The News You May Have Missed: December 2024

Victim or the Crime?

British police apologized to a Christian street preacher they jailed for 13 hours after he made public comments about Islam during Ramadan (Express, Oct. 13). Tempers flared outside Bristol University when Dia Moodley said the “moral standards of the God of Islam and the Christian God” are different. He was allegedly pushed off his stepladder by an unknown assailant, while others trampled his signs. When the police arrived, they arrested Moodley for committing “religiously aggravated harassment without violence” — a criminal charge that was subsequently dropped. He is now pursuing a complaint against the Avon and Somerset police for mistreatment, including the destruction of his signs, one of which displayed a Bible verse. “It shouldn’t be for the state to decide which religions and ideologies must not be discussed or critiqued in the public street,” Moodley said. “The result is…a two-tier society where some beliefs and ideologies are valued and protected, while others are undermined and outlawed.” His lawyer pointed out that Moodley “was himself a victim of crime, including assault, aggressive harassment and criminal damage and yet, perversely, he was the one treated as a criminal for peacefully exercising his fundamental rights.”

Death-Row Defier

The world’s longest-serving death-row prisoner was acquitted when a Japanese court ruled him not guilty of the multiple murders for which he had been convicted decades earlier (Sky News, Sept. 26). Iwao Hakamada, 88, spent 48 years behind bars, more than 45 of them on death row. The ex-boxer had been sentenced to death in 1968 for killing his former boss, his wife, and two of their children and setting fire to their home. The presiding judge at his retrial determined the evidence used against Hakamada had been fabricated. The bloodstained clothes investigators said belonged to Hakamada were found more than a year after his arrest, hidden in a tank of fermented soybean paste, or miso. Clothing soaked in miso for more than a year turns too dark for bloodstains to be seen. Furthermore, blood samples didn’t match Hakamada’s DNA, and the trousers submitted as evidence were too small for him. Hakamada was released from prison in 2014 to serve his sentence at home as frail health and age made him a low flight risk. He is the fifth Japanese death-row convict to be found not guilty in a retrial since 1945.

Under the Golden Arches

Three Czech men who trafficked 12 people into England have been convicted of modern slavery — for forcing their victims to work in a McDonald’s and elsewhere without pay (BBC News, Oct. 4). The men were given jail terms of various lengths. Their victims, “who spoke little or no English, were forced to work in various roles at a bakery in Hoddesdon, a car wash, a McDonald’s restaurant, as well as carry out domestic household tidying and cleaning,” said a spokeswoman for the Crown Prosecution Service. The men targeted “vulnerable” people from “poor or rural” backgrounds in the Czech Republic and Slovakia and “routinely withheld” their wages. Special prosecutor Kate Mulholland called the case “shocking.” The victims “may not have been under lock and key,” she said, “but their ability to escape was undermined by the various methods of control — and as a result they remained trapped in ‘invisible handcuffs.’” McDonald’s UK announced it has improved systems for spotting “potential risks.”