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	UN expert to visit US to discuss respect for human rights in war on terrorism by Special Rapporteur Martin Scheinin United Nations News   16 January 2007   An independent United Nations expert on safeguarding human rights while fighting terrorism is to visit the United States this spring at the invitation of its Government for wide-ranging discussions to help ensure that US counter-terrorism laws and practices respect human rights and fundamental freedoms.   The Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, Martin Scheinin, welcomed the Government’s decision to invite him following a request he made in October, when he said the US Military Commissions Act (MCA) violated the country’s international obligations under human rights laws in several areas.   These included the right to challenge detention and see exculpatory evidence and he specifically cited the President’s power to declare anyone, including US citizens, without charge an ‘unlawful enemy combatant’ subject to the jurisdiction of a military commission.   He noted that the MCA denies non-US citizens, including legal permanent residents, in US custody the right to challenge the legality of their detention by filing a writ of habeas corpus.   An added concern was that other Governments may view aspects of the legislation as an example to follow in their own national counter-terrorism legislation, as the US has taken a lead role on countering terrorism since the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, he stressed.   Mr. Scheinin said then that he would also like to discuss other rights concerns such as the Patriot Act, immigration laws and policies, secret detention centres, rendition flights to countries where detainees might face torture, breaches of non-refoulement (deportation) and the denial of extra-territorial human rights obligations.   In a statement issued in Geneva today, Mr. Scheinin proposed the second half of May for his visit. “I look forward to having an open and constructive dialogue with the Government, the judiciary, lawyers, security and law enforcement personnel, non-government organizations, civil society and all other relevant actors in order to study and discuss US counter terrorism laws, policies and practices,” he said.   “I intend to examine, in depth, issues regarding the detention, arrest and trial of terrorist suspects and the rights of victims of terrorism or persons negatively impacted by counter terrorism measures.   “I also aim to identify effective measures of preventing and countering terrorism and to formulate pertinent conclusions and concrete recommendations with the objective of helping to ensure respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms in the fight against terrorism,” he added.
	Monstrous Child Killings outrage India"s Poor by Mian Ridge The Age   Delhi. January 13, 2007   Rakesh Kanojia last saw his little sister, Jyoti, on June 21, 2005. The 10-year-old child went out to buy some embroidery with which to decorate her dress. She never came home.   On December 29, Jyoti"s sandals and pieces of her clothing were found in the drain of a nearby house in Noida, a suburb of New Delhi - along with the remains of 17 children and young women.   Rakesh, the 17-year-old son of a local fisherman, said news of the terrible discovery had devastated his parents. "My father started crying and my mother fell unconscious."   The owner of the house where the bodies were found, Mohinder Singh Pandher, and his servant, Surender Kohli, were promptly arrested. They remain in police custody.   Lurid tales of what may have happened inside the "house of horrors", as local media have dubbed Pandher"s whitewashed villa, have compounded the Kanojias grief.   Sexual depravity and a trade in organs have been cited by police as possible motives for the murders, while newspapers have reported that cannibalism may have prompted the killings.   Rumours that the victims had been cut up with surgical precision and found without their torsos have led to speculation that they were murdered for their body parts. "We cannot rule out the organ trade," Noida police chief R. K. S. Rathore told The Age, saying that there was no significant evidence of such activities.   On Tuesday, another bone was found near the house. "It was from a different drain, nearby; we do not know whether it belongs to a further victim or is part of one of the others," Mr Rathore said.   If the bone is that of an 18th victim, it will not surprise locals. In the past two years as many as 40 people, mostly children, have disappeared from Nithari, an old village tucked away behind the smart, tree-lined street in which Pandher and Kohli lived. Locals say that until the discovery of the bodies, police had ignored reports of Nithari"s missing children. But when their bodies were identified, all victims were found to have come from the village.   The case has caused an outcry in India over poor people"s access to justice. Most Nithari residents are migrants from West Bengal who work in Noida as maids and cooks. In the middle of a suburb known for its nightclubs, call centres and cash, Nithari is a run-down warren of tiny thatched huts where families live alongside cows, chickens and donkeys, and cow dung fuel bricks dry in the winter sun.   Everywhere in Nithari there are tales of missing children. "My neighbour"s five-year-old son, Satinder, disappeared on 27 April, 2005," said a woman named Savrati, as she crouched in the door of her one-room hut, kneading dough.   Armed police keep guard at the front of the sealed-off house. Earlier in the week, furious Nithari residents stormed the house and pelted police and neighbouring houses with stones.   Since then, efforts have been made to placate them. Six policemen have been sacked for their handling of the murders. The victims families have been given plots of land and money. Perhaps most significantly, on Wednesday the case was handed over to India"s federal investigating agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation. Experts say it will handle the case more swiftly and efficiently than local police.   Local officials have also sworn to change the way missing children are dealt with, by keeping a proper record of each in every police station.   But the case has highlighted a national problem: nearly 45,000 children are recorded as missing in India every year. Few are traced, and if Nithari is anything to go by, the real number is much higher. At the police station in Noida, desperate parents - "hundreds, from all over India", says a policewoman - have arrived in the hope of raising awareness of their loss.
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