German Nazi suspect Samuel Kunz dies ahead of trial

Nazi suspect indicted on charges of involvement in the murders of 430,000 Jews at Belzec death camp has  died in Germany aged 89.

Samuel Kunz was third on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of most wanted Nazi war crimes suspects and had been due to go on trial early next year.

He was also accused of personally shooting dead 10 Jews at the camp in occupied Poland during 1942-43.

State Prosecutor Andreas Brendel said Kunz died at home last Thursday.

The cause of death was not clear.

SS training camp

Kunz had admitted working at Belzec and had been called as a witness in the trial of alleged Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk, 90, who was deported from the US in 2009.

Prosecutors allege that both men trained at the SS camp at Trawniki.

Kunz was accused of moving Jewish victims from trains at Belzec, pushing them into gas chambers and throwing their bodies into mass graves.

He was also alleged to have shot dead two people who had escaped from a train and killed eight others who had been wounded.

Mr Brendel, who is head of the Dortmund-based centre for investigating Nazi war crimes, told the BBC News website that Kunz had been due to go on trial in January or February next year.

He said that his department had spent the whole year working on the case. He added that work was continuing on a number of other cases but it was not clear whether any would come to court.

Efraim Zuroff, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's unit for hunting down Nazi war criminals, said it was very important that Kunz had been indicted.

"At least a small measure of justice was achieved," he said.

Mr Demjanjuk, 90, went on trial last year on charges of assisting in the murder of 28,000 Jews at the Sobibor death camp.

He denies the charges.

BBC News

White 'separatist' says federal government targeting him (USA)

Michael Wayne Cook said he bought a ballistic vest at a 2007 gun show for personal protection.

Michael Wayne Cook said his recent indictment for buying a ballistic vest is proof he is being targeted by the federal government because of his reputation as a white supremacist.

Cook, 43, of Wrightsville, said he bought the vest at a gun show in Harrisburg in 2007 but did not know it was illegal to do so.

"It's really for my own protection, for my own safety," he said. "I've had numerous death threats in my life. . . . I didn't have any intention to use it for a crime."

A U.S. Attorney news release said Cook's convictions for terroristic threats and destroying property prohibit him from owning body armor.

Cook has a hearing on the charge of possession of body armor by a violent felon before a U.S. District Court judge in Harrisburg on Nov. 30.

Cook disputes that the vest he bought is a ballistic vest -- commonly known as a bullet-proof or Kevlar vest -- and says instead it was a flack vest, one that can protect the wearer only from flying shrapnel, not from bullets.

"In my opinion, it's a political sideshow," he said of the indictment. "The federal government is trying to curry favor with the minorities . . . in order to show they're fighting white separatists."

Cook said his felony charges date to 1994, when he pulled an unloaded gun as he and a friend were being threatened by a group in Minnesota.

"I got railroaded," Cook said. "I had poor representation."

In January 2002, Cook helped bring Matt Hale, then-leader of the white supremacist organization World Church of the Creator, to York for a speech.

Cook said that, since Hale's arrest in 2005, the Creativity movement has splintered into many factions and that he is not involved in any of them.

Cook said he considers himself a separatist -- he wants to be separate from minorities, not oppress them.

York Daily Record

Trial in white supremacist leader's death to start in South Africa

The trial of two men accused of killing white supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche is expected to start in the South African town of Ventersdorp on Monday.

Terreblanche, the leader of the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement, or AWB), was killed in April following an apparent dispute over wages with workers on his farm.

Police have charged Chris Mahlangu, 28, and a 15-year-old in the death, reported the South African Press Association.

Terreblanche, 69, was bludgeoned with clubs and stabbed with a machete during the attack at his farm near Ventersdorp in South Africa's North West province, police said.

The AWB is best known for trying to block South Africa's effort to end apartheid. The group used terrorist tactics in a bid to stall the country's first all-race vote in 1994, killing more than 20 people in a wave of bombings on the eve of the elections.

Terreblanche was convicted of a 1996 attempted murder of a black man who worked as a security guard on his farm. He served about two-thirds of a five-year sentence.

CNN

BBC'S PANORAMA CLAIMS ISLAMIC SCHOOLS TEACH ANTISEMITISM AND HOMOPHOBIA (uk)

Thousands of British schoolchildren are being taught Saudi national curriculum, according to programme

Children in Islamic schools are being taught antisemitic and homophobic views from textbooks, the BBC's Panorama will claim tonight. A textbook used in some weekend schools reportedly asks children to list the "reprehensible" qualities of Jews, according to the programme. It claims to have found 5,000 Muslim schoolchildren being taught that some Jews are transformed into pigs and apes and that the penalty for gay sex is execution. Some textbooks are said to teach the correct way to chop off the hands and feet of thieves.

A spokesman for the programme said the pupils, aged six to 18, attend a network of more than 40 weekend schools across the country which teach the Saudi national curriculum to Muslim children. One book for children as young as six is said to ask them what happens to someone who dies who is not a believer in Islam – the correct answer is "hellfire". Investigators claim to have also found a text for pupils aged 15 which reads: "For thieves their hands will be cut off for a first offence, and their foot for a subsequent offence." British Schools Muslim Rules, which will be aired tonight on BBC One at 8.30pm, says other texts for the pupils are said to claim that Zionists want to establish world domination for Jews, a spokesman said. Michael Gove, the education secretary, told Panorama: "Saudi Arabia is a sovereign country. I have no desire or wish to intervene in the decisions that the Saudi government makes in its own education system. But I'm clear that we cannot have antisemitic material of any kind being used in English schools."

At present, part-time weekend schools are not inspected by Ofsted but Gove said the educations standards watchdog would be reporting shortly on how to ensure part-time provision is better registered and inspected in the future. In a written response to the findings, the Saudi ambassador to the UK said the teachings were not endorsed by the Saudi embassy.

The Guardian

Tories in far right Euro alliance row (UK)

David Cameron is under pressure to pull out of an alliance with a right-wing Polish party because they have become too extreme.

Tory MEPs formed the European Conservatives and Reformists, with Poland's Law and Justice party.

But the Polish group's leader Michal Kaminski, who has himself been accused of homophobia and failing to commemorate the Holocaust, has quit, saying his colleagues are too far right for him.

Resigning last week, he said: "My party is being taken over by the far right." It is embarrassing for the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary William Hague, who hailed them as moderates.

Labour MP Denis MacShane said: "Now that even Michal Kaminski cannot stomach his own party it is time for David Cameron to pull the plug on this foray into the extremist swamps of East European hard right political parties."

The Euro alliance said it was an "internal matter".

Daily Mirror

Controversial bishop faces expulsion for hiring lawyer with neo-Nazi ties (UK)

Leaders of the Society of St. Pius X threatened to expel controversial member Bishop Richard Williamson for hiring a lawyer with neo-Nazi ties. The bishop will appeal charges in a German court for publicly denying the scope of the Holocaust.

Bishop Bernard Fellay – head of the St. Pius X society – ordered Bishop Williamson on Nov. 22 to fire his attorney Wolfram Nahrath, whom Bishop Williamson hired to represent him as he appeals an incitement conviction in Germany on Nov. 29.

The Associated Press reported that Nahrath has allegedly defended neo-Nazis in the past and is the former leader of a neo-Nazi group in Germany called Wiking-Jugend, or Viking Youth.

In April, a court in Regensburg, Germany fined the British-born Bishop Williamson almost $14,000, for his remarks in a 2009 interview with Swedish television on the Holocaust. The 70-year-old bishop had denied the magnitude of the Holocaust, saying only 300,000 Jews perished, and that there were no gas chambers.

It is considered a hate crime in Germany to deny the Holocaust, in which about six million Jews and millions of others were killed.

Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication of four society bishops this year, including Bishop Williamson, hoping to reconcile the group with the Catholic Church. Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre – who founded the Swiss-based group in 1969 which opposes some provisions of Vatican II – had ordained Bishop Williamson and two others without papal consent. He, along with Bishop Williamson and the two others, were excommunicated in 1988.

When Pope Benedict lifted the excommunications this year, Bishop Williamson's comments about the Holocaust caused controversy especially among Jewish groups. Bishop Williamson later offered an apology for his remarks, which the Vatican rejected as insufficient.

The society's general secretary Fr. Christian Thouvenot issued a statement on Nov. 20 explaining that “just ten days before his trial,” Bishop Williamson chose “to dismiss the lawyer charged with his defense, in favor of a lawyer who is openly affiliated to the so-called neo-Nazi movement in Germany, and to other such groups.”

“Bishop Fellay has given Bishop Williamson a formal order to go back on this decision and to not allow himself to become an instrument of political theses that are completely foreign to his mission as a Catholic bishop serving the Society of Saint Pius X,” he added.

Disobedience to this order, Fr. Thouvenot said “would result in Bishop Williamson being expelled from the Society of Saint Pius X.”

Catholic News Agency

Belgium anti-racism group urges 'Tintin in the Congo' ban

A black rights group urged a Belgian court Monday to pull the popular comic book "Tintin in the Congo" from library bookshelves, saying it depicts racist and offensive cliches about Africans.

Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo, a Congolese man who first filed the complaint, and an anti-racism association want the court to ban the book written by celebrated Belgian author Herge in 1931, or at least slap a warning label on it.

"It is not Herge we are putting on trial, it is the racism ingrained in people's minds at the time," Ahmed L'hedim, lawyer for Mondondo and the Representative Council of Black Associations, told the court, according to Belga news agency.

The plaintiffs said the book about the adventures of the intrepid reporter and his dog Snowy in Belgian Congo, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, should at least be relegated to the adult sections of libraries.

Sandrine Carneroli, a lawyer for publisher Casterman et Moulinsart SA, sought to have the case thrown out on grounds that it did not belong in civil court but in a trade tribunal "since we are talking about banning sales."

Another attorney for the publisher said at a previous hearing in May that a ban would be like a "book burning."

The next hearing is set for December 8 and a decision is expected within the following two months.

The 1931 tale of Tintin's trip to the former Belgian colony is controversial because of its depiction of colonialism and Africans, as well as casual violence towards animals.

The Belgian author Herge, real name Georges Remi (1907-1983), justified the book by saying it was merely a reflection of the naive views of the time. Some of the scenes were revised for later editions.

Google Hosted news

Racism is institutional in upper tiers of British society, says Lord Parekh (UK)

A report by New Labour's multiculturalism mentor believes education, political and judicial institutions have failed to tackle racism.

Racism is endemic across society's highest echelons, from the police to the judiciary, politics and education, according to Lord Parekh, chairman of a groundbreaking report that shaped much of New Labour's policy on multiculturalism.

Heralded as "the most important contribution to the national debate on racial discrimination for many years" when it was launched in 2000 by the then home secretary Jack Straw, the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain led to the reform of Britain's social, cultural and political institutions.

But Parekh has admitted that he is disappointed by sections of the upper tiers of many institutions in their failure to tackle racism in the 10 years since the report.

"Ethnic minority representation in the higher echelons of the judiciary, civil service, heads of universities, and cabinet is quite small," he said. "Although there are, happily, 24 black and ethnic minority MPs, their number does not reflect their presence in society. The ethnic minority representation in NHS trusts and CEOs of hospitals is extremely small, even though ethnic minorities provide nearly a quarter of our doctors.

"Look at the heads of our diplomatic missions abroad. Ethnic minorities there are negligible, just less than 2%. As a result, Britain presents a predominantly white profile abroad, which we cannot afford when we seek close trade ties with India and China."

Parekh was talking to the Guardian before a speech at the London School of Economics tomorrow evening, in which he will revisit the issue of multiculturalism for the first time since 2000. He said government cuts would increase racial discrimination and could lead to unrest.

"The coalition government's policy is disturbing," he said. "They are in danger of dismantling the advances we have worked so hard to achieve over the last decade by their determination to implement cuts that will disproportionately impact disadvantaged, black and ethnic minority communities."

Parekh said cuts to education and health, and restrictions in funding at local level, could lead to "alienation, protest and communities feeling under siege. Cuts like these will be a serious mistake," he said.

Parekh stressed that "there is no question of intentional discrimination" in the services offered by the judicial, political and other institutions that he criticises.

"However, the virtual absence of ethnic minority representation in their highest rungs matters greatly," he said. "It influences the problems they address, and the way they allocate their scarce resources. It also affects the organisation's ability to uncover its own hidden biases.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a journalist on the original commission, said Parekh's criticisms did not go far enough."I look around every single institution in Britain and I see a white man's world," she said. "I'm not saying people in power in these institutions are sitting around being racist but they are sitting around making decisions that continue to create a highly discriminatory and unrepresentative world.


The Guardian