Reynhard Sinaga victim: ‘I thought I might have killed him’

Student fought back after waking during assault and was treated by police as a suspect

The student who exposed the serial rapist Reynhard Sinaga has said he feared he had killed him after he woke and fought back when he found he was being abused.

Sinaga, 36, was jailed this month for a minimum of 30 years for 136 rapes against dozens of young men in Manchester. Police believe he would have carried on offending had one of his victims not woken up during an attack and called 999.

Continue reading...

Reynhard Sinaga may have been raping men as far back as 2005

Photos, videos and ‘trophy items’ suggest ‘Britain’s worst ever rapist’ attacked 195 men between 2005 and 2017

Police in Manchester believe the PhD student dubbed “Britain’s worst ever rapist” may have attacked men as far back as 2005 – and have admitted he called them at least twice to help evict men from his flat.

Reynhard Sinaga, 36, from Indonesia, posed as a “good Samaritan” outside clubs in central Manchester, inviting men back to his flat for a drink or to charge their phones, before slipping the date rape drug gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB) into their drink. He then recorded himself raping them, sometimes for hours at a time.

Continue reading...

Teenager who threatened suicide on road prosecuted for third time

In ‘worrying’ case woman told by Manchester judge to stop wasting police time

A teenager with long-term mental health problems has been prosecuted three times in the last nine months after threatening suicide near busy roads.

The 19-year-old woman was pulled to safety from a busy road by Greater Manchester police officers last Sunday, while still serving a community order for her previous offences.

Continue reading...

Exclusive: CPS seeks longer sentence for rapist Reynhard Sinaga

Crown Prosecution Service asks attorney general to review 30-year term for student who raped up to 195 men

A man described as Britain’s most prolific rapist could have his sentence increased after the Crown Prosecution Service wrote to the attorney general saying Reynhard Sinaga should serve longer than 30 years in prison.

Sinaga, a 36-year-old mature student from Indonesia, was given a life sentence with a minimum tariff of 30 years by a judge at Manchester crown court last week. Suzanne Goddard QC told him it was “borderline” whether he should be given a whole-life term but decided that he should not be considered for release until he was 66, having been unanimously convicted by four juries of drugging and abusing 48 men while they lay comatose in his Manchester flat.

Continue reading...

Reynhard Sinaga jailed for life for raping dozens of men in Manchester

Reynhard Sinaga is believed to have lured nearly 200 victims to his flat and attacked them

A man described as “Britain’s most prolific rapist” will never be safe to be released, a court has heard, as he was jailed for a minimum of 30 years after being found guilty of raping or sexually assaulting 48 young men in Manchester.

Reynhard Sinaga, 36, a mature student from Indonesia, is thought by police to have abused at least 195 men over two-and-a-half years after luring them to his flat under the guise of being a “good samaritan”, drugging his victims and then attacking them after they passed out.

Continue reading...

Bolton fire: emergency crews battle blaze at student housing building

Witnesses describe flames ‘crawling up cladding’ of six-storey building on Bradshawgate

Fire crews are tackling a large blaze “crawling up the cladding” of a student accommodation building in Bolton.

Images posted on social media show firefighters tackling flames coming out of the windows on the top floors of a building on Bradshawgate.

Continue reading...

Public invited to 100-year-old Jamaican war veteran’s funeral

Oswald Dixon served in RAF in second world war and died at care home in Salford

A care home is inviting members of the public to attend the funeral of a second world war veteran from Jamaica with no family in the UK.

Oswald Dixon died on 25 September aged 100 after living his last four years at a home for retired service personnel in Salford, Greater Manchester.

Continue reading...

Jet2 plane diverted to Porto after pilot falls ill at the controls

Flight from Manchester to Madeira rerouted amid reports a passenger assisted landing

A pilot fell ill at the controls of an aeroplane flying from Manchester to the Atlantic island of Madeira, forcing the flight to be diverted to northern Portugal.

The airline, Jet2, confirmed that the aircraft had to land in Porto on Monday, adding that a replacement aircraft and crew had been dispatched to get passengers to their proper destination.

Continue reading...

‘Several lives lost’: note reveals early details of Peterloo massacre

Magistrate’s message released to mark 200th anniversary may be first account of bloodshed

It was a defining moment in British political history, paving the way in the long struggle for democratic representation of the disenfranchised working classes.

Now, 200 years on from the Peterloo massacre in which peaceful protesters were cut down by sabre-wielding cavalry, a hastily scribbled note has been unearthed to reveal what could be the first account of the bloodshed.

Continue reading...

Shukri Abdi death: police face inquiry over Bury drowning case

Watchdog received complaint that police did not properly investigate girl’s death

An independent investigation has been launched into how police responded to the death of a 12-year-old girl in a river in Greater Manchester.

Shukri Yahya Abdi drowned in the Irwell in Bury on 27 June. Greater Manchester police said there were no suspicious circumstances and warned people of the dangers of swimming in rivers, lakes and reservoirs in hot weather.

Continue reading...

UK weather: thunderstorms set to cause further flooding

Roads closed in north-west after Manchester area gets two weeks’ worth of rain in 24 hours

Thunderstorms are expected to hit parts of the UK this week with a risk of more flooding following a weekend of heavy downpours.

Commuters woke up to road closures and diverted trains after parts of Greater Manchester were hit with two weeks’ worth of rain in 24 hours.

Continue reading...

Public re-enactment to mark 200th anniversary of Peterloo massacre

Free tickets issued on Thursday for 16 August event including 3,000 members of the public

More than 3,000 members of the public will play a part in marking the Peterloo massacre on the 200th anniversary of the bloody protest for parliamentary reform and political representation at St Peter’s Field in Manchester.

There will be no passive spectators at From the Crowd, an immersive experience which will weave together eyewitness accounts of those present at Peterloo in 1819 and the words of contemporary protesters and poets.

Continue reading...

‘People think I’m very odd’: how Ibrahim Mahama brought Ghana’s past to Manchester

From second-hand train seats to old school cupboards, the artist has transported discarded objects from his west African homeland to create a ‘parliament of ghosts’

‘We’re haunted all the time by ghosts of the past,” says Ibrahim Mahama as we sit on dirty old plastic second-class Ghana Railways carriage seats in Manchester’s Whitworth Art Gallery. Even these seats from an abandoned railway? “Especially these,” he says, smiling.

Mahama, a junkyard utopian whose art involves recycling stuff that’s lost its purpose, bought up rows and rows of these seats. He packed them into shipping containers and sent them on a 5,000-mile trip, from his west African homeland to the Whitworth, along with some school cupboards no longer fit for purpose, exercise books of children now grown up, and the minutes of Ghanaian parliamentary debates now deemed obsolete.

Continue reading...

Nico in Manchester: ‘She loved the architecture – and the heroin’

She had been a top model, then sang with the Velvet Underground, and in 1981 Nico moved to Manchester. Her friends there share their touching, alarming memories of ‘a true bohemian’

An imperious blond German ex-model with a voice once described as like “a body falling through a window”, Nico was already extraordinary by the time she leant her vocals to songs including Femme Fatale and All Tomorrow’s Parties on the Velvet Underground’s classic first album, produced by Andy Warhol.

Soon after that, she embarked on a solo career, and made records, such as The Marble Index, that were even darker, with despairing lyrics and a wheezing harmonium accompanying Nico’s Teutonic tones. By this time, she was no longer blond – she disdained her traffic-stopping looks – and was addicted to heroin.

Continue reading...

Northern’s Pacer trains to run into 2020 despite retirement pledge

Rail firm privately backtracks on vow to MPs that fleet would be retired by end of year

Northern rail promised MPs last week its fleet of hated “buses-on-rails” would be retired by the end of the year, but it has emerged the firm had already privately warned the transport secretary it might have to keep some of them in service well into 2020.

Rob Warnes, the rail firm’s network planning director, told the all-party parliamentary group (AAPG) on rail in the north that all of its antiquated fleet of Pacers would be gone by the end of the year, according to Ian Mearns, the Labour MP who chairs the AAPG.

Continue reading...

Woman, 93, arrested as a dying wish after being ‘good all her life’

Josie Birds said to have ‘thoroughly enjoyed’ gesture by Greater Manchester police

One of the UK’s largest police forces apparently arrested a 93-year-old woman who had committed no crime because it was her “dying wish”.

In a tweet that received more than a thousand likes, Pam Smith wrote to Greater Manchester police to thank them for the gesture towards her grandmother, Josie Birds.

Continue reading...

Hancock pledges hospital food overhaul after listeria deaths

Factory production of sandwiches linked to five cases is halted as health secretary demands action

Health secretary Matt Hancock has ordered a “root and branch” review of NHS food after two more patient deaths were linked last week to a listeria outbreak. The new deaths bring the number of suspected fatalities to five and doctors have warned that further cases could occur.

Hancock said he was “incredibly concerned” after it emerged the patients were suspected of dying as a result of eating pre-packaged sandwiches and salads linked by the same supplier, The Good Food Chain.

Continue reading...

Manchester police defend prosecution of two mentally ill people

Women who tried to kill themselves were charged this year after causing traffic jams

A police force has defended its decision to prosecute two mentally ill women who were charged after they caused traffic jams when trying to kill themselves.

Greater Manchester police (GMP) charged the two this year following the incidents. The force said it would review both cases and stressed prosecution was “rarely a course of action for someone with a mental health condition”.

Continue reading...

Diner accidentally gets £4,500 bottle of wine in Manchester restaurant

Hawksmoor steakhouse tweets ‘chin up!’ to staff who served it, adding: ‘mistakes happen’

A lucky diner was accidentally given a £4,500 bottle of red wine at a steakhouse in Manchester .

A member of staff at the Manchester branch of Hawksmoor, an upmarket chain specialising in steaks and seafood with nine sites across the UK, apparently served the luxury wine unknowingly in what the restaurant management described as a “one-off mistake”.

Continue reading...

Celebrating Purim in Manchester – in pictures

Orthodox Jewish children in fancy dress and adults take to the streets of Broughton in Greater Manchester to celebrate the annual feast of Purim, celebrated by Jewish communities around the world with parades and costume parties. Purim commemorates the defeat of Haman, the adviser to the Persian king, and his plot to massacre the Jewish people, 2,500 years ago, as recorded in the biblical book of Esther.

Continue reading...