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British Government Seeks to Limit Disclosure in Litvinenko Case

February 27, 2013 by Leave a Comment

“Due to the complexity of the investigation which necessarily precedes the hearings,” the coroner, Sir Robert Owen, said, “it may not be possible to adhere” to the planned May 1 start date for the hearings.

The inquest would be the first — and probably the only — public forum where witnesses would testify under oath about the killing, which strained Britain’s relationship with the Kremlin and kindled memories of the cold war.

The prospect of a postponement brought accusations from Ben Emmerson, a lawyer representing Mr. Litvinenko’s widow, Marina Litvinenko, that the British government was trying to gag the inquiry to protect lucrative trade deals with Russia.

Referring to Prime Minister David Cameron, Mr. Emmerson said on Tuesday that “the British government, like the Russian government, is conspiring to get this inquest closed down in exchange for substantial trade interests, which we know Mr. Cameron is pursuing.”

The British government, he said, had “no right to say to an independent judiciary, ‘you may not investigate these issues’ — that happens in Russia, for sure.” He added: “This has all the hallmarks of a situation which is shaping up to be a stain on British justice.”

Sir Robert, the coroner, said he would rule on Wednesday on the government’s application for what is known as a Public Interest Immunity Certificate, which would block the inquest from hearing information on certain topics, usually on national security grounds. Sir Robert did not reveal the particulars of the government’s request.

British analysts say they believe the government wants to avoid disclosing any information that might link Mr. Litvinenko to the British security services.

In a preparatory hearing in December, Mr. Emmerson, the lawyer, asserted that Mr. Litvinenko had been a “registered and paid agent and employee of MI6,” as the British Secret Intelligence Service is known. Mr. Litvinenko also worked for the Spanish intelligence service, Mr. Emmerson said, and both agencies made payments into a joint account with his wife. The lawyer said that the coroner’s inquest should consider whether MI6 failed in its duty to protect Mr. Litvinenko, who fled Russia in 2000 and styled himself a whistle-blower and foe of the Kremlin.

Mr. Litvinenko died in November 2006 at the age of 43, a few weeks after he secured British citizenship. He had unknowingly ingested polonium 210 — a rare radioactive isotope — at the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel in Grosvenor Square in London.

British prosecutors are seeking the extradition from Russia of Andrei K. Lugovoi, another former K.G.B. officer, to face trial on murder charges in the case. Mr. Lugovoi denies the accusation. Russia says its Constitution forbids sending its citizens to other countries to face trial.

The coroner has said in previous hearings that he would examine what was known about threats to Mr. Litvinenko and try to determine whether the Russian state bore responsibility. In a deathbed statement, Mr. Litvinenko directly blamed President Vladimir V. Putin, who dismissed the accusation.

Mr. Emmerson, the lawyer, complained on Tuesday that the preparations for the inquest were being bogged down by “the government’s attempt to keep a lid on the truth.”

British media outlets, including the BBC and The Guardian newspaper, are opposing the government’s effort to restrict the evidence. The Guardian said that “the public and media are faced with a situation where a public inquest into a death may have large amounts of highly relevant evidence excluded from consideration by the inquest. Such a prospect is deeply troubling.”

But the Foreign Office said the authorities acted in line with their duty to protect national security, and that the coroner would rule according to “the overall public interest.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/27/world/europe/british-media-to-challenge-secrecy-bid-in-litvinenko-case.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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D.J.’s in Prank Call Over Royals Forced Into Hiding

December 15, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Quoting an unnamed person at 2DayFM, the Australian radio station where the two D.J.’s work, The Daily Mail said that they were under the protection of security guards and “could be in hiding for months due to ongoing fears for their safety.”

They have been taken off the air indefinitely.

Meanwhile, at the opening of the inquest into the episode, it emerged Thursday that the nurse, Jacintha Saldanha, 46, had hanged herself in the nurses’ quarters of the King Edward VII hospital last Friday, three days after the prank call. The police said that she also had marks on her wrists and that she had left behind three notes — one that was among her belongings, and two that were found near her body.

They did not say what was in the notes, but The Guardian reported that one was addressed to the hospital and that it was critical of staff members there. According to the newspaper, one of the other notes dealt with the hoax call; the third was about funeral arrangements.

Ms. Saldanha’s death came after the D.J.’s, Mel Greig and Michael Christian, somehow fooled her and another nurse on duty at the hospital into thinking that they were Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles.

The pair made the call at 5:30 a.m.; Ms. Saldanha took the initial call and then transferred it to the second nurse.

The name of the second nurse, who was working on the ward where the duchess, the former Kate Middleton, had been admitted with acute morning sickness, has not been released.

But despite the D.J.’s poor accents and rude, unroyal chatter, she was also taken in by the ruse, according to the tape that was played on the radio station and then disseminated across the Internet.

Although none of the details the nurse revealed were particularly humiliating — she said that the duchess was sleeping, had successfully been given fluids and had not been “retching” — the episode was an acute embarrassment for the hospital, long a favorite with the discretion-seeking royal family.

At first, Ms. Greig and Mr. Christian and the station bragged about the hoax on outlets like Twitter.

But after Ms. Saldanha’s suicide, they became hated figures, with commenters on social media sites saying they should be charged with murder.

Interviewed on Australian television, they apologized for the episode, and Mr. Christian said he was “gutted” and “shattered” by what had happened.

At the inquest, the police said that Ms. Saldanha, who had two teenage children and commuted home to Bristol on weekends to see them and her husband, had also sent a number of e-mails and made telephone calls that might shed light on what led her to kill herself.

It was unclear whether her husband, an accountant, or her children had been aware of her role in the hoax in the days before her death.

The hospital says it did not reprimand Ms. Saldanha, but rather provided “support” to her and the other nurse.

Keith Vaz, a Labour member of Parliament who has emerged as a spokesman for Ms. Saldanha’s family, has asked the hospital to provide them with “the full facts, from the time she took the call from 2DayFM to the time she was found in her accommodation.”

He told reporters that the family was waiting to hear the hospital’s response to a list of questions about the episode.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/world/europe/djs-in-prank-call-over-royals-forced-into-hiding.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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French System Tints View of the Strauss-Kahn Case

May 29, 2011 by Leave a Comment

PARIS — The sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, which continues to crowd out much other news here, is becoming something of a civics lesson in American justice — one that has inspired both biting criticism and some respect.

Legal experts say much of the consternation here over what many consider rough treatment in the news media and the courts is rooted in a general unfamiliarity with an American justice system that differs profoundly — in procedure, tone and philosophy — from the French model.

“There is an aspect of pageantry that we don’t have in our country,” said Judge Marie-Blanche Régnier, who is national secretary of a French magistrates trade union.

While the American justice system has its origins in British common law and involves ordinary citizens at almost every level, the French judicial system is rooted in the Napoleonic Code and is largely conducted behind closed doors. Suspects are typically ushered into courthouses through discrete side entrances, out of view of the public.

State-appointed magistrates prosecute and pass judgment in most trials without the oversight of citizen jurors, who serve only in the most serious cases. In such cases, formal charges come — if they come — only after a lengthy inquest by an investigating judge, who collects evidence on behalf of both the prosecution and defense before determining if a trial is warranted.

And in further contrast to the American system, investigating magistrates are legally bound to secrecy during an inquest.

All too often, critics say, the French system allows cases against well-known people to go nowhere or result in reduced charges without explanation. “For the powerful,” Judge Régnier said, “there is a treatment that can be different.”

Because the magistrates are considered impartial investigators, and are tasked with seeking the truth without bias, the defense typically does not conduct a separate investigation.

Building their arguments primarily on evidence collected by investigating magistrates, and only rarely introducing significant evidence of their own, French lawyers seldom attack the credibility of witnesses or plaintiffs, a common tactic in American court cases.

“We’re going to see the man who could have been the embodiment of the French left obligated — because it’s the American judicial system that wants it — to crush this woman,” Jean-Dominique Merchet, a deputy editor at the weekly magazine Marianne, said on France Info radio. “It’s going to be terrifying.”

Much also has been made here of the 74-year sentence that Mr. Strauss-Kahn, who stepped down as the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, could face if convicted on all counts. American audiences pay little heed to such numbers. But French law puts far stricter limits on sentencing, and discrepancies between maximum terms and sentences as they are handed down are often less drastic.

Noting that the Manhattan district attorney is elected, many French also see the influence of politics in the muscular approach taken toward Mr. Strauss-Kahn, accused by a hotel housekeeper of attacking her in his room.

The “deliberate destruction” of Mr. Strauss-Kahn would probably be a “very winning” electoral strategy, Robert Badinter, a Socialist senator and former justice minister, said on France Inter radio.

Bradley D. Simon, a New York defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor, said some American lawyers also disliked the “theatrics of the criminal justice system.”

But he rejected French assertions that Mr. Strauss-Kahn had been unfairly singled out. Rather, Mr. Simon said, he is being “treated as badly as everyone else.”

The European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly criticized the French judiciary as lacking independence.

Writing on his blog after Mr. Strauss-Kahn was arrested, the respected Paris magistrate Philippe Bilger praised the diligence of an American system that “does not hesitate to apprehend even the most emblematic personalities with lightning speed.”

In France, he said, such people “would have had the time to prepare their truth or their lie.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/world/europe/29france.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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