Bokito Bezerk! Gorilla Goes Gonzo Again!

(photo:mrs. jolanda)

This is certainly the way to sell newspapers.

But was that banner headline and massive spread on the front page of Saturday's edition of De Telegraaf a tad too tabloid?

Bokito escaped from the Rotterdam Zoo in May and mauled a woman who was convinced she had a psychic connection with the ape. She had spent hours staring at him from behind the glass-walled indoor part of his enclosure, which primate experts say the 400-pound gorilla interpreted as provocation.

When a tiger got out and killed a young man in San Francisco last week, De Telegraaf decided it needed to do a follow-up story on Bokito.

The teaser:

"The Gorilla Bokito went crazy again when he saw his victim Yvonne de Horde for the first time after his escape at Rotterdam's "Happy Village Animal Nursery" in May. The woman, from Zoetermeer, has now had two meetings with the silverback since the attack."

The story quoted De Horde's husband describing the first meeting between Yvonne and Bokito.

Bokito "went completely crazy. He ran outside and Yvonne was in a panic, scared to death that he would attack her again. She wanted only one thing, and that was to flee the zoo as fast as possible. She squeezed my hand very hard with her broken fingers, but because of the adrenaline, she didn't even feel the pain."

-Gerrit de Horde, as quoted by De Telegraaf.

According to the story, her psychologist had recommended that she confront her attacker, but "in retrospect it wasn't such a good idea," De Horde said.

The story didn't mention when this all happened, but I think we can safely say it wasn't recently.

Later Saturday, zoo director Ton Dorresteijn confirmed the woman did return to the zoo twice, but gutted the rest of the Telegraaf story.

"It's possible that she caught a glipse of his back, but Bokito definitely hasn't seen her, much less gone crazy," Dorresteijn said, adding that
"This is really a canard, a straight-up monkey business story."

Bokito's quarters were altered after the escape, making it impossible for him to see people in the inside part of his enclosure. They can't make eye contact with him anywhere, and can only see him directly from outside, across a great distance.

(elke)



De Telegraaf decided to brazen it out in their Sunday edition: they didn't publish any correction. Instead they made a short acknowledgement of Dorresteijn's contradiction and stood by their story. They made the (justifiable) counter-accusation that Dorresteijn had tried to downplay the gravity of Bokito's initial escape back in May.

In addition, they ran a new story repeating their version of events, and asking psychologists what they thought of it all.

"The concept that new confrontation is good for working through a trauma is a false one," said Jeffery Wijnberg, house psychologist for De Telegraaf. "It's a simplistic way of looking and the phenomenon of trauma processing. She went back to (Bokito), but the danger hadn't receded. Her fear that he could escape again and get at her, is definitely not irrational. It can happen. They said it couldn't happen the first time and it did."

(another swipe at Dorresteijn).

He questioned whether it was even necessary for her to 'get over' her trauma.
"Because of Bokito's earlier attack she has developed a strong reflex to stay away from dangerous animals ... it would be a good idea for her to avoid zoos and to develop a new hobby," he said.

(kwispeltail)

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Spiked III - Calling A Cop "Homo" is a Crime in the Netherlands

(photo:ezzz)

But not because of hate speech laws. Or even libel laws...

A Dutch appeals court fined a man €200 (US$290) Friday for insulting a policeman by calling him a "homo."
Though not a crime in many countries like the United States, insulting an officer is an offense punishable by a jail sentence of up to three months in the Netherlands.
The legal question was whether "homo," an acceptable term for homosexual in the Dutch language, was meant in this case to be an insult.
The court in Den Bosch overturned a lower court ruling that the word "in principle has no offensive nature and thus by definition isn't appropriate for an insult."
The incident occurred early on New Year's Day 2007 when the defendant came across several officers issuing tickets he felt were unnecessary, and began chanting "ho-mos, ho-mos."
One officer filed charges, saying he felt his "honor and good name" had been slighted.
At an appeals hearing this month, the 19-year-old defendant, who was not identified in the published ruling, explained that he used the term to mean something like "jerks" or "bastards," and didn't believe the officer was truly offended.
However, the appellate court found that explanation undermined the lower court's opinion that the defendant meant "homo" in the sense of "homosexual," which would not be considered an insult.
"The defense misunderstands that the use of a word in a certain context _ for instance during sexual education or in a friendly setting _ actually can have the effect of damaging someone's integrity when it's used as a curse and thus with intent to insult," the court said.
Given the defendant's testimony, "there can be no doubt about the intent to insult."

(photo:millennialmyth).


What interests me most about this story is that insulting an officer is actually a crime. The entire Dutch debate around the murder of Theo van Gogh was predicated around the right to insult being part of the right to freedom of speech.

Secondarily, of course, is the funny politically correct dance that's going on in the courtroom.

In my opinion, the cop and the bigot _ I mean, the defendant _ are both jerks.




*End*

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Van der Sloot, Kalpoe Brothers, Holloway and Libel

(photo: billpstudios. View from the Marriott hotel over the beach in Aruba).


****UPDATE 12/29: After some looking around, I realize the information Joran gave DAG is already certainly publicized elsewhere. The question of whether prosecutors can libel suspects is for me still unresolved, but for a complete list of all evidence in the Van der Sloot case and a thoughtful analysis (without all the nonsense), I recommend the following site:

http://www.hollowaycase.com/

In other words, I wouldn't bother reading this post, but I'm not deleting it for archeological reasons...

Prosecutors closed their investigation into the 2005 disappearance of American teenager Natalee Holloway in Aruba this month without filing any charges. They said the trio of former suspects, Joran van der Sloot and the brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe _ the last three people seen with her before she evaporated _ remain "persons of interest" in what is now a cold case.

All say they are innocent of any wrongdoing.

On Christmas Eve, an expansive interview with Van der Sloot was published in the Dutch newspaper "DAG." Although he said he no longer wishes to discuss the case with prosecutors or the U.S. press, DAG's reporter got access presumably because he trusted her: she has written a book about the Holloway case, a book which has Van der Sloot's approval (he wrote the forward to it).

In that interview, he said one thing about prosecutor's evidence that I don't think has quite come out before.

"There was also a new witness: a girlfriend of one of the three suspects. She said that a little more than five hours after the disappearance, she was called by one of the three suspects with the information that 'something bad' happened that he couldn't talk about over the phone. It appeared that didn't concern Van der Sloot but Satish and Deepak. Van der Sloot: 'That wasn't any new evidence against me. It concerned a tapped conversation between Satish and his girlfriend from Suriname, in which he so-called* told her that something bad happened and that Deepak supposedly said the girl was dead'."

-DAG newspaper Dec. 24, 2007.
*[Dutch: 'waarin hij haar zogenaamd vertelt'. 'Zogenaamd' is bad Dutch, it must mean 'supposedly' or 'allegedly' so I use "so-called" to capture the nuance. In addition, I think that by 'tapped,' Van der Sloot must mean that the call was registered by the phone company. There wouldn't have been a tap on Satish's phone 5 hours after the disappearance. It's also clear because if it were actually tapped there would be no question about what was said.]

CNN interviewed Arbua prosecutor Hans Mos, who said the following:

"Other evidence against the three included two new witness statements. In one, a female friend told authorities that one suspect called her about five hours after Holloway was last seen leaving an Oranjestad, Aruba, nightclub with van der Sloot and the Kalpoes.
The female friend said that she could tell during the conversation that something was wrong, Mos said. When she asked about it, the suspect -- whom Mos did not name -- told her that "he didn't want to cause her any trouble, and that what had happened couldn't be discussed over the phone," he said."

-CNN, Dec. 21, 2007.

What's interesting is that Mos deliberately didn't mention which suspect it was on the phone. Why not?

In the absence of any charges against the former suspects, would it have been libelous? As a reporter I know that certain speech (during a trial or on the floor of parliament) is absolutely "privileged" and you can repeat it without fear of libel no matter what is said.

But I don't think that a prosecutors' press conferences fall under that category. So Mos probably had to watch his step a little bit _ by his own admission, there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute anybody.

Van der Sloot told DAG he's considering suing Aruban Justice.

In any case Mos did the same thing _ not naming exactly which suspect was intended _ when discussing the other witness statement.

"A second witness statement came from a teacher who said that another one of the suspects exhibited "very peculiar behavior" the day after Holloway's disappearance, including making or receiving a lot of telephone calls, Mos said."

-CNN

Again, no specificity as to which.
(elisart: aruban cactus)

(photo: elisart)


Now, Van der Sloot may not know it, but by repeating what the prosecutors told him during interrogation, perhaps he was slandering the Kalpoe brothers?

And perhaps DAG opened itself up to libel charges by printing what he said?

And perhaps I'm doing the same by reprinting it here?

I'm not too worried because in all situations, truth is a defense against libel, and as long as the prosecutors/Van der Sloot/Dag have it right about those phone calls, as incriminating as they sound, no problem.

If they got it wrong _ well, I guess nobody can call my raising the point in this context a "reckless disregard for the truth." Van der Sloot is a pretty well-placed source in this story.

The Oracle of Amsterdam says: unless there is an unprompted but credible confession, AND a body is found, the Holloway case will never be resolved.

(elisart)
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A Philosophical Christmas Message from me & Bob

(photo:rogiro)

Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging;
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark.

(T.S. Eliot)

The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration.

(debora_photo)





(sleepy sparrow)

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

(The end of Little Gidding)

(photo:santimb)


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