AN EYE FOR AN EYE ? DAWN AND ALEX HAVE NO FEAR OF THE POLICE

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In western society, criminals get away with all sorts of crimes. A proverbial "slap on the wrist" is the usual legal response to even the most heinous crimes.

 

Criminals laugh at the police and mock their victims openly. In my case, one of Dawn McSweeney's "partners in crime", Alex Lavergne, aka "The Ink". has had no hesitation about posting hate messages on my blogs, confident that the Montreal Police will do absolutely nothing about it. This is clearly based on the fact that the Montreal Police have repeatedly refused to take any action against Dawn McSweeney and the "partners in crime" in spite of the substantial, material evidence that I have presented to them.

 

On the other hand, Sharia law in the middle east has often demonstrated a cruel and brutal response to crimes, even those that western society might regard as trivial.

 

Canadians really have to get serious about changing our own laws to ensure that the punishment fits the crime without lowering society to a physical "eye for an eye".

 

My family has suffered day and night for more than thirteen years as a direct result of the crimes of Dawn McSweeney and her self-proclaimed "partners in crime." - and the complicity of the Montreal Police.

 

True justice requires that Dawn McSweeney receive a jail sentence that is appropriate for the terrible damage she has done to our family.

 

As a direct result of the robbery, our family was torn apart and the crime sent my parents to their graves after they were separated from their children and grandchildren for years by what Dawn McSweeney did. The suffering of the victims must be a major factor in deciding the sentencing of a criminal.

 

But under Canadian law today, Dawn McSweeney can continue to enjoy all the benefits of everything she stole. Today, she is writing poetry, practicing as a "yoga guru" in Montreal and she is about to embark on the study of Sanskrit. She can walk freely among civilized people without fear of the Montreal Police. They have been her accomplices from the moment I was attacked and I called 911 for help.

 

The Montreal Police I called to rescue me - helped the thief instead. And since then, the Montreal Police have continued to cover-up these crimes.

 

The governments of Montreal, Quebec and Canada refuse to do anything for Dawn McSweeney's victims who continue to suffer as a direct result of her malicious crimes.

 

Phyllis Carter

 

Meanwhile -

Saudi Arabia urged not to paralyze man as retribution punishment

By the CNN Wire Staff

August 21, 2010 4:18 a.m. EDT

(CNN) -- Amnesty International on Friday urged Saudi Arabian authorities not to paralyze a man as punishment for his having paralyzed someone else, allegedly during a fight.

The Saudi newspaper Okaz reported that the judge in the case had sent letters to several hospitals in Saudi Arabia asking if they could sever a man's spinal cord, as the man he allegedly stabbed had requested and, under sharia law, was his right to seek.

But such a punishment would amount "to nothing less than torture," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, acting director of the organization's Middle East and North Africa Programme. "While those guilty of a crime should be held accountable, intentionally paralyzing a man in this way would constitute torture, and be a breach of its international human rights obligations."

The paralyzed man, 22-year-old Abdul-Aziz al-Mitairy, told Okaz that the accused stabbed him in the back with a large knife during a fight more than two years ago. "The accused confessed to the crime in front of police, resulting in a general sentence of seven months," he told the newspaper.

During that time, the court in the northwest province of Tabuk debated how to carry out the surgery the paralyzed man was seeking as punishment for his alleged attacker, news reports said.

Riyadh's King Faisal Specialist Hospital, one of the kingdom's leading hospitals, responded that, from a medical perspective, it would not be possible for them to cause the injury by performing such surgery, Okaz reported.

But apparently at least one hospital said it would be possible. "According to one report, one hospital said it would be possible to medically administer the injury at the same place on the spinal cord as the damage the man is alleged to have caused his victim using a cleaver, during a fight more than two years ago, causing similar paralysis," Amnesty said in a news release.

It is up to the court to decide whether to impose the paralysis punishment or sentence the man to imprisonment, financial compensation, or flogging, it said.

The alleged attacker, who has not been identified publicly, "was convicted and sentenced following a trial where he was said to have had no legal assistance," Amnesty added.

International human rights law would consider such a sentence to be a violation of the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and to break the U.N. Convention Against Torture to which Saudi Arabia is a party, Amnesty said. It would also violate the principles of medical ethics adopted by the U.N. General Assembly, it said.

Other sentences of retribution in the kingdom have included eye-gouging, tooth extraction, and death in cases involving murder, it said.

International organizations are not the only ones to protest. Outrage has been expressed by bloggers in Saudi Arabia over the sentence, which underscores the societal struggle in Saudi Arabia between hardliners, who hew to tribal justice, and progressives, who consider such verdicts to be draconian and bad for the country's international image.

The fact that newspapers and bloggers are questioning decisions by courts -- institutions traditionally considered above reproach -- is a relatively recent phenomenon in Saudi Arabia, where other such sentences have captured international attention.

"This case in Saudi Arabia is not the only case of its kind," said Akbar Ahmed, a former commissioner of justice in Pakistan who is chairman of the department of Islamic Studies at American University in Washington. "We see many cases like this -- stoning or beheading or cutting off hands or feet in Iran, Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan, which are very tribal."

Under Islamic law, compassion is an important virtue for any judge, Ahmed said. "However harsh the punishment would be in tribal law, an eye for an eye, the compassion element that must be exercised by the judge overrides it, and I'm afraid we don't see much of that in cases like this where, very often, the victim becomes twice punished," he added.