Category Archives: Law

Disabled woman wins legal challenge against DWP over automatic benefit deduction

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High court rules DWP scheme to deduct money without consent is illegal and breaches ‘obligation of fairness’

A disabled former police officer has won a legal challenge against the Department for Work and Pensions over its policy of allowing utility companies to automatically deduct hundreds of pounds a year from individuals’ benefits without their consent.

Helen Timson, 51, of Leicester, argued it was unlawful and immoral that the DWP enabled water and energy firms to draw down up to 25% of a claimant’s monthly benefit income at source without undertaking any form of check with the claimant. Hundreds of thousands of claimants are understood to be subject to the deductions.

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Iran sends police to end Mahsa Amini protests as reports say seven killed

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Internet blackouts and Instagram blocks also reported amid anger after 22-year-old woman’s death in custody

Iran has sent police on to the streets in a scramble to end protests that have spread to at least 15 cities, as rights groups and local media reported up to seven people had been killed in crackdowns.

There were reports of internet blackouts in parts of the country while Instagram accounts with Iranian IP addresses were also blocked in an apparent attempt to quell growing anger.

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Children as young as nine say they are ill from work recycling plastic in Turkey

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Human Rights Watch says failure to enforce laws worsens health impact at centres, amid steep rise in EU and UK waste exports

Children as young as nine are working in plastic waste recycling centres in Turkey, putting them at risk of serious and lifelong health conditions, according to Human Rights Watch.

Workers including children, and people living in homes located “dangerously close” to the centres, told researchers they were suffering from respiratory problems, severe headaches and skin ailments.

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Madeleine McCann’s parents lose challenge over Portuguese libel case

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Couple sought redress from European court of human rights after libel case against detective was overturned

The parents of Madeleine McCann have lost their European court of human rights challenge to the Portuguese supreme court’s decision to throw out their libel case against a former detective who implicated them in their daughter’s disappearance.

Kate and Gerry McCann sued Gonçalo Amaral, who led the botched police search for Madeleine in 2007, over statements he made in a book, documentary and newspaper interview alleging that they were involved in Madeleine’s disappearance.

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West weighs calling for China Uyghur abuses inquiry at UN

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Battle over influence at Human Rights Council, with Beijing warning of ‘politicisation of human rights’

Western powers are weighing the risk of a potential defeat if they table a resolution at the UN Human Rights Council calling for an independent commission to investigate alleged human rights abuses by China in Xinjiang.

The issue is a litmus case for Chinese influence at the UN, as well as the willingness of the UN to endorse a worldview that protects individual rights from authoritarian states.

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West wavers on Ukraine proposals to seize Russian assets as reparations

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Exclusive: Ukraine lobbying UN and allies to clear legal path for extracting Russian compensation for war damage

Ukraine is facing a battle to persuade its western allies, including the UK, to back its proposal for any peace settlement with Moscow to include multibillion reparations by Russia, in part using seized Russian state and oligarch assets.

Ukraine is lobbying the UN general assembly to adopt a resolution that will become the basis for the creation of an international compensation mechanism that could lead to the seizure of as much as $300bn (£260bn) of Russian state assets overseas.

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France must rethink case of IS-linked women refused re-entry, rules ECHR

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Families argued detention in Syria exposed the two women and their children to inhumane treatment

The European court of human rights has condemned France over its refusal to repatriate French women who travelled to Syria with their partners to join Islamic State and are currently being held with their children at Kurdish-run prison camps.

The ruling will be studied closely by other countries who still have citizens detained in camps in north-eastern Syria, including the UK.

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Jean-Luc Godard chose to end life through assisted dying, lawyer confirms

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The medical report on death of 91-year-old director said he had chosen to end his life

Jean-Luc Godard, the maverick French-Swiss director who revolutionised post-war cinema in Europe, died by assisted dying, his lawyer has confirmed.

The medical report on the death of the 91-year-old director said he had chosen to end his life. He “had recourse to legal assistance in Switzerland for a voluntary departure” because he was “stricken with ‘multiple incapacitating illnesses’”, Godard’s legal council, Patrick Jeanneret, told AFP.

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Gay rights group was set up ‘to promote transphobic activity’, court told

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Claim comes in appeal by trans rights charity against decision to give LGB Alliance charitable status

The gay rights organisation LGB Alliance was set up to “promote transphobic activity rather than pro-LGB activities”, the head of Consortium, an umbrella group of LGBT organisations told a court on Monday.

In the first full day of hearings in the appeal by the transgender rights charity Mermaids against the Charity Commission’s decision to award charitable status to LGB Alliance, Paul Roberts, the chief executive of Consortium, said that LGB Alliance was created to pursue an anti-trans agenda.

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Revealed: Ginni Thomas’s links to anti-abortion groups who lobbied to overturn Roe

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Analysis of ‘amicus briefs’ shows how closely Clarence Thomas’s wife was entwined with rightwing effort to reverse 1973 ruling

Ginni Thomas, the self-styled “culture warrior” and extreme rightwing activist, has links to more than half of the anti-abortion groups and individuals who lobbied her husband Clarence Thomas and his fellow US supreme court justices ahead of their historic decision to eradicate a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy.

A new analysis of the written legal arguments, or “amicus briefs”, used to lobby the justices as they deliberated over abortion underlines the extent to which Clarence Thomas’s wife was intertwined with this vast pressure campaign.

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Iran condemns two women to death for ‘corruption’ over LGBTQ+ media links

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Outcry over show trial, which follows Zahra Seddiqi Hamedani talking to BBC about abuse of gay people in Iran’s Kurdish region

Two women have been condemned to death in Iran because of their links to the LGBTQ+ community on social media, human rights groups have reported.

Zahra Seddiqi Hamedani, 31, and Elham Choubdar, 24, were found guilty of a number of charges by a court in Urmia, in the Iranian province of West Azerbaijan, on 1 September but the details of their sentences only emerged this week.

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The virtual jury’s out as appetite for true crime podcasts grows

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The Teacher’s Pet helped solve a 40-year-old murder but the popularity of real crime dramas raises questions and legal concerns

For the makers of The Teacher’s Pet, the result could not be better: an Australian man who murdered his wife 40 years ago was convicted after a detailed reinvestigation of the case by the true crime podcast.

It uncovered flaws in the original police investigation and an unwillingness by prosecutors to charge Chris Dawson with the murder of his wife, Lynette.

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‘Where is the evidence?’: critics take aim at NT judge who says antiracism is becoming ‘a religion’

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Opponents say it is ‘surprising’ for Judith Kelly to claim that ‘on the whole, modern Australian society is not racist’, in speech on Indigenous domestic violence

Lawyers and academics have criticised comments by a Northern Territory supreme court judge that antiracism was becoming a “religion” preventing honest discussions about the “epidemic of extreme domestic violence” against Aboriginal women.

In the 26 August speech to a gathering of women lawyers, Justice Judith Kelly said there was a “cultural component” to the violence inflicted on Aboriginal women by Aboriginal men in the territory.

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Lawyer criticises UN report’s failure to call Uyghur oppression ‘genocide’

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Sir Geoffrey Nice QC says outgoing human rights chief’s report on China makes it easier for international community to do nothing

The UN’s failure to mention the word genocide in its report alleging serious human rights violations by China against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province is an “astonishing” lapse, according to a leading British human rights lawyer.

The 45-page report from the outgoing UN human rights commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, landed minutes before her term ended on Wednesday, outlining allegations of torture, including forced medical procedures, as well as sexual violence against Uyghur Muslims.

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Five key points from the UN report on Xinjiang human rights abuses

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Damning report cites human rights violations against Uyghur Muslims in north-west Chinese province

China has committed “serious human rights violations” against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province which may amount to crimes against humanity, the outgoing UN human rights commissioner has said in a long-awaited and damning report.

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US fossil fuel firm sues insurer for refusing to cover climate lawsuit

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Aloha Petroleum’s case against AIG could set precedent as to whether firms are protected against climate damage claims

A fossil fuel firm is suing its insurer for refusing to cover a climate lawsuit in a case that could affect the wider industry’s ability to defend itself from litigation.

Aloha Petroleum, a subsidiary of the US-based Sunoco, filed a claim against AIG’s National Union Fire Insurance Company of Pittsburgh earlier this month, arguing it had failed to protect Aloha from the mounting costs of defending climate-related claims by local governments in Hawaii.

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Dominic Raab made Parole Board’s ‘difficult job next to impossible’

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Justice secretary criticised by senior officials after board is ‘last to hear’ about important policy changes

Dominic Raab was accused by a senior Parole Board official of making a “difficult job next to impossible” after making big policy changes without notice, newly uncovered documents show.

Members of the Parole Board also said the justice secretary would have to increase the number of prison places by 800 every year if he was to force through major changes.

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Oil firm Rockhopper wins £210m payout after being banned from drilling

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Italian government ordered to compensate UK firm after exploration forbidden within 12 miles of coast

A corporate tribunal has ordered the Italian government to pay more than £210m to the UK oil company Rockhopper as compensation for an offshore oil drilling ban.

Rockhopper’s case was launched after the Italian government banned oil exploration and production within a 12 mile-limit off Italy’s coast in 2015, scotching the company’s planned Ombrina Mare oilfield.

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Kenyan tea pickers on Scottish-run farm to pursue health issues in UK court

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Prolonged bending to gather tea for James Finlay Kenya is argued to accelerate ageing of pickers’ backs by up to 20 years

More than a 1,000 Kenyan tea pickers who say that harsh and exploitative working conditions on a Scottish-run tea farm have caused them crippling health complaints can now pursue their class action in an Edinburgh court.

Lawyers acting for the tea pickers have won an order from the court of session, Scotland’s highest civil court, telling James Finlay Kenya Ltd (JFK) to abandon attempts to block the suit through the Kenyan courts.

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British Sikh activist ‘tortured in India after tip-off from UK intelligence’

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Lawyers for Jagtar Singh Johal say he was given electric shocks after unlawful arrest in Punjab in 2017

A British Sikh campaigner is facing a possible death sentence after the UK intelligence services passed on information about him to the Indian authorities, according to a high court complaint.

Lawyers for Jagtar Singh Johal from Dumbarton, Scotland, say he was tortured, including being given electric shocks, after his unlawful arrest in the Punjab in 2017 where he had travelled for his wedding.

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