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World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk

Ukraine crisis: uncertainty after Yanukovych signs deal - live updates

Posted: 22 Feb 2014 01:33 AM PST

Vacuum in Kiev as the presidential palace is vacated and security forces leave the streets

Conal Urquhart

Bali: Return Economy – review

Posted: 22 Feb 2014 01:32 AM PST

It's closer to Perth than Sydney: and the complicated relationship between Australia and Bali is explored in an intriguing exhibition

Van Badham

Syrian child refugees find light relief skiing in Kurdish mountains of Iraq

Posted: 22 Feb 2014 01:01 AM PST

Spanish ski instructor Igor Urizar set up scheme to bring children from refugee camps to help cope with the trauma of war

No one here has heard of the Sochi Winter Olympics, but the snow conditions are perfect in the Kurdish mountains of Iraq and 11-year-old Syrian refugee Hassan Khishman is thrilled to glide on skis for the first time.

"It's brought back the good times with friends in Syria," he says after sliding down a tiny slope.

The mountain village Penjwin on the Iranian border, around 185 miles (300km) north-east of Baghdad, was a major hub for refugees fleeing Saddam Hussein's campaigns. Smugglers' mule caravans still cross the rugged border valleys, and mines continue to be a threat.

The area where locals ski has been carefully chosen to avoid cruel surprises, and for some children like Hassan, the slopes have been a happy surprise.

They have been brought here from refugee camps at the initiative of ski instructor Igor Urizar, a Spaniard who set up Iraq's first ski school, to help them escape the bitter memory of war.

"We fled Syria because of the war. There were many among us who died, and the food became very expensive," says Hassan, who left his native town of Hasakah and crossed the border almost a year ago.

He now lives in the Arbad refugee camp in Sulaymaniya province, 160 miles north-east of Baghdad. It is one of six refugee settlements in the Kurdish autonomous region.

According to the UN, more than 200,000 Syrian refugees have taken shelter in Iraq's stable northern region. Huddled in tents, theyare facing one of the coldest winters ever recorded there.

Helin Kaseer is three years older than Hassan and could identify those who forced her family to flee the Kurdish village of Girke Lege.

"We left Syria eight months ago because of the growing presence of Islamists in our area. There was a lot of fighting and several of my friends were kidnapped, so we couldn't go to school," she says.

For her, too, the chance to ski has come as a huge surprise. She wishes there were more opportunities because "many more children from the camp wanted to come, but did not get the chance".

Urizar, 38, explains why the other children had to be left out.

"We have just enough equipment for a few dozen. Besides, getting the necessary permission for them to leave the camp for just one day has been a real nightmare," he says.

Before his first visit to Penjwin in 2010, Urizar was a ski instructor in the Basque region of Navarra, where every year about 5,000 schoolchildren enjoy a week of skiing in the Pyrenees.

With the support of the Tigris Association, a Basque-Kurdish NGO, his dream of exporting this project to the Kurdish mountains seems to be on the right track.

Local villagers and government officials are thrilled with Iraq's first ski school and the second set up in Ranya, 270 miles north-east of Baghdad.

Falah Salah, Tigris's local co-ordinator, has ensured that the project continues for a second year with the personal backing of Hero Khan, the wife of the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani.

Salah is planning to run for the Iraqi parliament in elections in April, so he is passing on the baton to Khalid Mohamad Qadir, the head of Penwjin's youth centre.

"Three years ago, Tigris invited us to the Pyrenees to check the possibilities of cross-country skiing as part of sustainable development," Qadir says, as he tries to manage a group of anxious children waiting for their turn.

"Over the past two years, the Roncal valley ski school has trained young Kurds who are now teaching a growing number of visitors in our area. Most of them are Kurdish, but we have recently had people from France and Holland too," he says.

After putting on his boots over three pairs of socks, Mohamed Ibrahim is ready. The 13-year-old native of Tirbespiye, 370 miles north-east of Damascus, smiles but says that nothing can help him forget what he witnessed in Syria.

"The jihadists began to harass and kill us in our area. There was no food, no oil. So we left at the first opportunity to escape. I've never been so scared in my life," he says.

As the children get on to the bus that will take them back to their camp as the sun sets behind the snow-capped peaks, Urizar seems relaxed. It has been a hectic and stressful week as a result of bureaucratic hurdles and a forecast of rain, which thankfully proved wrong.

"I cannot help thinking that these kids will have to sleep in those tents again," says Urizar, drying the skis before putting them away.

"I only hope that they will be able to do this again, or any other activity that helps bring back their childhood, even if it is just for a few hours."


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Lucy Mangan: my life's one long guilt trip

Posted: 22 Feb 2014 01:01 AM PST

My prime motivating force, the engine that powers all else, is guilt. The Catholics have their weekly absolution. Isn't it about time the rest of us had a secular alternative?

I'm currently reading The Dark Box: Confession In The Catholic Church, partly because I'm always up for a dose of Catholic history (it's the maddest sort there is) and partly because the only element of my parents' devoutly Catholic upbringing I have ever envied them is the weekly ritual of confession.

I don't know about you, but I run on guilt. I feel bad about everything, from little things such as not laying socks properly flat on the radiator to dry to opening an extra tab on my computer (yes, really. It's something to do with only using your fair share, even of an infinite, cost-free resource. Listen, the whole problem is that I don't make the rules, OK?), and work outwards from there.

Sure, other things come into play now and again: the need to earn money, or… Actually, no, that's it. But my prime motivating force, the engine that powers all else, is guilt. You don't have to be Catholic, of course, to suffer the same fate (though if my anecdotal evidence gleaned from nearly four decades' membership of a family of mentally-convulsing freaks is anything to go by, it does help). It's a temperamental thing. And for those of us who are daily wearied by the ever-accumulating burden it brings, the idea of having somewhere to go every Sunday to be absolved of all your sins (perceived and unperceived, just in case you overlooked something – what catch-all bliss!); and being ascribed a penance has a charm all its own. Just once, I'd like to feel fully shriven, like the bedragoned Eustace in The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader, after Aslan scores through his scaly hide and tears it off to leave him standing there "smooth and soft as a peeled switch", and free.

We need to develop a secular alternative. "I can see it now," Toryboy says – and I won't lie (can you imagine the internal contortions if I did?), there is something faintly contemptuous about his tone. "Queues of liberals outside a recycled cardboard confessional in a community centre. 'Forgive me, Father/Mother/Caregiver of either or indeterminate gender, for when somebody made a joke at my dinner table about immigrants, I did not fully ascertain that it was meant meta-ironically before I laughed; nor did I later offset the carbon I emitted while doing so.' 'Write four articles on intersectionality and walk to Waitrose with organic peas in your shoes, while checking your privilege as penance,' your soggy, proportionally represented elected excuse for a father confessor will say. 'And forgive me for being in a position to forgive you.' God almighty. Who art in heaven, actually, and is much better."

You would think that being an atheist would be liberating, but in fact it doesn't make sense. If you believe that there is no god, and that religion is an agglomeration of useful traditions and practices that has evolved to manage our desires and fears, then paralysing panic when these are stripped from you by the rational parts of your brain are entirely logical responses.

"All you need is someone bigger to shout loudly at you," Toryboy says. "Which works out very well for me." I hope he's right. Then maybe the only thing I'll feel bad about is the fact that I don't feel worse.

Lucy Mangan

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The Academy of St Martin in the Fields – review

Posted: 21 Feb 2014 11:39 PM PST

A night featuring a solo by the young violinist Michael Barenboim underlined the Academy's worldwide reputation for musical excellence, writes Alex Needham

Alex Needham

Charlotte Dawson's great strengths were personality, intelligence and work ethic

Posted: 21 Feb 2014 11:36 PM PST

The sudden death of the model and television personality brought up memories of her good times, and her desperate lows.

Flood insurance is Cockermouth's problematic legacy from 2009

Posted: 21 Feb 2014 11:01 PM PST

After the damaging floods of 2009, the homes and businesses of Cockermouth have had widely differing experiences

How can you find flood insurance? "It's the first thing people ask when looking at a property in the town," says Colin Eccles of estate agent PFK. "Was it flooded in 2009 and would I as the buyer be able to obtain flood insurance?"

Alongside the dreadful weather, home and business insurance has fast become a major topic of conversation in Cockermouth, with residents reporting very different experiences.

While some shops are still getting affordable cover, for others the price has become too steep. Local broker Philip Jackson, the town's main commercial insurance broker, said the market has "hardened dramatically" in recent years, and that many of the town's shops are in effect stuck with their existing insurer. In some cases they have had to opt for no flood cover because it was too expensive, he says.

It has been a similar, rather mixed position for householders. Sue Cashmore, who lives in the Gote area of the town, and is the chair of the Cockermouth Flood Action Group, says some homes including hers have in effect become uninsurable. She's uniquely placed to know, having been flooded three times between 2005 and 2009.

"I can't get affordable flood cover and only one firm would offer general cover, and that was via a specialist broker, Towergate. I'm paying £52 a month for a two-bed mid terraced home, which is a lot given there's no flood cover."

She says other Cockermouth residents have had mixed experiences finding household cover – some are still getting affordable cover, while other can't – depending on their original insurer. They say firms such as Axa will not offer affordable cover after it picked up a large bill following the 2009 floods, while the Co-op has been quite amenable.

"The companies say they are committed to offering cover but it's not uncommon for the firm to offer cover but at a price of £2,000 a year, which for most people means no cover. Excesses have gone up too in other cases. I am aware of one house in which the excess for flooding is £20,000."

This was certainly borne out when Guardian Money spoke to residents this week. No one wanted to be quoted directly but some residents in former flooded homes reported being offered continuous cover, while their neighbours had been declined.

This is somewhat at odds with what the government and the Association of British Insurers has been saying. They have agreed a memorandum of understanding on how to develop a not-for-profit scheme – Flood Re – that would make sure flood insurance remains widely affordable and available. This follows the statement of principles that had been running since 2000, but expired pending a new deal.

Under the terms of the Flood Re deal, which is expected to come into force next year, insurers will be expected to cap premiums. However, the expiry of the statement of principles has in effect allowed the insurers to sharply increase premiums, while maintaining the pretence of offering cover. Small businesses and those in large houses – band H for council tax – as well as anyone living in a flood-prone home built since 2009 will not be covered by the new deal. For everyone else the Association of British Insurance says there will be a cap on the flood insurance element of home policies of £210 a year for properties in council tax bands A and B, rising to £540 a year for band G. The premiums will go to a central fund and be used to pay out claims to any insurer. In theory, some people could see their costs go down once the cap comes into force, although this seems unlikely.

Small business owners are understandably very annoyed they are not being included in the scheme. Most of the businesses in Cockermouth would not have survived the flooding incident had they not been insured, and the high street would now be a ghost town.

Despite that, the insurance question has not stopped people buying houses in the flood affected areas of the town. The number of "sold" boards outside homes this week appear to confirm this.

One man who has not been put off buying a house in the town is Gerry Woodcock. The retired HR director recently moved to a property within a stone's throw of the Derwent river, which was badly flooded back in 2009, but has since been restored.

"The first thing we did before we put in an offer was to establish in writing that we could get flood insurance. None of the big firms such as Lloyds Bank would touch us, but a broker who knew the area was able to find us affordable cover. I can't remember the exact cost, but it's manageable. We wanted to be in the town and to us it's worth the risk because we like the town. If we get flooded we'll just deal with it. You could go under a bus tomorrow," he says.

Miles Brignall

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After the flood: time to rebuild shattered lives

Posted: 21 Feb 2014 10:59 PM PST

The people of Cockermouth are an inspiration to a nation looking to recover from the devastation of the recent flooding

Spend a few minutes walking around Cockermouth in Cumbria and the first thing that strikes you are the many signs that adorn the sides of buildings showing the extraordinary height the flood water reached back in 2009.

But the second thing visitors will notice is how vibrant the high street is. The road is lined with smartly painted, almost entirely independently owned stores, all enjoying brisk half-term trade. Coffee shops vie for custom alongside smart delis, bakeries and an amazing number of shoe shops. And there is no shortage of people hovering in front of estate agency windows – clearly wondering if they can afford to move to such a bustling place. It's a sharp contrast to other nearby towns – and indeed most other high streets in market towns across the UK.

What makes this scene of prosperity all the more remarkable is that just over four years ago, the main high street was between five and six feet under a torrent of water – water that flowed so fast that engineers feared many of the north-east Cumbrian town's Grade l and ll listed buildings would not survive.

Vans lifted by the rising waters from car parks as the flood washed through the town in November 2009 were found several miles downstream in the Derwent river. Many of the shop owners in what is one of the UK's more remote areas, feared their livelihoods were ruined.

"At the time it was dreadful, shocking, but once the water had gone we soon realised we had a choice. We could either give up and just wait for someone to help us, or we could get together and put the town back together," says Jonty Chippendale, who runs the town's toy shop, and is a former chair of Cockermouth's Chamber of Trade.

Many in Cockermouth's business community now feel that the floods of 2009, while devastating at the time, have been the making of today's town. The community came together (residents like to talk of "Cumbrian spirit"), £4.5m has been spent on the latest flood defences, and virtually every shop on the town's main street has received an expensive makeover.

Today it boasts almost full shop occupancy, and if the queen of shops, Mary Portas, has not been there yet for inspiration, she should.

But behind the new facades, problems remain in obtaining affordable insurance, and residents report a mixed experience of getting cover – despite the extensive flood defence improvements. Businesses in particular are angry that they are being left out of the government's deal with insurers to guarantee flood cover remains in place – and some simply can't afford to pay the premiums being demanded.

Unlike the recent floods seen in Somerset and the Thames valley, the Cockermouth flood water rose very quickly – over the space of a day – and receded almost as fast.

"One minute we were trying to get the stock upstairs and blocking the doorways with sandbags, the next they were being overwhelmed. When I opened the back door a huge flood ran through the shop we had to just get out. We had to link hands and wade out across the road to safety," says Chippendale.

The water eventually rose to more than five feet high in his shop. In other parts of the high street it rose even higher, and at its worst point was travelling at 25mph down the high street and ripping into everything in its path. Around 1,000 properties were seriously flooded, including most of the shops on the high street, and around 700 homes in the surrounding streets.

Among the first to offer help was the Chamber of Trade in Morpeth on the other side of the country, who'd been through a similar experience a year before, and were keen to pass on accrued knowledge. Some even drove over to meet the Cumbrian victims.

One of their key recommendations, says Chippendale, was the need to find someone who had the necessary contacts within the local councils, and the energy to drive through a rebuilding programme. Step forward Les Tickner, a civil engineer, who had just taken early retirement and was looking for a new project. Crucially he'd already been through the experience dealing with the floods in Carlisle in 2005. In Chippendale's words, Tickner was able to "cut through all the crap, and bang heads together".

Most insurers paid up to a greater or lesser degree, but many shops found they were underinsured because they had not updated their policies to reflect the growth in the business. Lots of stores were carrying extra stock in the runup to Christmas, and found their policies did not cover their losses.

The businesses that had no insurance were wiped out, he says.

Chippendale, who had upgraded his policy six months earlier – purely by chance – says his insurer, NFU Mutual, was brilliant. However, and in common with previous floods, he says the experience the townspeople came down to the loss adjustor sent by the insurer. "They varied enormously even within the same insurer, and the same loss adjusting firm," he says.

Most of the shops were forced to relocate in a bid to keep a presence in the community. Those that didn't found in most cases that their trade had gone elsewhere by the time they were able to reopen. The toy shop was one of the first to reopen in the high street after seven months, complete with solid floors and raised electrics. The Trout Hotel, which has a terrace over the Derwent river, was also closed for seven months and repairs cost £3.5m. Staff there repeatedly describe an extraordinary community revival and a revitalised town.

The town hall was turned into a recovery HQ where the various insurers and the other interested parties set up stalls. One pub in the town that still had electricity and, crucially, Wi-Fi became the centre of activities. "The number of deals that got done in there some evenings was amazing," says Suzanne Elsworth, who moved to the town just before the floods hit, and was closely involved in the recovery plan.

Tickner visited most days and could be seen walking the town's streets intervening in disputes, and doing what he could to hasten repairs. Deals were done with local paint suppliers – anything to make sure the town centre came back looking better than ever.

To prevent further devastating floods, the Environment Agency was persuaded to build new defences. Its first proposal was for a huge flood wall that would have dominated the town. But after pressure from the local flood action group, it settled on a Dutch designed wall that rises when needed, but still allows views over the river for the rest of the year. But while central government agreed to pick up most of the bill, the local community still needed to raise almost £1m to meet the cost. There was an increase to the community charge and business rates were upped 1%. Allerdale borough council found some money, and administered the many private donations that came in. One anonymous private donor gave £250,000. Only the few big chain stores, Chippendale says, declined to contribute to the improvements.

"The extensive media coverage of the town's plight – helped by visits by Prince Charles – all helped restore the idea that Cockermouth was open for business and was bouncing back," he says.

"You wouldn't choose to do it, but how often do you get a chance to completely rebuild a high street. It's been difficult and it helped that we had a lot of retired and other professional people in the town who all came together to restore the town. Seeing the flooding down south in recent weeks brought it all back, but hopefully we are proof that you can bounce back. But if you just wait for something to happen, it won't," Chippendale says.

'We had to turn it into an opportunity'

Many people contributed to the impressive regeneration of Cockermouth but one man, Darren Ward, is named time after time. The architectural designer was, like many others, trapped for several hours in his home, a pretty, former weaver's cottage not far from the river. Five feet of water filled his kitchen and downstairs in the building that also houses his architectural practice, Red Raven Design.

"Once we had got over the shock it was pretty clear that we had to turn it into an opportunity. Shop fronts had been washed away and many were in a very poor state. We realised it was a chance to revitalise the high street. We could come back much stronger."

He says insurers were happy as long as any changes didn't cost them any more. The fact that the work had to conform to the latest building regulations helped shopholders. He designed new fronts in keeping with the original Georgian structures, and worked (often for free) with the planners to speedily obtain permission. Stores that had to be rebuilt could now remove a cumbersome staircase or unsightly fitting that had once blighted the shop.

His home, one of eight terraced houses all jointly insured and which cost £200,000 to repair, now boasts a flood-proofed downstairs.

However, the owners have been clobbered with an insurance excess of £20,000 for flooding, and he can't get contents cover, despite the new flood defences. "Maybe because I was an incomer, and had chosen to live in the town, I was determined that the floods wouldn't beat us," he says.

He is critical of how insurers deal with big flood events. "Houses tend to be ripped apart and, in many cases, it's unnecessary. If it wasn't contaminated by sewage, lots of furniture and the like can be saved. Houses that survived floods in the past were taken apart by insurers, and they are too eager to junk stuff, much of which can be saved."

Miles Brignall

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New cardinals, among them Archbishop Vincent Nichols, bear Pope's stamp

Posted: 21 Feb 2014 10:15 PM PST

Many of the 19 men to be made cardinals by Pope Francis on Saturday share similar backgrounds and outlooks to the pontiff

The truth about the death of 37 prisoners at Cairo prison Abu Zaabal

Posted: 21 Feb 2014 10:01 PM PST

Last August, outside Abu Zaabal, 37 prisoners trapped in the back of a van were gassed to death having been held for six hours in temperatures close to 40 degrees. Patrick Kingsley talks to the survivors and, for the first time, reveals what really happened

Some time after midday on Sunday 18 August 2013, a young Egyptian film-maker called Mohamed el-Deeb made his last will and testament. It was an informal process. El-Deeb had no paper on which to sign his name and there was no lawyer present. He simply turned to the man handcuffed next to him and outlined which debts to settle if he should die, and what to say to his mother about the circumstances of his death.

El-Deeb had good reason to fear for his life. He was among 45 prisoners squashed into the back of a tiny, sweltering police truck parked in the forecourt of Abu Zaabal prison, just north-east of Cairo. They had been in the truck for more than six hours. The temperature outside was over 31C, and inside would have been far hotter. There was no space to stand and the prisoners had had almost nothing to drink. Some had wrung out their sweat-drenched shirts and drunk the drops of moisture. Many were now unconscious.

Most of the men inside that van were supporters of Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's first elected president. Squashed against el-Deeb was Mohamed Abdelmahboud, a 43-year-old seed merchant and a member of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood.

Following four days of mass protests against his year-long rule, the army had overthrown Morsi and the Brotherhood in early July. In response, tens of thousands of people camped outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in east Cairo to call for the president's reinstatement. Within a week, the space outside Rabaa turned from an empty crossroads to a sprawling tent city that housed both a market and a makeshift field hospital. At Rabaa's centre was a stage where preachers led prayers and firebrands spouted sectarian rhetoric. At its edges stood a Dad's Army of badly equipped guards, dressed in crash helmets and tae kwon do vests, 0standing before a series of walls built of stones ripped from pavements. From behind these barricades, two or three times a day, protest marches would snake into nearby neighbourhoods, blocking major thoroughfares and paralysing much of the city. Clashes between armed police and protesters claimed more than 170 lives.

For Islamists, Rabaa was one of the last remaining symbols of freedom. But for the millions who opposed Morsi, it was a hideout for violent extremists who were holding the country to ransom. Confrontation became inevitable. On Wednesday 14 August, some time after 6am, police and soldiers surrounded the camp, which still contained thousands of women and children. In the 12-hour operation that followed, more than 900 protesters were shot dead, many by sniper fire. A group of armed protesters fought back, killing nine policemen, according to Human Rights Watch. But they were vastly outnumbered. As police locked down the streets around the camp, they arrested thousands – not just Morsi supporters, but also dozens of local residents and workers caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

On Sunday 18 August, Professor Gamal Siam, an economist at Cairo University, arrived at the office of Egypt's chief prosecutor, Hisham Barakat. His oldest son Sherif had been arrested the previous Wednesday, during the crackdown at Rabaa. But there had been a mistake, his father told the chief prosecutor, and he needed help.

Sherif Siam was not a member of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, nor even a Morsi supporter. Sherif had said on Facebook that the president's overthrow had been not a coup, but a revolution. Certainly, he had visited the camp at Rabaa al-Adawiya two or three times, but he'd been to anti-Morsi marches, too. When the news broke of the Rabaa camp's dispersal, his father said Sherif went down to help the wounded.

On some level, Barakat sympathised. He gave Sherif's father a signed letter to present to prison officials, to help speed up the processing of Sherif's case. But what neither Barakat nor Siam knew was that it was already too late.

A few minutes earlier, in the back of an overcrowded police van on the other side of Cairo, Sherif Siam – and 36 others, including Mohamed el-Deeb – had been gassed to death.

The next day, footage emerged (warning: upsetting images) of the 37 corpses on their arrival at Cairo's main morgue. Most of the bodies were bloated, their faces red or black. El-Deeb's face was one of the few that was unmarked. But Sherif Siam's was swollen and blackened, almost beyond recognition.

What had happened was soon blamed on the prisoners. Police officials said the 37 died shortly before they were due to be handed over to the warders at Abu Zaabal prison, just north-east of Cairo. According to their narrative, the prisoners kidnapped a policeman who opened the door to let them out, prompting his colleagues to fire teargas inside the truck to subdue them. State media outlets went further, claiming that Muslim Brotherhood gunmen had attacked the van to try to free those inside, and the prisoners died in the ensuing clashes.

Whatever the truth, the news cycle quickly moved on. In a week of horror, other atrocities soon grabbed Egypt's attention. The next day, 25 police conscripts were killed in cold blood in Sinai by Islamist extremists angered by Morsi's removal. The massacres of the previous week – at Rabaa and at Ramses Square – still dominated the media narrative, as did the grotesque Islamist-led revenge attacks on dozens of Christian churches and police stations. Four of the 15 policemen who accompanied the truck were subsequently put on trial for negligence. But that trial was postponed indefinitely in January – and government officials are still able to claim the deaths were provoked by the prisoners.

But they reckoned without the incident's eight survivors, as well as some of the policemen who drove them to the prison. Five months on, their collected testimonies for the first time reveal a different story – one of police cruelty and a subsequent cover-up that starts not at lunchtime on Sunday 18 August, but on the previous Wednesday, when the 45 prisoners were among thousands arrested in and around the Rabaa al-Adawiya encampment.

Police had seized Sherif at around noon a few streets from the camp, where shooting had started six hours earlier. Amateur footage shows him in a blue shirt being led by officers towards a police van, when another officer sprints towards Sherif and fells him with a flying kick to the chest.

Like the thousands of others arrested that day, he was accused of a raft of catch-all charges, including membership of a terrorist group (as the state later designated the Muslim Brotherhood), attempted murder and possession of lethal weapons. It is impossible to know the precise circumstances of his arrest, but for his family, these are preposterous charges. He was a telecoms engineer by day, and had a second career as a life coach. Four days before his arrest, he was interviewed on Egyptian breakfast television about how to find happiness amid the tension and disruption wrought on Cairo by the Rabaa camp.

According to the survivors, Sherif Siam was one of at least eight victims at Abu Zaabal who were either opponents of Morsi, or had no connection to the Rabaa camp. Shukri Saad, a resident of Nasr City, the area surrounding Rabaa, had just bought a month's worth of diabetes treatment when he was stopped by police. They suspected him of buying medicine for people wounded at Rabaa. "I'm not Muslim Brotherhood, I'm NDP," Saad reportedly screamed as he was flung in a police van, in reference to the party of Morsi's predecessor, Hosni Mubarak.

Nearby, Talaat Ali was serving tea to off-duty soldiers and policemen on a break from clearing the camp. The cafe owner decided to close early, because the officers refused to pay for their drinks, so Ali started to make his way home. He said he was stopped by the same policemen he had served. "Hey, I'm the tea guy, I gave you tea," Ali apparently said before he, too, was arrested.

He was soon joined by Mohamed Ramzi, a vegetable seller from west Cairo who had come to Nasr City to sell cucumbers. Then there was Ahmed Hamrawy, on his way to sell his clothes in a market in the centre of town. Rafiq Abdelghany was stopped on his way to work, and would later be granted bail – but he was taken to Abu Zaabal before the bail money could be delivered. A card-carrying member of Ghad el-Thawra, a prominent liberal party, was also rounded up. Nasr City had become a military zone: a curfew had been imposed and anyone moving around was arrested.

Mohamed Abdelmahboud was arrested far from the camp, several hours after the shooting had stopped, as he drove home. He had been at Rabaa since its tents were first pitched in late June. When the siege began, he stayed put. A group of Morsi supporters returned the soldiers' fire, in a hopeless attempt to hold off a security force that included snipers on surrounding roofs and that exacted many more casualties than the small defence squad. Abdelmahboud says he stayed behind to help the wounded. After 3pm, once the gunfire became too intense to rescue any more of the injured, he made a run for it. Later, he joined up with a group of friends from his home town, a tiny hamlet down a backroad in the Nile delta. They had heard that a friend had been shot in the chaos and they were looking for his body at the Iman mosque, a few streets east of what had been the Rabaa encampment. The air there stank of an odd blend of joss sticks and rotting flesh – it was a smell Abdelmahboud and his friends would grow used to as they spent the evening picking through the long rows of corpses. Some were burnt through, unrecognisable, like logs in a bonfire.

A few metres away, Gamal Siam was searching for his son. Close to midnight, he was shown a YouTube video of Sherif getting a kicking from a police officer. "I was so pleased, even though what it showed was so inhuman," Siam said later. "At least he was alive."

Abdelmahboud and his friends stumbled across their friend. They put his body in the back of a pick-up truck and began the drive home to Sharqiya – a northern province two hours north-east of Cairo – for his funeral. There were around two dozen of them huddled over the corpse, making their way through the darkness. Ten miles into the journey, an army checkpoint loomed in the headlights. A curfew had been called to control the spread of violent clashes, and they were breaking it. "The soldiers got us out and started harassing us," Abdelmahboud said. "Where did we get the body from? Did we have permission to bury him?"

The soldiers took their belongings and their money, and called the police. After an hour, they released most of the villagers, but kept back five, seemingly at random. Abdelmahboud was one; Abdel Moneim, the local physician, was another. "They said there were warrants out for our arrests," said a third, Mohamed Sayed Gabal, a 29-year-old pharmacist. "That was surprising, because none of us had ever been involved with the police before."

The five were hauled back to north-east Cairo, to a police station in Heliopolis, a few hundred metres from the presidential palace. There, they were accused of carrying a corpse without a permit and of vandalism, and thrown into a crowded cell just as dawn was breaking.

Hussein Abdel Aal, a 60-year-old former official at an Egyptian oil company, had spent the night in custody, lying on a football pitch with thousands of other prisoners: so many people had been arrested in and around Rabaa that detainees were taken to Cairo stadium on Wednesday night, until space became available in the city's police stations.

Abdel Aal had arrived at Rabaa a few hours before it was cleared. There had been rumours that the soldiers would make their move on the camp that morning, and such was Rabaa's symbolism that he wanted to be there when it fell. He also wanted to stand alongside his son, Ramzy, a Brotherhood official who had been at the camp from the start.

As the violent clearance began, Ramzy was shot by a sniper from the top of a nearby building. "We were far from the frontline, but my son got a bullet in his forehead," his father later remembered, "and it went out of the back of his skull." Ramzy's friends took his body to a field hospital set up by the Muslim Brotherhood in a corner of the camp. But when the building filled with teargas, they were forced to move, and managed to find a car to take them to a private hospital.

At its gates, an army officer stopped the vehicle and ordered Abdel Aal out. "I begged him to let me stay," he said when I spoke to him last November. "I told him: 'I'm willing to kiss your feet – just let me stay with my son.'" Instead, he was arrested and taken to Cairo stadium, where police treated him "like an animal", punching and cursing him, and confiscating his money and mobile phone.

Elsewhere on the pitch, Sherif Siam met someone who still had his phone, and used it to post his whereabouts on Facebook: "Whoever sees this, tell my father I am in Cairo stadium."

When the curfew ended the next morning, Gamal Siam set about trying to find a lawyer to help free his son. Siam was a connected man – he was once an adviser to the Mubarak-era agriculture ministry – but none of his friends dared get involved. "Every lawyer," Siam said, "was worried about seeming to help the Brotherhood." So Siam went to the stadium himself, but by the time he arrived on Thursday morning, Sherif had already been taken to the police station in Heliopolis.

The cells were only about 3m long, and the prisoners were tightly packed in. According to Abdelmahboud, over the next three days there were at times as many as 38 prisoners to a room. It was too cramped for them all to lie down at once, so they would sleep in shifts – half of them standing while the other half slept. They were allowed out only twice a day, to be counted. The last one back into the cell would be beaten. "We were like sheep while we were going back, stumbling and stepping on each other in order not to be the last one," Abdel Aal said.

The heat was stifling. One night most of the men stripped down to their underwear to keep cool. "That's when Sherif took off his shirt and started fanning people," Abdelmahboud said.

Though most of them had been at Rabaa, the majority did not know each other, so they spent Thursday to Sunday swapping arrest stories. The survivors remembered Sherif for his humour. "He always used to joke – but just empty jokes," Sayed Gabal said. "No deep conversations."

After visiting three different police buildings, Gamal Siam and his family finally tracked Sherif to Heliopolis on the Friday. At first police denied he was inside, but after some arguing they were allowed to see him. Sherif wouldn't talk much, and didn't say a lot about how he was arrested. But he broke down in tears as his father hugged him.

Sherif was calmer when his father returned on Saturday evening. "He asked us to bring him a toothbrush and personal hygiene things," Siam said. "And he asked us to bring ice-cream for everyone." It was the last time the two would talk.

At around 6.30am on Sunday 18 August, 45 prisoners were handcuffed in pairs, apart from Mohamed Abdelmahboud, who was attached to two men. The five from Sharqiya were the last to be crammed into the back of the van, which was already full by the time their turn came.

"I said to the officer: how can we fit in there?" Sayed Gabal said. "He said the car fits 70, and shoved us inside." An engineer's report specially commissioned by prosecutors later said the van's maximum capacity was 24. With 45 crammed inside, the police struggled to close the door.

It took just over an hour for the van and its escort vehicles to reach the prison. Inside, the men were squashed against each other, and most could not stand properly. "If there was a bump," Abdelmahboud said, "everyone was thrown up and down."

Things worsened once they reached the forecourt of the prison. Driving there, breathing had been easy enough: a breeze blew through the van's four grilled windows, creating ventilation. But once the van parked at the prison, the airflow stopped and the men inside struggled to breathe.

What happened next was the subject of an inquiry in which one of the police guards gave an account that corroborates the surviving prisoners'. The policeman concerned, Abdelaziz Rabia Abdelaziz, whose rank loosely translates to sergeant, declined to be interviewed for this article; but his testimony to the prosecution was revealed by the survivors' lawyers, and confirmed by two other police sources.

Abdelaziz claimed the van's ventilation tubes were broken. Captain Amr Farouq, the leader of the convoy, said he had personally inspected the ventilation system and found it in working order.

The temperature near the prison that August day peaked at 31.1C. The 45 men in the van were forced to wait as more than 600 of those captured near Rabaa were delivered to Abu Zaabal. There were around 15 trucks waiting in the forecourt and each one took about half an hour to unload: time had to be set aside for a traditional prison welcome – the beating of the prisoners as they left the vehicles (an experience that would later be described in detail by two Canadians who were also arrested in the chaos that week). With the van from Heliopolis 11th in the queue, the prisoners were in for a long wait.

The heat became unbearable, the survivors said. People were standing on one leg, and their clothes were drenched in sweat. "We started to get short of oxygen," Abdelmahboud said, "and people started to shout for help. We started banging on the walls, we started screaming, but no one answered."

As time went on, 60-year-old Hussein Abdel Aal and Shukri Saad, the diabetic, were particularly affected. "I felt like I was dying," said Abdel Aal, who had open-heart surgery two years ago. "After a while, I saw that the blacks of [Saad's] eyes had started to dilate and he started to pass out. We cried out that someone was dying. They called back that they wanted all of us to die."

According to the survivors, the policemen began to mock the prisoners. "They told us we had to curse Dr Morsi, in order to get out," Abdel Aal said. "So the young people started to curse him. But after that [the police] said we couldn't leave. Then they said: call yourselves girls' names. Some did. Then they said: we don't talk to women."

In his statements to prosecutors, Abdelaziz did not recall any policemen insulting those in the van, but he claimed that the dozen junior policemen guarding the vehicle repeatedly asked their four commanding officers – who were drinking tea some way off – for permission to open the van's doors and give the prisoners more to drink. "Every one of us went telling them the prisoners want to drink," Abdelaziz said. The officers refused all but one request: at some point between 10am and 11am, around four hours after the prisoners were first shoved inside, they were given water.

At first, the police could not open the door because the officers had lost the key. Instead, Lieutenant Mohamed Yehia took a piece of scrap metal lying nearby and used it to smash open the lock. Even then, most of the prisoners were kept inside. Only Abdel Aal, who was standing next to the door, was briefly allowed to stand on the ledge at the back of the van and splashed with water. Then he was pushed back inside. While other convoys left their van doors open once inside the prison walls, the Heliopolis policemen locked the broken door shut with a pair of handcuffs.

Captain Farouq claimed the prisoners were let out three times in all, a claim denied by both the survivors and Abdelaziz, who, barring a 10-minute toilet break, was at the scene throughout the day. In the end, he said, "We took it upon ourselves as guards to bring water in bottles and pour it through the windows."

Inside the van, in the midday heat, the prisoners had reached breaking point. Many were delirious, some were giving each other messages for their families. "People started passing out, one after the other," Sayed Gabal said. "Of course, the elderly went down first. And the others started banging harder and harder. And outside they continued laughing and cursing Morsi."

Abdelaziz said it was obvious by this point that conditions inside the truck might cause the prisoners to suffocate, but he claimed that the four officers still refused to open the door. The truck eventually fell silent. Most of its occupants had collapsed.

Some time after 1pm, the prisoners who were still conscious heard shouting outside. It was their turn to disembark, the voices seemed to say, and they should prepare to hand over any remaining valuables to prison staff. But few of those inside could stand up.

What happened next is the subject of two vastly conflicting narratives. Farouq and most of his subordinates told investigators that, when the door was finally forced open, Lieutenant Yehia was pulled inside and held captive by the prisoners. The chaos brought more policemen from other convoys running to the van. Abdelaziz and another colleague were injured trying to rescue Yehia. In the commotion, and in an attempt to subdue the rioting prisoners, an unknown member of one of the police units fired a handheld canister of gas – issued to officers for their self-defence – through one of the side-windows. Yehia and two others were later taken to hospital for gas exposure, Farouq said, while Abdelaziz was treated for facial wounds.

But, according to the survivors and Abdelaziz, this version of events is a fabrication. "It didn't happen," Abdelaziz told the prosecution. He claimed that an officer later struck him across the face to make it look as if there had been a struggle. "Let's be logical," Abdelmahboud said. "We were so exhausted, we couldn't even walk. Most of us collapsed inside the van. Only five or six of us were able to stand. How could we possibly beat an officer?"

Egypt's interior ministry has not responded to requests for comment, or for interviews with police and prison personnel. But Abdelaziz's testimony indicates that the prisoners would not have been in any state to kidnap a guard.

Looking through the truck's back window, the policemen were met by a horrific sight. "Everyone inside was slumped over each other," Abdelaziz recalled.

Dr Hesham Farag, spokesman for the mortuary where the 37 casualties would later be taken for autopsy, said the men would still have been alive when the gas was fired, since traces of CS gas were found in each corpse's blood. He doubted that the single self-defence canister contained enough to kill so many men on its own, but it would have been the final straw for a group already starved for so long of adequate oxygen. "We decided that the police [are] responsible for all these casualties, because they loaded the vehicle with 45 prisoners, which is a very large number, because the vehicle should carry no more than 24 people," Farag said in written testimony to the Guardian. "Therefore there was a lack of oxygen, which accelerated the deaths when teargas was used."

Rather than blocking the door on purpose, the prisoners had simply been unable to move. Most of them were unconscious, the survivors said, while the few who were still just about conscious were handcuffed to people who weren't.

"I tried to wake one with my free hand," said Abdel Aal, who was still near the exit. "I punched him, God forgive me, but he didn't respond."

Abdelmahboud had been drifting in and out of consciousness. "The officer started asking us: who is behind the door?" he remembered. "We couldn't deal with the situation, we were in a very strange state, we couldn't move."

A lever was brought from the prison to force open the door and, when that was no use, a drill. At last, the policemen managed to force the door slightly ajar. Yehia squeezed inside, Abdelaziz said, and then they started dragging the prisoners through the small gap. Eight made it out alive, their skin badly scratched.

"Once I was out and smelled the fresh air, I couldn't feel anything and I fell on the ground," Sayed Gabal said. "Then they started beating us. There were two lines and they beat me while I was on the floor."

Once the bodies nearest the door had been cleared, the police were finally able to enter the truck themselves. "I found all the people inside were lying on top of each other," Abdelaziz said. There was a bad smell – something that made him gasp as he helped lug up to 10 more bodies out of the truck. As he carried them, a horrible realisation dawned on him: most of the men crammed inside that overheated van were dead.

"And then," Abdelaziz said, "the world became messy."

The next day, footage emerged of the 37 corpses on their arrival at Cairo's main morgue. Most of the bodies were bloated, their faces red or black. Sherif Siam's was swollen and blackened almost beyond recognition. State media reported that the men had died when Muslim Brotherhood gunmen attacked the vehicle, in an attempt to free the prisoners. Four of the 15 policemen who accompanied the truck were put on trial for negligence, but in January that trial was postponed indefinitely; government officials are still able to claim the deaths were provoked by the prisoners. Four of the survivors remain in jail.

Patrick Kingsley

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Matteo Renzi unveils a new Italian government with familiar problems

Posted: 21 Feb 2014 09:01 PM PST

Renzi will be sworn in as Italy's youngest prime minister on Saturday at the head of another broad coalition

Ukraine deal: Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin agree on need for speed

Posted: 21 Feb 2014 07:47 PM PST

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Police admit Seven committed no offence by seeking Corby interview

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Commissioner apologises for error in search warrant after raid on network's offices but still insists no money can change hands

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The band that has included the best psychedelic musicians in Western Australia gets set to blow minds in Perth

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Charlotte Dawson found dead in her inner-Sydney home

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Police say there are no suspicious circumstances around the death of the former judge of Australia's Next Top Model









North Korea rejects UN report on crimes against humanity as 'lies'

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Martin Rowson on Atos and Ukraine – cartoon

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Canada closes for business to watch hockey stars shut down USA | Colin Horgan

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Colin Horgan: Fans chew their nails but Sidney Crosby's men beat closest rivals 1-0 in hard-fought encounter where defences were on top

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Obama touts minimum wage proposal as 'good politics'

Posted: 21 Feb 2014 01:10 PM PST

President says 'overwhelming majority of Americans think that raising the minimum wage is a good idea' in promotional speech

Country diary: Sandy, Bedfordshire: The 'owl' I could hear was actually a singing starling

Posted: 21 Feb 2014 01:00 PM PST

Sandy, Bedfordshire: What possessed it to mimic a predator? Was it unaware that owls were associated with a silent swoop and snatch?

The other day, on a bright sunny afternoon, I heard tawny owl calls from the roof of our house. The sharp "kee-wicks" were loud enough to come through a closed window. The bird called four or five times, the last "kee-wick" dissolving into a squeal of what sounded like laughter. The "owl" was a singing starling. What possessed it to mimic a predator? Had it sat at its night-time roost hearing and imitating an owl's hoots, unaware that they were associated with a silent swoop and snatch? The days were lengthening towards spring and they were coaxing other birds to perform. I had been down that morning to a flooded copse where it seemed that every chaffinch in town had broken into song. It was a delirious fugue of tumbling notes, punctuated by explosive "Pink! Pink!" calls. It was hard to remember that this was competition and not a chorus.

I returned to see a collared dove in a bare tree trampling down its nest, pressing its feet into a platform of sticks as if it was kneading bread. From the garden, I could see a magpie re-establishing perching rights at the very top of the tallest sycamore. A great ball of twigs wedged a few branches below was its nest. The magpie cackled, then began flicking its tail, a conductor on a podium, waving its baton, holding attention. I had reached the compost heap when a robin landed on the fence. It sat still little more than an arm's length away. The wind caught a raised tuft of feathers on its flank and they fluttered. I looked into its eyes: it not only stayed where it was, it began to sing. This was a tiny tinkling, so soft a song that it was as if it had come from afar. No other bird could hear the melodious warbling, nor was it singing for me. Those under-its-breath utterances were meant for its ears only, a trial and error as it practised sotto voce. The robin's sub song was an exquisite preparation for a spring uttered at full voice.

Derek Niemann

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Madagascar rainforests: at home with the lemurs

Posted: 21 Feb 2014 01:00 PM PST

Marojejy national park was for decades open only to botanists but visitors can now trek into the mountains in order to see the fabled silky sifakas

It was dawn, deep in the jungle of Mount Marojejy, when my guide and I first caught sight of the family of silky sifakas – six snow-white, metre-high lemurs perched in the treetops. The rising sun had bathed the cliffs beyond them in liquid amber and, as we peered up, their pale coats were wreathed in smoky golden light. The locals call them angels of the forest – and we now understood why.

The silky sifaka is not only one of the world's most beautiful creatures, it is also among the rarest: fewer than 2,000 survive, all around Marojejy national park. And they are just one of several reasons to visit this great massif, perhaps the most spectacular peak and the richest repository of strange flora and fauna in the whole of Madagascar. It has a fearsome reputation, but recently built paths and campsites of sturdy huts now make a trip to its summit (almost) as doable as a weekend in Snowdonia.

In 1952, French botanist Henri Humbert declared it Madagascar's greatest treasure and closed it to the public. Marojejy reopened as a national park in 1998 and, for years was accessible only by a muddy, overgrown path – a sure route to sprained ankles and a gift to leeches.

My guide was Erik Patel, a young American primatologist who recently featured in a David Attenborough-narrated documentary on the silky sifaka, and is director of the Duke University Lemur Centre's Sava conservation project in Antananarivo, the island's capital. Madagascar is grindingly poor and "Tana" – as the locals call the capital – is a ramshackle place of barefoot children and rough carts pulled by zebu, or humped cattle. But it is hauntingly beautiful, too, with a cobbled old town on a hill.

An hour's flight north revealed the shocking extent of the island's ongoing deforestation – red gashes where entire denuded hillsides had collapsed. Then, at last, the rainforests of Masoala national park spread out below, and we alighted in the coastal town of Sambava. An hour's drive inland, cooks and porters awaited us at Marojejy's visitor centre. And from there, it was an hour's walk to the foot of the mountain, through green paddy fields and villages where women winnowed rice beneath spreading mango trees.

Marojejy's battlements thrust skywards quite suddenly from these idyllic surroundings and, where they rise, the primary-growth rainforest begins. Gradually, we started spotting its peculiar and magnificent inhabitants – a crimson millipede eight inches long; a troupe of grey-brown bamboo lemurs, leaping and whirling from creeper to trunk; a sleeping boa draped luxuriously around a branch.

Our camp consisted of five huts, including a dining area, half-way up the mountain, with a sublime view over a waterfall and a jungled gorge. I never made it to the summit. Erik's scouts predicted the sifakas would pass the camp the next day and I decided the chance to see them beat the extra legwork.

While we waited, we rambled up into the cloud forest nearby – a misty region of ferns and palms, orchids and giant saw-toothed pandanus leaves. The next day, the animals set off on their daily journey through the forest, leaping from tree to tree as we lumbered after them. Soon, their leaps came so thick and fast that the overwhelming impression was of flight, making a couple of hours following them on foot exhausting.

But the steep terrain in this region has been the animals' saviour. In recent years, gangs have run rampant in the rainforests, feeding demand for tropical hardwoods in China. And, while many of the locals I met around Marojejy had put themselves heroically in harm's way at one time or another to protect the park, logging is now resurgent in some parts. The presence of tourists and the income they bring is one of the best defences against it – another reason to pay an early visit to this last redoubt of the silky sifaka.

• The trip was provided by Rainbow Tours, which can tailor-make an eight-night holiday with four nights in Marojejy national park, two nights in Sambava and two nights in Antananarivo for £3,545pp (two sharing), including all flights, meals, transport, guides and porters


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Life in the fast lane | @guardianletters

Posted: 21 Feb 2014 12:59 PM PST

What is it Ivor Mitchell (Letters, 15 February) thinks parents ferrying their children to school in cars will be doing after dropping them off? Driving home and sitting on their sofas eating chocolate biscuits? Sadly, I don't have time to spend 40 minutes walking to my son's school and 40 minutes walking back because I have to work, keep up to date with ever-increasing professional demands, food shop, cook healthy food from scratch, clean the house, wash the clothes, sort the recycling, tend my garden to encourage wildlife, do voluntary work, keep up with modern technology to make sure my children are safe, keep in touch with my elderly relatives, check my bank statements to make sure we haven't been scammed, regularly switch our insurances, utilities, bank account and credit cards, keep up to date with politics so I can vote in an informed way, make sure my kids are doing their homework so they will have a hope in hell of getting a job, have a social life, have a sex life, get seven hours sleep and all the many other things that responsible parents and adults are expected to do these days. Gone are the day when you could just push your kids out the door and send them on their way.

Have you taken a flight anytime in the last decade, Mr Mitchell? Do you buy food from your supermarket that has been flown around the world? Do you buy products using palm oil, such as raisins and soap, which are contributing to mass deforestation? Are you consuming products made in China, where new power stations is being built at an alarming rate? Maybe you should look at your own lifestyle before pointing the finger at other people? Finger pointing – very thinly and smugly disguised as irony.
Claire Norris
Oswestry, Shropshire


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Life is Inspiration

Saya senang blogging, untuk sharing apa yang saya fikirkan. Saya menganggap setiap perjalanan hidup memiliki keunikan..

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