police brutality

South African shack dwellers: “The police are attacking us”

Sophie Team Observers — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:22:39 +0100

Image by posted by MrUmhlangarocks on YouTube.

A group of Durban shack dwellers say that local police attacked, abused, and intimidated residents on Friday night. It's the third alleged police-related attack in two months. But why would authorities target a group of shack dwellers?

Our Observer says that the November 13 attack is part of a mission to get rid of an increasingly powerful shack dwellers' rights group which is critical of ruling party ANC. Just two months ago the police failed to react to fatal clashes (see video below) in the neighbouring shantytown of Kennedy Road - which is also home to the movement. Activists condemned the violence as "coordinated" and the police as "complicit", in an open letter to President Jacob Zuma, which received over 1,250 signatures.

Since then, 32 "Abahlali baseMjondolo" movement members have been arrested, including 13 on Friday night (released on Monday). The group says it is "under attack" from the police. FRANCE 24 contacted the South African Police Service; they are yet to reply.

Iranian girl followed and arrested at her front door

Team Observers — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:18:01 +0200

These images were sent to us by our Observer Omid Habibinia. He says the footage was filmed on September 18 in the town of Rasht. It allegedly shows security forces detain a protester at the entrance of her building after having followed her home. Her family and neighbours appear to struggle to help her before being pushed back by the police.

“Horrendous” mobile footage of Tamil executions

Sophie Team Observers — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:51:14 +0200

A UN expert has called for an investigation into mobile phone footage of what appears to be Tamil civilians, hands bound and stripped naked, being shot dead by Sri Lankan soldiers.

The images are thought to have been filmed during the final stages of Sri Lanka's quarter century battle against separatist activists Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The bloody conflict, which claimed over 8,000 lives in 2009 according to unofficial UN figures, came to an end in May following a final military push and the subsequent death of Tamil leader Velupillai Prabhakaran.

Warning, these images may be found very upsetting.

The video was released on August 25 by Europe-based activists "Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka" (JDSL), a group of majority Sinhalese, but also Tamil, exiled Sri Lankan journalists. They said it had been filmed in January, but were unable to release further details in order to protect their sources.

Two days later, on August 27, the army responded to the footage by saying it was fake, staged by members of the Tamil Tigers, and that the JDSL was a "front" to the group. The following day however, UN Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Philip Alston, urged an independent investigation into the video, calling it "horrendous".

On Monday, the Sri Lankan army again responded by reporting that, after investigating the video further, they were able to confirm it was staged, and suggested that it was probably Tiger members killing abducted soldiers rather than vice versa. Verifying the footage is almost impossible, due to the media blackout placed in the region during the conflict.

“They forced me to write down all the people I'd had sex with”

Sophie Team Observers — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:48:34 +0200

"Minio", a young Iranian who was detained during the post-election repression, describes the humiliating experiences she went through at the hands of her jailers.

The last in a long list of complainants, an Iranian member of parliament has spoken out about the rape and torture of protesters detained following the 12 June election results. The unnamed Iranian MP, who worked on a committee charged with investigating prisoner abuse during the post-election repression, made the acknowledgment in a statement given last Thursday. "Raping of some detainees through baton and soda bottle has been proved to us," he was quoted as saying by the reformist parliamentary news website Parlemannews.ir. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei however blamed reformist politicians for focusing on prisoner abuse rather than the original "defacing of the system" by protesters.

Numerous accounts of prison abuse have emerged since some of the hundreds of people arrested in the repression were released. Even the most prominent cases have, however, been carefully refuted by the authorities. Findings from the investigative parliamentary committee in question are also expected to be unreliable - the majority of the committee members are members of Ahmadinejad's government, the minority, reformist politicians...

Who wants you to see these torture videos?

Sophie Team Observers — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:00:34 +0200

Blogger Wael Abbas has published footage of a man being tortured in what he says is an Egyptian police station. The horrific scenes seem not to have greatly shocked the Egyptian public. Our Observers there, however, are asking why and for whom these images were filmed.

Please be aware that this post includes images which you may find upsetting.

Wael, who works often with such documents, published the images last Wednesday. He says that the scene appears to have taken place in the Ad-Dawahi police station in the harbour town of Port Said, situated at the mouth of the Suez Canal. His source, which he says is reliable but prefers to remain anonymous, does not know when the scene took place but affirms that the torturer is the station commissioner, Mohamed Abu Ghazala.

Contacted by FRANCE 24, activists from the Port Said branch of the NGO Arabic Network for Human Rights Information said that they have tried to find the victim in the video, but nobody has come forward. They told us that acts of torture at the hands of the station commissioner in question had already been documented by the group. Interestingly, they also told us, the victim does not have the local accent of the Port Said province.

We decided not to publish the torture videos on The Observers. The footage shows a person hung by their wrists in an interrogation room.

He begs his torturer to stop. "Please Mohamed Bey [an old-fashioned dignitary address from the Ottoman empire], stop, I'm going to die. I'm not an animal. I'm a human being."

The officer replies, "Shut up you son of a bitch".

Here are some screen grabs of the scene.

Was Taraneh raped and murdered, or did she never exist?

Sophie Team Observers — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:24:39 +0200

Taraneh was a 28-year-old beautician who was arrested by Basij forces, raped and tortured for 22 days, and then set on fire and left in the desert. At least, that's what dissident Web users say. According to the authorities, the woman in question has been living in Canada for the past two years; and they have evidence to prove it — they've interviewed her family. So who's telling the truth?

The story of Taraneh Mousavi emerged online on 14 July, when protest blog Iranian Leftists wrote about the suspected torture, rape and murder of a young woman after allegedly talking to a friend of the aforementioned. It reported that the beautician was arrested on 28 June along with around 40 protesters. Although she herself was not participating in the protest, it was said that she was detained for wearing high heels and fashionable clothes. While the other detainees were turned over to the police at Nobonyad police station, Taraneh was taken to a house in Hosseinieh Ershad district by the Basij militia.

The post reported that a few days later the family of the young woman received a telephone call from an anonymous caller who said that Taraneh had been hospitalised following an "accident" in which her womb and anus and were damaged. When her family went to the Imam Khamenei Hospital in Karaj to look for her, a nurse told them that a girl matching Taraneh's description had been brought into the hospital by plain clothes officers and then removed a few hours later.

Two days later, the website reported that Taraneh was dead. They published what they say is the account of one her friends. The alleged friend says that Taraneh's family received another phone call in which they were informed that her burnt body had been found in the desert between Karaj and Qazvin (north-west of Tehran).

The story caused such a hullabaloo online that it managed to reach Thaddeus McCottor, a Republican congressman from Michigan, who delivered a speech to Congress on July 20, asking Supreme Leader Khomeini to look at the photo of Taraneh, saying: "Here is the truth denied by Khomeini and his misogynistic murderous regime."

Islamic sect leader filmed in custody before his killing

Ségolène Team Observers — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:59:06 +0200

This video shows Nigerian Islamist militant Mohammed Yusuf just before he was handed over to the police. Hours later, he died. The footage of the sect leader being interrogated by the army strongly implies that the he was not killed in battle, as initially reported by the authorities.

The details of 39-year-old cleric Mohammed Yusuf's death remain unclear. Blamed for the anti-state violence which saw five days of bloodshed in Nigeria's northern Borno state, Yusuf was killed by authorities on the afternoon of Thursday 2, his bullet-riddled body put on display outside the police station.

It was initially reported that he died during an exchange of fire. But inconsistencies between the police and the army revealed that he had actually been arrested and detained. It emerged that he had been found hiding in his wife's parents' goat pen in the town of Maidiguri, and arrested by the army, who then interrogated him - seen in the video - before handing him over to the police. It was after this that he died. The police deny responsibility for his death, however, saying only that he died trying to escape the authorities. On Wednesday President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua ordered an investigation into his death.

Scene from a war film? No, a protest in Tehran...

Sophie Team Observers — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:08:59 +0200

This footage was filmed by residents on a balcony in Tehran. In the street directly below, the police shoot down a protestor.

FRANCE 24 has not been able to confirm the date of the incident. The video appeared in the past few days on the Facebook page and blog of "Iranian Leftists". Omid Habibinia, a member of the group, says that the video was most probably filmed on June 20, the day of the death of Neda Agha Soltan and the day after Ayatollah Khameni's speech, which marked the beginning of the repression. We see police officers (in green), armed with shotguns, and a plain clothes policeman who shoots with a handgun.

We advise watching the entire video.

Translation: Omid Habibinia. Subtitles by FRANCE 24.

If you have more information about this video, contact our journalists by registering on The Observers.

An illegal immigrant expelled “like a dog”

Sophie Team Observers — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 17:17:43 +0200

Lamine Mbengue was waiting for his transfer plane in Madrid airport when he witnessed an illegal immigrant being tied up by the police and forced onto a plane bound for Dakar. The scene shocked him so much that he took out his digital camera and recorded it. Now, the images are making their way round the world.

Have you been deported? Publish your account on The Observers.

Honduran newspaper photoshops blood from crackdown victim

Sophie Team Observers — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:22:51 +0200

Left, photo published in La Prensa, right, original photo.

These photos seem to prove that a pro-coup newspaper digitally removed bloodstains from the image of a protester shot dead by soldiers.

Isis Obeth Murillo, 19, a young anti-coup protestor from ousted President Manuel Zelaya's home state of Olancho, died after being shot in the head at the airport during Zelaya's unsuccessful attempt to return to Tegucigalpa on Sunday. The image of his friends carrying him has become an iconic image for anti-coup protestors, who say that the army is enforcing a brutal crackdown in the country, largely covered up by the media.

Highlighted by Cuban website CubaDebate, these two images seem to prove the protesters right. The original image, on the right, shows the youth bleeding from the head and covered in blood, while in the same photo which appeared in La Prensa (on the left), the blood has all but disappeared. Not surprisingly, the newspaper in question is a right leaning anti-Zelaya publication...