Wednesday 6 June 2012

Sex attacker on the royal barge: Security blunder lets pervert mingle with the Queen


Unknown to other VIPs, on board was a convicted sex attacker who has served time for a series of despicable attacks on women
VIP guest: Rana within feet of Harry, Kate and Wills
VIP guest: Rana within feet of Harry, Kate and Wills
Getty
Strutting the deck of the Royal Barge, Harbinder Singh Rana hid a vile secret as he mingled with royalty for the Diamond Jubilee pageant.
Unknown to other VIPs enjoying the occasion during Sunday’s 1,000-boat Thames flotilla, he is a convicted sex attacker who has served time for a series of despicable attacks on women.
And last night, as MPs demanded a police probe into the alarming security lapse, it was revealed that 52-year-old Rana had been invited to join the exclusive celebrations by Prince Charles – who was totally unaware of his shameful past.
But even though the invite came though the prince’s office, questions were being asked yesterday about why apparently no checks were carried out on his background before he was allowed on board.
And the huge security blunder reveals serious weaknesses in the vetting procedures that are supposed to protect the Royal Family at all times.
During his time on the barge, Rana came into close proximity with the Queen, Prince Philip, Prince Charles, Camilla, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry.
But he would never have been allowed anywhere near them if the details of his sickening crimes had been unearthed sooner.
During his trial in 1986, a jury heard how he tricked his way into his victims’ homes by posing as a doctor before subjecting them to internal examinations – even giving some of the women injections.
He was sentenced to four years after being convicted of five counts of indecent assault, 11 counts of assault causing actual bodily harm and one of attempted assault.
Confronted by the Mirror yesterday, Rana revealed he was sent an invite to be a guest aboard the Royal Barge by Prince Charles’s office around three weeks ago.
He is understood to have met Charles several times through his work for the Anglo-Sikh Heritage Trail – a group that promotes the Sikh community in Britain.
Asked whether he had been vetted, Rana, who lives in Walsall, West Midlands, said: “I don’t know what checks they do or how they do them.”
But, amazingly, he said he had never “had to tell anybody” of his sex crimes and was never asked about them before the event.
Rana, who has worked as a management consultant in the past, said: “I was given the invitation and I attended.
"The fact that the Prince of Wales invited me clearly shows what I have done for the community since then.”
Harbinder Singh escorts the Prince of Wales into the Reception Hall of St James Palace
Invite: Prince Charles pictured her with Rana on a previous occasion
 
He said of his conviction: “It was very circumstantial. It is an area I have switched off from my life and got on with it.”
At his trial Rana denied the sex allegations and yesterday still claimed it was a case of “mistaken identity”.
He added: “I have a relationship with some of Charles’s staff, not him – although I have met him at events, yes.
“I have made it clear I wasn’t representing the Sikh community, I was there because I was very happy to be invited.”
He said that, although the Queen was at times just “a few feet” from him, he never spoke to her or any senior member of the Royal Family while on the boat.
A spokesman for Clarence House said: “The office of Prince Charles was unaware of his previous convictions.”
But last night Steve McCabe, MP for Birmingham Selly Oak, who sits on the Home Affairs select committee, said: “It is an astonishing situation in terms of security. I’m flabbergasted.
“There should be a police investigation into how this was allowed to happen. Who the prince wants to entertain in private is his concern, but this was a public event. Questions need to be answered.
“I would like to know who thought he was an appropriate guest for an event involving so many women.
"Whoever was in charge of vetting Prince Charles’s guest list needs to start earning his money.”
The prince’s aides appear to have been unaware of Rana’s murky secret for years.
He and the prince are thought to have first met in July 1999 at the unveiling of a statue in Thetford, Norfolk.
Since then they have met at several events and Rana accompanied Charles on a visit to Ropar in India in 2006.
At one presentation in July 1999, Rana said of the prince: “The fact that he has come here today is a fitting tribute to the relationship between the Sikh community and the Royal Family, which is based on mutual admiration.”
A picture of Rana proudly standing next to the Queen and Prince Philip was posted on the Facebook page of the Anglo-Sikh Heritage Trail on Sunday.
On its official website, Rana is listed as honorary director.
Diamond Jubilee River pageant
Royal occasion: The river pageant featured 1,000 boats and had tight security
Kent Gavin
 
The Heritage Trail is a project of charity Maharajah Duleep Singh Centenary Trust, whose annual accounts were yesterday 310 days overdue, according to the Charity Commission.
Dr Kate Cook, from Manchester-based Trafford Rape Crisis, which deals with all forms of sexual assault, said: “Sex attackers can appear respectable and come in all guises.
“This man’s crimes were very premeditated and insidious.
“Pretending to be a doctor in order to have access to women is very deliberate, it is not like he couldn’t help himself.
"Women find this sort of attack very frightening. It can often take an extraordinarily long time, sometimes many years, for them to get over it.”
Dr Cook, a lecturer in law, added: “At the very least it is extremely disappointing that someone like him has been allowed to mingle at such a high-profile and prestigious event as this.
“There are lots of people who would have deemed it a great honour and the fact he has been let on will be very frightening for his victims.
"Imagine how horrified you would be if you saw your attacker standing alongside the Queen.”
A Scotland Yard spokesman said last night: “We do not comment on the details of security checks.”
 

Five decades of security scares

1974 : Princess Anne and then husband, Capt Mark Phillips, escape abduction attempt by gunman Ian Ball who holds up their car on the Mall in London and shoots four people.
1982 : Michael Fagan breaks into Buckingham Palace. Queen wakes up to find him sitting on her bed.
1993 : Anti-nuclear protesters scale walls of Palace and hold sit-down protest on lawn.
1994 : James Miller flies over Palace in a paraglider before landing on roof and exposing himself.
1994 : Cufflinks given to Prince Charles by Camilla stolen in break-in at St James’s Palace.
2003 : Daily Mirror reporter Ryan Parry exposes gaps in royal security by spending two months working under- cover as Palace footman.
2003 : “Comedy terrorist” Aaron Barschak gatecrashes Prince William’s 21st birthday bash at Windsor Castle dressed in pink frock and Bin Laden beard.
2004 : A Fathers 4 Justice campaigner dressed as Batman unfurls a protest banner on balcony at the Palace.
2004 : Michael Hammond cons way into Windsor Castle by posing as Scotland Yard detective. He was jailed for four-and-a-half years.
2010 : Duchess of Cornwall hit by a protester on student fees demo after her car came under attack.

Man Discovers He’s Actually A Woman Thanks To Kidney Stone



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Image Credit: Photos.com
A trip to the hospital to deal with a kidney stone wound up being a life-changing event for a Denver, Colorado man, who learned in the emergency room that he was actually a woman.
That man, Steve Crecelius, was a photographer who had been married for 25 years and was the father of six children when an ultrasound revealed that he was actually female during that hospital visit five years ago, Ashley Jennings of ABC News and Rheana Murray of the New York Daily News reported this week.
After hearing the news, he decided to begin living as a woman.
Crecelius, who now goes by the name of Stevie, told reporters that even as a child, he would have “feminine feelings” and that we would secretly wear his mother’s clothes and makeup. He said he thought he looked “pretty,” and said that while he was a little surprised when a nurse told him he was intersex (meaning that he had male genitalia and female internal sex organs), that he wasn’t overly shocked by the news.
“It validated everything I had always felt inside,” he told Hema Mullur or KDVR.com on Tuesday. Likewise, he told ABC News, “It was very liberating. I had spent so much energy after the age of 13 constantly evaluating how people looked at me and acted towards me.”
Crecelius’ wife, Debbie, and his children were accepting of the news, and the couple still lives together.
“I didn’t sign on for this, but who signs on for anything? She’s the same person she was as a he on the inside,” Debbie Crecelius told Mullur.
“She still relates to my heart and soul, and I still relate to hers, and I think that that’s the essence of true love,” added Stevie, telling ABC News that the couple “worked through what we needed to” and that the “concept of unconditional love is a larger story.”
Likewise, when they told their children, she said, “How do you tell your kids that, well, it’s no longer dad, it’s dadette?’ … Within a few minutes, all of them said, ‘I don’t care dad; I love you for who you are’.”
Stevie told Jennings that she hopes she can be an advocate both for intergender people and for same-sex couples, adding, “People need to be accepting and understand. I was born this way, and loving each other and supporting each other will always be the main factor in our household.”

Source: RedOrbit Staff & Wire Reports

DEAD BOY SITS UP IN COFFIN AT HIS FUNERAL AND ASKS FOR WATER


  • Kelvin Santos stopped breathing during treatment for pneumonia and was declared dead on Friday
  • On Saturday he allegedly sat up in his coffin and asked his father for a glass of water
A two-year-old boy sat up in his coffin and asked for water before laying back down again lifeless, according to a Brazilian news website.
In a case that seems almost too incredible to be true, ORM claimed that Kelvin Santos stopped breathing during treatment for pneumonia at a hospital in Belem, northern Brazil.
He was declared dead at 7.40pm on Friday and his body was handed over to his family in a plastic bag.
Two-year-old Kelvin Santos was declared dead on Friday after he stopped breathing during treatment for pneumonia
Two-year-old Kelvin Santos was declared dead on Friday after he stopped breathing during treatment for pneumonia
The child's devastated family took him home where grieving relatives held a wake throughout the night, with the boy's body laid in an open coffin.
But an hour before his funeral was due to take place on Saturday the boy apparently sat up in his coffin and said: 'Daddy, can I have some water?'.
The boy's father, Antonio Santos, said: 'Everybody started to scream, we couldn't believe our eyes. Then we thought a miracle had taken place and our boy had come back to life.
'Then Kelvin just laid back down, the way he was. We couldn't wake him. He was dead again.
Mr Santos rushed his son back to the Aberlardo Santos hospital in Belem,where the doctors reexamined the boy and confirmed that he had no signs of life.
He said: 'They assured me that he really was dead and gave me no explanation for what we had just seen and heard.'
The boy's family decided to delay the funeral for an hour in the hope that he would wake up again, but ended up burying him at 5pm that day in a local cemetery.
Devastated: Kelvin's father Antonio Santos claims his son was a victim of medical negligence
Devastated: Kelvin's father Antonio Santos claims his son was a victim of medical negligence
Convinced that his son was victim of medical malpractice, Mr Santos has now registered a complaint with the police who have launched an investigation
He said: 'Fifteen minutes after rushing him away for resuscitation, they came and told me he was dead and handed me his body. Perhaps they didn't examine him properly. Dead people don't just wake up and talk. I'm determined to find out the truth.'
The local state department today confirmed the boy had been admitted to hospital in a critical condition and was declared dead after suffering cardiac-respiratory failure.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2155245/Dead-Brazilian-boy-wakes-funeral-asks-WATER-lying-lifeless.html#ixzz1x3NzUF2L

WOMAN HELD HOSTAGE BY A MURDERER WHO FAKED HIS OWN DEATH


A convicted murderer who faked his own death while on the run from an open prison has been jailed for four years for holding a woman hostage.

Murderer faked his own death on the run after holding woman hostage
Johns escaped from Wormwood Scrubs in 1995, after being given a life sentence for murder at Chelmsford Crown Court on July 8, 1993.  Photo: ALAMY
Gary Johns, 46, was believed to be dead when he tied up Adeola Oluwa and tried to force her into making a sex tape, to be used against her if she tried to 'grass him up'.
The terrified mother-of-one was also held at knife-point and told two vans were waiting outside John's flat to take her away, Snaresbrook Crown Court heard.
Johns escaped from Wormwood Scrubs in 1995, after being given a life sentence for murder at Chelmsford Crown Court on July 8, 1993.
He stabbed a 29-year-old through the heart after gatecrashing a nurse's party in Harlow, Essex.
Johns was later captured and given a concurrent seven-year term for escape.
At the time, he was the first inmate to flee the west London jail since spy George Blake in 1996.
He was eventually transferred to Standford Hill open prison, on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, but bolted while on day release and remained at large between 2008 and 2011.
Ms Oluwa had been subjected to a 24-hour ordeal when she went to collect her American pitbull, named Bronx, from Johns' girlfriend, Dennelva Buntin, last October 12, at her flat in Albion Road, Hackney.
When Ms Oluwa arrived to get the dog she was amazed to see Johns there.
'Ms Oluwa was surprised because she thought Mr Johns was dead, having been told this in February last year,' said prosecutor Matthew Dalton.
When Ms Adeola said she needed to collect her daughter from school Johns said she could not leave because she now knew he was alive and could 'grass him up' to police.
'Ms Adeola begged Mr Johns to let her go but he quickly fetched some black rope and tied her wrists together,' said Mr Dalton.
Some time later, Johns reappeared with a knife, waving it at her in a threatening manner.
'He said there were two vans with men outside to take her to a hotel where she would have to work and make a sex tape,' Mr Dalton added.
'She would also have to be filmed taking drugs so he could use it against her if she did grass him up to the police.'
Ms Adeola continued to beg for her freedom but Johns insisted she would have to stay overnight.
The following morning, he said he would release her if she dropped him at a friend's house, but instead tried to lure her into a secluded alleyway, where he brandished the knife again.
She managed to escape as Johns tried to force her to go with him back to the flat, but he caught up with her and grabbed her clothing.
Shocked members of the public witnessed her crying out and the police were called.
But he was not arrested until more than a month later on November 23.
A jury found Johns guilty of false imprisonment following a trial.
Buntin, 22, was cleared of the same charge.
Sentencing Johns to a four year sentence concurrent to his life term, the judge, Mr Recorder Tim Clark said: 'I'm required to pass sentence on you for falsely imprisoning Ms Oluwa, having absconded from day release.
'Bearing in mind the rather strange facts of your offence which occurred as a result of you not wanting to go back into prison, and the fact that you will be on licence for the rest of your life anyway, this is not a case where dangerous provisions are appropriate.
'You were at large having absconded while on day release from your life sentence.
'Despite the victim's understandable belief that she had been set up, in my view this was an offence that was wholly unplanned.
'Ms Buntin thought that you had gone out and was not expecting you to be at the flat when she returned with Ms Oluwa.
'When you saw this person with Ms Buntin, you realised you had a problem.
'Although you had met Ms Oluwa since you absconded, you had let it be known to your family and associates that you were dead and had done so successfully, to the extent that Ms Oluwa was shocked to see you.
'That caused you all sorts of difficulties and you came to the conclusion that you would have to detain her.
'She found this experience terrifying and that will have some consequence on her state of mind for some time.
'Marking the seriousness of the offence and hoping there is still some chance for you to progress and there is light at the end of the tunnel, the appropriate sentence is one of four years in prison.'
Shaven-headed and wearing jeans and an orange polo shirt, exposing his tattooed arms, Johns thanked the judge he was led of the dock.
Defending Johns, Bridget Irving said a pre-sentence report had concluded he doesn't pose a risk to the public.
'He was at large from 2008 to 2011 and he worked during that time, setting up his own business.
'Clearly he is a lifer so he is going to be on licence for the rest of his life.
'The amount of time he has left to serve is not going to be resolved until the end of the proceedings when the parole board will meet.
'Unfortunately he is back before the courts when he kept out of trouble in and out of prison for some time.'
A charge of escape from Stanford Hill Open Prison in 2008 was laid on file.
Buntin, of Hakewill Way, Colchester, Essex and Johns, of no fixed address, denied false imprisonment.
Johns is also subject to a restraining order against Ms Oluwa.

The American That Flew Crashed Dana Airline (Pls If You Can't,Don Look At the 2nd Picture)


undefinedCaptain Peter Waxtan, the American pilot who flew the ill-fated Dana plane on Sunday [June 3], was on his last flight and last day in Nigeria before returning to his country, friends and former colleagues said.

A former pilot for Miramar-based Spirit Airlines, Waxtan resumed work with Dana Air in March 2012,Oscar Wason, the airline’s director of operations said.


Photo of Captain Waxtan while he was being brought out of
the crahsed Dana plane. PHOTO: Olatunji Erinfolami
In all, Waxtan had flown Dana planes for 30 days and was off duty for 15 days, Pat Squires, a pilot who worked with him for 15 years told Sun Sentinel newspaper in the United States, adding that he was to return on Sunday (3 June), the same day the Dana flight 992 crashed in Lagos, southwest Nigeria, killing 152 people on board and at least 10 others on the ground.

Squire added that Waxtan was eager to return to the US and spend time with Lisa, his fiancée. The 55-year old pilot was to have arrived his Fort Lauderdale home on Wednesday (i.e. today, June 6), he said.

The American pilot worked at Spirit from 1997 to 2009 before his contract and that of Squires, his colleague, were terminated during union negotiations with the airline. “It was a political thing”,Squires said, which occurred during union negotiations with the airline. Both men then flew for Falcon Air Express, a Miami-based charter service. Last year they both departed Falcon. Waxtanlater joined Dana Air, where he worked 30 days on and 15 off, Squires said.

“Sunday was supposed to be his last day in the rotation in Nigeria”, he said.

Waxtan lived with Lisa, his fiancée, who through a friend declined to give her last name. “He spent as much time as he could get with her”, Squires said. “It’s just so devastating”, said a Coral Springs flight attendant who knew Waxtan.

The late Captain Waxtan
Flight 992 was few kilometers on its final approach to the Lagos airport whenWaxtan declared an emergency. The jetliner crashed into a two-storey railway building, hitting the ground tail first and exploding in flames.

Squires described his friend as a“consummate professional” at flying. “He was the best MD-80 captain I’ve ever seen”, said Squires.

Squires said crash photos showing Flight 992 on the ground with it nose up indicates Waxtanwas trying to keep it in the air right until the end.

“He did everything he could to save that aircraft”, Squires said. “In the end, if he knew it was going down, he did everything he could to minimize the amount of damage on the ground”. “If nothing else, his efforts were heroic”.

Squires said Waxtan was a former Army helicopter pilot who enjoyed hiking. About three weeks ago, the two men spoke. “He was very happy, he kept telling me, ‘We need captains, come on over“, Squires recalled.

“I’m still in shock,” said the friend, his voice breaking”. “God, I’m going to miss him”, the Sun Sentinel reported.

culled CKN NIGERIA