> 19 years’ jail for child rape

PUTRAJAYA: “The child did not fabricate evidence to implicate you in the crime. We do not doubt her testimony.”

This was the immediate remark of judge Datuk T. Selventhiranathan soon after the Court of Appeal confirmed the 19 1/2-year jail sentence on Mat Saad Md Isa for rape and forcing a child to perform oral sex.

Mat Saad, 64, who was unrepresented, vehemently told the court that the prosecution did not adduce eyewitness evidence that he committed the acts.

Selventhiranathan, who is a High Court judge but co-opted to the Court of Appeal to hear the case, said evidence also showed that Mat Saad promised the girl RM5 and presented her a pair of shoes so that she would not tell others about the incidents.

Judge Datuk Heliliah Mohd Yusof and Datuk Sulaiman Daud were the other judges who sat with Selventhiranathan to dismiss Mat Saad’s appeal.

Mat Saad, a former Kuala Lumpur City Hall labourer, had been charged with raping the girl, then nine, at a settlement in Segambut some time in December 2001, and forcing her to perform oral sex on Dec 16, 2001.

The Sessions Court, after a trial, found him guilty of both offences and sentenced Mat Saad to 19 years and six months’ jail for rape.

He was also sentenced to four-and-half years’ jail for the second offence, the sentences to run concurrently.

Mat Saad was free on bail pending appeal to the High Court which on July 25 last year upheld the conviction and sentence of the lower court.

He began his jail term but filed an appeal to the Court of Appeal. Deputy public prosecutor Tetralina Ahmed Fauzi said the girl’s evidence was corroborated by the testimony of a doctor and her mother to conclude that the sexual abuse took place.

> Shooter had child porn

19 June 2009

WASHINGTON - CHILD pornography was found on a computer belonging to the white supremacist charged with shooting and killing a security guard at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the FBI said in court documents.

Agents found the material on a desktop computer seized from the apartment in nearby Maryland where 88-year-old James von Brunn lived with his son and son’s fiancee, FBI Special Agent Ronald Farnsworth said in an affidavit filed on Wednesday to support a search warrant.

Investigators searched the home last Thursday, taking more than 30 items, including ammunition, computers, thumb drives, CDs, memory cards, cell phones and videos.

Authorities will analyse who had access to the computer to determine whether the pornography was von Brunn’s, or if it could have belonged to someone else, prosecutors said. No decisions on charges have been made.

The documents did not say what form the pornography was in, or how much of it was there.

In separate documents filed on Wednesday, the FBI said it found 35 rounds of .22-calibre ammunition in a search last Thursday of von Brunn’s car, which was parked outside the Washington, DC, museum during the shooting a day earlier.

Investigators said they also found a notebook in the car with handwritten notes saying, ‘The Holocaust is a lie. Obama was created by Jews. Obama does what his Jew owners tell him to do. Jews captured America’s money. Jews control the mass media.’

Von Brunn faces murder charges in the death of Stephen T. Johns and remains hospitalised after being hit in the face by guards who returned fire.

The FBI has said he is likely to survive. — AP

> Colombia calls off hunt for drugs hippo

Colombia has called off the hunt to kill a drug lord’s escaped hippo, and will instead try to relocate the animal.

The drug-hippo climbdown came after its mate was shot dead by order of the government, sparking outrage from animal rights groups.

The giant animals were imported from Africa by late cocaine king Pablo Escobar and put in his zoo. They escaped in 2006 to live in the wild near the Magdalena river in northern Colombia, causing concerns about local public safety.

Colombia was shocked last Friday when photographs were published of the dead hippo, named Pepe, and by news that the hunt was still on for his mate, ‘Matilda’.

Matilda had given birth to a calf in the wild.

Bogota-based beer company Bavaria offered to bring in animal protection experts from South Africa and Tanzania to find the best way to care for the surviving hippo and her calf.

‘We have accepted Bavaria’s offer. The hunt is off,’ a spokeswoman for Colombia’s Environment Ministry told Reuters on Wednesday. ‘The idea is to relocate the animals.’

Scores of protesters picketed ministry offices in Bogota on Tuesday, objecting to what they called the ‘death sentence’ handed down against the hippos.

Pepe was killed by a .375 caliber round through his heart. It was a fate not unlike that of Escobar, who controlled most of the world’s cocaine supply before being gunned down by police on a Medellin rooftop in 1993.

He was so flush with cash in the 1980s that he flew in hundreds of exotic animals, including kangaroos, elephants, rhinos and nine hippos.

The African zoologists will also study what to do with the two dozen hippos still living at the site of Escobar’s zoo, called Hacienda Napoles in the northern province of Antioquia.

‘The experts, once they are here on the ground, can help with our effort at finding the best possible place for these animals to live, either inside or outside Colombia,’ said a statement issued by the Environment Ministry.

Most of the other animals imported by Escobar, seen by Colombians as symbols of his power and extravagance, were given to local public zoos after his death.