Dubai Rape Case Update (Two)
In another tiny little article, but high up on page 3 of the Kuwait Times is:
UAE Court Upholds Verdict in Rape Case
Dubai: An appeals court in the United Arab Emirates yesterday upheld 15 year jail terms handed down against two Emiratis convicted of raping a French-Swiss teenager, and AFP journalist said. The judge in Dubai took just a few seconds to announce his ruling after proceedings opened. The defense wanted the sentences pronounced on December 12 to be quashed, and a lawyer for the two men told AFP after Sunday’s ruling that a further appeal would be lodged with the supreme court. Prosecutors had demanded the maximum punishment, which could have meant the death penalty. A third defendant is being tried in a juvenile court. One of the men who raped the European teenager was HIV-positive, but has since been found to be clear of the sexually transmittable disease. The boy’s mother, Veronique Robert, launched a media campaign to publicize the case and gather support for her demand that the UAE recognize homosexual rape in its legal system and set up institutions to treat AIDs sufferers. She protested against the original verdict, saying that “15 years is nothing for someone who knew he had AIDs.”
Comment: Did you read this sentence?:
One of the men who raped the European teenager was HIV-positive, but has since been found to be clear of the sexually transmittable disease.
Can you tell me who has been found to be clear of the disease? One of the men? The teenager?
Comment 2: Bravo, UAE judges!
Corrupt Officials Beware
I don’t usually type out the whole article from the Kuwait Times, but because this one is so small, and buried way down on the page, I am making an exception and typing in the whole thing:
Responding to recent stories published by Al-Rai concerning alleged violations and corruption cases committed by ministers and MPs, HH the Prime Minister Sheikh Nassar Al-Mohammed noted that HH the Amir had instructed them to enforce the law to everybody. “And you can start with enforcing it on me,” the prime minister added.
Sheikh Nassar pointed out that the law would be enforced on everybody, be them (sic) (they) senior or minor officials. He added that he had instructed all concerned law-enforcement authorities to treat everyone equally with no exceptions at all.
Comment: WOOOO HOOOOOOOOO, HH Prime Minister Sheikh Nassar Al-Mohammed and BIG WOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOO to HH the Emir! If I knew how to make red letters, this would be a big RED letter day! WOOOOO HOOOOO law enforcement!
Just Bad English
I am adding a new catagory today called Just Bad English.
No, I am not going to troll your blogs looking for grammar mistakes or misspellings or unusual use of English. I have noticed that I am blogging in English, and that many of the Kuwaiti bloggers are blogging in their second language – that is tough enough without the Language Police lurking in the background, and that’s not my point, nor my interest.
If, however, you are writing for a newspaper, you are held to a higher standard, even if English is not your native tongue.
So tell me, in this article from the Arab Times Kuwait Crime News, how many people were arrested? What were they arrested for?
Meanwhile, a team of securitymen has launched a surprise inspection campaign in Ahmadi resulting in the arrest of two Kuwaitis wanted by law for various criminal charges and 105 jobless expatriates. The arrested individuals were referred to the concerned authorities.
I have another complaint. In the Kuwait Times, we often read of the police “suspecting” a car and pulling it over, or
“suspecting” some individuals and chasing them.
We don’t use “suspecting” that way.
There is suspicious behavior. People are suspected OF something – you can’t just look at a car and “suspect” it, you have to suspect it OF something – erratic driving? What made the police suspicious?
examples of good usage:
Police suspected him of being under the influence of drugs, and pulled him over.
He looked nervous, and police suspected him of being an illegal resident, so they asked to see his papers.
Police received a tip that a brothel was operating in Farwaniya, and based on that suspicion, raided the apartment, breaking down two iron doors in the process which gave the occupants enough time to escape through a hidden hatch in the back of the apartment.
A sharp eyes policeman spotted the car, which appeared to be one stolen a few nights previously. Suspicious that the driver was not the legal owner, they stopped him and interrogated him, and demanded to see his registration and residency papers.
(I made up all the above. Any resemblance to a case you may know is purely coincidental.)
I have also noticed that almost every suspect gives up his drug accomplices, pimp, fellow thieves, smugglers and drug stash after interrogation. I suspect Kuwait police have some extensive experience in encouraging these confessions. Most of these confessions seem to result in other valid arrests. Sometimes, I can believe, these confessions are made by people who are very very afraid. On the other hand, sometimes a confession elicited by fear of a lot of pain might be totally false.
How do you know the difference? What if someone experiences a lot of pain and confesses to a crime they did NOT commit? This means that an innocent man suffers and the one who committed the crime skates. This happens in every country in the world. (That is just a rant, not a language criticism, just a general question in my mind; how do we protect the innocent?)
Parking Hall of Shame
Just four spots away was a legitimate spot, but no! This guy has to leave his rear end half out into the driving lane so that he could be right by the door. I am guessing he only parked there because all the handicapped spots were already taken (by able bodied people.)
The other day I heard a woman say that it is OK to park in a handicapped spot if no one else has taken it because it means that no handicapped person needs it.
What ignorance!
What happens when someone with a leg injury comes looking for that spot? Someone with asthma? Someone old, with joint problems? People who park in a handicapped spot have NO HEART!
New Kuwait Traffic Fines
A new e-mail flying around Kuwait gives the new traffic fines. At first, I thought this was a joke, but it looks pretty serious. Will someone please explain why a Jordanian car would get such a stiff fine?
And I remember a lot of discussion about penalties for talking on a mobile phone while driving, but when did the law pass? Was there any announcement? And babies in the front seat, not allowed, when did that change? All of this is amazing to me, I am still wondering if it is a hoax?
Do you think the police will really enforce these laws?
Is This News?
Today in the Arab Times I see this announcement:
Ministry monitoring Internet networks to block porn sites
KUWAIT : The Ministry of Communications is monitoring Internet networks to block porn websites and clamp down illegal Internet telephony, Al Seyassah daily quoted the Director of Telephones Monitoring Department at the Ministry of Communications Eng Nasser Al Khandari as saying. The department is also monitoring various areas for such illegal telephone service providers.
Is this news? One time, I was looking for tablecloths, and the site was blocked for inappropriate content. It seems to me that the Ministry of Communication has an ongoing battle, trying to block content providers. As for illegal telephony . . . it appears they are cracking down mostly on large scale telephone service providers, not on the individual VOIP phones. VOIP users complain from time to time about “listeners” and about echos, but I think this is more a result of poor connections than any local actions. Am I wrong?
Which ministry is it that will be/is monitoring bloggers?
One Week, Four Cuts
Doesn’t anyone else find it very strange that in one week, the internet connection cables would be cut in four different places? The Egyptians have announced that no, it was not fishing boats or any other boats anchoring that cut the cable there by accident, the area is a “no-go” zone, is under sattelite observation, and no ships were in the area.
I just think that four in one week goes beyond co-incidence.
Beware: Men in Veils
I know y’all think I am just so very creative coming up with all these titles, but the truth is – I don’t have to! This is the exact title from this morning’s Arab Times.
By Muneef Naif
Special to the Arab Times and Agencies
βMen in veilβ kidnap, rob woman, rape attempted
KUWAIT : Police are looking for three unidentified persons wearing veils β one woman and two men dressed as women β for kidnapping a 33-year-old Kuwaiti woman, stealing her handbag containing KD 130 and a gold chain, reports Al-Anba daily.
The woman in her complaint told the Fahaheel police the trio bundled her in their Suburban and took her to an unidentified location. One of the men also tried to rape her inside the vehicle.
The trio then tied her and kept her in the vehicle, until the woman went sold the chain in a gold market and returned with the money. Then they dumped her at an unidentified location and escaped.
An Asian passerby reportedly untied the woman after she had been struggling to set herself free for over an hour and a half.
Update – I think this is the same story because so many specifics are the same, but this is how the story appears in the Kuwait Times:
Masked Men Rob, Gag Kuwaiti Woman
A 38 year old Kuwaiti woman registered a complaint with Fahaheel police that, at 9pm, as she walked to her car after a shopping trip, three masked man (sic) dragged her forcibly into a four-wheel drive and kidnapped her. She said the men were also accompanied by a woman wearing aveil who, along the way, snatched a gold bracelet from her wrist and sold it at a jewelry shop. The men snatched her handbag, which contained KD 130 and then tied her arms and legs and abandoned her in a dark open area. An asian expatriate passing by spotted the woman and untied her arms. She later reported the matter to police, and the case is under investigation.
“Bookstores, Bathouses, Bars . . . “
I’m following The Shield, a hard-edged detective show I have followed, when I can, ever since Glen Close was the police chief. If you thought Glen Close was tough as Cruella de Ville, wish you could see her as police chief/ π
The guy standing next to her is Detective Vic Mackey, a renegade plainclothes cop who plays fast and loose with the system. You know me, Mrs. Law and Order – whoda thunk I would find myself rooting for this guy as he undergoes close scrutiny from the Internal Affairs Division. He’s really a bad guy. He does really bad things. He is a LIAR! He lies to everybody! He kills people, he steals dope and money. And somehow you find yourself pulling for him. I don’t know why.
But the reason I am writing about this is because in yesterday’s episode, a couple guys get their private organs caught in rat traps because they stuck their organ in a place called a “glory hole” for a little excitement and got more than they had bargained for (ouch). See what you can learn from these shows? And this is on during daylight viewing hours?
So the new police chief, a very cool and tough black woman, tells the detectives to go check “bookstores, bathhouses, bars, you know, the places these perverts hang out. . . ” and I am thinking “BOOKSTORES?” BOOKSTORES?? I hang out in bookstores all the time! I never see any perverts at the Barnes and Noble, or Half Price Books!
The things you learn on televison. I hope children are not watching this show!
Bowen: Cruzatte and Maria
Peter Bowen’s tales of Montana in transition are an acquired taste. When I first started reading them, at my sister’s recommendation, I had a hard time getting past the dialect. The main character, Gabriel DuPre, speaks English differently; he is Metis, a mixture of French, Indian and who knows what, here before America was America, as he says “long time gone.”
You get used to it. It still makes me think he should be in New Orleans, speaking as he does, it sounds very Cajun, but you get used to it.
Peter Bowen’s Gabriel DuPre is another treat to myself (like Donna Leon.) Reading the latest book I bought, saved for just this time, a cold wintery January, brightened my outlook considerably.
The first book I read, Wolf, No Wolf had to do with environmentalists putting wolves back into the mountains where once they had flourished, but where now, for a couple centuries, people have been raising cattle. Guess what? Hungry wolves love cattle. It makes for some very hostile feelings.
That theme – local culture against intruding environmentalists – continues in this book, where DuPre is hired as a consultant on a film being made about Lewis and Clark. The locals in the Coronado area are no happier with all the film crews and tourists than the ranchers were with the wolves – and people end up dead.
In addition, DuPre’s friend Benetsee and his daughter Maria spend time together in the sweat lodge, and later, his daughter, Marie, sees a mound and is revisited by a vision she had. She tells her dad, DuPre, to dig, and he uncovers a trove of treasures cached by the Lewis and Clark expedition. Partly, it is the incursion of the spiritual and supernatural that I find so intriguing in these books; there is a reality, and then a greater reality, and they co-exist. Bowen makes it seem and feel entirely natural. I love it.
The book has some highly entertaining, laugh-out-loud moments, takes great pokes at the eco-tourist, and at the same time deals with some serious issues. We get to hear DuPre fiddle his old Voyageur songs, we get to hear what people are saying at the local bar, where cheeseburgers are the plat du jour. It is a great way to pass a winter’s day.
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