Friday
5th
February
2010
India forms new climate change body
Dean Nelson - Telegraph
The Indian government has established its own body to monitor the effects of global warming because it “cannot rely” on the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the group headed by its own Nobel prize-winning scientist Dr R.K Pachauri.
The move is a significant snub to both the IPCC and Dr Pachauri as he battles to defend his reputation following the revelation that his most recent climate change report included false claims that most of the Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035. Scientists believe it could take more than 300 years for the glaciers to disappear.
The body and its chairman have faced growing criticism ever since as questions have been raised on the credibility of their work and the rigour with which climate change claims are assessed.
In India the false claims have heightened tensions between Dr Pachauri and the government, which had earlier questioned his glacial melting claims. In Autumn, its environment minister Mr Jairam Ramesh said while glacial melting in the Himalayas was a real concern, there was evidence that some were actually advancing despite global warming.
Dr Pachauri had dismissed challenges like these as based on “voodoo science”, but last night Mr Ramesh effectively marginalized the IPC chairman even further.
He announced the Indian government will established a separate National Institute of Himalayan Glaciology to monitor the effects of climate change on the world’s ‘third ice cap’, and an ‘Indian IPCC’ to use ‘climate science’ to assess the impact of global warming throughout the country.
“There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am for climate science. I think people misused [the] IPCC report, [the] IPCC doesn’t do the original research which is one of the weaknesses… they just take published literature and then they derive assessments, so we had goof-ups on Amazon forest, glaciers, snow peaks.
“I respect the IPCC but India is a very large country and cannot depend only on [the] IPCC and so we have launched the Indian Network on Comprehensive Climate Change Assessment (INCCA),” he said.
It will bring together 125 research institutions throughout India, work with international bodies and operate as a “sort of Indian IPCC,” he added.
The body, which he said will not rival the UN’s panel, will publish its own climate assessment in November this year, with reports on the Himalayas, India’s long coastline, the Western Ghat highlands and the north-eastern region close to the borders with Bangladesh, Burma, China and Nepal. “Through these we will demonstrate our commitment to climate science,” he said.
The UN panel’s claims of glcial meltdown by 2035 “was clearly out of place and didn’t have any scientific basis,” he said, while stressing the government remained concerned about the health of the Himalayan ice flows. “Most glaciers are melting, they are retreating, some glaciers, like the Siachen glacier, are advancing. But overall one can say incontrovertibly that the debris on our glaciers is very high the snow balance is very low. We have to be very cautious because of the water security particularly in north India which depends on the health of the Himalayan glaciers,” he added.
The new National Institute of Himalayan Glaciology will be based in Dehradun, in Uttarakhand, and will monitor glacial changes and compare results with those from glciers in Pakistan, Nepal and Bhutan.
Romania to host US missile interceptors
Romanian President Traian Basescu says his country has approved a plan to host a new US anti-missile shield.
President Basescu said the Supreme Defence Council, the senior military and security authority, had approved Washington's proposal to include Romania in a system against "potential attacks with ballistic missiles or medium-range rockets".
The system is scheduled to become operational in 2015 and is aimed at "defending against current and emerging ballistic missile threats from Iran".
President Barack Obama had called on Bucharest to allow the US to deploy the system on Romanian territory. The new system replaces the missile shield proposed by the Bush administration. The Bush plan consisted of a series of radar stations and interceptor missile batteries in Poland and the Czech Republic.
Neither plan has been welcomed by Russia although the Kremlin was more vehemently opposed to the Bush-era plan as it saw it as interfering in Russia's sphere of influence.
Adolf Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' to be republished in Germany
Adolf Hitler's autobiography "Mein Kampf" is to be republished in Germany in 2015 for the first time since being banned under the country's constitution at the end of the Second World War.
Under the post-1945 German constitution, the dissemination of Nazi philosophy has been a crime punishable by fines and imprisonment.
But the copyright, held by the state of Bavaria where the Nazi movement began life in the 1920s, expires in 2015, 70 years after the death of its author in his Berlin bunker.
On Thursday the Munich-based Institute of Contemporary History (IfZ) pledged to publish an "annotated version" with historical notes that it hopes will see the book used in schools and colleges.
The finance ministry in Bavaria said it had still not decided whether to give its permission but it is understood that with the lapse in copyright, the IfZ will not need the green light from it. "Besides, we think our version, with sensible notes and comments pointing out the falsity of much of what he wrote, will be far better than neo-Nazis putting out their own versions," said the IfZ.
Jewish leaders in Germany have already pledged their support for the project, saying they believe it "would prevent neo-Nazi from profiteering from Mein Kampf. while an aggressive and enlightening engagement with the book would doubtless remove many of its false, persisting myths".
The IfZ wants the agreement of the finance ministry in Bavaria before the 2015 deadline so as to begin work on the project right away.
Mein Kampf became a better seller than the Bible in the Third Reich.
Hitler became a multi-millionaire through royalties while newspapers around the world, including some in the UK, serialised his work.
It was written when he was sentenced to five years in jail for attempting to overthrow the government in 1924. It is filled with the prejudices and hatreds of an uneducated man and within its pages are endless rants against the Jews, who he would soon attempt to eliminate altogether.
In another passage he foretells his plans for the conquest of Russia, writing: "We must eliminate the disproportion between our population and our area...... Some of this land can be obtained from Russia. We must secure for the German people the land and soil to which they are entitled."
Over 12 million copies were sold in Nazi Germany. Recently an edition of the book became a best seller in Turkey.
Islamic Mein Kampf
The protocols of the learned elders of zion [1109KB PDF}
Books, influence and access to writings
Unionists back power-sharing deal with Sinn Fein
David Sharrock - The Times
Gordon Brown will return to Hillsborough Castle this morning to seal an agreement on saving Northern Ireland’s power-sharing institutions — a week after his deadline for a deal expired
The breakthrough was reached late last night when the Democratic Unionist Party announced that it would back an agreement with Sinn Féin over the transfer from London to Belfast of policing and justice powers.
Peter Robinson, the DUP leader, who announced 24 hours earlier that he was resuming his role as First Minister, said that he had the unamimous backing of his party’s 36 members in the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Mr Robinson has been battling allegations liked to his wife Iris’s sexual and financial affairs with a teenage boy.
However, the decision was criticised by Jim Allister, leader of the hardline Traditional Unionist Voice party. He said: “The DUP (assembly members) who buckled tonight not only let themselves down, but, more importantly, let their country down as they gifted IRA/Sinn Féin their strategic goal of policing and justice to a terrorist-inclusive Executive. Sinn Féin could not have had this victory without them.
“The deal the DUP so meekly accepted is the same deal they rejected on Monday. The deal hasn’t changed, only the snowmen of the DUP who melted once the heat came on.”
Mr Brown, along with Brian Cowen, the Taoiseach, had been expected in Belfast on Monday but the DUP wobbled on the deal, with claims that 14 assembly members voted against it.
DUP leaders are believed to have received clarification last night on the £800 million package offered by Mr Brown to fund the devolution of powers to the Assembly.
The Unionist leadership was also updated on possible support for the Presbyterian Mutual Society. The organisation went into administration in October 2008 and about 10,000 people fear losing their savings.
The crisis arose a fortnight ago when Sinn Féin threatened to pull out of government because of delays in transferring the powers.
Shaun Woodward, the Northern Ireland Secretary, has described the transfer as the last piece in the peace process jigsaw and, for Sinn Féin, it carries symbolic importance, allowing it to argue to its sceptical supporters that British disengagement is continuing.
The DUP has been reluctant to take the step and has increased demands for a reciprocal move on the issue of how controversial Protestant parades are handled. The detail of the agreement will be unveiled this morning at a plenary session of Northern Ireland’s main parties.
It will include a date for the transfer of the powers in mid April and the creation of a Justice Ministry.
The new Justice Minister is expected to be David Ford, leader of the small cross-community Alliance party, which classifies itself as neither Unionist nor nationalist.
The negotiations, which began a week last Monday, are the longest period of talks to take place in many years. It means that the immediate threat of fresh assembly elections — and the risk to Unionists that Sinn Féin would emerge as the largest party – has been removed.
McGuinness 'should be prosecuted' over gun photo
Google links up with US spy-master to thwart threats to cyberspace
James Bone - The Times
Google is teaming up with the US National Security Agency to battle cyber-attacks from China in a move that is causing disquiet on the internet.
The alliance of the world’s largest internet search company and the world’s most powerful electronic surveillance agency has provoked concern among privacy advocates. The non-profit Electronic Privacy Information Centre filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking more details yesterday hours after the deal was disclosed by The Washington Post.
The alliance puts Google in bed with the US Government because it challenges suspected Chinese Government interference on the internet.
It comes as Congress prepares to hold a hearing on Wednesday at which a senior Google executive will testify on the internet giant’s role in promoting democracy.
Nicole Wong, Google’s vice-president and deputy general counsel, will appear before the Foreign Affairs Committee at a hearing on The Google Predicament: Transforming US Cyberspace Policy to Advance Democracy, Security and Trade.
The agreement, which was still being finalised last night, would reportedly allow the NSA access to data from Google to help defend against cyber-attacks. But Google would not grant the agency access to users’ searches or e-mail accounts.
The Wall Street Journal said that Google began working with the NSA on the same day that it announced that hackers in China had made a cyber-attack on the company, targeting the e-mail accounts of human rights activists.
Google, which censors internet searches in China, has threatened to pull out of the Chinese market unless Beijing can guarantee uncensored searches.
The Pentagon said this week that it was putting cyberspace on the same level as land, sea and air as a potential battleground. A new US Cyber Command is being set up under Strategic Command to defend military computer networks and “conduct cyberspace military operations”.
Jack Goldsmith, co-author of a 2009 report entitled Technology, Policy, Law, and Ethics Regarding US Acquisition and Use of Cyberattack Capabilities, wrote in the Washington Post this week that the NSA had offensive capabilities.
“The NSA, the world’s most powerful signals intelligence organisation, is also in the business of breaking into and extracting data from offshore enemy computer systems and of engaging in computer attacks that, in the NSA’s words, ‘disrupt, deny, degrade, or destroy the information’ found in these systems,” he wrote.
March of the state spies
Former spy in line for top Scottish Tory job
UK Government spies could scan every call, text and email
Tea Party movement reaches boiling point at first convention hits trouble
Sarah Palin's $100,000 speaking fee angers right-wing rank and file
David Usborne - The Independent
They came by bus, train, plane and car from places as far apart as Las Vegas, Memphis, Fresno and Boston. And they were variously livid, mad-as-hell, furious and, in a few cases, a wee bit bonkers. Welcome to the Tea Party Convention at the Grand Ole Opry Hotel just outside Nashville, Tennessee.
They come in celebration and anticipation, but quite what will transpire as the first national gathering of self-described "tea-partiers" starts this morning is anyone's guess.
The melodious country tunes you might expect in Music City will likely be absent. Rather, expect a cacophony of competing arguments, banners and megaphones, as they dig in to consider where the movement should head next and what its aims are. Another certainty: the highlight will surely be the Saturday night lobster and steak dinner featuring the event's keynote speaker, the former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.
Dissent arrived early, in fact, after two main speakers and three sponsors pulled out at the last minute, alleging that the convention had become a commercial enterprise for its organisers – a group called Tea Party Nation – and that the grassroots nature of the movement was being compromised. The $549 (£348) price of admission angered many, as did the $100,000 speaking fee for Ms Palin.
The movement was born last February when a television reporter commented on air about Barack Obama's bailout plan for the banks. He called for a Windy City "tea party" to protest against the policies, making reference to the Boston Tea Party when colonists rebelled against taxes on tea imposed by Britain in 1773.
The idea caught on and since then tea party activists have sent tremors through the political landscape, first by organising rowdy town hall events over the summer to oppose healthcare reform, then convening a huge rally on the Washington Mall in the autumn, and finally sending volunteers to New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts for elections, helping to tip the results against the Democrats.
While Democrats are rattled by the brush fire that is the Tea Party, so are many in the Republican leadership. The movement is backing hard conservatives to compete in mid-term elections in November. That could hurt the Republicans nationally.
And their views represent a slice of the "Grand Old Party" that the party would rather keep quiet about in national elections. Clamouring for bellhops and registration assistants last night were libertarians, conservatives, anarchists, born-agains and, of course, a ship load of "birthers", the folk who insist that President Obama is not an American and represent more than one third of the party, according to a recent poll.
Nor is there just one Tea Party organisation. Competing for attention this week are Tea Party Nation, Tea Party Express, SurgeUSA, SmartGirl Politics and a string of other conservative groups. Among those boycotting the Nashville bash is Keli Carendar, the "Liberty Belle", a popular figure who was one of the first to stir up the movement. She and other purists worry that a ticketed convention in a fancy resort smacks of the traditional political parties.
"It wasn't the kind of grass-roots organisation that we are, so we declined to participate," said Marty Meckler, a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots.
High-profile last-minute drop-outs included two members of Congress, Marsha Blackburn and Michele Bachmann.
Media's Presidential Bias and Decline
Tea Party Movement Evolves Into Political Force With Eye Toward 2010
Sweden's Justice Minister reluctant to store data
The European Court of Justice has told Sweden that it must implement a 2006 measure requiring telecom operators to store information about their customers’ phone calls and emails.
The European Union directive, known as the Data Retention Directive, was approved by Brussels in March 2006, but Sweden has yet to implement the measure more than three years after its passage.
The Swedish government conceded to the court that it had not fulfilled its obligations and assured the court that the EU directive 2006/24 can be expected to pass into Swedish law on April 1st 2010.
But hours after the verdict was made public, Justice Minister Beatrice Ask told news agency TT that the government would not be preparing a legislative proposal on the issue prior to this autumn's general election.
"The extent to which private companies should be forced to store information about the activities of individuals is an important matter of principle. That's exactly what this is about," Ask told news agency TT.
The minister added that the government would at least wait until the completion of an inquiry into police methods, the findings of which are expected to come at the start of the summer.
The Commission decided in April 2009 to file a suit against Sweden in the European Court of Justice and the court published its decision against Sweden on Thursday.
The Data Retention Directive was championed by former Social Democratic justice minister Thomas Bodström, but the centre-right government has declined to present the legislation to parliament.
"It's no secret that I wasn't very fond of the proposal when it was initiated and I think there is good reason to exercise a certain amount of caution when it comes to gathering information," said Ask.
On two previous occasions, the Commission has questioned why Sweden delayed implementing the law, with the government claiming it was too busy working on the Treaty of Lisbon to turn its attention toward the directive.
Sweden has been told to pay court costs, in accordance with EU praxis.
The measure stipulates that telecom operators store data about customers’ telephone calls, as well as information about text messages and emails.
The directive was passed in the wake of the Madrid and London terrorist bombings. Seen as an important tool in combating terrorism, it raised concerns from privacy advocates.
MPs milked system until the day they were exposed
CPS to reveal charges against members and peers accused of serious fraud
Nigel Morris - The Independent
MPS were claiming record sums of money from the taxpayer until the final moment that the expenses scandal erupted.
The total bill for their allowances jumped by almost three per cent to £95.6m in 2008-09, an average of almost £150,000 for each MP.
The last financial year ended just four weeks before details of the extent of abuse of expenses emerged, plunging Westminster into crisis and marking the end of lax controls on claims.
The most expensive politician last year was Mohammed Sarwar, the Labour MP for Glasgow Central, who received £192,986.87. His claim included £31,310 of travel claims and £99,104.72 for staffing costs.
He was followed by Roger Godsiff, the Labour MP for Birmingham Sparkbrook and Small Heath (£189,337.89) and Angus Robertson, the SNP MP for Moray (£188,164.16).
Westminster’s expenses bill rose by £2.7m since the previous year’s total of £92.9m which was itself an inflation-busting rise of six per cent on 2006-07.
Details of last year’s allowance payments came as Sir Thomas Legg published his long-awaited audit of every claim by MPs for their second homes over five years.
He instructed 390 current and former MPs to pay back a total of just over £1.3m, a figure that was reduced to £1.1m after several successful appeals by MPs – around £100,000 less than the cost of Sir Thomas’s inquiry. More than half the 752 politicians whose claims he examined were judged to have overclaimed.
Sir Thomas’s damning verdict comes as the Crown Prosecution Service prepares to announce today (FRI) whether charges will be brought over allegations of serious expenses fraud against a small number of MPs and peers.
In the foreword to his report, Sir Thomas launched a withering attack on the “deeply flawed” rules for claiming for second homes, accusing deferential Commons officials of turning a blind eye to the abuse of the system.
He pinned some of the blame on Baron Martin of Springburn, who resigned as Commons Speaker last May amid widespread anger over his handling of the crisis.
The fees office had been “vulnerable to the influence of higher authorities in the House of Commons, from the Speaker down, and of individual MPs,” Sir Thomas protested. “These influences tended more towards looking after the immediate interests of MPs than to safeguarding propriety in public expenditure,” he said.
He also condemned the “vague” rules governing expenses claims and the failure by many MPs to produce the paperwork to justify large claims.
The biggest single repayment will be made by Barbara Follett, the local government minister, who has returned £42,458.21, most of which was spent on security patrols outside her home. She said the expenses saga had been “a sad and sorry episode in Britain’s political life which I deeply regret”.
The Tory husband and wife Andrew Mackay and Julie Kirkbride are returning £60,436 between them. Both are stepping down at the election after it emerged they claimed second homes allowance on different properties.
MPs have been given a deadline of 22 February to arrange repayments and those that fail to comply face having the cash docked from their salaries or their “golden goodbyes” when they leave Parliament.
Many MPs have already returned their overpayments, paying back more than £800,000. The largest sum outstanding is due from the Tory former minister David Heathcoat-Amory, who has been told to pay back £29,691.93 in gardening and cleaning costs.
Thirteen MPs have been given extra time to appeal against the Legg rulings, including the shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox who is disputing a demand to return more than £20,000 in mortgage interest payments.
Sir Christopher Kelly, who led a review of the parliamentary allowances system last year, told the Commons Public Administration Committee yesterday: “I think all of you are guilty of having gone along with a system which you must have known was flawed, even if you were not personally guilty.”
Reflecting the anger of many MPs over the whole reform of expenses, the former Home Secretary David Blunkett said independent reviews by retired mandarins amounted to “the Civil Service actually running the political system, rather than politicians representing and accountable to the people”.
He said the new allowances regime being put in place threatened to be “obtuse, perverse and extraordinarily difficult to implement”.
Ann Widdecombe, the former Home Office minister, called the Legg review “lazy, incompetent and illogical”.
Payback time: The losers
*Tory husband-and-wife team Andrew Mackay and Julie Kirkbride are £60,436 poorer after the Legg review. Both have also been forced to step down at the election after it emerged that they designated different homes as their second property, including Boeley Hall, Worcestershire. Mr Mackay is returning £31,193 while his wife is paying back £29,243.
*Barbara Follett, the Local Government minister and wife of the millionaire author Ken Follett, will have to return £42,458 – more than any other MP. Mrs Follett, the MP for Stevenage, made invalid claims for mobile security patrols outside her second home, six telephone lines, pest control and insurance for artworks.
*The former Tory frontbencher Bernard Jenkin was initially ordered to repay the £63,250 he claimed to rent his second home from his sister-in-law. The sum was reduced to £36,250 on appeal, but is still the second largest repayment.
*Iris Robinson, the Democratic Unionist MP currently embroiled in a sex scandal, had to return £544.90 of the £1,644.90 she spent on a new bed.
*Labour's Mike Gapes is making the smallest repayment. The Ilford South MP has already returned 40p as a result of a "clerical error".
*The Tory MP Anthony Steen handed back the £28.50 cost of the rope and binding used on the flagpole outside his house, as well as £117 for skip hire and £39.39 for plants.
*Former Labour minister Gerald Kaufman spent £240.95 replacing two broken china grapefruit bowls. He was told he should have claimed on his insurance.
*Former Tory minister Douglas Hogg submitted an 18-page letter appealing against a demand to return £20,639.42, including his housekeeper's expenses. It failed.
*The claim by Labour's Harry Cohen for a £150 flower vase was deemed "excessive".
Knights at the helm: Expenses investigators
*If you have a crisis that threatens the established, what is the first thing you do? Call in the establishment.
Sir Thomas Legg, a former civil servant, was given the task of auditing MPs' allowances and deciding how much they should pay back.
Sir Paul Kennedy, a retired High Court judge, heard appeals against his conclusions and cut the amount MPs will have to return by £200,000. Sir Ian Kennedy, another lawyer, has been drafted in to make sure nothing like this can happen again by drawing up new rules for MPs as the chairman of the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. But even he does not have an entirely free hand. He will be working on proposals from Sir Christopher Kelly, the former senior civil servant who chairs the Committee on Standards in Public Life.
Its Payback Time for Scots MPs
Turkish girl, 16, buried alive for talking to boys
Death reopens debate over 'honour' killings in Turkey,
which account for half of all the country's murders
Robert Tait - Guardian
Turkish police have recovered the body of a 16-year-old girl they say was buried alive by relatives in an "honour" killing carried out as punishment for talking to boys.
The girl, who has been identified only by the initials MM, was found in a sitting position with her hands tied, in a two-metre hole dug under a chicken pen outside her home in Kahta, in the south-eastern province of Adiyaman.
Police made the discovery in December after a tip-off from an informant, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported on its website.
The girl had previously been reported missing.
The informant told the police she had been killed following a family "council" meeting.
Her father and grandfather are said to have been arrested and held in custody pending trial. It is unclear whether they have been charged. The girl's mother was arrested but was later released.
Media reports said the father had told relatives he was unhappy that his daughter – one of nine children – had male friends. The grandfather is said to have beaten her for having relations with the opposite sex.
A postmortem examination revealed large amounts of soil in her lungs and stomach, indicating that she had been alive and conscious while being buried. Her body showed no signs of bruising.
The discovery will reopen the emotive debate in Turkey about "honour" killings, which are particularly prevalent in the impoverished south-east.
Official figures have indicated that more than 200 such killings take place each year, accounting for around half of all murders in Turkey.
Barbarism in Iraq
On reactions to Mukhtaran Mai and Pakistan's Hudood Laws
Beyond the Domestic Violence Bill
Child brides in Afghanistan
Vani girls
Couple jailed after using trafficked girls in huge prostitution ring
Nigerians aged from 15 to 21 forced to work in business
controlled from former vicarage in Wales
Caroline Davies - Guardian
A couple were jailed today after running a prostitution ring from an old vicarage in Wales using girls trafficked from Nigeria.
Thomas Carroll, 48, an Irishman, and Shamiela Clark, 32, his South African wife, controlled their multimillion-pound business from a mobile phone "call centre" in Castlemartin, Pembrokeshire.
Among the prostitutes were six trafficked girls and young women, aged from 15 to 21, some of whom had been terrified into working for fear of breaking a "juju" oath they were forced to take during voodoo ceremonies in Nigeria.
Carroll was jailed for seven years, and Clark, a former prostitute, for three and a half years, at Cardiff crown court, after both admitted conspiracy to control prostitution for gain and conspiracy to money-launder.
Carroll's daughter, Toma, 26, was imprisoned for two years after admitting laundering the profits which, in one year alone, totalled more than £800,000.
After the case, investigators said the evidence suggested that at the time of their arrest, the couple were in the process of setting up a similar operation in South Africa to coincide with the World Cup.
The couple ran more than 35 brothels, mainly in the Irish Republic, from the rented Welsh farmhouse to which they fled after coming to the attention of the gardaí.
The Nigerian women and girls, who were not trafficked by the defendants, were among prostitutes supplied to the ring. One girl rescued by police was just 14 when trafficked out of Nigeria, and 15 when placed in one of the Carroll brothels.
All came from poor family backgrounds, having lost one or both parents, and were promised a better life away from their remote, rural villages. One was told she could be a hairdresser, another that she would be put into further education.
"Instead, they find themselves being issued with forged passports in different names and being taken to Dublin via various routes and find themselves in the hands of the Carroll family," Mark Phillips, deputy director of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), which was involved in the operation, said after the case.
"The first these girls know they are going into a life of prostitution is when they are bought items of clothing, dropped off at a flat, and get a phone call to say 'expect a male customer and do what you are told',"
They worked 12 to 15 hours a day, were regularly moved from brothel to brothel, and supplied with "necessities" – condoms, creams and lingerie. Food was brought to them. The going rate was €160 (£140) for half an hour, but they had to pay their money into Toma Carroll's bank account.
Of the 15 prostitutes caught in the police raids on Carroll's brothels, some were from South America and Europe and willingly worked for him.
But many of the trafficked women and girls lived in fear of juju oaths, made during "terrifying and humiliating" rituals they were forced into by traffickers.
One was forced to sleep in a coffin to "put the fear of death" in her. Menstrual blood was drawn into a padlock, locked, and thrown in the river to signify their lives were in the hands of the river goddess, said investigators.
Live chickens were killed and the victims made to eat the raw hearts. Fingernail clippings and pubic hair cuttings were taken, and retained, to "instill the fear of God in them" and show they could be "metaphysically" reached wherever they were. Often the girls were naked, and one was cut all over her body with blades, said investigators.
An important part of the oath was each was told they had to pay back, on average, £65,000 to their traffickers. If they breached the oath, they would die, or their families back in Nigeria would die.
Investigations continue to track down those responsible for trafficking them out of Nigeria and those passing them through Europe to Ireland.
The defendants are said to have properties in South Africa, Bulgaria and Mozambique thought to be worth "millions".
At the farmhouse, police found 70 mobile phones, all linked to adverts placed on sexual services websties or in newspapers.
Phone records showed 300 calls a day were made or received. "That gives you some idea of the scale", said Tony Fitzpatrick of SOCA Wales. They also found drafted advertisements, one reading: "African Nandi, very petite tanned chocolate delight, petite slim size 8, 34C but leggy flexible kinky, Nandi enjoys nudism and exploring her body and yours making the sessions fun and intimate."
Over a period of three months, they spent £5,200 on one telephone bill, running to 5,000 pages.
Male clients would phone and be given directions where to go. Unlike traditional massage parlour brothels, Carroll's "closed brothels", were set up in rented flats or houses, and regularly moved around 15 towns in the Republic and three in Northern Ireland so proved particularly challenging for investigators.
In one year Carroll, a father of four originally from County Carlow, spent £28,580 on newspaper advertising alone. From 2002 increasing amounts of money were deposited into his daughter's bank account. In 2006 €111,000 were deposited, in 2007 €1.13m and in 2008 €500,000had been deposited by September.
Sentencing the defendants, judge Neil Bidder, told them: "I'm not sentencing you for trafficking those women and accept you were unaware of the personal circumstance of the women who worked in your brothels and you were not responsible for any violence and threats of violence.
"But the Nigerian women who were threatened with dreadful coercion all ended up working for you.
"You did not ask and did not care what personal tragedies had befallen those women submitting for your profit."
The multi-agency operation was spearheaded by detectives from Northern Ireland Police Service's Serious Organised Crime branch, in partnership with the Serious Organised Crime Agency and An Garda Siochana.
Philips, said: "This was a well organised and lucrative enterprise. The defendants made substantial amount of money from their business which they used to purchase properties in South Africa, Bulgaria and to make a down payment on a property being built in Mozambique. They will now be subject to confiscation proceedings to seize the proceeds of their crime."
Should prostitution be given the red light?
Prostitution in SNP Scotland
This
report
is
in
part
summarised
from
Radio
Netherlands.
Visit their site to enjoy further informative writing and multimedia
Visit their site to enjoy further informative writing and multimedia
Readers
please
email
comments to: editorial AT
martinfrost.ws including full name
Return to Home Page
Return to Home Page