..
Croydon teacher jailed for trying to rape young boy and
abused another in 3 years of horrific abuse
Muhammad Asgar had attempted to rape one of his victims and left him
with long-lasting psychological trauma
My London
Holly Evans
Muhammad Asgar has been jailed for 10 years for sexually abusing a teenager and a child (Image: Met Police)
A Croydon religious teacher has been jailed for sexually abusing two boys over a three-year period. Muhammad Asgar, 68, targeted the two boys leaving them with 'severe psychological harm'.
Despite denying the charges, Asgar, who worked as a Quran teacher at Croydon Mosque & Islamic Centre, was convicted by a jury of attempted rape as well as four counts of sexual assault. Appearing today (March 3) at Croydon Crown Court, he was jailed for 10 years for the horrific offences.
But, surely, he was teaching then the Quran!!!?
Jurors heard that the abuse had taken place over a three year period with his first victim being subjected to several incidents with Asgar forcibly kissing him and putting his tongue in his mouth.
Muhammad Asgar has been jailed at Croydon Crown Court (Image: David Cook)
He would also get his victim to sit on his lap and would position him over the sofa to rub his erect penis against him. On one occasion, he attempted to rape the teenager by pulling down his underpants and bending him over the arm of the sofa.
His second victim, who was under the age of 13, was also sexually abused in his own home before he was reported to the police. In his impact statement, his first victim said that he had been left struggling to trust people and had struggled with the “huge disruption” to his education.
He said: “The incidents that occurred, despite the attempt to suppress the memories and feeling, unfortunately affected my life in different ways. They had an effect on my mental state especially at the time of my A-levels. I felt unmotivated to do anything and wanted to keep to myself.”
The court heard that the victim had suffered “severe psychological harm” and that both of his victims had been “particularly vulnerable” due to their age. Despite being convicted, Asgar maintained his innocence with his defence lawyer stressing that his “previous good character and reputation had been destroyed”.
That makes it sound like it was the boy's fault that his reputation was destroyed.
Asgar, of Goldwell Road, Thornton Heath, has been jailed for 10 years and has been the subject of an indefinite sexual harm prevention order. He was also acquitted of four further charges including attempted rape and three counts of sexual assault on a child under 13.
German ISIS bride who chained up five-year-old Yazidi slave girl
in the sun and let her die of thirst for wetting the bed faces tough
new sentence as court overturns 'too lenient' ten-year jail term
By CHRISTIAN OLIVER
PUBLISHED: 10:05 EDT, 9 March 2023 | UPDATED: 10:26 EDT, 9 March 2023
Daily Mail
Germany's top court on Thursday ordered a new sentencing hearing for a German ISIS member who was given 10 years in prison for her involvement in the death of a five-year-old Yazidi slave girl.
Jennifer Wenisch joined ISIS in Iraq and allowed the young girl to die of thirst after she was chained up in the sun for wetting the bed in August 2015.
She and her then husband, an ISIS fighter, had bought the young Yazidi girl and her mother as household slaves.
The initial sentencing that saw her jailed for 10 years in 2021 was considered too lenient by the German public prosecutor.
The 31-year-old defendant, originally from Lohne in Lower Saxony, now risks a higher sentence.
Jennifer Wenisch, originally from Lohne in Lower Saxony, joined ISIS in Iraq and allowed the young girl
to die of thirst after she was chained up in the sun
Germany's Federal Court of Justice threw out an appeal by the woman - who the court identified only as Jennifer W. in line with the nation's privacy rules - but partly approved an appeal by prosecutors.
The court overturned the sentence on Thursday, though not the rest of the verdict, and sent the case back to the Munich state court for a new decision.
The woman was convicted in October 2021 of, among other things, two counts of crimes against humanity through enslavement, in one case resulting in death, being an accessory to attempted murder and membership in a terrorist organization abroad.
The federal court found that Munich judges erred in sentencing the woman for a 'less severe case' of crimes against humanity and overlooked aggravating circumstances.
German law allows for a life sentence in cases where a defendant's actions result in a person's death.
At the trial in Munich, prosecutors accused the woman of standing by as her then husband chained the young Yazidi girl in a courtyard and left her to die of thirst. The court found that she did nothing to help the girl, although doing so would have been 'possible and reasonable.'
She was taken into custody while trying to renew her identity papers at the German Embassy in Ankara in 2016, and deported to Germany.
Her former husband, an Iraqi citizen who was identified only as Taha Al-J., was convicted by a Frankfurt court in November 2021 of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and bodily harm resulting in death. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
The girl's mother, who survived captivity, testified at both trials.
Following her conversion to Islam, Wenisch was recruited by the terrorist organisation in mid-2015 to the group's self-styled hisbah morality police. She patrolled city parks in IS-occupied Fallujah and Mosul, armed with an AK-47 assault rifle, a pistol, and an explosives vest.
She was tasked by the group to ensure strict IS rules on dress code, public behaviour, and bans on alcohol and tobacco.
In January 2016, she visited the German embassy in Ankara to apply for new identity papers. When she left the mission, she was arrested and extradited days later to Germany.
Wenisch's initial trial began in April 2019, and is one of the first examples of court proceedings over the Islamic State group's brutal treatment of Yazidis.
A Kurdish-speaking group hailing from northern Iraq, the Yazidis were specifically targeted and oppressed by the jihadists beginning in 2015.
London-based human rights lawyer Amal Clooney - who was involved in a campaign for ISIS crimes against the Yazidi community to be recognised as a 'genocide' - was part of the team representing the Yazidi girl's mother.
Germany has charged several German and foreign nationals with war crimes and crimes against humanity carried out abroad, using the legal principle of universal jurisdiction which allows crimes to be prosecuted even if they were committed in a foreign country.
=====================================================================================
Divorced Afghan women forced back to abusive ex-husband
Luana Sarmini-Buonaccorsi, Aysha Safi and Estelle Emonet
5 March 2023·
Agence France Presse
Abused for years by her ex-husband who broke all of her teeth, Marwa has retreated into hiding with her eight children after Taliban commanders tore up her divorce.
Marwa was one of a small number of women who, under the previous US-backed government, were granted a legal separation in Afghanistan, where women have next to no rights and domestic abuse is endemic.
When Taliban forces swept into power in 2021, her husband claimed he had been forced into the divorce and commanders ordered her back to his clutches.
"My daughters and I cried a lot that day," Marwa, 40, whose name has been changed for her own protection, told AFP.
"I said to myself, 'Oh God, the devil has returned'."
The Taliban government adheres to an austere interpretation of Islam and has imposed severe restrictions on women's lives that the United Nations called "gender-based apartheid".
It's more like gender-based slavery.
Lawyers told AFP that several women have reported being dragged back into abusive marriages after Taliban commanders annulled their divorces.
For months Marwa endured a new round of beatings, locked away in the house, with her hands broken and fingers cracked.
"There were days when I was unconscious, and my daughters would feed me," she said.
"He used to pull my hair so hard that I became partly bald. He beat me so much that all my teeth have broken."
Gathering the strength to leave, she fled hundreds of kilometres (miles) to a relative's house with her six daughters and two sons, who have all assumed fictitious names.
"My children say, 'Mother, it's okay if we are starving. At least we have got rid of the abuse'," said Marwa, sitting on the cracked floor of her bare home, clasping a string of prayer beads.
"Nobody knows us here, not even our neighbours," she said, fearing her husband would discover her.
- 'Islam permits divorce' -
In Afghanistan nine in 10 women will experience physical, sexual or psychological violence from their partner, according to the UN's mission in the country.
Divorce, however, is often more taboo than the abuse itself and the culture remains unforgiving to women who part with their husbands.
Under the previous US-backed government, divorce rates were steadily rising in some cities, where the small gains in women's rights were largely limited to education and employment.
Women once blamed their fate for whatever happened to them, said Nazifa, a lawyer who successfully handled around 100 divorce cases for abused women but is no longer permitted to work in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
As awareness grew, women realised that separating from abusive husbands was possible.
"When there is no harmony left in a husband and wife relationship, even Islam permits a divorce," explained Nazifa, who only wanted to give her first name.
Under the ousted regime, special family courts with women judges and lawyers were established to hear such cases, but the Taliban authorities have made their new justice system an all-male affair.
Nazifa told AFP that five of her former clients have reported being in the same situation as Marwa.
Another lawyer, who did not want to be identified, told AFP she recently witnessed a court case where a woman was fighting against being forcefully reunited with her ex-husband.
She added that divorces under the Taliban government are limited to when a husband was a classified drug addict or has left the country.
"But in cases of domestic violence or when a husband does not agree to a divorce, then the court is not granting them," she said.
A nationwide network of shelters and services that once supported women has almost entirely collapsed, while the Ministry of Women's Affairs and the Human Rights Commission have been erased.
- 'Knock on the door' -
Sana was 15 when she married her cousin, 10 years older than her.
"He would beat me if our baby cried or the food was not good," she said as she prepared tea on a gas stove at a home where she has been living in secret.
"He used to say that a woman does not have the right to talk."
With the help of a free legal service project she won a divorce from her husband in court -- but her relief was shattered when Taliban commanders came knocking.
Threatened with losing custody of her four daughters, she returned to her ex-husband who by then had also married another woman.
She escaped after he announced the engagement of her daughters to Taliban members.
"My daughters said, 'Mother, we will commit suicide'," Sana said.
She was able to gather some money and escape with her children, and with the help of a relative found a one-room house, furnished only with a gas stove and some cushions for sleeping.
"Whenever there's a knock on the door, I fear that he's found me and come to take the kids away."
- Ordeal for children -
A Taliban official told AFP the authorities would look into such cases where previously divorced women were being forced to return to their ex-husbands.
"If we receive such complaints, we will investigate them according to sharia," said Inayatullah, spokesman for the Taliban supreme court, who like many Afghans goes by one name.
When asked whether the Taliban regime would acknowledge divorces granted under the previous government, he said: "This is an important and complex issue."
"The Dar al-Ifta is looking into it. When it arrives at a uniform decision, then we will see," he said, referring to a court-affiliated institution that issues rulings on sharia.
For Marwa and her daughters, who survive by sewing clothes, the trauma has left deep psychological wounds.
"I'm afraid I won't be able to get them married," said Marwa, looking at her daughters.
"They tell me, 'Mother, watching how bad your life has been, we hate the word husband'."
No comments:
Post a Comment