Category: news

The International Olympic Committee is to investigate BBC claims of corruption against Fifa Vice-President Issa Hayatou, also an IOC member, it says.

It has asked the BBC to give any evidence of alleged bribes taken by Fifa executives, following the screening of its Panorama programme.

Panorama alleged Mr Hayatou and two other Fifa officials voting on World Cup bids took bribes in the 1990s.

Fifa, world football’s governing body, has dismissed the claims.

The IOC has said it will refer the matter to its ethics commission.

“The IOC has taken note of the allegations made by BBC Panorama and will ask the programme makers to pass on any evidence they may have to the appropriate authorities. The IOC has a zero tolerance against corruption and will refer the matter to the IOC Ethics Commission,” it said.

Fifa issued a statement, saying the allegations referred to events that had taken place before the year 2000 and had been investigated by the Swiss authorities.

“In its verdict of 26 June 2008, the Criminal Court of Zug had not convicted any Fifa officials. It is therefore important to stress again the fact that no Fifa officials were accused of any criminal offence in these proceedings.”

The BBC Panorama, broadcast on Monday, alleged that Fifa officials Issa Hayatou – Confederation of African Football chief, from Cameroon – Nicolas Leoz, from Paraguay, and Ricardo Teixeira, from Brazil, took bribes from a sport marketing firm which was awarded lucrative World Cup rights.

The men will vote this week on the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids.

They have not responded to Panorama’s allegations.

England is competing with Russia, Spain/Portugal and Netherlands/Belgium to host the 2018 tournament.

The alleged bribes to the three members of Fifa’s executive committee were paid by sports marketing company International Sport and Leisure (ISL) and date from 1989 to 1999, Panorama alleged. The company collapsed in 2001.

Fifa granted ISL exclusive rights to market World Cup tournaments to some of the world’s biggest brands, and ISL received millions more from negotiating television broadcast rights.

Panorama: Fifa’s Dirty Secrets was broadcast on BBC One on Monday, 29 November and is now available in the UK on the BBC iPlayer.

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The Wikileaks site set up to host leaked US diplomatic cables has been hit by a web attack.

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Students are staging a sit-in outside the vice-chancellor’ s office at Queen’s University in protest at proposals to increase tuition fees.

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Older people are less likely to get skin changes checked by a doctor, leading to a steep rise in cancer deaths, say researchers.

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As the England 2018 bid team heads for Switzerland to persuade Fifa to let us host the World Cup, BBC News looks at what such an event would mean for the country.

Many football fans across the country will be keeping everything crossed on Thursday when Fifa decides who will host the 2018 World Cup.

England is competing against three other bids – from Russia, Spain and Portugal, and the Netherlands and Belgium.

A delegation which includes Prince William, in his role as president of the Football Association, Prime Minister David Cameron and David Beckham – possibly England’s most famous footballer of all time – is travelling to Switzerland to persuade Fifa voters to bring the tournament to English soil.

It is estimated the event will boost the UK economy by £3bn, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has said.

“Winning the right to host the 2018 World Cup would be a fantastic opportunity for the country,” said Hugh Robertson, Minister for Sport and the Olympics.

“We would put on a fantastic festival of football with supporters from all competing countries welcomed with open arms.”

Professor Stefan Szymanski, from the Cass Business School, part of City University in London, is more sceptical about the impact the World Cup might have on the economy, which he described as “negligible”.

“The UK attracts a lot of tourists anyway and this is not going to be a significant boost to that,” he said.

“As many people come, there will be people put off coming to England in the middle of a football tournament.”

Prof Szymanski, who specialises in the economic impact of sport, said very little money would need to be spent on stadiums and infrastructure, because the country already has them in place.

“We could host it tomorrow if we wanted to,” he said.

“We do not need to build a lot of infrastructure to host the World Cup because we have good transport links internationally and we have stadiums that are large enough to host the event.

“This means we will not need to spend… upgrades to roads, smarten up transport links but it should not be a huge sum of money.”

Ironically, this may lead to England missing out on the 2018 World Cup, Prof Szymanski added.

“The way we have sold a World Cup to Fifa is to say that it is a safe bet,” he said.

“We have the facilities already but that’s not actually what Fifa wants.”

He said Fifa was likely to chose a country that would need to build infrastructure, such as Russia, because of the desire to make improvements to a nation by staging the tournament there – as it aimed to do with this year’s hosts South Africa.

“Part of the problem is the mistake of thinking the reason for doing it is an economic benefit,” he said.

“We want to host the World Cup because we love football.

“As culturally significant as this is… it’s insignificant for the economy of the UK.”

Eleven cities and one town have been chosen as potential England World Cup hosts.

These are Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Newcastle, Nottingham, Plymouth, Sheffield and Sunderland.

Some, such as London and Manchester, already have large enough stadiums and the facilities suitable for such a major football event.

Liverpool Football Club’s new owners are yet to decide whether a new stadium will be built or the existing one at Anfield will be redeveloped. The England 2018 bid makes it clear either a new or existing stadium on Merseyside could be used.

Other cities, like Bristol and Nottingham, want to rebuild.

Nottingham Forest have plans for a new 45,000-capacity stadium and Bristol City want to build a 44,000-seat stadium.

Simon Inglis, stadium expert and editor of the Played in Britain sports book series, said the impact of hosting the World Cup would be far greater in places where new stadiums were likely be built.

“For these towns and cities who are going to go into the big time for the first time… this is make or break for them to a certain extent,” he said.

“The Bristol stadium, if it gets built, if we get the World Cup, if Bristol remains on the list, the impact will be enormous.

“The local community always benefits in terms of economic impact.

“They would probably only get three games each but all the evidence shows a big competition like this is worth millions in inward investment.”

Alan Southern, senior lecturer specialising in enterprise and regeneration at the University of Liverpool, said having the World Cup in England could act as a “catalyst” for regeneration in some host cities.

He said the event would have an effect on the economy, particularly locally, but the amount of impact was difficult to calculate.

Whether it is significant economically or not, most English fans would be overjoyed to have such an important football competition held on English soil.

The last time we hosted the World Cup was in 1966, when Alf Ramsey led England to a 4-2 victory over West Germany in the final – England’s only major tournament win.

Mark Perryman, from LondonEnglandfans, said fans young and old had lived with the legacy most, or all, of their lives.

“It’s an incredibly important iconic memory for every England fan,” he said.

“The idea that it may return to these shores is incredibly exciting.”

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The UK was complicit in the torture of the first al-Qaeda member to be convicted in the country of directing terrorism, a court has heard.

Rangzieb Ahmed, 34, was unlawfully held in Pakistan, beaten and had fingernails removed, a QC told the Court of Appeal.

Joel Bennathan QC said during Ahmed’s torture in 2006 he was asked “many” questions about events in Manchester – where he was arrested a year later.

His trial, which saw Ahmed jailed for life, should have been halted, he said.

Mr Bennathan told the court his client was held unlawfully for more than a year, during which time he was beaten with sticks and cables and had three fingernails pulled out with pliers.

The court heard how the CIA was present at his arrest and how British intelligence officials questioned Ahmed, formerly of Rochdale, during the period of his alleged mistreatment.

“We say the UK was complicit in these acts,” said Mr Bennathan.

He said that in 2006, while his client was being tortured, Ahmed was asked “many, many questions about events in Manchester” which formed a direct link with his subsequent arrest in that city.

When it came to his trial on terrorism charges, “the trial judge should have stayed the proceedings as an abuse of process”, he argued.

He told appeal judges Lord Justice Hughes, Mr Justice Owen and Mrs Justice Thirlwall that they should now allow Rangzieb Ahmed’s appeal “on the same basis”.

Ahmed watched the appeal proceedings via video link from prison.

In July this year Prime Minister David Cameron said a “judge-led” inquiry would look at claims that UK security services were complicit in the torture of terror suspects.

There are approximately a dozen cases involved, including Ahmed’s and the well-documented case of British resident and former Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed.

In December 2008 Ahmed became the first British man to be jailed for directing terrorism outside of Northern Ireland.

He is alleged to have played an important role in Pakistan, linking British activists with Jihadist leaders.

Human rights campaigners in Pakistan highlighted his case before he was deported to the UK to face trial.

The judge at his Manchester trial refused to throw out the case and rejected Ahmed’s claim that his fingernails were pulled before he had been interviewed by MI5.

Earlier this year former Conservative frontbencher David Davis used the legal protection of Parliamentary privilege to make allegations about Ahmed’s treatment, relating to information raised in secret before the trial.

He told MPs that he had information that Greater Manchester Police had sufficient grounds to arrest Ahmed, but he was allowed to leave the UK in 2006.

British intelligence officers then suggested to their Pakistani counterparts that they arrest Ahmed, Mr Davis alleged.

He claimed MI5 subsequently supplied the Pakistani interrogators with questions. And when Ahmed later told visiting MI5 and MI6 officers he had been tortured, they did not return.

“A more obvious case of outsourcing of torture, a more obvious case of passive rendition, I cannot imagine,” Mr Davis told MPs.

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