Dutch anti-Islam party hit by scandal

Tue Nov 16, 2010

A member of the anti-Islamic Dutch Freedom Party with a past conviction for sexual offenses is posing problems for party leader Geert Wilders.

Parliament member Eric Lucassen has been embroiled in a controversy after it was revealed on Thursday that he had been found guilty of sexual misconduct in 2002.

The former army instructor served one week in military detention in the same year for having sex with a female army recruit while he was a sergeant, TV station RTL4 reported last week.

The lawmaker has also been accused of threatening and intimidating his neighbors between 2006 and 2009.

Wilders had earlier stated that he felt 'unfairly treated' by Lucassen, but stopped short of expelling him from the party.

The MP's ouster from the Freedom Party group in the Lower House would have created a crisis for the one-seat majority supporting the current right-wing government.

Theoretically, that could lead to the fall of the cabinet barely a month after the new government came into office.

The recent crisis has raised serious questions over the screening of political candidates before elections.

Wilders, however, argues that his party lacks the means to hire expensive bureaus to screen candidates.

"It's not the first time things like these have happened," Wilders went on to say.

The party leader was hinting at a 2009 incident in which another Freedom Party MP, Hero Brinkman, assaulted a barman in the parliament's press cafe.

Also in 2002, Dion Graus, Freedom Party MP and animal rights campaigner, was accused of physically abusing his pregnant wife.

Wilders made headlines worldwide in March 2008 after making the anti-Islam film, Fitna. The movie prompted angry protests across the world.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon described Wilders' movie as “offensively anti-Islamic”. The European Parliament also banned the screening of the film, saying it provoked hatred.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/151228.html.

UK's Prince William engaged to longtime girlfriend

By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press

LONDON – Prince William and girlfriend Kate Middleton are engaged and will marry next spring or summer in London — a royal wedding that Britons have been eagerly awaiting for years.

The announcement Tuesday by royal officials ends an on-again, off-again romance that began after the two met more than eight years ago as students at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Prince Charles' Clarence House office said the heir to the British throne is "delighted to announce the engagement of Prince William to Miss Catherine Middleton." It said they got engaged last month during a vacation in Kenya.

Prime Minister David Cameron said he was delighted by the news, and sent the couple his best.

The prince, who is second in line to the throne, once told an interviewer he wouldn't marry "until I'm at least 28 or maybe 30." He turned 28 in June and recently completed training a Royal Air Force search and rescue pilot.

The royal family is said to approve of Middleton, the daughter of self-made millionaires. Her father worked for an airline and her mother was a flight attendant before they started a mail-order business specializing in children's parties, run from their farm in southern England.

Middleton works for the family business.

Commentators have been anticipating a summer 2011 wedding, a date that avoids both the Olympics and Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee, both due to be held in 2012. Bookmakers stopped taking bets on a 2011 wedding months ago, saying all signs were pointing to a marriage next year.

Earlier this month the Middletons joined members of the royal family for a shooting holiday at the Balmoral estate in Scotland — another milestone on Kate's road to acceptance by the family's inner circle.

The venue for the wedding was not announced.

"Prince William has informed the queen and other close members of his family," the Clarence House statement said. "Prince William has also sought the permission of Miss Middleton's father."

It said after the wedding, the couple will "live in north Wales, where Prince William will continue to serve with the Royal Air Force."

Egypt Islamists say over 600 arrested in election campaign

By Samer al-Atrush (AFP)

CAIRO — Egyptian police have rounded up about 600 Muslim Brotherhood members ahead of this month's parliamentary election and some 250 are still detained, a senior Brotherhood official said on Tuesday.

Mohammed Mursi told AFP that the crackdown on members of the opposition Islamist group began when the Brotherhood announced on October 9 plans to field candidates for the November 28 legislative polls.

"Arrests are still being made. Someone goes out to campaign, he gets harassed and arrested and then released in a few days," said Mursi, a member of the Brotherhood's politburo who heads the group's election campaign.

"About 600 have been arrested since we announced that we would run in the election. About 250 remain in jail," he said.

The group said on its website that more than 70 Islamists were arrested across the country over the past few days, including about 50 who were detained overnight in the southern Bani Suef province after clashing with police.

Security officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Police regularly say they arrest Brotherhood members for belonging to an illegal organization.

The group, which registers its candidates as independents to skirt a ban on religious parties, won a fifth of parliament's seats in the last election in 2005.

The Brotherhood is fielding about 135 candidates in this month's election, but the number remains uncertain as some candidates are contesting the election committee's decision to bar them from running, Mursi said.

The ruling National Democratic Party is running about 800 candidates, and the liberal Wafd opposition party about 250 for the 508 seats up for election.

Dozens of independents, many of them NDP would-be nominees who were not endorsed by the party, are also standing for election.

The official press reported on Tuesday that the election committee has approved 5,181 candidates for the election out of roughly 5,700 who applied.

The US State Department on Monday called on Egypt to hold fair elections and allow international observers to monitor the vote, something Cairo rejects as interference in its affairs.

The government said it will allow local groups to send observers to polling stations.

The Forum of Independent Human Rights Organizations, a coalition of Egyptian rights groups, said last week that the election has already been compromised by arrests of opposition members and a media crackdown.

Bahieddine Hassan, director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, said there was a climate of "terror" in the media after the dismissal of an opposition newspaper editor and the suspension of several satellite stations.

"It is a farce rather than a legislative election," he said.

Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved.

Iran says NATO missile shield a plot to protect Israel

Tue, 16 Nov 2010

Tehran - Iran said Tuesday that the creation of a NATO-wide missile shield was a plot by the West to protect Israel.

"Regional and Islamic countries have already voiced their doubts about this suspicious move which is mainly aimed at supporting and protecting the Zionist (Israeli) regime," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said.

He said the region's nations should not allow such plans to be implemented as they had their own potential to guarantee security.

NATO's decision on missile defense would clear the way for the creation of a computer program capable of linking anti-missile systems in all member states under a single operator.

As part of the package, the US is to move anti-missile systems to Europe, starting with ships in the Mediterranean in 2011 and stationing land-based missiles in Romania in 2015 and Poland in 2018.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Monday in Brussels that there was no need for the alliance to name the nations against which its proposed ballistic missile screen would operate.

The proposed shield would largely be based on US technology, and diplomats said Washington initially pushed for this week's NATO summit in Lisbon to name Iran as the main source of a missile threat. But Turkey opposed that stance, fearing tensions with its neighbor.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/353731,a-plot-protect-israel.html.

Muslims mark Eid with outdoor prayers in central Athens

Tue, 16 Nov 2010

Athens - Thousands of Muslim immigrants gathered for outdoor prayer services across Athens on Tuesday to mark the festival of Eid-al-Adha.

Dozens of riot police were deployed in the city center to protect the immigrants from attacks by extreme right-wing demonstrators who tried to disrupt the prayers.

Reports said a handful of protesters threw eggs at the group of faithful in central Athens before police intervened early on Tuesday.

In recent municipal elections on November 14 the head of extreme right-wing party Golden Dawn, Nikos Mihaloliakos, won more than 5 per cent of the vote in Athens, winning a seat in seat on the local council.

Mihaloliakos based his campaign on anti-immigrant issues and government plans to build a mosque in the Greek capital.

Tens of thousands of immigrants make their way into the European Union via Greece each year, mainly from the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/353732,outdoor-prayers-central-athens.html.

Suspect in Iran stoning case allegedly confesses to being 'sinner'

Tue, 16 Nov 2010

Tehran - An Iranian woman claiming to be Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani, who has been sentenced to death by stoning after an adultery conviction, confessed on Iranian state television to being a "sinner."

The woman, speaking in Azeri, said Monday night that she not only had a sexual liaison with her husband's cousin but also helped him kill her spouse.

A woman purported to be Mohammadi-Ashtiani also made a televised confession in August in which she confirmed the charges put forward by the Iranian judiciary.

Mohammadi-Ashtiani was sentenced to death on an adultery charge and is also under investigation for murder, for which she could also face the death penalty.

Iran employs televised confessions for political prisoners, a method that has met not only with harsh international criticism but also local opposition.

In Mohammadi-Ashtiani's case, the confession was believed to be aimed at defusing international condemnation of her sentence.

The TV footage also showed two men identified as her son, Sajad Qaderzadeh, and her lawyer, Houtan Kian, who were arrested on October 10 with two German reporters who wanted to interview them on the Mohammadi-Ashtiani case.

The son revised his earlier remarks to Western media that his mother was tortured and said without the ballyhoo in the West, his mother's case would have gone through normal procedures.

The man introduced as Kian said he lied to the foreign media about the case.

The British newspaper The Guardian in August quoted Kian as saying that the woman had been tortured for two days at the Tabriz prison in north-western Iran.

The sentence against Mohammadi-Ashtiani has provoked an international outcry with Western countries and human rights organizations calling on Iran to revise it.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/353735,allegedly-confesses-being-sinner.html.

Egypt's longest-serving parliamentarian dies

Tue, 16 Nov 2010

Cairo - Egypt's longest-serving member of parliament and one of the president's closest confidants, Kamal al-Shazly, has died, state media reported on Tuesday.

Al-Shazly, who served as a parliamentarian for 46 years, died after a long battle with disease, according to media reports.

The 76-year-old lawmaker hailed from the governorate of Monofiya, where both President Hosny Mubarak and former president Anwar Sadat were born.

Al-Shazly died just two weeks ahead of parliamentary elections, in which he was seeking another five-year term.

He was one of the founders of Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), served as minister of state for parliamentary affairs for more than a decade, and was the leader of the NDP in parliament.

A state funeral for al-Shazly is expected to take place in Cairo.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/353758,egypts-longest-serving-parliamentarian-dies.html.