Nine prisoners on death row in Belize yesterday won a temporary reprieve from Law Lords on the

Nine prisoners on death row in Belize yesterday won a temporary reprieve from Law Lords on the Privy Council in London. The council – the final court of appeal for 16 Commonwealth countries – dismissed a claim by the Belize government that British judges had no power to intervene. “I believe so, yes,” the officer replied.The court heard that before the father-of-two – who was said to be carrying crack cocaine the size of a golf ball – was taken away, neither of the two officers in charge of the arrest had disclosed that Mr Lapite had been kicked hard in the head, twice.The court heard that Mr Lapite had lapsed into unconsciousness in the back of the van and had immediately been taken to Homerton Hospital, east London.One of the assisting officers, Constable Jonathan Ridley, was accused of “lying to assist his brother officers,” after his notes and testimony contradicted the statement he made which stated that Mr Lapite had responded to conversation.The inquest continues today.. He said there was also a lot of “aggressive” shouting and swearing.”The man was not struggling at all,” he said. “It was as if he was laying on a board.” He added that the man’s head was being supported but he could not say if he was conscious.Earlier, officers who had arrived at the scene to assist in the arrest of Mr Lapite in Clapton, east London, on suspicion of possession of drugs, said they thought that after they had overpowered him, Mr Lapite had “pretended” to be unconscious.Constable Peter Baron, of Stoke Newington police, said Mr Lapite had made “no noise” and not moved at all from the time until he was placed in the police van – apart from to offer “passive resistance”, by “not assisting us at all”.”I would say he was pretending not to be conscious,” PC Baron told St Pancras coroner’s court in London.”So for all outward purposes the man was unconscious, but you’re saying you thought that was put on,” asked Ben Emmerson, counsel for Mr Lapite’s family.

JOJO MOYES

An inquest was told yesterday how a man heard “a terrible screaming like someone was being hurt” before seeing a man who later died in police custody being taken away in a police van.
Robert Howes, who was giving evidence on the second day of an inquest into the death of Shiji Lapite, 30, said he had looked out of the skylight in the roof of his flat after hearing a “terrible noise” shortly after midnight on 16 December 1994.”It was like someone was in pain,” he said of the screaming, which he estimated lasted two or three minutes and ended shortly before he saw a black man being carried into the back of a police van by “four to six” policemen. This is Foxtrot Four Juliet Four Zero.” The inquiry at Paisley, Strathclyde, has been told that Prestwick air-traffic control centre did not respond to the message, sent less than five minutes before the helicopter crashed on 2 June 1994 with the loss of 29 lives, including top Ulster police and military intelligence experts.. Lasting only one or two seconds it was of an unidentified member of the Chinook crew saying: “Scottish military Good afternoon. He wants Labour and the Liberal Democrats to get together for two Parliaments, the time he thinks it would take to enact a radical programme of government including constitutional reform, the overhaul of the welfare state and modernisation of the education system. Ashdown’s ideas floated last night are far more ambitious than an electoral pact.

That is the underlying agenda of Paddy Ashdown’s speech last night and the delicate courtship with Labour leader Tony Blair The prospect of such a partnership emerging is alluring. Such an alliance could amount to the most important new force in British politics since the emergence of Thatcherism and the reconstitution of the Conservative right in the late Seventies. Then there are the conferences and parties where broadcasters will shake his hand, congratulate him on work well done and then bitch in the toilets about the parlous state of TV regulation Nice job.. A realignment to turn the centre-left of British politics into a force that could rule for years and leave a lasting mark on the way Britain is governed.