Woman Finds Lookalike On Instagram And Kills Her To Fake Own Death

 A 23-year-old German-Iraqi woman sought out a lookalike on Instagram and murdered her with a friend in order to fake her own death, prosecutors in Bavaria believe.

When the blood-covered body of a young woman was found last August in a parked Mercedes in Ingolstadt, southern Germany, reports initially identified the victim as Sharaban K, a Munich-based 23-year-old beautician with Iraqi roots.

Even though some members of Sharaban K’s family had identified the body, an autopsy report the next day raised questions over its identity. The victim was eventually named as Khadidja O, an Algerian beauty blogger from Heilbronn in the neighbouring state of Baden-Württemberg, also 23.
With long black straight hair, a similar complexion and heavy makeup, the two women looked “strikingly alike”, police said, leading the German press to refer to the case as the “doppelganger murder”.

Along with a 23-year-old Kosovan, named as Sheqir K, Sharaban K was detained on remand by Bavarian police on 19 August 2022, though authorities did not publicly speculate about a motive until this week. The victims and accused have been referred to by their first names and an initial as is customary in the German legal system.

“Investigations have led us to assume that the accused wanted to go into hiding because of a family dispute and fake her own death to that effect,” Veronika Grieser of the Ingolstadt state prosecutor’s office said on Monday morning.

Police say several women bearing her resemblance had been contacted by Sharaban K, operating on social media sites under numerous aliases, in the week before the murder. “By making various promises she tried to bring about meetings, which was initially unsuccessful,” Grieser said.

But Khadidja O had agreed to meet, lured by what Süddeutsche Zeitung reported to be a cosmetics offer. By car, Sheqir K and Sharaban K allegedly picked her up from her apartment on the day of the murder. In a stretch of woodland between Heilbronn and Ingolstadt the accused pair are alleged to have made up a pretext for the Algerian woman to step outside the vehicle and stabbed her to death.

“The crime weapon has not been found, but the evidence is overwhelming,” a police spokesperson, Andreas Aichele, told the tabloid Bild. “The victim was killed with over 50 thrusts of the knife, the face completely disfigured.”

Prosecutors allege the pair then lifted the victim on the backseat of their Mercedes and drove to Ingolstadt, parking the car in a quiet residential area by the banks of the Danube, where it was discovered by Sharaban K’s parents shortly before midnight on 16 August 2022.

Though investigations were ongoing and further witnesses were still to be interviewed, arrest warrants against Sheqir K and Sharaban K were issued on 26 and 27 January, the spokesperson for the Ingolstadt prosecutor said. The pair face life sentences if convicted.

“You don’t get a case like this every day, especially with such a spectacular twist,” Aichele told Bild. “On the day we found the body there was nothing to prepare us for this development.”

Source: peacefmonline

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Nigerian rights commission to probe army over alleged abortions

 Reuters reported in December that the military ran a secret abortion programme in its fight against Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria.

Nigeria’s human rights commission has appointed a special panel whose role will include investigating a Reuters report that the military ran a secret abortion programme in its fight against armed groups in the northeast.

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), which is appointed by the government, said in a statement posted on its website on Tuesday that it would launch the special panel next week in Abuja.

“The National Human Rights Commission will on Tuesday (7th February 2023) inaugurate a Special Independent Investigative Panel on human rights violations in the implementation of counterinsurgency operations in the northeast,” NHRC said.

“The panel will, among other things, focus on investigating Reuters report which alleged that Nigerian Military was involved in abortion of many pregnancies in the North East in the last 10 years,” NHRC said.

The seven-member panel will be chaired by retired Supreme Court Judge Abdu Aboki and includes a retired major general, a representative from the Nigerian Bar Association and an expert in obstetrics and gynaecology, NHRC said.

It was not immediately clear how long the investigation would last and what the panel would do with its findings. NHCR has no powers to prosecute human rights violators but can recommend prosecution for offenders.

An NHRC spokesperson did not respond to calls and messages sent to their mobile phone seeking further details.

Reuters reported in December, based on dozens of witness accounts and documentation, that the military abortion programme involved terminating at least 10,000 pregnancies among women and girls, many of whom had been kidnapped and raped by rebel fighters.

The Nigerian military said it would not carry out an investigation because the report was not true.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

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UK documents: Bush ordered CIA to find replacement for Arafat

Documents say US President George W Bush considered the Palestinian leader ‘useless’ but US spy agency found no suitable successor.

Former United States President George W Bush ordered the CIA to search for a replacement for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat after the escalation of the second Intifada in 2001, the BBC said, quoting recently released British documents.

The US effort came after the failure of the Camp David negotiations in 2000 between Arafat and then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. The talks followed the escalation of violence in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

According to the BBC documents, Bush expected early on that Ariel Sharon, who succeeded Barak, would use the Gaza Strip to sow divisions among the Palestinians.

The documents deal with discussions that took place between the United Kingdom and the US a few months after Bush and his administration, which was dominated by neoconservatives, entered the White House.

When Bush was inaugurated in January 2001, the second Palestinian uprising was at its height. It had erupted in late September 2000 when Sharon entered the courtyards of Al Aqsa Mosque, an act widely seen by Palestinians as a provocation.

The Bush administration called on Arafat to stop the uprising to lay the groundwork for the start of security negotiations with Israel. It also vetoed a draft resolution in the United Nations Security Council, which proposed sending a UN observer force to protect Palestinian civilians from Israeli forces in the occupied territories.

After the negotiations were aborted, telephone talks were held between Bush and then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair in which they discussed the Palestinian-Israeli conflict at length.

According to the minutes of the talks, the prime minister said Arafat was a liability.

He said the Palestinian leader “had reached the limits of what he can do constructively and he is only working to maintain his position”. He added that Arafat “no longer has anything to offer”, indicating that the leader had made all the possible concessions he could.

Bush endorsed what Blair had said, then described Arafat as “weak and useless”. He revealed that he had asked the CIA to search for possible successors to the Palestinian leader but said that the agency “researched the Palestinian scene thoroughly and concluded that there is no successor available”.

The British documents revealed that the US secretary of state at the time, Colin Powell, did not agree with Bush’s search for a replacement for Arafat.

Arafat died a few years later, on November 11, 2004, at a Paris hospital after a cerebral haemorrhage caused by a toxic substance – polonium – that was found on his clothes and body.

Palestinians and Arabs accused Israel of killing him. It denied any responsibility for his death.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

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