Woman arrested after police find bodies of 37 dogs at Essex home
A 25-year-old London woman has been arrested on suspicion of animal cruelty after the discovery of 37 dead dogs.
Essex Police confirmed the woman was taken into custody on Wednesday afternoon as part of an ongoing investigation. Authorities also found the remains of four additional animals at the scene.
Officers, together with staff from the RSPCA and Basildon Council, discovered the 37 dead dogs during a joint visit to a property in Crays Hill, Billericay, last month.
A 25-year-old man, Ovaeed Rahman, of Hope Road in Crays Hill, Billericay, was last month charged with causing unnecessary suffering to a protected animal.
Rahman is also charged with an offence contrary to the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and three counts of fraud by false representation.
He appeared before Southend Magistrates' Court last month and was remanded in custody until a plea hearing at Basildon Crown Court on June 9.
A second man, who was arrested on suspicion of fraud relating to transfer of ownership of dogs and animal cruelty offences, has been conditionally bailed until July.
Police said that 21 live animals were recovered.
The force said that following information provided by a member of the public, officers from Essex Police and the RSPCA carried out further investigations at the Crays Hill location on Wednesday.
The original scene had been stood down on May 14.
Police said the remains of four further animals were identified when buildings were dismantled by the landowner, with liaison with Essex Police.
An Essex Police spokesperson said: 'We are now working to respectfully remove these remains from the scene and the Basildon Neighbourhood Policing Team will work to establish if they are linked to our investigation.'
Inspector Steve Parry, of Basildon Neighbourhood Policing Team, said: 'We understand the concerns of the local community.
'We would ask people not to speculate and allow us to carry out our complex and thorough investigations.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
What the Trump administration doesn't get about the ‘fake news' media
It was the summer of 1997 – a few months after a notable marathon libel case in which our crime correspondent, Duncan Campbell, had successfully defended his exposé of suspected corruption at Stoke Newington police station. Around four in the morning, I was jolted awake by a burly policeman in the bedroom. We were living in Highbury, North London, and I soon worked out that the house was swarming with police officers, along with their dogs. It turned out that a burglar had smashed through our front door in the middle of the night. The police eventually left and, as the last one disappeared up the path, he said to me: 'You're the editor of the Guardian, aren't you? You might like to know we're all based at Stoke Newington nick.' My heart may have missed a beat. Duncan had, after all, just vanquished five of his colleagues in court. But I was wrong: as the copper tugged his dog into the van and drove off, he said: 'Tell your Mr Campbell to keep digging.' That was the thing some people struggled to understand about the way Duncan – who died recently – worked. You could expose bent cops and be in favour of the police. You could be dealing with the Met Commissioner as chair of the Crime Reporters' Association in the morning and have a drink with a bank robber in the evening. Of course, with Duncan, it went further, as anyone who attended one of his publishing parties would know. There would be chief constables, great train robbers, judges, barristers, old lags and old hacks. The art was to work out which was which. Everyone trusted Duncan – except Mr Justice French in the Stoke Newington trial. In the previous 33 months, the police union, the Police Federation, had fought and won no fewer than 95 libel cases in a row. They were called 'garage actions' because coppers would use the guaranteed settlement money for home extensions. If Mr Justice French had had his way, the score would have been 96-0. But Duncan went into the witness box to give evidence. The jury, like everyone else, trusted Duncan. It cost him a huge amount in sleepless nights and anxiety, but the stand he took did his colleagues in the British press a considerable favour. It was now much safer to write about police corruption; it was a game-changer. Duncan died within a week of another reporter, Andrew Norfolk, whose reporting on child-grooming gangs for The Times was similarly widely lauded for its courage and integrity. At a time when trust in the media is underwater, it's heartening to be able to celebrate the best among us. Duncan wrote about the world of crime like no other reporter could even dream of. How he did it, no one could quite explain. Nick Reynolds, son of the great train robber Bruce, told me: 'You know, most villains hate journalists. I mean, the whole point of it is to try and do something and get away with it and be discreet. But somehow, through his integrity, approach, sense of humour, diligence, and demeanour, he managed to get the Golden Pass to the underworld, and they all respected him. ' Freddie Foreman, who killed people for the Krays, loved him. Mad Frankie Fraser, who extracted the teeth of his victims with pliers, adored him. But so did lawyers and police officers who cared about the truth. He was very proud of the website he created, Justice on Trial, which ran until 2017 and covered numerous miscarriages of justice. He took an interest in so many. The Miami Five, the Craigavon Two, the Shrewsbury 24, the Birmingham Six, the Cardiff Three. The Torso murders, George Davis, and Gary McKinnon. Kiranjit Ahluwalia, who had been sentenced to life for killing her abusive husband. They and many, many more had reason to thank Duncan for swimming against the tide and taking the time and trouble to investigate their cases. But most of the time, when people think about journalists, they don't think of the Campbells and Norfolks. They don't think of the risks that reporters take in covering events in the Middle East, or Ukraine, or even, as a new Amnesty International report highlights, in Northern Ireland, where there have been 71 attacks or threats against journalists since 2019. When journalists are not being attacked physically, they are under attack verbally. It is now routine White House policy to denigrate, mock, discredit and delegitimise the so-called legacy media. The objective seems plain: if Donald Trump can persuade you that the New York Times is fake news, you might not believe them the next time they investigate his affairs. The White House press secretary is 27-year-old Karoline Leavitt, who believes that Donald Trump won in 2020 and who used her very first briefing to (falsely) claim that $50m a year of US taxpayers' money was going to fund condoms in Gaza. It's unclear whether she has any journalistic experience, although she did once apply for an internship at Fox News. This week, she took it upon herself to lecture the BBC on editorial standards, tearing into a report about deaths in Gaza and claiming the BBC had been forced to retract its claims. This was fantasy stuff, as the BBC's Ros Atkins demonstrated in a devastating three-minute film the following day. But, as the old cliche goes, Truth often takes some time to get its boots on. GB News presenters, for example, chortled with glee at the 'humiliation' of the BBC seemingly without lifting a finger to interrogate whether any of Leavitt's claims were actually, you know, true. Atkins works for BBC Verify, which GB News owner, Paul Marshall, incidentally wants closed down. Truth, lies – who cares? So journalism is struggling today. Which is why it's worth pausing to remember and celebrate the best rather than dwell on the worst. We said farewell to Duncan on Tuesday. He himself was a veteran of reporting on the funerals of the villains he'd known, including gangland figures such as Charlie Richardson and Ronnie Kray, as well as the Great Train Robbers, Buster Edwards and Ronnie Biggs. Though with one, Peter Scott, a noted jewel thief who died bankrupt and penniless in 2013, it was Duncan himself who ended up organising his funeral at Islington cemetery. He arranged it at 10.15 in the morning: 'There was a discount for the early hour,' he recalled. The undertaker demanded the deceased's occupation. 'Cat burglar,' said Duncan, who also chose the music for the ceremony. The coffin disappeared to the old gospel song, Steal Away. It helps to have a sense of humour if your life is spent covering crime. Not to mention today's White House.
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Three Iranians in UK court accused of assisting Tehran spy service
LONDON, June 6 (Reuters) - Three Iranian men appeared in court in London on Friday accused of assisting Iran's foreign intelligence service and plotting violence against journalists working for a British-based broadcaster critical of Tehran. The three men - Mostafa Sepahvand, 39, Farhad Javadi Manesh, 44, and Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori, 55, - have been charged with offences under Britain's National Security Act, brought in to give the authorities new powers to target threats from foreign states. They are accused of "engaging in conduct likely to assist a foreign intelligence service" between August 2024 and February this year, and police have said that it related to Iran. Sepahvand is also charged with carrying out surveillance in preparation to commit serious violence against a person, while Manesh and Noori were charged with surveillance with the intention that serious violent acts would be committed by others. The men appeared by videolink on Friday for a brief hearing at London's Old Bailey court during which their lawyers said all intended to plead not guilty to the charges. Prosecutors told a hearing last month that the allegations involved the targeting of journalists based in Britain connected with Iran International, a broadcaster critical of the Iranian government. They were remanded in custody until a formal plea hearing on September 26 and they are due to go on trial in October next year. The suspects were arrested last month on the same day counter-terrorism police detained five other men, including four Iranians, as part of a separate operation. Those men were later released without charge.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Shopper put on Facewatch watchlist after dispute over 39p of paracetamol
A London woman has made a data complaint after discovering she had been put on a facial recognition camera watchlist at a Home Bargains store after a dispute over 39p worth of paracetamol. She learned of her entry on a database of banned customers when a member of staff at the store in Grove Farm retail park, in Chadwell Heath, asked her to leave and directed her attention to a Facewatch sign. Facewatch is a facial recognition system used by retailers to identify and deter shoplifters by analysing CCTV footage and comparing faces to a private database of known offenders. It triggers an alert to staff when a match is made by the software. Stores including Asda, Budgens, Sports Direct and Costcutter have used the technology, despite privacy campaigners arguing that the surveillance infringes the rights of shoppers. The 62-year-old woman, who has lost the confidence to go shopping on her own since the incident, according to her family, has made a complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office on the grounds that the Data Protection Act requires there to be a 'substantial public interest' for the processing of biometric data to be lawful. 'She's really struggling because even to go into Tesco she gets really stressed thinking 'or am I allowed? Would they kick me out?',' her daughter said. The woman from Romford, who has asked not to be named, had first visited the Home Bargains store with her daughter on 25 April to buy some products for an upcoming wedding. She picked up two packets of paracetamol and asked her daughter to pay for them while she went on ahead to Lidl next door. 'Mum has got this habit. She's got a few illnesses, but every time she goes to a shop she always buys paracetamol,' her daughter said. 'We always laugh at her that 'you are always stocking up'.' According to the complaint to the ICO, as she went to the exit 'she was accused by staff of theft, had her bag searched, and her own personal paracetamol (which she carries regularly) was confiscated'. She denied taking the paracetamol but was in a rush and so 'left the shop and she thought nothing of it', her daughter said. She had no idea that her name had been added to the watchlist until she returned with her two sons and daughter-in-law to the shop on 30 May to buy some snail repellent. She was allegedly asked to leave by a member of staff, whose offer of explanation was to point her to a Facewatch sign that was initially covered up. She 'later discovered that, based solely on this disputed and minor allegation, Home Bargains had added her biometric data to a Facewatch watchlist', it is claimed. The complaint goes on: 'To be clear: [she] did not steal the paracetamol during the first visit. The allegations by Home Bargains are false. However, even taking Home Bargains' allegations at face value, their – and Facewatch's – biometric processing was clearly not in the substantial public interest. 'The watchlist entry was created and acted upon in order to apprehend someone supposedly guilty of (on one occasion) stealing goods valued at less than £1. It is scarcely possible to imagine a less serious 'offender'.' The ICO separately investigated Facewatch in 2023 and asked for a series of changes. According to the new complaint, that investigation 'resulted in Facewatch being required to focus on 'repeat offenders or individuals committing significant offences''. Alex Lawrence-Archer, a solicitor at the data rights firm AWO, who is acting for the woman, said: 'This case shows that people can be added to the biometric watchlist for the most minor suspected offence, without being properly informed, and without having the chance to tell their side of the story.' Madeleine Stone, a senior advocacy officer at Big Brother Watch, which is supporting the woman, said there was no 'due process' to the addition of names to watchlists at retailers. She said: 'The government must urgently step in and stop retailers from subjecting shoppers to this Orwellian and discriminatory technology.' A Facewatch spokesperson said: 'Facewatch exists to help retailers prevent crime and protect their employees in a way that is lawful, proportionate and respectful of individual rights at a time when shoplifting in England and Wales has reached a record 516,971 offences, and incidents of violence and abuse against retail workers have surged to more than 2,000 per day. 'It would be inappropriate to comment on this matter while a legal process remains ongoing and, notwithstanding that, Facewatch would not be able to disclose personal data about an individual or the facts of any individual case. Facewatch is committed to transparency, accuracy, and upholding the highest standards of data protection and public reassurance and our technology and processes remain fully compliant with UK data protection legislation and latest regulatory guidance.' A spokesperson for TJ Morris, the owner of Home Bargains, declined a request for comment.
