The Daily Blog

Ramazan Acar, Australian ‘Facebook Killer,’ Gets Life Sentence For Murdering Daughter After Social Media Threats.

An Australian man dubbed the “Facebook killer” after posting he was “bout to kill ma kid” on the social media site before repeatedly stabbing his two-year-old daughter and leaving her to die has been sentenced to life in prison.

As the Newcastle Herald is reporting, Ramazan Acar, 24, repeatedly taunted his ex-partner, Rachelle D’Argent, on the night he killed their daughter Yazmina, known as “Mimi,” with Facebook status updates, text messages and phone calls in November 2010. Acar is said to have killed his daughter shortly after the original posting, and followed up with “payback u slut.”

The AFP reports that Acar had picked up Yazmina at D’Argent’s home earlier that day, telling her was taking the girl to a local candy shop. After taking Yazmina, Acar communicated with D’Argent by phone and via a bizarre series of text messages, at one point telling her she would not get her child back and asking whether he should kill the girl in a car crash or stab her. “How does it feel to not have your child when I did not have mine for three months?” he is quoted as saying. He also said: “I loved you Rachelle and look what you’ve made me do.”

Melbourne Magistrates Court Justice Elizabeth Curtain reportedly called the crime “chilling and horrific,” and said life in prison was the only appropriate sentence for Acar, who had pleaded guilty:

“More than that, the victim was your infant daughter, and she was killed by the one man in the world whose duty it was to love, nurture and protect her,” Justice Curtain said. “As such, your conduct was a fundamental breach of the trust that reposes between parent and child, a fundamental breach of a parent’s most fundamental obligation.

“Further, you committed this murder for the worst possible motives - revenge and spite. You killed your daughter to get back at her mother. You used your daughter, an innocent victim, as the instrument of your overarching desire to inflict pain on your former partner.”

After the verdict was read, D’Argent reportedly spoke tenderly to her dead daughter while clutching a photo. “Mimi, it’s our day today,” she said. “Mummy told you there would be justice for you…and even though I haven’t accepted that you’re not here, forever you’ll be in my heart and I know you’ll always be smiling down on all of us.”

While in custody, Acar also reportedly told police he wanted to kill himself as well, but “did not have the balls.”

Buju Banton Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison.

Reggae singer Buju Banton was sentenced to 10 years in prison Thursday (June 24) for cocaine trafficking. Banton has been behind bars since late 2009, after he was busted for buying drugs from an undercover police officer.

A Florida judge declared a mistrial last September, leaving the Grammy winner acquitted of the attempted possession with the intent to distribute charge he was facing, but guilty of three other charges.

All along the 37-year-old and his lawyers — David Oscar Markus and David Seitles — have claimed that he was set-up by law enforcement. According to paperwork released by his council, Banton was merely a pawn in an entrapment scheme set forth by the DEA.

“The facts and circumstances of the confidential sources’ contacts with Mr. Myrie display a deliberate effort by a paid informant to ensnare a perfect stranger, who happened to be sitting next to him on an international flight, into committing a crime, thereby ensuring the informant more money,” said his lawyers. “The confidential source is a paid government informant. In addition to refusing to disclose the identity, the government has refused to identify the prior cases in which he has been involved, the outcomes of those cases, the amount of money he has earned making cases for the government, or even the amount he has been paid (or expects to be paid) in this case.”

Although his sentence is stiff, it could have been worse, as Banton was originally facing up to 20 years behind bars. While in prison he will be permitted to keep his dreadlocks and continue to practice his Rastafarian faith.

Nikita Tikhonov And Yevgenia Khasis, Russian Nationalists, Sentenced For Killing Human Rights Lawyer, Journalist.

MOSCOW — A Russian ultranationalist was sentenced to life in prison, and his girlfriend received an 18-year sentence Friday for the brazen daylight killing of a prominent human rights lawyer and an independent reporter.

The double killing sent shockwaves through Russia’s beleaguered human rights community and triggered a government crackdown on far-right and neo-Nazis groups that had gained popularity in recent years.

Nikita Tikhonov, 31, received the maximum sentence after the court convicted him of gunning down lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova. Tikhonov’s 26-year-old girlfriend, Yevgenia Khasis, was convicted as an accomplice in the January 2009 attack, and sentenced to 18 years in prison.

A jury ruled last week that Tikhonov was the masked killer who used a 1910 Browning pistol to shoot Markelov and Baburova as they walked out of a press conference into a snowy street near the Kremlin. Khasis followed the two from the conference hall and helped Tikhonov identify the lawyer and the reporter, who wore heavy winter clothes and hats.

The defendants, who denied the charges, smiled from their courtroom cage as the judge read aloud the sentence, appearing uninterested at times and whispering to each other throughout. They were convicted last week.

Judge Alexander Zamashnyuk said the defendants were “led by the idea of their own superiority and ideological hatred toward Markelov.”

Tikhonov, with tattooed Celtic symbols on his arms and bandages on his wrists, shouted to the judge that he “understood the sentence.” Last week, he and Khasis slit their wrists in what a senior prosecutor called an “imitation of suicide.” Celtic imagery is popular among Russian neo-Nazis, with the Celtic cross thought to be a substitute for the Swastika.

“We will come out much earlier,” Tikhonov said as police escorted him and Khasis out of the courtroom.

Defense lawyer Alexander Vasilyev called the sentence “illegal and unfounded,” and said he would appeal, while senior prosecutor Boris Laktionov said he was “satisfied” with the outcome.

The 34-year-old Markelov’s work had angered nationalists, who had threatened him and cheered his killing in Internet comments. The lawyer also had made enemies through his work fighting for victims of rights abuses in Chechnya.

Investigators said Baburova, 25, was shot because she was a witness to the murder.

Tikhonov, the son of a counterintelligence officer, joined ultranationalist groups while studying history at Moscow State University, where he wrote a thesis on the “genocide” of ethnic Russians in Chechnya.

Police tracked down Tikhonov and Khasis by their messages on Internet forums and tapped their phones months ahead of their arrest in November 2009. In their rented Moscow apartment, investigators said the two kept an arsenal of arms and explosives, books on criminal justice and firearms, as well as detailed plans by ultranationalist groups for seizing power in Russia.

Tikhonov immediately confessed to the killing, but later said he was forced to confess because police threatened to abuse Khasis.

Two prominent ultranationalists testified against him during the 2 1/2-month trial, with one of them alleging that Tikhonov planned further killings of government officials and anti-racist activists.

Russia has seen a string of contract-style killings of human rights workers and journalists in recent years – few of them ever solved.

Racially motivated attacks that often target labor migrants from Russia’s Caucasus and ex-Soviet Central Asia peaked in 2008, when 110 people were killed and 487 wounded, according to independent watchdog Sova. The Moscow Bureau for Human Rights estimated that some 70,000 neo-Nazis were active in Russia, compared with just a few thousand in the early 1990s.

Markelov’s 2009 killing marked a tactical change for neo-Nazis and ultranationalists, who switched to killings of anti-racist activists and government officials and terrorist attacks, watchdog Sova said.

In April 2010, a federal judge who presided over trials of White Wolves, a mostly teenage group of skinheads convicted of killing and assaulting non-Slavs, was gunned down contract-style outside his Moscow apartment.

Members of a neo-Nazi group accused of planning to blow up a mosque, a McDonald’s restaurant and railway stations in Moscow are currently standing trial.

Peng Zhimin, Chinese Hilton Hotel Exec, Gets Life in Prison For Organized Crime.

A top shareholder of the Hilton hotel in Chongqing, China was sentenced to life in prison Wednesday for his connections with organized crime.

Peng Zhimin was convicted of bribery, prostitution, intentional injury, assault and other charges relating to organized crime, Agence France Presse reports.

Peng headed the Qinglong Property Development Companu, which owned the Chongqing Hilton Hotel in southwestern China.

Last year, the hotel was closed as authorities investigated an alleged prostitution ring being run out of the hotel.

Peng was arrested last July and his charges are connected to that investigation. Thirty-one others tied to Peng’s ring were sentenced to various terms of several years to life in prison.

The Hilton Hotel Group was reportedly fully cooperating with authorities.

After the raid, the Hilton was forced to close for a week and was stripped of its fifth star. The incident also prompted China to speed up an overhaul of its hotel star rating system, reports USA TODAY.

Chongqing, a city of 30 million people, is known for being a haven for underworld criminals. A crackdown on organized crime has led to more than 3,300 detentions and hundreds of prosecutions.

Paris Hilton, Boyfriend Attacker Jailed.

James Rainford, the man who attacked Paris Hilton and her boyfriend Cy Waits on Wednesday, has been sent to jail.

TMZ is reporting that Rainford got sentenced to 227 days in prison after he pleaded ‘no contest’ to misdemeanor battery.

Rainford was already on probation and the judge threw the book at him for violating the terms of his probation. He was arrested last October after trespassing on the socialite’s property and getting into an altercation with her security.

In addition to the jail sentence, Rainford was sentenced to three years informal probation and ordered to stay away from Waits once he’s released.
Hilton and Waits were walking into a Superior Court building in Van Nuys when Rainford attempted to grab Waits in the back of the neck. He was immediately subdued by a bodyguard and handed over to police.

After his arrest, Rainford explained to police that he was in love with Hilton and had her father’s permission to marry her.

Hilton and Waits were at the Van Nuys courthouse to testify in a case against Nathan Parada who broke into their home last year wielding a knife.

US Soldier Gets 24 Years for Murders of 3 Afghans.

JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. — A U.S. soldier was sentenced to 24 years in prison Wednesday after saying “the plan was to kill people” in a conspiracy with four fellow soldiers to kill unarmed Afghan civilians.

Military judge Lt. Col. Kwasi Hawks said he initially intended to sentence Spc. Jeremy Morlock to life in prison with possibility of parole but was bound by the plea deal. Morlock will receive 352 days off of his sentence for time served.His sentencing came after he pleaded guilty to three counts of murder, and one count each of conspiracy, obstructing justice and illegal drug use at his court-martial at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, south of Seattle.

The 22-year-old soldier is a key figure in a war crimes probe that implicates a dozen members of his platoon and has raised some of the most serious criminal allegations to come from the war in Afghanistan.He was accused of taking a lead role in the killings of three unarmed Afghan men in Kandahar province in January, February and May 2010.

Asked by the judge whether the plan was to shoot at people to scare them, or to shoot to kill, Morlock replied, “The plan was to kill people.”

Morlock was the first of five soldiers from the 5th Stryker Brigade to be court-martialed - something his lawyer Geoffrey Nathan characterized as an advantage. Under the plea deal, Morlock agreed to testify against his co-defendants.

“The first up gets the best deal,” Nathan said by phone Tuesday, noting that under the maximum sentence, Morlock would serve no more than eight years before becoming eligible for parole.

Morlock told the judge that he and the other soldiers first began plotting to murder unarmed Afghans in late 2009, several weeks before the first killing took place. To make the killings appear justified, the soldiers planned to plant weapons near the bodies of the victims, he said.

Morlock’s lawyers previously indicated they would argue that a lack of leadership in the unit contributed to the killings.

“There was a lack of supervision, a lack of command control, the environment was terrible,” Nathan said Tuesday. “In his mind, he had no choice.”

During questioning by the judge Wednesday, Morlock said he had second thoughts about the murder plot while home on leave in March 2010, after the first two killings took place.

“It was really hard to come back,” he told Hawks, adding that he no longer wanted to “engage or be part of anything” like the killings that already had occurred.

Morlock said he didn’t voice his doubts to his fellow soldiers, however, and he went on to participate in the third killing in May.

Morlock also admitted to smoking hashish while stationed in Afghanistan, though he said he was not under the influence of the drug at the time of the killings. In addition, he admitted to being one of six soldiers who assaulted a fellow platoon member after that man reported the drug use going on in the platoon.

Morlock, his voice shaking at times, told the judge has had a lot of time to reflect on his actions in Afghanistan and ask himself “how I could become so insensitive and how I lost my moral compass.”

“I don’t know if I will ever be able to answer those questions,” he said, adding that he believes he “wasn’t fully prepared for the reality of war as it was being fought in Afghanistan.”

Earlier this week, the German news magazine Der Spiegel published three graphic photos showing Morlock and other soldiers posing with dead Afghans. One image features Morlock grinning as he lifts the head of a corpse by its hair.After the January killing, platoon member Spc. Adam Winfield sent Facebook messages to his parents saying that his fellow soldiers had murdered a civilian and were planning to kill more. Winfield said his colleagues warned him not to tell anyone.

Winfield’s father alerted a staff sergeant at Lewis-McChord but no action was taken until May, when a witness in a drug investigation in the unit reported the deaths.

Winfield is accused of participating in the final murder. He admitted in a videotaped interview that he took part and said he feared the others might kill him if he didn’t.

Also charged in the murders are Pvt. 1st Class Andrew Holmes and Spc. Michael Wagnon II.

Seven other soldiers in the platoon were charged with lesser crimes, including assaulting.

Wisconsin Serial Killer Sentenced to Life in Prison.

MILWAUKEE — A Milwaukee man convicted of choking the life out of seven women during a 21-year killing spree was sentenced Thursday to spend the rest of his life in prison, and prosecutors said they may yet tie Walter E. Ellis to two or more unsolved slayings.

Ellis, 50, was convicted last week after he pleaded no contest to charges of first-degree intentional homicide and first-degree murder. Although the charges carry a mandatory life sentence, Judge Dennis Cimpl had the option of allowing the possibility of parole.However, Cimpl said the only factor in Ellis’ favor - that by pleading out he spared the victims’ families from having to endure a trial - was like weighing “a feather against thousands of pounds of bad things.”

Cimpl sentenced Ellis on Thursday to seven consecutive life sentences for the slayings. Ellis sat impassive as the sentence was handed down, just as he had during the previous hour when a parade of victims’ relatives, some angry, some tearful, called for justice.

Several remembered the victims as mothers of small children, as women who may have led troubled lives but who didn’t deserve to suffer at Ellis’ hands. Several called Ellis the devil, and one said he hoped Ellis’ fellow inmates violate him and treat him with the same contempt that he showed his victims.

A few relatives lamented the fact that Wisconsin does not have the death penalty. However, the sister of victim Irene Smith said it wasn’t for humankind to pass such judgment.”I’m not one to judge,” Virgie Smith said, her eyes red with tears after the hearing. “He’s going to get the worst thing God can give him.”

The sentencing brings a close to a deadly rampage that ran from 1986 to 2007. The subsequent investigations eventually forced a complete review of how the state maintains its DNA database.

All seven victims were strangled, either by hand or with a rope or clothing tied around their necks. One was also stabbed.

“Of any way to kill somebody, that’s probably the most despicable way to do it,” the judge told Ellis. “You look at them and you literally choke their lives away.”

Ellis declined to speak before sentencing, continuing his silence that has frustrated and infuriated those desperate to know what motivated him to kill their loved ones and whether he felt any remorse. Ellis has long refused to cooperate with authorities and even with his own lawyers.

Defense attorney Patrick Earle also declined to speak at the hearing. A message left at his office afterward was not immediately returned.

Ellis was arrested in 2009 after police said his DNA matched semen samples found on six victims and a blood sample on a can of pepper spray discovered at the scene of the seventh slaying. Authorities have said they began to focus on Ellis after his name surfaced in connection with a number of unsolved homicides.

Ellis’ case exposed flaws in the state’s process for collecting DNA from convicted felons. Ellis’ DNA was missing from a state database even though he should have submitted a sample during an earlier prison stint. Authorities said Ellis persuaded a fellow inmate submit a DNA sample in his place.

Police have said that if a sample had been taken from Ellis at that time, they may have been able to track him down before the last slaying, in 2007.

The discovery prompted a state audit, which found nearly 17,700 offender samples missing from the crime lab’s database.

Authorities suspect Ellis in at least two other killings, but District Attorney John Chisholm said he hasn’t brought charges in those cases because he wanted to focus on his strongest cases.

Chisholm, who told the judge Ellis was one of the few defendants he’d ever seen who truly deserves to be called evil, said the investigation continues in those two cases.Chisholm said he was also concerned that Ellis’ later crimes, along with his deceit in not submitting a DNA sample, showed that his understanding of DNA’s role in crime investigations was growing more sophisticated. The prosecutor said investigators would also review other homicides in which no DNA was left to see if any more slayings could be tied to Ellis.

Outside the courtroom, victims’ families and friends collapsed into each other’s arms. They laughed and cried together, grateful that the sentencing finally brought closure to decades of uncertainty.

Mansa Miller, the brother of victim Tanya Miller, said Ellis got the sentence he deserved.

“I pray for him to do what he has to do with his life to make himself a better person,” he said.

Border Activist Sentenced to Death for Fatal Home Invasion.

A border-control activist was sentenced to death today for orchestrating an Arizona home invasion that left a man and his 9-year-old daughter dead.

A jury in Pima County, Ariz., deliberated for four hours over two days before deciding that Shawna Forde, 43, should pay the ultimate penalty, the Arizona Daily Star reported.

Forde was convicted Feb. 14 of first-degree murder in the May 30, 2009, deaths of Raul “Junior” Flores, 29, and his daughter, Brisenia Flores, 9. She was also found guilty of attempted murder in the shooting of Gina Gonzalez, Flores’ wife and Brisenia’s mother.

Prosecutors said Forde decided to target the house in Arivaca, Ariz., because she believed Flores was a drug smuggler and would have cash in the house. She wanted money to fund her border protection group, Minutemen American Defense, prosecutors said.

Two men are also charged in the case and face trial later.

Indonesian Pop Star Jailed for Sex Tapes.

An Indonesian pop star was sentenced to three and a half years in prison today after sex tapes of him and his celebrity girlfriends went viral online, in a case that’s led to a huge crackdown on Internet porn in the world’s most populous Muslim country.

Nazril “Ariel” Irham is one Southeast Asia’s most popular stars and front man for the band Peterpan. He was arrested after two homemade videos swept the Internet last year, depicting the 30-year-old star having sex with his actress girlfriend and a popular TV presenter. The videos riveted Indonesia and spurred the government to try to impose a porn filter on the Web, to prevent local users from accessing Playboy and dozens of other sites.Dueling chants echoed outside the court compound today in the city of Bandung, where Irham’s punishment was announced. Young, Web-savvy music fans gathered alongside Muslim hardliners protesting what they saw as authorities’ leniency in dealing with the pop star. Irham’s three-and-a-half-year prison sentence also includes a $28,000 fine, but it was less than the five years prosecutors had requested, CNN reported.After the verdict was read, some Muslim protesters stormed the court, and the singer was whisked away into an armored police car. Some 1,000 police sought to keep order outside.

Irham was found guilty of violating Indonesia’s controversial anti-pornography law, passed in 2008 amid pressure from Muslim conservatives for the country to crack down on public nudity and racy material online. The law says anyone found guilty of producing, copying, distributing or broadcasting pornography can be sentenced to up to 12 years in jail.

“The defendant is legitimately and convincingly guilty of giving chances for others to spread, make and provide pornography,” Judge Singgih Budi Prakoso told the court, according to Reuters.

The sex tapes are believed to have come from Irham’s computer, and police initially said a friend may have stolen them. An employee of Peterpan’s record label was sentenced today to two years in prison for allegedly being the one who uploaded the videos to the Internet.

The pop star denied it was him in the footage, and his lawyer vowed to appeal, saying the anti-pornography law was wrongly applied retroactively to acts videotaped in 2006.”We’re Indonesians, we pay taxes, we’ve never done anything wrong, we’ve done nothing. But it’s like they’re raping our freedom, they’re raping our privacy,” Irham’s girlfriend, actress Luna Maya, who allegedly appeared in one of the tapes, told The New York Times. “If this country is going to hand out punishments based on public opinion, then we may as well do away with the courts.”

But the local head of an Indonesian Muslim group, Abdul Qohar, told the Times that Irham’s videos were a “virus” corrupting the nation’s youth.

After the two videos went viral, the words “Ariel Peterporn” — a play on the name of Irham’s band and a reference to the porn scandal he was mired in — became a trending topic on Twitter.

Kenny Mack Sentenced to Seven Years in Prison for Gun Charge.

Kenny Mack, an Oregon-based hip-hop performer whose real name is Nathan Paul Burke, is suffering through just about the worst possible fate for an up-and-coming rapper that has yet to find a big national audience. He has been sentenced to more than seven years in a federal prison after pleading guilty to being in possession of an illegal firearm. Burke admitted his guilt to the federal court back in October 2010 and received his sentence on (Jan. 11).

Mack was truly on his way up before a series of crimes derailed his career. The rapper was voted as Artist of the Year at the West Coast Hip-Hop Awards in 2009 and had the potential to be a rare breakout MC from the Pacific Northwest. Yet later that year he was arrested outside a Portland bar called the Spare Room Tavern with a loaded .45 caliber handgun that officers watched him toss in an attempt to flee the scene. Police were responding to reports that the bar was experiencing some sort of gang activity and nabbed Burke as he was on the run.

Burke’s sentence of seven years was prolonged because he had also earned a previous conviction for the unlawful use of a weapon as well as the delivery of a controlled substance.