‘Bloody Sunday’ soldier charged
NAIROBI: Kenya’s High Court acquitted a British aristocrat yesterday of smuggling cocaine in a shipment of sugar, ending a high-profile case that captured public interest in how the justice system would treat the scion of a prominent colonial-era family.
One hundred kilos of cocaine, worth around $6 million (R86m), were seized from a container in the Kenyan port of Mombasa in 2016.
Sugar trader Jack Marrian, grandson of a Scottish earl, said they were framed. The prosecution applied to end the case for lack of evidence, but a magistrate in a lower court refused to drop the charges.
“The court was directing a prosecution against accused persons against the wish of the prosecution, without a complainant and a prosecutor,” Judge Luka Kimaru wrote in yesterday’s ruling. | Reuters NEW DELHI: Maharashtra state will use drones to undertake the “biggest” land survey exercise in modern India, as the government aims to give ownership rights to about 15 million rural households in the western state, an official said.
Starting June 1, dozens of drones mounted with highresolution cameras will survey the inhabited areas of 40 000 villages in the state, according to S Chockalingam, director of land records in Maharashtra.
The exercise is expected to be completed in three years, he said.
“The villagers have been paying taxes on the land they live on, but they had no titles, as the land had never been surveyed,” he said.
Only villages with more than 2 000 people were generally surveyed in the country. | Reuters A FORMER British soldier will be prosecuted for two murders in the “Bloody Sunday” killings of 13 unarmed Roman Catholic civil rights marchers in Londonderry by British paratroopers in 1972 – one of the most notorious incidents of the Northern Ireland conflict.
The evidence was insufficient to charge 16 other former soldiers, Northern Ireland’s Public Prosecution Service said yesterday.
Soldiers from the elite Parachute Regiment opened fire on Sunday, January 30, 1972, during an unauthorised march in the Bogside, a nationalist area of Londonderry. They killed 13 WASHINGTON: Beto O’Rourke, a 46-year-old former Texas politician in the US House of Representatives who has drawn comparisons with Barack Obama for his charismatic style, has launched his campaign for president.
This catapults him into the race for the Democratic presidential nomination and the chance to square off against President Donald people and wounded 14 others, one of whom died later.
A judicial inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday, which took place at the height of Northern Ireland’s 30-year sectarian conflict, said in 2010 the victims were innocent and had posed no threat to the military.
It was the worst single shooting incident of “the Troubles”, although several bomb attacks by rival militant groups claimed higher death tolls, and yesterday’s decision will reignite the Trump in 2020. “The challenges we face right now… will either consume us or they will afford us the greatest opportunity to unleash the genius of the US,” O’Rourke said. | dpa controversy.
The prosecutor announced yesterday that there was sufficient evidence to prosecute “Soldier F” for the murder of James Wray and William McKinney and for the attempted murders of Joseph Friel, Michael Quinn, Joe Mahon and Patrick O’Donnell.
But “in respect of the other 18 suspects, including 16 former soldiers and two alleged Official IRA members, it has been concluded that the available evidence is insufficient to provide a Doan Thi Huong reasonable prospect of conviction”, a prosecutor’s statement said.
Victim’s families said they were disappointed by the decision. Their lawyers said they would challenge in the High Court any prosecutorial decision that did not withstand scrutiny.
“We would like to remind everyone that no prosecution or if it comes to it no conviction does not mean not guilty, it does not mean that no crime was committed, it does not mean that those soldiers acted in a dignified and appropriate way,” said Mickey McKinney, brother to one of the victims. | Reuters