Weekly Round-up: Horizon IT, Jeffrey Epstein, Idaho abortion ban
9 January 2024
In the news
The Post Office is being investigated by the Metropolitan Police for potential fraud offences committed in what has been termed the Horizon IT Scandal. This investigation builds on a pre-existing one into potential offences of perjury and perverting the course of justice in relation to prosecutions carried out by the Post Office. Between 1999 and 2015 hundreds of sub-postmasters were prosecuted by the Post Office for alleged theft, fraud, and false accounting, despite evidence having come to light in 2010 that the Post Office’s Fujitsu accounting systems were faulty. The prosecutions resulted in over 700 sub-postmasters being handed criminal convictions as well as being forced to pay back apparent shortfalls. A 2019 high court case overturned some of these convictions and led to partial victim compensation but the Post Office continues to oppose appeals. In the wake of a new ITV drama concerning the scandal, 50 new potential victims have come forward. Rishi Sunak has signalled that the government is taking steps to exonerate victims of the faulty technology.
Other nations have come under pressure to support South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ, which accuses the wartime state of committing genocide against Palestinians. The application stated that Israel’s recent actions have violated the 1948 Genocide Convention “because they are intended bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group”. The White House has criticised South Africa’s accusation as “meritless … counterproductive and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.”
With the release of court documents from a 2015 defamation lawsuit pursued by Virginia Guiffre, the alleged victim of a celebrity sex-trafficking ring, dozens of people connected to Jeffrey Epstein have been named. These include public figures such as Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump. The documents apparently detail Epstein’s methods for procuring young girls for sexual exploitation as well the occasions on which public figures engaged in these activities. The Metropolitan Police has signalled that it will not be opening an investigation into Prince Andrew in the wake of this new information.
In other news
The US Supreme Court permitted the enforcement of a strict abortion ban enacted by the State of Idaho. A District Judge had placed an injunction on the measure on the grounds that it conflicted with a federal law which required hospitals to “stabilise” patients with emergency conditions, and the government argue that this law requires healthcare professionals to provide abortions for patients whose lives are threatened by conditions such as severe bleeding and pregnancy-related infections. The state ban follows the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v Wade, which paved the way for states to self-determine the legal status of abortion. The Supreme Court will hear full arguments about the Idaho law in April.
Alexander Lukashenko, the President of Belarus, has signed a law giving him lifelong immunity from criminal prosecution as well as preventing opposition leaders recently sent into exile from returning to run in future presidential elections. Lukashenko, who has been in power for almost 30 years, faced mass protests in August 2020 when he was being re-elected for the sixth term, an election that western commentators consider fraudulent.
In the courts
In the case of Humpert and Others v. Germany, the European Court of Human Rights held that there had been no violation of the freedom of assembly and association in a case concerning the imposition of disciplinary measures on participants of trade union strikes. The Court found that the sanctions placed on the claimants, teachers with civil servant status, were enacted within the state’s margin of appreciation, the trade-union freedoms not being sufficiently restricted to constitute a violation of ECHR Article 11.
