Foreign News
Norwegian crown princess’s son found guilty of two counts of rape
Marius Borg Høiby, the 29-year-old son of Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit, has been found guilty of two counts of rape and sentenced to four years in prison.
The three judges in courtroom 250 at Oslo District Court cleared him of two other counts of rape, but found him guilty of many of the other offences of which he had been accused.
Høiby was not in court for the verdict for unspecified health reasons, but joined the session via video link.
Prosecutors had called for Høiby to be given seven years and seven months in prison. His defence lawyers had called for a lesser term of 18 months and have said he will appeal.
Even though Marius Borg Høiby is not himself a royal figure, the trial has cast a shadow over the broader royal family. His mother married Crown Prince Haakon when he was four, and he grew up within the family. The palace has said it will not comment on Monday’s verdict.
Mette-Marit is very ill with a form of pulmonary fibrosis and has recently been placed on a lung transplant list.
Her son’s lawyers have repeatedly sought his release from prison so he could spend time with his mother because of her declining health.
After the verdict, Høiby’s defence lawyer Petar Sekulic again asked the court for his release, however the court rejected the plea late on Monday, ruling that there was a risk that he might contact a woman he was convicted of assaulting, and who he had broken a restraining order to see in the past.
One of the three judges in the trial, Judge Jon Sverdrup Efjestad, began the session early on Monday with a summary of their conclusions, before going into a 128-page ruling explaining the verdict.
Høiby had denied all four counts of rape, but the judges convicted him of raping two women, including one on the Crown Prince’s estate at Skaugum in 2018 and another involving a woman in Oslo in 2024.
He was also convicted of abusing an ex-girlfriend, Norwegian influencer Nora Haukland and of causing serious bodily harm to another partner, in whose flat he was arrested in the upmarket Frogner area of Oslo in August 2024.
However, he was cleared of two further rapes, involving a woman he met at a hotel in Oslo in November 2024 and another he met while on holiday in the Lofoten islands in 2023.
Sekulic said it was “in the nature of the case that there could be an appeal”.
His defence colleague Ellen Holager Andenæs told reporters they were satisfied with the acquittals but were more critical of other aspects of the verdict.
Both lawyers then went to discuss the verdict with Høiby at Ila prison and detention centre outside Oslo.
The case against Høiby involved six women, but only one of the women was in court to hear the verdict and she was seen crying as Høiby was found guilty of raping her.
Prosecutors said she had been either incapacitated or asleep when she was raped after a party in Oslo in March 2024, and after they had engaged in consensual sex.
The case rested on videos that Høiby had filmed at the time and, giving evidence in February, the woman told the court that she was asleep and would never have allowed it to happen.
The court agreed the victim had been unable to resist what had happened.
All four rape charges involved women who had been either asleep or incapacitated at the time. The women had been unaware of the incidents until police found videos on Høiby’s phone after his arrest.
The judges also found it proven that the woman in the 2018 rape case had been asleep at the time and unable to resist Høiby. She only found out that Høiby had filmed what had happened last year.
Høiby was also convicted of several offences including abuse and reckless behaviour towards the sixth woman in the case, who became known as the Frogner woman because of the area of Oslo where she lived.
The court ruled he should pay a total of 640,000 kroner (£50,000; €57,000) in compensation to four of the women, including Nora Haukland, the only woman judges ruled could be named in the case.
Anja Emilie Kruse, a criminologist at the University of Oslo who researches sexual violence and attended part of the trial, believes there is a frustration in parts of Norwegian society that the courts seem unable to deliver justice in rape cases.
“The burden of evidence needs to be high,” she concedes. However, most rape allegations by women are placed on file by police, Kruse has told the BBC, and the state prosecutor told the court on Monday that one in three Norwegian rape cases that do reach court ends in acquittal.
“These two women who today experienced their cases ending in acquittal are far from alone in having that experience, and the rape cases that do make it to court are just a kind of tip of the iceberg,” says Kruse.
The palace said in an email to the BBC that “the matter has been considered by the courts, and we have no comment on the outcome”. It has already made clear there will be no further statement on Mette-Marit’s declining health until she has had a lung transplant.
“There is no doubt that this case has affected people’s perception of the royal family,” said Caroline Vagle, royal correspondent for Se og Hør magazine.
That was further compounded by revelations on the eve of the trial that the crown princess had had a three-year friendship with late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
But Vagle believes the mood now is completely different: “Her health is the main concern now – and it overshadows everything else.”
Peggy Simcic Brønn, who is a specialist in reputation and public relations and professor emirata at BI Norwegian Business School, believes the royal family is in the midst of an institutional crisis.
“The Høiby case is a tragedy and a crisis for any family,” she said.
“The way they handle it is let the person be convicted, let him serve his sentence, but try to make amends as a family for what that person has done to their reputation and the impact on the royal house itself.”
[BBC]
Foreign News
Zambia ex-president’s family wins latest legal battle over what should happen to his body
More than a year after the death of Zambia’s former President Edgar Lungu, his family have won their appeal to have his body buried in South Africa where he died – overturning a high court ruling that allowed the Zambian government to repatriate the corpse.
Tuesday’s Supreme Court of Appeal judgement finally puts to rest the legal battle over what should happen to his remains following a long-standing feud between Lungu and his successor, President Hakainde Hichilema.
The Zambian government has said while it disagrees with the ruling it will “not be taking the matter any further”.
It had long argued that, as a former head of state, Lungu should be honoured in the country.
The Zambian government wished to see him laid to rest alongside his predecessors in the special presidential burial ground in the capital, Lusaka.
But Lungu’s family wanted a private burial after negotiations with the government over the funeral arrangements broke down.
“The very ritual intended to bring closure has, instead, pitted family against the state in a hard-fought legal dispute far from the protagonists’ home,” said Justice Raylene May Keightley in Tuesday’s judgement.
Last August, the South African high court in Pretoria ruled that Zambia’s govrnment could repatrite the body and give him a state funeral – an outcome that left Lungu’s relatives visibly distraught in the courtroom.
The family appealed against the decision but, in a surprise announcement in April Zambia’s government said Lungu’s remains had been “formally transferred” to the state by the South African court.
But just a few hours later, the same South African court ordered the Zambian government to return the body until the matter went to court again.
The former president died of an undisclosed illness aged 68 at a clinic in Pretoria. Chaos ensued following his death, with mourners receiving conflicting information from the government and Lungu’s political party, the Patriotic Front (PF).
Two separate mourning periods were announced and at one point there were competing condolence books.
Lungu, who led Zambia from 2015 until 2021, had numerous rows with Hichilema, who was the opposition leader for many years before finally unseating his bitter rival.
After Lungu’s death, his family said the ex-president did not want Hichilema to be at his funeral or “anywhere near” his body.
In this latest ruling at the Supreme Court of Appeal, the judges said it was clear that the former president “viewed himself to be persona non grata in his own country” of Zambia and “felt that he would not be afforded a dignified send-off” if his successor was present.
[BBC]
More than 5,300 people remain trapped in online scam centres in Myanmar near the Thai border, despite a multinational crackdown in the region last year, a human rights group says.
The Thai-based Civil Society Network for Human Trafficking Victim Assistance (CSNHTV) sent a letter to Thai police urging them to take action. It said many of those trapped were foreign nationals held at four locations inside areas controlled by the Myanmar Democratic Karen Buddhist Army militia.
According to the CSNHTV, an estimated 1,600 people trapped are Chinese nationals, and about 200 are people of Myanmar, along with people from the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brazil, Russia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe.
“Many of these compounds have yet to be dismantled or subjected to rescue operations to free all remaining victims,” it said.
“As a result, these syndicates continue to engage in online fraud and human trafficking, causing harm to victims around the world, particularly in the United States and Europe.”
Scam centres in Southeast Asia, including those in Myanmar and Cambodia, run illegal online schemes that are designed to defraud people worldwide.
The centres grew significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic in the region, and were initially tied to poorly run casinos and online gambling. They have now become a multibillion-dollar industry, according to the United Nations.
A UN report in February said the facilities are mostly staffed by foreign nationals who have been trafficked by criminal gangs and subjected to abuse.
It found instances of “torture and other ill-treatment, sexual abuse and exploitation, forced abortions, food deprivation, solitary confinement, among other grave human rights abuses”.
“The litany of abuse is staggering and at the same time heart-breaking,” UN Human Rights chief Volker Turk said.
“Yet, rather than receiving protection, care and rehabilitation as well as the pathways to justice and redress to which they are entitled, victims too often face disbelief, stigmatisation and even further punishment.”
[Aljazeera]
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has landed in Pakistan for a state visit – his first overseas trip since the United States and Israel launched strikes on Iran on February 28.
His Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar received the Iranian leader at a military base near capital Islamabad on Tuesday.
During his day long visit, Pezeshkian, who is accompanied by a high-level delegation that includes ministers and senior officials, will hold talks with Sharif, and is also expected to meet with Zardari.
Pezeshkian arrived aboard a special aircraft named Minab 168, a tribute to the 168 people killed in an attack on an Iranian girls’ school by US and Israeli forces in the Iranian city of Minab on the first day of the war in February.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who had arrived separately earlier in the day from Oman, was also part of the delegation.
The Iranians are due to hold bilateral talks with premier Sharif, followed by a delegation-level meeting between the two sides.
According to Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Senate Chairman Yousaf Raza Gilani, National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq, and Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar will also call on the Iranian leader.
“During the visit, the two sides will review the full spectrum of bilateral relations and explore new avenues to further deepen cooperation across diverse sectors, including trade, energy, border security, people-to-people exchanges, and regional connectivity,” the ministry said in a statement on Monday.
Pezeshkian’s visit follows the crucial first round of talks between the United States and Iran, mediated by Pakistan and Qatar, in the Swiss city of Bürgenstock to end the war on Iran.
As part of the agreement, the US will release $12bn in frozen Iranian funds. The US has also announced a temporary easing of international sanctions on Iran, allowing it to sell its oil and petrochemicals until August 21. The talks concluded with a 60-day roadmap towards a final deal.
[Aljazeera]
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