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Monday, 19 August 2013

Muslim Brotherhood prisoners killed in Egypt

At least 36 people die after taking police officer hostage in bid to escape custody, sources say.

Muslim Brotherhood supporters taken away from Fateh Mosque in Cairo on Saturday [Reuters]
 
At least 36 people described as supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood have been killed in Egypt while attempting to escape police custody.

The men were killed after taking a police officer hostage while being transferred in a police vehicle to Abu Zaabal prison near Cairo on Sunday, sources told Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera's Bernard Smith, reporting from Cairo, quoted a source as saying that the men had been arrested in the clearout of Cairo's Fateh mosque on Saturday.

He said the men somehow took the police officer hostage in an attempt to break free. However, other police officers attacked the vehicle with guns and tear gas and all inside were killed.

The AP news agency quoted Egypt's MENA agency as saying the vehicle was in a convoy of vans carrying more than 600 detainees rounded up in street violence in recent days.

Abu Zabaal was the scene of a mass breakout of prisoners in 2011 as police abandoned their posts during protests against the former president Hosni Mubarak.

Read more :http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/08/2013818175824286257.html


Source: Al Jazeera

UK's biggest child sex gang uncovered as 45 men are arrested over abuse of girls as young as 13

  • Most of the suspects are in their 20s with a few middle aged, up to their 60s
  • Members of the gang are alleged to have abused four girls as young as 13
  • Arrests follow year-long investigation into alleged sex abuse crimes in West Yorkshire


Police have arrested 45 men believed to be involved in the biggest child sex ring ever seen in the UK,
Head of the West Yorkshire Homicide and Major Inquiry team, Detective Chief Superintendent Andy Brennan, pictured, revealed the arrests come after a year-long investigation into the alleged sex abuse of four girls
Head of West Yorkshire Homicide and Major Inquiry team, Detective Chief Superintendent Andy Brennan, pictured, revealed the arrests come after year-long investigation into alleged sex abuse of four girls

it emerged today.

The arrests come after a year-long investigation into sex abuse allegations across three towns in West Yorkshire.

Most of the suspects - said to be white and Asian - are in their 20s but some of are said to be middle aged, up to their 60s.

Members of the gang are alleged to have abused four girls - some as young as 13 - over several years.

One member of the gang is said to have groomed the girls before having sex with one of them in front of his friends and passing her around to be abused.

Some of the men arrested were directly linked to each other while others were described as being 'opportunistic', the Sunday Mirror reports.

Head of the West Yorkshire Homicide and Major Inquiry team, Detective Chief Superintendent Andy Brennan, told the newspaper: 'These are serious allegations, which is why we have made a significant number of arrests to try and confirm or negate any criminality.

'Although 45 people have been arrested they are not all directly linked. There has been a series of incidents over several years and we will investigate each and every one of them.

'Some of the incidents involved a couple of people, while others involved more.'

The investigation involving 30 police officers is still ongoing and further arrests may be made.

All the alleged crimes are said to be historic - at least two years old.

The men have been bailed.

The arrests come after a series of high-profile child sex gang cases - including five men who were jailed for life in June for 'crimes of the utmost gravity' in Oxford.

Child sex gangs have also been caught in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, Cambridgeshire and Rotherham, South Yorkshire.
Arrests: West Yorkshire police have arrested 45 men on suspicion of being connected to the sex gang - with further arrests a possibility
Arrests: West Yorkshire police have arrested 45 men on suspicion of being connected to the sex gang - with further arrests a possibility

Egypt: Islamists hit Christian churches

CAIRO (AP) — After torching a Franciscan school, Islamists paraded three nuns on the streets like "prisoners of war" before a Muslim woman offered them refuge. Two other women working at the school were sexually harassed and abused as they fought their way through a mob.
In the four days since security forces cleared two sit-in camps by supporters of Egypt's ousted president, Islamists have attacked dozens of Coptic churches along with homes and businesses owned by the Christian minority. The campaign of intimidation appears to be a warning to Christians outside Cairo to stand down from political activism.
Christians have long suffered from discrimination and violence in Muslim majority Egypt, where they make up 10 percent of the population of 90 million. Attacks increased after the Islamists rose to power in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring uprising that drove Hosni Mubarak from power, emboldening extremists. But Christians have come further under fire since President Mohammed Morsi was ousted on July 3, sparking a wave of Islamist anger led by Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood.
Nearly 40 churches have been looted and torched, while 23 others have been attacked and heavily damaged since Wednesday, when chaos erupted after Egypt's military-backed interim administration moved in to clear two camps packed with protesters calling for Morsi's reinstatement, killing scores of protesters and sparking deadly clashes nationwide.
One of the world's oldest Christian communities has generally kept a low-profile, but has become more politically active since Mubarak was ousted and Christians sought to ensure fair treatment in the aftermath.
Many Morsi supporters say Christians played a disproportionately large role in the days of mass rallies, with millions demanding that he step down ahead of the coup.
Despite the violence, Egypt's Coptic Christian church renewed its commitment to the new political order Friday, saying in a statement that it stood by the army and the police in their fight against "the armed violent groups and black terrorism."
While the Christians of Egypt have endured attacks by extremists, they have drawn closer to moderate Muslims in some places, in a rare show of solidarity.
Hundreds from both communities thronged two monasteries in the province of Bani Suef south of Cairo to thwart what they had expected to be imminent attacks on Saturday, local activist Girgis Waheeb said. Activists reported similar examples elsewhere in regions south of Cairo, but not enough to provide effective protection of churches and monasteries.
Waheeb, other activists and victims of the latest wave of attacks blame the police as much as hard-line Islamists for what happened. The attacks, they said, coincided with assaults on police stations in provinces like Bani Suef and Minya, leaving most police pinned down to defend their stations or reinforcing others rather than rushing to the rescue of Christians under attack.
Another Christian activist, Ezzat Ibrahim of Minya, a province also south of Cairo where Christians make up around 35 percent of the population, said police have melted away from seven of the region's nine districts, leaving the extremists to act with near impunity.
Two Christians have been killed since Wednesday, including a taxi driver who strayed into a protest by Morsi supporters in Alexandria and another man who was shot to death by Islamists in the southern province of Sohag, according to security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release the information.
The attacks served as a reminder that Islamists, while on the defensive in Cairo, maintain influence and the ability to stage violence in provincial strongholds with a large minority of Christians.
Gamaa Islamiya, the hard-line Islamist group that wields considerable influence in provinces south of Cairo, denied any link to the attacks. The Muslim Brotherhood, which has led the defiant protest against Morsi's ouster, has condemned the attacks, spokesman Mourad Ali said.
Sister Manal is the principal of the Franciscan school in Bani Suef. She was having breakfast with two visiting nuns when news broke of the clearance of the two sit-in camps by police, killing hundreds. In an ordeal that lasted about six hours, she, sisters Abeer and Demiana and a handful of school employees saw a mob break into the school through the wall and windows, loot its contents, knock off the cross on the street gate and replace it with a black banner resembling the flag of al-Qaida.
By the time the Islamists ordered them out, fire was raging at every corner of the 115-year-old main building and two recent additions. Money saved for a new school was gone, said Manal, and every computer, projector, desk and chair was hauled away. Frantic SOS calls to the police, including senior officers with children at the school, produced promises of quick response but no one came.
The Islamists gave her just enough time to grab some clothes.
In an hourlong telephone interview with The Associated Press, Manal, 47, recounted her ordeal while trapped at the school with others as the fire raged in the ground floor and a battle between police and Islamists went on out on the street. At times she was overwhelmed by the toxic fumes from the fire in the library or the whiffs of tears gas used by the police outside.
Sister Manal recalled being told a week earlier by the policeman father of one pupil that her school was targeted by hard-line Islamists convinced that it was giving an inappropriate education to Muslim children. She paid no attention, comfortable in the belief that a school that had an equal number of Muslim and Christian pupils could not be targeted by Muslim extremists. She was wrong.
The school has a high-profile location. It is across the road from the main railway station and adjacent to a busy bus terminal that in recent weeks attracted a large number of Islamists headed to Cairo to join the larger of two sit-in camps by Morsi's supporters. The area of the school is also in one of Bani Suef's main bastions of Islamists from Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood and ultraconservative Salafis.
"We are nuns. We rely on God and the angels to protect us," she said. "At the end, they paraded us like prisoners of war and hurled abuse at us as they led us from one alley to another without telling us where they were taking us," she said. A Muslim woman who once taught at the school spotted Manal and the two other nuns as they walked past her home, attracting a crowd of curious onlookers.
"I remembered her, her name is Saadiyah. She offered to take us in and said she can protect us since her son-in-law was a policeman. We accepted her offer," she said. Two Christian women employed by the school, siblings Wardah and Bedour, had to fight their way out of the mob, while groped, hit and insulted by the extremists. "I looked at that and it was very nasty," said Manal.
The incident at the Franciscan school was repeated at Minya where a Catholic school was razed to the ground by an arson attack and a Christian orphanage was also torched.
"I am terrified and unable to focus," said Boulos Fahmy, the pastor of a Catholic church a short distance away from Manal's school. "I am expecting an attack on my church any time now," he said Saturday.
Bishoy Alfons Naguib, a 33-year-old businessman from Minya, has a similarly harrowing story.
His home supplies store on a main commercial street in the provincial capital, also called Minya, was torched this week and the flames consumed everything inside.
"A neighbor called me and said the store was on fire. When I arrived, three extremists with knifes approached me menacingly when they realized I was the owner," recounted Naguib. His father and brother pleaded with the men to spare him. Luckily, he said, someone shouted that a Christian boy was filming the proceedings using his cell phone, so the crowd rushed toward the boy shouting "Nusrani, Nusrani," the Quranic word for Christians which has become a derogatory way of referring to them in today's Egypt.
Naguib ran up a nearby building where he has an apartment and locked himself in. After waiting there for a while, he left the apartment, ran up to the roof and jumped to the next door building, then exited at a safe distance from the crowd.
"On our Mustafa Fahmy street, the Islamists had earlier painted a red X on Muslim stores and a black X on Christian stores," he said. "You can be sure that the ones with a red X are intact."
In Fayoum, an oasis province southwest of Cairo, Islamists looted and torched five churches, according to Bishop Ibram, the local head of the Coptic Orthodox church, by far the largest of Egypt's Christian denominations. He said he had instructed Christians and clerics alike not to try to resist the mobs of Islamists, fearing any loss of life.
"The looters were so diligent that they came back to one of the five churches they had ransacked to see if they can get more," he told the AP. "They were loading our chairs and benches on trucks and when they had no space for more, they destroyed them."

When hiring family is not nepotism

Tourism Minister Nazri Abdul Aziz may have drawn a lot of flak for hiring his own son as an aide, but he has found sympathy among some of his political opponents.

One of them is Selangor DAP chief Teresa Kok, although she did not hire any family members. The DAP veteran believes that most politicians do not like to hire family, but sometimes, there are few other options.

“But then, when you have someone close to your family who is good in certain fields or can assist in your career, what’s wrong with it?” she told Malaysiakini.

Kok was asked to elaborate on her Aug 16 Facebook posting, where she explained that many elected representatives had difficulty finding dedicated and loyal staff.

Kok, who was a Selangor exco member between April 2008 and May 2013, said she had changed 10 of her staff members since 2008 due to a range of problems, which include sabotage.

She pointed out that having an aide turn against you was not uncommon, citing how Mohd Ezam Mohd Nor was once one of PKR de facto leader Anwar Ibrahim's closest aides-turned-enemy.

“We must understand that hiring relatives to be assistants is not the same as giving projects and goodies to them or practising nepotism,” said Kok, who is also the Seputeh MP.

'What if Nedim is a lawyer?'

She added that suitability and trustworthiness is what politicians - or any employer - are looking for when making hiring decisions, including when hiring relatives.

However, she qualified her statement, stressing that just because a person is a relative doesn’t guarantee loyalty.

On Aug 14, it was reported that Nazri had appointed his son Nedim as his special officer in the Tourism Ministry.

Today, Nedim has been redesignated as Nazri’s aide for his parliamentary constituency of Padang Rengas instead, but not before sparking allegations of cronyism and nepotism.

The episode also forced Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng to explain the appointment of relatives by several state executive councillors in his administration, stressing that they were not under the state’s payroll.

Kok opined that Nedim's appointment was only a controversy because of his chequered history.

“Can you imagine if Nazri’s son is a human rights fighter, a prominent lawyer and is not on government payroll, will the reaction from the public be that strong against him?” she said.

Grumbles over daughter's appointment

Meanwhile, Seri Andalas assemblyperson Dr A Xavier Jeyakumar echoed Kok’s sentiments, saying that people should not come into position - including in political party positions - simply because of their parent’s influence.

However, he said there has not been enough public discourse on the issue and it is largely ignored.

“If there is open debate and there is enough discourse in the country and people are given the opportunity to talk about it and discuss about it, then we will be in a better position to understand what the feelings of the general public are,” he said.

As an example, he said he had previously employed his daughter, who is a lawyer by training, in 2008 as an assistant during his tenure as a Selangor state executive councillor.

This caused ‘grumblings’ from within PKR and he had to sack his daughter in 2010, although he believes that she has done a good job.

“There was so much hue and cry from within the party. To me, since people do not accept it, then it should be across the board. It should not be specific cases.

“But as long as someone proves themselves to be in a position to be capable, of course we should support them then,” he said.

“Umno leaders fear the young and smart”

Umno is losing out to PAS in the battle for young talent, with doctors, lawyers and engineers joining

the Islamic political party.

And the reason for this trend: Umno leaders fear those smarter than them.

Former Umno president Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad (pic) who held the helm for more than two decades told reporters at his Hari Raya open house in Seri Kembangan today that, "the party itself is not the problem, the problem is the people who run it".

"If you do not know how to run something, then the best organised organisation will not help.”

He also said that the party has to attract younger people as some of the leaders have been there for far too long.

"They will need to re-examine themselves, because the party has become old and a lot of the leaders have been there for quite a long time. The young people don't find the party attractive anymore."

Dr Mahathir added that the younger generation seem to want to play a bigger role but looking at the leadership at state and national levels, it looks like they are not given the chance.

"So the problem is this... Umno don't like and fear 'people smarter than their leaders'," he said, adding that as a result of this the credible ones from the party join PAS.

The former prime minister also pointed out that previously, PAS had ustaz as members only but now they have lawyers, engineers and doctors.

Still an influential figure within the party, Dr Mahathir in an open letter to Umno members earlier today, said the Malays must not sabotage Umno in the coming party elections.

This, he said, is because Umno is the only party which can ensure that Malays profit.

He acknowledged that the ruling party has lost touch with the Malays as its members are more interested in pursuing their own individual interests rather than helping the public.

“The spirit to fight for the people, religion and country is no longer present. There is no loyalty to Umno because allegiance has now shifted from the party to selected individuals,” he said in the letter published in the Umno-backed Malay weekly, Mingguan Malaysia.

“Members are bribed with money, overseas trips and to perform umrah. With that, all Umno members are involved in bribery by selling their votes for money," he said.

However, Dr Mahathir said the party still has much to offer to Malays compared to opposition parties.

“Accept the reality and be thankful. Do not complain that no benefits were given despite years of supporting Umno," Mahathir added. – August 18, 2013.

Privatise MAS for profit, says Tun M

Ex-PM says as a GLC, MAS will not achieve its target as a profitable conglomerate.

SRI KEMBANGAN: Dr Mahathir Mohamad said today that Malaysia Airlines (MAS) should be privatised to increase company profits.

The former prime minister said that as long as MAS remained a GLC (government-linked company), it would be difficult for the conglomerate achieve high-profit status.

“This is the difference between conventional business by parties who work for profit without interest in the company’s profit-making,” Mahathir said at his Aidilfitri open house here.

“Privatising MAS would increase the company’s profits,” he added.

Last week, minister in the prime minister’s department Idris Jala said that the government should have sold MAS when its shares peaked at RM6.20 in 2007 while he was still chief operating officer.

“The government should stay out of the airline business but it must sell it at the right price and at the right time,” Idris said during Pemandu’s Global Malaysia Series LIVE here.

“I think they should have sold it when I was there. When the shares went from RM3 to RM6.20″.

During Idris’ tenure in MAS from Dec 1, 2005 to Aug 31, 2009, the company went from a loss of RM1.3bil in the year he joined to recording a profit of RM850mil two years later.

Idris was then appointed chief of Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak’s Performance Management and Delivery Unit in 2009.

In 2011, the controversial share swap between MAS and rival AirAsia – crafted for the benefit of the country’s aviation industry and for the revival of the national carrier– was ditched following concerns that the tie-up may lead to restructuring and job cuts.

The following year, MAS reported a loss of RM2.52bil due to soaring fuel costs and admitted that the flag carrier was “in crisis” but confident of recovery.

In May, MAS registered a significant improvement in its operations by reducing operating loss by 46% to RM165mil for the first three months ending 31 March 2013 compared with RM307mil in the same quarter in 2012.

‘No reason to demolish surau’

Dr Mahathir does not see reasons why the surau that housed other faiths need to be demolished.

SRI KEMBANGAN: There is no reason to demolish the surau which housed a group of meditating Buddhists, Dr Mahathir Mohamad said today.

The former prime minister made this statement in response to the Johor state government’s decision to demolish the surau, as it had hosted other religious activities.

However, Dr Mahathir defended Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi’s decision to strip the permanent resident status of the Singaporean resort owner who allowed the group to use the surau.

“The government reserves the right to (revoke the man’s PR status). But the demolishing of the surau is different,” he said at his Aidilfitri open house here.

Dr Mahathir then added it was better to comply with the wishes of the residents in the area, who reportedly demanded that the surau be demolished.

Last week, Johor Islamic religious council (MAIJ) advisor Nooh Gadut reportedly said that if such a sacred place had knowingly been used for activities outside the Islamic faith, it should be torn down.

He also said that the surau was not built towards the qiblat, and was “300 kilometres off” the direction of Mecca’s holy ground.

Yesterday, Zahid Hamidi announced that the PR status of the resort owner was revoked in accordance with provisions of the law on the grounds that the latter was “insensitive to Muslims and Islam”.

Umno veterans driving away young talent

Dr Mahathir also claimed that veteran Umno leaders were driving away young talent due to their dislike for “people who are more capable than them”.

“Umno members do not like people who are more capable than their leaders… (They are) afraid that they will lose their positions,” he said.

“So people with calibre do not get to enter Umno,” he added.

Dr Mahathir lamented that these young talents – including doctors, lawyers, and engineers – were now being recruited by PAS, as “all of them are not allowed to enter Umno”.

“Even retirees who are capable don’t get to join Umno,” he said.

“Many of them choose to join opposition parties.”

Earlier today, Mahathir made a pitch in an open letter urging the Malays to stay with Umno as it is the only party that can ensure the race profits.

However, he also acknowledged that Umno is plagued by corruption, namely rampant money politics that have benefited the political careers and financial standing of certain politicians.

We need more specialists, says Dr Subra

Malaysia is facing a shortage of specialist doctors despite an increasing number of medical graduates.

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia is facing a shortage of specialist doctors despite an increasing number of medical graduates from local and foreign institutions every year.

Health Minister Dr S Subramaniam said the current lack of specialists needed to be addressed immediately to prevent a crisis later on.

“We’re still lacking in terms of specialists as we only manage to train about 500 to 600 doctors into experts in a year.

“So we are looking at ways to increase the number of specialists and at the same time upgrade the quality of care,” he told reporters at ‘An Evening with the Health Minister’ organised by the Malaysian Medical Association yesterday.

Commenting on ‘too many doctors’ in Malaysia, he said the ministry would continue to create more government posts for doctors and other health care professionals, on a regular basis.

He said at present there were 36,607 doctors, including specialists, with a doctor to population ratio of 1:791 and by the year 2020 based on the estimated population of 34 million, 85,000 doctors would be needed to attain the standard ratio of 1:400.

“Previously, posts in the government were not filled due to insufficient medical graduates but now almost 85 percent of the posts have been filled with around 3,700 intakes every year.

Earlier in his speech, Dr. Subramaniam said the ministry was working closely with the Malaysian Medical Council and Education Ministry on the approvals for new medical schools in Malaysia.

“At regular meetings with the deans of medical schools in Malaysia, various issues are deliberated including the appropriateness of enhancing the medical curriculum to prepare graduates to meet local needs and challenges.

“This is to ensure an optimum supply of competent doctors. However, we have limited control over medical faculties abroad,” he said.

He said the recognition of foreign medical degrees needed to be reviewed and strengthened and the issuance of the ‘No Objection Certificate’ by the Ministry of Education was a must before they could enroll into schools abroad.

He said private medical schools should ensure that their curriculum and performance markers were on par with other established medical institutions.

“Those who face difficulties in providing quality lecturers and facilities should consider merging,” he said.

He added that the ministry had no intention of increasing the consultation fees of doctors by 30 per cent as rumoured.

Zaid: Only ‘lousy unthinking Muslims’ challenging Islam


(MM) - Braving religious fire, Datuk Zaid Ibrahim has censured Islamic supremacists for their inflexible stance towards non-Muslims by declaring on Twitter that “lousy unthinking Muslims” are undermining the creed of peace.

The former minister lashed out at one-time Umno colleague, Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahidi, after the home minister told non-Muslims yesterday to stop challenging Islam and its devotees by insisting on calling their gods “Allah”, a word Muslims here believe to belong exclusively to them.

“I don’t think Zahid Hamidi is suitable as home minister.

“The only people who are challenging Islam are the lousing unthinking Muslims,” said Zaid, who was the de facto law minister during the Abdullah administration and who was given the boot for opposing the detention-without-trial of government dissenters in 2008.

The prominent Malay-Muslim lawyer added that Malaysia was performing moderately well in tackling corruption to build up its economy.

“However rank bottom in tolerance and commonsense index,” he posted on his Twitter account, @zaidibrahim.

Ahmad Zahid was not the only one who drew the 62-year-old former lawyer’s ire.

Zaid also chided the local Catholic Church for pushing its claim on the word “Allah” through the courts.

“For the Catholic Church to apply to dismiss the government’s appeal is wrong,” he told The Malay Mail Online when contacted today, arguing that the government has the right to appeal the High Court’s landmark that allowed Christians the right to also call their god by the Middle Eastern word.

Ahmad Zahid, an Umno vice-president whose outspokenness in defending Islam ahead of the party’s election in October has not gone unnoticed, had yesterday said he respected Malaysia’s minority religions and insisted they respect Islam’s stand on the exclusive use of “Allah” for Muslims.

“This is not a matter of rights but this is more than an absolute right, the word ‘Allah’ is an absolute right for Islam, full stop,” he told reporters at the Persatuan Pengasih Malaysia’s Aidilfitri celebration here.

The tussle over the word “Allah” will return to the courts on August 22, when the Court of Appeal hears the Catholic Church’s bid to strike out Putrajaya’s appeal against the 2009 High Court ruling upholding the Christians’ right to use the Arabic word.

Two civil rights activists contacted by The Malay Mail Online, however, believed the Catholic Church had not made a misstep in filing to dismiss the government’s appeal.

Instead, they viewed the warning to non-Muslims to stop challenging Islam as a threat that could jeopardise efforts to bridge the growing faith divide.

Civil liberties lawyer Syahredzan Johan told The Malay Mail Online that the Catholic Church has the right to challenge the sensitive word.

“So to have a minister say that, making those statement will not help with interfaith relations.

“At the end of the day, non-Muslims have felt more and more alienated in the past few years in their own country [and] it doesn’t look as if this government care for the non-Muslims,” he said over the phone.

“It would appear that Muslim rights overrides the rights of other religion and I think this is the problem.”

Syahredzan pointed out that although Muslims make up the majority of Malaysians, as a democratic nation, the government has to also protect the rights of the minority.

“When you have a minister saying things like this, it moves towards strengthening the attitude that Malay Muslims are entitled.

“These issues have been pegging the society for the past few years and it is not getting better,” he said.

Eric Paulsen, co-founder and advisor of legal group, Lawyers for Liberty, also agreed that the minister’s forceful stance in the issue was unnecessary.

“The minister’s belligerent stand over the Allah issue is certainly not helpful, but it is also not ideal to resolve this through the courts as either way, the decision would not be accepted by the losing party.

“What is needed is a genuine dialogue between all the stake holders concerned and resolve it once and for all,” he told The Malay Mail Online over the phone.

Paulsen said that whatever the court decides, it might appear to be a forceful and authoritarian directive.

“This calls for a serious and good faith consultation and both parties must meet and thrash it out.

“There should be an extra effort to resolve this, not through the courts, but with genuine discussion with opposing parties because either way... this would not have been accepted by the losing party,” the lawyer said.

Diana letter: were the SAS involved in her death?

Exclusive: As police investigate claims that the British military may have been involved in the death of Princess Diana, Channel 4 News has seen the letter in question.
The letter, written in 2011 by the parents-in-law of an unidentified SAS soldier known only as Soldier N, includes a claim that the SAS may have been involved with the death of Princess Diana.
Channel 4 News has seen the letter in connection with the second court martial of another SAS soldier, sniper Sgt Danny Nightingale who was found guilty of illegally possessing a gun and ammunition.
The focus of the letter is about the man who went on to be Sgt Danny Nightingale's housemate and who was also one of the Service Prosecuting Authority’s (SPA) key witnesses at the Nightingale court martial, Soldier N.
It was the XXX who arranged Princess Diana’s death and that has been covered up - extract from letter about Soldier N
It's understood, during the trial the letter was handed to the SPA and sections which mentioned names or identifying details were redacted before it was released to the court.
In the letter, the parents-in-law of Soldier N begged the commanding officer of the SAS to intervene as Soldier N was allegedly threatening to kill them and intimidate their daughter.
The parents-in-law also wrote about the circumstances surrounding Princess Diana's death, saying:
"He also told her [the daughter] that it was the XXX who arranged Princess Diana’s death and that has been covered up.
"So what chance do my daughter and I stand against his threats?"

A box for 'private jobs'

The author of the letter also writes how Soldier N had threatened their daughter saying he could make her "disappear" and warned her of the existence of a box that some of the members of the SAS used for "private jobs".
The letter states:
"They put in the box the name, address and details of what they want done and then one of them who wants to earn extra money takes the details out of the box and does that job."
They then ask the commanding officer if the names and contact details of their family are in the box.
The seven-page hand-written letter also makes reference to another member of the SAS who allegedly shot his wife and family. It states: "He reminded my daughter of a man ... who had matrimonial trouble and he went home and shot her and the family."
It alleges that Soldier N had admitted to the family that he had killed women and children during his time in the SAS:
"He insists on telling us about his killing escapades whilst working in his job. How he has killed women and children and a priest, whose big toe kept on wiggling although he was dead."
Soldier N recently completed a two-year term in military prison after admitting to keeping a Glock pistol, a grenade and ammunition at his home. The letter references numerous occasions when he had military equipment at his home.
"He has been frightening my daughter by bringing guns into the home. Laying them out in a row on the lounge carpet and saying lets invite friends round because he wants to show people. She found a gun in the under stairs cupboard. He had a gun in his car and in his bedside cabinet... we have been told by him that he is allowed to do this because of the job he does."
The letter has now been handed to the Metropolitan Police.
News
The allegations if true, ask some serious questions of Soldier N's mental state of health. He allegedly hid from a motorbike which was driving down the road because "he thought someone was after him".
The parents-in-law said: "We have said for sometime that this man is not presenting with normal behaviour and yet we were told he is fine. No doubt he is good at his job but he can't switch off and he brings the job home and treats us all very badly. There are times when we have been petrified."
They then request the help of the army, stating: "You have trained him and as such I feel that the army should step in and take some responsibility here."
Scotland Yard said: "The Metropolitan Police Service is scoping information that has recently been received in relation to the deaths and assessing its relevance and credibility.
"The assessment will be carried out by officers from the specialist crime and operations command. This is not a re-investigation and does not come under Operation Paget."
The Ministry of Defence said it was not commenting and it was now a matter for civilian authorities.
A 2008 Inquest jury returned an unlawful killing verdict on the death of Princess Diana and Dodi al Fayed.
Channel 4 News does not know the identity of Soldier N and we cannot independently verify of the allegations of his behaviour.