Category Archives: Law

Met police pays damages to women arrested at Sarah Everard vigil

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Apology and ‘substantial’ payouts to Patsy Stevenson and Dania al-Obeid mark major climbdown after years of legal battles

Scotland Yard has apologised and paid “substantial damages” to two women arrested during the vigil for Sarah Everard, in a major climbdown following years of legal battles over the policing of the event.

In a move that the new Metropolitan police commissioner, Mark Rowley, will hope draws a line under one of the darkest periods of the Met’s recent history, the force acknowledged that it was “understandable” that Patsy Stevenson and Dania Al-Obeid had wanted to attend a candlelit vigil at Clapham Common because they felt women had been “badly let down”.

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Iran’s ‘gender apartheid’ bill could jail women for 10 years for not wearing hijab

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Shops that serve unveiled women could be shut under draft law UN human rights body says suppresses women into ‘total submission’

Women in Iran face up to 10 years in prison if they continue to defy the country’s mandatory hijab law, under harsher laws awaiting approval by authorities. Even businesses that serve women without a hijab face being shut down.

The stricter dress code, which amounts to “gender apartheid”, UN experts said, comes one year after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, 22, who had been detained for allegedly wearing the Islamic headscarf incorrectly. Her death, after allegedly being beaten by police, led to the largest wave of popular unrest for years in Iran.

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Protests in Israel as supreme court hears challenge to judicial curbs

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Striking down of ‘reasonableness’ clause abolishing ability to overrule government could trigger constitutional crisis

Israel’s supreme court justices have begun hearing petitions against a key part of the rightwing government’s judicial overhaul limiting the court’s powers, a development that could trigger an unprecedented constitutional crisis.

For the first time, a panel of all 15 judges convened on Tuesday to discuss eight filings aimed at striking down the “reasonableness” clause, passed by the Knesset in July, which abolished the supreme court’s ability to overrule government decisions.

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Calm settles in leafy Chiswick after drama of terror suspect Daniel Khalife manhunt

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After sightings in the area, teams descended to search gardens with dogs and check vehicles, while helicopters whirred overhead. Now picnics and sunbathing can resume

The Saturday morning news that Daniel Khalife, the terror suspect who escaped from HMP Wandsworth on Wednesday morning, had been spotted in Chiswick caused predictable intrigue in the leafy west London district. Police swiftly mustered in the area. Some drivers were being stopped and others reportedly asked for identification.

A police helicopter had been whirring overhead for much of the night and some residents said they had awoken to find officers sweeping through gardens. Police dog handlers and armed officers were all spotted along one of the area’s main roads by early morning.

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Ethiopian troops accused of mass killings of civilians in Amhara region

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Exclusive: Witnesses say federal forces have been looting villages and shooting farmers in their hunt for defiant Fano militiamen

Ethiopian soldiers killed more than 70 civilians and looted properties in a town in Amhara, multiple witnesses have claimed.

The killings took place in Majete, a rural town in north-eastern Ethiopia, after two weeks of heavy fighting between federal soldiers and the Fano, an Amhara militia.

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Germany refuses to extradite man to UK over concerns about British jail conditions

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Court in Karlsruhe decides against extradition of Albanian man ‘in view of the state of the British prison system’

A German court has refused to extradite to the UK a man accused of drug trafficking because of concerns about prison conditions in Britain, in what is thought to be the first case of its kind.

The decision has been described as a “severe rebuke” and “an embarrassment for the UK” by a member of the Law Society.

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UN highlights ‘psychological harm’ to UK man jailed since 2012 for phone theft

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Exclusive: Expert repeats call to review indefinite sentences such as Thomas White’s, whose family says now suffers from psychosis

A UN torture expert has called the case of a man driven to psychosis after being jailed in the UK for more than a decade for stealing a mobile phone “emblematic of the psychological harm” caused by indeterminate sentences.

Thomas White was handed an imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentence in 2012 for stealing a mobile phone – four months before such prison terms were abolished. He has been in jail ever since after initially receiving a minimum two-year tariff.

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England’s concrete crisis could extend to hospitals and courts, experts say

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Labour demands urgent audit of government’s handling of longstanding concerns about Raac

England’s growing buildings crisis could expand beyond schools to other public buildings such as hospitals and courts, experts have said.

More than 100 schools were forced to partially or fully close this week after a dramatic escalation of the government’s approach towards crumbling concrete.

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Foul fumes and sewage spills in Tory stronghold of Michael Gove

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Aggrieved residents tell of issues in constituency of housing secretary planning to rip up pollution laws

While Michael Gove was deciding to weaken pollution laws for new housing developments this week, his own constituency was being plagued by the stench of human waste.

People living on the outskirts of Camberley, the largest town in Gove’s constituency of Surrey Heath, have been complaining for months that foul-smelling fumes from the local sewage works have ruined their summers, causing even the washing they hang out to stink.

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RSPB v the Tories: Six claims, the truth or otherwise

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Do the charity’s accusations that the government has reneged on a range of environmental pledges stand up to scrutiny?

If the RSPB hoped to raise awareness about the perplexing concept of “nutrient neutrality” their post calling Rishi Sunak, Michael Gove and Thérèse Coffey “LIARS!” worked: it has, to date, been viewed by five million people.

“You lie, and you lie, and you lie again,” the conservation charity declared on X, formerly Twitter, listing a number of environmental statements from the trio over recent years.

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Pret a Manger fined £800,000 after employee trapped in freezer

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Employee, who was stuck in walk-in freezer for more than two hours, was treated in hospital for hypothermia

Pret a Manger has been fined £800,000 after an employee was trapped in one of its freezers for more than two hours, where she tried to use croissant boxes to stave off hypothermia.

The employee was wearing jeans and T-shirt when she was stuck in a walk-in freezer, which typically had its temperature set at -18C, in July 2021, Westminster magistrates court was told.

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Travel firms urged to halt trips to Uyghur region over China rights abuses

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Exclusive: Report says optics of western firms organising Xinjiang tours amid ‘crimes against humanity are disastrous’

Uyghur advocates have called on western tourism companies to stop selling package holidays that take visitors through Xinjiang, where human rights abuses by authorities have been called a genocide by some governments.

The request comes as China reopens to foreign visitors after the pandemic, and as its leader, Xi Jinping, calls for more tourism to the region.

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Gangs forcing hundreds of thousands of people into cybercrime in south-east Asia, says UN

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Organised criminals use threats, torture and sexual violence to coerce victims to work in international scamming operations

Hundreds of thousands of people have been trafficked and forced to work for online scamming operations in south-east Asia run by criminal gangs, according to a UN report.

Billions of dollars are being generated each year by gangs who coerce victims into cybercrime, where they are subject to threats, torture and sometimes sexual violence, said the report, published by the UN human rights office on Tuesday.

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Suella Braverman restates wish for UK to leave European court of human rights

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Home secretary calls the court ‘politicised’ and refuses to rule out mass tagging of asylum seekers

Suella Braverman has reiterated her wish to leave what she called the “politicised” European court of human rights (ECHR) and refused to rule out the mass tagging of asylum seekers, a move one refugee charity said would treat people as “mere objects”.

Marking a return to the political fray after a summer recess in which a series of Home Office policy hiccups prompted speculation she could be replaced as home secretary, Braverman said the government would “do whatever it takes” to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.

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Suella Braverman says ‘we will do whatever it takes’ if Strasbourg thwarts Rwanda plan

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Home secretary confirms government considering fitting some migrants with electronic tags

Suella Braverman has said the government will “do whatever it takes” if its plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda is “thwarted in Strasbourg”, and confirmed the government is considering fitting some migrants with electronic tags.

In an interview with the BBC, the home secretary stepped up her attack on the European court of human rights (ECHR), calling it politicised and interventionist.

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Serious Fraud Office drops 10-year corruption inquiry into Kazakh miner ENRC

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UK agency also shuts other high-profile cases including Rio Tinto investigation

The UK’s Serious Fraud Office has abandoned a criminal investigation into the Kazakh mining group ENRC, ending a decade-long corruption inquiry mired in controversy.

The SFO updated its website on Thursday with a notice that it had closed the case after concluding there was “insufficient admissible evidence” to prosecute the company.

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Labor’s counter-terror laws may stifle ‘political dissent’, Law Council warns

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Journalists and civil liberty groups also concerned about proposed bill that creates new offences around accessing violent extremist material

Australia’s peak body for lawyers has joined civil liberty groups, journalists and advocacy groups to sound the alarm on proposed laws to criminalise the accessing of violent extremist material, saying the new powers are unnecessary and may inadvertently interfere with “legitimate matters of political dissent or struggle”.

The federal government is seeking to expand counter-terror powers by introducing new offences for possessing or controlling violent extremist material using a carriage service.

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Civilians targeted in war-torn Khartoum as poor and elderly remain trapped

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Latest atrocities in Sudan war include the shelling of house of traditional healer, who died with her children and neighbours

People trapped in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, and its twin city of Omdurman say civilians are being deliberately targeted in shelling by the warring parties.

A woman who had been helping wounded soldiers was killed along with her three children and six neighbours when her home was shelled by Sudanese army forces earlier this week.

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Sunak suggests plan to stop small boats won’t fully succeed before general election but claims it is working – politics live updates

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Prime minister says he is ‘not complacent’ and figures showing fall in crossings compared with 2022 show his approach is working

Rishi Sunak and Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, were both given a chance to show off their painting skills when they visited a nursery in Harrogate this morning. According to PA Media, they were both painting bees. Keegan’s bee would merit a gold star. Sunak’s looks more like a parrot with a squint.

In his pooled TV interview, Rishi Sunak also stressed the government’s commitment to extending access to free childcare. He said:

It is really important to me that young families have access to high quality affordably childcare. That is why the government is expanding its offer of free childcare.

Currently working families can access 30 hours of free childcare for three and four-year-olds. As part of our big reforms we are extending that all the way down to little ones as young as nine months.

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