Eideard

Hundreds greeting Salah on his release from an Israeli prison
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

The Home Office’s hi-tech passenger data centre sent an alert to Terminal 1 at Heathrow about the impending arrival of Raed Salah, a “preacher of hate” who had been barred from the country by order of Theresa May, the Home Secretary.

However, he was on a plane heading for Terminal 5, a UK Border Agency source said. The mistake meant the immigration officer who checked his passport was not fully aware of the passenger’s significance and waved him through…

“There were a series of cock-ups in terms of getting information to the front-line,” said the UKBA source…

The Home Office has launched an investigation into how Salah was able to enter the country despite a travel ban, but last night refused to offer a “running commentary” on the inquiry.

Mrs May is likely to face tough questioning on the bungle when she appears before the Commons’ Home Affairs Select Committee on Tuesday.

The National Border Targeting Centre opened 15 months ago as part of the Home Office’s “e-Borders” scheme, which is behind schedule after the IT company hired to deliver the project had its contract terminated.

The Wythenshawe centre receives “passenger name record” information, which airlines flying into Britain are required by law to provide, and analyses the data in a bid to spot terrorist suspects, known criminals and illegal immigrants.

Salah was banned from Britain on the grounds that he holds hard-line anti-Semitic views. However, the UKBA mistake meant he was able to enter the country on June 25.

He delivered speeches in London and Leicester in the early part of last week and was later due to speak on the Israeli-Palestine conflict at the House of Commons at the invitation of three Labour MPs.

He was detained at 11pm on Tuesday and is now believed to have been deported.

Phew! Sounds to me as if the Brits are living up to all the standards established by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. From inept programming to boundless fear.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

The pilot falsely accused of training the hijackers responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks has won his almost decade-long miscarriage of justice battle.

Lotfi Raissi, an Algerian living in Britain who lost his career as an airline pilot, suffered wrongful imprisonment and damage to his health, will now be eligible for up to £2m compensation.

Raissi became the first person to be accused of participating in the 2001 attack in New York and Washington. He was held for five months in Belmarsh high security prison in London and told he would be charged with conspiracy and murder in the US where he could face the death penalty.

Today he described the last nine years as “hell” but said he was delighted with the decision by Jack Straw, the justice secretary. “I have suffered such a great injustice, I’m grateful for this verdict. They took almost 10 years of my life and now I’m starting to breathe again.”

He added: “I’ve been exonerated, not just by a court, but by the British government. Now I can turn the page, but I can never forgive them for what they did…”

Raissi’s arrest, at his home in Colnbrook, Berkshire, 10 days after the 9/11 attacks, followed an extradition request from the FBI. In court, where he awaited extradition to the US on a holding charge, he was described by British lawyers representing the US as one of the lead instructors of the four hijackers.

A judge threw the case out in 2002 and said there was no evidence against him. Since then, Raissi has sought an apology. In 2008, in a judgment that exonerated him, three court of appeal judges condemned the Met and the CPS for abusing the court process, presenting false allegations and not disclosing evidence.

Anyone holding their breath awaiting exoneration from the FBI or the United States government?

All fallacies. All corrupt.

A Royal Navy commander crashed a nuclear-powered submarine into a large rock in the Red Sea after misreading a number one as seven on a navigational chart…

Commander Steven Drysdale, who was in charge of HMS Superb, had ordered the vessel to take a shorter route to make sure it reached a rendezvous point in time for an operation. The submarine dived to reach deeper water so that it could travel faster, the hearing at Portsmouth naval base was told.

A pinnacle jutting out from the seabed was marked as being at a depth of 123 metres, but Drysdale misread it as 723. Thinking that the boat would clear the obstruction easily, the submarine was directed towards it and it grounded…

Captain Stuart Crozier, prosecuting, told the hearing that the submarine had been suffering from technical problems, causing it to lose speed, at the time of the incident in May 2008. He said there was pressure on Drysdale to ensure the submarine arrived in the Gulf on time for planned operations…

When the new route was charted by the plotting officer, who does not face the court martial, all three defendants failed to spot that the pinnacle marked on the map was only 123 metres deep, the only shallow point in the area.

Crozier said that when the submarine collided with the pinnacle, the vessel was brought to an almost immediate halt. “The submarine collided with the underwater obstacle reducing its speed from 16 knots to three knots in a very short time,” he said. “There was a significant amount of damage to the forehead of the submarine, but no casualties…”

Commander Alison Towler, representing Drysdale, told the court that the commanding officer had since been moved to a desk job. She said the service had also stopped Drysdale from taking up the high-profile position of Royal Navy staff officer submarines in Washington DC shortly after the incident…

The submarine, which came into service in 1976, was decommissioned in September 2008 and the MoD has said the accident did not lead to the submarine being taken out of service earlier than planned.

Sounds like an expensive oops to me. Most I ever took out was a double-stacked pallet-load of truck mirrors.

Three police cars pulled into Christina FourHorn’s front yard one afternoon just before she was supposed to pick up her daughter at school. The officers had a warrant for her arrest.

“What do you mean robbery?” FourHorn remembers asking the officers. Her only brushes with the law had been a few speeding tickets.

She was locked up in a Colorado jail. They took her clothes and other belongings and handed her an oversize black-and-white striped uniform. She protested for five days, telling jailers the arrest was a mistake. Finally, her husband borrowed enough money to bail her out.
“They wouldn’t tell me the details,” she said.

Later, it became clear that FourHorn was right, that Denver police had arrested the wrong woman. Police were searching for Christin Fourhorn, who lived in Oklahoma.

Their names were similar, and Christina FourHorn, a mother with no criminal record living in Sterling, Colorado, had been caught in the mix-up…

The problem of mistaken arrests continues, said attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado. The group, which represented FourHorn, calls Denver’s police work “recklessly sloppy.” An ACLU mistaken identity lawsuit on behalf of four other people is pending against Colorado police agencies…

Since the FourHorn case, the ACLU found at least 237 cases in Colorado in which police may have arrested the wrong person. The figure is likely a small sample since police often release those wrongfully arrested before the first court appearance, the ACLU said…

“Naturally police think people are lying when the person says they didn’t do it,” said Jack Ryan, an instructor at the Legal & Liability Risk Management Institute and police officer for two decades.

“But that doesn’t change the fact that there needs to be an investigation,” he added. “The overall philosophy of justice in this country is that an innocent person shouldn’t be locked up.”

In Christina FourHorn’s case, she was about 100 pounds heavier then the suspect, Christin Fourhorn. Her middle name is Ann, while the suspect’s middle name is Blue. She was also seven years older and didn’t have a tattoo on her left arm, which the suspect did.

Sounds like a police department where families buy a job for the dullest nephew. The one who couldn’t figure out how to work a shovel in the state highway department.

Peruvian doctors amputated the healthy leg of an 86-year-old man, then amputated the other leg when they realized their mistake.

“I was shocked when I lifted the sheets and saw they had taken his left leg,” the man’s daughter, Carmen Villanueva, told Peruvian radio station RPP.

“The ulcer was on his right leg and they had to amputate that one too to keep the infection from spreading,” she said.

The Alberto Sabogal Hospital in the coastal district of Callao just north of Lima said it had suspended the doctors involved in the botched surgery for a life-threatening ulcer, pending an investigation.

I wouldn’t allow a surgical procedure unless it was sketched out on my body – and signed by the doctor in charge – beforehand.

Part One:

Frustrated travelers were delayed for hours Sunday night when officials shut down a terminal at Newark Airport after a man walked into a secure area without authorization.

Dozens of flights were grounded, and thousands of passengers waited late into the night to be rescreened at Terminal C .

Homeland Security Department spokeswoman Sari Koshetz said a man was seen walking down a security checkpoint exit lane into the secure area about 5:30 p.m.

Screening was halted in the terminal while authorities looked at surveillance tapes to identify the man, who had not been found.

“If they find the person who did this, he’s going to be in big trouble,” said traveler John Davis.

Passengers in the Continental Airlines terminal were evacuated from the terminal and moved to the open side of the airport to go through screening again.

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Kroll, the secretive investigations consultancy, is facing embarrassment after giving a clean bill of health to a pair of alleged fraudsters who are accused of running a $248 million Ponzi scheme.

The revelation is a blow for Kroll as the American firm is still reeling from the discovery that one of its top investigators gave a similar endorsement to Sir Allen Stanford, the Texas billionaire accused of orchestrating a $7 billion Ponzi scheme.

In June 2007 Kroll was asked to investigate Barry Tannenbaum, a South African, and Dean Rees on behalf of a New York-based asset management firm that was considering investingplacing a large investment with the pair.

The due diligence investigation found nothing untoward with either Tannenbaum or Rees and is said to have shown both men in a “very positive light”, according to sources.

Since then Tannenbaum and Rees have been accused of running a scheme involving the importation of antiretroviral drugs into South Africa for the treatment of HIV. They are being investigated by South African police…

The finished Kroll report is understood to have been passed on to others, unwittingly pushing even more potential victims into Tannenbaum’s alleged fraud.

Kroll declined to comment on the report…

Electri International, a Maryland based foundation for electrical contractors, is suing Kroll over $6.3 million it placed with Stanford International Bank, Sir Allen’s Antigua-based operation, even though it paid Kroll Associates $15,000 in fees, plus expenses, to conduct due diligence on the bank.

It turned out that one Kroll official was Allen Stanford’s buddy. Not that it would have colored their report. Right?

Swansea council contacted its in-house translation service when designing the bilingual sign. The seeds of confusion were sown when officials received an automated email response in Welsh from an absent translator, saying: “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated.”

Unaware of its real meaning, officials had it printed on the sign. The council took down the sign after Welsh speakers spotted the mistake.

We have a similar problem in northern New Mexico with all the road signs being produced at the State Penitentiary. The prevailing illiteracy makes for some fascinating reading while trying to find your way around the region.

AP Photo by Alex Brandon

It often happens that the pundit “scoring” of a presidential debate ends up quite at odds from the polls of viewers that soon follow.

We’ve seen it again with Friday night’s debate, which most pundits (on TV and in print) scored very or fairly even, with perhaps some recognition that Obama made some small gains because he pretty much held his own on McCain’s turf. Of course, as we now know, virtually every poll taken by the networks and outside sources gave Obama an edge — and not a small one. He easily swept surveys of undecideds, even carried a Fox focus group. At least in the polls, it was no contest.

We’ll see if and how it affects the head-to-head matchup surveys in days ahead but for now we have to ask: Why did so many mainstream pundits blow it?
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The drug raid by Prince George’s County law officers on the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo last week was a Keystone Kops operation from start to finish.

Understand from the beginning, there was little or no investigation, the mayor and his family -and their dogs – were innocent, the Sheriffs who invaded the mayors house did not have a no-knock warrant.

Acting on a tip that a 32-pound package of marijuana had been sent by Federal Express from Arizona to Mr. Calvo’s home (addressed to his wife, Trinity Tomsic), Prince George’s police swung into action. Which is to say they got on the phone, calling law enforcement agencies to see who might have a SWAT team available to bust the unsuspecting Calvo family. (It seems the police department’s own team was tied up.) After being turned down at least once, they finally struck a deal with the Prince George’s Sheriff’s Office, whose track record with domestic disputes is extensive but whose experience with drug busts is slight. And it showed.

Without bothering to alert Berwyn Heights police, sheriff’s deputies moved into position. Posing as a deliveryman, a deputy took the package to the family’s door. After Mr. Calvo’s mother-in-law initially refused to sign for it, the package was finally taken into the home, where it sat, unopened, on the living room floor. Whereupon the deputies, guns drawn, kicked in the door, stormed the house and shot to death the Calvos’ two Labrador retrievers, one of them, apparently, as it attempted to flee. The canine threat thus dispatched, the mayor — in his briefs — and his mother-in-law were handcuffed and interrogated in close proximity to the bloodied corpses of their dogs.

Read the rest if you can stomach it. Lousy police work by incompetent coppers.