Husband charged with murder of wife whose hand was chopped off

The estranged husband of a mother-of-two Geeta Aulakh, who was found with horrific injuries including a severed hand, was today charged with her murder.

Harpreet Aulakh, 31, will appear before London's Feltham Magistrates' Court next week charged with murder.

Mrs Aulakh, 28, was found with fatal head injuries and her hand severed after being attacked in Greenford, north-west London on November 16.

Aulakh was one of two men arrested by Scotland Yard yesterday in connection with the murder.

Mrs Aulakh was attacked at about 7pm. She was walking to pick up her two sons aged eight and ten after leaving work at Sunrise Radio where she was a receptionist.

Her family have since described how they are living in a "nightmare" from which they cannot wake up.

They said Mrs Aulakh was preparing to divorce her husband of 11 years.

The second man arrested yesterday has been bailed to a west London police station on a date in mid-January.

Mail Online

Somalia: Executed For Murder and Adultery?

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Witnesses say Islamist militants have executed two men accused by the fighters of murder and adultery.

Witnesses in the town of Afgoye southwest of the capital say the Hizbul Islam militants on Sunday stoned to death the man accused of adultery and shot the man accused of murder. They say the militants summoned the town's residents to watch the executions.

Islamic courts run by radical clerics have ordered executions, floggings and amputations in recent months. In some areas militants have also banned movies, musical telephone ringtones, dancing at weddings and playing or watching soccer.

Somalia has been ravaged by violence since warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, then turned on each other.

Report on Arrakis

Arroyo vows justice over massacre

Gloria Arroyo, the Philippine president, has said "no effort will be spared" in the hunt for those behind what is believed to have been a politically-driven massacre in the south of the country.

Local media reports on Tuesday said that at least 46 people were believed to have been killed in the attack, up from an initial death toll of 22.

The victims were part of a group of people abducted in Maguindanao province by around 100 armed men.

Among those killed were the wife and family members of Esmael Mangudadatu, a local politician, as well as journalists.

The army has linked the killings to political rivalries ahead of next year's local elections.

In a televised address to the nation on Tuesday afternoon, Arroyo said she was determined that those behind the killings would be held "accountable to the full limit of the law".

"The chief of staff has ordered the establishment of check points and choke points and as of last night, the military elements were in place to preserve peace in the areas.

"Additional troops have also been deployed to the area last night to further secure the area," she said.

Earlier officials in the president's office said she had ordered a state of emergency in the area, following what they said was the worst political violence seen in the country in recent history.

Lieutenant-Colonel Romeo Brawner, a spokesman for the Philippines military, said that about 500 more soldiers had been sent to Maguindanao province on the island of Mindanao "to go after the criminals" believed to be behind the killings.

He said the troops were under orders to arrest the followers of Andal Ampatuan, the incumbent governor suspected of being behind the killings.

"We maintain the Ampatuans are the suspects," Brawner told the AFP news agency.

On Monday, the military said 22 bodies - most female, some beheaded and mutilated - had been found in a mass grave in a remote mountainous area.

Al Jazeera's Marga Ortigas, reporting from the Philippines, said Ampatuan is known to be closely-associated to the government and a close ally of Arroyo so people are watching to see what action the government will take.

Ampatuan is seen to have delivered the votes that swung the 2004 elections in Arroyo's favour, so people in the province fear he may not be punished if he is found to be behind the killings, she said.

Meanwhile Mangudadatu, whose family members, including his wife, were among those killed according to the military, told local radio that at least four people had survived the attack.

He said the survivors were safe under his care and "will come out at the right time".

Mangudadatu told local television network ABS-CBN on Monday that he had been warned about the dangers of standing for the governorship against Ampatuan.

Mangudadatu said he stayed behind in the capital Manila and sent his wife, Genalyn Tiamzon-Mangudadatu, to file his nomination in Maguindanao on his behalf.

Maguindanao is one of the most politically tense provinces in the country.

The governor position is hotly contested because it is the seat of the autonomous region of Muslim Mindanao, she said.

More at Al Jazeera

Modernity – an end to male-run faiths and 'honour' crimes

by Joan Smith

When demonstrators gathered in London yesterday to protest against sharia, the Archbishop of Canterbury was otherwise engaged with the Pope. It's almost two years since Rowan Williams caused an outcry when he suggested that recognising aspects of sharia would help social cohesion, and, every day, evidence accumulates to show how wrong he was.

Women, girls and young men desperately need protection from religious laws and the patriarchal attitudes associated with them, as two ghastly events demonstrated last week.

First, on Monday evening, a young mother was found dying from head injuries in a street in West London. Geeta Aulakh worked as a receptionist at Sunrise Radio in Ealing and was on her way to pick up her sons from a childminder when she was attacked.

As soon as I learned that her right hand had been hacked off, I assumed it was an "honour" killing, and I'm unconvinced by the claim of a senior police officer that "it could be a defence wound". The right hand has huge significance in Sikh culture and Jasvinder Sanghera, founder of the South Asian women's organisation Karma Nirvana, has described in her autobiographical book Shame how important "honour" is in some Sikh communities.

Geeta Aulakh left her husband last year after a troubled marriage and was in the process of getting divorced. Her sister Anita Shinh said she had felt threatened for months: "She feared for her life, but she wasn't able to talk about it to anyone. She didn't want to worry us."

Also last week, a Muslim man appeared in court in Blackburn: Aurang Zeb made history earlier this year when he was one of the first people to be served with a forced marriage protection order, preventing him taking his daughter Rozina Akhtar to Pakistan to marry her cousin against her will.

After the order was imposed in February, Zeb tried to force his son to attack his mother and sister, and threatened to kill his wife and cut out her tongue. Last week he was convicted of breaching the order, forbidden to contact his family and ordered to carry out 200 hours of community service. Shazia Qayum of Karma Nirvana criticised the sentence, pointing out there was clear evidence that Zeb had threatened to kill his wife. "Community service? He should have been locked up," she said.

The MP for Blackburn is the Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, and earlier this year the Government's forced marriage unit started holding confidential forced marriage surgeries in the town. In the first nine months of last year, the unit gave advice or support in 1,308 cases nationally and intervened directly in 388, a 100 per cent increase on the same period in 2007.

These figures are shocking and encouraging at the same time: as The Independent on Sunday reported last year, the extent of forced marriage and "honour" crimes in this country is only beginning to be revealed.

It's sometimes argued that forced marriage and "honour" crimes have nothing to do with religion, as though faith and cultural practices are separate. Obviously they aren't, and "honour" crimes happen in circumstances where ideas about the superiority of male relatives are entrenched through religion.

There is a bigger point here: the shift away from a tribal social structure, where senior males expect to enjoy unchallenged authority based on religious texts, is a key condition of modernity.

It's supported not just by secularists but by Muslims, Sikhs, Jews and Christians who want to practise their faith in the modern world. They're on the right side of the argument – and of history.

The Independent

Somali jihadists forcing civilians to watch executions

Movies and television? No way. Executions? Bring the whole family -- or else! "Somalis 'made to view executions'," by Mary Harper for BBC News, October 25:

Hundreds of people in Somalia have been forced to watch Islamist militants executing two people accused of spying.

People in Merca said al-Shabaab militia patrolled the town with loudspeakers, demanding they attend the executions.

The militants also ordered schools to close for the day as they were keen for children to watch the two men being shot dead by a firing squad.

Most of those at the execution, on a patch of open ground, are reported to have been women and children.

It is becoming something of a pattern for al-Shabaab to encourage young people to engage in violence.

It recently organised a quiz for young men in the southern town of Kismayo.

The prizes included AK-47 assault rifles, hand grenades and anti-tank mines.

The aim, said al-Shabaab, was to stop young men from wasting time, and to focus on important things like defending their territory and their religion.

Priorities: As the Ayatollah Khomeini said, "There is no fun in Islam."

At the prize-giving ceremony, which was attended by hundreds of people, the militants urged parents to teach their children to handle weapons at an early age.

Somali children's rights groups say al-Shabaab is intent on brainwashing the young to believe in violent Islamism.

In this way, it can ensure it has a steady supply of recruits, ready to fight for its aim of establishing extreme Islamist rule, not only in Somalia but far beyond its borders.

Source: JihadWatch

New Terror Tactic in Afghanistan: Children

Nine young boys were tricked into delivering a bomb for the Taliban. It is the story of Eidullah and his friends. I came across the story on a military base in Khost, Eastern Afghanistan when a few of the boys had come for a check up. Military doctors saved their lives.

The boys were asked to deliver a fruit basket to a local commander working with U.S. forces. What they didn’t know was hidden in the basket was a bomb. It exploded early and injuring the boys. Two lost legs, one went blind, all their lives changed in a flash.

Using children is new terror tactic that is growing in Afghanistan. Doctors at the combat hospital say they are seeing child bombers more frequently.

Eidullah was one of the boys who lost his leg. When I met him, his face was etched with worry. He used to run his father’s shop in his village. His father is blind and as the oldest son it’s up to him to take care of his mother and 6 siblings. He doubts he can. It is hard to believe such responsibility for an 11-year-old.

Nine year old Mohammad’s father begged doctors not to amputate his leg, but the blast took out his sciatic nerve. His right leg is now dead. He has no feeling and no control over it. It will need to be removed in the future but the doctors respected the father’s wishes.

Even when it is amputated, it’s unlikely Eidullah or Mohammad will ever get a prosthetic leg, they are simply too poor to afford it.

They will join the 50 thousand other Afghan civilians amputated by 30 years of continuous war.

Despite the agony from their injuries, not one of the boys complained. They were near stoic with their new reality given to them by a terrorist.

The bombing that changed the lives of these boys happened on September 11th. A terrible reminder of how it always seems to be their lives of the innocence that are torn apart by terrorism and war.

Source: CBS

Somali Islamists carry out amputations on 3 men

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Six masked men used machetes to carry out amputations on three men accused of robbery by a Somali Islamist court, a witness said Saturday.

Abdulahi Hassan Afrah said the two of the men had both a hand and a foot cut off and a third had only a foot cut off after the Islamic court in the southern port city of Kismayo realized he was already disabled.

He said a crowd of around 400 people, mainly women and children, watched the sentence carried out Friday on the three screaming young men.

"It was most painful thing I have ever seen," he said.

A spokesmen for the al-Shabab militia, Sheik Hassan Yaqub Ali, said the three had admitted robbing passengers on board a truck heading to Kismayo.

None of the three were allowed to appeal the sentence or had access to a lawyer.

The Islamic courts were originally set up to try to counter the bloody chaos of Somalia's 18-year-old civil war. Initially their harsh judgments were welcomed by many of the war-weary population and in 2006 the courts formed the basis for an Islamist administration that controlled much of the capital and southern Somalia.

But the Islamist government was toppled in December 2006 by Ethiopian troops supporting the weak U.N.-backed government, and the Islamists launched a bloody insurgency. The courts are still active in areas under Islamist control, including many neighborhoods in the capital.

In 2008, the courts in Kismayo ordered a 13-year-old gang rape victim to be stoned to death.

But amputations and public floggings are more common.

Source: AP

H/T: WeaselZippers

Somali Islamists amputate 2 men's hands in capital

MOGADISHU, Somalia — A spokesman says a Somali Islamic court has amputated the hands of two men accused of theft and lashed another accused of rape.

Al-Shabab militia spokesman Sheik Ali Mohamud Rage says the men had admitted the charges against them.

An eyewitness says kitchen knives were used to amputate a hand off each of the screaming men on a large table.

He declined to be named for fear of reprisals.

Wednesday's punishment by courts connected to a powerful insurgent group shows the shaky U.N.-backed government's inability to control even Somalia's capital city of Mogadishu.

Such strict punishments are historically unusual in Somalia and analysts say they are partly a reaction to the chaos of the civil war.

Source: AP via Google News

Thieves suffer public amputation

From correspondents in Mogadishu, Somalia

June 25

HOODED Somali Islamist militiamen today chopped off the right hand and left foot of four thieves in front of a crowd of 200 people in Mogadishu.

An ad-hoc court set up by the hardline Islamist group Shebab had this week found the four young men guilty of stealing mobile phones and guns from residents in the Somali capital.

"The amputations have been carried out as scheduled,'' a Shebab official said on condition of anonymity.

"According to Islam, anybody who robs people will face a similar punishment.''

Residents in the Sukahola neighbourhood gathered to watch the amputations but no cameras nor mobile phones were allowed.

Two hooded men watched by masked Shebab gunmen carried out the amputations with a traditional Somali curved-blade knife known as a "torey'' after applying tourniquets on the accused's forearms and legs.

"Before the sentence was carried out, medics checked their health. We wanted to avoid anything that could put their lives at risk,'' the Shebab official said.

Witnesses told of the robbers' agony.

"The four were screaming when their limbs were hacked off,'' said Ali Mohamed Ibrahim, a local resident.

"It did not take long. Within three minutes I saw them without their right hand and left foot.''

"Their faces were twisted in horror,'' he said.

"Some of the people in the crowd had to look away when the punishment was carried out. It looked really painful but I want this to put an end to robbery in the area,'' said Farah Mohamed, another witness.

While most of the political players in Somalia recognise Islam as the main source of legislation, the Shebab advocate a very strict interpretation of Sharia.

An alliance including the Shebab and other hardline Islamists already controls and administers large parts of southern Somalia, where courts impose tough sentences that have been condemned by rights groups.

On Monday, Amnesty International issued a statement urging the Shebab - who are engaged in a deadly military offensive against the fledgling administration of President Sheikh Sharif - not to carry out the sentences.

"We are appealing to Al-Shebab not to carry out these cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments,'' said Tawanda Hondora, the London-based watchdog's Africa Deputy Director.

"These sentences were ordered by a sham Al-Shebab court with no due process or guarantees of fairness,'' it said.

Today's public punishment, known as "cross-amputation'', was the first such case in the capital in recent years.

In October, a 13-year-old girl was stoned to death in public by around 50 men on one of Kismayo's main squares.

She was accused of adultery by local hardline Islamists after reporting that she had been raped by three men.

Source: The Australian