GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A 32-year-old man shot and killed the father of his ex-girlfriend in Vernier Saturday morning at 10:30, Geneva police say. The man arrived to pick up his daughter, born in 2009, for a weekend visit but a dispute broke out between the man, his ex and her parents, who were visiting. The younger man, a Geneva resident, then shot the older man. Police arrested the gunman in front of the apartment building and despite emergency services arriving quickly on the scene, the victim died there.
Flip side of disco fever!
Location: Château de Coppet
Link out: http://www.meurtresetmysteres.ch
Date: 26 Jan 2012
Start time: 19:30
Suspect has police record
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The 23-year-old Swiss man in custody since Friday night4 November when he apparently shot his girlfriend in their apartment in St Leonard, appears to have used his army weapon, canton Valais police say. The weapon that caused the woman’s death was a FASS (fusil d’assaut) 90, kept at home and used by young soldiers for their regular federal shooting practice at 300 metres.
Domestic violence in Switzerland: relationship between victim and suspect (source: Federal Statistical Office, 2010)
The youth has a police record. He was indicted in 2010 on charges of breaking and entering, theft and damage to property as well as for possession of drugs.
In 2008 he was found guilty and given a suspended sentence for menacing threats and damaging property.
Swiss voters in February 2011 firmly rejected a popular initiative that would have kept the arms of the citizen militia in arsenals. Soldiers are no longer permitted to keep ammunition at home, however. The “Small Arms Survey” carried out in 2007 showed that Switzerland had 2.7 million arms in homes, as the debate over military guns heated up.
The argument against military guns kept at home was fuelled by the widely publicized death of ski star Corinne Rey-Bellet, who was shot by her husband, an army officer who then took his own life after a police chase.
Swiss police estimated in 2010 that fewer than one-quarter of guns in Swiss homes are military issue. Firearms accounted for 23 percent of all murders.
A study by doctors at the Chuv university hospitals in Lausanne that was published in December 2010 in Forensic Medicine and Pathology reviewed murders and suicides in Switzerland over a 23-year period.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A 23-year-old Swiss man is under arrest after shooting to death his 21-year-old girlfriend late Friday in the apartment they shared in St Leonard, near Sion in canton Valais. The two had argued, say Valais police, when the youth pulled the gun, around 23:15. Further details are not yet available.
The number of domestic homicides has fallen, from about 50 a year in 2000 to 2004, to 25 and 26 in 2009 and 2010. Last year 19 women were among the 26 victims. About 65 percent of the deaths occur among couples who are currently in a relationship. Historically, 9 out of 10 victims are women, according to Swiss federal statistics.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Libya’s NTC, the National Transitional Council, says it will bring to justice the person found to have shot the bullet to the head that killed former leader Muammar Qaddafi, who died 20 minutes after being captured. The NTC had argued for a week that he was killed in crossfire, but video footage shown by those who captured him forced the council to back down. The Guardian reports that everyone in Misrata, where he was captured, knows the man who shot Qaddafi, and his army unit, but there is little sympathy for calls for justice. “Talk of an inquest was being seen by Misrata officials as an attempt by the Benghazi-dominated NTC to claim prominence in post-Gaddafi affairs,” reports the Guardian.
Aljazeera has shown film footage of the man who claims to have taken the shot, surrounded by fighters who are clearly proud of him, but it says it cannot independently confirm the information, a report repeated by other news agencies that have film footage. Aljazeera notes that the United Nations and human rights organizations will be closely viewing films in coming days to determine who murdered Qaddafi, when and how.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The trial of two men for the murder of white supremacist Eugene Terre’Blanche is underway in South Africa, after two delays. The prosecution claims that the two, a 16-year-old farm worker and Chris Mahlangu, 29, who also worked on Terre’Blanche’s farm, meted out the 28 blows that killed the farmer in April 2010, while the defense says they found the body and called police, but did not commit the crime.
The crime, in northwestern South Africa, “highlighted South Africa’s fragile race relations 16 years after white minority rule ended”, reports the BBC, while the Mail & Guardian in South Africa focuses on technical aspects as the trial opens. Both men are pleading not guilty.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Media in the Italy, Britain and the US are heavily covering the release from prison of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, following the judge’s decision in Italy to overturn their murder convictions in the November 2007 death of Meredith Kercher. Coverage of the trial and release continue to follow national lines, with American media often portraying Knox as an innocent victim, British media emphasizing the prosecution’s description of her as a liar with a split personality, and Italy media incensed that their justice system is being called faulty by Americans.
Knox sobbed as she left the courtroom. Sollecito’s father gave an emotional TV interview outside. And Kercher’s family quietly left, telling journalists briefly of their disappointment, appearing stunned by the verdict. They will give a press conference later today.
Rudy Guede, 24, from Cote d’Ivoire, was also accused of the murder in a separate trial and his appeal was upheld although he, too, claims innocence.
A fourth person involved in the court case, bar owner Patrick Lumumba, was once Knox’s employer, and while under interrogation she accused him of the murder. He was detained for two weeks based on her evidence. Know was found guilty 3 October of slander and was sentenced to three years, which she has served, and ordered to pay him several thousand dollars. Knox is likely to quickly sign an agreement worth at least $1 million with a US television network, according to Britain’s Sky News.
Links to other sites: Guardian, UK, Seattle PI, Sky News, Zimbio images
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – Vaud police say the 48-year-old man whose body was found in Begnins, not far from Nyon, Friday morning committed suicide, but the cause of death of his 39-year-old wife is not yet clear.
The Swiss couple were found in their apartment by someone who knew them about 09:00 Friday 9 September and police were called immediately. Those close to the situation and the two children of the couple, reportedly ages 4 and 7, were given counseling by police.
Police have ruled out the involvement of a third party in the deaths of the couple who, according to local media, had been living in Begnins for less than a year.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The Tribune de Geneve reports that a man suspected of the murder of a 51-year-old TPG (Geneva public transport) company manager was arrested abroad and is being investigated by Geneva police. According to the city newspaper the man, who is an employee of the company, has had personal problems in recent months that have caused him trouble at work, but the TPG has provided him with support and some time off. He was scheduled to met his boss Monday morning to discuss getting back to work and reportedly walked in and shot him instead.
The murder was Geneva’s fifth in 2011.
Italian dies on Matterhorn late Sunday afternoon
Update 11:50 GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The past four days have taken a high toll in deaths and injuries in Switzerland: a well-known wine writer was murdered by her former companion who then committed suicide early Friday, three mountain climbers lost their lives in falls and four youths on a joyride are in serious condition after the car they stole rolled several times.
Murder victim and ex known in food and wine circles
Barbara Dittus-Meier, 47, former editor of Vinum, the European wine magazine, and a widely respected wine authority in Switzerland, was shot at her home shortly after midnight Friday in Baden, not far from Zurich, by her ex-companion, Rui A, a Portuguese chef and owner of the Pergola restaurant in Bad Zurzach, 43. He then turned the gun on himself. Neighbours alerted the police after hearing several shots. The three daughters of Dituss-Meier, ages 14 to 20, were asleep at the time of the deaths, but were awakened by the shots and they discovered the bodies. (more on editor Ellen Wallace’s wine blog, Among the Vines).
Argovian police had previously received calls for domestic violence; the couple had been together for several years but had recently split up.
Youths steal car, lose control and flip it
Fourth local youths stole a car in Stalenried in canton Valais in the early hours of Sunday 21 August, around 02:00, and headed on the cantonal road for Gspon when the driver lost control of the car on a bend.
It rolled over several times, 150 metres down a sloping pasture, before coming to a stop. All four were taken to hospital with serious injuries: two were flown to the Hopital de l’Ile in Bern and two others were taken by ambulance to Visp.
They are 18, 16, 14 and 13 years old.
Fire destroys new barn at its inauguration
A new building described by canton Vaud police as an “ultra-modern” barn that was to house 160 animals starting next week in Grens, Vaud, caught fire and was destroyed Saturday afternoon at 15:00 during its inauguration.
Several dozen people and about 15 animals were there to celebrate the completion of the barn when it caught fire, for reasons that are not yet known. The building housed more than 800 large rolls of hay and straw, and it went up in flames quickly. The animals were taken to safety and no one was injured. The 160 animals scheduled to winter there are currently up in the Copettes alpage near Givrins.
Separate accidents kill 3 in Swiss Alps
An Italian died on the east face of the Matterhorn at 17:30 Sunday and two climbers died in separate accidents 19 and 20 August, bringing to four the number of people who died in one week while walking or climbing in canton Valais.
Police say the Italian was one of a group of five climbing the Matterhorn/Cervin Sunday 21 August when he fell 500 metres to his death on the east face of the mountain, shortly before the Solvay hut, at 4,030 metres. The group was not roped together. Police are trying to formally identify the climber.
A 43-year-old German man who was climbing the Lagginhorn mountain on his own 19 August fell 50 metres to his death, at 3,600 metres. His family became worried when he hadn’t returned home by 20:30 and they called police. A helicopter search failed to find him during the night but found his body when the search was taken up again Saturday morning.
Two Austrian climbers headed up the south face of the Dent Blanche Saturday morning. As they started down, on the south peak at 4,000 metres, at 09:30, one of them, a 27-year-old man, fell 400 metres to his death, for reasons that are not clear.
A 15-year-old Mauritian tourist lost his life earlier in the week while hiking near Martigny-La Combe.
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND – A 44-year-old woman who had recently contacted a psychiatrist killed her nine-year-old daughter Friday 12 August in Romanel-sur-Lausanne, then killed herself. The pair was found by the father and husband, who called 117 after he discovered the two at the family residence, shortly before 18:00.
Canton Vaud police have released little additional information beyond saying that the involvement of a third party has been excluded and that the husband/father as well as others close to the situation are being given counseling. TSR reports that the couple had another child, who age is not known, and who was not at home at the time; the station quotes a police officer as saying the father was in a “terrible state of shock”.
Le Matin reports that the other child, a 12-year-old girl, learned of their deaths upon her return Saturday from summer camp, and that the mother sent an e-mail to her boss Friday to say she wasn’t ready to come back from sick leave, which she’d taken in mid-July.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A 45-year-old woman from the Dominican Republic was found dead in a studio apartment on the rue des Uttins in Yverdon-les-Bains Sunday evening, and police are calling it homicide. An investigation was opened after police, called in by people close to the woman, found her body with fatal knife wounds and her hands bound.
The studio is in a building with several apartments that are used by legally registered prostitutes.
Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The circumstances remain a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie, surrounding the death of a senior air traffic controller, age 34, fatally stabbed early Wednesday morning 27 April in a secure area of Basel airport.
His body was found at 08:00 at the top of the elevator that leads to stairs going up to the control tower, by a fellow employee who raised the alarm. He had been stabbed in the throat, lungs and thorax, at least three times. Police say no weapon has been found.
The man, who has not been named, was the father of a four-year-old child. He was heading to work for his turn of duty, in charge of the control tower.
Traffic at the EuroAirport Bâle-Mulhouse-Freiburg airport was not interrupted. The airport is on French territory but at the intersection of France, Germany and Switzerland. French police say the secure area is accessible only to people with badges. Christian Reeb, who is heading the French investigation, told media he believes there is no link between the man’s death and his work.
Links to other sites: TSR (Fr), BaslerZeitung (Ge)
Israeli Arab filmmaker was murdered 4 April
Visions du Réel runs 7-13 April in Nyon
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) -The Nyon documentary film festival opens Thursday on a somber note, with a tribute to Juliano Mer Khamis, an Israeli Arab filmmaker and actor who was murdered 4 April in the West Bank. His film “Arna’s Children” was awarded the prize of the Jury du Jeune Public of Visions du Réel in 2004.
This is a year of change for the Nyon festival, with Luciano Barisone, its new director, taking charge for the first time. On a more practical level for festival-goers, a new electronic ticketing system is in place.
The festival opens Thursday 7 April, with some 50 films making their world or European debuts at this festival that has grown in scope and importance to the film industry in recent years. Films fall into three categories: long, medium-long and short.
A trial in France over responsibility for the death of an 11-month-old girl in March 2008 has provoked questions about people’s dietary choices. The French parents are being prosecuted for “neglect or food deprivation followed by death” after their daughter died of complications from bronchitis.
Her parents treated her using only natural methods, from a book published in the 1950s.
Sergine Le Moaligou, the deceased baby’s mother, has been criticized for her vegan lifestyle, which may have been linked to her daughter’s death, according to the deputy state prosecutor. The baby was breastfed her whole life and had vitamin deficiencies that could have made her susceptible to the pneumopulmonary infection. The baby weighed just 5.7kg compared with the normal 8 to 11kg average for her age group.
France, famous for its meat dishes such as foie gras, steak, and various preparations of veal, provides few alternative options for vegetarians and vegans, argues a writer in the Guardian. The case has sparked a worldwide debate about whether the vegan diet is to blame in the baby’s death, or whether the parents simply should have taken medical advice from a qualified doctor.
Links to other sites: CTV, Guardian, France 3, TF1, The Week
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Police in Geneva say they have arrested a 29-year-old Swiss man for murder, after working closely with Vaud police to find the suspect. The man was questioned Wednesday 16 March and then taken to prison where he is being detained as a suspect in the killing of a 26-year-old Serb.
The man died 2 March in front of 4, rue Tronchin, despite emergency medical treatment, after being hit with a blunt instrument.
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The death of a popular local Swiss politician in July 2010 shocked the Morges region when her step-son, a well-known geneticist, was taken in for questioning in relationship to her death, charges he vehemently denied.
Medical examiners in Paris, France, who were given access to all the evidence, have declared the woman’s death “accidental”, TSR television has learned.
Relations between Pakistan and the US have been tense over the arrest in January of US diplomatic worker Raymond Davis but they are heating up, with Lahore saying he was on assignment for the CIA while Washington insists he is an embassy technical worker who has diplomatic immunity. Davis opened fire on, and killed, two men who pulled up next to him at a red light in Lahore and he has been charged with murder. The Guardian in the UK says it is now clear, based on interviews with officials from the two countries, that he was working as a spy.
The deaths of four men, thrown from a bridge near Acapulco, Mexico Friday 18 February, appear to signal that the drug cartel wars in Mexico have shifted into a more violent gear.
Earlier this week, US special agent Jaime Zapata was killed and his partner injured during a border shootout, but even their brazen murders have paled next to the grizzly bridge deaths.
Zapata and his partner, run off the road while driving north from Mexico City to Monterrey in a US government vehicle, identified themselves as US diplomats before they were shot in an incident that “Republican Ben Quayle, from the border state of Arizona, described [the attack] as ‘a wake-up call for all of us in the US’,” reports news agency AFP.
MSNBC reports of the Acapulco bridge deaths that “the four were among 12 people killed Friday in and around Acapulco, which has seen a spike in violence since rival factions of the Beltran Leyva cartel began fighting over territory after leader Arturo Beltran Leyva died in a battle with Mexican marines in December 2009.”
The men are presumed to have been alive, with hands and feet bound and duct tape over their heads, when they were tossed off the bridge.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A 68-year-old Swiss man was knifed to death in his apartment on the rue du Vidollet in Geneva Tuesday, police say. He was found at 22:00 by people “close to him”. Police have opened an investigation, but have provided no other details for now.
The murder is Geneva’s first in 2011. Five people were murdered in the city in 2010.
Local papers Tribune de Geneve and GHI, after interviewing neighbours, have described the man as “gentle”, “kind”, “generous” and very well liked by his neighbours, but it appears that few knew him well or even knew if he had any family.
Organized crime has taken a beating, says the FBI, which Thursday 20 January rounded up 110 suspected members of the mob in the New York area, the largest single sweep according to federal authorities. Charges have been pressed against a total of 127 people for extortion, murder and narcotics. The haul includes leaders of some of the best-known mafia families in the US: the Gambino, Genovese, Lucchese, Bonanno, Colombo and DeCavalcante clans.
Links to other sites: BBC, FBI press release (first of a series), NPR, US Dept. of Justice
Police in Mauritius have told the BBC that one of the three men arrested on suspicion of murdering Michaela Harte McAreavey has confessed to the crime. She was strangled when she returned to the couple’s room to fetch biscuits for tea, while she was on her honeymoon after marrying Gaelic football player John McAreavey. The three men who were arrested are hotel employees and police have told media who have flocked to the island paradise that the men entered the room two minutes before the 27-year-old woman, who was married 30 December.
Police say DNA samples they are gathering as well as information from the electronic room key will provide crucial evidence.
British police are now calling the death of Joanne Yeates in north Bristol “murder” and say she was strangled. The 25-year-old landscape architect’s death made headlines in the UK after 17 December, when she inexplicably disappeared on her way home at 20:00 from a pre-Christmas party with friends. Her body was found eight days later, on Christmas Day, by people out walking their dog. Her coat, keys and mobile phone were found in her home, but no sign of the pizza she bought at Tesco’s on her way home, or of its packaging.
Body never found, manner of death unknown
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The jury has passed judgement and ruled José guilty of murdering Olga in 1999, in the strange trial that has taken place in Geneva during the past week.
The jury announced its decision Tuesday 21 December in the evening and on Wednesday the judge sentenced him to 16 years for murder, rape and sequestering another person.
The sentence was conditional: he must be reviewed by a psychiatric panel and if, when his sentence is complete, he is not judged safe for society, he will not be released.
José, a 44-year-old Peruvian, was charged with assassination in the death of 23-year-old Olga, a clandestine au pair worker in Geneva, with whom he had a child. But Olga’s body has never been found, nor is it known how she died, and the jury settled for the lesser, not pre-meditated charge of murder, under the circumstances.
It refused to exclude the possibility that Carmen, his ex-wife and one of the mothers of his nine children, may have had a hand in Olga’s death, although Carmen alerted police to the possibility that her ex-husband had murdered the younger woman.
Final Geneva jury has its say
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The riveting trial of José, 44, Peruvian, father of nine children by four women, for murdering one of the women, Olga, enters its second week Monday 20 December. Olga, age 23, disappeared in October 1999 after working clandestinely in Geneva for six years, on the first birthday of the child she had with José. It was only in 2005, when Carmen, José’s ex-wife, told police he had shown her Olga’s dead body, that police arrested him. The lead-up to the trial and the first week of testimony have shown a world of wildly differing stories, with Carmen, who had three children by her ex-husband after their divorce, being accused by him of plotting her revenge against her rival, Olga. The trial is also exposing he underside to life in Geneva for black market workers.
Links to others sites: Le Temps, Tribune de Geneve
South African media have been keeping people informed of the blow by blow developments in the love triangle murder plot against 21-year-old rugby play Deon Helberg. Helberg, who plays for the Blue Bulls, was dating Jalien Reyneke, but he was also reportedly seeing her mother Manda, age 47. The mother said in a Pretoria court Monday that she hired two hitmen to murder the young man and that she had a backup plan in case they failed. The court released her on R5,000 bail, against the prosecution’s wishes, and she has been ordered to report to a psychiatric institution within 24 hours.
Links to other sites: Independent, South Africa, News24
Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Police have identified the dead man found at Montagny-près-Yverdon 27 October as a Polish man, whose name has not been provided. The man’s clothing had been removed, but a ring left at the site provided enough clues for police in Poland to alert the public. The man’s wife, who believes he left home to seek work, recognized him. His dental records, provided by police in Poland, allowed him to be formally recognized Friday 19 November, say Vaud police. He leaves his wife and a young child.
Police are still seeking information on what he was doing in Switzerland and whether or not he was travelling with anyone.
Photo and background story, GenevaLunch
St Gallen, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A 52-year-old man who was wanted by Swiss police for 11 years for murdering his 14-year-old daughter’s teacher in St Gallen and for sexually molesting the girl, has died while in detention in the eastern Swiss city, reports news agency ATS. Police there have released no details.
The girl had confided in the teacher about the abuse at home and when her father found out, he killed the teacher. The man fled Switzerland for Kosovo in 1999 after the death, was found, pleaded guilty and in 2000 he was sentenced by Serbia to four years, two of which he served. Switzerland then tried to have him extradited but initially failed. Kosovo finally agreed to deliver him to Swiss authorities in 2009, but he was in hiding.
The man was extradited in September 2010.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Cécile B, as Cécile Bosshard was familiarly known during her 2008 trial for murdering Geneva banking family scion Edouard Stern, has been released from prison early on good behaviour, her lawyer told AFP news agency.
The Frenchwoman had been in prison since 2005, but was sentenced in June 2009 to 8.5 years. Stern’s lover, who had been promised money and marriage, but received neither, famously shot him at close range while he was tied to a chair, wearing a latex suit, during sex games where, she insisted, he insulted her.
She has reportedly been told to leave the country, with a ban on visiting Switzerland in the next 10 years.
- related articles on the Stern murder, GenevaLunch
- GenevaLunch, in partnership with Swiss news magazine l’Hebdo: two-part report on the murder trial, June 2009
Lucerne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Julien Kénord, 27, who worked for Caritas, Switzerland in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, was killed Friday 8 October, the group announced Tuesday. He had just cashed a Caritas check for $2,000 at a bank in the city and was seated in his car when he was beaten by an unknown assailant. Shortly after, he died in hospital, from injuries sustained in the attack.
Police in Haiti have opened an investigation into the attack and death. Caritas, while deploring his death, says it will carry on the work it began in Haiti 12 years ago. The group provides basic survival assistance to families in distress, and it recently undertook the reconstruction of 1,700 homes in the area ravaged by the January earthquake, in Gressier, west of Port-au-Prince.
