King of #Spain Faces Calls to Abdicate After Elephant Hunt

 

The King of Spain who is recovering in hospital after injuring his hip during a fall while elephant hunting in Botswana faced calls to abdicate amid growing controversy over the trip.

By Fiona Govan, Madrid, Daily Telegraph, April 16, 2012

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/9207280/King-of-Spain-faces-calls-to-abdicate-after-elephant-hunt.html

The 74-year-old monarch has faced a barrage of criticism over his extravagant lifestyle at a time when Spaniards are suffering harsh austerity measures in a nation mired in economic crisis.

Left wing leaders called for greater transparency of Royal accounts and one even suggested it may be time for the once popular monarch to give up his throne.

“The head of state must choose between his obligations and the duty of service of his public responsibilities, or an abdication that would allow him to enjoy a different kind of life,” Tomas Gomez, the leader of the Madrid branch of the opposition socialist party, said on Sunday.

Spain’s minority United Left (IU) party called for a referendum on whether Spain should return to a republic citing the poor example the Monarch was setting during a time of hardship.

“It shows a complete lack of ethics and respect toward the people of Spain who are suffering a lot,” said Cayo Lara Moya, spokesman of the IU.

The party said it will present a list of questions to parliament calling for details of the financing of the trip to be made public. The budget for the Royal Household was reduced by only 2 per cent in 2012 – from 8.43 million euros last year – whereas government ministries faced cuts of 16 per cent across the board.

This year, for the first time, the Palace will publish a breakdown of its accounts in a step towards greater transparency.

So far the Royal Household has declined to give details on the trip except to say it was a “private matter”.

King Juan Carlos also faced calls to resign his position as patron of the Spanish branch of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) over his hunting of elephants.

A petition on the online forum Actuable had already attracted 40,000 signatures by Monday lunchtime calling for the King to renounce his presidency of the WWF in light of the recent hunting trip.

El Mundo, a newspaper normally supportive of the Monarchy summed up the feeling in Spain with an editorial, Sunday, entitled: “An irresponsible journey at an inopportune time.”

Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s Prime Minister, will meet with the monarch later this week when he is discharged from hospital, the government website said.

 http://bit.ly/HV3WrO #spain #news #euro

#Spain :Census of "stolen children" to be carried out

Census of "stolen children" to be carried out By: ThinkSpain , Thursday, April 12, 2012

The government has agreed to carry out a census of possible cases of "stolen children" (niños robados) in Spain, which will include name, date and place of birth, and a database in collaboration with the National Institute of Toxicology, which will enable scientists to compare genetic profiles of mothers and children, one of the original demands made by the victims of this scandal. In today's meeting with representatives of the victims' associations, Justice Minister Alberto Ruiz Gallardón (pictured, centre) said: "We want to help resolve this terrible human drama. We're not going to give up on it." His comments came on the same day Sister María, the first person to be charged in relation to the scandal, claimed her right to silence after being called to testify in court in Madrid. Furthermore, Spanish authorities are going to suggest an amendment to European Union law to facilitate access to healthcare files and thus determine blood relationships. The Justice Ministry has also agreed to make it easier for victims to get access to data held on the Civil Register, like births and possible deaths of newborn infants over the past 50 years. The victims' associations have asked for an "interdepartamental commission" or "specialised investigatory group" to be set up at national level, and offering international coverage. With regard to the state prosecutor, they have asked for local and regional offices to be instructed to act in a "uniform" way, basing their cases on the crime of "illegal detention" so that cases are not shelved. More than 900 cases of "stolen children" are currently being investigated, but new cases are coming to light all the time. Lawyers say the total could eventually reach 300,000. The scandal covers a period of about 40 to 50 years, beginning under the Franco dictatorship, and continuing up to the 1990s.  Hundreds, or possibly thousands of children were taken from parents judged to be morally or economically deficient and placed with approved Catholic, often childless, families.  An ingrained fear of or respect for the church and the medical profession has prevented the scandal being exposed before now.  Also, Spanish law does not require the biological mother's name on the birth certificate, which has slowed down exposure of the scandal in many cases. Source : Think Spain

#Cordoba :No Trace Of Ruth And Jóse - Father Remains The Prime Suspect

Six months without Ruth and José, Córdoba's missing children By: thinkSPAIN , Friday, April 6, 2012

NO trace of Ruth and José, the two infants who disappeared while playing in a Córdoba park with their father, has been seen in six months and all search parties have come home empty-handed, authorities revealed this weekend. Ruth, six, and two-year-old José literally vanished into thin air on October 8 last year and, although the river near the city-centre park was dragged and their paternal grandparents' garden and home searched, they have not been found. Their mother, Ruth Ortiz, who lives with the children in Huelva, has already testified, as has their father. The father, José Bretón, remains prime suspect, but no evidence has been found to incriminate him. Judge in charge of the case, José Luis Rodríguez Laín, who remanded Bretón in custody on October 21, maintains that the children were never in the Cruz Conde park in the city in the first place. This is the view held by Ruth Ortiz, since she claims Bretón did not call her to tell her of the children's disappearance until 05.00hrs the following morning. She has been clamouring ever since for her ex-husband to 'tell the truth' about the infants' whereabouts, and has also been in contact with his brother and sister, Rafael and Catalina, believing they may hold information leading to finding the children. Ruth Ortiz is also said to have formally reported Bretón for 'psychological abuse' during their marriage, namely 'insults and humiliation', although there is said to have been no domestic violence involved. Laín and the prosecution service believe Ruth and José's father to be guilty of false imprisonment, or kidnap, of the kids whose mother had custody of them. They have tracked his mobile telephone calls and photographs taken on his handset, which they claim do not coincide with his version of events. Source : Think Spain

#Spain: Jeers For Spanish Nun In Baby Kidnapping Case.

An 80-year-old Spanish nun was jeered as she arrived in court this week, the first person to go before a judge over cases of babies allegedly stolen from their mothers during and after the Franco era.

Sr Maria Gomez Valbuena went before a judge investigating her role in the kidnapping of a newborn girl from a Madrid hospital three decades ago, one of thousands of cases of alleged theft of babies by nuns, priests and doctors.

Wearing the blue habit of her Sisters of Charity order, she refused to testify and left the court accompanied by another nun from her convent as police shielded her from the crush of reporters.

She was called to give evidence in the case of Maria Luisa Torres, a mother who has accused the nun of stealing her daughter shortly after she was born at the Santa Cristina hospital in Madrid in March 1982.

Ms Torres, 58, said that she accepted the nun’s offer to temporarily look after her newborn daughter until her economic situation improved but instead, Sr Maria gave the baby away to another family.

“I was still half asleep when I asked her where my daughter was. She told me: ‘Stop asking me that or else I will also take away your other daughter and you will go to jail for adultery’,” Ms Torres said.

“She was a nun and I thought she was untouchable,” she added when asked why she did not take action against Sr Maria at the time.

Ms Torres was reunited with her daughter Pilar last year following an investigation by a journalist.

The nun has been charged with illegal detention and falsifying documents.

As Sr Maria arrived at the court escorted by police, a woman who believes she was kidnapped as a newborn from the Santa Cristina hospital in 1957 yelled at the black car transporting the nun.

“It is shameful and on top of it all they protect her. I don’t even know who I am,” said 55-year-old Paloma Perez as the car drove by.

There are no firm figures for the number of children who were snatched from their mothers during General Francisco Franco’s 1939-75 dictatorship and up to the end of the 1980s.
Estimates range from hundreds to tens of thousands of victims of a practice that began as a policy to remove children whose “moral education” was considered at risk and allegedly developed into financial trafficking.

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120414/world/Jeers-for-Spanish-nun-in-baby-kidnapping-case.415407

#Spain #Bailout :Spains 10-year bond yield jumps above 6 percent as fears mount over bailout

 http://bit.ly/HVSIFt

#Menorca :Contrabandista Bar Run By Corrupt Ex Cop John Davidson !

With its offering of karaoke nights and quizzes alongside an Anglo-Mediterranean menu ranging from sole to chicken tikka, the Contrabandista bar and restaurant has been a popular spot for English-speaking tourists in Menorca.

Patrons remark on the attentiveness of the owner, John, to the needs of his customers, offering free appetisers where service is running late, and say they plan to visit again.

Indeed, for a tanned and relaxed John Davidson, the streets of south London have seemed a world away. It is more than 15 years since Mr Davidson stalked the capital's thoroughfares as Detective Sergeant John Davidson, a no-nonsense Scots-born cop with a 30-year record of catching criminals from cocaine dealers to wristwatch thieves.

But even now, DS Davidson’s actions while in the Metropolitan Police hang over him in his retirement home in the Balearics.

In recent years, the trail of individuals making their way to El Contrabandista or the Smugglers bar has occasionally included newspaper journalists and film crews seeking Mr Davidson’s response to claims from the highest levels of Scotland Yard that rather than being an honest thief-taker, he was prominent in a corrupt cabal of detectives operating out of an imposing police station in East Dulwich, south east London.

In particular, they have wanted to know his feelings on allegations that he played a corrupt role in the original Stephen Lawrence inquiry.

“Shrinking violet” is a term that no-one who knew Mr Davidson during his time carrying a warrant card would apply to him.

Known to his colleagues as “OJ” for “Obnoxious Jock”, he was renowned for his abrupt manner in a career which began in January 1968 when he joined the notoriously hard-bitten Glasgow City Police, later subsumed into Strathclyde Police. He joined the Met in June 1970 and stayed with Britain’s biggest force until his retirement in March 1998.

Former colleagues described him as “professional”, even “imposing”. But a rigorous examination of his conduct in the botched first Stephen Lawrence investigation by the Macpherson Inquiry came up with a different of adjectives - and views - to apply to the veteran detective.

Davidson had joined the investigation into the murder of the black teenager some 36 hours after the killing and performed numerous key roles, including the supervision of an important early witness, known as James Grant, who came forward with information that it had been carried out by members of a white gang calling themselves “the Krays”.

The Macpherson report, published in 1999 after Mr Davidson had spent three days in the witness box, was every bit as unvarnished in its assessment of the detective as he was in the habit of being with his interviewees.

Describing him as a “self-willed and abrasive officer” with a “strong, self-opinionated character” who was likely to dominate witnesses, the report criticised his handling of Mr Grant and other witnesses and found that he and others were guilty of “unwitting collective racism” in their handling of the investigation.

This hinged on Mr Davidson’s refusal in the witness box to accept that the attack on Stephen, who was chased by his killers calling “What - what nigger?”, was purely racist.

In his evidence, the detective said: “They were thugs who were out to kill, not particularly a black person, but anybody and I believe that to this day that that was thugs, not racism, just pure bloody-minded thuggery.”

Describing his attitude as “obdurate”, the report found that Mr Davidson had influenced junior colleagues to reach the same view and this had led to the wrong approach being taken by them towards the murder.

What the report did not find, however, was any evidence that Mr Davidson had tried to thwart the investigation, in particular because of any connection between him and Clifford Norris, the gangster father of David Norris, one of two men last month convicted of Stephen’s killing.

The clouds of suspicion first gathered over Mr Davidson after he left the flailing Lawrence investigation and joined the South East Regional Crime Squad (SERCS), the close-knit unit set up to tackle drug dealers and other gangsters in London and its surrounding counties.

According to Neil Putnam, the detective constable who became a friend of Mr Davidson and later his would-be nemesis as an anti-corruption supergrass, the Scots DS was “sponsored” onto the SERCS squad by another colleague.

Certainly the sense of camaraderie on the unit seems to have been strong. Mr Putnam said he had played for football team managed by Mr Davidson, who had also visited his home and even attended the Christening of his infant son.

Worries were also shared, with Mr Davidson confessing that he had concerns about paying his son’s school fees, according to Mr Putnam. Mr Davidson has denied that he was close friends with his former colleague.

This is perhaps unsurprising given that after his arrest in July 1998 by the Yard‘s CIB3 anti-corruption unit, Mr Putnam named Mr Davidson as his partner in a corrupt relationship with an informant, laying out three specific allegations of theft and profiteering.

* The two men shared the £250 profit from the sale of stolen Omega watches.
* In December 2004, Mr Putnam claimed Mr Davidson gave him £40-£50, describing it as “Sargey’s Christmas box”. It was allegedly a share of the proceeds from the sale of a seized haul of stolen electrical goods.
* In spring 1995, both men were involved in the stopping of a cocaine dealer in the car park of a Dulwich pub. Mr Putnam claimed he saw his colleague take a white carrier bag from the car holding a brick-shaped object. The following day, he said, he was presented with £500 in an envelope - his share of the proceeds.

Mr Davidson, who was arrested in September 1998 on the basis of Mr Putnam’s claims, denied the allegations and was never charged after prosecutors decided there was insufficient corroborating evidence.

In particular, Mr Davidson ferociously denies the claim which Mr Putnam insists he made to his CIB3 debriefers - and which the Yard insists he did not make - that he had admitted to taking money from Clifford Norris during the Stephen Lawrence investigation.

Although Mr Davidson was allowed to leave the Met in March 1998, he did not do so without question marks over his record.

In November 1995 he had been suspended while bizarre allegations were investigated that he and five others had been moonlighting as drivers and bodyguards in London for Reg Grundy, the Australian television tycoon behind the soap opera Neighbours.

It was alleged that the officers had carried out their freelance work on police time after telling their superiors that they were on court duty.

The disciplinary investigation remained unresolved after three of the officers reported sick and left the Met on the grounds of mental ill-health.

Mr Davidson, along with another colleague, was allowed to retire, leaving Britain in the - perhaps mistaken - belief that his past would not follow him.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/profile-detective-sergeant-john-davidson-7537552.html

#Noos :15 Questions and Answers on the Urdangarín Case.

http://atthespanishcourt.wordpress.com/category/corruption-scandal/