An Australian policeman accused of killing an Aboriginal prisoner was found not guilty yesterday after a racially charged trial in the northern state of Queensland.
An all-white jury found police sergeant Chris Hurley not guilty of killing Cameron Doomadgee, 36, whose death in custody in November 2004 sparked days of rioting in the remote indigenous community of Palm Island.
Hurley had pleaded not guilty to charges of manslaughter and assault at the trial at the Queensland Supreme Court in Townsville, which has pitted police against Aborigines in the state.
Aboriginal activist Gracelyn Smallwood expressed disappointment at the verdict but said there should be no repeat of the violence that followed the death of Doom-adgee, who was also known by his tribal name Mulrunji.
She said the fact that Hurley had been brought to trial -- the first time a Queensland police officer has faced a jury over an Aboriginal death in custody -- was in itself an advance.
"Of course we wanted justice and we never got it," Smallwood told reporters outside the court.
"But we've had a win because the whole world is watching this country. We don't want any violence, we want peace and we want everybody to be monitoring the police department," she said.
Doomadgee was arrested for public drunkenness in November 2004 after verbally abusing police as he walked past a domestic dispute, and was found dead in his cell within an hour.
After his death, Palm Island residents torched the police station and the homes of the island's 14 police officers in a violent rampage that only ended when extra officers were flown in from the mainland.
The case caused outrage among Aborigines when prosecutors initially said there was not enough evidence to charge Hurley, despite evidence from the coroner that Doomadgee died when a blow left his liver "cleaved in two."
An independent review resulted in charges but police in Queensland said Hurley had become a political scapegoat, with officers threatening industrial action and many wearing blue wristbands in support of their colleague.
Prosecutors alleged that Hurley had performed a "knee-drop" to Doomadgee's torso, while the defense said the injury occurred accidentally when Hurley landed on top of the prisoner as they struggled in the doorway of a holding cell.
Queensland Police Union president Gary Wilkinson said Hurley had been through an ordeal but took strength from the support offered within his community and the police force.
"There will be no celebration, there are no winners," Wilkinson said. "The Doomadgee family and Chris and his family have endured a terrible ordeal since November 19, 2004."
Stewart Levitt, a solicitor with the Aboriginal legal group the Errol Wyles Foundation, said prosecutors appeared to have mounted a "minimalist" case against Hurley by not calling police and Aboriginal eyewitnesses to testify.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS