Cop who killed sleeping 7-year-old Aiyana Jones will not face charges January 29, 2015

The Detroit police officer who fatally shot a sleeping 7-year-old girl will not be retried, officials said Wednesday.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said in a statement that her office was moving to dismiss the case against Officer Joseph Weekley. He was originally charged with involuntary manslaughter and careless discharge of a firearm causing death, a misdemeanor, after Aiyana Stanley-Jones was killed in 2010 during a botched police raid at her home.

Weekley’s first trial in 2013 ended in a mistrial. In a second trial last year, Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Cynthia Gray Hathaway dismissed the manslaughter charge after a motion by the defense. The jury again deadlocked while deliberating whether to convict Weekley of the lesser charge, causing a second mistrial.

"Today we personally informed the family of Aiyana Stanley–Jones that we have made a decision that we would not be going to trial for a third time in the Joseph Weekley case," Worthy said, calling Hathaway’s decision to dismiss the manslaughter charge "unfortunate."

Shortly after midnight on May 16, 2010, members of the Detroit Police Department’s Special Response Team initiated a raid on the Stanley-Jones home in search of a murder suspect. Weekley was first through the door and allegedly had difficulty seeing when another officer threw a a flash-bang grenade. Weekley fired his gun, killing Aiyana, who had been asleep on the couch with her grandmother.

Weekley maintained that he only shot because the grandmother, Mertilla Jones, struck his gun. She denied touching his weapon, and at trial the prosecution questioned why Weekley had his finger on the trigger.

As activists around the country have widely protested the police killings of unarmed black individuals, including Eric Garner in New York City and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, Detroiters have added Aiyana’s name to the list of victims. In October, Roland Lawrence, chairman of the Justice for Aiyana Committee, condemned the judge’s decision to dismiss the manslaughter charge against Weekley.

"Surely, the death of a baby by a well-trained police force must be deemed unacceptable in a civilized society," Lawrence said in a statement at the time.

The prosecution will move to dismiss the case against Weekley Friday morning.

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Moroccan man in France killed at home in front of wife in ‘horrible Islamophobic attack’

A Moroccan man in France was brutally killed after being stabbed 17 times in front of his wife at his own home by a neighbour in what is described as a “horrible Islamophobic attack”.

Mohamed El Makouli was confronted by a 28-year-old attacker who forced himself through the front door at around 1:30am on Wednesday, shouting “I am your god, I am your Islam”, the National Observatory Against Islamophobia said yesterday.

The father of one, 47, was killed in the quiet village of Beaucet, near Avignon in southern France, while his 31-year-old wife Nadia tried to save him. She suffered wounds to her hands before she fled the scene with their child to call the police.

Observatory president Abdallah Zekri condemned the attack “as a horrible Islamophobic attack” and claimed that the victim’s partner was very clear about what the man had shouted regarding Islam.

He told AFP: “She is sure of what he [the attacker] said.”

The man was charged on Thursday with murder, attempted murder and possession of drugs before he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Montfavet. Police said yesterday that the claims of Islamophobia will be investigated when they start questioning the attacker.

He was reported to have been diagnosed with schizophrenia as he claimed he had heard voices and officials say that he was found at the scene in an incoherent state.

The attack is one of at least 50 Islamophobic incidences reported so far in the country after the murders of 17 people at the Charlie Hebdo magazine and a kosher supermarket in Paris earlier this month, according to the Central Council of Muslims in France.

The three gunmen had massacred cartoonists, journalists, police officers and hostages and claimed it was in revenge of drawings published in the satirical magazine of Prophet Mohamed.

A 20-year-old Muslim man originally from Eritrea, Khaled Idris Bahray, was stabbed to death in Dresden, Germany, on Tuesday. He is reported to have left his home on Monday and did not return before his body was found on the street in the early hours.

The attack on Bahray is feared to be linked to “anti-Islamification of Europe” marches held in Germany, which have been strongly condemned by the country’s leaders including Chancellor Angela Merkel.