A British lorry driver on Wednesday pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of 39 people found dead in a refrigerated truck in southeast England.

Maurice Robinson, 25, of Craigavon in Northern Ireland, was arrested shortly after the bodies of 31 men and eight women from Vietnam were discovered in the truck in an industrial zone in Grays, east of London, in October.

The lorry arrived on a ferry from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge in the early hours of October 23, carrying the victims, who included two 15-year-old boys.

They died from lack of oxygen and overheating, according to post-mortem examinations.

Police charged five men, who appeared at a virtual hearing via Skype at the Old Bailey on Wednesday.

Robinson had already pleaded guilty to conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration and acquiring criminal property.

British Romanian Gheorghe Nica, 43, denied 39 counts of manslaughter while Romanian national Alexandru-Ovidiu Hanga, 27, denied a charge of conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration.

Northern Ireland man Christopher Kennedy, 23, has previously denied conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration while Valentin Calota, 37, was not asked to enter a plea to the charge of conspiring to assist unlawful immigration.

Prosecutor William Emlyn Jones told the court that human trafficking conspiracy charges were being dropped against Kennedy and Robinson.

Migrants can pay smugglers up to $40,000 for the dangerous journey, an enormous sum in Vietnam, where the annual per capital income is around $2,400, according to the World Bank.

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Israeli President Reuven Rivlin on Sunday rejected a request to pardon a soldier convicted of manslaughter for shooting dead a Palestinian man.

His decision came after the Israeli military chief of staff reduced the sentence for Elor Azaria, 20, who shot dead 21-year-old Abdel al-Fattah al-Sharif at close range in Hebron.

A statement by Rivlin’s office confirmed that it had formally rejected the pardon for Elor Azaria.

“President Reuven Rivlin today took the decision to deny the request for pardon filed by Elor Azaria,” it said in an English-language statement, exactly one month after the jailed soldier submitted the request.

Azaria’s sentence was reduced from 18 to 14 months and announced nearly a year after he shot a bullet from a close range into the head of Sharif.

The former Israeli soldier shot dead Sharif in March 2016. The incident was caught on video by a human rights group and this was later spread online and went viral.

The video showed Sharif lying on the ground wounded and shot along with another Palestinian, Aziz al-Qasrawi, after stabbing and wounding a soldier, according to reports by the Israeli army.

Eleven minutes after the initial shooting, Azaria, a sergeant and military medic at the time of the incident, shot him in the head without any visible provocation.

Azaria said he feared Sharif was wearing an explosive belt and on the verge of blowing himself up, a claim judges rejected.

He was sentenced to 20 months in prison, but the military trial gave Azaria 18 months. This was later upheld by a military court following an appeal.

Many Palestinians viewed Azaria’s conviction as a farce.

Polls at the time showed that most Israelis agreed with Azaria’s actions and agreed with his refusal to show any remorse.

They believed he acted appropriately and supported his actions.

However, during the trial, it emerged that Azaria had extreme anti-Arab views, which he expressed online.

Facebook posts showed that the former Israeli soldier called for the massacre of every Palestinian in Gaza during the 2014 war.

He also admitted having spent a great deal of time in Hebron with followers of the late Meir Kahane, a rabbi whose anti-Arab Kach party was outlawed in 1994 after a supporter, Baruch Goldstein, shot 29 Palestinians in Hebron’s Ibrahimi mosque.

Source – MEE

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Elor Azaria,the Israeli soldier convicted of manslaughter for fatally shooting a wounded Palestinian has asked the country’s president to pardon him, the presidency said on Thursday.

“The request will be considered by the relevant authorities and, as is customary in the case of pardon requests by soldiers, will be passed to the ministry of defence and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) for consultation,” President Reuven Rivlin’s office said.

A number of Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have called for Azaria to be pardoned.

The March 2016 shooting in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron was caught on video by a human rights group and spread widely online.

It showed Abdul Fatah al-Sharif, 21, lying wounded on the ground, shot along with another Palestinian after stabbing and wounding a soldier, according to the army.

About 11 minutes after the initial shooting, Azaria, a sergeant and military medic at the time of the incident, shot him in the head without any apparent provocation.

He said he had feared Sharif was wearing an explosive belt and could blow himself up – a claim judges rejected.

On 30 July, a military court turned down Azaria’s appeal against his conviction for manslaughter and upheld an 18-month prison sentence, which he began serving on 9 August.

Last month, Israel’s military Chief of Staff General Gadi Eisenkot reduced the term by four months.

In a letter to Azaria, Eisenkot wrote that “it must be said from the outset clearly and unequivocally that from the point of view of the chief of staff, your conduct was inappropriate and contrary to army orders and to the army’s values”.

The army said, however, that Eisenkot had decided to show compassion because of of Azaria’s prior military service record in a combat zone.

Amnesty International has said Azaria’s sentence does “not reflect the gravity of the offence”.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said it was an “unacceptable” punishment for “an apparent extra-judicial killing”.

In sharp contrast, Palestinian security prisoners are not allowed to request pardons.

In 1997, then-president Ezer Weizman pardoned two Israeli assailants who threw a grenade into a shop in east Jerusalem, killing an elderly Palestinian man.

The men, who were members of the now-outlawed extremist group Kahane Chai – designated a foreign terrorist organisation by the US State Department – served only four years of 10-year sentences.

Source – MEE

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has joined the chorus of right wing Israelis calling on the Israeli president to pardon a soldier convicted of manslaughter after shooting dead an already neutralized Palestinian attacker last March.

On Wednesday, a three-judge panel unanimously ruled that Sgt. Elor Azaria had violated the military’s open fire regulations when he shot dead Abdel Fattah Sharif, who had attacked IDF soldiers in the West Bank city of Hebron.

At the time of the fatal shooting in the head, which was captured on camera, the Palestinian assailant had already been immobilized and posed no danger to the public or the Israeli soldier, contrary to defense claims which said that Sharif posed an immediate danger.

“His motive for shooting was that he felt the terrorist deserved to die,” chief judge, Col. Maya Heller, said delivering the. Azaria now faces 20-year behind bars for manslaughter. While the defense team said they would appeal the verdict, Netanyahu urged Israeli president Reuven Rivlin to pardon the soldier.

“IDF soldiers are our sons and daughters and must remain above any controversy,” Netanyahu wrote in Hebrew on Facebook. “I support giving Sgt. Azaria a pardon.”

“This is a difficult and painful day for all of us, first and foremost for Elor and his family, for IDF soldiers, for many citizens, and for parents of our soldiers — myself included,” Netanyahu added.

Besides Netanyahu, Education Minister Naftali Bennett also condemned the judiciary’s decision, as hundreds of activists demonstrated in support of Azaria.

“Today a soldier who killed a death-deserving terrorist who tried to butcher a soldier was put in handcuffs and treated like the worst of criminals,” he wrote on Facebook.

The Israeli defense minister also disagreed with the verdict, saying that “We must keep the army outside every political argument…and keep it in the widest consensus in Israeli society.” However, as the verdict was announced, Avigdor Lieberman said the ruling should be respected.

Sharon Gal, a spokesperson for the Azaria family, accused the court of “picking up the knife [used to attack an IDF soldier] from the ground and stabbed it in the back of all the soldiers”.

The office of president Rivlin has already issued a statement saying that any amnesty plea on behalf of Sgt. Azaria would be considered in accordance with standard practices.

Palestinians and Israeli Arabs have carried out over 160 knife attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians after a new wave of violence began in September 2015. Since then, 42 Israelis have been killed in such attacks and 602 people, including 4 Palestinians, injured, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

Human Rights Watch figures show that Israeli forces shot and killed more than 150 Palestinians, while Palestinians have killed 33 Israelis during the same time period.

The Palestinian news agency Ma’an has a slightly different casualty toll and has recorded the death of 235 Palestinians and 34 Israelis from 1 October 2015 – 30 September 2016. In addition two Americans, one Eritrean, one Sudanese, and one Jordanian were killed.

And while Israelis see the attacks as a “direct result of incitement by radical Islamist and terrorist elements, calling on Palestinian youth to murder Jews,” HRW believes the Palestinian – Israeli conflict is similarly fueled by Israel’s ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy encouraged by senior officials.

A new HRW report suggests that senior officials encourages the Israeli Defense and Police Forces to “shoot to kill” Palestinians they suspect of attacking Israelis, “even when they are no longer a threat.”

“Given the prevalence and prominence of statements encouraging security forces to shoot to kill, what we’re asking for is that Netanyahu and other senior officials issue a strong and public admonition to intentionally use lethal force only when strictly necessary,” HRW representative Ahmed Benchemsi told RT.

Source – rt news
Pic credit – Saudi Gazette

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