03 Dec 08 | Comment
Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie marked a new era: a retreat from the ideal of tolerance and the spirit of the Enlightenment, says Bernard-Henri Lévy in this exclusive article from the new issue of
Index on Censorship
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28 Nov 08 | Iran
Bahman Totonchi, a journalist for the former Kurdish weekly Karfto, was arrested on 18 November following a house search by intelligence agents. The authorities had been harassing the journalist since the closure of Karfto on 29 December last year, when the weekly’s licence was withdrawn for good on the grounds of “failure to publish regularly”. It is not known where Totonchi is now being held.
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27 Nov 08 | Comment
While the Anna Politkovskaya murder trial descends into farce, her newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, is cutting reporting staff. Is there more to the move than the financial crisis, asks Maria Eismont
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13 Nov 08 | Uncategorized
It didn’t take District Judge Nicholas Evans long to come up with a verdict in the case of the five Plane Stupid protesters charged under SOCPA this morning. All were found guilty and four ordered to pay a fine and costs totalling £365. The youngest defendant, Tamsin Omand, was ordered to pay just £150 costs, on account of her previously unblemished record. Considering their crime — trespass on a designated area — carries a potential jail sentence, one could say they got off lightly.
The morning’s brief discussion centred on rather bizarre arguments over whether the opening of an unlocked door could constitute force legally (the five had gone through an unlocked, unmonitored door on the way to the roof of the building). The defence argued that there was precedent allowing the use of force to prevent a crime (the crime, in this case, being what Plane Stupid claim is ‘collusion’ between interested parties in the consultation on the building of a third runway at Heathrow airport).
In the end, Mr Evans decided that opening a door did not constitute use of force, and even if it did, it would no have immediately prevented the ‘crime’ being committed.
This important distinction having been made, the district judge delivered his verdict.
After formalities were over, Leo Murray optimistically claimed that the fact no-one had challenged whether the group were right, or had a right, to believe that ‘collusion’ was taking place, was of great importance to the Plane Stupid campaign. Buoyed by this thought, the five and a small group of supporters set off to Scotland Yard, eager to present their dossier of evidence on collusion to the unsuspecting desk sergeant.
13 Nov 08 | News and features
Five climate change protesters who climbed on to the roof of the Palace of Westminster have been found guilty of trespass under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA).
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