Three British Muslims were reported killed in Afghanistan late last month.However, Zaki Badawi, president of London’s Muslim College, said that he doubted that any British Muslims were fighting for the Taliban. “There are lots of stories about it and every time they claim somebody is fighting then we discover them somewhere in Pakistan,” Badawi said in an interview BBC radio.He said that he would regard any British Muslims who fought for the Taliban as traitors: “Anyone fighting against this county is a traitor and I feel this very strongly. If you are a citizen of this country you have to abide by the law of this country.”. A warning by the country’s most senior judge that dozens of men might have been wrongly convicted of child abuse divided the legal profession on Friday. “Who would want to go through the ordeal of a criminal trial and put their credibility on the line?” he asked.Mr Levy said the system was “far from foolproof” and that there was no room for complacency. But he added: “I don’t think there is an epidemic of miscarriages.”Malcolm Fowler, a senior member of the Law Society’s criminal law committee, agreed with the sentiments of the Lord Chief Justice, which were published yesterday. Mr Fowler said the circumstances of many convictions in child abuse cases were a source of concern.”This is getting into Alice in Wonderland territory where we go through an expensive and elaborate quadrille just so we can convict the defendant.

It’s almost like having the sentence before the trial.”Mr Fowler also said compensation should be seriously considered as a factor when child abuse claims were being brought.David Wilson, a criminology professor at the University of Central England, said there appeared to have been a change in police tactics when investigating such crimes.He said: “If six or 16 people say it happened, the police assume it happened. They are allowing the number of people making the allegation to determine whether it’s true or false, rather than just investigating the case on the evidence. I think Lord Woolf’s fears are absolutely right.”Lord Woolf made his comments on the day that the disgraced pop impresario Jonathan King, 56, was jailed for seven years for sexually assaulting boys.In a letter to newspapers, King claimed it had been “virtually impossible” for him to defend himself in court because of the length of time since the offences.He said he wanted to highlight flaws in the legal system in an effort to “prevent one more person suffering the ordeal that I have gone through”.King said he could not claim the trials were unfair, but said the legal system allowed “serious potential injustices. The removal of the need for corroboration of witnesses means that the accused is effectively presumed guilty unless innocence can be proved,” he wrote.Campaigners have been trying to persuade the Government to make it more difficult for child abuse cases to reach the courts.Last year, the former Southampton football manager David Jones was cleared of allegations of sexual abuse and indecent assault of children in his care dating from his career in care homes.George Williamson, the chairman of Action Against False Allegations of Abuse, which is based in Leeds, said yesterday: “We are very concerned by corroboration by volume to persuade juries of somebody’s guilt. They put all these allegations together and then at the end of the case the judge says to the jury you must treat them all separately.”. Full consultation on new laws to tackle ageism was promised on Friday after the collapse of a private member’s Bill to set up a commission on age discrimination.

But he insisted legislation would not come into force until 2006 and rejected attempts to create an Age Equality Commission to vet new legislation.Candy Atherton, Labour MP for Falmouth and Camborne, had attempted to withdraw her private member’s Bill and praised the Government for making “great strides” on the issue, despite claims that she had been pressed to back down by Labour whips. The Bill fell after it failed to win the backing of MPs.She told the Commons age discrimination cost the economy £31bn a year and left one in four men over 50 out of work.Mr Johnson said ministers would consult on specific anti-discrimination proposals next year. He said: “I don’t think it would be right for us to commit to an age commission; not now and not in isolation.”We don’t anticipate the new legislation will come into force earlier than 2006, although we would aim to have the legislation and guidance in place well before then so businesses have sufficient time for preparation.”. The United Nations war crimes tribunal has agreed to hear genocide charges arising from the Bosnian war against the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. Those acts include murder, inflicting living conditions designed to eliminate a group, preventing births or transferring children from one group to another.A prosecution spokeswoman said the indictment charged Mr Milosevic with 29 counts, including genocide, complicity to commit genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and violations of the laws or customs of war.The document alleges that Mr Milosevic “participated in a joint criminal enterprise, the purpose of which was the forcible and permanent removal of the majority of non-Serbs from large areas of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina”. It included responsibility for the murder of more than 7,000 Muslims in Srebrenica in July 1995.Thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Croats were held at detention centres in “inhuman conditions” before they were trucked to execution sites.

“The total number of people expelled or imprisoned is estimated at over a quarter of a million,” the prosecution said.Mr Milosevic was extradited to The Hague from Belgrade on June 28.. Andy suddenly went quiet, raised his binoculars and scribbled down the number of a passing Concorde. Apologising, he said: “Plane spotting doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny – it has no logic. We just love aircraft.”

Andy suddenly went quiet, raised his binoculars and scribbled down the number of a passing Concorde. We just love aircraft.”The observation deck at Heathrow’s terminal 1 was thronged as usual yesterday with predominantly middle-aged men clutching note pads, radio scanners and bulky tomes with titles such as Aircraft Markings 2000.The pastime so impassions some that they are enduring a spell in a Greek jail after trying to obtain the spotter’s holy grail – military tail numbers.Plane spotters, of which there are 10,000 Britons, fall into three groups: small aircraft fans, commercial jet groupies and the hard core camouflage and afterburner junkies.