Class action suits however are unheard of

Class action suits, however, are unheard of.It is fairly common for officials to put pressure on victims and their families to keep quiet.. DNA tests on hair samples have implicated a wealthy Tokyo businessman in the case of the missing Briton Lucie Blackman, according to police investigators. The man – Joji Obara, 48 – is already under arrest on rape charges in a separate case. DNA tests on hair samples have implicated a wealthy Tokyo businessman in the case of the missing Briton Lucie Blackman, according to police investigators. The man – Joji Obara, 48 – is already under arrest on rape charges in a separate case.
Blonde hairs found at Mr Obara’s seaside apartment are reported to offer a close DNA match with hairs provided by members of the Blackman family.

The findings would undermine Mr Obara’s claims to have met Ms Blackman, only once, in June this year, when she was working as a bar hostess in Tokyo’s Roppongi night-life district.Ms Blackman, 22, a former British Airways flight attendant, entered Japan in early May as a tourist. She went missing after telling a friend on 1 July she was going on a trip to the sea with a client.Forensic examinations have been made of evidence gathered from Mr Obara’s home in Tokyo and a bathroom in his apartment at the seaside town of Zushi. More than 400 hairs, some from Caucasian women, have been subjected to DNA testing. Sources close to the investigation say it is highly likely that several of the hairs can be identified as Ms Blackman’s.Mr Obara is on trial for drugging and raping four women, including another Briton.

Police have not so far charged him in any crime connected with Ms Blackman’s disappearance.Yesterday prosecutors indicted Mr Obara on a charge of drugging and raping a Japanese woman in early June. Mr Obara has pleaded not guilty to the charges, insisting that all the women agreed to sexual relations. He denies he gave drugs to the women.Lawyers for Mr Obara maintained that the police were wrongly trying to link him with Ms Blackman. Although videotapes showing scenes of sexual assault on women were found at Mr Obara’s Zushi apartment, none included any link to the missing Briton.. To her friends Mariette Bosch seemed to have it all – three children, money and an extravagant lifestyle to match. Now she faces going down in history as the first white woman to be hanged in the former British protectorate of Botswana.

To her friends Mariette Bosch seemed to have it all – three children, money and an extravagant lifestyle to match. Now she faces going down in history as the first white woman to be hanged in the former British protectorate of Botswana.
She was convicted 12 months ago of murdering her best friend so she could marry the widowed husband. Capital punishment is mandatory for murder in Botswana unless there are extenuating circumstances.The extraordinary case has been dubbed “Botswana’s White Mischief” after the film about a fatal love-triangle set among the wealthy British society of 1940s Africa.The life of Mariette Bosch has split the African republic’s resurgent community of British and South African expatriates who have been benefiting from the country’s diamond-rich economy for many years.On 25 June 1996, Mariette Bosch, a 50-year-old South African, borrowed a pistol from a friend in Pietersburg, just over the border in South Africa.The next evening she returned to Botswana, drove to a house owned by her best friends, Ria and Tienie Wolmarans, and shot Ria twice in the head with a 9mm pistol.Gaborone police failed to identify a single suspect for three months after the killingMariette and Tienie became secretly engaged soon afterwards and in September, three months after the shooting, they bought a wedding dress.But Bosch had made a crucial mistake. She gave the murder weapon to her brother, even though she knew that his wife, Juliet, hated her. When Juliet heard of the engagement, she became suspicious and handed the gun to the police.At her trial in January this year, Judge Isaac Aboagye, sentencing her, said: “I have not been able to find one moral extenuating circumstance. You are not very young, you were not intoxicated and you were not provoked.” The judge said he had no doubt that she had killed her friend as a result of “jealously and infatuation”.In a hangover from the days when Botswana was a British colony, Mariette Bosch’s fate will be determined by two of Britain’s most eminent judges and an English barrister, credited with saving more people from death-row than any other lawyer.Next month an English High Court judge and a Scottish law lord are to fly out to what used to be known as Bechuanaland to hear Bosch’s final plea for mercy.Lord Weir, from the Scottish courts, and Mr Justice Blofeld, from the English High Court, sitting with three other judges drawn from the Commonwealth, will make up the Botswana Court of Appeal.She will be represented by her British barrister, Desmond de Silva, whose legal skills have stopped 35 people from going to the gallows and earnt him the sobriquet, Scarlet Pimpernel.He is also representing Lee Bowyer, the Leeds United footballer accused of seriously assaulting an Asian student outside a Leeds nightclub.Mr de Silva believes Mariette Bosch is the victim of a miscarriage of justice.He will argue that she could not have killed her friend because she was at her home in the Botswana capital at the time of the murder. He will also try to persuade the court that Judge Aboagye, who heard the case without a jury, misdirected himself on the law.Bosch has protested her innocence from the start.