspected terrorist ringleaders.

Keith told Lady Justice Hallett, who is sitting as the coroner: "One issue that my lady may need to explore, in particular with the security service, is whether it is fair to say that the threads of Mohammad Sidique Khan's graduation from an associate of terrorists to prime conspirator and murderer were in fact there to see.

"Was it simply a question of tying threads together? And that process, the process of tying those threads together, should, it may be argued, be carried out, not only as part of an investigation into those who may already have formed their plans, but also by aggressive investigation of those who may be in the process of radicalisation." ...

Explosive- and drug-sniffing dog performance is affected by their handlers' beliefs
UC Davis study finds detection dogs may exhibit the 'Clever Hans' effect
Phyllis Brown
University of California - Davis Health System
31-Jan-2011

Drug- and explosives-sniffing dog/handler teams' performance is affected by human handlers' beliefs, possibly in response to subtle, unintentional handler cues, a study by researchers at UC Davis has found.

The study, published in the January issue of the journal Animal Cognition, found that detection-dog/handler teams erroneously "alerted," or identified a scent, when there was no scent present more than 200 times — particularly when the handler believed that there was scent present.

"It isn't just about how sensitive a dog's nose is or how well-trained a dog is. There are cognitive factors affecting the interaction between a dog and a handler that can impact the dog's performance," said Lisa Lit, a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Neurology and the study's lead author.

"These might be as important — or even more important — than the sensitivity of a dog's nose."

To evaluate the effects of handler beliefs and expectations on detection-dog performance, the researchers recruited 18 handler-detection dog teams from law-enforcement agencies. All of the teams were certified by an agency for either drug detection, explosives detection or both drug and explosives detection.

The dogs all were trained to either alert passively at the location of a scent by sitting or laying down; alert actively by barking; or by doing both. The teams included 14 male dogs and four female dogs, including Labrador retrievers, Belgian Malinois, German Shepherd dogs and Dutch Shepherd dogs. The dogs' level of experience ranged from two to seven years. Their human partners had as many as 18 years of dog-handling experience.

The setting for the study was a church — selected because it was unlikely to have contained either explosives or drugs in the past — where neither the dogs nor the handlers had been before. The researchers created four separate rooms for the dogs to examine or "clear."

The handlers were told that there might be up to three of their target scents in each room, and that there would be a piece of red construction paper in two of the rooms that identified the location of the target scent. However, there were no target scents — explosives or drugs — placed in any of the rooms.

Each room represented a different experimental condition or scenario:

* There was one room where the experimenter did nothing — she walked in and walked out;
* In one room she had taped a piece of red construction paper to a cabinet;
* She had placed decoy scents, two sausages and two tennis balls hidden together out of view, in one of the rooms;
* She had placed a piece of red construction paper at the location of hidden decoy scents, two sausages and two tennis balls, in the last room.

The dog-handler teams conducted two separate five-minute searches of each room. When handlers believed their dogs had alerted, indicated a target scent, an observer recorded the location indicated by handlers. Search orders were counterbalanced; that is, all teams searched the rooms in a different order.

Although there should have been no alerts in any of the rooms, there were alerts in all rooms. Moreover, there were more alerts at the locations indicated by construction paper than at either of the locations containing just the decoy scents or at any other locations. ...

Tax avoidance protesters needed hospital treatment today after police used CS spray to break up a demonstration on Oxford Street in central London.

Hundreds of people staged peaceful sit-ins at high street stores around the country as part of the latest UK Uncut day of action, designed to highlight companies it says are avoiding millions of pounds in tax.

In London protesters had successfully closed down Boots in Oxford Street – one of the companies campaigners accuse of tax avoidance – when police tried to arrest a woman for pushing a leaflet through the store's doors. Other demonstrators tried to stop the arrest and at least one police officer used CS spray, which hospitalised three people.

Jed Weightman, one of those who went to hospital, said protesters had joined hands to try and prevent the arrest.

"One police officer sprayed towards us and because I was tall I got a lot of it in my face," he said. "My eyes were streaming and I couldn't see anything."

Earlier this week Sir Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said police could adopt more extreme tactics to counter the growing wave of protests, and hinted that UK Uncut demonstrators could face criminal and civil charges if they invaded shops during today's protests.

Activists reacted angrily to yesterday's events, claiming the police had been "heavy handed and disproportionate."

Anna Williams, who saw the incident, said: "This is yet another example of political policing that is about protecting corporate interests and not those of ordinary people ... We have a right to protest when the government are making unnecessary cuts that will hit the poorest in our society the hardest."

Protesters said staff at Boots had been shocked by the police tactics, and took those who were suffering from the effects of CS spray into the store and offered them free eye wash.

"The staff at Boots were fantastic and took us inside and gave us free treatment," said Gordon Maloney, 20, one of the other protesters who was hit by the CS spray. "My eyes were really streaming and my face hurt but I was most struck by the violence used by the police. I have been on a lot of demonstrations and have not seen anything like this before." ...

Police brutality in Egypt is "routine and pervasive" and the use of torture so widespread that the Egyptian government has stopped denying it exists, according to leaked cables released today by WikiLeaks.

The batch of US embassy cables paint a despairing portrait of a police force and security service in Egypt wholly out of control. They suggest torture is routinely used against ordinary criminals, Islamist detainees, opposition activists and bloggers.

"The police use brutal methods mostly against common criminals to extract confessions, but also against demonstrators, certain political prisoners and unfortunate bystanders. One human rights lawyer told us there is evidence of torture in Egypt dating back to the time of the pharoahs. NGO contacts estimate there are literally hundreds of torture incidents every day in Cairo police stations alone," one cable said.

Under Hosni Mubarak's presidency there had been "no serious effort to transform the police from an instrument of regime power into a public service institution", it said. The police's ubiquitous use of force had pervaded Egyptian culture to such an extent that one popular TV soap opera recently featured a police detective hero who beat up suspects to collect evidence.

Some middle-class Egyptians did not report thefts from their apartment blocks because they knew the police would immediately go and torture "all of the doormen", the cable added. It cited one source who said the police would use routinely electric shocks against suspected criminals, and would beat up human rights lawyers who enter police stations to defend their clients. Women detainees allegedly faced sexual abuse. Demoralised officers felt solving crimes justified brutal interrogation methods, with some believing that Islamic law also sanctioned torture, the cable said. ...

The convictions of 20 environmental campaigners involved in a protest at Britain's second largest coal-fired power station are to be reviewed less than two weeks after they were sentenced.

The urgent investigation by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) into the safety of the convictions was welcomed by one of the activists, Ben Stewart, a Greenpeace employee who branded the trial a miscarriage of justice.

The CPS decision follows revelations in the Guardian about the role of PC Mark Kennedy, allegedly at the centre of a £250,000-a-year undercover operationwithin the climate change movement. Under the name Mark Stone the former Metropolitan police officer infiltrated environmental groups across Europe.

The demonstrators were convicted of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass at the coal-fired Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire. ...

Scotland Yard reopened its investigation into phone hacking today – four years after the only convictions in the case – after the News of the World passed on "significant new information" alleged to implicate one of the paper's top executives in the practice.

Shortly afterwards the paper announced that it had sacked its assistant editor (news), Ian Edmondson. This came hard on the heels of the arrival in London of its proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, said to be in town to deal with both the phone-hacking scandal that has engulfed the paper and his corporation's bid to take complete control of BSkyB.

The sacking, and the new police investigation, come after 18 months of Guardian reports into allegations of widespread phone hacking at the News of the World.

Until shortly before Christmas the paper had always alleged that only one rogue reporter and a private investigator were involved in the practice, and the police had repeatedly insisted that there was no evidence available to link any other News Corporation employees with hacking.

Tonight a source close to the new police investigation said the latest evidence passed to the Metropolitan police so far amounted to only a small number of emails, although detectives believe there may be many more.

"It's hard to believe these are the only ones. There may be a shedload of shit still to come," said one source. ...

The international row over undercover police officer Mark Kennedy escalated tonight after the full scope of his activities were revealed in a secret sitting at the German parliament.

Germany's federal police chief, Jörg Ziercke, was forced to admit to MPs at the Bundestag that not only had Kennedy had a long-term lover in Berlin – in direct violation of a law forbidding police officers to have sexual relationships while undercover – but that he had been invited to Germany by the authorities to infiltrate the anti-fascist movement.

Ziercke also revealed that Kennedy, the Metropolitan police officer at the centre of a controversy over the infiltration of peaceful environmental groups across Europe, worked for three German states during at least five visits to the country between 2004 and 2009.

He said the agent committed at least two crimes, but the cases against him were dropped at the behest of German authorities who knew Kennedy's true identity.

Kennedy first broke the law during protests at Heiligendamm, the town near Rostock where the G8 meetings took place in 2007. He later committed arson, Der Spiegel said, during a demonstration in Berlin at which he set fire to containers.

The revelations are published today in Der Spiegel, which says Kennedy's involvement in criminal activity during his time in Germany highlights concerns that he was working as an agent provocateur and not just an observer of the activists.

In addition, the newspaper says, the fact that investigations into both crimes were shelved suggests police authorities wielded an unacceptable influence over the country's judicial process. ...

The government will respond today to revelations that police spent millions of pounds running a network of undercover spies in the environmental protest movement.

Home Office minister Nick Herbert will be questioned by MPs about Mark Kennedy, who spent seven years living as an activist. Kennedy claims he has been "hung out to dry" by his handlers, makes numerous criticisms of the operation and admits to sexual relations with activists.

He also alleges that secret surveillance tapes would have exonerated six activists accused of breaking into a power station. He accuses senior officers of suppressing the tapes, a move that could have resulted in a serious miscarriage of justice.

Herbert, who has responsibility for policing, will appear before the home affairs select committee to answer questions on police financing. Members of the committee, including the Labour chair, Keith Vaz, are planning to question him over Kennedy. A programme to plant spies in the protest movement is now estimated to have cost £15m over the last decade.

Kennedy denies claims by activists that he was an agent provocateur in protests, including the attempt to break into Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in 2009. He insists all of his activities were scrutinised and "sanctioned" by his superiors. ...

...it was some years before I heard he had been an informer. I was left feeling rather grubby, and rueing my taste in men. Yet I never thought that he had specifically targeted me, or that anything I said had been of particular use to his police handlers.

A far greater betrayal came in the form of Joy Harnden, another spy in my organisation, the End Conscription Campaign. We weren't particularly close but I remember being impressed by her dedication and intimate knowledge of the workings of the apartheid state. (Odd that.) I recall one conversation when she pumped me for personal information about a housemate who had recently been released from police detention. I should have noticed something was amiss, but I admired Joy and was pleased to spend time with her.

I later learned that she was a lieutenant in the security police and was responsible for the death of at least one ANC comrade. It still makes me feel sick. She changed her name and lived in Scotland for a while, and sometimes I fantasise about tracking her down and confronting her.

But it didn't cross my mind to take legal action against the police over any of this. After all, it was South Africa in the 1980s and we were trying to overthrow the state. We expected it. But it's not what I would expect if I was protesting against climate change in Britain today.

Twenty environmental activists are seeking to overturn recent criminal convictions in the wake of the Guardian's revelations about a network of undercover police officers embedded deep in the movement.

Lawyers for the group claim that a failure to disclose the role of covert police operative Mark Kennedy during their trial may have led to a miscarriage of justice and have written to the Crown Prosecution Service demanding details of his role.

Six other activists walked free from court earlier this week after their lawyer, Mike Schwarz, demanded details of the part played by Kennedy in planning the environmental protest they took part in at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, near Nottingham, in 2009.

However, last month, in a separate trial, the 20 green campaigners were convicted of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass during the same protest, after failing to convince a jury that their actions were designed to prevent immediate harm to human life and property from climate change.

"The police allowed this trial, unlike the later one, to run all the way to conviction," said Schwarz, whose firm, Bindmans, represents both groups of protesters. "In the light of events last week, this must be seen as a potential miscarriage of justice."

Revelations of PC Kennedy's activities by the Guardian this week have triggered a crisis in undercover policing. He is alleged to have played a central role in organising a proposal to break into the power station.

Kennedy used the fake identity "Mark Stone" to live for seven years in the protest movement, infiltrating activist groups in 22 countries. He had sexual relationships with a number of women. He also revealed the identity of another undercover officer to fellow activists, leading to a security operation this week as police tried to ensure all their undercover officers were safe.

An investigation into the collapse of the trial of the six activists is expected to be launched shortly by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. The body is also considering widening its inquiry to take into account whether or not Kennedy acted as an agent provocateur during his years undercover. A further review into the wider undercover operation and those organising it may also follow. ...

... The woman who said she had had a sexual relationship with Kennedy now lives abroad and wants to be known only by her first name, Anna. She said she had sex more than 20 times with the undercover officer about five years ago, including at his house in Nottingham, when she was aged just 21. They met at protests around Europe, and it seemed clear to her that Kennedy was "seeing other women" around the same time. "I'm not sure personally if I would be willing to take part in an inquiry that touched on our sexual relationship," she said. "If the Met knew that this was going on, then obviously they should reveal this. There should be an inquiry into whether this is legal."

Kennedy, who joined the police in about 1994, is known to have had a wife and children before going undercover. There have also been unconfirmed reports that Kennedy had a long-term relationship with a woman in Nottingham while posing as an activist.

Questions over the ethics of the Kennedy operation have already been raised in Germany, where the MP Andrej Hunko has tabled questions asking whether authorities authorised the undercover officer to have "sexual relationships" in the country.

A Guardian investigation revealed on Monday that Kennedy had used a fake passport to travel to 22 different countries while posing as a campaigner, earning the trust of activists and feeding back intelligence to his commanders. ...

Police have asked the government for a new counter-terrorism power to stop and search people without having to suspect them of involvement in crime, the Guardian has learned.

Senior officers have told the government the new law is needed to better protect the public against attempted attacks on large numbers of people, and are hopeful they can win ministers' backing.

A previous law allowing counter-terrorism stops without suspicion, section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, was scrapped this year by the home secretary, Theresa May, after European judges struck it down for breaching human rights.

But police, including the Metropolitan force, which leads the UK fight against terrorism, say they need a boost to their counter-terrorism powers, which they worry are now too weak. ...

Manchester police's £80,000 eye in the sky on the blink due to wet weather
'Covert' surveillance balloon sold off after being repeatedly grounded by bad weather
Helen Carter
Thursday 11 November 2010

A "covert" police surveillance balloon has been scrapped because it could not cope with the wet weather in Manchester.

The helium eagle eye blimp – which had "police'' emblazoned across it in 10ft letters – was used to secretly monitor people from the air at large-scale events. It cost the Greater Manchester force £80,000.

The balloon was first trialled at last summer's Heaton Park Oasis gigs and during 17 other large outdoor events, including football matches.

But it was mothballed after its outer skin repeatedly ripped during rain. A police source said it had become something of a joke. The blimp, which was unmanned, had a camera mounted beneath it that could turn 360 degrees with a one-mile range.

The £80,000 cost included camera equipment and the vehicle that transported the balloon and which operated as a studio where five officers viewed footage. It was given a low-key launch by officers who described it as a "covert intelligence tool" despite its colossal size and large police logo.

The balloon was expected to carry out a similar role to the force helicopter, India 99, but with the advantage it did not have to return to its base to refuel.

Police chiefs admit it has been a huge disappointment. It was beset by "technical problems" and was becoming too expensive to maintain.

It has now been sold at a loss, but the force was unable to confirm the precise figure. One officer said: "It has become something of a joke. It just became too expensive to maintain and its operational effectiveness was questionable."

Another source said: "The idea was good and it worked well in good weather. It started to encounter problems really in bad weather."

The head of Greater Manchester police's specialist operations branch, Chief Superintendent Dave Anthony, said: "We experienced a number of technical and other problems with the blimp and it was decided, especially in the current climate, that it was neither cost effective nor operationally viable to maintain.

... Detroit filed a motion in federal court Tuesday seeking to recoup $10 million it paid former Police Department monitor Sheryl Robinson Wood and the firms who employed her to oversee federally mandated department reforms, because Wood was found to have been carrying on a secret relationship with Kilpatrick.

"She violated the city's trust, and all the money needs to be repaid," said attorney Thomas Murray, who is representing the city.

In July 2009, U.S. District Judge Julian Abele Cook received Wood's resignation after Kilpatrick's messages revealed what Cook characterized as "undisclosed communication, as well as meetings of a personal nature."

University of Detroit Mercy law professor Larry Dubin said it appears the city has a serious claim. "A lawyer has a duty to give the client or the court undivided loyalty." ...

... after receiving a $90 speeding ticket in Bluff City, Tennessee, Brian McCrary discovered a third option. The Bluff City Police Department had forgotten to renew their domain name, BluffCityPD.com, and let it expire. McCrary bought the domain name for $80 and posted his side of the story with information about speed traps in Bluff City and the $250,000 per month they cost the town’s 1,500 residents.

The police department had no idea their domain name had expired and that McCrary owned it until reporters started calling them to ask about it. Bluff City Police Chief David Nelson said they may approach McCrary about buying the domain back from him, but they are not optimistic.

McCrary’s goal is to get enough attention to put pressure on the local government to remove the traffic enforcement cameras in Bluff City.



Ta much, dear MSiegel

Tredegar terror - Weeping residents angry at MP and police
Published: Saturday | August 14, 2010
Arthur Hall and Rasbert Turner, Gleaner Reporters

THE GRIEF was evident, and the tears flowed freely as residents of Tredegar Park, St Catherine, responded to the killing of eight of their neighbours yesterday morning.

But what was more evident was the anger, as the residents claimed that they had been abandoned by the security forces and their political representatives and left to the mercy of heartless criminals.

With five men and three females, including an 11-year-old girl dead, the residents of the east central St Catherine community had reason to mourn. ...

... The residents reported that about 12:30 yesterday morning, explosions were heard in the area.

On investigation, the residents saw a group of men numbering between 15 and 20, dressed in dark-coloured clothing, firing shots into a number of houses before setting fire to at least two premises.

According to residents, calls to the police went unanswered as the gunmen went on a rampage that lasted for between 30 and 45 minutes.

"As anything happen, the police come round here, but when gunmen come kill wi aff, wi caan si any police," said a young woman, as the tears streamed down her cheeks.

"Let this be a warning to all of you that we have to come together to protect each other because the police and soldiers nah protect we," said an obviously angry young man.

"If you did think we have any MP (member of Parliament) or police to protect wi, you can see wi nuh have none now. You nuh see all now the MP nuh reach yah so," the young man added angrily. ...

Wrong again! Man 'killed' by police still on the run
Published: Saturday | August 14, 2010
Arthur Hall, Senior Staff Reporter

ANOTHER POLICE report has been called into question less than three weeks after the police information arm was left with egg on its face when a private video recording contradicted its report about the circumstances surrounding the fatal shooting of a man in Buckfield, St Ann.

Early yesterday morning, the police claimed that they had engaged the gunmen who had killed eight persons in Tredegar Park, St Catherine, and fatally shot two of the men in the section of the community known as Brooklyn.

According to the police, the dead gunmen were identified as Kevin, otherwise called 'Bilbo', and Jerome Williams, otherwise called 'Crab', both members of the Clansman gang, which operates in Spanish Town.

But hours later, residents disputed the police reports and compounded this by identifying the two dead persons.

The residents identified one of the victims as 15-year-old Derrick Anthony Bolton, otherwise called 'Crabby'. The other victim was identified as Lemone Turner, otherwise called 'Frenchman'.

"Crabby is my son who is a dancer who stay in Brooklyn and practise him dancing, so me tell him not to come home until in the morning," Geraldien Williams, his mother, told The Gleaner.

"The police dem hold him and dem ask him what the people call him, and him say Crabby, and dem say a him shoot the people a Tredegar Park, and a so dem kill him. It was a case of mistaken identity," Williams argued.

Other residents were most upset that the police could have mistaken the young Crabby for the alleged gangster known as Crab who was recently released from state custody.

"The police dem should a know say a nuh him name Crab, and dem should a never kill the youth," an angry resident said. ...

FEDERAL BUREAU of Investigations (FBI) director, Robert Mueller, told Congress yesterday that he does not know how many of his agents cheated on an important test about the limitations of the bureau's powers to conduct surveillance and open cases without evidence that a crime has been committed.

The Justice Department inspector general (IG) is investigating whether hundreds of FBI agents cheated on the test, a brewing scandal that could be further embarrassment for the FBI as it continues cleaning up after years of collecting phone records without court approval. Asked by Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat, about an Associated Press report on the cheating, Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee he didn't know the exact number of agents involved. ...

Vital leads 'ignored' in Natalya Estemirova murder investigation
One year on, many observers suspect cover-up over Russian human rights campaigner's murder in Chechnya
Tom Parfitt in Moscow
Wednesday 14 July 2010

... Investigators now say they have solved Estemirova's murder, finding she was killed by a boyevik (rebel fighter) called Alkhazur Bashayev from Shalazhi village in central Chechnya. Bashayev was allegedly upset by reports Estemirova wrote about his armed group for the Russian human rights organisation Memorial, whose office she headed in Grozny.

This theory rests on investigators' claims earlier this year that they had found a rebel arms cache in Shalazhi including the pistol used in the killing, a car fitting descriptions of that used to kidnap Estemirova, part of a silencer in the boot of the car which fitted the pistol, and then the owner of the car, who said he had sold it to Bashayev.

Bashayev – too conveniently, say critics – cannot be questioned because he was killed in a shootout with security forces last autumn.

In fact, many observers suspect a cover-up. They think Estemirova, known to friends as Natasha, was killed for the reports she wrote on wayward law enforcement agencies – perhaps even those filed in the days before her death.

One report described how officers in the police department of Chechnya's Kurchaloy district had publicly executed Rizvan Albekov, an unarmed man suspected of helping the rebels, on 7 July.

"Natasha must have struggled with her captors because investigators obtained DNA samples of three people from under her fingernails," said Milashina. "Why have no samples been taken from the police officers in Kurchaloy for comparative study?"

Critics say there are other glaring errors: Estemirova never visited Shalazhi or wrote about Bashayev; and investigators have not questioned any of the witnesses who saw her being kidnapped near her home in Grozny.

Oleg Orlov, the head of Memorial, said investigators must seek Estemirova's killers among those she exposed.

"Above all, the investigation needs to determine who were the guilty parties in the crimes that Natasha was examining," he said. "So far, they have not looked at a single case she handled in the year she died."

... Jamaat-e-Islami has a large following among the country’s majority, and mostly illiterate, Muslim population. But as a political party it ranks fourth after the Awami League of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of ex-premier Begum Khaleda Zia and the Jatiya Party led by former army ruler Hossain Mohammed Ershad.
Police arrested the three top Jamaat leaders after another religious group, the Bangladesh Tarikat Federation, filed a court case in March, saying two had compared the Jamaat party chief with Prophet Muhammad.
In Islam, Muhammad is beyond comparison. Police named the arrested leaders as Jamaat chief Moulana Motiur Rahman Nizami, his deputy Ali Ahsan Mohammed Mujahid and another key party leader, Moulana Delwar Hossain Saidee.
Jamaat said around 25 other party members were detained in police in overnight raids in various districts.
Many Bangladeshis accuse Jamaat of collaborating with the Pakistani army during the 1971 war of independence, in which around three million people were killed and thousands of women raped.
Jamaat denies the charges, and in turn has accused the government of Sheikh Hasina of trying to curb its activities using war crime charges and is likely to see the arrests as a ploy to push that effort.
Police using clubs, tear gas and water cannon were also locked in street battles with textile workers demanding back pay and an immediate rise in monthly wages now equivalent to less than $24. Witnesses said at least 30 people, including 10 police, were injured.
The clashes, with workers erecting street barricades, pelting police with stones and attacking cars, were the second in as many weeks involving workers producing garments for global brands and earning wages well below the poverty line.
The violence took place three days after a one-day general strike called by opposition parties closed most businesses and prompted further confrontations between marchers and police.
Bangladesh garment factory workers currently earn a minimum monthly salary of 1,660 taka, or less than $24, and have demanded an increase of 300% to 5,000 taka. Owners last week said they could pay no more than 3,000 taka a month.
Garments, Bangladesh’s biggest export, account for more than 80% of the impoverished South Asian country’s $15bn in annual export earnings, according to Commerce Ministry data. ...



Dear BrightKnight hipped me to this news story.

Police in Bangladesh have used clubs, tear gas and water cannons to disperse thousands of textile workers protesting low wages in capital city Dhaka.

The clashes erupted Wednesday in the Mirpur and Sheorapara areas of the capital, forcing several factories to close down. Authorities say the protesters erected street barricades and hurled bricks at police.

Witnesses say at least 40 people, including police officers, were injured in the violence.

The unrest is the latest in a series of violent protests involving low-paid workers producing garments for global brands. Garment factories accounted for 80 percent of Bangladesh's annual export earnings last year.

Supporters of the Islamic party Jamaat-e-Islami took to the streets on Wednesday to protest the arrests of three of their leaders the day before. At least 20 people were detained during the demonstrations in Dhaka and other parts of the country. ...



Dear BrightKnight hipped me to this news story.

Arrests made amidst violent G20 protests
By Ashley Terry, Linda Nguyen and Mark Kennedy
Canwest News Service June 27, 2010 12:06 AM

TORONTO — Riot police arrested more than a hundred G20 protesters who rampaged through the city’s downtown core burning police cars and smashing windows on Saturday.

A small group of black-clad protesters were surrounded at a downtown intersection around 10 p.m. ET.

A police line in full riot gear began marching at the group, banging their batons on their shields, in hopes of preventing more protesters from moving towards the G20 security fence still located blocks away.

The mood was tense as a small number of protesters yelled obscenities. Helicopters could be heard overhead.

The officers loudly chanted: “Move, move,” as they marched.

One older man was pushed by police out of the way as he was seeking shelter from the pouring rain. ...

Media covering G20 caught up in arrests
Canwest News Service June 27, 2010 1:02 AM

TORONTO — Two National Post photographers were arrested Saturday night during anti-G20 demonstrations in downtown Toronto.

Brent Gundlock, a staff photographer for the Post, was tackled and taken away by several police officers in riot gear as they attempted to disperse protesters hanging around near the Ontario legislature.

Kier Gilmour, a photographer for Canwest News Service who witnessed the arrest, said the officers knocked Gundlock to the ground and then dragged him away. He had been standing with several other media photographers at the time.

"They slammed him down, onto his ass so to speak, then they dragged him back up and pulled him back to the police line," Gilmour said.

He said the photographer was not wearing his yellow media credentials at the time. He had taken the badge off because he was trying to stay close to members of the Black Bloc — the anarchist group believed to be behind many of the outbreaks of violence at the demonstrations — and they did not want members of the media among them.

Colin O’Connor, a freelance photographer working for the Post, was also apparently detained.

Gilmour said the police were being very aggressive in trying to disperse the remaining demonstrators near Queen’s Park, which is several blocks away from the secure zone where the G20 meeting is taking place. ...

Posted: May 21, 2010
Raid footage in hands of State Police TV crew
BY JIM SCHAEFER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

The production company for the TV crew that was with Detroit police when an officer's gun went off, killing 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones, said it has turned over its footage to Michigan State Police.

The crew following the Detroit Police Special Response Team early Sunday shot footage from outside the house only, according to a statement released Thursday on behalf of ITV Studios, which produces "The First 48" for A&E.

Earlier this week, a person familiar with the case told the Free Press that the film crew had turned over its video to Detroit police on Sunday.

A second source told the Free Press on Thursday that the tape turned over to Detroit police was a copy of the original. The film crew, though, had a second camera operator at the raid who did not surrender footage Sunday. In the days since the shooting, copies of footage from both cameras were turned over to the State Police.

The girl was shot in the neck during the raid after an officer threw a flash-bang grenade through the window of her east-side duplex. Police say the gun went off accidentally when a cop came in contact with the girl's grandmother. The grandmother denies any contact.

Detroit attorney Herschel Fink, who is representing ITV, said the footage turned over to State Police is not the footage referenced by Geoffrey Fieger, the lawyer for the girl's family. Fink also frequently represents the Free Press in First Amendment and other legal matters.

State Police "have the ITV footage, but ITV was not the source of the footage supposedly shown to the attorney for the family," Fink said. ...

May 22, 2010
Aiyana Jones murder turns spotlight on a nation hooked on reality TV
Giles Whittell in Washington

When police scooped up the limp body of Aiyana Jones, 7, last Sunday night they promised her father that she would be all right. They were wrong. She was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital, the victim of a police Swat team member being filmed for a reality TV show.

Miss Jones went to sleep for the last time under the front window of her parents’ flat on Detroit’s violent and impoverished east side. A police bullet killed her later that night. The porch outside is now festooned with flowers, teddy bears and “you will be missed” balloons.

Her body went on display yesterday at a nearby funeral parlour. She will be eulogised at her funeral today by the Rev Al Sharpton, with the Rev Jesse Jackson in attendance — figures from an era of racial politics that millions of Americans hoped to consign to history two years ago by voting for Barack Obama.

Six days after police burst into the Jones’s flat — the wrong flat — Miss Jones’s death has acquired the dimensions of a national scandal. Black leaders in Washington have demanded a federal investigation into the use of paramilitary police units in poor neighbourhoods.

A white Republican candidate for governor of Michigan has condemned Mr Sharpton’s appearance at the funeral as disgusting. The family’s lawyer has accused police of a cover-up. All are being forced to confront the issue of whether the murder has been turned into entertainment for a nation addicted to reality TV.

There were 379 murders in Detroit last year alone. Miss Jones’s killing may yet be ruled manslaughter but it is her death that has focused national attention on “ridealong” TV crews and Detroit violence.

Police claim that she was struck by a bullet in the neck after her grandmother jostled a Swat team officer who was inside the flat with a search warrant for a separate murder hunt. The family’s lawyer insists that the only shot was fired from outside the building, and claims to have seen videotape that proves it.

No one denies the existence of the tape: it was shot by a film crew following the Swat team for “The First 48, a reality series for the A & E network that focuses on the crucial first two days of murder investigations. A Supreme Court ruling bars the media from following police inside private homes, forcing the crew to wait outside while the team went in.

Geoffrey Fieger, the family’s lawyer and a prominent Michigan Democrat, believes that the cameraman missed nothing. Flanked by tearful family members at a news conference this week he told reporters that the raid began with a flash-bang grenade — or bomb — being thrown through the front window to stun anyone inside. ...

May 17, 2010
Detroit police investigate grenade use in fatal raid
By AMBER HUNT and BEN SCHMITT
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS

Detroit police are investigating whether officers were right to use a disorienting flash-bang grenade when executing a search warrant on an east-side home that turned deadly early Sunday, Assistant Chief Ralph Godbee said.

He told reporters that the department and the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office together agreed that the investigation into the shooting should be handled by Michigan State Police to address “community confidence concerns.”

But he said the investigation into the officers’ use of the flash-bang is under way in-house.

“This is not about egos,” Godbee said this afternoon. “This is about getting to the veracity of the truth, finding out what happened and taking the appropriate prosecutorial approach and taking the appropriate approach to assessing our tactics, our policies and our procedures.”

Godbee declined to discuss the specifics of the shooting that left 7-year-old Aiyana Jones dead of a gunshot wound to the neck.

The officer whose firearm was discharged during the incident is on administrative leave without gun access. The unnamed officer is a 14-year veteran who has worked on the Special Response Team – which handled the Sunday raid – for about six years, Godbee said. ...

May 17, 2010
Cop car crash kills Dearborn Heights woman
By ERIC D. LAWRENCE
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Michigan State Police have been asked to investigate a collision between a Dearborn police officer and a Dearborn Heights woman that left the woman dead today.

State Police Capt. Harold Love, commander for southeast Michigan, said the request was made by Dearborn police, and that once completed, the investigation results would be reviewed by the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office.

After the collision, the 55-year-old woman, identified by her neighbors on Hanover Street as Deborah Hodges, was taken to Oakwood Hospital and Medical Center in Dearborn, where she was pronounced dead. Police said her SUV collided with a Dearborn police cruiser on Outer Drive at Parker Street this morning.

Her 20-year-old daughter, who was a passenger in the 1994 Ford Explorer, and the officer who was driving the cruiser were both taken to Oakwood Hospital, where they were treated for non-life-threatening injuries, according to Dearborn Police Chief Ronald Haddad. The officer was later released from the hospital.

“It’s a tragedy for the family. It’s a tragedy for the community. It’s a tragedy for the police department,” Haddad said. ...

After 16 months of promoting the “KopBusters” reality show, former Texas narcotics officer Barry Cooper is closing up shop out of fear that the next police retaliation may be much more severe.

“I’ve been told by lawyers, my fans and many people who love me that the next thing they’re gonna do is plant drugs on me and send me away for 20 years, or kill me or my wife … I’m not going to let that happen,” he said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

“We put so much of our life into something good,” Cooper continued. “We got Yolanda out of prison. I had so many plans for ‘KopBusters’. We were gonna get to the point where we were targeting federal agents, but then I did these bag drops and look what happened! So, I’m … I’m not doing any more cop stings. I’m still going to make noise. I’m still going to produce ‘Never Get Busted‘. I’m going to give speeches and I’m still going to run for office. But … I’m done with ‘KopBusters’.” ...

Ta much, dear Edosan

Police who investigated the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World obtained previously undisclosed telephone records which showed a vast number of public figures had had their voicemail accessed – and then decided not to pursue the evidence, according to official papers seen by the Guardian.

The revelation – contained in paperwork from inside the Crown Prosecution Service – raises fundamental questions about the behaviour of Scotland Yard, which has claimed repeatedly that it found evidence of "only a handful" of people whose mobile phone messages had been intercepted by the News of the World's private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire.

The paperwork also reveals that police and prosecutors adopted a deliberate strategy to ringfence the evidence which they presented in court in order to suppress the names of particularly prominent victims, including members of the royal family. The existence of this strategy has been omitted from all public statements, including evidence made to the House of Commons media select committee.

In a further blow to the official version of events, the Guardian has discovered that although police and prosecutors named only eight victims in court, material seized by police from Mulcaire and the paper's royal reporter, Clive Goodman, contained 4,332 names or partial names of people in whom the two men had an interest, 2,978 numbers or partial numbers for mobile phones and 30 audio tapes which appear to contain an unspecified number of recordings of voicemail messages. ...

Police accused of trespass after 'burgling' 50 homes... to show owners how insecure they are
By Luke Salkeld
30th March 2010

When it comes to fighting crime, a certain understanding of the criminal mind is essential.

But the police have been criticised for their attempts to prevent a spate of house thefts - by committing the burglaries themselves.

Officers have been entering private homes through open windows or unlocked doors, supposedly as a warning to residents about a lack of security. ...



Wow. Warrantless co pigs rooting round in peoples' homes, eh? Jolly good show, idiots.

Ta much, dear Edosan

Last Updated: March 26. 2010 1:00AM
Dozens allege brutality by Gang Squad
West side residents say police officers beat, harassed victims
George Hunter / The Detroit News

Detroit -- Dozens of people packed Thursday's meeting of the Board of Police Commissioners to describe what they called a night of terror last week at the hands of the Detroit Police Gang Squad.

Police officials promised to look into the allegations that on March 18 members of the Gang Squad beat a man while he was handcuffed, assaulted the man's son and harassed other neighbors on Abington Street on the city's west side.

Members of the squad also came back the next day to hassle residents, according to several people at the emotional, standing-room-only meeting.

One of the alleged beating victims, Gerald Evans, is the grandfather of an 8-year-old girl whose anguished 911 call was released by police earlier this month after two gunmen shot and killed her mother, Monica Botello, and her boyfriend.

"I was talking to my neighbor about the incident with my daughter being killed, when two officers came out of nowhere and asked me what I was doing," said Evans, 44. "Then, for no reason, they put me in handcuffs and started beating me. A man with a mask just started socking me in my face. Then another officer with steel-toed boots started kicking me."

Family members and neighbors, some in tears, told the board that when they asked the officers why they were beating a man who was in handcuffs, they also were hassled or beaten.

"I came outside and saw them beating my daddy," said Maurice Evans, 21. "I asked the officers why they were doing that and they beat me, too. Then they said I had a gun on my person, which I didn't have. I just don't understand it." At that point, Maurice Evans started sobbing.

Alice Evans, wife and mother of the alleged beating victims, said her husband's shirt was covered with blood after police were through thrashing him.

"The police threw the shirt away," she said. "I asked why they did that, but they didn't answer. I know why -- they wanted to get rid of the evidence." ...

Hamtramck (pronounced ham-TRAM-ick; Hamsammich by local wags) is a very strange little city on the Near West Side, completely surrounded by Detroit. It has a very diverse population (Eastern Yurpeens - Poles, Russians, Balkanites, former Yugoslavs; Arabs and Blacks).

Hamsammich is unfortunately nowt like Brooklyn - it is not a Land of Racial Harmony. Most of the violence is gun-related, between Blacks and Albanians (who all too frequently appear to have as low an opinion of Blacks as they do women).

[I never hear anything about Russian mafia crap here in Detroit, if you were wondering.]

It really is quite a bizarre place.

To wit:
Paycheck's is a bar that had punk shows back in the 80s and still does, tho now of far lower calibre. I saw Jodie Foster's Army and Flipper there, among other greats. Now their ads are for bands who have names like Liquid Corpse and Bone Drones and Icky Stuff Under Your Nails. [I invented those. The real ones are even worse, believe it or else.] You know, They-sound-like-crap-bands-no-one'd-ever-want-to-see sort of thing.
Sometimes unbelievably annoying and drunken local regulars - nasty old men - sit at the bar, bitch about the music (So leave, asshole!) and curse at (mainly female) punks in Polish. I find that snapping, "SCHVEEN-ya GO-vnoo!" ('pig shit' in Polish) at them usually shuts them up.
Paycheck's opens at 8 AM, which seems really weird since they don't serve food; but they close at 2 AM, like most Detroit joints. The 8 AM opening doubtless explains the drunk-on-their-arses eejit regulars - they've prolly been sat there since 10 AM!
Paycheck's is strange enough, but.....

Does any other city in the world boast a bar featuring xmas lights, green tinsel xmas garlands and machine guns hanging from the ceiling; plus vodka-and-beer-drinking Russians beneath this tasteful decor, arguing about politics while getting slowly, belligerently, malevolently pissed?
Did I mention the karaoke?
That curious bar (whose name escapeth me) can be found on a cross street of Conant, a pleasant walk from another weird joint called Small's.

A man facing the first major criminal trial to take place without a jury in England in 400 years was being hunted by police today after he went on the run from court.

Peter Blake, who police warn is dangerous and has previously had access to firearms, was reported missing just after the lunch break at the Royal Courts of Justice in London yesterday. ...

A suspected armed robber who was on trial for a £1.75m heist in a historic criminal case without a jury has gone on the run.

Peter Blake, 57, apparently walked out of the high court in London in the midst of his trial yesterday.

Blake and three co-defendants were being tried without a jury after the prosecution and police alleged the jury in the previous Old Bailey trial had been harassed.

The escape of Blake is the latest in a series of setbacks in the investigation and prosecution of suspects for the 2004 heist at a warehouse near Heathrow. There have been three criminal trials and more than £20m has been spent, but no one has been convicted of the robbery.

During the third trial last year, the judge halted proceedings over claims from the prosecution that the jury had been interfered with. The court of appeal ruled that in the face of threats to a future potential jury the four men should be tried without a jury – the first such trial in England for 400 years. ...

Manchester police are first to wear named badges on their uniform
Police in Greater Manchester have become the first in the country to wear name badges on their uniform.
05 Feb 2010

All 8,227 officers employed by the force, along with the 4,128 civilian staff, have been told they must display the magnetic badges which spell out their name and rank.

The move is part of a drive to improve the force's image with the public.

Plain clothes officers will also have to wear the badges – similar to tags worn by shop staff – but police working undercover or wearing riot gear will be exempt.

At present police can only be identified by the number on their uniform.

The Metropolitan Police announced last month that some of its officers would wear name badges in response to criticism levelled after April's G20 demonstrations in London. ...

Kids' TV hosts terrorism-stopped for pew-pewing with sparkly hair-dryers
Andrew sez, "The presenters from British TV channel ITV's Toonatik were filming in London wearing safety gear and brandishing hairdryers. Of course, this presents a danger to Queen and Country, so the ever-vigilant Met held them and issued them a warning under the anti-terrorism act. And Londoners survive another day!" ...


Ta much, dear Anneliese

... Perception that the force is out of control has exploded since April when a police major shot dead a cashier and one other person in a Moscow supermarket. The interior ministry has shown little appetite for reform. It arrested an officer who complained of corruption in a video appeal to Vladimir Putin.

"Our law enforcement bodies all share a strong sense of impunity. This includes the police, the prosecutor's office, and the courts," Konstantin Korpachev, a colleague of the dead journalist, said. "This feeling is one of the main factors that allows cases like this to happen. They like to protect their own."

Korpachev dismissed insinuations by the local prosecutor's office that Popov had died of alcohol poisoning. The journalist had been savagely beaten to death, he said, adding that local officials were suffering from an "elementary lack of tact. We have lost a very nice and positive man."

Regional officials acknowledged that the behaviour of Russia's police force is unacceptable. Surveys show that 70% of Russians do not trust the police, who frequently turn to crime and corruption to supplement their low salaries.

Tomsk's governor Viktor Kress admitted: "This once again confirms the necessity of reforming our law enforcement structures."

During the late Soviet period the police force was known for its educated recruits, high standards and reasonable salaries. Since the end of communism, however, the force has attracted lower calibre officers.

... I was stopped and searched twice near London City airport – for watercolouring! I was not even facing the airport. I was painting the Tate and Lyle sugar factory opposite. They said they saw me on a camera and thought that "no one would want to paint a factory". I explained that LS Lowry did loads. Then they said I could be an anarchist and I was carrying "suspicious paraphernalia" – this being a flask of coffee and an iPod. Oh, and a box of watercolours.

Once they had all my gear out, rummaged through what identity documentation I had and double-checked it on a few radios, they were satisfied I was just "weird" and left me to it. Until the next week, when I went back to finish off the picture and had to go through the same rigmarole all over again.

I have painted in Ukraine, Russia, Vietnam and plenty of other "controlled" states, and have never been questioned about watercolour anarchism.

Liam O'Farrell

London

I hope he can go live elsewhere!

Bumbling NJ firemen, cops blown up in 'huge fireball'
Gunpowder plot ruled out: bunker-buster blunder blamed

By Lewis Page

Posted in Bootnotes, 30th November 2009

Firemen and police officers in New Jersey blew themselves up last week in an "orange mushroom cloud of fire and debris" which created a "deafening boom felt miles away". The unfortunate public-safety operatives had been attempting to light a bonfire at a high-school rally.

According to the South Jersey Courier-Post, kids at Vineland High School had planned a "pep rally" at 6:30 pm local time last Wednesday. Weather conditions had been damp, and it seems that local firemen attending the rally "doused" the bonfire - constructed largely of wooden shipping pallets - with "diesel and another accelerant".

Within seconds of the fire being lit, there was apparently a devastating blast which "ejected a flaming pile of pallets into the sky" atop the above mentioned roiling fireball. Fortunately nobody was seriously hurt, though the Courier-Post reports that a firefighter was injured by flying debris and several police officers "sought medical treatment for ear ailments" following the blast.

No schoolkids were harmed, and the rally apparently went ahead without trouble at an alternative venue free of exploding bonfires. ...

Senior police officers could lose the consent of the British public unless they abandon misguided approaches to public protests that are considered "unfair, aggressive and inconsistent", an inquiry has found.

Denis O'Connor, the chief inspector of constabulary, used a landmark report into public order policing to criticise heavy-handed tactics, which he said threatened to alienate the public and infringe the right to protest.

The report, published today, called for a softening of the approach and urged a return to the "British model" of policing, first defined by 19th-century Conservative prime minister Sir Robert Peel. O'Connor advocated an "approachable, impartial, accountable style of policing based on minimal force and anchored in public consent".

The initial reaction from protest groups was positive. A lawyer from environmental organisation Climate Camp, believed to be the largest network of activists in the country, described the findings as a "huge step forward". ...

A Scotland Yard commander was accused of misleading parliament tonight after an inquiry found that undercover police were secretly deployed at the G20 protests to spy on activists, contrary to the police chief's denials.

Commander Bob Broadhurst, who had overall command of the G20 policing operation, told the home affairs select committee in May that "no plain clothes officers [were] deployed at all" during the demonstrations in the City of London.

It has emerged that 25 undercover City of London police were stationed around the Bank of England to gather "intelligence" on protesters on 1 and 2 April. Broadhurst stands by the evidence he gave to MPs, claiming the deployment of undercover officers was unknown to him.

The disclosure will add to pressure on the Metropolitan police, who will tomorrow be forced to react to the findings of a long-awaited government inquiry into the policing of protest. This inquiry, by Denis O'Connor, head of the government's policing inspectorate, was set up after criticism of the Met's handling of the protests, at which Ian Tomlinson, a newspaper seller, died after being attacked by police.

The inquiry's report is expected to call for a radical overhaul of public order policing, and to suggest that the heavy-handed way that forces handle protest threatens a broader breakdown in trust in the police. ...

Police officers are now routinely arresting people in order to add their DNA sample to the national police database, an inquiry will allege tomorrow.

The review of the national DNA database by the government's human genetics commission also raises the possibility that the DNA profiles of three-quarters of young black males, aged 18 to 35, are now on the database.

The human genetics commission report, Nothing to hide, nothing to fear?, says the national DNA database for England and Wales is already the largest in the world, at 5 million profiles and growing, yet has no clear statutory basis or independent oversight.

The highly critical report from the government's advisory body on the development of human genetics is published as the number of innocent people on the database is disclosed to be far higher than previously thought ‑ nearing 1 million.

The commission says the policy of routinely adding the DNA profiles of all those arrested has led to a highly disproportionate impact on different ethnic groups and the stigmatisation of young black men, with the danger of their being seen as "an 'alien wedge' of criminality". ...



Ta much, dear Glenn321

Scotland Yard faced calls for an "ethical audit" of all officers in its controversial riot squad tonight after figures revealed that they had received more than 5,000 complaint allegations, mostly for "oppressive behaviour".

Details of all allegations lodged against the Metropolitan police territorial support group (TSG) over the last four years reveal that only nine – less than 0.18% – were "substantiated" after an investigation by the force's complaints department.

The figures, released under the Freedom of Information Act, were described as evidence of a "culture of impunity" that makes it almost impossible for members of the public to lodge successful complaints against the Met's 730 TSG officers.

The TSG is a specialist squad that responds to outbreaks of disorder anywhere in the capital. It is under investigation for the most high-profile cases of alleged brutality at the G20 protests, including the death of Ian Tomlinson.

The unit came under renewed criticism this week after one of its officers was identified as a member of a team implicated in a "serious, gratuitous and prolonged" attack on a Muslim man. ...

The local mcdonald's should be getting some new applicants soon - from the soon-to-be former staff members (and I use the term advisedly) of the Sun City West retirement community, and several soon-to-be-ex-ahem-members of the 'police' department.

Ta much, dear Anneliese

Well done, texass.

Scotland Yard's most senior officer in charge of policing protests saidtoday that he would support a government inspectorate which has proposed a radical overhaul of public order policing.

Assistant commissioner Chris Allison said police would in the future be "far more explicit" about their commitment to facilitating peaceful protest, the main proposal made in an inquiry headed by Denis O'Connor, the chief inspector of the constabulary.

O'Connor's inquiry was launched in the aftermath of the Metropolitan police's controversial handling of the G20 protests, which saw several thousand protesters contained by officers in so-called "kettles" near the Bank of England. A newspaper-vendor, Ian Tomlinson, died after being pushed by a member of the Met's territorial support group.

The full report by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), outlining major reform for policing protests, will be published next month. However, the Guardian understands the Met hired lawyers to object to a central recommendation made in its interim findings.

HMIC sources said the Met instigated a "huge battle" with inspectors, who were attempting to bring the force's approach in line with human rights obligations to facilitate peaceful assembly. The HMIC was forced to pay for its own senior barrister, whose legal advice found in their favour.

A Home Office source said the Met was still resistant to change, and "the battle is far from won" over the right approach to demonstrations....

Police were in no mood for a "softly-softly" approach when climate change campaigners began their demonstration outside Kingsnorth power station in Kent last year. Their response was harsh and expensive – and has been roundly criticised. The £5m operation involved putting demonstrators, including children, through a total of 8,000 searches at airport-style checkpoints.

Loud music was blasted out to spoil protesters' sleep during the week-long camp, and more than 2,000 possessions were confiscated, including party poppers, a clown costume and camping equipment. Protesters were aghast; they were staging a piece of political theatre to publicise the dangers of global warming. The police looked on them, it seems, as a far graver threat, bent on putting out the nation's lights.

Without perhaps many of the activists realising it, their demonstration was colliding with an established official mindset focused on potential terrorists or saboteurs. It is a culture that conforms with a change in the way political activists have become viewed by the UK authorities. ...

Chief constables will be forced to justify the legality of recording thousands of law-abiding protesters on secret nationwide databases, the government's privacy watchdog announced today.

Christopher Graham, the information commissioner, said he had "genuine concerns about the ever increasing amount" of personal data held by police.

Graham's move came after the Guardian revealed how police have developed a covert apparatus to monitor people they consider are, or could be, "domestic extremists", a term which has no legal basis.

Photographs and personal details of thousands of activists who attend demonstrations, rallies and political meetings are being stored on the databases. Surveillance officers are given so-called "spotter cards" to identify individuals who may "instigate offences or disorder" at demonstrations. ...

Assaults and drunken attacks on the street have been ignored by the police rather than recorded and investigated as violent crime, an inspection report disclosed today.

One in three decisions to record a violent incident that has occurred as a “no crime” was wrong, the police inspectorate said.

If the findings, based on a small sample, are repeated across all forces in England and Wales an estimated 5,000 violent offences a year are not being treated as a crime by officers.

Today’s report will raise concerns that officers are dismissing violent offences in order to make their forces’ figures look better. ...


Ya think?

"More than half the plants were destroyed," Simon Vink, spokesman for the university, said on Thursday.

The plants were part of a legal experiment on the suitability of cannabis fibres for the production of textiles, paper and synthetic materials, he said.

"The project had been underway for years and was in its final phase, which would have allowed us to introduced these new fibres to the market.

"We will probably suffer big losses; we are busy doing the calculations."

He added the university, in the east of the country, was "busy talking to the police" about recovering costs.

Police announced on Wednesday they had discovered about 47,000 cannabis plants with an estimated street value of 4.4 million euros (about 6.3 million dollars).

But, said Vink, the plants were unfit for cannabis production due to an extremely low content of THC, the psycho-active ingredient for soft drug use. ...



It's hemp, numbnuts!

JERICHO, AR - There could be a legal battle on the horizon between an Arkansas city and its fire chief. Jericho, Arkansas fire chief, Don Payne, is recovering at The Med after being shot in court last Thursday. Payne says police officers have gotten out of hand with traffic tickets, and he was trying to stick up for his son when he got shot.

Crittenden County Sheriff's Department Investigators are meeting with prosecutors to see if any charges will be filed in the shooting that happened in the Jericho city hall when police officers shot the fire chief when he was trying to argue a traffic ticket. ...



Yet another reason to avoid arkansas, as if we needed one.

Dear Ar0cketman sent me the yahoo story and I found this 'un.

Bob Dylan a complete unknown in New Jersey town
Fri August 14, 2009
Deborah Brunswick

(CNN) -- How does it feel? To be on your own? A complete unknown? Bob Dylan might know.
The rock legend was stopped in July by police in Long Branch, New Jersey, who were responding to a call about a suspicious person roaming the neighborhood, police said.

According to Long Branch Police Department Sgt. Michael Ahart, Dylan had been peering into a window of a house that was for sale, which prompted a neighbor to call the police on July 23.

One of two responding officers, Officer Kristie Buble, 24, approached Dylan and asked him for his name.

"She recognized the name, she just really didn't believe it was Bob Dylan," Ahart told CNN. "He was soaking wet because it was raining and he was wearing a hood."

So Buble asked the musician for identification, but he had none.

Buble and her partner, Officer Derrick Meyers, 24, then asked Dylan, 68, to accompany them to where his tour buses were parked. Once they arrived, Dylan showed them identification.

"Dylan was really cool about the whole incident," Ahart said. He said he asked the singer why he had been walking in the rain and was told, "I just felt like going for a walk."

Dylan, who is on a national tour with musicians Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp, was in Long Branch on the Jersey shore prior to his performance at a baseball stadium in nearby Lakewood.



My God/dess, you'd think they'd recognise his voice!

The sniffer dog trials

Using sniffer dogs to identify people carrying drugs is wrong in principle and ineffective in practice – and we'll prove it in court

Claudia Rubin
Friday 14 August 2009

Release is taking legal action against the British Transport Police (BTP) to determine if the use of sniffer dogs to detect drugs is lawful. If we are successful, the case will require the police to stop using sniffer dogs for this purpose.

The case was sparked by an incident in which Release's executive director, Sebastian Saville was searched last year by the BTP at Camden Town underground station following a positive indication by a sniffer dog. Saville had no illegal drugs in his possession.

Release argue that Saville was unlawfully searched and detained, and that these actions constituted a breach of Saville's fundamental human rights of freedom of movement and respect for private life, as well as constituting a trespass to his person. These kind of civil liberties are what distinguish our own society from the authoritarian and repressive ones that we loathe and fear. Adhering to the principle that the police are here to serve and protect the public requires our police forces to tread a fine line, and sometimes this line is crossed. The use of sniffer dogs to identify people carrying drugs as they make their way through London's transport system is not only wrong in principle, but it is also ineffective in practice.

Australian research has found that in 74% of searches following an indication by a police dog no drugs were found. No equivalent comprehensive research has been conducted in the UK; however preliminary inquiries via freedom of information requests indicate that the deployment of police dogs here produces similar results. During Operation Shelter, conducted by the British Transport Police during Latitude festival in Ipswich in 2008, only 12% of searches conducted as a result of "tells" by police dogs located illegal drugs. ...

Jolly good show.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? indeed, Juvenal.

Former Detroit police monitor Sheryl Robinson Wood was ousted under a cloud. Some experts say a review of her ties to then-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick may eventually turn into a criminal investigation.

"With the possibility of federal charges, there are no minor concerns," said Detroit attorney Bill Goodman, who represented the City Council in its efforts to oust Kilpatrick.

Wood has been in talks this week with attorney Richard Craig Smith, an expert in white-collar crime and government investigations with the Washington, D.C., firm Fulbright & Jaworski. The firm was once home to Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski.

Wood has not returned calls seeking comment. Carl Racine, managing partner at her law firm, Venable LLP, based in Washington and Baltimore, declined to discuss her status.

As first reported on freep.com, the judge overseeing Detroit Police Department reform efforts forced her ouster last week after being shown text messages that, the judge concluded, revealed Wood had engaged in an inappropriate relationship with Kilpatrick, even as she was monitoring the city's compliance with police reforms. ...

The race row that has inflamed the US took a bizarre twist last night when a Boston police officer was suspended for abusing Harvard scholar Professor Henry Louis Gates and calling him "a banana eating jungle monkey".

Hours before President Barack Obama was to sit down at the White House for a beer with Professor Gates and Sergeant James Crowley to calm tensions over the academic's arrest, it emerged that another police officer, Justin Barrett, was accused of sending an insulting email about Professor Gates to a local newspaper.

In a furious and at times ungrammatical rant at a reporter on the Boston Globe newspaper, the anonymous email, allegedly written by Officer Barrett said: "If I were the officer he (Professor Gates) verbally assaulted like a banana eating jungle monkey I would have sprayed him in the face with OC (capsicum spray)."

Later in the email, quoted in full on the website MyFoxBoston.com. the 36-year-old former English teacher suggested the headline for the newspaper's article on Professor Gates' arrest should read: "Conduct Unbecoming a Jungle Monkey - back to one's roots."

The Boston Police Department suspended Mr Barrett when the existence of the email became known. A spokesman for the police force said in a statement: "Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis placed Officer Justin Barrett, 36, on administrative leave pending the outcome of a termination hearing.

"Commissioner Davis was made aware of a correspondence with racist remarks and yesterday re[lie]ved the officer of his gun and badge." ...

Idiots.

Kent Police clamp down on tall photographers
New heights of absurdity (about 5'11")

It appears that Kent is radically mis-spelled.

The man in charge of the Met's CCTV unit has criticised the way police use surveillance and called for no more cameras to be installed.

Detective Chief Inspector Mike Neville said footage from cameras was often not used because forces do not have systems or staff to retrieve images. He added that serious crime that could be solved by CCTV was not, because of poorly targeted investment.

Comparing London to other parts of the country, he said: "Because we had CCTV first, we made all the mistakes. And the mistake was spend it on kit, don't spend it on people or processes and that's what's gone wrong. Unless there is a systematic way of gathering CCTV then it will continue not to be as effective as it could be."

Neville was responding to the findings of a Newsnight investigation, broadcast on Monday night.

He continued: "What I would say is we've got enough cameras, let's stop now, we don't want any more cameras. Let's invest that money that's available and use it for the training of people, and the processes to make sure whatever we've captured is effectively used." ...

... to underline Britain's status as the West's most monitored society, the BBC's Freedom of Information requests showed that authorities on the Shetland Islands have more CCTV cameras than the San Francisco Police Department.

I am not an idiot and I grew up in Detroit, which leads me to believe most of these items were stolen by the plod themselves.

Kent police's blanket use of stop-and-search powers on thousands of environmental activists at the Kingsnorth demonstration was "disproportionate and counterproductive", according to an official review into the force's handling of protests released today.

A total of 8,218 searches were carried out on protesters at the week-long demonstration last August against the energy company E.ON's proposed coal-fired power-station, after orders from senior commanders were misinterpreted "as an instruction to search everyone".

Although "huge amounts of property were seized" during the climate camp protests, only 2,000 stop-and-search forms – fewer than 25% – were legible. The report said this raised questions about the competence of police officers and their understanding of the law.

Most protesters were stopped under section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (Pace), which requires officers to have reasonable suspicion that an individual is carrying prohibited weapons or articles that could be used for criminal damage.

David Howarth, the Liberal Democrat justice spokesman, echoed the report's findings when he said: "This is yet another example of the disproportionate use of stop and search, and shows how, even on the report's own narrow terms, this tactic is totally counterproductive."

The scale of the stop-and-search operation came to light in two inquiries by the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) into Kent police's £5.3m operation, the largest of its kind in the UK last year. More than 1,400 officers were drafted in from 24 forces to assist with the operation, codenamed Oasis, on the Hoo peninsula.

The Kent force has come under sustained criticism for its management of the demonstration, after allegations of brutality by officers who had covered their badge numbers and concern that police used "psychological operations", including playing loud music at night to deprive activists of sleep. ...

... Eastern Kentucky University professor Peter Kraska told the Washington Post that SWAT teams are currently sent out 40,000 times a year in the U.S. During the 1980's, SWAT teams were only used 3,000 times a year. Most of the time, SWAT teams are being sent out to simply serve warrants on non-violent drug offenders.

Many municipalities are using Homeland Security grants to even purchase large armored vehicles. The Pittsburgh Police Department now uses their 20-ton armored truck complete with rotating turret and gun ports to deliver many of their warrants. Pittsburgh Police Sgt. Barry Budd recently told the Associate Press: "We live on being prepared for 'what if'."

The training being given at many police academies appears to be the type of tactics one would use in Baghdad, rather than Baltimore. It would seem that our police officers are being readied for war, with the American public as the enemy. In the last several years, there has been a transformation from community policing to pre-emptive assaults

On January 24, 2006, Dr. Salvatore Culosi was shot and killed outside his house by a Fairfax County SWAT officer. Police used the SWAT team to serve a documents search warrant, after Dr. Culosi came under suspicion for taking sports bets. The investigation began after Fairfax Detective David Baucom solicited a bet with Dr. Culosi at a local sports bar.

Dr. Culosi was standing outside his home while talking with Det. Baucom, when SWAT Officer Deval Bullock quickly approached with his gun drawn and fatally shot Dr. Culosi in the chest. Court documents report that Culosi never made any threatening movements and made no attempt to run as he watched the SWAT team move in around him.

Dr. Culosi had no history of violence nor any criminal history whatsoever. He operated two successful optometry clinics at Wal-Marts in Manassas and Warrenton, Va. His parents have filed a $12 million lawsuit against the county of Fairfax, Va. ...



Land of the free and home of the brave, huh?

Five Portage, Wisconsin students arrested for food fight
6/04/2009 10:44 am

PORTAGE -- Police arrested five students after a food fight during lunchtime at Portage High School.

The teens were led from the school in handcuffs Tuesday after yogurt and taco salad flew across the cafeteria.

The mother of one of the teens, Wendy Mitchell, thinks the school overreacted by calling police. So does Lee Ann Vesley, whose son Ryan Hayes was also involved. Vesley says she's upset they were arrested and now have $172 tickets for disorderly conduct. ...

Is stupidity a requirement for joining the police force the world over?!

"Hey, fbi
I am the Sky
Who are you?

Hey, po-lice
My name is Chris'
Who are you dat I should be mindful of?"

- Opening of De Devil Dead by Lee 'Scratch' Perry

{Ed Note: That "Chris' " is pronounced like Christ but missing the final T, and of course the 'lice' in 'po-lice' rhyme wid it, Mon.}

I hope they rot in jail for the rest of their lives.

Brian Paddick is a God among slugs.

IPCC orders new post-mortem on G20 victim Ian Tomlinson
Philippe Naughton and Adam Fresco
April 8, 2009

The Independent Police Complaints Commission is to carry out a second post-mortem on the body of Ian Tomlinson, the newspaper vendor who died after collapsing at last week's anti-capitalist protests in London.

The IPCC also announced tonight that its own investigators are to take over the inquiry into Mr Tomlinson's death after video footage emerged that showed him being struck by an officer and pushed roughly to the floor shortly before his death.

The organisation had previously been directing an investigation by City of London Police but the video footage, and testimony from witnesses at the scene, appeared to call [into question] the official police version of events. ...

I feel sick. My tags say it all.

Legalize it. No one's tobacco pipe will be trashed again.

This is disgusting.

Detroit woman sues police for $15 million
BY ZLATI MEYER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
January 30, 2009

A Detroit woman and her seven children ages 9-18 are suing the Detroit Police Department for $15 million, because they allege officers attacked them without provocation in their home earlier this month.

Tasha Flowers said Thursday that approximately 14 police officers barged into her home in the 19000 block of Shrewsbury about 7:30 p.m. on Jan. 3 without a search warrant, demanding to know where drugs and guns were. After she explained she didn't have any, she said they twisted her arm and tried to handcuff her, while her children and two of their friends were there.

The following day, a police officer came back with $25 gift certificates to Wal-Mart and Target, $100 in cash and the promise to bring a cashmere coat because he felt bad about the alleged attack, Flowers said. ...

Friday, January 30, 2009
Lawsuit: Cops beat mom, gave gift cards as bribe
Woman claims she and her children were assaulted by officers and offered a bribe to be quiet about the incident.
George Hunter / The Detroit News

DETROIT -- Cash and gift cards from Walmart and Target stores were allegedly offered as bribes to a 36-year-old woman if she agreed to keep quiet about a group of officers who broke into her home and assaulted her and her children, the woman claims in a lawsuit.

Attorneys for Tasha Flowers filed a lawsuit Wednesday in Wayne County Circuit Court, seeking $15 million in damages stemming from the alleged Jan. 3 incident.

Flowers claims in the lawsuit that several Detroit police officers from the department's Western District responded to a neighbor's complaint that she was selling drugs in her home on Shrewsbury. The police rushed into Flowers' home without her permission and without a search warrant.

"They showed up at my door and pointed a gun at me," Flowers said. "Then the officers pushed past me into my house and started asking me about drugs and guns. They pushed my daughter, and threw me to the ground and twisted my arm. Then the lieutenant grabbed my 14-year-old son in a chokehold until he was unconscious."

Flowers said the group of about 10 officers began assaulting her other six children, ages 8 to 17, who she said suffered cuts, scrapes and bruises.

Then, the next day, Flowers said the lieutenant in charge of the officers paid a second visit to her home.

"He said he felt bad about what he'd done, and asked if there was anything he could do to make up for it," Flowers said. "Then he offered me two gift cards: One from Walmart and Target; and $100." ...

... The details are still dribbling out, but it appears that for at least three recent years, the state police antiterrorism unit spied upon, infiltrated and documented groups of Marylanders who had the nerve to disagree with the policies of their government. The police acknowledge that at least 53 individuals made their terrorist-watch list but the real number could be much higher.

The troopers zeroed in on Roman Catholic nuns, human rights activists and church groups. They monitored animal rights advocates and cyclists pushing for more bicycle lanes. They opened a dossier on Amnesty International. (That group's crime was listed as "human rights.")

The troopers created files with titles like: "Terrorism: Anti-War Protesters," and "Terrorism: Anti-Govern," and "Terrorism: Environmental Extremists," and "Terrorism: Pro-Life."

To Maryland's finest, even Quakers, the ultimate pacifists, constituted a "security threat group." ...


The only real terrorists mentioned are pro-lifers.

Oh, and go fuck yrself, maryland.

Elite police detained after off-duty brawl
Tue Jan 13, 2009

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Three elite Frankfurt police officers who were involved in an off-duty brawl at a brothel have been detained by police and are under investigation for assault, a Frankfurt police spokesman said on Tuesday. ...

Great. Seattle fired its one decent cop.

Mexican sits in truck 14 hours as refuses cop bribe
Thu Dec 4, 2008

MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) - A Mexican motorist staged a 14-hour sit-in protest in his truck after police tried to make him pay a huge bribe for driving through a red traffic light, rather than impose a smaller official fine.

Jesus Martinez said police tried to extort 8,000 pesos (£400) from him after he ran a red light in the early hours of Wednesday in the northern city of Monterrey, Mexican media reported. The official fine for failing to stop at a red light in Monterrey is about $30 (£20). ...

Anti-terror computer stolen from open window of MI5 officer's home
2nd October 2008

A computer containing highly-sensitive information on the fight against terrorism has been stolen from a house used by an MI5 officer.

The property in Greater Manchester was rented by the intelligence service.
But the information on the hand-held computer was encrypted and MI5 say it would be virtually impossible for anyone to extract details from it.

The theft is not being regarded as act of negligence on the part of the officer who was using the house. It is believed the property accessed through an open window by an opportunist burglar and was not deliberately targeted. ...




Uh-huh. I wonder how much they paid the guy who left the window open.

Growing up in Detroit gives one the wisdom of being distrustful and afraid of all cops.

Detroit Police lab shut down after probe finds errors
BY BEN SCHMITT AND JOE SWICKARD
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
September 25, 2008

The Detroit Police crime lab is so riddled with errors that officials ordered an immediate shut down today, saying that the local criminal justice system could be at risk.

A Michigan State Police audit of the Detroit Police firearms lab revealed a 10% error rate in ballistic evidence and led to Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy and Police Chief James Barren to announce the closing of all operations of the crime lab.

"If we have even one person in prison on evidence that was improperly done, that's a huge problem," Worthy said. "As prosecutors we completely rely on the findings of police crime lab experts every day in court and we present this information to juries. And when there are failures of this magnitude, there is a complete betrayal of trust."

The audit said: "If this 10 % error-rate holds, the negative impact on the judicial system would be substantial, with a strong likelihood of wrongful convictions and a valid concern about numerous appeals."

Questions about the firearms testing in the Detroit lab were raised in April after defense attorney Marvin Barnett determined that police mishandled evidence in a shooting case. Former Chief Ella Bully-Cummings closed the firearms unit and requested the State Police to conduct an audit.

Barnett was trying a double homicide case and questioned whether 42 spent shell casings could have come from the same weapon as the crime lab indicated. He hired former Michigan State Police firearms examiner David Balash to review the evidence, and determined that 17 casings came from one weapon and 25 came from a second weapon.

"Oh, my God, I can't tell you how catastrophic this is," Balash said today after learning about the audit. "That kind of number - I never would have thought it. You could have people in prison who shouldn't be there." ...

Charges dropped in art gallery raid
BY DAVID ASHENFELTER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
September 22, 2008

The ACLU of Michigan said today that the City of Detroit has dropped loitering charges against more than 100 people who were detained and ticketed by Detroit police during a raid at Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit in May.

"The Detroit police went too far and it is to the credit of the City of Detroit that they have agreed to drop the charges against these young people who did nothing illegal," ACLU director Kary Moss said in a statement today.

"For years, we have been alarmed by masked police officers in commando outfits and guns drawn needlessly storming peaceful gatherings in Detroit. We encourage the city to take the next step to fix this unconstitutional ordinance and put an end to this practice once and for all," Moss added.

There was no immediate comment from Detroit police. ...




Detroit cops have been like this far longer than I've been alive.