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The Guardian
an hour ago
- General
- The Guardian
Relatives of 1994 Chinook crash victims initiate legal action against MoD
Relatives of intelligence officers and military personnel killed in a 1994 RAF helicopter crash on the Mull of Kintyre have taken the first step in legal action against the Ministry of Defence (MoD). Twenty-nine people – including officers from MI5, the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the army, along with the helicopter's special forces crew – died after RAF Chinook ZD576 crashed in foggy weather in south-west Scotland on 2 June 1994. Now, 31 years to the day, lawyers acting pro bono for the bereaved have issued the MoD with a 'letter before action', seen by the Guardian. The letter formally informs the MoD of the Chinook Justice Campaign's intention to apply for a judicial review of the decision not to hold a public inquiry into circumstances of the crash, citing article 2 of the Human Rights Act, which protects the right to life. It urges the secretary of state for defence, John Healey, to start an inquiry 'without further delay', giving him 14 days to respond. Last week the Guardian reported the families' demand, in an open letter to the government, for the full release of archive documents that have been locked away until 2094 by the MoD. Their lawyers believe a public judge-led inquiry would have full access to material that previous investigations have not been able to consider. Sign up to Headlines UK Get the day's headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion Mark Stephens, of the law firm Howard Kennedy, said: 'The government has a legal obligation to answer the families. Thirty-one years on, there can be no operational reasons for secrecy and the only way to find out the truth is with a judge-led inquiry where the judge can review the so-called 'secret' material and answer the multitude of questions that are left begging.' Stephens said the families and their legal counsel had seen 'more than enough evidence' to convince them the 'aircraft should never have taken off'. The most recent review, by Lord Philip in 2011, set out safety concerns but concluded the cause of the crash was unlikely to be ever known, while exonerating the helicopter's late pilots, Flt Lts Richard Cook and Jonathan Tapper, who had been found guilty of 'gross negligence' by the RAF 17 years earlier. Esme Sparks, from County Durham, whose father, Maj Gary Sparks, was killed in the crash, said: 'We don't want to have to take legal action against the government, but we do want and need answers. What is being hidden? In our view, a public inquiry is key.' Andy Tobias, who was eight when his father, Lt Col John Tobias, 41, was killed, said: 'It's clear to me that a complete lack of duty of care was given to those passengers because they got on a Chinook that wasn't fit for flight. 'And really, the government need to show their duty of candour and really be open and transparent about what's in those documents and give us the opportunity to really understand anything that's in them that could give us more answers about what happened.' On Sunday, families attended a private commemoration at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire. Describing the crash as 'a tragic accident', an MoD spokesperson previously said: 'Our thoughts and sympathies remain with the families, friends and colleagues of all those who died.'
Yahoo
an hour ago
- General
- Yahoo
Palestinian Officials Say More Than 20 Gazans Killed Trying to Get Aid
The shooting that killed more than 20 Palestinians has become the deadliest incident since the new Israeli-backed aid-distribution system started last week in Gaza.
Yahoo
14 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
Bangladesh ex-PM Hasina charged with ‘systematic attack' as trial opens
Fugitive former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina orchestrated a 'systematic attack' on protests against her government, Bangladeshi prosecutors have said at the opening of her trial over last year's deadly crackdown. 'Upon scrutinising the evidence, we reached the conclusion that it was a coordinated, widespread and systematic attack,' Mohammad Tajul Islam, chief prosecutor at Bangladesh's domestic International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), told the court in his opening speech on Sunday. 'The accused unleashed all law enforcement agencies and her armed party members to crush the uprising,' Islam said as he charged the 77-year-old former leader and two other officials of 'abetment, incitement, complicity, facilitation, conspiracy, and failure to prevent mass murder' during the student-led mass uprising. The United Nations says nearly 1,400 Bangladeshis were killed between July and August 2024 when Hasina's government launched a brutal campaign to silence the protesters. Bangladesh has charged her with crimes against humanity over the killings. Hasina – who remains in self-imposed exile in neighbouring India, her old ally – has rejected the charges as politically motivated. She fled by helicopter to New Delhi in August last year after the nationwide protests ended her 'autocratic' 15-year rule marked by allegations of repeated human rights violations, including attacks, imprisonment, and even targeted killings of opposition figures, dissenters, and critics. She has since defied an arrest warrant and extradition order to return to ICT is also prosecuting former senior figures connected to the ousted government of Hasina and her now-banned Awami League party, including former Interior Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal and former police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun. Their prosecution has been a key demand of several political parties now jostling for power. The interim government has promised to hold elections before June 2026. Prosecutors submitted their report in the case against Hasina last month, with the court expected to issue formal charges on Sunday. ICT chief prosecutor Tajul Islam said on May 12 that Hasina faces at least five charges, including 'abetment, incitement, complicity, facilitation, conspiracy and failure to prevent mass murder during the July uprising'. Investigators have collected video footage, audio clips, Hasina's phone conversations, records of helicopter and drone movements, as well as statements from victims of the crackdown as part of their probe. The ICT opened its first trial connected to the previous government on May 25. In that case, eight police officials face charges of crimes against humanity over the killing of six protesters on August 5, 2024 – the day Hasina fled the country. Four of the officers are in custody and four are being tried in absentia. The ICT was set up by Hasina in 2009 to investigate crimes committed by the Pakistani army during Bangladesh's war for independence in 1971. It sentenced numerous prominent political opponents to death, and many saw it as a means for Hasina to eliminate rivals.
Yahoo
16 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
Russia tells Ukrainians in occupied areas to get Russian passport or leave
For more than three years, every time 67-year-old Iryna and her husband stepped beyond their front door, the Ukrainian couple feared for their lives. They could be caught up in shelling or in a drone strike — or end up being interrogated by security agents at gunpoint as they tried to cross a checkpoint in the southern part of Kherson region, an area still under Russian control. The couple, who had been living under occupation since the early days of Russia's invasion, initially refused to get a Russian passport even as Moscow made it increasingly difficult to survive without them. "Everything was becoming harder and harder," said Iryna during an interview with CBC News last month. "You felt like you were in a cage." Iryna, who CBC News agreed to identify only by her first name due to her concerns about retribution from Russia, said she and her husband felt they had no choice but to get Russian passports last year. That was when the local stores closed and it became impossible to get groceries without going through a Russian checkpoint. Like many other Ukrainians, she and her husband accepted Russian citizenship because they feared what would happen if they didn't. It is part of what human rights experts see as a widespread campaign of coercion that's designed to extend Moscow's influence over the occupied territories, areas it demands Ukraine relinquish as part of any potential peace deal. At the same time, the Kremlin has refused to implement a 30-day ceasefire, and Russian forces have recently launched a new offensive to try and take more Ukrainian land. According to Moscow, 3.5 million residents living in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson have received passports. While Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the country had "virtually completed" the mass issuance of passports in these areas, he signed a presidential decree in March to target the few Ukrainians still holding out. Ukrainians who live in Russia, or the areas it purports to control, have to legalize their status by Sept. 10 — or leave their homes. Though these Ukrainian regions aren't fully controlled by Russia, Moscow attempted to justify its claim to them by staging "sham" referendums in September 2022 that were condemned by world leaders. Its passport policy is an extension of that strategy, considered an attempt to weaken Ukrainian sovereignty and a clear sign that Moscow has no intention of giving up the territory it now occupies. Russia has previously used its fast-track passport scheme as a geopolitical tool in other areas, including in thebreakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia and in Moldova's separatist Transdniestria region. After Russia illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014, it distributed Russian passports in a widespread campaign. At the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Iryna and her husband were living in a cottage on an island in the Dnipro River Delta in the Kherson region. The area was seized by Russia during the first week of the war. When Ukrainian forces retook part of Kherson, including Kherson City in November 2022, Iryna said Russia's soldiers ordered her and other residents to evacuate further south. She and her husband ended up living in someone else's house in the village of Stara Zbur'ivka, located along the south side of the Dnipro river. They tried to avoid interacting with the Russian soldiers, Iryna told CBC News, but having to cross a Russian checkpoint each time they needed groceries or supplies meant they would be grilled by those manning it. "They kept asking 'Why are you not taking a passport, are you waiting for the Ukrainian military to return?'" said Iryna. On one occasion, she said, a soldier pointed a gun at her husband's head while questioning him. "It was no longer possible without them," she said of getting a Russian passport. "It was just dangerous." When Iryna and her husband decided to leave Kherson in March, they used their Russian passports as they travelled into Crimea and then Russia. At that point, she said, a local underground network of volunteers helped them get back to Ukraine by going through Belarus. Now living in Dnipro, the couple said they have no use for the passports Russia imposed on them. Even before Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Moscow was trying to entice Ukrainians with citizenship. Putinsigned a decree speeding up the process for those living in the self-proclaimed regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, which were then controlled by Russian-backed separatists. By July 2022, the Kremlin announced that all Ukrainian citizens were eligible to receive passports under the fast-track scheme. According to Human Rights Watch, the passports were distributed through anillegal pressure campaign, in which Russian authorities threatened to detain Ukrainian citizens or confiscate property if they didn't accept a passport. Russia has made it increasingly impossible to live without the document in the territory it occupies, requiring it to access state services, including pension payments, education and health care. During a six-month period in 2023, the international organization Physicians for Human Rights documented at least 15 cases of people being denied medical care, because they lived in the occupied territories and didn't have a Russian passport. The group said some hospitals even set up a desk so desperate patients could fill out the necessary paperwork right there. Ivan, a co-ordinator with the Yellow Ribbon resistance campaign that's active in the occupied territories, told CBC News that through the first few years of the Russian invasion, he and other volunteers advised residents about how to avoid accepting a Russian passport. CBC News agreed not to identify him by his last name, given his work in the occupied territories and the possibility of retribution by Russian authorities. In 2023, the resistance group ran an information campaign about steps Ukrainian citizens could take to prevent their flats or other real estate from being confiscated if they didn't have Russian citizenship. But he said as Russia ramped up restrictions, the messaging changed. "We are recommending that people take a Russian passport because you basically need it if you want to survive," he said during a Zoom interview in April. "You could be arrested or detained ... just because you don't have it." While he and others try to reassure residents that getting a passport is "no big deal" and they can later relinquish their Russian citizenship, he acknowledges that it could mean that men who are new citizens could be drafted into the country's military. Ivan, who graduated from university in information technology in 2021, was living in Kherson City when it was invaded by Russia. At the time, he had lost his Ukrainian passport, so he ended up being issued a Russian legal document. After the liberation of Kherson City, Ivan went to the northern part of the country, before later taking a route through Russia to enter the Russian-occupied part of the Ukrainian territory of Zaporizhzhia. He told CBC News he had relatives living in the area that he needed to bring passports to, and he helped a few local activists there stage non-violent resistance campaigns by tying yellow ribbons to trees and distributing information pamphlets. But he acknowledges he only knows of a few people in the occupied areas who haven't yet taken a Russian passport. "Even they know that they will have to accept a passport if the occupation continues."
CBC
16 hours ago
- General
- CBC
Russia tells Ukrainians in occupied areas to get Russian passport or leave
For more than three years, every time 67-year-old Iryna and her husband stepped beyond their front door, the Ukrainian couple feared for their lives. They could be caught up in shelling or in a drone strike — or end up being interrogated by security agents at gunpoint as they tried to cross a checkpoint in the southern part of Kherson region, an area still under Russian control. The couple, who had been living under occupation since the early days of Russia's invasion, initially refused to get a Russian passport even as Moscow made it increasingly difficult to survive without them. "Everything was becoming harder and harder," said Iryna during an interview with CBC News last month. "You felt like you were in a cage." Iryna, who CBC News agreed to identify only by her first name due to her concerns about retribution from Russia, said she and her husband felt they had no choice but to get Russian passports last year. That was when the local stores closed and it became impossible to get groceries without going through a Russian checkpoint. Like many other Ukrainians, she and her husband accepted Russian citizenship because they feared what would happen if they didn't. Mass distribution of passports It is part of what human rights experts see as a widespread campaign of coercion that's designed to extend Moscow's influence over the occupied territories, areas it demands Ukraine relinquish as part of any potential peace deal. At the same time, the Kremlin has refused to implement a 30-day ceasefire, and Russian forces have recently launched a new offensive to try and take more Ukrainian land. According to Moscow, 3.5 million residents living in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson have received passports. While Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the country had "virtually completed" the mass issuance of passports in these areas, he signed a presidential decree in March to target the few Ukrainians still holding out. Ukrainians who live in Russia, or the areas it purports to control, have to legalize their status by Sept. 10 — or leave their homes. Though these Ukrainian regions aren't fully controlled by Russia, Moscow attempted to justify its claim to them by staging "sham" referendums in September 2022 that were condemned by world leaders. Its passport policy is an extension of that strategy, considered an attempt to weaken Ukrainian sovereignty and a clear sign that Moscow has no intention of giving up the territory it now occupies. Russia has previously used its fast-track passport scheme as a geopolitical tool in other areas, including in the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia and in Moldova's separatist Transdniestria region. After Russia illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014, it distributed Russian passports in a widespread campaign. Life under occupation At the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Iryna and her husband were living in a cottage on an island in the Dnipro River Delta in the Kherson region. The area was seized by Russia during the first week of the war. When Ukrainian forces retook part of Kherson, including Kherson City in November 2022, Iryna said Russia's soldiers ordered her and other residents to evacuate further south. She and her husband ended up living in someone else's house in the village of Stara Zbur'ivka, located along the south side of the Dnipro river. They tried to avoid interacting with the Russian soldiers, Iryna told CBC News, but having to cross a Russian checkpoint each time they needed groceries or supplies meant they would be grilled by those manning it. "They kept asking 'Why are you not taking a passport, are you waiting for the Ukrainian military to return?'" said Iryna. On one occasion, she said, a soldier pointed a gun at her husband's head while questioning him. "It was no longer possible without them," she said of getting a Russian passport. "It was just dangerous." When Iryna and her husband decided to leave Kherson in March, they used their Russian passports as they travelled into Crimea and then Russia. At that point, she said, a local underground network of volunteers helped them get back to Ukraine by going through Belarus. Now living in Dnipro, the couple said they have no use for the passports Russia imposed on them. Passport policy Even before Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Moscow was trying to entice Ukrainians with citizenship. Putin signed a decree speeding up the process for those living in the self-proclaimed regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, which were then controlled by Russian-backed separatists. By July 2022, the Kremlin announced that all Ukrainian citizens were eligible to receive passports under the fast-track scheme. According to Human Rights Watch, the passports were distributed through an illegal pressure campaign, in which Russian authorities threatened to detain Ukrainian citizens or confiscate property if they didn't accept a passport. Russia has made it increasingly impossible to live without the document in the territory it occupies, requiring it to access state services, including pension payments, education and health care. During a six-month period in 2023, the international organization Physicians for Human Rights documented at least 15 cases of people being denied medical care, because they lived in the occupied territories and didn't have a Russian passport. The group said some hospitals even set up a desk so desperate patients could fill out the necessary paperwork right there. Advising Ukrainian citizens Ivan, a co-ordinator with the Yellow Ribbon resistance campaign that's active in the occupied territories, told CBC News that through the first few years of the Russian invasion, he and other volunteers advised residents about how to avoid accepting a Russian passport. CBC News agreed not to identify him by his last name, given his work in the occupied territories and the possibility of retribution by Russian authorities. In 2023, the resistance group ran an information campaign about steps Ukrainian citizens could take to prevent their flats or other real estate from being confiscated if they didn't have Russian citizenship. But he said as Russia ramped up restrictions, the messaging changed. "We are recommending that people take a Russian passport because you basically need it if you want to survive," he said during a Zoom interview in April. " You could be arrested or detained ... just because you don't have it." While he and others try to reassure residents that getting a passport is "no big deal" and they can later relinquish their Russian citizenship, he acknowledges that it could mean that men who are new citizens could be drafted into the country's military. Ivan, who graduated from university in information technology in 2021, was living in Kherson City when it was invaded by Russia. At the time, he had lost his Ukrainian passport, so he ended up being issued a Russian legal document. After the liberation of Kherson City, Ivan went to the northern part of the country, before later taking a route through Russia to enter the Russian-occupied part of the Ukrainian territory of Zaporizhzhia. He told CBC News he had relatives living in the area that he needed to bring passports to, and he helped a few local activists there stage non-violent resistance campaigns by tying yellow ribbons to trees and distributing information pamphlets. But he acknowledges he only knows of a few people in the occupied areas who haven't yet taken a Russian passport.
