Jail for the graffiti ‘artist’ who gave street cred to EastEnders

TIMESONLINE

Home Staff

11/07/08

A graffiti artist who was hired by the BBC to spray his tag over the EastEnders set was jailed for two years yesterday. Andrew Gillman, 25, was a member of a group responsible for damage to trains and railways estimated to be worth millions of pounds.

While on bail Gillman was hired by the BBC under the name Eddie Jones and paid £500 for a day’s work in which he sprayed his “NEAS” tag on the EastEnders set in Elstree, Hertfordshire. He defaced a wall of the Queen Vic pub, the Albert Square street sign and the car lot of Mitchell’s Autos.

Between 2004 and 2006 Gillman’s gang, “The DPM Crew”, vandalised trains in London, Somerset, Liverpool, Manchester and Sunderland. There were also outings to Paris and Amsterdam. The group filmed themselves and published pictures on the internet.

Seven other members of the gang were sentenced at Southwark Crown Court. Slav Zinoviev, 25, Ziggy Grudzinskas, 25, and Paul Stewart, 26, were jailed for 18 months. Matthew Pease, 24, was jailed for 15 months.

Jack Binnie, 26, Matthew Tanti, 23, and Alex McClelland, 24, were given suspended sentences.

Judge Christopher Hardy said: “It would be wrong of me not to acknowledge that some examples of your handiwork show considerable artistic talent, part of what is now known as the graffiti subculture and on the way to being recognised as a valid form of art. The trouble is that it is has been sprayed all over other people’s property without their consent and that is simply vandalism.”

Sudan president expected to face war crime charges

By JOHN HEILPRIN

UNITED NATIONS (AP )

U.N. officials and diplomats said the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court will seek an arrest warrant Monday charging Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir with crimes against humanity and genocide in Darfur.

The court based in The Hague, Netherlands, said the prosecutor will present evidence of the war crimes in Darfur to judges Monday and one or more new suspects will be named. But court officials refused Friday to identify any of the potential new suspects.

The U.N. officials and diplomats said they expect lesser charges of helping orchestrate genocide and participating in crimes against humanity to be brought against Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Mohammed Taha. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

A spokesman for Sudan’s president dismissed the investigation and said his government refuses to hand over any suspects.

Sudan’s ambassador to the U.N., Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamed, warned that issuing arrest warrants for government leaders would be “a criminal move.”

“We condemn it in the strongest of terms. It will have far-reaching, bad implications for the entire country, and all options are open for our reactions,” he told The Associated Press.

“If you indict our head of state, the symbol of our country, the symbol of our dignity, then the sky’s the limit for our reactions.”

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack warned the Sudanese government not to resort to violence.

“Violence perpetrated by the government against those on the ground performing humanitarian missions, performing duties on behalf of their governments serves — certainly does not serve the purposes of the Sudanese government,” he said.

The court’s prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo of Argentina, has earlier clearly indicated he is aiming for the top of the Sudanese government, accusing them of sponsoring the janjaweed militias who have unleashed a reign of terror on the country’s Darfur region. Up to 300,000 people have died since the conflict began in early 2003.

The prosecutor has described the probe as relying on investigators based in neighboring Chad and more than 100 witnesses in 18 countries.

He told the U.N. Security Council in June that “evidence shows that the commission of such crimes on such a scale, over a period of five years, and throughout Darfur, has required the sustained mobilization of the entire Sudanese state apparatus.”

The court in The Hague is the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal. An indictment of al-Bashir would mark the first time the tribunal has charged a sitting head of state with war crimes.

But there is precedent: Other U.N.-created international war crime tribunals charged Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and Liberian President Charles Taylor with war crimes while they were still in office.

Milosevic died in his cell in March 2006, shortly before the end of his genocide trail. Taylor is currently on trial in The Hague for crimes against humanity in Sierra Leone.

The charges could bring a backlash from Sudan’s government, which already has made it difficult for international aid workers and U.N.-African Union peacekeepers to do their work.

“If the procedure is going the way it seems it’s going to go, of course we have to be aware of the effects it would have on the ground,” France’s U.N. Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert said Friday of the court’s expected action.

Threats to the peacekeepers — currently about 9,000 soldiers and police officers — were underscored this week by an ambush that killed seven and injured 19, one of the deadliest attacks on U.N. forces in recent years.

But some court experts anticipating the charges against Sudan’s leaders say the benefits outweigh the risks.

“If the prosecutor requests an arrest warrant against the president of Sudan for genocide or crimes against humanity or both, it will a huge step in limiting the impunity for horrific acts committed against innocent people in Darfur,” said Richard Dicker, director of the international justice program for Human Rights Watch, a research and advocacy group.

“It would send the message that no one is above the law for these kinds of crimes including a sitting president,” he said.

Sudan does not recognize the court’s authority and has for months refused to arrest and send for trial a government minister and rebel leader charged with atrocities by Moreno-Ocampo last year.

On Friday, a spokesman for the president, Mahjoub Fadul Badry, called the court’s prosecutor a “terrorist” whose investigation is based on biased testimony from rebel leaders. Badry said the government would not hand over any suspects, even rebel leaders.

“Moreno-Ocampo’s report depends on verbal testimony of rebel leaders and organizations that work under a humanitarian cover but in fact are branches of the intelligence apparatuses of other countries,” Badry told The Associated Press.

“In the end, we don’t really care what he says.”

Young man shot dead in Sheffield

* Do you live in Burngreave? Please contact The Star’s

newsdesk – email starnews@sheffieldnewspapers.co.uk or

call 0114 252 1309 tonight.

The star

11/07/08

Police this afternoon launched a murder investigation after the Asian man – thought to be 19or in his early 20s – was killed in Spital Hill at around 1.45pm.

Detectives today told The Star they believe the murder to be a targeted shooting, not a random attack, which “may well be gang related”.

The victim was shot outside the Burngreave Young Children’s Centre on Spital Street. Children, parents, and staff inside the building at the time are to be offered counselling.

Police have sealed off the scene from the bottom of Spital Hill to 50 metres past the junction with Spital Street. The council said the road would be “closed to traffic for several hours”.

Spital Street and Spital Lane, to the junction with Andover Street, are both closed, and Burngreave Road to the junction with Brunswick Road has also been shut.

Armed police were this afternoon patrolling the streets.

Chief Supt Paul Broadbent, who is this afternoon in a high-level police briefing to discuss the murder, told The Star: “I don’t believe it to be a random attack, and by that I mean I don’t believe the community has anything to fear.

“It may well be gang-related. But we are keeping an open mind. We are not ruling anything out.”

Traffic is being diverted via Carlisle Street and Gower Street or by Gower Street, Sutherland Street and Savile Street.

The local Safer Neighbourhood Team is also out in the community to offer a reassuring presence to the public.

Council Leader Paul Scriven said: “Today’s fatal shooting in Burngreave is a tragic waste of a young life, and I would like to send my condolences to the victim’s family and friends.

“This mindless act is simply unacceptable, and the council will do all that it can to help the police and the local community find out who is responsible for this appalling crime, and to bring them to account. I would urge everyone else to do the same.”

“My plea to young people in Sheffield is please don’t become involved or associated with this type of crime.

“Just like today’s victim, everyone is somebody’s son or brother, or daughter or sister, and we don’t want to see any more families devastated by similar events in the future.

“Anyone who has been affected by this incident can visit First Start Children’s Centre from 9am tomorrow, where staff from Sheffield City Council will be on hand to offer advice and support. The centre is at 441 Firth Park Road, Firth Park.”

Anyone with information about the incident should contact police on 0114 220 2020 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

* Do you live in Burngreave? Please contact The Star’s newsdesk – email starnews@sheffieldnewspapers.co.uk or call 0114 252 1309 tonight.

Eritrea debunks overstepping in Djibouti

Afrol News

11 July 2008

The government of Eritrea has dispelled allegations that it has been involved in “good-faith territorial dispute” with the neighbouring Djibouti, insisting that it “harbours no territorial ambitions, or claims whatsoever on Djibouti.”

Asmara authorities also denied overstepping their country’s territory to occupy an inch of sovereign land of what it called “neighbouring and sisterly state.”

“While these are the facts of the matter,” Eritrea’s Foreign Affairs Ministry told the United Nations Security Council, “the government of Djibouti has sadly been engaged in an unprovoked, intensive and hostile campaign against Eritrea under the prodding of external forces for the last two months. This campaign is underpinned by ulterior motives that have nothing to do with a putative border problem between the two countries. To exacerbate and dramatize the situation, however, the Government of Djibouti was even cajoled to launch a reckless attack on our territorial units on June 10 last month.”

Asmara said the “transparent game, principally labeled and packaged in Washington, consists of fomenting an artificial crisis to precipitate the conditions for regional meddling and complication.” It said such a scenario has put the UN Security Council and other regional bodies under pressure to “swiftly pass unwarranted statements and resolutions.”

Eritrean government is disgusted with the evidence of the irony of the whole affairs, scolding the UN Council for “shirking its responsibilities” for the past years to accommodate Ethiopia’s occupation of sovereign Eritrean territories, including the town of Badame, in violation of the UN Charter and Algiers Peace Agreement.

The Horn of African country that had clashed with Ethiopia and Djibouti and accused of being an ally of the ousted Islamists regime in Somalia said since April 2009, also accused Ethiopia of occupying Mount Musa Ali, which includes Djiboutian and Eritrean territories where it deploys “long-range offensive weapons.”

Asmara said while these “flagrant acts of aggression are ignored,” the UN body has now been asked to send “fact-finding missions” and launch “diplomatic shuttles for a non-existent problem.”

“Eritrea wishes to underline that it cannot possibly entertain an exogenous agenda when the real problem has, and continues to be, ignored and pushed to the back-burner. The principal causes of potential regional destabilization are clear indeed and Eritrea again requests the UN Security Council to channel its efforts to address the real problems,” Eritrean authorities insisted.

By staff writer