Speier Calls Congress 'Enablers of Sexual Assault'

Jackie Speier

Lawmakers came down hard today on military leaders, the morning after allegations emerged of another head of a military sexual assault prevention program engaging in the very behavior he was charged with stopping.

Late Tuesday the Army announced that the coordinator of a sexual assault prevention program at Fort Hood, Texas, is under investigation "for pandering, abusive sexual contact, assault and maltreatment of subordinates." He has been suspended from all duties while his case is investigated by the Army's Criminal Investigative Command.

That report came a week after the lieutenant colonel in charge of the Air Force's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office was arrested for the alleged sexual battery of a woman in a parking lot near the Pentagon.

"Another sex scandal rocks the military," Rep. Jackie Speier said Wednesday. "Is Congress really going to stand by and let the military handle this? "Congress has been an enabler of sexual assault by not demanding that these cases be taken out of the chain of command."

Rep. Speier has a bill pending in Congress that would do precisely that, called the STOP Act. Staff for Speier said the U.S. Capitol Police are investigating threats against the congresswoman.

Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin said these reports were evidence of "a disgraceful culture of abuse" within the armed services.

"Reports of a soldier at Fort Hood, Texas, assigned to prevent and report sexual assaults, being accused of serious sexual misconduct, abuse, and maltreatment of soldiers is reprehensible," Sen. Durbin, D-Ill., said in a statement released Wednesday. "Next week, the Army will be before my subcommittee and they will face tough questions about these accusations."

Other lawmakers on Twitter called the Fort Hood scandal " unacceptable," " horrific" and " v[ery] disturbing."

Tuesday Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered that all of the military's sexual assault prevention coordinators and military recruiters to be retrained, re-credentialed and rescreened.

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UK lawmaker denies sex assault, rape allegations

LONDON (AP) — A senior British Conservative Party politician arrested on suspicion of rape and sexual assault said Sunday the allegations against him are "completely false."

Deputy House of Commons Speaker Nigel Evans, 55, was arrested on Saturday. He was questioned about sex offenses that allegedly took place between July 2009 and March 2013 and was later released on bail.

Evans — who has served in Parliament for two decades and is one of Britain's most prominent gay lawmakers — said the allegations were made by "two people well known to each other" and who until a day earlier he had regarded as friends.

"The complaints are completely false and I cannot understand why they have been made, especially as I have continued to socialize with one as recently as last week," he said, thanking colleagues and friends who echoed his own "sense of incredulity" over the allegations.

He did not address whether he would stay on as deputy speaker in his brief prepared statement on Sunday, but a spokesman for the House of Commons confirmed that Evans had asked to be excused from chairing the Queen's Speech debate due to start on Wednesday.

The debate comes after Queen Elizabeth II opens a new session of Parliament with a speech outlining the government's legislative plans, and lawmakers then debate the content of the speech over several days.

Lee Bridges, the spokesman, said Evans had asked Speaker John Bercow to excuse him from the debate in the House of Commons and that the speaker was "happy to give him that" time, which could last about a week.

British officials, including Defense Secretary Philip Hammond, expressed shock over his arrest, while Foreign Secretary William Hague called him a "popular and well-respected member of Parliament."

Evans has been a lawmaker for the Lancashire constituency since 1992. In June 2010, he was elected one of the three deputy speakers for the House of Commons.

Later that year, he told a newspaper he was gay, saying he was "tired of living a lie" and that opponents had threatened to expose his sexuality.

"I could not afford it to be used as leverage against me," he told The Mail on Sunday at the time. "I couldn't take the risk. I don't want any other MP to face that kind of nastiness again."

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Cassandra Vinograd can be reached at http://twitter.com/CassVinograd

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Administration still pushing for assault weapons ban: Biden

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vice President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that the Obama administration would continue to press for an assault weapons ban as part of gun control legislation despite a serious setback on the issue earlier this week.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid acknowledged on Tuesday that there was not enough support for the ban in the Senate, meaning it would fail when gun control legislation comes to the floor of the chamber next month.

Biden, who has led President Barack Obama's push for tighter gun regulations, said he was undeterred.

"We are still pushing that it pass," Biden told NPR in an interview, according to its website.

"I believe that the vast majority of the American people agree with us, the vast majority of gun owners agree with us, that military-style assault weapons are — these are weapons of war. They don't belong in the street," he said.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Bob Burgdorfer)

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Tensions high in Lebanon after assault on clerics

BEIRUT (AP) — Several hundred demonstrators angry over attacks against Sunni Muslim clerics blocked roads with garbage bins and burning tires in Beirut and other Lebanese cities on Monday, enflaming old tensions already boiling over the conflict in Syria.

The country is sharply split along sectarian lines, and the civil war next door has exacerbated those divisions among supporters and opponents of President Bashar Assad. The split is a legacy of the nearly three decades when Damascus all but ruled Lebanon, until 2005.

Gunmen supporting opposing sides of the Syrian civil war have frequently clashed, raising concerns that fighting could spread.

Assad's ally, the militant Hezbollah group, is Lebanon's strongest political and military movement and has been accused by Syria's overwhelmingly Sunni rebels of assisting Assad in his military crackdown. Assad belongs to a small branch of Shiite Islam.

Hezbollah denies any of its members are fighting alongside Assad but says several of its fighters have been killed while defending themselves against Sunni gunmen in areas along the border.

Two violent incidents in Lebanon itself have turned up the temperature.

On Sunday night, Mazen Hariri and Ahmad Fekhran, two Sunni Muslim sheikhs at Dar al-Fatwa, Lebanon's highest Sunni religious authority, were attacked by a group of Shiite men shortly after leaving a mosque in downtown Beirut. They were beaten up by Shiites in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Khandak al-Ghamik.

Two other Sunni sheikhs were assaulted in another Shiite neighborhood of Beirut in a separate incident.

As news of the incidents spread, dozens of people took to the streets, blocking roads in the capital and in the predominantly Sunni cities of Sidon and Tripoli in southern and northern Lebanon.

Trying to contain the fallout, Interior Minister Marwan Charbel said those responsible for the attacks were not affiliated with any party.

But many Sunnis quickly direct their anger at Hezbollah and Amal, the two main Shiite groups in Lebanon.

Lebanon's Grand Mufti, Mohammed Rashid Kabbani said the attacks were "not a coincidence."

"I'm not accusing any specific faction, but Shiite leaderships in Hezbollah and Amal ... must lift the cover on the perpetrators," he said Monday.

Hezbollah was quick to condemn the attacks and assisted in handing over the suspects to security forces.

Demonstrations had a clearly sectarian tone.

"The turban of the Sunnis is stronger than attempts at sedition," read a poster held up by protesters at a rally in the mainly Sunni Tarik al-Jdideh district in Beirut.

Regional tensions between Sunnis and Shiites have increased significantly because the Syrian civil war. Most of the rebels fighting to topple Assad are from the country's Sunni majority, while the president belongs to the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

In Lebanon, mortar and artillery shells from the Syrian side often explode in Lebanon.

On Monday, Syrian warplanes hit targets along Syria's border with Lebanon. The state-run National News Agency said the attack hit a remote area near the town of Arsal.

The shelling came just days after Damascus warned Beirut to stop militants from crossing the border to fight with rebels.

A senior Lebanese official confirmed the fighter jets' activity along the frontier, but said it was not clear if targets inside Lebanese territory were hit. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Lebanon, a tiny country with a population of about 4 million, also shelters about 360,000 Syrian refugees.

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Hagel Orders Review of Rules in Military Sex Assault Convictions

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel says he is ordering a review of the rules that allow a military commander to overrule court martial convictions by military juries. Hagel wrote a letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., which is posted on her website.

The move was prompted by the outrage on Capitol Hill after an Air Force general decided to throw out an F-16 fighter pilot's jury conviction for aggravated sexual assault. Lt. Col. James Wilkerson was convicted of the assault, which took place at his home base in Aviano, Italy where he was the base's Inspector General. Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin threw out the conviction, reinstated him in the Air Force and cleared his record.

Franklin made the change against the recommendation of his staff lawyer and instead agreed with Wilkerson's attorney that prosecutors had not proved that he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

RELATED: Military Lags Assisting Victims of Sexual Assault

Wilkerson was able to do this because he was designated the "convening authority" for the case. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), convictions go to the case's convening authority, a commander, for final action. This happens in every military trial.

"I believe this case does raise a significant question whether it is necessary or appropriate to place the convening authority in the position of having the responsibility to review the findings and sentence of a court-martial," wrote Hagel, "particularly prior to the robust appellate process made available by the UCMJ."

Hagel can't review the actions of the Wilkerson case or overturn the case, but he's ordering a review of the case to see whether it "points to changes that should be considered in the UCMJ, or in the military services' implementation of the UCMJ and, if so, what changes should be made."

The Wilkerson case has gained traction over the past week on Capitol Hill as Democratic Senators Boxer, Claire McCaskill and Debbie Stabenow have all expressed outrage over the general's actions. They demanded that the military change the UCMJ provisions to remove the leeway commanders have in sexual assault cases. McCaskill has a meeting set up with the Air Force's top general, Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh.

RELATED: "Invisible War" - Military Rape Victims Go to Congress

On Tuesday Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif, is expected to introduce legislation in the House that, if enacted, would remove the ability of military commanders to unilaterally overturn or lessen the decisions of judges or juries at courts martial under their review. But at meeting of the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, the commander of the U.S. Central Command said that while he wasn't aware of the Wilkerson case, he stood by the military legal system in its current form.

Marine Gen. James Mattis said the powers bestowed upon convening authorities were intended to serve as a defendant's right and check to the jury system.

"No court system is more subject to being characterized as a kangaroo court than one where military officers who are in command also initiate it," Mattis said, adding he believed the U.S. Military Justice code "overwhelmingly" served justice.

"I say that because as a commander, I was not just responsible for prosecution; I was also responsible for defense," he said. "And commanders must balance both of those if we're to have a fair system."

On Wednesday the case is expected to be discussed at the first Senate hearing in a decade dedicated to the issue of sexual assault in the military.

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Ex-CIA contractor pleads guilty in Colorado assault case

DENVER (Reuters) - A former CIA contractor who triggered an international incident in 2011 when he killed two men in Pakistan pleaded guilty on Friday to assaulting a Colorado man in a dispute over a parking spot, prosecutors said.

Raymond Allen Davis entered the plea in Douglas County District Court to misdemeanor third-degree assault and received a two-year probationary sentence, said Lisa Pinto, spokeswoman for the district attorney's office.

Pinto said Davis was also ordered to take anger management classes and write a letter of apology to the victim, Jeff Maes.

Davis, 38, was originally charged with second-degree felony assault in the altercation with Maes in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch in October 2011.

Officers were sent to a bagel store parking lot on reports of a fight between the two men, according to Douglas County Sheriff's spokesman Ron Hanavan.

Police said Davis started the fight and knocked Maes to the ground. He was arrested at the scene.

Maes has filed a civil lawsuit against Davis, saying he suffered two fractured vertebrae in the fight, along with emotional distress.

A U.S. Army veteran and former special forces soldier, Davis made international headlines when he shot and killed two men whom he said were trying to rob him in the eastern Pakistan city of Lahore in January 2011.

Davis, who was working in Pakistan at the time under a CIA contract with Xe Services, the controversial private security firm formerly known as Blackwater, said he acted in self-defense.

He was acquitted of murder and allowed to leave Pakistan after a $2.3 million payment was made to the men's families.

Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at the time that the U.S. government did not pay the "blood money" but would not reveal who did.

(Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Xavier Briand)

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