The four black friends believed to be behind the disturbing torture of a white special needs man in a Facebook live video have been identified and charged with committing a hate crime.
Jordan Hill, 18; Tesfaye Cooper, 18; and sisters Birttany, 18, and Tanisha Covington, 24, were charged Thursday morning with aggravated kidnapping, aggravated unlawful restraint, aggravated battery and a hate crime, according to the Cook County State's Attorney's Office. Hill was also charged with robbery and possession of a stolen motor vehicle. He, Cooper and Brittany Covington face additional charges of residential burglary.
The four are set to face a judge for the first time Friday afternoon at 1pm Central Time for a bond hearing.
Chicago authorities revealed more about the disturbing incident at a Thursday afternoon press conference .... http://www.dailymail.co.uk
Chicago police told FOX 32 that four people are currently in custody.
Chicago police were made aware of this video Tuesday afternoon. A young African American woman streamed the video live on Facebook showing at least four people holding a young white man hostage.
The victim is repeatedly kicked and hit, his scalp is cut, all while he is tied up with his mouth taped shut. The suspects on the video can be heard yelling, "F*** Donald Trump! F*** white people!"
Community activist Andrew Holmes was made aware of the disturbing video, which he is calling a "hate crime." .... https://www.google.co.ve
America’s biggest Islamic ally in the middle east – Saudi Arabia -has sentenced a man to ten years in prison and 2,000 lashes for expressing his atheism on Twitter.
The 28-year-old reportedly refused to repent, insisting what he wrote reflected his beliefs and that he had the right to express them.
The hardline Islamic state’s religious police in charge of monitoring social networks found more than 600 tweets denying the existence of God, ridiculing Koranic verses, accusing all prophets of lies and saying their teaching fuelled hostilities .... https://www.thesun.co.uk
Hours after the attack on Istanbul’s Ataturk International Airport that killed at least 41 people and injured at least 239, presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump reemphasized his support for torture tactics.
In a speech in Ohio on Tuesday, Trump said he wanted to fight "fire with fire." He told the crowd that waterboarding is "peanuts" compared with the tactics used by terrorist organizations. He then asked the crowd what they thought about waterboarding, and through the cheers he said, "I like it a lot. I don’t think it’s tough enough" .... http://www.vox.com
A Saudi Arabian court has sentenced a man to 10 years imprisonment and 2,000 lashes for hundreds of atheist posts on Twitter, media reported.
The Saudi religious police, which is also responsible for monitoring social networks, found more than 600 “atheist” tweets on the page of an unnamed user, AP reports.
The user was said to deny the existence of God, ridicule verses from the Koran, and accused all prophets of lying and fueling hostilities through their teachings, according to Al-Watan online daily.
The 28-year-old man, whose name has not been disclosed, is said to have admitted his atheist views and refused to repent, saying the tweets reflect his beliefs and that he has the right to express them .... https://www.rt.com
A Saudi court ruled this week that instead of beheading Palestinian poet Ashraf Fayadh, he will now face flogging and eight years in prison as punishment for what state religious authorities consider to be crimes against Islam.
According to The Guardian, the change in sentencing came after an appeal filed by Fayadh’s lawyer. The appeal argued that Fayadh had been denied a fair trial, was convicted based on questionable testimony and that he shows evidence of mental illness.
Despite the change in sentence, the court maintains Fayadh’s guilt. In addition to 800 lashes administered 50 times each on 16 separate occasions during his imprisonment, the court has ruled that he must publicly repent on Saudi state media .... https://electronicintifada.net
Donald Trump touted the benefits of waterboarding in a campaign rally on Monday night, telling a crowd that “you bet your ass” he would bring it back into use.
Addressing thousands of people in Columbus, Ohio, the Republican frontrunner praised waterboarding, an interrogation method that has been called torture. “I would approve more than that,” he said.
Trump told supporters: “Would I approve waterboarding? You bet your ass I would. In a heartbeat. I would approve more than that. It works.”
The Republican frontrunner then added “… and if it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway for what they do to us” .... http://www.theguardian.com
According to a number of global mainstream media sources, the Pentagon is covering up a disturbing video that was never made public with the rest of the recent torture report.
According to various well respected journalists, including Seymour Hersh, the appalling video was recorded at Abu Ghraib, the notorious US torture dungeon in Iraq that made headlines roughly a decade ago, when the inhumane tactics being used at the prison were exposed.
Sadly, it seems that the evidence released years ago was only scratching the surface.
While the video has remained under wraps thus far, Hersh says it is only a matter of time before it comes out.
Giving a speech at the ACLU last week after the senate torture report was initially released, Hersh gave some insight into what was on the Pentagon’s secret tape .... http://www.mintpressnews.com
Karl Andree, 74, who reportedly broke Saudi Arabia’s laws with homemade alcohol, will not survive flogging, say family
The children of a British man have called on David Cameron to intervene to save their father from being subjected to 350 lashes in Saudi Arabia. Karl Andree, 74, faces being publicly flogged as part of a punishment imposed after bottles of homemade wine were reportedly found last year in his car by Saudi police enforcing strict laws prohibiting alcohol.
The family of the oil executive, who is being held at Jeddah’s Briman prison, say he is already weak as a result of cancer and fear that the flogging will kill him. They said in a statement reported by the Sun: “Our father has given 25 years of his working life toSaudi Arabia, and this is how he is treated. Until his arrest, he has always been happy working there and felt safe .... http://www.theguardian.com
A Saudi teenager is facing death by crucifixion in his home country of Saudi Arabia on charges activists say are politically motivated.
In 2012, Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, then 17, was arrested in the country's Qatif province on reportedly shaky charges of illegal protesting and gun possession, the International Business Times reported Wednesday. There was never any evidence to support the guns charge.
After being arrested, al-Nimr was held in jail and not allowed to speak to a lawyer. According to the British legal aid group Reprieve, al-Nimr was subject to torture to extract a forced confession. A closed appeals process — which he was not invited to and occurred without his knowledge — dismissed any remaining possibility that the nation's legal system would prevent his biblical execution .... http://mic.com
A Gold Coast police officer who leaked the CCTV video footage showing police brutally beating an innocent man is now facing seven long years behind bars.
Sergeant Rick Flori is being threatened with seven years in prison after the leaked video surveillance footage was released, which clearly showed his fellow officers beating a young chef named Noa Begic.
Begic was handcuffed in the Surfers Paradise Police Station basement during the entire ordeal. There was simply no way the officers could get away with claiming self-defense on this one… at least not once the video was released .... http://www.blacklistednews.com
The US National Security Agency spied on German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier prior to 9/11 and amid the rendition flights scandal, WikiLeaks claimed in a new publication, which also detailed 20 more German targets of the NSA program.
"Today's publication indicates that the NSA has been used to help the CIA kidnap and torture with impunity," Julian Assange, the editor-in-chief of the whistleblowing website, commented on the leak .... http://www.rt.com
Tanked-up Ukranian troops are crammed into small metal cages as a punishment for getting drunk.
Video footage of the soldiers being shoved into the cages to sober up in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine has been published online.
The men are forced to sit on the floor of the metal enclosure as it is not high enough for them to stand. The scene is described by an onlooker as a 'f***ing embarrassment' .... http://www.dailymail.co.uk
The US has always been a deadly force for journalists. The US invasion of Iraq launched in 2003, for example, as Al Jazeera reports, is the single “deadliest war for journalists” ever waged: “More journalists were killed during the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq than in any war in history.”
Now, as US and EU officials and propagandists regularly denounce the journalism of outlets they don’t like (ie ones that debunk Western propaganda), and the US positions tanks, artillery, trainers, and other equipment and hostile forces on Russia’s border, the US is further muddying its official definition of “journalist”.
Under the Bush Jr. regime, a phrase with no occurrence or standing in law was invented as an “excuse” to illegally violate the Geneva Convention and use outlawed treatment, such as execution, torture, military instead of civilian courts, and indefinite imprisonment, on whomever the US wanted, includingjournalists. That phrase was “unlawful combatant”. (The perpetrators of crimes “excused” by the phrase are all being protected by Obama.) .... http://www.washingtonsblog.com
The US Senate has voted to outlaw many forms of torture, including waterboarding, “rectal feeding,” mock executions, hooding prisoners, and sexual humiliation in any sector of the US government.
By a vote of 78 to 21, the Senate agreed on an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that limits the US government to interrogation and detention rules delineated in the US Army Field Manual. The amendment also requires that US officials immediately notify the International Red Cross in the event of an individual taken into US custody or control .... http://rt.com/usa
Kanani Nankunda bears a ten-inch long scar on the back of his neck where he was cut and left to die in a case of attempted human sacrifice.
His sister, just eight years old, was killed and mutilated beside him; her body opened and her organs snatched, all in the name of witchcraft.
Shelin Kasozi, a worker with Kyampisi Childcare Ministers (KCM) in Uganda, says that child sacrifice is on the rise in the country, the belief being that members of the elite can increase their new-found wealth though the sacrifice of the young.
KCM say they receive several cases of child sacrifice a month. Police figures in the past decade reported just one such case in 2006, rising to 29 by 2009. KCM cares for a number of child sacrifice survivors, like Kanani, who since the ordeal has become withdrawn and unable to cope with new people or places .... http://www.independent.co.uk
Riyadh (AFP) - Saudi Arabia on Thursday expressed disbelief at foreign criticism of the 1,000-lash sentence which the kingdom's highest court upheld against a blogger.
The kingdom "has expressed strong disbelief and condemnation" at the statements made about the case of Raif Badawi, the Saudi Press Agency said, citing an official source at the foreign ministry.
Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom on Tuesday accused Saudi Arabia of handing Badawi a "medieval" punishment.
Rights groups fear the flogging could resume as soon as Friday, despite appeals from the United States, European Union and France for his sentence to be rescinded.
Saudi Arabia's judiciary "enjoys independence and the kingdom does not accept any interference in its judiciary and internal affairs from any party," the Saudi foreign ministry source said .... http://news.yahoo.com
Both warring sides in eastern Ukraine are perpetrating war crimes almost daily, including torturing prisoners and summarily killing them, the Amnesty International rights group said in a report Friday.
Amnesty said in a statement that it has heard from former captives of both Ukrainian government and separatist forces who say they faced savage beatings, torture with electric shocks, kicking and stabbings.
Concern about the treatment of prisoners comes as Ukrainian authorities face scrutiny this week for publicly parading two men they say were Russian soldiers captured while fighting alongside separatists .... http://www.miamiherald.com
Almost 800 people have filed a $1 billion (£676 million) suit against the Johns Hopkins Hospital System Corp after hundreds were unwittingly infected with syphilis, gonorrhoea and other infections as part of study into sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) conducted by the US Government more than 65 years ago.
The former research subjects were infected in Guatemala as part of a study looking at ways of preventing STDs spreading. The law suit filed by the participants alleges that the university had “substantial influence” over the studies by controlling some panels that advised the federal government on how to spend research funds.
It claims that Johns Hopkins and the Rockefeller Foundation, which is also named as a defendant, “exercised control over, supervised, supported, encouraged, participated in and directed the course of the experiments”, according to the Associated Press .... http://www.independent.co.uk
A Saudi Arabian court has sentenced a woman to 70 lashes after she allegedly insulted a man on the messaging service WhatsApp.
The 32-year-old, who has not been named, admitted to insulting the man but also refuted the verdict, according to reports in GulfNews.com and other local media.
The nature of their argument was unclear but she was found guilty of tarnishing the reputation of the complainant through the application, reported the Okaz newspaper who also said she was fined around £3,600 for the offense .... http://www.independent.co.uk
