Global Political News – sknlabourparty

STOCKHOLM – A former Swedish police chief known for his lectures on gender equality and sexual harassment was convicted on Friday of rape and other sex crimes and sent to prison.

In a case that shocked this Nordic nation, the court found Goran Lindberg, 64, guilty of “sadistic, sexual violence” for tying one of his victims to a bed before raping her.

The Sodertorn District Court convicted Lindberg of more than a dozen sex offenses, including aggravated rape and buying sexual favors. He was sentenced to 6.5 years in prison and ordered to pay 300,000 kronor ($41,000) in damages to three of the victims.

The former police commissioner has denied all charges, except a few cases of buying sex.

Lindberg was police chief in the Swedish city of Uppsala from 1997 to 2006. He also headed Sweden’s national police academy. As a police commissioner he traveled around Sweden and lectured, often in uniform, to companies and organizations.

Swedish Justice Minister Beatrice Ask has expressed shock over the case, which shook the country’s police force.

GENEVA (Reuters) – Israel must lift its military blockade of the Gaza Strip and invite an independent, fact-finding mission to investigate its raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, a United Nations rights body said on Friday.

The U.N. Human Rights Committee also told Israel to ensure that Palestinians in the occupied territories can enjoy the fundamental civil and political freedoms that Israel had pledged to uphold in the main international human rights treaty.

Israel maintains that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights does not apply to the occupied West Bank and Gaza, although it says that the treaty does apply to Jewish settlers there, committee member Christine Chanet said.

There are no Israeli settlers in Gaza itself.

“In Israel’s written responses to the committee, one could see a total discrimination in the sense that settlers benefited from the pact,” she told a news briefing.

“We have maintained our position on the applicability of the covenant. We are stronger because the International Court of Justice has said we were right on this position,” she added, referring to the World Court’s 2004 advisory opinion.

Chanet, a former French judge and international human rights expert, said: “It is very difficult to have a real dialogue (with Israel).”

AID FLOTILLA

The committee’s non-binding recommendations add to pressure on Israel to explain what happened in its attack on May 31 on an aid flotilla in which nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists were killed, damaging relations between Israel and Turkey.

Israel admitted errors in planning the raid but justified the use of lethal force saying its marines came under attack from activists wielding knives and clubs. Activists deny this.

There was no immediate reaction from Israel on the eve of the Jewish Sabbath but the government has repeatedly condemned the U.N. human rights bodies in Geneva as biased.

The recommendations are the latest in a series of reports and sessions in which Israel has been on the defensive at the United Nations over its policies in Gaza and the West Bank.

On July 23, another U.N. rights forum, the Human Rights Council, appointed a team of international experts to investigate the raid on the flotilla and called on all parties to cooperate.

The committee is a body of 18 independent experts, mainly prominent in international and human rights law, that monitors the implementation of the Covenant by the 166 countries including Israel that have signed up to it.

The recommendations on Israel’s regular report to the committee on its compliance included calls for investigations into human rights abuses including killings in Israel’s military offensive in Gaza between December 27, 2008, and January 18, 2009.

Israel should also refrain from holding criminal proceedings against children in military courts, the committee said.

“There are hundreds of children (being held),” Chanet said.

The committee also told Israel to end extra-judicial executions of terrorist suspects, make torture illegal, end construction of settlements in the occupied territories, stop building a wall cutting off some of the territories from other regions, and stop destroying homes as a collective punishment.

It asked Israel to say in its next report due by July 2013 what action it had taken on these and other recommendations.

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) – Five Taliban members, including a former Afghan ambassador to the United Nations, have been taken off a UN sanctions terrorism list, Austria’s UN mission said Friday.

The five were Abdul Satar Paktin; Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad Awrang, a former Afghan envoy to the UN; Abdul Salam Zaeef, author of “My life with the Taliban;” and two officials who are now deceased.

Austria chairs the UN Security Council panel that maintains a blacklist of individuals and entities linked to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

The panel is to complete its review of the blacklist, which until now included 137 Afghan nationals, Saturday and will unveil its full results on Monday.

Individuals on the list are subject to asset freezes, a travel ban and an arms embargo.

As part of his efforts to promote national reconciliation, Afghan President Hamid Karzai had asked the Security Council to remove the names of some Taliban members who were not linked to Al-Qaeda from the terror blacklist.

The Karzai government has set conditions for peace talks with Taliban insurgents, demanding militants renounce violence, accept the Afghan constitution and rescind ties with Al-Qaeda.

The Afghan reportedly sought the removal of up to 50 former Taliban officials from the blacklist, which contains nearly 500 names, including those of a number of persons now deceased.

Last January, the sanctions panel had already removed five top Taliban officials from its list.

The five then delisted were Abdul Wakil Mutawakil, who was foreign minister under the now ousted Taliban regime; Faiz Mohammad Faizan, a former deputy commerce minister; Shams-US-Safa, a former foreign ministry official; Mohammad Musa, a deputy planning minister; and Abdul Hakim, a former deputy frontier affairs minister.

The UN blacklist was established under UN Security Council Resolution 1267, adopted in October 1999 for the purpose of overseeing implementation of sanctions imposed on Taliban-controlled Afghanistan for its support of Osama bin Laden’s extremist network.

Under the resolution, UN member states are required to impose travel bans, an asset freeze and an arms embargo on any individual or entity associated with Al-Qaeda, bin Laden and/or the Taliban.

Removal from the list requires unanimous approval from all 15 members of the Security Council’s sanctions panel.

The UN blacklist list with all its entries is available on the Internet at: http://www.un.org/sc/committees/1267/index.shtml.

PARIS – Two men who work for the U.S. Embassy in Paris underwent medical tests after handling a suspicious letter Friday, the embassy said, and Paris police said it appeared they had been exposed to tear gas fumes.

Both men were cleared and released after being examined at the Paris hospital Hotel Dieu, Embassy spokesman Paul Patin said. The mailroom employees identified a suspicious letter and the embassy alerted French authorities, he told The Associated Press.

The central laboratory of the Paris police identified the irritant as tear gas, according to a police official who was not authorized to speak to the media. However, Patin said he could not immediately confirm that report.

“Whatever the smell was, it was not deemed harmful. It’s not toxic …,” said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. “As a precaution, the two employees were sent to the hospital and have experienced no ill effects from whatever was detected in these letters.”

An embassy employee received a manila envelope sent as registered mail that had no mail inside, but it began emitting fumes after the employee opened it, the French police official said.

The official said the throats and eyes of the employee and two others were irritated. There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy in the number of exployees reported affected.

The embassy spokesman said that only two people were involved and “they were cleared and released.”

Two months ago, Paris police were asked to investigate a similar case involving a letter to the U.S. ambassador, the Paris police official said.

The embassy did not provide further information about where the letter came from or the nationalities of the employees. The mailroom is in the main building of the U.S. embassy, located just off the Champs-Elysees not far from the French presidential palace.

The embassy, which is always surrounded by layers of security, remained open after the incident.

Suspicious mail has gotten particular attention since 2001, when five people in the United States were killed and 17 fell ill after opening letters containing anthrax. Postal facilities nationwide were shut for inspection after the letters containing anthrax spores were sent to lawmakers and news organizations after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The FBI concluded that an army scientist, Bruce Ivins, was responsible for those attacks. Ivins, who killed himself in 2008, denied involvement in the anthrax letters and his family and some friends have continued to insist that he was innocent.

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The U.N. Security Council extended the stay of peacekeepers in Sudan’s western Darfur region by another year on Friday, telling the force to focus primarily on protecting civilians and aid deliveries.

The 15-nation council unanimously approved the extension in a resolution that also condemned a recent upsurge of violence in Darfur and called on Khartoum to stop hindering the work of the joint African Union/U.N. peacekeeping force, or UNAMID.

The force, which currently stands at some 21,700 troops and police, has been struggling for three years with the Darfur crisis, which erupted when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003, accusing Khartoum of neglect.

The government responded by mobilizing mostly Arab militias accused of a campaign of rape, murder and looting which created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. U.N. officials say up to 300,000 have died, while Khartoum says 10,000.

Extending UNAMID’s mandate until July 31, 2011, the Security Council called on it to give priority to protection of civilians and ensuring “safe, timely and unhindered humanitarian access” to an estimated 2 million refugees.

It instructed U.N. officials in Sudan to develop a “comprehensive strategy” to achieve those targets.

Western diplomats said the force should put those goals ahead of reconstruction projects or a direct role in attempts to negotiate a political settlement, which they said UNAMID had been straying into and which Sudan’s government favored.

Peace talks between Khartoum and Darfur rebels are going on in Qatar, but have made little progress in the absence of the two main rebel groups.

PERMANENT CEASEFIRE SOUGHT

The renewal of UNAMID’s mandate came as violence has risen in Darfur, a region the size of France. Eight people were reported killed and dozens injured this week at fighting in refugee camps between supporters and opponents of peace talks.

UNAMID reported earlier this month that 221 people had died in tribal fighting and other violence in Darfur in June after nearly 600 deaths in May. UNAMID itself has lost 27 troops and police since it first deployed.

The Security Council called on all parties to the conflict in Darfur to immediately end the violence and commit themselves to a “sustained and permanent ceasefire.”

The council was to discuss the violence in closed-door consultations later on Friday, diplomats said.

The council also urged all parties to let UNAMID do its work and called on Khartoum to carry out promises to the United Nations on flight and equipment clearances and remove all obstacles to the use of the force’s aircraft.

In a report this month, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon accused both Khartoum and rebel groups of restricting access to areas where there had been fighting. Sudan’s U.N. Ambassador Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem said his government had placed “no restrictions whatsoever” on UNAMID.

Aid group Oxfam agreed with the Security Council that UNAMID should focus on security and stay out of reconstruction. “Mixing the work of blue helmets (peacekeepers) with aid groups will confuse Darfuris,” El Fateh Osman, Oxfam’s country director in Sudan, said in a statement.

Separately, U.N. Under-Secretary-General Susana Malcorra told reporters that the United Nations was preparing to expand its presence in semi-autonomous South Sudan to help prepare for next year’s referendum on possible secession for the South.

She said U.N. personnel would also help with training of local security forces and monitoring for the referendum.

LONDON – Feel like living dangerously?

Riding a bike in London will soon be more convenient, though it’s unlikely to be any less scary. Riders already dodge the city’s famed black cabs and double-decker buses — to say nothing of other cyclists.

A bike rental program launched Friday by London’s Mayor Boris Johnson will add an additional 6,000 bikes to the capital’s congested streets. Under the initiative, cyclists will be able to rent bikes from 400 docking stations around town.

Johnson called it “a new dawn for the bicycle in the capital” — but veterans of the London cycling scene are bracing for a new era of transit mayhem.

Unlike Amsterdam, where bike paths are separated from the road by a curb, in London a white line is the only protection for cyclists.

Consider these experiences of two avid riders who cycle to work almost every day.

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FIRST RULE, BE SAFE, WRITES SATTER

When the brakes on my bike started slipping, I figured I’d take care of the problem later. After I went flying over the hood of a black cab at the intersection of Gray’s Inn Road and Calthorpe Street, I wished I’d taken care of it sooner.

The London Cycling Campaign says the most common cause of accidents here is from drivers not seeing cyclists, so when in London, do as the Londoners do: Don day-glow jackets, fluorescent gloves or a bright yellow backpack.

Sure, you’ll look ridiculous, but at least motorists will look.

And, while accidents happen, serious ones are rare. According to the latest statistics kept by Transport for London, the number of fatalities has stayed virtually the same between 1987 and 2007 — about 15 per year — even as the number of cyclists plying the streets has doubled.

So while the papers often carry accounts of trucks hitting cyclists, you’re better off biking to work than sitting on the couch eating crisps, as the British call potato chips.

“The health benefits outweigh the risks by a factor of 20,” says Mike Cavenett of the London Cycling Campaign.

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USE THE GREAT ESCAPE, ADVISES WAGNER

Tourists often don’t know this, but London has a great canal network that runs through the central and eastern parts of the city, and it can be a great escape for cyclists who find the capital’s maze-like streets and traffic circles too scary.

Long, narrow house boats traverse the canals, maneuvering through one lock after another. Alongside are footpaths that horses once used to pull narrow boats carrying supplies and produce.

These footpaths can be a boon for bike riders, but be warned: They aren’t easy to navigate.

For one thing, the paths are made of loosely laid concrete blocks that wobble and shake as a cyclist speeds over them — making it easy to lose control.

Tunnels along the canals are only wide enough for one bike — and so low that a cyclist has to duck his head to pass through.

In the middle of the day, when lots of bikes and pedestrians (and dog walkers) are using the footpaths, a ride involves constant negotiation.

Once, while coming out of a tunnel, I had a head-on collision with another biker who was entering from the other direction. Result? Bleeding knuckles.

But we both were thrilled we hadn’t fallen into the polluted canal waters.

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RIDING ON THE “WRONG” SIDE OF THE ROAD CAN BE HAZARDOUS, WARNS WAGNER

Like many Americans living in the UK, I have friends and relatives who visit for the first time and need to be shown around London.

I always insist we cycle. On a bike, a tour that includes Buckingham Palace, 10 Downing Street, Parliament, Big Ben, Regent’s and Hyde parks and many sites along the River Thames can be done in just three hours.

In some ways, it’s like teaching a teenager how to drive. Even on a Sunday, when traffic is at its lowest, Americans find it tough to ride a bike on the left side of the road and to navigate traffic circles.

At the end of the ride, they are usually saying something like, “Wow, never again.”

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NAVIGATING LONDON’S TWISTS AND TURNS, FROM WAGNER

Forget street signs or the grid system. London’s traffic network is an amazing mix of Roman roads, crooked Medieval alleys, 19th-century avenues and modern concrete traffic circles.

It’s also one of Europe’s largest, most densely populated cities, as a friend and I learned firsthand. On a bike trip from London to Brighton on the southern coast, we couldn’t believe it took 2 1/2 hours of pedaling just to get outside the city limits.

Trying to keep the city’s many famous place names straight can also be a challenge — Leicester Square, Covent Garden, Oxford Street, Regent Street, Bond Street, Mayfair, Soho, Trafalgar Square.

Some cyclists rely on landmarks to keep track of where they are. The River Thames, the London Eye Ferris Wheel to the west and the Gherkin skyscraper to the east are all great navigational tools.

And once you learn the maze, short cuts on bikes are everywhere. Not to mention the clock tower at St. Paul’s Cathedral, which is ideally positioned for cyclists wondering whether they’re late for work.

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BIKING HAS ADVANTAGES, SAYS SATTER

Whether you’re living in London long-term or just here as a tourist, bouncing around on a bike makes good economic sense. Transport in London is brutally expensive. A single trip from Covent Garden to Hyde Park can set you back four pounds ($6.25). Even if you buy into the capital’s discount card system, a weekly pass costs 25.80 pounds (about $40).

At 5 pounds ($7.85) for a seven-day rental and 45 pounds (about $80) for an annual membership, London’s bike rental plan is a better deal by far. And you’re spared the creaky, sweaty subway system. Even in London’s frequent (but usually very light) rains, cyclists tend to stick to their handlebars rather than risk the overcrowded Tube.

Bikes are faster too.

In a race organized by a popular television show, “Top Gear,” a cyclist beat public transport, a motor boat and a Mercedes in a 17-mile (27-kilometer) race across London.

As the London Cycling Campaign’s Cavenett puts it: “What a great way to see the city.”

PARIS – President Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday that he wants to revoke the French citizenship of immigrants who put the lives of police officers in danger as part of a “national war” on delinquency.

In a speech in Grenoble, the site of recent urban unrest, Sarkozy said that the current list of causes for revoking French nationality would be reevaluated and “rights and benefits” accorded to illegal immigrants would be reviewed.

Meanwhile, a video posted on the Internet showing riot police roughly rousting African immigrant squatters, including one visibly pregnant woman, from an encampment at a housing project prompted shocked reactions around the country.

The video shot by a member of a housing-rights organization shows police wearing leg protection pulling women, some with babies on their backs, and in one case dragging a woman across the ground with her infant trailing behind in the dirt.

No one was injured in the July 21 operation in La Courneuve, a suburb northeast of Paris, local officials said, but human rights advocates denounced the “brutal evacuation” of some 200 people.

Family Planning, an international women’s health group, issued a statement saying it was “scandalized, shocked, outraged and even sickened by the conditions” of the mass evacuation of women and children.

MRAP, a leading human rights group, said people in the video had all been expelled from previous housing and provided with no long-term solutions.

The squatters physically resisted, “attaching themselves to each other, lying down, sometimes kicking and hitting police,” the government of the Seine-Saint-Denis region around La Corneuve said.

The evacuation was handled “according to legal procedures and rules in such circumstances,” and no one was injured, it said in a statement.

The French president, a former interior minister, has projected a law-and-order image, and named a former police official as prefect, the highest state authority, for the region around Grenoble after youths and police clashed this month at a housing project that is home to many immigrants.

Two days ago, Sarkozy ordered the expulsion of Gypsies living in France illegally, saying their camps should be “systematically evacuated.” That order came after police clashed this month with Gypsies, known as Roma, in the Loire Valley following the shooting death of a youth fleeing police.

The pronouncement caused special outrage because Sarkozy singled out a particular ethnic group in a country official that’s official blind to ethnic origins.

Sarkozy said he wants immigration laws changed to make it easier to expel people “for reasons of public order.”

Sarkozy traveled to Grenoble Friday for the induction ceremony of a new prefect, Eric Le Douaron, and used the occasion to announce a new get-tough approach to delinquency that notably hits hard on immigrants who disobey the law.

“French nationality should be earned. One must know how to be worthy of it,” the president said. French nationality should be revoked “from any person of foreign origin who voluntarily threatens the life of a police officer” or other public authority, he said.

The violence outside Grenoble, in the southeast, was triggered by the police killing of a resident fleeing after an armed robbery at a casino. Officials said some youths fired on police in the ensuing unrest.

Tensions have simmered in heavily immigrant projects around France since nationwide riots in 2005.

Human rights organizations joined political rivals to denounce Sarkozy’s decision to target French of immigrant origin.

“The xenophobia of Nicolas Sarkozy threatens democracy,” the League of Human Rights said. For the conservative leader’s main rival, the Socialist Party, “There are rules that are valid for all French … You are French or you are not French.”

Many claimed that Sarkozy, plummeting in the polls, was using law-and-order and immigration issues to gain backing from deeply conservative swaths of the population and the minority far-right.

NOWSHERA, Pakistan – The death toll in the massive flooding in Pakistan surged past 800 as floodwaters receded Saturday in the hard-hit northwest, an official said. The damage to roads, bridges and communications networks hindered rescuers, while the threat of disease loomed as some evacuees arrived in camps with fever, diarrhea and skin problems.

Even for a country used to tragedy — especially deadly suicide attacks by Taliban militants — the scale of this past week’s flooding has been shocking. Monsoon rains come every year, but rarely with such fury. The devastation came in the wake of the worst-ever plane crash in Pakistan, which killed 152 people in Islamabad on Wednesday.

In neighboring eastern Afghanistan, floods killed 64 people and injured 61 others in the past week, while destroying hundreds of homes and huge stretches of farmland, according to Matin Edrak, director of the Afghan government’s disaster department.

As rivers swelled in Pakistan’s northwest, people sought ever-shrinking high ground or grasped for trees and fences to avoid getting swept away. Buildings simply crumbled into the raging river in Kalam, a town in the northern part of the Swat Valley, Geo TV showed Saturday.

Reports coming in from districts around the northwest, where such flooding has not been seen since 1929, showed at least 800 people had died, said Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the region’s information minister. The U.N. estimated that some 1 million people nationwide were affected by the disaster, though it didn’t specify exactly what that meant.

Floodwaters were receding in the region, and many people remain missing, Hussain said.

Over 30,000 Pakistani army troops engaged in rescue and relief work had evacuated 19,000 trapped people by Saturday night, said army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas.

“The level of devastation is so widespread, so large,” he said. “It is quite possible that in many areas there is damage, deaths, which may not have been reported.”

In the Nowshera area, scores of men, women and children sat on roofs in hopes of air or boat rescues. Many had little more than the clothes on their backs.

“There are very bad conditions,” said Amjad Ali, a rescue worker in the area. “They have no water, no food.”

A doctor treating evacuees at a small relief camp in Nowshera said some had diarrhea and others had marks appearing on their skin, causing itching. Children and the elderly seemed to have the most problems, Mehmood Jaa said.

“Due to the floodwater, they now have pain in their bodies and they are suffering from fever and cough,” Jaa told The Associated Press.

In the town Charsadda, Nabi Gul, who estimated he was around 70, looked at a pile of rubble where his house once stood.

“I built this house with my life’s earnings and hard work, and the river has washed it away,” he said in a trembling voice. “Now I wonder, will I be able to rebuild it? And in this time, when there are such great price hikes?”

Another resident of Charsadda complained of what he considered a lackluster government response.

“Nobody has offered us for help. We have got no help,” said Awal Sher, 60. “Everything is destroyed. Inside, outside — everything is broken.”

In eastern Afghanistan, Edrak said floods destroyed about 800 homes and hundreds of acres (hectares) of farm land, damaged hydropower dams and partially destroyed more than 500 other houses. Most of the flooding was in eight provinces, including Kabul, he said.

Rescuers were using army helicopters, heavy trucks and boats to try to reach flood-hit areas. Thousands of homes and roads were destroyed, and at least 45 bridges across the northwest were damaged, the U.N. said.

The American Embassy in Islamabad announced the United States would be providing 12 prefabricated steel bridges to temporarily replace some of the spans damaged by the water. It also is sending rescue boats, water filtration units and some 50,000 meals to be distributed to those in stricken areas, the embassy said in a statement.

Communications networks were sketchy, and the rescue effort was further hampered by the washed-out roads and bridges, said Lutfur Rehman, a government official in the northwest.

“Our priority is to transport flood-affected people to safer places. We are carrying out this rescue operation despite limited resources,” he said.

Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, the head of the Pakistan Meteorological Department, said that no more rain was expected in the next few days for the northwest. But Punjab province in the east, Sindh province in the south, and Pakistan’s side of the disputed Kashmir region all could expect a lashing over the next three or four days, he said.

Flooding has already affected some of those regions, with more than 20 people dying in Kashmir.