A judge has decided a Sikh man can testify at a trial later this month by video conference for religious reasons after he was refused entry to court for wearing his kirpan.

Court of Queen's Bench Justice Bryan Mahoney made the ruling after hearing an application from Crown prosecutor Beverly Bauer on Friday.

Bauer said defence lawyer Patrick Flynn agreed to what is essentially a compromise.[Link]

Muslim woman said masked man targeted her over religion

She said she was the victim of a hate crime, but now police say a 19-year-old Elmhurst College student made up her story that a masked man attacked her in a campus restroom because she's a Muslim.

Safia Z. Jilani, a 19-year-old sophomore at the school, was charged Friday with filing a false police report, a Class 4 felony punishable by one to three years in prison, Elmhurst police said. [Link]

A Hempstead, N.Y.-based chain of retail discount stores, National Wholesale Liquidators, Inc., will pay $255,000 and agree to injunctive relief to settle a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency announced today. The EEOC had charged that the company subjected employees to a hostile work environment based on their race, national origin and religion and sexually harassed an employee.

In its lawsuit, the EEOC said a National Wholesale Liquidators store manager subjected South Asian workers to taunts about their national origin and religion. The EEOC also charged that the store manager sexually harassed a female employee. The woman, a Sikh, was told by the manager to remove her turban because she “would appear sexier without it.”

“The EEOC hopes this settlement encourages employers to take steps to educate their managers and employees,” said Margaret A. Malloy, the EEOC trial attorney assigned to the case. “Harassing employees based on national origin, sex or religion is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”

EEOC New York District Director Spencer H. Lewis said, “This case should remind employers to take seriously allegations of harassment, especially where managers in positions of authority are involved in the misconduct.” [Link]

Three North Shore men have been charged in federal court with terrorizing two Revere families just because they practice Islam.

Prosecutors of the U.S. Attorney’s Office have charged Adam J. Bonito, 21, of Revere, Christopher D. Giaquinto, 22, of Winthrop and a juvenile male with criminal conspiracy to commit a hate crime.

Christina DiIorio-Sterling, spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan’s Office, announced Friday that the suspects would be charged with vandalizing and damaging the vehicles of the two Muslim families, who lived in the same Revere duplex, in 2004 and 2005.

A press release about the case did not specify where in the city the victims lived.

Prosecutors allege, “it was the plan and purpose of the conspiracy to vandalize a van, believed to belong to one of the residents, in order to interfere with the victim’s housing rights because of race,” DiIorio-Sterling said. “The intended victim was an Arab Muslim person of Middle Eastern origin who lived at the duplex in Revere.” [Link]

A drunken lorry driver who ripped off a Sikh taxi driver's turban and then tried to steal a motorist's car keys has been jailed for a year.

William Carr, 36, was aggressive and argumentative as the taxi he was being driven home in pulled into Watford Gap services on the M1 on November 11 last year.

Rebecca Wade, prosecuting, said: "They got out and the defendant started being aggressive towards the taxi driver, being abusive and swearing."

He grabbed hold of Ajit Singh Dhillon's car keys, £120 in cash and a mobile phone, before ripping off his turban and then trying to headbutt him several times.

The taxi driver managed to keep out of his way and called the police as Carr turned his attention to a passing motorist, who had stopped at the motorway service station.

Northampton Crown Court heard last week how Carr approached motorist Vimal Palmer and launched an unprovoked attack, while trying to steal his car keys.

After being arrested, Carr told officers he was so drunk he had no recollection of the incident.

Judge Richard Bray said: "He was drunk and assaulted a taxi driver; a nasty assault of an Asian taxi driver and his turban was taken off his head and thrown away.

"It's a grave insult and an aggravating feature."

Carr, of Fallowfields, in Crick, pleaded guilty to affray, theft of cash and a mobile phone and the attempted robbery of Vimal Palmer's car keys.

Jailing him for a year, Judge Bray said: "The taxi driver was assaulted in a humiliating manner and must have been very upset by your behaviour.

"There has to be a prison sentence.

"Attacks on taxi drivers at night have become all too prevalent," he added.

Claire Howell, defending, said Carr had been shocked by his behaviour after watching the CCTV footage from Watford Gap and wanted to compensate Mr Singh Dhillon.

She said: "This defendant was very, very drunk and was appalled by what he was said to have done. He is deeply ashamed of his behaviour that night." [Link]

The head of the Crown Prosecution Service in West Yorkshire is to undergo “training” in the wake of an employment tribunal that saw a Muslim solicitor awarded a record £600,000 payout for racial discrimination.

Chief Prosecutor Neil Franklin is among a number of senior managers involved in the case who will be given “further guidance and training.”

Halima Aziz was suspended from work by the CPS after joking at Bradford Magistrates’ Court that she was a friend of Osama bin Laden. Earlier this month, an employment tribunal found that there was “not a shred of evidence” to support the treatment of Miss Aziz by the CPS.

The lawyer was working at Bradford Magistrates in October 2001 – a month after 9/11 – when she was accused of blaming the terror attacks in the US on “Jews”. Miss Aziz denied making that comment, saying that she joked, as she was going through a security check at the court, that she was being treated like a friend of Bin Laden.

She was suspended from duty while a complaint from the court was investigated and she was cleared of all allegations in 2002.

The Employment Tribunal found that senior officials at the CPS were guilty of racial discrimination for the way they handled her case and that a previous inquiry run by chief executive Peter Lewis was a “whitewash”. And it identified Mr Franklin as one of the “principal discriminators”.

The CPS said it accepted the recommendations in the judgement and has now revealed that it will provide further guidance and training for the managers involved.

But the CPS does not accept certain elements of the judgement and is seeking a review and appeal on those.

The CPS said the specific elements it was appealing against were the references to the CPS withholding material from the Tribunal, the Employment Appeals Tribunal and the Court of Appeal. [Link]

Two Greater Boston men and a juvenile were charged yesterday with committing a hate crime against two Muslim families in Revere, according to a statement from US attorney Michael J. Sullivan.

Adam J. Bonito, 21, of Revere and Christopher D. Giaquinto, 22, of Winthrop were charged with carrying out a criminal conspiracy that interfered with the fair housing rights of two Muslim families living in a duplex in Revere, according to Sullivan.

Bonito and Giaquinto repeatedly damaged and vandalized vehicles parked in front of the duplex shared by the families in 2004 and 2005, Sullivan said.

The intended victim was a Muslim of Middle Eastern descent who lived at the duplex.

A person at each of the homes of Bonito and Giaquinto said the men declined comment last night.

Bonito and Giaquinto, along with others, allegedly vandalized a Nissan van parked outside the house on Sept. 19, 2004, breaking a windshield and several windows and damaging the body of the van, Sullivan alleges.

During January and March 2005, Bonito and another person vandalized a Dodge van parked in front of the house that they believed belonged to the same victim, the US attorney said.

Another male, whose name was not released because he is under 18, has been charged in juvenile delinquency proceedings for his "bias motivated acts of vandalism," Sullivan said. [Link]

Dallas County has revised its security-screening procedures to settle a lawsuit filed on behalf of a Sikh man who was ordered out of a courtroom for refusing to remove his turban, a civil rights group said yesterday.

The new policy announced by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Texas calls for security personnel at all county buildings to allow people wearing religious head coverings or other religious garments to walk through a metal detector without removing the item. If the detector beeps, security personnel will use a hand-held detector or conduct a private search.

The policy was developed by the county based on models provided by the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund. The new led to the dismissal last week of a case brought by the ACLU on behalf of Amardeep Singh.

According to the suit filed last year, Singh was ordered out of a Justice of the Peace courtroom under threat of arrest in June 2006. Singh had gone to defend himself from a traffic ticket when he was told by court personnel and Judge Albert Bernard Cercone to remove his "hat." When Singh tried to explain that wearing a turban is a required religious practice for members of the Sikh faith, the judge and court officials refused to hear his explanation.

Sikhs compare the turban to yarmulkes worn by many Orthodox Jews and hijabs worn by many Muslim women and say removing it is humiliating. There are an estimated 500,000 Sikhs in the U.S., according to their legal defense group.

"The Constitution protects the right of Mr. Singh and every citizen to access their government without compromising their religious beliefs," said Lisa Graybill, legal director of the ACLU Foundation of Texas. "By applying this new policy, the county and Judge Cercone will help ensure that right is respected in Dallas County."

Last year, officials in Lawrenceville, Ga. revised their policy after a Sikh man was kept from entering the court because of his turban, according to documents in the lawsuit.

A federal guideline also revised last year allows air passengers to keep on headwear such as turbans at screening checkpoints. It gives airport screeners the option to pat down headwear at the metal detector if a passenger does not want to remove it for personal reasons. [Link]

France's supreme court upheld a decree that refused citizenship to a Muslim woman from Morocco, ruling that she had failed to assimilate French culture. It was ruled that her radical practice of Islam is incompatible with French values.

On June 27, 2008, the Council of State (Conseil d’Etat), the French Supreme Administrative Court, upheld a Prime Minister’s decree refusing citizenship to a Moroccan woman who was married to a French national and had two French children. The Council’s decision was based on the grounds that the woman lacked assimilation to French society because of her radical practice of religion, deemed incompatible with the essential values of the French community, in particular equality of the genders. These findings were supported by elements in the court file that the Moroccan woman was a Salafist Muslim and wore the Burqa. [Link]

The outcome of a complaint filed by a Tulsa Muslim teenager against Abercrombie & Fitch may never be made public.

The girl ... filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last month alleging that the popular clothier's Woodland Hills store refused to hire her because she wears a religiously mandated head scarf....

EEOC attorney Michelle Robertson said her office cannot comment on any charge that is still open because of confidentiality requirements of the Civil Rights Act, and cannot even confirm that the case was filed.

In general, she said, when a complaint is filed, it is assigned to an investigator who gets information from the employer and elsewhere and makes a recommendation to the area director.

In 5 percent of the cases, there is enough evidence to determine that discrimination occurred, she said.

Nearly all of the cases with evidence of discrimination are settled out of court and remain confidential.

Only 1 percent of those 5 percent wind up in court, where they become public, she said. [Link]

Critics of the government's secret no-fly list scored a potentially important victory Monday when a federal appeals court ruled that would-be passengers can ask a judge and jury to decide whether their inclusion on the list violates their rights.

In a 2-1 ruling, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reinstated a suit by a former Stanford University student who was detained and handcuffed in 2005 as she was about to board a plane to her native Malaysia.

The ruling is apparently the first to allow a challenge to the no-fly list to proceed in a federal trial court, said the plaintiff's lawyer, Marwa Elzankaly.

The decision would allow individuals to demand information from the government, present evidence on why they should not have been on the list, and take the case to a jury, Elzankaly said.

The ruling means that "someone who finds it's likely that their name has been placed on a government watch list will get their day in court," Elzankaly said. [Link]

A military court convicted and sentenced Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, this past week in connection with terrorist activities.

Hamdan was charged with conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism, but he was acquitted of the conspiracy charge.

The court believed he didn’t know about plans for the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the United States, but by driving and hiding bin Laden, he provided support for terrorism. The sentence, coupled with time served, could mean that Hamdan would be released by December this year, as he has been held at Guantanamo Bay by our government since 2003.

While this trial might not be the end of the legal road for Hamdan, it does represent an important milestone in the nation’s war on terror. It’s a milestone, however, that the nation passed before, long ago.

In this country, we don’t lock away people indefinitely without due process, trial and conviction.

If someone is suspected of a crime, we investigate, gather evidence, arrest, charge, try, convict or acquit, and sentence or release.

For too long the nation has held people in limbo at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or in secret prisons overseas.

This trial, before a six-member military panel, was seen by some as outside the bounds of our accepted and tested legal system, and it was. However, it did permit the hearing of evidence, permitted the accused to mount a defense, and it still provides the means to appeal to civilian courts and eventually the U.S. Supreme Court.

A concern is the length of time that it took to reach this juncture, and the fact that the Bush administration contends that the court’s sentence doesn’t make any difference — it can still hold Hamdan indefinitely as an enemy combatant as long as the war on terror continues.

Past wars have caused other presidents to take steps that were later regretted. The internment of Japanese Americans is one example.

We also will regret holding people without charge, or without trial, then continuing to hold them regardless of trial outcome.

As a nation, we must put more faith in the rule of law. Unlawful acts should be prosecuted, but we should not prosecute suspected acts that cannot be proven because of a lack evidence and thoughts that don’t lead to acts.

Judicial standards carved out over more than 200 years are worth protecting, not abandoning in moments of panic. [Link]

For at least the last six years, federal border agents have been taking travelers' laptop computers away from them to be searched without any evidence of the travelers' wrongdoing. Border officials have been able to share copies of the laptops' contents with other agencies - and to prosecute travelers for crimes based on what they've found on the illegally searched and seized computers.

Anyone's computer (or flash drive, hard drive, iPod, cell phone or pager) can be seized, and has been seized. According to a recent survey by the Association of Corporate Travelers, 7 percent of business travelers report having their laptops searched by the federal government. One of the reasons why the public is finally learning about this program is that businesses were starting to get worried about their trade secrets leaking out to rivals. It's an unfortunate way to learn about this infringement upon our Fourth Amendment rights. [Link]

Chief Prosecutor Robert Jackson opened the proceedings at Nuremberg not with a list of Nazi atrocities but with a tribute to the war-crimes court itself: “That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that power has ever paid to reason.”

The ensuing trials, though not without their flaws, largely fulfilled this lofty promise, standing as a monument to the rule of law and the very idea of conducting public trials for war criminals. As civilized people, we have a natural desire to see criminals held responsible for their actions. The desire is that much stronger in the case of large-scale crimes like genocides or terrorist attacks, which seem to demand not just accountability but a reaffirmation of the moral order — a public enumeration of what is right and what is wrong — that can be delivered only in a courtroom.

The hope once was that military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay would meet this need — if not provide closure on the Sept. 11 attacks, then at least enable a collective participation in the trials of their perpetrators. There were practical reasons to opt for tribunals over the federal courts, which were not designed to try combatants captured on the battlefield: a soldier couldn’t very well be expected to read a prisoner his rights. But there was something else, too. Trying terrorists as war criminals would send a powerful message to the world.

And yet the tribunals that just opened hardly have the feel of history in the making. They haven’t merited much discussion in the presidential campaign; nor are we a nation riveted by the trial of the first defendant, a former driver for Osama bin Laden named Salim Hamdan. Instead of a landmark case, one that serves as a resonant reminder of the gulf separating us from our enemies, we have detachment and ambiguity — not just about the extent of Hamdan’s guilt but also about the wisdom of the entire tribunal process as well as many other aspects of the prosecution of the war on terror....

The enduring legacy of Nuremberg was an international movement to outlaw crimes against humanity — a movement that has gone a long way toward keeping order in a violent world. What will the legacy of these war-crimes trials be? [Link]

Citing changing demographics and a steady increase in complaints from people of faith, a federal agency last week released an updated compliance manual on religious discrimination in the workplace.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued the guidance after consultation with religious groups, employers, and labor organizations. The number of religious-discrimination charges reported to the agency has more than doubled over the last 15 years.

"The goal here is to promote voluntary compliance, to get everyone on the same page, to let them know what the law is," said David Grinberg, a spokesman for the agency. "We want to stop discrimination before it starts."

The new manual provides safeguards for workers who request time off for religious observances, and protects workers whose faith requires they wear specific religious garments, such as a hijab, a head covering worn by some Muslim women.

Muslims have faced the sharpest increase in workplace discrimination of any major religious in recent years. Between 1997 and 2007, the number of discrimination charges filed by Muslims more than doubled, from 398 to 907. That figure peaked at 1,155 in 2002, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. [Link]

She spent nine weeks in isolation in a classroom, alone except for a teaching assistant, working from notes which she was instructed to copy. The school canteen was barred to her and so were its corridors whenever they were being used by other pupils.

She was not allowed to join her friends in the playground and had to be accompanied by a teacher when she went to the toilet. All because her determination to wear a metal bangle was considered by her school to be an act of defiance.

Yesterday, a high court judge ruled that the exclusion of 14-year-old Sarika Watkins-Singh from Aberdare girls' school in south Wales because she continued to wear the bracelet - a symbol of her Sikh religion - was unlawful.

Mr Justice Stephen Silber concluded the school was guilty of indirect discrimination under race relations - Sikhs are a race - and equality laws. [Link]

An Arab man employed at a biotech company on the UBC campus has been awarded $11,599 in damages after the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal found he was a victim of racial profiling by colleagues, which led to him being reported to the RCMP as a suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The case was so egregious that the tribunal said it would have awarded Ghassan Asad much more than the $6,000 he had sought as compensation for injury to dignity, feelings and self-respect.

"If it were possible to increase the award beyond $6,000 I would do so," said tribunal member Abraham Okazaki, given the insensitivity and lack of care by Kinexus Bioinformatics Corp.'s senior management. [Link]

A jury has awarded $337,000 to a former Missouri Department of Natural Resources supervisor who claimed he was subject to a hostile work environment after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the invasion of Iraq.

Mohamad Alhalabi, who is of Lebanese descent, told the jury in St. Louis County Circuit Court during a two-week trial that his bosses did nothing to alleviate ethnic slurs, including personal attacks in anonymous anti-Muslim fliers. [Link]

A Muslim man is suing the Kane County Sheriff’s Department for religious discrimination, claiming he was fired as a correctional officer after refusing to shave off the mustache he kept for religious reasons.

Abal Zaidi filed a federal lawsuit Monday against the department, claiming he was discriminated against and fired due to his religion.

Zaidi was employed as a correctional officer at the department from July 31, 2006 until December 19, 2006, according to the suit filed in U.S. District court. [Link]

A University of South Florida student said Walt Disney Co. officials told him he didn't fit the "Disney look" when he applied for a job.
more stories like this

Now, 24-year-old Sukhbir Channa is suing Disney World. He claims the company discriminated against him because of his turban and bushy beard, which his religion requires.

He was applying to be a trumpet player during the 2006 holiday season.

A Disney spokeswoman said they have no record of Channa applying for the job then and that the company does not discriminate against anyone.

The suit was filed in Tampa on Monday where the university is located and where the hiring process took place. He's seeking $1 million in punitive damages. [Link]