Friday, May 22, 2009

Aussie air steward jailed for bomb hoax

May 22, 2009, 7:09 am

An Australian flight attendant has been jailed for 18 months in England for leaving a bomb hoax note on a London-bound plane he was working on.

Matthew Carney, 23, of Melbourne , was arrested in March after the Emirates Boeing 777 flight he was on landed at Gatwick airport amid a major security scare about whether there was a bomb on board.

While no explosive devices were found, two notes referring to a bomb on the jumbo were discovered - one in a passenger toilet and another in Carney's luggage.

Carney pleaded guilty to making a hoax threat at Lewes Crown Court in southern England on Thursday. He denied a second charge of endangering the safety of an aircraft.

Handing down Carney's sentence, judge Richard Brown said the Australian had breached the trust of the plane's 164 passengers, its owner and his co-workers.

Carney's lawyer Andel Singh said he had been under great stress and was extremely tired while he was working on board the flight from Dubai.

"He apologises wholeheartedly and sincerely to all those individuals who were even the slightest bit inconvenienced," Singh said.

Fears about a bomb being on board the plane arose when Carney found wires hanging in an economy toilet cubicle during the flight to Gatwick.

He alerted senior staff who found the wires were not connected to any electrical devices and removed them before instructing cabin crew to monitor the cubicle for any suspicious activity.

A passenger later found a note warning that "explosive material can be found in the fwd (forward) cargo department" stuck inside another toilet cubicle that Carney had restocked with toilet paper.

The note added: "We have the Taliban to thank for this. It will activate."

The passenger alerted Carney and his supervisor, who passed the note to the captain so he could warn ground staff at Gatwick.

By the time the plane landed early on a Sunday morning, police, ambulance and fire crews were on alert and guided the aircraft to an isolated secure area.

The airport was closed for 15 minutes and all passengers and crew had their bags searched.

Investigators found another note in a pocket of a pair of shorts inside Carney's suitcase which read: "Cargo contains explosives."

Source

Monday, May 11, 2009

Despite the fanfare, most bikies charged for minor offences

Geesche Jacobsen Crime Editor

May 11, 2009

MANY of the people charged by police under an operation hailed for being tough on bikies have been charged with traffic, street and other minor offences, figures show.

Many might have been arrested as part of normal police operations, not those targeting members of an outlaw motorcycle gang.

Overall, 975 people were charged with 2171 offences under Operation Ranmore, which started two years ago this month and predated the killing of Anthony Zervas at Sydney Airport and the new Strike Force Raptor.

However, figures obtained under freedom-of-information laws show that in that time only nine people were charged specifically with being a member of a criminal gang.

Nearly 300 people were charged with traffic offences, more than 140 with "judicial" offences, such as breaching bail, and 110 with property and street offences.

The Opposition police spokesman, Mike Gallacher, said the figures of Operation Ranmore had been "inflated by the inclusion of low-level offences".

"It is quite possible that a number of those charges … were the result of normal operations of general duties and highway patrol police stopping an offender who they found out to be a bikie, with that person being arrested then being included in Ranmore [statistics] even though the person may not necessarily have been targeted prior to committing the offence."

The figures show the state's Gang Squad charged only 40 of the people arrested under the operation, and most charges were laid by local police around the state.

More than 200 people were charged with assault or violence, but it is unknown how serious many of those alleged offences were.

Only 139 charges relate to drugs, firearms or weapons offences, which have been singled out as the main bikie criminal activities.

The Government has repeatedly praised Ranmore as successfully "tackling these thugs head on".

The commander of the Gang Squad, Superintendent Mal Lanyon, said police were targeting illegal activities by members of outlaw motorcycle gangs and their associates "right across the spectrum of offences", which included serious traffic offences. "If you target people that are carrying out illegal activities you are certainly making the state a safer place," he said.

He said local police were also conducting some intelligence-based operations which specifically targeted bikies, while highway patrol officers targeted serious traffic offenders.

Source

Bomb threat just Dokic's idea of a joke

Selma Milovanovic

May 11, 2009

THREATS to blow up the Australian ambassador were a joke and bombs found in his home were souvenirs from the war in Croatia, a handcuffed Damir Dokic told a Serbian magistrate.

Dokic, 50, faced court just days after reacting wildly to claims by his daughter Jelena that he had physically abused the tennis player. He is being held in a Serbian jail for up to 30 days after police raided his home and said they found weapons, including two bombs.

Earlier he allegedly told Serbian media he would fire a rocket at the Australian ambassador, Clare Birgin, if she did nothing to stop Australian media reports of his alleged violence towards Jelena.

Dokic has been charged with illegal weapons possession and endangering another person's safety. His lawyer was due to seek bail for Dokic yesterday.

Dokic told Serbian media the alleged threats were not serious. "I only wanted to ask the embassy to investigate who had spread the misinformation. I told reporters that I would fire a wasp [rocket] at her when I was upset and as a joke." Dokic, a Serbian war veteran, said the bombs were a souvenir he had "totally forgotten about".

He had bought 20 bullets at a fair in the town of Ruma as souvenirs. They did not fit hunting rifles he legally owned, also seized in the raid.

Dokic's lawyer, Bosiljka Djukic, said the threats were a "media beat-up" and that she would ask for her client to be transferred to hospital if his blood pressure and sugar levels continued to rise.
Dokic "may have said something to an embassy employee while upset but those were by no means serious threats".

The Foreign Affairs Minister, Stephen Smith, said Dokic, an Australian citizen, would be offered consular assistance. The offer came days after Dokic said he would sue the Australian Government for $2 million for pain and suffering caused by the expulsion of his family from Australia.

The magistrate, Branislav Rakicevic, told reporters Dokic had been remanded because of the "likelihood he would reoffend".

A pub owner in the village of Vrdnik told a newspaper of Dokic's frequent visits to the pub. He was "liberal with drinks, and tips to the musicians". He often asked a mandolin orchestra to play his favourite folk song, Oh, Jelo, Jelena, but with the bang of a fist, always halted them after the first refrain. Djordje Knezevic, a local, said: "All of us have our faults, but Dokic is an extremely nice and educated man who has done a lot for Vrdnik."

Source

Military covered up shooting of Afghan family

Nick McKenzie

May 11, 2009

AUSTRALIAN military personnel were involved in a cover-up of an investigation into the alleged involvement of special forces soldiers in the killing and maiming of Afghan civilians.

Information held by the Defence Department contradicts claims by the Defence Force chief, Angus Houston, that SAS troopers had nothing to do with an incident that left an Afghan man dead, a woman blinded and her daughter badly injured.

Air Chief Marshal Houston told a parliamentary hearing in early 2007 that a "quick assessment" investigation had found "absolutely no substance to the allegations" that Australian special forces were involved in the incident near Tarin Kowt in southern Afghanistan in July 2006.

But information gathered by Defence officials in Afghanistan has been uncovered that implicates Australians in the shooting. It is believed that some of this information was uncovered during the "quick assessment" ordered by the ADF.

A well-placed Defence source said there was pressure on Defence officials in Afghanistan to cover up the incident. Information detailing possible Australian involvement in the incident is believed to have been stored on ADF computers in Afghanistan. It is almost certain this information did not make its way to Air Chief Marshal Houston before he was questioned by the Senate Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee.

An Afghan parliamentarian, Haji Abdul Khaliq, whose relatives were the victims of the attack, said he was convinced Australians were responsible.

Mr Khaliq said the attack on his relative's car had killed his brother-in-law Abdul Baqi, blinded his wife and badly injured his daughter, who later had her leg amputated. His son and a niece and nephew were also injured.

"Australian forces attacked my family ... they started shooting them," said Mr Khaliq.

"We asked the governor and police chief who made the investigation. They said that they were Australians [who had fired at the car]. They did not give any sign to stop. My car's windows were not dark. Inside the car was visible."

Mr Khaliq said none of the Australians helped the injured. "They didn't even give them a bottle of water and they didn't even take them to hospital."

The former governor of the area in which the attack took place, Abdul Hakim Monib, said a senior Australian officer told him Australians were responsible. "They expressed their sorrow for the incident and they said 'We thought they were the enemy' ... They said it was a mistake and we are upset about it."

In a written statement a Defence official said the claims of Mr Khaliq did "not correspond to Coalition patrol reporting."

But the Greens leader, Bob Brown, has called on Air Chief Marshal Houston to launch an inquiry. "It is very deeply concerning that, on the face of it, there may have been a cover-up of an incident involving death and injury to civilians in Afghanistan," Senator Brown said.

Mr Houston's 2007 comments and the investigation summary likely to have been sent to Canberra are contradicted by information uncovered during the investigation in Afghanistan.

The information reveals:

* An SAS patrol was in the vicinity when the shooting occurred;

* The patrol reported a "contact" - meaning they fired their weapons; and

* The area in which the SAS patrol reported the enemy to be located was the same area in which the family was travelling.

At the time of the shooting, the SAS patrol believed taxis were ferrying Taliban insurgents in the area. A Defence source said it was possible troopers shot at the vehicle believing it was carrying Taliban militants.

Other information available to Defence officials also pointed to the involvement of Australians, as do interviews conducted recently in Kabul.

The revelations raise questions about whether Air Chief Marshal Houston unwittingly misled the Senate committee, as well as doubts about the adequacy of inquiries in combat zones.

When Air Chief Marshal Houston was questioned about the incident by the Greens senator Kerry Nettle at the hearing in February 2007, he said: "We investigated it [the alleged involvement of Australians] and we found no evidence of Australian troops involved in what was described as happening."

The Defence Department is yet to release the findings of two other inquiries into claims Australians were responsible for the deaths of civilians this year.

In January, an Australian operation aimed at finding those responsible for the death of the special forces soldier Greg Sher allegedly left four Afghan civilians dead. Five children were killed in an incident involving Australian troops in February.

The Age

Source

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Policemen charged with Vic sex offences

Two South Australian police officers have been charged with sex crimes while they were in Victoria assisting with the Black Saturday bushfires.

The officers, aged 29 and 39, will face a Victorian court later this month.

They were off duty at the time of the alleged offences, police said on Thursday.

"It is believed the alleged incidences took place when the members were in Victoria assisting during the bushfire period," a Victoria Police spokesman said.

The 29-year-old, from Banksia Park in Adelaide's northeast, has been charged with rape. The 39-year-old, from south suburban Daw Park, has been charged with one count of indecent assault.

Both men faced the Adelaide Magistrates Court on Thursday, where they were bailed to reappear in the Melbourne Magistrates Court on May 13.

A South Australian Police spokesman said both officers had been suspended from duty, but could not say what rank they held.

The charges follow an Ethical Standards Department (ESD) investigation.

Source