Displaying items by tag: inquiry

45 people were crushed to death and over 150 sustained injuries in Israel’s deadliest civilian disaster when a stampede broke out at a densely-attended celebration. Search and rescue authorities struggled to evacuate trapped people after some revellers slipped on steps, causing dozens more to fall over and be crushed. The police commissioner said the handling of the site was deeply flawed. On 3 May the Knesset held a memorial for the 45 victims of the Meron disaster. Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the special session. He was moved by his hospital visit to the injured, saying that Israelis, Jews and Arabs alike, have shown mutual responsibility and a huge heart in their response to the tragedy. ‘The families are not alone, and this is the most important thing.’ He vowed that the government would help them. and the incident would be investigated from every angle.

Mary, a former resident of Marianvale Home for mothers and babies in Newry, said, ‘My baby was taken from me. We have been asking the Executive to set up an inquiry for years. Ministers have brushed us aside.’ Her statement echoes the cry of women and babies in near-identical institutions who suffered arbitrary detention, forced labour, ill-treatment, and the removal and forced adoption of their babies. These criminal acts were carried out by both Catholic and Protestant churches and organisations. They enforced a regime of praying, knitting and scrubbing floors. Women were treated as prisoners, not expectant mothers. There were over a dozen of these institutions, where 7,500 women and girls gave birth. The last one closed in the 1990s. Two UN committees have recommended that the government should establish an inquiry into these abuses.

Retired judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick has been chosen to lead the public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire. Eighty people are now presumed dead after the disaster in west London on 14 June. Born in Wales and educated at Cambridge, the 70-year-old is said to be highly respected in the profession and ‘intellectually superb’. But leading barrister Michael Mansfield QC, who has met survivors of the fire, has said it is ‘unbelievable that lessons are not learned’ from the earlier inquiry into child sexual abuse, which he claimed had not consulted the families or the survivors. ‘The same thing seems to have happened all over again’, he said. Local residents are unconvinced that the inquiry will attribute responsibility as well as identifying the cause of the blaze. Meanwhile, tests have shown inflammable cladding on 120 tower blocks in the UK, and that number is expected to rise. Aluminium composite cladding has been widely blamed for the speed with which the Grenfell Tower fire spread. See