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GULF DAILY NEWS, The Voice of Bahrain

Gay 'honeytrap' victim robbed

Bahrain, Feb. 18, 2008-- THREE men have admitted robbing a Bahraini at knifepoint after setting up a gay "honeytrap" over the Internet. The 21-year-old victim was lured to a rendezvous on the isolated Sitra coast, after striking up a chat room friendship with one of the assailants.

He was held at knifepoint by two masked men, who also 'robbed' the other man, to disguise the fact that he was the bait.

It later emerged that the person the victim met in an Internet chat room was actually one of his muggers, while the man who showed up for the rendezvous was an accomplice, a Public Prosecution spokesman said yesterday.

The spokesman said all three Bahrainis were in on the mugging, which was staged to look like a random hold-up.

"Apparently, the two men's friendship grew to more than just an Internet communication and they began to call each other over the phone," said the spokesman.

"After some time the 19-year-old defendant agreed that it was time for them to meet so that they could be more than friends.

"He and the victim agreed that they would meet in a park after the defendant told him that he wanted to meet him in person."

However, the 19-year-old sent one of his friends in his place to meet the victim.

"The friend, pretending to be the person he met in a chat room, told the victim that they should drive to a beach where it was quieter for them to talk," said the spokesman.

"The victim agreed and drove to a beach in Sitra where they started talking."

However, after a few minutes a car pulled up behind them and one of the defendants got out wearing a mask, held a knife to the victim's throat and demanded his mobile phone and wallet.

He also demanded the mobile phone of the accomplice who showed up at the meeting to make the robbery more convincing.

However, the plot was exposed when the victim reported the incident to police.

The accomplice went with him to avoid raising suspicion, since he claimed his phone had also been stolen. However, officers became suspicious when they discovered the accomplice had given them a false name. He claimed he had used a fake name because he did not give out his real name on the Internet, said the spokesman.

However, police were able to track down the masked mugger - who later confessed that it was actually him who arranged the meeting.

Police were able to establish that the mugger and his accomplice, who showed up on the "date", were friends and they later confessed to planning the whole thing.

Officers were then able to track down the third man involved in the plot and all three are now in custody facing a charge of aggravated robbery.

They will remain in detention until their case goes to court.

sara@gdn.com.bh

Moscow December 21, 2006-- More than 1,000 people have been murdered in Moscow so far this year – about three a day – about twice the number in New York (550 murders so far this year) and five times the number in London (190).

It’s still considered the preferred way to solve otherwise insoluble problems – pesky journalists who keep asking the wrong questions, for instance, or stubborn business partners who refuse to give you his half of the business.

The Moscow times ran an article on the pursuit of gay rights in Moscow, focusing on Ed Mishin, who runs the only gay bookstore (Indigo) in Moscow and acts as the leading but very low-profile voice of gays here.

He and his “Russian National Gay, Lesbian, Bi-, and Transexual Center” (GLBT or “Together” for short) are still advocating a non-confrontational approach as the best way to find acceptance in post-Soviet Russia. “Together” focuses on services to gays and lesians, such as hotlines (495/783-8333) and support groups (group@gay.ru). There is also a website (www.gay.ru) which Mishin says gets 65,000 hits a day.

The MT says Mishin is “optimistic – perhaps overly so – about gay life here. “Homosexuality is not that big a problem here,” he insists, and Nikolai Alexeyeev, one of the organizers of last May’s aborted march, agrees that “there is no danger from the neo-fascist” to the Moscow gay movement.

Although Mishin says he knows of no anti-gay directed crime here, anecdotally there is still evidence that young gay men put their lives in danger when they make their orientation obvious.

A friend NN Vanya said he went to the gay club “Chance” recently and was accosted by a group of vigilantes. He convinced them that he was straight, so they turned to a lone teenage boy who was walking behind him. They seized him and dragged him into the nearby woods. What happened to him one can only imagine.

And according to the MT, a gang of thugs recently attacked and severely beat a gay man outside the new gay club “Soul and Body.”

Probably the biggest news in Russia right now is the weather. It has persisted in the mid-to-upper 30s and 40s (F).

We had the first snow in weeks here last night, but barely enough to stick to the ground, and it will probably be gone by nightfall.

It would probably be trite to whisper “global warming” in such a transitory phase of weather, but even here people are becoming more aware of it. It’s increasingly a topic of “news” in my Inst. of Diplomacy classes, and one student mentioned last Saturday the prediction that fish will be gone from the oceans by 2050 unless drastic measures are taken immediately.

An anti-Kremlin protest march was banned last Saturday. A group of some 2,500 protesters were permitted to gather at “Victory Park,” but not to march from there to Pushkin Square just blocks from the Kremlin.

Dubbing themselves the “Other Russia,” the loosely-knit amalgamation of anti-Putin groups headed by former chess champion Garry Kasparov did not defy the 8,500 riot police and their batteries of trucks, helicopters, and buses.

“We decided to spare your heads,” Eduard Limonov, head of the banned National Bolshevik Party, explained to the gathered crowd.

Even so, police arrested about 40 of the participants, according to the Moscow Times.

“The government has crushed our liberties,” Kasparov declared. “We need another Russia.”

Michail Kasyanov, former prime minister who has announced he will run against Putin in 2008, noted that “we have 15 months until the change of government. If this government continues with their policies, the country will fall apart.”

While the event was covered by “scores” of journalists, according to the MT, there were none from the state-owned TV stations, which provide virtually the only TV news coverage. So most Russians don’t know there was an anti-Putin rally.

It is a preview of what can be expected over the next 15 months. Putin will be shown several hours a day on TV networks, while his opponents will be scarcely mentioned, and only then in connection with scandal or opprobrium.

There’ll be no mirror image of last month’s repudiation of Bush in America.