#TheStoryIsNotDead: Reporter #JanKuciak and his fiancée were found dead this Sunday, killed by a single shot each. Kuciak was working w/ @OCCRP, @investigace_cz, and @irpinvestigates on a story into the Ndrangheta in Slovakia. Here is Kuciak’s final story: https://www.occrp.org/en/amurderedjournalistslastinvestigation/ …
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Julian Assange Arrested in London After Ecuador Withdraws Asylum; U.S. Requests Extradition
7Ecuador’s Embassy in London, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange lived until his arrest on Thursday. Photo: Alastair Grant/AP
Julian Assange Arrested in London After Ecuador Withdraws Asylum; U.S. Requests Extradition
This breaking news report will be updated throughout the day.
JULIAN ASSANGE, the WikiLeaks founder, was arrested on Thursday inside Ecuador’s Embassy in London, where he had lived since 2012 under diplomatic protection. London’s Metropolitan Police Service said in a statement its officers were “invited into the embassy by the Ambassador, following the Ecuadorian government’s withdrawal of asylum.”
Video of Assange being dragged from the embassy was captured on a livestream set up by Ruptly, a Russian government news agency.
Assange’s lawyer, Jen Robinson, tweeted that he had been arrested not just for breach of bail conditions in the United Kingdom, but also in relation to an American extradition request. Apparently citing Assange himself as a source, the lawyer said the warrant was for allegedly conspiring with Chelsea Manning to leak documents in 2010.
Just confirmed: #Assange has been arrested not just for breach of bail conditions but also in relation to a US extradition request. @wikileaks @khrafnsson
From #Assange: The US warrant was issued in December 2017 and is for conspiracy with Chelsea Manning @xychelsea in early 2010.
A subsequent police statement confirmed that Assange “been further arrested on behalf of the United States authorities, at 10:53 hrs after his arrival at a central London police station. This is an extradition warrant under Section 73 of the Extradition Act.”
Assange, 47, was then taken from a central London police station to Westminster Magistrates’ Court. The force explained that it acted initially on a warrant issued by that court after Assange took refuge in the embassy in 2012, violating bail conditions by not attending a hearing on his attempt to resist extradition to Sweden, where he was wanted for questioning on sexual misconduct allegations leveled against him by two women.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Murdered Slovak Journalist Was Investigating Prime Minister’s Aide Linked to Suspected Italian Mafia Figure
Murdered Slovak Journalist Was Investigating Prime Minister’s Aide Linked to Suspected Italian Mafia Figure
BEFORE HE WAS murdered last week with a single shot to the chest, and his body left alongside that of his fiancée, who was killed with one shot to the head, the Slovak investigative journalist Ján Kuciak had been amassing evidence that an Italian businessman living in Slovakia was part of the ‘Ndrangheta, a Calabrian organized crime network.
Kuciak’s final, unfinished report for the news site Aktuality.sk, on money-laundering, tax fraud, and drug smuggling by the ‘Ndrangheta in Slovakia, was published on Wednesday by several Slovak websites.
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, or OCCRP, which had supported Kuciak’s work, also published an overview of the investigation.
According to the OCCRP, Kuciak and his colleagues had started their investigation “by looking into the hiring of Maria Troškova, then 27, by Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico as an assistant.”
Fico hired the former Miss Universe contestant and topless model (dubbed “the sexy assistant” by Slovak media) despite her relative lack of political experience. His press department had refused to release her job description, to clarify her position in government, or to say whether she got a security clearance.
But while looking into this story, the reporting team uncovered an even bigger one. As it turns out, Troskova used to be a business partner of Antonino Vadala, 42, an Italian man who now lives in Slovakia and owns a network of agricultural companies in the east of the country.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
British Exit From EU Not Inevitable, Despite Referendum
Prime Minister David Cameron, who led the failed campaign to convince voters to stay in the EU, told the public that an exit would not happen soon, as he intended to resign in three months and leave it to his successor to decide “when to trigger Article 50″ of the union’s basic agreement, the Lisbon Treaty, which says that a member state has two years after declaring its desire to leave to negotiate the terms of its exit.
Has Article 50 been invoked yet?http://hasarticle50beeninvoked.uk/
Panama Papers Source Wants Whistleblower Immunity to Aid Law Enforcement
THE ANONYMOUS SOURCE responsible for leaking the vast document trove known as the Panama Papers said in a manifesto published on Friday that she or he “would be willing to cooperate with law enforcement” to ensure the prosecution of wrongdoing revealed by the paper trail — but only once “governments codify legal protections for whistleblowers into law.”
The source wrote that the leaked files on offshore business dealings and shell companies organized by Mossack Fonseca, a law firm based in Panama, revealed “the scandal of what is legal and allowed.”
But the source, who took the name “John Doe,” argued that since “the law firm, its founders, and employees actually did knowingly violate myriad laws worldwide, repeatedly,” the wrongdoers there should now be prosecuted.
Doe added that prosecutors require access to the original documents, noting that media outlets “have rightly stated that they will not provide them to law enforcement agencies. I, however, would be willing to cooperate with law enforcement to the extent that I am able.”
“That being said,” Doe continued, “I have watched as one after another, whistleblowers and activists in the United States and Europe have had their lives destroyed by the circumstances they find themselves in after shining a light on obvious wrongdoing.” Doe explained:
Edward Snowden is stranded in Moscow, exiled due to the Obama administration’s decision to prosecute him under the Espionage Act. For his revelations about the NSA, he deserves a hero’s welcome and a substantial prize, not banishment. Bradley Birkenfeld was awarded millions for his information concerning Swiss bank UBS — and was still given a prison sentence by the Justice Department. Antoine Deltour is presently on trial for providing journalists with information about how Luxembourg granted secret “sweetheart” tax deals to multi-national corporations, effectively stealing billions in tax revenues from its neighbour countries. And there are plenty more examples.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Germany Could Charge Comic for Insulting Turkey’s President
AMERICANS WONDERING WHAT life might be like in the near future — after a President Donald Trump acts on his promise to “open up our libels laws,” so that politicians with easily bruised egos can sue reporters or commentators for hurting their feelings — should pay attention to what is happening this week in Germany.
That’s because German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday that her government, while being fully committed to the principle of free speech, is considering a request from Turkey to file criminal charges against the host of a late-night television show on the state broadcaster, ZDF. His alleged crime? Joking about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s thin skin by reading examples of actual slanderous statements about him, in the form of a poem.
The poem, performed last month by the German satirist Jan Böhmermann, was a carefully calibrated insult. The host began the sketch by telling viewers of his show, “Neo Magazin Royale,” that he would read aloud from a text called “Defamatory,” in order to demonstrate the difference between the sort of satirical insults of the notoriously prickly Erdogan that are permitted under German law and legally prohibited slander.
“What I’m about to read is not allowed. If it were to be read in public, that would be forbidden in Germany,” Böhmermann said, before launching nonetheless into a recitation of the full text, which describes Erdogan as a foul monster who has sex with goats and “watches child porn while kicking Kurds.”
As originally broadcast, the sketch included several interjections from Ralf Kabelka, Böhmermann’s sidekick, who interrupted to explain that under German law, certain sections of the poem were clearly not satire but defamation.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Turkey Wants Ban on Mocking Its Leader Enforced Abroad Too
After the president arrived in Washington on Tuesday night, his security team got right to work, harassing protesters and journalists outside his hotel, as writers for one of the papers recently shuttered by Erdogan’s government noted.
Erdogan’s guards try to silence protesters in DC by shouting louder meaninglessly. A taste of Erdogan regime in USA https://twitter.com/AtillaTasNet/status/715121684651589632 …
Erdogan’s rubber-stamp editor @ibrahimkaragul attacks reporter @ihsandenli in Washington.
Turkish president Erdogan’s security guards attack journalists outside his hotel in #WashingtonDC – common practice
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Egypt Bars Journalist From Leaving Country as Crackdown on Dissent Widens
One of Egypt’s leading investigative journalists, Hossam Bahgat, was prevented from boarding a flight to Jordan today when officials at Cairo International Airport informed him that his name had been added to a list of citizens barred from traveling abroad.
Bahgat, who was detained and interrogated for three days in November by military intelligence officers, wrote on Facebook that officials at the airport told him that the order confining him to the country had come from Egypt’s public prosecutor, but they could provide no details of any case against him.
With some exasperation, the reporter pointed out that this surprise punishment by the Egyptian judicial system came as he was on his way to Jordan “to participate in the United Nations meeting on justice in the Arab world!”
The travel ban was quickly condemned by Egyptian activists, including Heba Morayef, the associate director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a prominent human rights group that Bahgat founded and led before turning his attention to journalism after the country’s 2011 revolution. Writing on Twitter, Morayef observed that the space for dissent against Egypt’s authoritarian government seemed to be narrowing, given that the restrictions on Bahgat were imposed just weeks after a similar ban was placed on Gamal Eid, a lawyer with the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, and days after health officials ordered the closure of El Nadeem, a renowned clinic for the rehabilitation of torture victims.
Hossam Bahgat has just been banned from travel. After Gamal Eid travel ban + Nadim Center closure order. Closing in.
