One dead, 7 missing as heavy rains trigger floods in central Japan/node/2572216/world
One dead, 7 missing as heavy rains trigger floods in central Japan
Japanese authorities told tens of thousands of people to evacuate the quake-hit region of Ishikawa on September 21 as heavy rain caused flooding, with one person unaccounted for, officials said. (AFP)
One dead, 7 missing as heavy rains trigger floods in central Japan
In Wajima city, two people were missing, and calls for rescue were swamping the local fire department
Updated 21 September 2024
AFP
TOKYO: One person was killed and at least seven were missing on Saturday, officials said, as “unprecedented” rains triggered floods and landslides in Japan’s quake-hit region of Ishikawa, where authorities told tens of thousands to evacuate.
A dozen rivers in the region, on the west coast of central Japan that was hit by a large quake on New Year’s Day, had burst their banks by 11:00 am (0200 GMT), land ministry official Masaru Kojima said.
One person was killed, three people were missing and two people were seriously injured in Ishikawa, the region’s government said in a statement, with two of the missing reportedly carried away by strong river currents.
Another four people, who were working for the land ministry to restore a road in Wajima, were also missing, ministry official Koji Yamamoto told AFP.
“About 60 people have been working to restore a road hit by the quake but a landslide occurred” on Saturday morning, Yamamoto said.
“I asked (contractors) to check the safety of workers... but we are still unable to contact four people,” he said.
Rescue workers were on their way to the site but were “blocked by landslides.”
About 20 workers were taking shelter inside a tunnel they had been working to restore, Yamamoto said.
Japan’s Kyodo news agency said as many as 10 people were missing in Wajima.
Many buildings were inundated, with landslides blocking roads, some 6,000 households without power and an unknown number of households without running water, the Ishikawa government said.
Communication services were also cut for some people, operators said.
The cities of Wajima and Suzu, as well as Noto town, ordered about 44,700 residents to evacuate, officials said.
Another 16,700 residents in Niigata and Yamagata prefectures north of Ishikawa were also told to evacuate, the fire and disaster management agency said.
The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said it issued its highest-level warning for Ishikawa, advising of a “life-threatening situation.”
The areas under the warning were seeing “heavy rain of unprecedented levels,” JMA forecaster Satoshi Sugimoto told reporters, adding “it is a situation in which you have to secure your safety immediately.”
More than 120 millimeters (4.7 inches) of rainfall per hour was recorded in Wajima in the morning, the heaviest rain since comparative data became available in 1929.
Footage on NHK showed an entire street submerged in Wajima.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida instructed the government “to do its best in disaster management with saving people’s lives as the first priority,” top government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters.
Self-Defense Force personnel have been sent to the Ishikawa region to join rescue workers, he said.
Wajima and Suzu, in central Japan’s Noto peninsula, were among the areas hardest hit by the huge New Year’s Day earthquake that killed at least 236 people.
The region is still reeling from the magnitude 7.5 quake that toppled buildings, ripped up roads and sparked a major fire.
Parts of Japan have seen unprecedented rainfall in recent years, with floods and landslides sometimes causing casualties.
Scientists say human-driven climate change is intensifying the risk of heavy rain in the country and elsewhere because a warmer atmosphere holds more water.
UK must tackle racists and people who take law into their hands head on, says former Tory chancellor and author of ‘The Boy from Baghdad’ Nadhim Zahawi
In wide-ranging interview, Zahawi describes PM Starmer’s decision to remove Margaret Thatcher’s portrait from office as “vindictive” and “petty” behavior
Updated 19 min ago
Arab News
DUBAI: Britain is still the most tolerant place on earth, but it must tackle head on both the scourge of racism in society and those who are intent upon taking the law into their own hands, former Conservative MP and minister Nadhim Zahawi said.
His remarks follow a summer of unrest in the UK, where a knife attack in the town of Southport that killed three children and injured 10 sparked nationwide riots, exploited by far-right fringe groups to whip up hatred against immigrants.
“We have to address the racists head-on,” said Zahawi, appearing on the first episode of the new season of the Arab News current affairs program “Frankly Speaking.”
“And I think it’s important that we send a very clear message that taking things into your own hands and going out and antagonizing, bullying, beating people just because of their background or color is completely unacceptable.
“And we have to deliver that message very, very clearly. It’s incumbent on the leadership, from the prime minister down, to do that.”
In his new memoir, “The Boy from Baghdad,” Zahawi chronicles his family’s escape from the regime of Saddam Hussein in the 1970s. (Arab News photo)
Zahawi, who was a Conservative member of parliament for Stratford-upon-Avon from 2010 to 2024 and who served as chancellor of the exchequer in Boris Johnson’s cabinet, also spoke of his own struggles growing up in the UK as an Iraqi refugee.
In his new memoir, “The Boy from Baghdad,” Zahawi chronicles his family’s escape from the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein in the late 1970s, the struggles of building a new life in Britain, and the onset of serious financial difficulties.
“I talk about my sort of impostor feeling that just because I came from a privileged family background in Iraq, landing in the UK in 1978-79, but not having the same financial struggles as, say, a refugee today that would land in the UK,” he said.
“We had different financial struggles much later on, which I address in the book, and pretty dire ones, including the bank taking away our home. But because of success and maybe because I don’t conform to the stereotype of what brown people should do in politics in the UK, that they should be socialist or they should be leftwing Labour.”
Indeed, Zahawi also had to contend with racial discrimination. Does he believe Britain has always had a racism problem?
A knife attack in the town of Southport that killed three children sparked riots nationwide. (AFP)
“In the 1980s, it was very different to today, including my own party,” he said. “I think the Conservative Party of the ’80s was a bit of a closed shop for people of my background, but I persevered.
“There are always going to be elements of racism. But I think, if you look at the evidence, the UK has dealt with it in a much better way than pretty much every other country around us in Europe.”
Because of his own experiences as a refugee who made his fortune and rose to the front bench of politics, it seems somewhat jarring that he would go on to support the Conservative government’s scheme to deport failed asylum-seekers to Rwanda.
“So, let me just unpack some of that,” said Zahawi.
“The net increase in migration into the UK was about 740,000 people last year. Clearly, our public services cannot cope with a city the size of Bath being built every year to be able to accommodate that level of migration.
“We’ve been promising, prime minister after prime minister, that we would bring down migration numbers. David Cameron said it would be tens of thousands. It has gone on one trajectory, and that’s up. And that has to be our priority, this government’s priority.”
Of particular concern to UK authorities — and especially to those who took part in the summer’s rioting — are the irregular migrants arriving in Britain on small boats, crossing the English Channel from northern France.
“Forty thousand are coming in illegally on these small boats,” said Zahawi. “Now, the problem with that is ... the unfairness of that, the perception that this is really bad, it’s unfair. Why should these people get to jump the queue to come into the UK? That poisons the well of goodwill with the British public. And so, Rwanda, in my view, was a good deterrent.”
King Charles paying tribute to the victims in Southport. (AFP)
Owing to repeated defeats in the UK’s highest courts over its human rights implications, the Rwanda scheme never got off the ground, and was immediately scrapped by the new Labour administration, which has pledged to tackle the smuggling gangs at the source.
If Europe wants to prevent hundreds of millions of migrants arriving on its doorstep, however, Zahawi says governments would do well to imitate the development agendas of the UAE, China, and others in helping countries in Africa and beyond to stabilize and prosper.
“In Libya and anything south of Libya, there are about half a billion people who will come under pressure and are capable of movement for political reasons, for environmental reasons, or economic reasons,” he said.
“Clearly, Europe cannot absorb half a billion people. So, we have to have some really serious work done upstream in those countries to stabilize them, to allow them to become prosperous.
“The UAE is doing a lot of that work. We should look at what they’re doing and see if we can partner with them, because the work they’re doing in Africa is second only to China and the investment China is making in Africa.”
In July, Zahawi’s party, under the leadership of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, suffered the worst election defeat in the party’s 190-year history, losing to Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour by a landslide.
Of particular concern to UK authorities are the irregular migrants arriving in Britain on small boats. (AFP)
Despite pledging to put “country first, party second,” Sir Keir has already ruffled feathers among his Tory rivals after deciding to remove a portrait of Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher from his office at 10 Downing Street.
Although he denied moving the portrait for ideological or party political reasons, opponents have used the new PM’s choice of decor to accuse him of pettiness. “I just think this sort of, dare I say, vindictive type behavior,” said Zahawi. “I thought it’s petty, honestly.”
In early September, Zahawi faced a backlash of his own after posting a photograph on social media of a homeless person sleeping on the pavement in Mayfair, one of the British capital’s wealthiest neighborhoods.
Although Zahawi insists he was merely drawing attention to the high rates of rough sleeping, critics pointed out that homelessness had risen significantly under Conservative rule, and attacked Zahawi’s personal wealth.
“I just happened to be walking through Hertford Street, and I saw this poor, tragic human being lying on the pavement in the morning, and I wanted to highlight that this really is an issue. And it’s heartbreaking,” said Zahawi.
“But then you’ve got the Twitter pile-on from the lefties, who then attack your success, as if I’m somehow affronted by this just because it happens to be Mayfair. No.”
Zahawi appeared on the first episode of the new season of the Arab News current affairs program “Frankly Speaking.”
Zahawi says he is concerned the scale of rough sleeping on London’s streets, combined with rates of crime and antisocial behavior, leaves foreign visitors with a bad impression.
“The perception around the world, in the UAE, of their citizens going to England and getting mugged or hurt by some of these criminal gangs, at the moment is reaching a level that I think is deeply damaging to the image of the UK and to London,” he said.
Another recent controversy involved Zahawi’s stance on Iraq. Although he did not have a hand in the UK’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 — indeed, this was the work of a Labour government, and long predated Zahawi’s election to parliament — the Guardian newspaper criticized him for refusing to condemn the war in his new memoir.
Zahawi has since clarified that he supported the toppling of Saddam, but not the way the post-war situation was handled. Indeed, analysts are united in the view that these failures led directly to the emergence of Daesh.
“What Saddam did to the Kurds and the Shiite community in the south was abominable,” he said, referring to the regime’s successive bouts of repression.
“It was murderous. It was criminal. The Anfal program alone is responsible for 182,000 innocent souls being murdered, 4,000 Kurdish villages burnt to the ground. And so I think it’s only right that the world helped these unfortunate souls, these communities, depose such an evil tyrant.
“Post war, I think actually we really made a terrible error of judgment. And I would very easily explain to those interested that I think Tony Blair should have been much more robust to our most important ally, the US, by saying, look, show me the plan.”
Britain is still the most tolerant place on earth, Zahawi told Arab News. (AFP)
He highlighted the de-Baathification campaign and the disbanding of the Iraqi army as particularly grave errors that sparked the extremist insurgency that followed.
“You send home 700,000 men with no hope of a job, no way to put food on the table, and a gun in their pocket. What do you think is going to happen? The end is Daesh. That was a terrible, terrible decision,” he said.
“It’s right to be able to almost disaggregate those two things and say, actually, the removal of an evil dictator was right. But we never really planned for the day after properly. And we have to take part of that responsibility in the UK.”
Returning to domestic affairs, Zahawi says he is concerned about the prospect of growth in the UK economy unless the tax burden can be reduced, inflation brought under control, and the flight of wealthy individuals abroad can be stemmed.
“If you really care about the British economy, why are you exporting talent? Second only to China in losing millionaires,” he said.
“Now, I know wealth is not the only proxy, as I said, to talent. But it’s a pretty good proxy. And we’re only second to China in losing people to Abu Dhabi and Dubai and elsewhere around the world. And we’re importing low-skilled labor.”
Having stood down ahead of the last general election, Zahawi is now free to return to his business ventures. One new acquisition he is said to be keen on is The Daily Telegraph — one of the Western world’s oldest conservative-leaning publications.
“It would be an honor and a privilege to lead a great newspaper like The Daily Telegraph and it is one of our great products,” he said.
Zahawi was a Conservative member of parliament for Stratford-upon-Avon from 2010 to 2024 and served as chancellor of the exchequer in Boris Johnson’s cabinet. (AFP)
The sale has met with controversy, however, after a UAE-backed bid to buy the paper was effectively blocked when the UK government published proposed laws banning foreign states or government officials from holding any direct stakes in newspaper assets.
Although he remains in the running to buy the paper, Zahawi feels the country was sending out the wrong signal. “The UK should always be open for business,” he said.
“The way you protect particular sectors of the economy, if they require protection, whether it’s nuclear or media, is through regulation, good regulation, not legislation.”
Full line-up, which includes fresh faces in almost all key posts, is due after “final fine-tuning,” Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s office said
Updated 21 September 2024
AFP
PARIS: France’s new premier said he hoped to finalize a long-awaited government “before Sunday,” as President Emmanuel Macron weighed a line-up that marks a shift to the right, with left-wingers due to protest on Saturday.
The full line-up, which includes fresh faces in almost all key posts, is due after “final fine-tuning,” Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s office said, after two-and-a-half months of deadlock created by inconclusive legislative elections.
While there appeared to be no major surprises or big-name entrants into the cabinet, there are set to be new foreign, economy and interior ministers, with only the defense minister remaining unchanged among the key offices of state.
Barnier is proposing Europe Minister Jean-Noel Barrot as foreign minister, a source close to Macron’s political faction told AFP, asking not to be named.
The move would be a major promotion for the 41-year-old, whose slick media appearances have impressed observers, but boosting France’s presence on the international stage could pose a challenge.
Bruno Retailleau, who heads the faction of the right-wing The Republicans (LR) in France’s upper house Senate, is to take on the interior ministry, according to several sources who spoke to AFP.
Landing the interior ministry, which oversees the police and domestic security, would be seen as a major success for the right.
And another meteoric rise will likely see Antoine Armand, the 33-year-old head of parliament’s economic affairs commission, installed as economy minister.
One key person said to be staying on is Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu, who is believed to enjoy a close and trusting relationship with Macron.
Barnier was at the Elysee Palace late Thursday to discuss the nominations with Macron.
Macron could seek to veto Barnier’s proposals but doing so would cause immense tensions with his premier at this stage.
Sources added that names still need to be vetted to ensure they have no conflicts of interest before entering government, as is customary.
But Macron “will not censor any name,” said a source close to him who asked not to be named.
Among the more junior positions, a last-minute controversy arose over the proposed appointment of LR senator Laurence Garnier as family minister.
Macron’s centrist allies strongly protested her nomination to the family brief, with Garnier having opposed both gay marriage and the inscription of the right to abortion in the constitution.
There had been tensions between centrist Macron and Barnier, who comes from the LR, over the balance of the government, notably at a lunch earlier this week that reports said was far from cordial.
Le Monde daily said that Barnier had even raised the possibility of resigning just days into the job. The tensions were then resolved on Thursday.
Politics in France has been deadlocked since the June-July snap legislative elections left it with a hung parliament.
Barnier, the European Union’s former top Brexit negotiator and a right-winger, was appointed earlier this month by Macron in an attempt to breach the impasse.
Key posts were vacant, with Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire stepping down after occupying his post since Macron came to power in 2017, and Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne tapped by Macron to be France’s new EU commissioner.
However, there seems to be no place in the cabinet for the ambitious Gerald Darmanin, interior minister since 2020, who has reportedly long coveted the job of foreign minister.
The 73-year-old Barnier has already faced a raft of challenges since taking office.
He warned on Wednesday that France’s budgetary situation, which has seen Paris placed on a formal procedure for violating EU budgetary rules, was “very serious.”
Macron had hoped to reassert his relative majority in parliament by calling for the elections in late June and early July, but the plan backfired.
A left-wing alliance, which nabbed the most seats in the lower house National Assembly but does not have a working majority, is outraged at the prospect of a right-wing government.
The hard-left France Unbowed party (LFI) and allies are due to join demonstrations on Saturday organized in several cities by student, environmental and feminist groups against Macron and Barnier.
The LFI hopes to “increase popular pressure,” leading party figure Mathilde Panot said, after more than 100,000 left-wing demonstrators protested Barnier’s nomination and Macron’s “power grab” in early September.
Macron’s centrist faction came out as the second largest bloc in the elections.
The far right is third, but the anti-immigration National Rally emerged from the election as the single largest party.
Polls close in first Sri Lanka election since economic collapse
Turnout was at nearly 70 percent an hour before polling stations closed at 4:00 p.m. (1030 GMT)
President Ranil Wickremesinghe is fighting an uphill battle for a fresh mandate to continue belt-tightening measures that stabilized the economy
Updated 21 September 2024
AFP
COLOMBO: Cash-strapped Sri Lanka voted for its next president Saturday in an effective referendum on an unpopular International Monetary Fund austerity plan enacted after the island nation’s unprecedented financial crisis.
Turnout was at nearly 70 percent an hour before polling stations closed at 4:00 p.m. (1030 GMT), an election commission official said, citing provisional figures.
The record for voter turnout in a Sri Lankan presidential election was set in 2019 with 83.72 percent.
President Ranil Wickremesinghe is fighting an uphill battle for a fresh mandate to continue belt-tightening measures that stabilized the economy and ended months of food, fuel and medicine shortages.
His two years in office restored calm to the streets after civil unrest spurred by the downturn in 2022 saw thousands storm the compound of his predecessor, who promptly fled the country.
“I’ve taken this country out of bankruptcy,” Wickremesinghe, 75, said after casting his ballot.
“I will now deliver Sri Lanka a developed economy, developed social system and developed political system.”
But Wickremesinghe’s tax hikes and other measures, imposed under the terms of a $2.9 billion IMF bailout, have left millions struggling to make ends meet.
“The country has been through a lot,” lawyer and musician Soundarie David Rodrigo told AFP after casting her vote in Colombo.
“So I just don’t want to see another upheaval coming soon.”
Wickremesinghe is tipped to lose to one of two formidable challengers. One is Anura Kumara Dissanayaka, the leader of a once-marginal Marxist party tarnished by its violent past.
The party led two failed uprisings in the 1970s and 1980s that left more than 80,000 people dead, and it won less than four percent of the vote in the previous parliamentary elections.
But Sri Lanka’s crisis has proven an opportunity for the 55-year-old Dissanayaka, who has seen a surge of support based on his pledge to change the island’s “corrupt” political culture.
He said at a polling station he was confident of securing the top job.
“After the victory there should be no clashes, no violence,” he said. “Our country needs a new political culture.”
Fellow opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, 57, the son of a former president assassinated in 1993 during the country’s decades-long civil war, is also expected to make a strong showing.
Premadasa has vowed to fight endemic corruption, and both he and Dissanayaka have pledged to renegotiate the terms of the IMF rescue package.
Political analyst Kusal Perera told AFP it was difficult to predict a winner from the three-way race — the first in the island’s history.
“What is clear is that no candidate will surpass the 50 percent mark” needed to win outright, he said.
Officials would then carry out a count of second- and third-preference votes to determine the winner.
More than 17 million people were eligible to vote in the election, with more than 63,000 police deployed to guard polling booths and counting centers in schools and temples.
The government also banned the sale of liquor over the weekend and said no victory rallies or celebrations would be permitted until a week after the results were announced.
“This election would go down in the history of the country as the most peaceful,” election commission chair R.M.A.L. Ratnayake told reporters in Colombo.
Counting began on Saturday evening and a result is expected on Sunday, but an official outcome could be delayed if the contest is close.
Schools were closed on Friday to be converted into polling stations, which were staffed by more than 200,000 public servants deployed to conduct the vote.
Economic issues dominated the eight-week campaign, with public anger widespread over the hardships endured since the peak of the crisis two years ago.
Official data showed that Sri Lanka’s poverty rate doubled to 25 percent between 2021 and 2022, adding more than 2.5 million people to those already living on less than $3.65 a day.
Experts warn that Sri Lanka’s economy is still vulnerable, with payments on the island’s $46 billion foreign debt yet to resume since a 2022 government default.
The IMF said reforms enacted by Wickremesinghe’s government were beginning to pay off, with growth slowly returning.
“A lot of progress has been made,” the IMF’s Julie Kozack told reporters in Washington last week.
“But the country is not out of the woods yet.”
Voter Rodrigo agreed.
“We have a lot of challenges ahead so good luck to whoever comes,” she told AFP.
Lawyers of women alleging Al-Fayed sex abuse receive over 150 new enquiries
BBC released a documentary and podcast on Thursday in which Fayed is accused by multiple women who worked at the London luxury department store of sexual assault
Updated 21 September 2024
AFP
LONDON: A legal team representing women alleging rape and sexual assault by the late Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al-Fayed said on Saturday it received over 150 new enquiries, including from women accusing the former Harrods owner.
The BBC released a documentary and podcast on Thursday in which Fayed is accused by multiple women who worked at the London luxury department store of sexual assault, including five accusing him of rape.
The new enquiries included a “mix of survivors and individuals with evidence” about Fayed, the legal team confirmed to AFP, after announcing it was representing 37 women accusing Fayed of sex abuse.
Comparing the scale and nature of the case to claims made against fallen figures like Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein, lawyers said the allegations included some girls who were just 15 and 16 at the time of the alleged assault.
The team is bringing claims against Harrods for enabling the “systematic abuse” of its employees, many hired as Fayed’s personal assistants and secretaries, over a period of 25 years.
The accusers say assaults took place at Fayed’s apartments in London, residences in Paris, and on trips abroad from Saint-Tropez to Abu Dhabi.
The upmarket department store, which Fayed sold in 2010, said it was “utterly appalled” by the allegations and had received new enquiries as well since the BBC investigation.
The Harrods website now has a form that victims can complete, adding that it had an “established process” for those affected to claim compensation.
The legal team also said it was representing women who were employed by the Ritz hotel — which was also owned by the mogul.
A former manager of the women’s team at Fulham FC, also owned by Fayed until 2013, said the players were “protected” from Fayed.
“We were aware he liked young, blonde girls. So we just made sure that situations couldn’t occur,” Gaute Haugenes, who managed the team from 2001 to 2003, told the BBC on Saturday.
A Fulham FC spokesperson said the club was “deeply troubled and concerned.”
“We are in the process of establishing whether anyone at the club is or has been affected,” the spokesperson added.
NEW DELHI: Protesting junior doctors in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal returned to duty on Saturday to provide emergency services to flood victims, as they partially withdrew from a month-long strike over the rape and murder of a female colleague in Kolkata.
The 31-year-old trainee doctor was brutally raped and murdered on Aug. 9 at a state-run hospital in West Bengal’s capital, where she worked.
The murder has triggered daily protests across India, especially in Kolkata, where thousands of young medics called for safer working conditions.
They continued their protest despite the Supreme Court ordering them last week to return to work, and said they would only follow if their demands for justice for the victim and better safety measures in hospitals were met.
“The strike is partially over. We have partially joined the duty, the emergency duty. We have only started, not the regular duties, because our demands have been partially fulfilled,” Dr. Anustup Mukherjee, member of the West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Front, which represents some 7,000 physicians in the state, told Arab News.
Heeding to the doctors’ demands, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee sacked on Tuesday Kolkata’s police chief and two top health ministry officials. But the demands for accountability for the murder and better security remain to be met.
“The demand for justice is still to be fulfilled, the demand for the eradication of the threat culture is yet to be fulfilled, even in the security and safety security issues, infrastructural issues are only partially fulfilled,” Mukherjee said, adding that the state’s administration told them it had ordered CCTVs, panic buttons and would arrange separate restrooms and bathrooms for on-duty doctors.
“We have got confirmation from the State Secretariat that our infrastructural demands for safety and security will be fulfilled ... But we are waiting.”
The doctors’ strike was lifted only at hospitals due to the ongoing floods in the state.
“We thought that a large number of people were suffering due to the flood, so we thought that ... a humanitarian decision should be taken,” Mukherjee said.
Dr. Ashfaqullah Naya, also a member of the West Bengal Junior Doctors’ Front, told Arab News that the protest was not over.
“This partial withdrawal is also because there is a flood in some parts of the state. But the protests in medical colleges will continue. We are just doing essential services, not the regular services,” he said.
As the probe into the gruesome murder has been moved from Kolkata Police to India’s federal Central Bureau of Investigation, doctors were waiting for all the perpetrators to be caught.
One man has been charged with the murder and was arrested last month, but following an autopsy, doctors assessing the report suggested the victim might have been subject to gang rape.
“The culprits should be caught,” Naya said. “Some of the culprits are roaming free.”
Last week, the CBI arrested the former principal of the college where the murder took place and a local police officer on charges of mishandling and tampering with key evidence in the case, and misleading the investigation team.
