— Der Spiegel: Witness in War Crimes Trial Could Face Indictment — “Samuel K. is expected to testify in the upcoming Nazi war crimes trial against 89-year-old John Demjanjuk. The witness himself has admitted in the past that he had aided the SS in its murderous practices. He has never been forced to answer before a court despite being ‘strongly suspected’ of aiding and abetting the murder of 434,000 people.”
— “Yes, he said, he had been recruited by the SS and trained at the Trawniki camp, east of the Polish city of Lublin. Yes, he admitted, he had served at the Belzec camp, also located on Polish territory. He said that nobody had any doubts about what happened there. “We all realized that the Jews were exterminated and later also burned there. We could even smell that every day.'”
— “According to the indictment prepared by the Munich public prosecutor’s office, in 1943 Demjanjuk was an accessory to the murder of at least 27,900 Jews in Sobibor, an extermination camp like Belzec. The trial is scheduled to begin on Nov. 30, with over 30 co-plaintiffs. Two weeks ago, Germany’s Constitutional Court rejected Demjanjuk’s final appeal against the opening of the proceedings.”
— “According to the indictment prepared by the Munich public prosecutor’s office, in 1943 Demjanjuk was an accessory to the murder of at least 27,900 Jews in Sobibor, an extermination camp like Belzec. The trial is scheduled to begin on Nov. 30, with over 30 co-plaintiffs. Two weeks ago, Germany’s Constitutional Court rejected Demjanjuk’s final appeal against the opening of the proceedings.”
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case of former Ku Klux Klan (KKK) white supremacist James Ford Seale, who was convicted in 2007 of the 1964 kidnapping of black Americans Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee. Moore and Dee were beaten, bound, weighted down, and thrown in a Mississippi river backwater, possibly alive. They were found dead.
James Ford Seale - Convicted in 2007 of Kidnapping of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee
Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee -- kidnapped and left to drown in Mississippi by the White Supremacist Ku Klux Klan in 1964This pair of 1964 Mississippi State Highway Patrol photos shows James Ford Seale (left) and Charles Marcus Edwards (AP Photo/David Ridgen)In Remembrance of Henry Dee and Charles Moore (Vickie D. King/The Clarion-Ledger)
— “The Supreme Court on Monday left in place a judge’s ruling that allowed prosecutors to charge a reputed Ku Klux Klansman with kidnapping more than 40 years after two black men were abducted and killed in rural Mississippi.”
— “The justices rejected a plea from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on whether too much time had elapsed for the case against James Ford Seale to go forward.”
— “The action leaves in place a lower court ruling that the statute of limitations had not expired for a federal kidnapping charge against Seale in the 1964 disappearance of two 19-year-old friends.”
— “Seale was convicted in 2007 of abducting the men. Authorities said they were beaten, weighted down and thrown, possibly still alive, into a Mississippi River backwater.
— “Two justices wanted case”
— “Disagreeing with their colleagues, Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia said the high court should have agreed to hear the case because it raises an important issue that potentially affects similar prosecutions. The court did not otherwise elaborate on its order.”
— “The request by the New Orleans-based appeals court indicated that the decision could affect roughly two dozen other investigations into Civil Rights Era crimes. But Chief Judge Edith H. Jones and five other dissenters cast doubt on that number.”
— “In 1964, when the men disappeared, kidnapping was punishable by death under federal law. But in the 1970s, Supreme Court decisions and acts of Congress changed the maximum sentence for kidnapping to life in prison. Capital crimes have no deadline for prosecution, but lesser crimes must be prosecuted within five years.”
— “The question was whether the case should be decided under the law as it existed in 1964 or the stricter deadline that applies today.”
— “Seale was serving life sentences in the 2007 conviction when a 5th Circuit three-judge panel ruled that the statute of limitations had passed and threw out his conviction.”
— “The full 5th Circuit split 9-9, a vote that left in place the original finding by a Mississippi federal judge that the statute of limitations had not expired.”
— “Prosecutors said Seale was with a group of Klansmen when they abducted Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee in southwest Mississippi. They took the teens into the woods and beat and interrogated them about rumors that blacks in the area were planning an armed uprising, prosecutors said.”
— “Remains found in July 1964”
— “The teens’ remains were found in July 1964, when federal authorities searched for the bodies of three civil rights workers who had also disappeared that summer. The case of the three civil rights workers became known as “Mississippi Burning” and overshadowed the deaths of Dee and Moore.”
— “Seale and another man, Charles Marcus Edwards, briefly faced state murder charges in the deaths of Dee and Moore. Prosecutors say the charges were dropped because local law enforcement officers were in collusion with the Klan.”
— “Many people thought Seale was dead until 2005, when he was discovered living in a town not far from where the teens were abducted and the case was reopened.”
— “Even after the high court’s action, Seale has other issues on appeal.”
— “The Supreme Court typically hears appeals submitted by the losing side in the lower courts. But the court does allow the appeals courts themselves to ask the justices to resolve nettlesome questions of law. The justices have agreed to hear cases in this way just four times in more than 60 years and not at all since 1981.”
— “The case is U.S. v. Seale, 09-166.”
— New Strait Times – “Marriage plan won’t work”: “Wan Ubaidah Omar, the Women, Family and Health Committee chairman in Kelantan, made her attention-grabbing suggestion at the Kelantan assembly for men to be given awards for increasing their quota. Incidentally, quota is her definition for Muslim men’s religious entitlement to four wives.”
— “Unsurprisingly, all who agreed with her were men.”
— “It is a fact that there is an inordinately high divorce rate among Muslim men when compared with the other races.”
— “The reason for this is the Muslim man’s unilateral right to divorce his wife at will and for any reason. His right, as far as he is concerned, is to have four wives, to demand obedience, to beat his wife, to have sex on demand and to divorce his wife at will.”
The Daily Telegraph reports: — “Polygamy challenged as renegade Mormon group’s trial grips Texan town” — “Court case sheds light on Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, where it is alleged that bigamy and sexual abuse of girls, some as young as 12, are widespread.’ — “It was laid out in the makeshift courtroom set up in Eldorado’s draughty community hall, where, over coming weeks, the key tenet that marks the sect out from mainstream Mormons – polygamy – will come under challenge. Prosecutors claim that the church’s controversial practice of ‘spiritually uniting’ young women with men often several decades older is a cover for rampant sexual abuse, as well as bigamy.” — “The legal showdown began last week, when a leading pillar of the church pleaded not guilty to charges of sexual assault against a 16-year-old girl, who was allegedly assigned as one of his nine wives.” — “Raymond Jessop, 38, is one of 12 men from the sect who are facing sex and bigamy charges arising from a raid last year on the church’s nearby Yearning for Zion ranch.” — “‘We will ask you to conclude, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Raymond Merrill Jessop is guilty of sexual assault on a woman less than half his age,’ deputy attorney General Eric Nichols told the jury of eight men and four women in a brief opening statement.” — “Jurors were shown a picture of a toddler in a pink prairie dress, clinging to the skirt of a teenage woman who prosecutors say is the girl with whom Mr Jessop allegedly had sex in 2004. Prosecution DNA evidence is be presented to show that the toddler was the product of that liaison.” — “Led by their ‘prophet’ Warren Jeffs, who has since been jailed on sex charges, many of the sect’s senior figures moved here in 2004 from their long-standing communities 1,100 miles away on the Utah-Arizona borders. — “Even as the softly-spoken mothers, their hair coiffed up from their foreheads as a tribute to God, insisted that the authorities were breaking up happy normal families, child welfare services were reporting a large number of pregnancies among ‘clearly underage’ teenage girls. They also noticed an unusual rate of broken bones among young children, The Sunday Telegraph was told.” — “The children were all subsequently returned to the church, to the delight of its leaders and horror of its critics. But based on evidence seized from the ranch, the prosecutions are being pursued.” — “Their 10,000 followers, who are spread across the Midwest, broke away early last century after the mainstream Mormon church renounced polygamy. They are committed to the doctrine of ‘plural marriage,’ which requires a man to take multiple wives to receive the highest form of salvation.” — “The church also practices ‘placement marriage’ – with the church leader, who has the status of prophet, assigning females to husbands. Traditionally, this has involved marrying off girls as young as 12, although the church stated last year that it would end the practice of child brides.” — May 30, 2008: “Texas overstepped authority in removing polygamist sect children, rules court” — April 28, 2008: “Most teen girls from ranch have been pregnant” — Wikipedia reports: “Despite the widespread assumption that the calls that triggered the raid were hoaxes, Texas officials have no regrets. One child, a 14-year-old girl, remains in foster care. She was married to jailed leader Warren Jeffs two years ago, when she was just 12.” — June 11, 2004 – Arizona Republic: “Peek at polygamists’ haven”
"Yearning for Zion" Ranch (Jack Kurtz/The Arizona Republic)
Philippines: Kidnappers urged to start talks on kidnapped priest Fr. Sinnott
— UCAN News reports: “The crisis committee in charge of the bid to rescue Father Michael Sinnott issued a plea to his kidnappers on Nov. 2 to start negotiations.”
— “Officials of Pagadian diocese remain concerned about the priest’s health despite receiving a video of the man along with a US$2 million ransom demand.
— “‘I am naturally happy to see him alive on video,’ Bishop Emmanuel Cabajar of Pagadian told UCA News. However, the video arrived five days after it was taken on Oct. 24, so ‘we do not know how he is right now.'”
— “‘I’m hoping to see a more recent video of Father Mick,’ the Redemptorist bishop said on Nov. 2 after an All Souls’ Day Mass at the diocesan cemetery.”
— “He added that he would like to see how the 79-year-old priest was holding up without medication for a heart condition.”
— “The bishop said he hopes negotiations on getting medicines to the priest would start soon and “in the long run” address the issue of his freedom.”
— “Crisis Management Committee spokesman June Allan Molde told UCA News that his committee on Nov. 2 appealed to the kidnappers to contact the committee and start negotiations.”
Photo of Fr. Michael Sinnott from Missionary Society of St. Columban
Egyptian Christians Fear More Muslim Violence
— AINA reports: “Egyptian security forces have intensified their presence in the Upper Egyptian town of Dairout, in anticipation of a recurrence of Muslim violence against Christians. Copts expressed their fear over leaflets entitled ‘These have to Die!’ which are being distributed to all Muslims in Dairout and neighborhoods, enticing them to ‘burn, vandalize and clean the country of these evil immoral infidels.'”
