I know he was the nastiest of the nasty; the world’s most wanted self-confessed terrorist. But how can it be right to act as judge, jury and executioner against anyone? We tried Nazis who were guilty of genocide and other crimes against humanity, yet in this case the rights he would deny us were also denied him? Isn’t our understanding of the rule of law that it applies to everyone all of the time, regardless of what they’ve done? He didn’t put up a struggle, yet the narrative says he was summarily killed anyway. How is that any more right than America’s ongoing, unaccountable Predator drone strikes elsewhere in Pakistan?

Human rights are absolute. Osama, regardless of his crimes, was entitled to live his life free from arbitrary state execution, or in this case a foreign state’s arbitrary execution. His credo was just that – he orchestrated the senseless deaths of countless thousands of people, based on an absolutist, fundamentalist worldview. To prove our way is better we have to stand up for it, not cast it aside. But of course we already have as Johann Hari points out:

Osama Bin Laden is dead, but our foreign policy is still giving him what he wanted. We are still bleeding cash creating bleeding countries and more enraged people. The angry, fighting people in Afghanistan today are – according to leaked CIA reports – overwhelmingly “a tribal, localised insurgency” who “see themselves as opposing the US because it is an occupying power”. They have “no goals” beyond Afghanistan’s borders. Even General David Petraeus, the new head of the CIA, says there are only 100 al-Qa’ida fighters in the whole of Afghanistan. One senior military official, speaking to the Washington Post, compared their intelligence on them to “Bigfoot sightings”. Crunch the numbers, and you find we are spending $1.5bn a year on each al-Qa’ida fighter in Afghanistan. Is there anyone, except the private defence contractors making a fortune, who thinks that is a smart use of cash?

Many people are angrily asking whether the Pakistani authorities knew about Bin Laden’s presence. But few are asking how our governments’ actions may have made this more likely. For the past three years, the US, with the support of its allies, has been sending unmanned robot-planes swooping over the country, incinerating thousands of civilians. When the country experienced its worst floods in living memory, it was used as a pretext to increase the bombings. If that was happening in your country, would you be more or less likely to co-operate with the people attacking you?

Well done Obama, you’ve apparently killed the bogeyman. And missed the entire point.

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Ruby Thomas, 19, was one of three teenagers who attacked 62-year-old Ian Baynham in an incident likened by one witness at the Old Bailey last month to something out of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.

Jurors then convicted Thomas, of Anerley, south London, and her ex-boyfriend Joel Alexander, now 20, of nearby Thornton Heath – who was today sentenced to six years – after hearing details of the assault in September 2009.

Thomas had been acting in a “lairy, mouthy way” and flirting with passersby before she turned on Baynham and his friend Philip Brown and screamed “fucking faggots” at them as they crossed the square.

She also smiled as she “put the boot into” an unconscious Baynham after Alexander had knocked him to the ground and caused a severe brain injury.

Baynham died 18 days later at the Royal London hospital without recovering consciousness. Police found his blood on Thomas’s handbag and the ballet pumps she had been wearing.

Judge Richard Hawkins increased Thomas’s sentence from six years to seven because of the homophobic nature of her actions. He said: “This was a case of mindless, drink-fuelled violence committed in public.”

A third defendant, Rachael Burke, 18, of Upper Norwood, south London, will serve a two-year sentence in a young offenders’ institution after being convicted of affray at a separate trial.

Surely a real example of ‘broken Britain’ is when a judge increases a tariff for killing someone for being gay by a year rather than twenty. These are two, six and seven year sentences for murder -yet again homophobic scum get away with it by being ‘public schoolgirls’, ‘usually responsible’ or the jury believing the most preposterous justifications for Thomas’ behaviour from her barrister, reducing the charge to manslaughter . This is what happened:

The court was told that Thomas, of Anerley, south-east London, had been acting in a “lairy, mouthy way” and flirting with random passersby before turning on Baynham and his friend Philip Brown and screaming “fucking faggots” at them as they crossed the square.

When Baynham confronted her, there was a scuffle during which she hit him with her handbag. Alexander knocked him to the ground, causing a severe brain injury as his head hit the pavement.

Brian Altman QC, prosecuting, told the court: “That did not suffice. There is evidence that the female defendants then began putting the boot into Mr Baynham, who was still prone on his back, clearly unconscious and in distress … shocked onlookers saw repeated stamping to his chest and forceful kicks to his head.” He said the girls had been fuelled by copious amounts of alcohol.

How on earth was this manslaughter? How on earth could the sentences be this puny? How on earth could Ben Summerskill of Stonewall not condemn their leniency?

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by Chris Barnyard

A spokesperson for the J4J (Justice For Jean) campaign last week condemned the decision to give former Met Police chief Ian Blair a peerage as an “insult”.

This seems like a final flourish of a discredited Parliamentary system handing out tawdry awards to political allies and cronies. Actions like this only reinforce the impression that politicians remain detached from the views of ordinary British people.

Jean Charles De Menezes was shot by Met Police officers in 2005. An investigation later showed the Met Police repeatedly tried to block the inquiry into his death.

Vivian Figuereda, cousin of Jean Charles de Menezes, who lived with him at the time of his death said:

We are disgusted at this decision. As Commissioner, we believe Ian Blair was ultimately accountable for the death of Jean, for the lies told and the cover up. He even tried to stop the IPCC investigating our cousin’s death. This is a final slap in the face for our family.

Blogger Kevin Blowe added:

Quite how someone, who deliberately delayed an investigation into a hugely controversial death and whose force was found to have made nineteen catastrophic errors that endangered the lives of Londoners, could ever been viewed as fit to serve in the House of Lords, or provide the benefits of his ’specialist knowledge’, is quite beyond me. Once again, it rather makes the case for the abolition of the Lords so that such blatant acts of patronage are no longer possible.

Indeed.

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The anti-fascist protester Blair Peach was almost certainly killed by police at a demonstration in 1979, according to a secret report released today.

Documents published on the Metropolitan police’s website shed new light on the death of Peach, a 33-year-old teacher from New Zealand, whose death marked one of the most controversial events in modern policing history.

A campaigner against the far right, Peach died from a blow to the head during a demonstration against the National Front in Southall, west London.

A crucial report into the death, which Peach’s family have campaigned to see for more than 30 years, was finally released today. It said it could “reasonably be concluded that a police officer struck the fatal blow”. A police van carrying six officers was identified as having been at the scene when the fatal blow was struck.

Except of course this doesn’t tell the whole story. The Met want you to think that it’s all gone murky, that the killer can’t possibly be found and that releasing this report should draw a line under the matter once and for all. The evidence suggests otherwise:

• suspicions centred on the SPG carrier U.11, the first vehicle to arrive on Beechcroft Avenue, the street where Peach was found staggering around and concussed. [Commander John] Cass said there was an “indication” that one officer in particular, who first emerged from the carrier but whose name has been redacted from the report, was responsible;

• the criminal investigation into Peach’s death was hampered by SPG officers, who Cass concluded had lied to him to cover up the actions of their colleagues. He “strongly recommended” that three officers should be charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, giving detailed evidence to show how they were engaged in a “deliberate attempt to conceal the presence of the carrier at the scene at that time”. None were ever charged;

So the Met knows who murdered Peach, and knows who covered it up? Can someone in the know explain why they aren’t being charged now? The problems continue:

It was already known that when Cass raided lockers at the SPG headquarters he uncovered a stash of unauthorised weapons, including illegal truncheons, knives, two crowbars, a whip, a 3ft wooden stave and a lead-weighted leather stick.

One officer was caught trying to hide a metal cosh, although it was not the weapon that killed Peach. Another officer was found with a collection of Nazi regalia.

In his report, Cass said the arsenal of weapons caused him “grave concern”, but claimed there was insufficient evidence to prosecute the officers involved.

A total of 14 witnesses told investigators they saw “a police officer hit the deceased on the head” but, according to Cass, there were discrepancies in their evidence and most could not identify the officer.

Insufficient evidence? What should we make of Commander Cass, when he’d seen what seems abundantly sufficient evidence, yet labelled it ‘insufficient’? And why then should it be abundantly clear to others who killed Peach:

The six officers with the SPG (the forerunners of today’s brutal and equally notorious TSG) are known to be Insp Murray, PC White, PC Richardson, PC Scottow, PC Freestone and PS Lake. Although the published version has been censored by the Met to obscure the truth it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that Blair Peach was killed by a blow from Inspector Murray’s police radio.

Duncan Campbell argues:

It is shameful that it has taken so long for the report to be published. It would be more shameful if the lessons in it – about honesty and transparency and about the dangers of creating an elite force-within-a-force like the SPG then and the Territorial Support Group now – were not recognised.

They’re still not being recognised, just as the lessons of the G20 protest last year haven’t been learned. Indeed just recently Sergeant Delroy Smellie was acquitted for his attack on a peaceful protester, following the Met’s killing of Ian Tomlinson. Not only was Smellie’s defence palpably absurd, but the reasons for his violent behaviour were never questioned. The current TSG might not be quite as bad as the SPG but having this elite force-within-a-force seems still to lead to a serious level of needless brutality, serious injury and death. And just what is happening about Ian Tomlinson? Any charges anyone?

British ‘justice’ – nothing changes.

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Last night I attended a vigil in Trafalgar Square for Ian Baynham, the gay man recently murdered there. I’ve written recently about why gay hate might be so much in the ascendant once more, but last night was cause for optimism. Thousands of people – gay, straight, white, every ethnic minority under the sun, older, younger, you name it everyone was there to make a stand against hate. Friends and family of Ian’s were in attendance, some of them spoke and shared their private memories of a man lost because he dared to stand up for who he was.

The video is of TV personality Sue Perkins, reading out a list of people lost to homophobic hate in the last ten years. It was sobering to experience, and remains sobering to watch.

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A vigil has been organised to pay tribute to Ian Baynham, the gay man who died this week after being attacked in London’s Trafalgar Square.

The event was planned by members of a Facebook group called 17-24-30, which remembers those killed and injured by Soho bomber David Copeland. It was responsible for organising the London vigil after the Tel Aviv gay shooting in August.

It will be held between 8 and 10pm in Trafalgar Square on Friday, October 30th.

Reassuringly there have been arrests:

Police hunting for the killers of a 62-year-old gay man who was beaten to death in Trafalgar Square have arrested two 17-year-old girls and one 18-year-old boy.

Ian Baynham was attacked on September 25th. After suffering brain damage, his life support machine was switched off on Tuesday.

According to a Metropolitan Police spokesman, the girls were arrested at their homes in south-east London, as was the 18-year-old male.

They are being held at separate police stations and will be questioned.

Makes you wonder whether Jan Moir blames him for his own murder, doesn’t it?

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A man who was assaulted in London’s Trafalgar Square as part of a homophobic hate crime has died, Pink Paper can report.

Ian Baynham, was walking through Trafalgar Square with a 30-year-old friend on Friday 25 September when a woman began shouting homophobic abuse at him.

Punched to the floor and kicked repeatedly outside South Africa House by a second female and a man, the 62-year-old victim was taken to a central London hospital with serious head injuries, including brain damage.

Baynham died last night when doctors turned off his life support machine.

This, people, is why hate crimes legislation is important. Whether it be because of the economic climate or other social reasons, gay hate is on the increase. The Independent reports:

Over a quarter of all incidents involved physical violence. Figures from the Met show that in the last year reported homophobic hate crime in London has risen by more than 5 per cent, from 1,008 to 1,062 incidents. London’s gay and lesbian population is thought to stand at around 750,000.

National figures on homophobic incidents are not collected by the Home Office, however. A survey by Stonewall, the gay rights charity, published last year found that one in five gay people had been the victim of a hate crime in the last three years.

Stonewall also published a report earlier this month which revealed a “deeply alarming” amount of homophobia in schools. The report is the largest survey of both primary and secondary schoolteachers on the issue of homophobic bullying.

David Morley, Michael Causer, the Admiral Duncan bombing, these aren’t isolated incidents. The image is of two of the murder suspects. Hopefully Ian’s murderers will be found and sent to jail for lengthy terms. We cannot afford to be complacent – laws may have changed, but homophobia hasn’t gone anywhere.

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