Nov. 11
JAMAICA:
Murder of Finnish doctor in Jamaica could bring death sentence ---- Victim
was shot by the roadside in unclear circumstances
The shooting of a 53-year-old Finnish doctor in Jamaica in October now
appears to be a more premeditated killing than was initially believed. A
man and a woman being held on suspicion of the crime could both face
capital punishment. Jamaica retains death by hanging for premeditated
murder. The actual court case is yet to begin.
The matter came to the surface on Thursday at the Police HQ in Pasila,
where Jamaican detectives Clive Brown and Lenroy Arnett gave a briefing to
Finnish journalists on the ongoing investigation into the death of the
Finnish man.
The 2 officers have been in Finland to gather evidence, and were full of
praise for the assistance they had received from the Finnish murder squad
detectives.
The facts of the case so far as they are known are that the doctor, from
Helsinki, was killed by the side of the road leading from Montego Bay's
Sangster International Airport to Ocho Rios, early in October.
He was coming from the airport, where he had just been picked up by his
24-year-old Jamaican wife. The couple were on their way to an apartment
they had rented. They had been married for 2 years.
According to Det. Inspector Brown, the couple were driving down the
highway at around 10.30 p.m. when the woman - who was behind the wheel -
announced she needed to take a leak by the roadside. She slowed down and
stopped the car, and at that point the vehicle was rear-ended by another
car.
The wife got out to discuss the fender-bender collision with the other
driver, and shortly afterwards the doctor himself got out and went behind
the car to examine the minor damage. Then the wife has said she heard
shots and she dashed for cover in the bushes, from where she called the
police.
A police patrol car arrived within fifteen minutes and found the Finnish
doctor dead from gunshot wounds beside the car.
The other vehicle was nowhere to be seen, and the victim's mobile phone
was also missing.
An investigation was launched, and a few points indicated that the wife's
testimony was not altogether convincing, not least the fact of her needing
to excuse herself by the road.
"In Jamaica, if a woman is driving a car and another car rams her vehicle
in the back, then it is not customary to stop, but to drive to a place
where there are plenty of people around", said Brown of a country where
there are around 1,000 homicides each year, among a population of 3
million.
It also transpired that the woman had borrowed the car that the couple
were in from a 29-year-old painter/carpenter, who himself told a slightly
different tale.
The end result is that both are now suspected of 1st-degree murder and
conspiracy to commit murder.
Brown ventured that the motive for the killing was probably money. He also
noted that police had received evidence to suggest the 2 alleged
perpetrators were lovers. Police are now trying to establish which of the
pair actually fired the fatal shots. This could be difficult, given the
circumstances of a witness having become one of the prime suspects,
admitted Det. Insp. Brown.
He commented that each year around three or four tourists to Jamaica fall
victim to killings on the island. "So these are pretty rare cases", he
said.
(source: Helsingin Sanomat)
LIBYA:
Gaddafi's Son Doesn't Believe Bulgaria Medics Guilty
The influential son of Libyan leader relations with the West, and the
European Union and the United States are both following it closely.
The nurses insist they are innocent and the only evidence against them
consists of confessions extracted under torture.
U.S.r a fair hearing.
"Bulgaria has always believed in the nurses' innocence," said foreign
ministry spokesman Dimitar Tsanchev.
"We expect the Libyan supreme court, on November 15, to take into
consideration the convincing evmbings in which Libya, long regarded by
Washington as a "rogue state," was implicated.
The oil-producing North African state has dramatically improved ties with
the West since Gaddafi renounced weapons of mass destruction in Deaghdad
restaurant frequented by the security forces at breakfast time on
Thursday, killing 35 people and wounding 25 in an attack claimed by al
Qaeda in Iraq.
***********************
Bulgarian Nurses Face Last Appeal in Libya
Zorka Anachkova still recoils with horror when she recalls the indictment.
Issued by a Libyan court in 2000, it charged her daughter Kristiana and
four other Bulgarian nurses with intentionally infecting 426 children with
the HIV virus.
"It said they were murderers," said Anachkova, a retired cook. "I cried
all night. You have heard the phrase 'a broken heart'? I know what it
means.
"My heart has ached ever since," she told Reuters from her modest 2-room
apartment in a Sofia suburb.
Last year, the court sentenced the nurses and a Palestinian doctor
colleague to death, intensifying a standoff that has threatened Libyan
leader Muammar Gaddafi's efforts to renew ties with the West after decades
in isolation.
Bulgaria and its allies, the European Union and the United States,
condemned the verdicts, pointing to allegations that the nurses were
tortured to extract confessions and to expert medical testimony indicating
they were not present when the epidemic broke out.
However, in the Mediterranean port of Benghazi, where Libya says at least
50 of the children have died of AIDS, the victims' families have demanded
vengeance.
In custody since 1999, the nurses have what may be a last chance to escape
a firing squad on November 15, when the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear
a final appeal and either uphold the verdicts or call a retrial.
The date has already been pushed back once though, and analysts say a
quick solution this time is also unlikely.
With a risk of domestic unrest in Benghazi if the nurses are freed -- the
Mediterranean port is a bastion of anti-Gaddafi dissent -- the court is
likely to uphold the guilty verdicts, the analysts say.
However, Gaddafi faces what the West says is a mountain of evidence
showing the nurses are innocent and he has too much at stake on the
international stage to carry out the executions.
"He therefore has an impossible circle to square," said George Joffe, who
lectures on the Middle East and North Africa at Cambridge University's
Center for International Studies.
"If the court simply accepts the evidence, it would have to release the
nurses...which would enrage the local population and might spark off
violence. If Gaddafi can, on the other hand, find a way out, it would
please everyone."
PARIAH-STATE IMAGE
Libya has tried to shed its pariah-state image since 2003 and is trying to
draw foreign investment into what analysts say is an under-exploited oil
source right on Europe's doorstep.
Tripoli abandoned its pursuit of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons
in 2003. It also took responsibility for bomb attacks against French,
British and German targets and agreed to pay compensation to the victims'
families.
In turn, Washington ended a trade embargo and Gaddafi, shunned for most of
his 35-year rule, has received overtures from countries such as Britain,
France and Italy, which are eager to improve ties with Africa's second
largest oil producer.
However, the nurses' case threatens to reverse the thaw.
Although poor and small, ex-communist Bulgaria joined NATO last year and
is aiming for EU entry in 2007. Its new allies back the nurses, who say
they were framed to deflect blame from Libya's dilapidated health sector.
AIDS expert Luc Montagnier, co-discoverer of the HIV virus, has said the
outbreak began before the nurses arrived at the hospital and was most
likely caused by poor hygiene.
In spite of these discrepancies, Libyan authorities have stood by the
court, and the victims' families have demanded an end to delays so the
executions can be carried out.
"The death penalty will convince the families the murderers have drunk of
the same poison glass that killed their children," said Idriss Lagha,
chairman of the Libyan Association to Aid Infected Children.
"No other sentence will satisfy them."
LOCKERBIE COMPENSATION
Tripoli has said it will consider freeing the nurses for compensation
similar to the 2.7 billion euros it paid for its role in the Pan Am plane
bombing over the Scottish town of Lockerbie which killed 270 people in
1988.
Islamic law allows for a victim's relatives to withdraw a death sentence
if the condemned person pays reparations, but Sofia has rejected any type
of payout, saying it would amount to a false admission of guilt.
The EU disagrees with the verdicts, but it is loath to see Libya slip back
into the diplomatic wilderness and is leading talks to find a way for
Tripoli to get out of the quagmire.
Brussels is putting together an aid package, including medical supplies,
training, and treatment at European hospitals for the children, and has
already provided some measures.
The moves may be bearing fruit. On Thursday Gaddafi's influential son told
Reuters he personally did not believe the nurses were guilty but that
appeasing the families of the victims was crucial for a solution.
"The most important thing is to find an urgent settlement with the
families of the victims. This is the core issue in order to find light at
the end of the tunnel," said Saif al-Islam, whose charity is working with
the EU and Bulgaria to provide aid to the children.
So far, however, Sofia and Brussels have strictly avoided labeling any aid
effort as compensation.
In spite of reports in British and Arab newspapers that a deal may be
imminent, experts say it is much more likely the court will have to buy
more time at next Tuesday's hearing.
"The Libyans will have to push this as far as they can, right up until the
point when it looks like the executions are inevitable," said Joffe. "And
then, if there is no evidence of concessions, Gaddafi will have to step in
and solve it."
(source for both: Reuters)
