Tag: crime

  • Daily chart: The Devil’s in the deterrent

    Daily chart: The Devil’s in the deterrent

    Sep 3rd 2012, 13:05 by The Economist online

    Crime rates and religious beliefs

    20120908 woc894

    GOVERNMENTS labouring to deliver effective crime-prevention policies could do worse than consider divine deterrence. In a paper published this summer in PLoS ONE, Azim Shariff at the University of Oregon and Mijke Rhemtulla at the University of Kansas compared rates of crime with rates of belief in heaven and hell in 67 countries. Citizens of those countries were asked which of heaven and hell they believed in, and each country’s overall “rate of belief” was calculated by subtracting the percentage of hell-believers from that of heaven-believers. The researchers found that the degree to which each country’s citizens believed more strongly in heaven than in hell predicted higher national crime rates. It seems that believing more strongly in the forgiveness of sins than in punishment in the after-life may help pave the way for further transgressions. The researchers also noted that the proportion of people believing in heaven almost always outweighed the proportion believing in hell. So a little more preaching on the fiery furnace might be beneficial in this life, if not also the next.

    via Daily chart: The Devil’s in the deterrent | The Economist.

  • FBI organizes almost all terror plots in the US

    FBI organizes almost all terror plots in the US

    fbi almost organizes all terror plots in the US
    FBI organizes almost all terror plots in the US

    The Federal Bureau of Investigation employs upwards of 15,000 undercover agents today, ten times what they had on the roster back in 1975.

    If you think that’s a few spies too many — spies earning as much as $100,000 per assignment — one doesn’t have to go too deep into their track record to see their accomplishments. Those agents are responsible for an overwhelming amount of terrorist stings that have stopped major domestic catastrophes in the vein of 9/11 from happening on American soil.

    Another thing those agents are responsible for, however, is plotting those very schemes.

    The FBI has in recent years used trained informants not just to snitch on suspected terrorists, but to set them up from the get-go. A recent report put together by Mother Jones and the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California-Berkley analyses some striking statistics about the role of FBI informants in terrorism cases that the Bureau has targeted in the decade since the September 11 attacks.

    The report reveals that the FBI regularly infiltrates communities where they suspect terrorist-minded individuals to be engaging with others. Regardless of their intentions, agents are sent in to converse within the community, find suspects that could potentially carry out “lone wolf” attacks and then, more or less, encourage them to do so. By providing weaponry, funds and a plan, FBI-directed agents will encourage otherwise-unwilling participants to plot out terrorist attacks, only to bust them before any events fully materialize.

    Additionally, one former high-level FBI officials speaking to Mother Jones says that, for every informant officially employed by the bureau, up to three unofficial agents are working undercover.

    The FBI has used those informants to set-up and thus shut-down several of the more high profile would-be attacks in recent years. The report reveals that the Washington DC Metro bombing plot, the New York City subway plot, the attempt to blow up Chicago’s Sears Tower and dozens more were all orchestrated by FBI agents. In fact, reads the report, only three of the more well-known terror plots of the last decade weren’t orchestrated by FBI-involved agents.

    The report reveals that in many of the stings, important meetings between informants and the unknowing participants are left purposely unrecorded, as to avoid any entrapment charges that could cause the case to be dismissed. Perhaps the most high-profile of the FBI-proposed plots was the case of the Newburgh 4. Around an hour outside of New York City, an informant infiltrated a Muslim community and engaged four local men to carry out a series of attacks. Those men may have never actually carried out an attack, but once the informant offered them a plot and a pair of missiles, they agreed. Defense attorneys cried “entrapment,” but the men still were sentenced to 25 years apiece.

    “The problem with the cases we’re talking about is that defendants would not have done anything if not kicked in the ass by government agents,” Martin Stolar tells Mother Jones. Stolar represented the suspect involved in a New York City bombing plot that was set-up by FBI agents. “They’re creating crimes to solve crimes so they can claim a victory in the war on terror.” For their part, the FBI says this method is a plan for “preemption,” “prevention” and “disruption.”

    The report also reveals that, of the 500-plus prosecutions of terrorism-related cases they analyzed, nearly half of them involved the use of informants, many of whom worked for the FBI in exchange for money or to work off criminal charges. Of the 158 prosecutions carried out, 49 defendants participated in plots that agent provocateurs arranged on behalf of the FBI.

    Experts note that the chance of winning a terrorism-related trial, entrapment or not, is near impossible. “The plots people are accused of being part of — attacking subway systems or trying to bomb a building — are so frightening that they can overwhelm a jury,” David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor, tells Mother Jones. Since 9/11, almost two-thirds of the cases linked to terrorism have ended with guilty pleas. “They don’t say, ‘I’ve been entrapped,’ or, ‘I was immature,’” a retired FBI official remarks.

    All of this and those guilty pleas often stem for just being in the right place at the wrong time. Farhana Khera of the group Muslim Advocate notes that agents go into mosques on “fishing expeditions” just to see where they can get interest in the community. “The FBI is now telling agents they can go into houses of worship without probable cause,” says Khera. “That raises serious constitutional issues.”

    From the set-up to the big finish, the whole sting operation is ripe with constitutional issues such as that. A decade since 9/11, however, the FBI is reaching through whatever means it can pull together to keep terrorists — or whom they think could someday become one — from ever hurting America.

    www.rt.com, 09 September, 2011

  • How schoolboy hitman Santre Gayle murdered for £200

    How schoolboy hitman Santre Gayle murdered for £200

    gulistansubasiSantre Gayle Police were said to be shocked at the killer’s tender age

    Two people have been convicted of the murder of a young woman who was shot dead at point blank range and died in her mother’s arms.

    Detectives were shocked to learn her killer was a 15-year-old schoolboy, who was paid only £200.

    When the young mother was shot dead on the eve of her son’s ninth birthday detectives were initially baffled.

    Gulistan Subasi, 26, lived in Turkey but had returned to London to see her son, who was living with relatives of her estranged husband.

    Fortunately a CCTV camera had caught the killing on camera.

    The footage shows Santre Sanchez Gayle ringing the doorbell and waiting calmly and patiently for Ms Subasi to open the door before blasting her from point blank range with a sawn-off shotgun.

    Off camera she collapsed and died in the arms of her mother, Dondu.

    Hooded and hiding his face from the camera, the assassin gave the impression of being an experienced professional hitman.

    Which is why Det Ch Insp Jackie Sebire and her team were so shocked when they discovered he was a schoolboy.

    She said: “When we saw the CCTV we all thought it was a professional hitman. There was no hesitation and he shows no nerves. It did not look like a 15-year-old boy.”

    A minicab driver who unwittingly took the killer to and from the crime scene in Clapton, east London, later testified that Gayle appeared totally normal when he got back into the taxi.

    We absolutely did not have a clue. We were at a dead end”

    Det Insp Andy Chalmers said they were aware Ms Subasi was estranged from the father of her son, Serdar Ozbek.

    Det Insp Chalmers said: “We absolutely did not have a clue. We were at a dead end.”

    The teenager bragged about the killing to friends in Willesden, north-west London, and it was this loose talk which unlocked the case.

    Izak Billy, 21, a member of the Kensal Green Boys (KGB) gang in north-west London, had been threatening to kill a teenager called Ryan Hatunga.

    Mr Hatunga told police that Billy – a drug dealer with the street name Iceman – had threatened to shoot him because he knew about the murder of “a Turkish woman”.

    Mr Hatunga made a statement that the killer had confessed to carrying out the shooting, said they had been taken there by taxi and that a security grille covered the door of the victim’s flat.

    Gulistan Subasi Gulistan Subasi died almost instantly after answering the door of her mother’s flat

    Det Insp Chalmers said: “When I heard about the grille I knew only the killer could have known about that. We had never revealed that.”

    In a second statement Mr Hatunga said the killer had told him his wages for the murder had been just £200.

    But Det Insp Chalmers said: “I think he thought he was going to get more money for it.

    “But my gut feeling is that the money was an element but there must have been a lot of peer pressure, kudos, an attempt to impress older members of the gang.”

    He said of the killer: “He is not a very bright lad. He did not have good schooling or much parental control.

    “He was easily manipulated. In many ways he himself is a victim.”

    Ms Subasi, who was due to get married in Turkey that summer, had mentioned regaining custody of her son. This was said in court to have been the motive.

    Calls from Turkey

    Det Ch Insp Sebire said it took a lot of detective work to fit the pieces together.

    They examined hundreds of mobile phone records, eventually focussing on a flurry of calls in the days running up to the murder.

    Izak Billy was said to have been contacted from Turkey.

    “That call is the contract being put out on Gulistan and within hours Billy has spoken to [the killer] and he is on his way over to do a recce,” says Det Insp Chalmers.

    Billy, understood to have received £2,000 for his part in the contract killing, arranged for the killer to be shown the flat and may have obtained the murder weapon.

    At 2020 GMT on 22 March 2010 there was a knock on the door of the home in Clapton.

    CCTV of killing Gayle was seen on CCTV aiming the gun

    In a witness statement Ms Subasi’s mother later said: “I said, ‘No, daughter, we don’t know who is at the door, I will answer the door’.

    “But she didn’t listen to me.”

    Det Insp Chalmers said he believed Ms Subasi might have opened the door because she hoped it might be someone bringing her son to see her on the eve of his birthday.

    She had bought him a present and was desperate to see him.

    After working out the conspiracy the police eventually rounded up their suspects.

    Now, nearly a year later, they can file it away as “case solved”.

    Ozbek was cleared of murder, as were Paul Nicalaou, 29, of Tottenham and Leigh Bryan, 25, of Hornsey.

    Billy, 22, of Willesden, was found guilty.

    via BBC News – How schoolboy hitman Santre Gayle murdered for £200.