Italian ship master lands jail term after rescuing migrants and taking them to Libya

The Italian Court of Cassation has sentenced a ship’s master to a year in prison after he rescued 101 migrants from the sea and took them to disembark in Libya without notifying Rome.

Captain Giuseppe Sotgiu, of the commercial shipping vessel Asso 28, also called Asso Ventotto, was prosecuted by the highest court in Italy, which upheld an original decision declaring that international maritime law forbids the returning of refugees to Libya.

The jail term was handed down after Cpt Sotgiu was found guilty of abandoning minors or incapacitated persons and arbitrary disembarkation and abandonment of persons.

The prosecutor’s office in Naples stated the Asso 28 captain and crew had not taken any action to locate the exiles, determine their health or whether the youngsters were alone.

In addition, they failed to enquire as to whether the rescued individuals wanted to request asylum, all of which is in contravention of international conventions.

In 2018, the Asso 28 found a large rubber dinghy packed with passengers, including children and pregnant women, adrift in international waters about 105km from the Libyan shoreline. The crew then safely brought all the migrants aboard.

The ship’s owner Augusta Offshore and Cpt Sotgiu reported they had been in touch with the Libyan Maritime Command Centre through the Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre (MRCC) in Rome.

A Libyan Coast Guard representative who it was said boarded the ship was reportedly then given the order by Tripoli to return the migrants to Libyan territory.

There was no proof that the Libyan MRCC had been notified, according to Naples prosecutors. Italian media also reported that the ship’s register did not indicate that any Libyan official was on board.

The captain is unlikely to go to jail, though, as sentences of less than four years are not typically served in prison in the Italian system.

The final ruling upholds two lower courts’ earlier verdicts. Although the latest was filed on February 1, Italian media outlets made it public over the weekend of February 17.

NGOs and open border activists commended the final verdict.

“Libya is not a safe country: we have been saying this for years and now the Supreme Court says it too,” Amnesty International Italy posted on X.

“Returning people to Libya and collaborating with the so-called coast guard contradicts the duty to bring rescued people to a safe place.

“Italian governments that have signed and renewed migration agreements have in fact made themselves complicit in serious violations. People first, then borders,” it concluded.

NGO Open Arms described the ruling as a “landmark judgment”.

The European Union and Italy operate a Border Assistance Mission in Libya, helping Libyan authorities manage the county’s borders and fight cross-border crime such as human trafficking, migrant smuggling and terrorism.

The mission is often criticised by NGOs, some of which allege widespread abuse in the detention centres funded by Europe.

Italian interior minister Matteo Piantedosi said the final judgment needed to be “contextualised” rather than seen as an “ideological interpretation” of the law.

According to Piantedosi, the affair illustrated the importance that “anyone who intervenes [in such a manner] must co-ordinate with the competent authorities … there can be no ‘spontaneity’.

“The important thing is that there is co-ordination.”

https://brusselssignal.eu/2024/02/italian-sea-captain-gets-jail-term-after-rescuing-migrants-and-taking-them-to-libya/

Germany: Popular TV host calls for killing of AfD and FPÖ politicians

Jan Böhmermann compared FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl to Adolf Hitler before proceeding to claim he and other right-wing politicians should be “culled.”

The 42-year-old Jan Böhmermann is being harshly criticized for calling for the killing of politicians from Austria’s FPÖ and Germany’s AfD parties during his “ZDF Magazin Royale” on Friday evening.

The comedian, who is paid €682,000 per year from the mandatory fee all Germans have to pay to support public television, is outraged that the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) is soaring in the polls, and is currently the most popular party in the country in the run-up to new elections in the fall. Böhmermann equates the two parties, the AfD and the FPÖ with the National Socialists (NSDAP), and then concluded his show, which he spent attacking the two parties, by saying: “Don’t always bring out the Nazi club, but maybe just club a few Nazis. Bye, see you next week.”

His phrase is a play on the verb “keulen” in German, with “Nazi-Keule” referring to the Nazi dictatorship, while “keulen” is a verb that refers to culling animals, which the German dictionary defines as the act to kill farm animals “to prevent or contain animal epidemics.”

In effect, Böhmermann compares the AfD and FPÖ politicians with sick animals that need to be killed in order to avoid or prevent an epidemic.

FPÖ leader Kickl wrote on his Facebook channel: “For your information: culling is a verb from veterinary medicine and is defined by the dictionary as follows: ‘To kill livestock in order to prevent or contain animal diseases’.” Kickl described it as “disgusting” and “absolute madness” that had nothing to do with satire.

Just last week, an AfD politician withdrew from his election race due to serious threats to him and his family, while numerous AfD supporters have been brutally assaulted, targeted at their homes, and had their vehicles set on fire.

Before his call to “cull” the two parties, Böhmermann spent 34 minutes drawing comparisons between the AfD, the FPÖ and Adolf Hitler, saying: “The FPÖ, that is the Austrian AfD.”

He also mocked Christian Democrat Union (CDU) leader Friedrich Merz, who Böhmermann says is not taking the AfD seriously enough.

“You can’t just bring out the ‘Nazi-club’ if you want to talk about Nazis.” Then, he takes on a serious demeanor, saying: “When Nazis come to power, they become more powerful. Who would have thought.”

He also attacks the leader of the FPÖ, Herbert Kickl, saying: “Just because someone speaks like Goebbels doesn’t mean he is Hitler… Adolf Hitler and Herbert Kickl have nothing to do with each other, I have to make that very clear here. Hitler had a completely different beard.” He then mocks Kickl’s decision to refer to himself as the “people’s chancellor,” saying Hitler wanted people to call him the “people’s chancellor until he wanted every to him the Führer.”

At the end of the program, Böhmermann parodied the FPÖ party song (“Always again Austria”) in a music video and accused the FPÖ politicians of killing people for their country: “I beat someone dead for red-white-red – I am a real patriot.”

FPÖ Secretary General Christian Hafenecker also sharply criticized Böhmermann’s statements, which he said went “beyond all previous dimensions” and should not remain without consequences. Calls for physical violence against opposition politicians “were previously only known from terrorist regimes,” Hafenecker added.

He called for the self-proclaimed satirist to be monitored by the intelligence services. “Where is the outcry from Federal President Van der Bellen? Where are the condemning statements from the ÖVP, Greens, SPÖ, and NEOS, who always accuse the FPÖ of hatred and incitement? Where is the Office for the Protection of the Constitution?”

https://rmx.news/austria/germany-popular-tv-host-calls-for-killing-of-afd-and-fpo-politicians/

Italy Remembers the Foibe

Prime Minister Meloni at the memorial for victims of the Foibe Massacre.

On Saturday, 10 February 2024, Giorgia Meloni paid tribute to the victims of the Foibe massacres, perpetrated by Yugoslavian communists during and just after WWII, in a solemn ceremony at the Foiba in Basovizza. This fact alone is newsworthy, because it is the first time that an Italian prime minister has attended a ceremony in memory of the thousands of Italians killed and the hundreds of thousands who had to go into exile. “I came here as a child,” Meloni recalled, “when few did, because it meant being singled out, accused, isolated.” The victims were forgotten and the exiles were repudiated in their own country for decades. The official remembrance came only twenty years ago. With her presence, Meloni wanted to settle a historical debt: “The homeland is the family of the heart; so you, who have defended and loved this homeland and thus contributed to building it, are our family.”

Istria, Fiume, and Dalmatia—where there was a majority Italian population—were incorporated into Italy after the end of World War I. But after the defeat of fascism, they were integrated into Yugoslavia in February of 1947 as a result of the Paris Peace Treaties. Consequently, the Italian population was forced to leave their lands and homes. In what became known as the Istrian-Dalmatian exodus, some 300,000-350,000 Italians left the region. For example, the town of Pola (now Pula, in Croatia) had 33,000 inhabitants in February 1947; but, after the exodus, only 3,000 people remained.

The Italians were well aware of what awaited them under communist rule, because they had suffered persecution at the hands of Tito’s partisans since late 1943. In the early post-war years, the partisans murdered thousands of Italian civilians in a campaign of ethnic cleansing—men, women and children, under the pretext that they were “supporters” of fascism. Figures vary from 5,000 to 10,000 killed, although some historians put the number as high as 15,000. The victims were shot or thrown alive into natural sinkholes called “foibe,” which are abundant in the region: there are more than 1,700 in the Istria area alone, and some are up to 200 metres deep.

Among the thousands of victims, there are several names that symbolise the horror of what happened in the foibe. Among them are two priests, Angelo Tarticchio and Francesco Bonifacio. Father Tarticchio, parish priest of Villa di Rovigno in Istria, was arrested by the partisans in September 1943. He was tortured, killed, and thrown with 43 other prisoners into the Lindaro quarry. His body was found two months later, completely naked and castrated, with a crown of barbed wire on his head. Father Boniface, chaplain of Villa Gardossi in Istria, was arrested on 11 September 1946 by the People’s Guards. He was tortured, stoned, and stabbed, and his body, which was never recovered, was thrown into the Martines foiba. On 4 October 2008, Father Bonifacio was beatified in Trieste by Benedict XVI.

But if there is one face and one name that embodies the foibe for Italians, it is that of Norma Cossetto, a 23-year-old student who was imprisoned for refusing to collaborate with the partisans and inform on her compatriots. She was repeatedly tortured and raped and, on 5 October 1943, the partisans cut off her breasts before throwing her alive into a pit along with three dozen other prisoners. Her remains were exhumed just a week later. The image of the smiling young woman has become a symbol of her victory over her killers, and streets and plaques throughout Italy bear her name. Yet for this to happen, more than 60 years had to pass.

Despite the Foibe and Bleiburg, and the many other crimes committed during and after the war by the Yugoslav communists, the Western powers saw in Tito’s government a potential ally. Tito did not want Yugoslavia to become a satellite of the Soviet Union, and consequently it did not join the Warsaw Pact. The Italian government ignored the uncomfortable testimonies of returnees and forgot the foibe, the victims, and the exiles. It forgot them to the point that, on 2 October 1969, the man most responsible for the massacres and the exile, Marshal Tito, was awarded the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic by the socialist president Giuseppe Saragat. Moreover, those who dared to remember the foibe—as Meloni pointed out in Buzzovina—were branded as radicals and fascists.

Everything changed in 2004. That year, under the government of Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian parliament established 10 February as “Remembrance Day” to remember those killed in the Foibe massacre and the Istrian-Dalmatian exodus. A year later, Italian RAI television premiered Il Cuore nel Pozzo (The Heart in the Well), a film that tells the story of Italian children fleeing from Tito’s partisans. The film was broadcast in two parts on 6 and 7 February, and again on 10 February (in a shortened version), to celebrate Remembrance Day. Seventeen million Italians saw the film, and many discovered for the first time the forgotten tragedy of their history. That same year, Italian President Carlo Ciampi posthumously awarded the Gold Medal for Civil Merit to Norma Cossetto. In 2011, the cities of Trieste and Terni dedicated a street to her, and, since then, ever more cities have inaugurated streets and installed commemorative plaques either with her name or dedicated to the martyrs of the foibe. At the end of 2018, a new film about the foibe massacres, Rosso Istria (Red Land), was released and won an award at the Venice Film Festival. Italy recovered its lost memory.

However, some have wanted to keep the memory of the foibe buried with its victims. Although the Italian Left initially condemned ethnic cleansing, different sectors, particularly the communists, were quick to denounce the Remembrance Day as an historical manipulation aimed at criminalising anti-fascism. Consequently, they have promoted a negationism that justifies the crimes or minimises the number of victims. In addition, the extreme Left has carried out a permanent campaign of vandalism and mockery against monuments dedicated to the foibe. For example, in March 2021, an anti-fascist collective wallpapered Genoa with posters and stickers with the message “No foibe, no party.” This year, while left-wing radicals demonstrated in Turin under the slogan, “From the Yugoslav partisans to the Palestinian resistance: [we’re] on the right side of history,” the plaque dedicated to the victims in Florence was damaged for the second time in a few days—and it was also attacked in January and October 2023.

The victims of the foibe massacres are an uncomfortable reality for the Left, and neither Elly Schlein of the Democratic Party nor Giuseppe Conte of the 5 Star Movement mentioned Remembrance Day. Their rejection is also making itself felt in their reluctance to remove the honours of the Yugoslav dictator. Tito has been a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic since 1969, an honour that Fratelli d’Italia and Lega consider an insult to the victims. In February 2023, Walter Rizzetto (Fratelli d’Italia) presented a bill to change the rule establishing the Order of the Knights of the Republic, according to which the honour cannot be cancelled for people who have died in the meantime. And just a few days ago, the Constitutional Affairs Committee debated Rizzetto’s bill and two others by Massimiliano Panizzut (Lega) and Fabio Rampelli (Fratelli d’Italia). All of them are aimed at removing the legal obstacles that have prevented the removal of Tito’s honour. However, as was the case a week earlier, the committee has not been able to send a final text to be voted on in the Chamber because of obstacles put in the way by the Democratic Party. It seems that, for the moment, it is not yet possible to reverse the infamous decision taken by the Italian socialists in 1969.

Tito’s medal is the last obstacle to repairing the decades of silence and concealment of the victims of the foibe. Removing Tito’s honour is a duty to all of the victims, after “unforgivable decades” of silence, as Giorgia Meloni pointed out in Basovizza. The Day of Remembrance has been a fundamental tool to make Italians aware of this tragic part of their history and, above all, to put an end to the hypocritical distinction between first- and second-class victims. The remembrance is an historical memory “not to reopen the wounds of the past, not to divide again, but to close a circle, to heal that shame and repair that feeling of solidarity on which every nation is founded.”

https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/italy-remembers-the-foibe/

Two Muslims rape 14-year-old German girl in Berlin- public prosecutor demands only probation

Schlachtensee, Wikimedia Commons, Asif Masimov, CC-BY-SA-4.0

Three years in juvenile prison for the rape of the schoolgirl from Schlachtensee! Nine months in prison for his accomplice.
Mehmet E. (19) dragged Nina* (14) from a summer night party in 2023 into the bushes and attacked her there with a friend. The trial has been taking place since January 11.
The prosecution reported Nina’s* night of horror on the 9th of June 2023 as follows: around 80 young people were partying at night in Paul-Ernst-Park above the sunbathing lawns, drinking a lot of alcohol. At around 10.30 pm, two young men approach the pretty Nina* from the Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg: “Come with me!” She doesn’t want to. One of them carries her to a secluded shore area. No, pleas and tears are ignored. She is grabbed. One of them kisses her, one pulls down her trousers … Friends later find Nina* bleeding in the bushes.

Both defendants remain silent during the trial. Nina* suffered the horrific night once again as a witness in court. Large parts of the trial take place in camera.
The public prosecutor then requests that both defendants only receive suspended sentences. They demand only two years’ probation for hairdresser Mehmet E. (19) from Steglitz.

But the judges exceed the sentence by far!
Three-year juvenile sentence for rape plus continued imprisonment for Mehmet E. (already behind bars since the 10th of August 2023).
Co-perpetrator Islam El-M. (18) from the Tempelhof district of Berlin is sentenced to nine months’ juvenile detention for the sexual assault. His probation period lasts three years.
Both have to pay 5000 euros to the schoolgirl. The younger boy must also complete “social-cognitive individual training” and 60 hours of recreational work.
(*Name changed)

Gericht in Berlin: Schlachtensee-Vergewaltiger muss in den Knast | Regional | BILD.de

Jewish family ‘in disbelief’ after baby’s birth certificate RIPPED and Israel birthplace scribbled out in the UK: ‘It’s like 1930s Germany’

Father-of-three, Israel, said his family were in disbelief and said it was as though they had ‘been taken back to 1930’s Germany’ X

A Jewish family say they feel like a “target” after their baby’s birth certificate returned from the Home Office ripped and with the birthplace of Israel scribbled out.

Father-of-three, who is called Israel, said his family were in disbelief and said it was as though they had “been taken back to 1930’s Germany”.

The family – who live in Edgware, North London – found five-month-old Ronnie’s identification papers had been tampered with.

They were advised to contact the Campaign Against Antisemitism who launched a complaint against the Home Office.

The birth certificate was returned with a rip down the right hand side and with the birth place of Ronnie’s father’s scratched out.

Despite Ronnie’s mother, Dorin also having Israel down as her place of birth, this was left untouched.

“She found it was ripped half way through and my place of birth – which was Israel – had been scribbled out with a pen,” Israel told The Daily Mail.

“We felt as if we had been taken back to 1930’s Germany where the Nazis would put notes on Jewish people’s documentation.

“It is completely warped and it hurts my heart that my daughter is not even six-months-old and she has already been discriminated on in the worst way.”

As the certificate is damaged, it is no longer valid so a new document must be re-sent by the Home Office.

The father has now called for the person behind the attack to be removed from the Home Office and for the Government to apologise.

He added: “This is our Government and we are putting our faith in their hands so we want the Home Office to first apologise.

“Afterwards we need to make sure this person, man or woman, cannot put their hands on other people’s private documents.

“Unfortunately this birth certificate is not valid any more because it’s been scribbled on. So this person has destroyed my child’s identity, their birth certificate, just because it’s a Jewish person.

“We are terrified because if this is the environment within the Home Office this is not a place we want to live. We are just as British as everyone else.”

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “This is completely unacceptable.

“The Home Office has responsibility for law enforcement and the security of the Jewish community and the wider public. Confidence in the authorities among British Jews is at painfully low levels and must be restored.”

https://www.gbnews.com/news/jewish-family-birth-certificate-ripped-israel-birthplace-london

Groundbreaking Global Study on 99 Million Vaccinated People Reveals Increases in Neurological, Blood, and Heart Conditions Associated with COVID-19 Vaccines

In a groundbreaking multinational study conducted by the Global Vaccine Data Network (GVDN), researchers have shed light on the safety of COVID-19 vaccines among a cohort of 99 million vaccinated individuals.

The study, spanning multiple countries, aimed to evaluate adverse events of special interest (AESI) following COVID-19 vaccination, providing crucial insights into vaccine safety.

Some of the countries included in the study are:

  • Denmark
  • New Zealand
  • Argentina
  • Canada (Ontario and British Columbia)
  • Finland
  • Australia (New South Wales and Victoria)
  • Scotland

The study was published at the world’s leading scientific publisher and data analytics company for more than 140 years, Elsevier.

The study confirmed known safety signals for conditions such as myocarditis, pericarditis, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, while also identifying potential new safety signals that warrant further investigation.

According to the result, the study covered 99,068,901 vaccinated individuals, analyzing the administration of 183,559,462 doses of Pfizer (BNT162b2), 36,178,442 doses of Moderna (mRNA-1273), and 23,093,399 doses of Oxford/AstraZeneca (ChAdOx1) vaccines.

Experts chose thirteen health issues to keep a close eye on after people get their COVID-19 vaccines.

The health issues they’re watching were picked from a list made by a group called the Brighton Collaboration SPEAC Project. They chose these specific issues because they are the same ones for which recent data on how common they are (background rates) was collected by some research sites.

To identify these issues, they used a standardized system of medical codes called ICD-10. Among the issues they’re focusing on are several neurological conditions like Guillain-Barré syndrome (a rare nerve disorder), transverse myelitis (inflammation of the spinal cord), Bell’s palsy (sudden facial muscle weakness), acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (a brief but widespread attack of inflammation in the brain and spinal cord), and seizures (convulsions that can happen with or without fever). They’re paying special attention to these because there have been some reports of these issues after vaccination.

They’re also looking at blood clotting issues, including clots in the brain’s veins, clots in the abdomen’s veins, and lung clots, because these could be signs of a rare clotting problem linked to the vaccine. Low platelet counts (thrombocytopenia) and a specific immune response causing low platelets (immune thrombocytopenia) are also being watched due to their connection to this clotting issue.

Lastly, myocarditis and pericarditis, which are types of heart inflammation, are being monitored. Each of these conditions is being looked at separately to understand how often they happen after vaccination.

These Race Zealots Hate Britain & the West. They Don’t Care about Ethnic Minorities or Countryside

NCF Senior Fellow Rafe Heydel-Mankoo told GB News that those claiming the “Countryside is racist” don’t care about ethnic minorities at all. They are motivated by a deep seated hatred of Britain and the West and seek to undermine them at every occasion. They are engaged in a war of attrition against our culture, our values and our way of life.

Small Irish Regulatory Authority To Enforce EU’s Digital Services Act for 450 Million Europeans

Executive Vice President of the European Commission for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age Margrethe Vestager , screen grab youtube

The Digital Services Act (DSA)—the EU’s new legislative framework to regulate online platforms—came into full force on Saturday, putting the European Commission’s small Irish partner in charge of handling most of the regulatory caseload for the entire bloc. This decision-making process, based at the Coimisiún na Meán, is set to make a major impact on future EU and European elections.

A statement distributed on behalf of Coimisiún na Meán described how the organisation would “empower people and civil society groups to hold platforms to account for dealing with illegal content” with the introduction of the DSA. It “looks forward” to working on digital moderation with the European Commission.

Coimisiún na Meán will has been granted unprecedented powers to censor online content for 450 million EU citizens from Saturday February 17th as the DSA comes into full effect. The Dublin-based body is seen by many as Europe’s nerve centre for monitoring and removing allegedly hateful content, ahead of a busy election cycle.

The presence of most major digital platforms in Dublin means the 75-person office will effectively become the chief EU moderator for platforms such as Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok, deciding which content to remove. It can even issue multi-billion euro fines to corporations, a politically sensitive task ahead of June’s European elections.

The DSA came into full effect on Saturday, February 17th, and will impose fines worth up to 6% of a company’s annual income, combined with the possibility of prosecution for companies who defy the edict of regulatory bodies such as Coimisiún na Meán.

The DSA has been criticised as open to human error and political manipulation. As if saying the quiet part out loud, just this week Irish MEP Barry Andrews suggested the Act as a potential replacement for fiercely contested hate speech legislation which formally targets the far Right.

European politicians have already attacked the political intent of the DSA, with Tucker Carlson’s Vladimir Putin interview becoming an early target. Many right-wing populists are concerned that the primary aim of the DSA is to undermine them in the guise of fighting so-called disinformation.

The regulator’s Dublin office will be supported by DHR Communications, a politically connected PR firm which has taken a key strategic role advising the agency. It has ties to Ireland’s left-leaning president Michael D. Higgins and ruling Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael parties. DHR appears to have been given the task of running Coimisiún na Meán’s public relations work and helping with strategy in time for the DSA’s debut.

Despite claims that the regulator should be non-partisan, its communications agency brings with it ties to the hard Left and even Antifa activists. One prominent activist, on hand to help launch the DSA, is Síona Cahill, a former student militant and president of the country’s national student union. She is now Coimisiún na Meán’s primary media officer, working alongside her employer DHR.

A student activist and board member of The Irish Family Planning Association (the Irish equivalent of Planned Parenthood), as well as ex-president of the Irish national student union, Cahill became embroiled in an expose of the Irish antifascist scene in 2020.

A self described “feminist and a rabble rouser” who has worked as an Account Director for DHR Communications, previously Cahill has made her partisan bias obvious. A pinned tweet on her personal Twitter account decrying “right-wing agitation” demonstrates this—as did social media posts criticising populist candidates during the 2019 European elections.

Following our inquiries, Cahill has appeared to unpin a tweet describing her outlook—just minutes after being contacted by The European Conservative.

The former student activist has spoken previously at a youth conference for the German Green Party about her role in the Irish abortion referendum. Given the opportunity in both telephone and email contact from The European Conservative, Cahill was unable to explain whether her hard Left activities—including public attacks on free speech for conservatives—would impact on her new responsibilities.

As part of initiating the landmark piece of censorship legislation, Cahill will work alongside Patricia Ryan, a former advisor to both the office of the President of the European Parliament and the Irish government. This emphases the links between both the Irish state and hard left with the new hate speech regulator.

It is troubling that activists who can’t get elected by appealing directly to the electorate will play a major role in regulating debate during a major European election year.

https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/small-irish-regulatory-authority-to-enforce-eus-digital-services-act-for-450-million-europeans/

Switzerland: Asylum seeker armed with an axe and a knife takes hostages on a train and is killed by police – his family now files charges

screen grab X

15 people were taken hostage on a train near Essert-sous-Champvent VD on the 8th of February. The 32-year-old perpetrator was armed with an axe and a knife. The passengers and the train driver were unharmed. The hostage-taker was shot and killed during the police operation.

The Iranian family of the hostage-taker filed a complaint this week to find out under what circumstances their relative was shot dead by a Vaudois police officer. According to the RTS investigation department, the family believes that the fatal outcome at the end of the four-hour hostage-taking “could have been avoided”.

RTS journalists were able to contact the younger brother of the 32-year-old Iranian-Kurdish asylum seeker. The man, who lives in Iran, asks himself: “Why didn’t they use other tools to neutralise him?” It was clear that his brother had behaved very badly, the man admits. The family did not support the act, but his brother did not deserve to be killed. “He just wanted people to listen to him. He wanted to scream, it was a cry for help.”

In their complaint, the family is targeting “anyone who unlawfully contributed to the death of our son”. The Vaud public prosecutor’s office, which has already launched an investigation into the circumstances of this death, confirmed to RTS that it had received the complaint at the end of the week and had granted the parents the status of private plaintiffs.

Via their lawyer in Switzerland, they are also calling for the investigation to be extended to the care of their son, who arrived in Switzerland in 2022 and had severe mental health problems that have since worsened.

Familie des getöteten Iraners (32) reicht Anzeige ein – 20 Minuten

UK: Retailer John Lewis Slammed for “Inclusivity” Ad Featuring Employee Who Is A Transgender BDSM Fetishist

CONTENT NOTICE: This article contains photos which might be considered Not Safe For Work. Reader discretion is appreciated.

A British retailer is under fire after featuring a transgender BDSM fetishist in a new ad campaign highlighting “diverse” employees. To commemorate LGBT+ History Month, John Lewis Partnership (JLP) released a photo exhibition called the Identity Project, which highlights staff who identify as transgender or queer. The content was created as part of JLP’s 32-page internal magazine, Identity, which was distributed to the company’s 80,000 employees.

Yet critics on social media swiftly pointed out that some participants in the photography project had troubling backgrounds — including one trans-identified male who had been uploading disturbing bondage fetish photos to his Flickr and Facebook accounts.

Marc Geoffrey Albert Whitcombe, who was positively profiled in the campaign, has worked for JLP at Waitrose Brighton for over two decades. In February 2021, Whitcombe legally changed his name to “Ruby Geoffrey Michael Porcelain Whitcombe,” in accordance with his self-declared transgender status.

According to the image produced in collaboration with photographer Chris Jepson for JLP, Whitcombe began to identify as transgender in 2015 “after accessing mental health support.” The photo of Whitcombe depicts him in fetish attire, wearing a wig, and holding a multi-tailed whip.

“[He] came out to [his] friends and family and started transitioning, presenting more and more as female, and [he] now presents as female full-time,” reads the copy, referring to Whitcombe with feminine pronouns. “[His] transition brought about a new confidence that saw [him] start performing at local competitions and open mics, culminating in lip-syncing for Graham Norton in the grand final of one of Europe’s biggest Lip Sync competitions and singing live on stage at one of Europe’s biggest trans Pride events.”

Prior to identifying as transgender, Whitcombe had been performing as a drag queen at burlesque shows under the moniker Tran-Tula. A Facebook account used to promote his events is described as “a page for my kinky and trans-drag performing alter-ego.”

Posting under the alias Ruby Porcelain online, Whitcombe has uploaded hundreds of images of himself in fetish gear, bondage, and lingerie. Some photos depicted Whitcombe in dresses, spreading his legs to reveal himself in women’s underwear, and others show Whitcombe holding sex toys in his mouth.

Under a now-deleted Flickr account, Whitcombe can be seen in a variety of sexual poses, holding handcuffs, wearing a police uniform and brandishing a whip, or sporting thigh-high PVC boots.

Pornographic images seen by Reduxx that were saved under Whitcombe’s favorites folder depict other “sissy” crossdressing men in bondage, hogtied and gagged, or alternatively decked out in silicone costumes designed to resemble women — part of a fetish subculture known as female masking.

One of the first groups joined by Whitcombe, according to his profile, is a crossdressing fetish community where men share similar content, captioned with pornographic language, such as “Sucking cock: the ultimate turn-on,” and, “Who goes out in public?”

Ruby Whitcombe.

An alternative Flickr account run by Whitcombe interacts with dozens of groups dedicated to photos of graveyards. Whitcombe uses the account to share hundreds of his own images of cemeteries and tombstones as a participant in a taphophilia subculture that celebrates a compulsive interest in the rituals of death. In one Facebook post dated April 2020, Whitcombe states that he regularly frequents graveyards in order to “exercise.”

Following the revelation of Whitcombe’s sadomasochistic proclivities, JLP Executive Director James Bailey released an internal staff memo that was leaked by former barrister and advocate James Esses.

“You may have seen coverage in the press and on social media over the past 24 hours following the publication of the Identity magazine,” reads the memo. “We have an ambition to become the UK’s most inclusive employer, because celebrating diversity will make us a better business. That means creating an environment where everyone feels welcome irrespective of their backgrounds or beliefs.”

The statement went on to offer mental health support to any individual who had been “affected” by any of the “coverage,” without mentioning the fetish content and pornography that had been publicly shared by Whitcombe.

Other JLP employees featured in the LGBT+ campaign included a nursery advisor in bondage gear associated with the so called ‘pup’ and furry community, which incorporates a sexual interest in dressing up as animals. Additionally, Liberal Democrat councillor Sean Macleod, of Lewes and Eastbourne, was profiled despite being publicly criticized last year for a “misogynistic” social media post which read, “Fuck the TERFs,” a euphemism for women who oppose gender identity policies.

In 2019, public outcry erupted after John Lewis’ clothing retail shops were discovered to have adopted a ‘gender-neutral’ policy for its changing rooms, which, as critics pointed out, allowed men who declared a transgender status to use the fitting rooms reserved for women.

In the days leading up to the most recent controversy, which saw John Lewis trending on social media platform X for two days with calls for a boycott, Esses had criticized what he called the “trans takeover of John Lewis,” and described in detail other aspects of JLP’s Identity magazine.

“This month, JLP published a new internal magazine, entitled ‘Identity’. It was the brainchild of JLP’s ‘LGBTQIA+ network’. It was promoted to every one of its 80,000 staff members (known as Partners). A copy of the magazine was sent to me by someone working at JLP, too afraid to speak out themselves,” Esses wrote on his Substack.

Among the concerning ideological content highlighted by Esses was the promotion of breast binders for minors and pressure from higher-ups on personnel to wear pronoun badges at work.

“Most worrying of all is when the article goes on to recommend Mermaids as a resource to parents. This is the same Mermaids currently under investigation by the Charity Commission for safeguarding concerns, including sending breast binders to children behind parents’ backs,” Esses says.

“Shockingly, the article goes a step further, by actually recommending online videos which show children how to achieve their ‘desired gender identity, for example, chest binders’Readers are told that ‘a binder is always safer than the alternatives.’”

Women’s rights campaigner and founder of advocacy group Sex Matters, Maya Forstater, referred to JLP’s promotion of Whitcombe as part of a larger trend she called “bring your autogynephilia to work,” a term defined as a male sexual fetish for pretending to be female.

“It is sexist and insulting to women to pretend that these men’s hobby of dressing up and wearing wigs makes them women,” Forstater remarked.

In recent years, several other men have been held up as role models for wearing sexualized female-coded attire. One of the men presented as an example of the phenomenon, Philip, or ‘Pippa’ Bunce, was in 2018 included in a list of Britain’s top 100 female executives compiled for the Champions of Women in Business awards.

https://reduxx.info/uk-retailer-john-lewis-slammed-for-inclusivity-ad-featuring-employee-who-is-a-transgender-bdsm-fetishist/