CLOAK AND CABINET

  Today's case is the sad murder of Australian woman, Beth Barnard. A tragic death that occurred on picturesque Phillip Island, just off the coast of Melbourne, in the state of Victoria. Vivienne Cameron was suspected to be responsible for the murder. However, police never had the chance to question her as she mysteriously disappeared on the same night that Beth died. What happened? Why can't police answer the burning questions of why one woman was brutally murdered and her suspected killer vanished without a trace? Let's find out! Beth Barnard A HORRIFIC MURDER On the night of 22 September 1986, the body of young farm hand, Beth Barnard, was found viciously stabbed and mutilated with the letter ''A'' carved in her abdomen. Her throat was cut, she had a broken tooth and her faced was slashed.  When police found her, the body was covered with a quilt. This led police to suspect that the murder was committed by either a woman or someone that cared for Beth ver...

North Korea, the Hermit Kingdom, has managed to keep the international eyes out even more since the pandemic started and their borders went firmly shut. We were graced with two very interesting pieces of news from North Korea in the past week.  MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT PARADE  In what has been called ''The Parade of Paramilitary and Public Security Forces'' which included labourers, research groups and regional party leaders coming to march in the Kim Il-Sung Square under the watchful gaze of the national Dear Leader, Kim Jong-un. There was no heavy weaponry or strong military force to be found.  Paratroopers riding motorcycles in the parade The parade featured paratroopers dropping from the sky, and the most striking group were the orange hazmat suit clad, gas mask wearing unit called the ''emergency disease prevention unit''. The purpose of these ''anti-pandemic'' fighters was to showcase how North Korea has kept it's population...

After 20 years of almost normal freedom, the country of Afghanistan is once more thrown in the dark ages in regards to women's rights. The Taliban has formed a new government, formally announcing the start of their reign with the hoisting of their flag over the Afghan presidential palace on September 11, 2021. So, on the same day that the United States of America was mourning the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the World Trade Centre attacks where 2,977 people died.  Taliban flag flying on top of the Afghanistan presidential palace JUST ANNOUNCED: Women can still study at university, but.... Today, it came out in all the newspapers that the Taliban have announced that women can still attend university. The only problem is that they specified a set of almost unachievable rules that will mean that women will not be able to go to university if the resources or space does not meet the demands.  Women can still attend university, even post-graduate studies if: classes are gende...

Last month was a historic and tragic time in the long, battle weary past of Afghanistan. The ones suffering the most will be the Afghani women, who have experienced periods of freedom, education and almost equal status in society. Under Taliban rule, their lives will take a 180 degrees into the past with bans on music, dancing, going to school, forced marriage and sexual slavery. It is so bad that some women would rather die than to be wed to a Taliban fighter! In this post, we will explore what life will be like for women under the new Taliban regime, and why they would rather commit suicide than to live that sad, small and secluded life devoid of freedoms and education.  Female Afghani soldiers WOMEN'S RIGHTS TAKEN AWAY On September 27, 1996 the Taliban seized control of Kabul, and previously Herat in 1994. They overtook the then current Afghanistan government and set up their own totalitarian dictatorship that ruled with an iron fist. They set up a gender apartheid that...

Continuing from Part 3 , and the final instalment of this series, we have a look at the challenges that Scotland Yard faced in investigating this case. They were led to over 40 sites on the polonium trail, and all the way to Moscow and the Kremlin. As you can guess, the Russians did not give them an easy time. Read on to see what happened! THE POLICE INVESTIGATION  The police investigation started with interviewing Alexander Litvinenko for a period of 3 days, 9 hours in total. Police could see that he was in pain, and suffering horrendously, but he never complained or asked to stop. The Scotland Yard Counter-Terrorism Unit was assigned to the investigation. Clive Timmons was the Detective Superintendent on the case.  Clive Timmons, Detective Superintendent from Scotland Yard As mentioned in the previous post, Timmons requested that a living post-mortem be conducted on Litvinenko so as to find more evidence like puncture wounds, scratch marks, etc. It was really befudd...

In Part 3 of the Litvinenko case, we will have a look at the events that led to Litvinenko's poisoning. Then, in Part 4 we will have a look at what the Metropolitan Police did and how the British government reacted to this unbelievable series of events.  THE KEY PLAYERS  Andrey Lugovoy was born in Baku, Azerbaijan and was a childhood friend of Dmitry Kovtun. Both of them joined the KGB at the same time, in the end of the 1980s. He provided protection for top officials and later on went into private business. He knew Litvinenko for 10 years before the dissident escaped to London. They were just acquaintances and were neither tied professionally or personally.  Dmitry Kovtun was born in 1965 and trained at the Soviet command academy in Moscow with Lugovoy. He was in East Germany at the fall of the Soviet Union and fled with his wife to claim political asylum in Hamburg. He had unfortunate luck when it came to jobs. He had worked in the hospitality industry as a dishwasher...