分类： 其他平台
2013-11-05 15:35:52
Sentencing for the men Kabeer Hassan, Abdul Aziz, Abdul Rauf, Mohammed Sajid, Adil Khan, Abdul Qayyum, Mohammed Amin, Hamid Safi and a 59yearold man who cannot be named for legal reasons begins Wednesday.
"The details of the offenses that we have heard in this trial in the last few weeks have shocked and appalled us all," said Nazi Afzal, chief crown prosecutor for the North West Area.
Greater Manchester Police Assistant Chief Constable Steve Heywood denied that the case was about race.
"It is not a racial issue," he said. "This is about adults preying on vulnerable young children."
But race was repeatedly brought to the fore as the case progressed.
Far right groups such as the English Defence League and the British National Party led protests shortly after the trial began Feb. 6. The father of one victim told the court he joined the BNP after learning of what had happened to his daughter.
The trial also was delayed after two nonwhite lawyers representing some of the men were attacked by farright protesters and quit the case.
Muslim leaders condemned the crime and praised the bravery of the victims for coming forward.
"These criminals have brought shame on themselves, their families and our community," said Mohammed Shafiq of the Ramadhan Foundation, one of Britain largest Muslim organizations.
British law prohibits publishing the names of sexcrime victims. The Associated Press also generally does not name victims of sexual assault.
During the trial, one girl described how she was forced to sleep with 20 men in a night. Another was raped by two men while so drunk that she was vomiting during the ordeal. The sex ring used another girl, dubbed the "honeymonster," to lure other girls into the ring.
"They ripped away all my dignity and all my last bit of selfesteem," one victim said. "By the end of it, I had no emotion."
Both the Crown Prosecution Service and police apologized for not taking the first victim case to trial earlier.
It was Afzal who overturned the initial decision and decided to file charges against the men that girl had accused.
"The witness was entirely credible," he said. "To put it bluntly, the original decision was wrong."
Tuesday convictions bore similarities to a large investigation into a sex ring in the East Midlands that wrapped up in November 2010.
Several men of South Asian descent were convicted of rape and other sexual offenses for preying on vulnerable girls, aged 13 to 20 years old, by plying them with alcohol and forcing them to have sex.、
11 with appeal for tolerance
WASHINGTON President Barack Obama appealed to an unsettled nation Saturday to honor the memory of the Sept. 11 attacks by hewing to the values of diversity and tolerance. "It was not a religion that attacked us that September day it was alQaida, a sorry band of men which perverts religion."His comments came on a Sept. 11 anniversary unlike others. Terry Jones called off his widely denounced plans to burn copies of the Quran, but damage was already done. "To stay true to who we are, as Americans; to renew our sense of common purpose; to say that we define the character of our country, and we will not let the acts of some small band of murderers who slaughter the innocent and cower in caves distort who we are."Obama did not mention the New York City mosque, or the Florida pastor, but his message was clear. "We champion the rights of every American, including the right to worship as one chooses as service members and civilians from many faiths do just steps from here, at the very spot where the terrorists struck this building," he said. 11 as a day of service to others, and he participated himself by traveling to the Ronald H. Brown Middle School in northeast Washington to take part in Armed Services YMCA: Operation Kid Comfort.
