I think this should be filed under - Good, about time

The JC reports that:

'The former US President Jimmy Carter is facing legal action from readers who claim he misrepresented Israel in a book about the Middle East conflict.

Mr Carter, who was president between 1976 and 1980, could have to pay more than £3 million if the case is successful.

The dispute is over his 2006 work “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”, in which Mr Carter compared the Israeli government to the leaders of apartheid South Africa.

He wrote: “When Israel does occupy this territory deep within the West Bank, and connects the 200-or-so settlements … with a road, and then prohibits the Palestinians from using that road, or in many cases even crossing the road, this perpetrates even worse instances of apartness, or apartheid, than we witnessed even in South Africa”.

The case, filed at the Manhattan Federal Claims Court by a group of readers, accuses Mr Carter of filling his book “with demonstrable falsehoods, omissions and knowing misrepresentations intended to promote [his] agenda of anti-Israel propaganda".

According to court papers quoted by the New York Post, the group who filed the case said Mr Carter was wrong to have promoted the book as “non-fiction".

The papers added: “This lawsuit challenges the defendants' actions in attempting to capitalise on Carter's status as a former president of the United States to mislead unsuspecting members of the reading public who thought they could trust their former president to tell the truth."

Mr Carter, who as president oversaw the historic peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, is a prominent critic of the Israeli government. In 2008 he described Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip as “one of the greatest human-rights crimes on earth”.

The lawsuit is directed at both Mr Carter and his publishers, Simon & Schuster.

A spokesperson for the company said the lawsuit was "frivolous".'

Until recently I had always believed Jimmy Carter to have been the worst American President since the end of World War II. Of course Barack Obama is providing strong competition now...

'Bringing Jacqui to Justice' - 'fraud by misrepresentation'

I read in The Mail this morning that:

"A Whitehall whistleblower is to launch a private prosecution against Jacqui Smith, accusing her of expenses fraud.

Miss Smith, who resigned as Home Secretary last month, racked up a £116,000 allowance on her family house in Redditch, while claiming her main residence as her sister's spare bedroom in London.

Christopher Galley, a former Home Office civil servant, claims however that she spent more time at the West Midlands address."

This will be worth watching.

Sharia Law - the reality

My postings on Sharia Law are becoming rather frequent, you can read the most recent here and here. However as our "establishment" seem to have deemed that Sharia law will play some part in our futures, I see it as important to examine the implications.

From Reuters via Boston.com I read that:

"A Saudi appeals court is due this week to review the case of a biochemist and his female student sentenced to jail and flogging after a lower court ruled their research contact was a front for a telephone affair.

The man was sentenced to 8 months in prison and 600 lashes and his student to 4 months in prison and 350 lashes last November for establishing a phone relationship that led her to divorce her husband.

London-based Amnesty International says it will consider the two as prisoners of conscience if the verdicts are carried out.

"The charges ... do not correspond to recognizable criminal offences," the group said in a statement in April.

A spokesman for the government's Human Rights Commission said he was not immediately able to comment.

Rights groups and some Saudi reformers have criticized what they say is an arbitrary justice system unsuited to the needs of a country of 25 million people.

Judges who are religious scholars apply the rulings of an austere version of sharia, Islamic law, often termed Wahhabism.

The government, a key U.S. ally, says the system ensures justice for Muslims and non-Muslims. It is in the process of overhauling the organization of courts and codifying a formal penal code.

The hospital where the man worked in al-Baha in the southwest of the kingdom put him in charge of the masters research the student was doing at the King Abdul-Aziz University in Jeddah in 2002.

The woman obtained a divorce seven months after she was married in 2004. Her husband then raised the court case, saying the supervisor's phone calls led to the break-up.

The supervisor, who asked to be identified only as Khalid, 32, told Reuters that over 12 months of trial he and the woman were refused permission to use lawyers or bring witnesses to testify.

The woman was represented in court by her father because Wahhabi rules require a male legal guardian."

A quick review:
Punishment includes flogging - "check"
Defendants denied legal representation - "check"
Defendants denied right to call witnesses - "check"
Female defendant worth less than a man - "check" (The woman was represented in court by her father because Wahhabi rules require a male legal guardian"

All seems normal in the world of Saudi Arabian Wahhabi Sharia law.

Oddly the BBC have not seen fit to publicise this case of Sharia law in action.

“There’s got to be something seriously wrong with a country that lets a hijacker work at an airport. It’s shocking.”

“There’s got to be something seriously wrong with a country that lets a hijacker work at an airport. It’s shocking.”

You'd have thought so, wouldn't you. So take a read of this from the Sun:

"GUN cops at Heathrow discovered a notorious hijacker at the wheel of a car they pulled over – and were amazed to learn he had a JOB there.

Nazamuddin Mohammidy, 34 – hired to clean British Airways offices – is one of nine Afghans who threatened to blow up an airliner during a four-day siege at Stansted in 2000."

Go on read the whole story; you absolutely could not make this sort of crap up!

A legal perspective on the latest Labour sleaze stories

Take a read of this.