Youth tells of driving accident which nearly killed him

Wafa Issa

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DUBAI // Life was full of promise for Hassan Al Khalaf. The young Emirati was a promising sportsman hoping for success with the national football team, and nurtured ambitions of a career with the police.

It took just a moment for those ambitions to evaporate. Mr Al Khalaf had, he admits, been driving recklessly when he lost control of the dune buggy he was racing at 110kph. The vehicle overbalanced, threw him from the controls and rolled on top of him. The next thing Mr Al Khalaf remembers is lying in a hospital bed with doctors telling him he might never walk again.

"At that moment, I wished to die," said Mr Al Khalaf, now a 21-year-old media and communications student at Al Jazeera University in Dubai.

He is still recovering from the accident in November 2010, which left him with 13 fractures in the spine, several slipped discs and 90 per cent damage to the nerves of his left leg. He has undergone three major operations so far, and has two more to come. And while he has regained the ability to walk, he can no longer play his beloved sport and fears his health will preclude him from joining the police.

Instead he has a new ambition - to warn fellow students to avoid his example and to educate them about the dangers of reckless driving.

"I was just like any of you - I could run and do whatever I wanted to do but today I am deprived of many things," he told an assembly at his university yesterday.

"I learnt a lesson but unfortunately I learnt it too late. I learnt it in overtime.

"I was driving at 110kph and my friend who was riding behind on the buggy was shouting for me to stop as he had overtaken the guy we were racing. I looked behind for a second and lost balance.

"I had two accidents prior to that serious accident but I did not learn the lesson until I was told, while I was on the hospital bed, that I had a 90 per cent risk of being paralysed.

"Today I think thousands of times before I take any move, and this is what I want you to do. I want you to think before driving."

His speech was part of an awareness campaign organised by Dubai Police Traffic department in cooperation with Al Jazeera university and the Arabic daily Al Bayan.

The campaign, called "Beware of being the victim or the killer", aims to educate young people of the danger they pose to both themselves and others by driving recklessly.

"We are being criticised that we sometimes neglect the awareness factor in our work and we hope that this campaign can fill this gap," said Maj General Mohammed Saif Al Zaffin, the head of the traffic department.

Part of the campaign involves the traffic department's handing out booklets to young drivers during field inspections.

Speaking after he addressed his fellow students, Mr Khalaf said his life had been transformed.

"Half of my previous life was about football. I was playing in the sports club and I had the potential to make it to the national team. Today I cannot even play football," he said.

He hoped that by providing a real-life example he could convince his peers to change their ways.

He also said parents had a role to play by resisting pressure from their offspring to buy vehicles while they were still not mature.

He said any parent in doubt should visit a traffic accident victim in hospital - then "all of them will realise what speed and reckless driving can cause".

wissa@thenational.ae

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Iranian women's civil rights activist killed in Houston

Associated Press

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HOUSTON // A woman whom police described as an activist on behalf of Iranian women's civil rights was found shot dead at the wheel of her car after it crashed into a Houston town house garage.

The car was still running when police found the body of Gelareh Bagherzadeh, 30, behind the wheel about 12.30am Monday in an upmarket town house development.

"When the officer arrived, the car's tires were still spinning. He had to reach in and turn off the motor," the policeman JC Padilla said.

Ms Bagherzadeh apparently was talking on the phone with an ex-boyfriend when she was shot.

"He heard a loud thud - doesn't recall hearing any gunshots, but a loud thud - and then a screeching noise. He said it sounded like someone driving away," Sergeant Richard Bolton, a Houston police detective, said.

Sgt Bolton said police have questioned the ex-boyfriend but he is not a person of interest in the case.

Ms Bagherzadeh was a molecular genetic technology student at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. She also was active in promoting Iranian women's rights, the police spokesman Victor Senties said.

"It appears she was one of the ones who would be out protesting, and she was very well known in the Iranian women's rights community because she was constantly out protesting," Mr Senties said.

Mr Senties said it was unclear whether her death was related to her background or her activities. Sgt Bolton said investigators suspect the victim was followed home or that someone was waiting for her.

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A woman whom police described as an activist on behalf of Iranian women's civil rights was found shot dead at the wheel of her car after it crashed into a Houston town house garage.

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Qaddafi killed as Sirte falls to NTC: Libya

Agencies

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SIRTE, Libya // The Prime Minister of Libya's interim government, Mahmoud Jibril, has confirmed that former Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi has been killed.

Libya's National Transitional Council leader said Qaddafi died of his wounds as fighters battling to complete an eight-month uprising against his rule overran his home town Sirte today.

The era of Moammar Qaddafi has ended with his death and the capture of Sirte in Libya by the National Transitional Council.

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"We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Muammar Qaddafi has been killed," Jibril told a news conference in the capital Tripoli.

A NTC official said his body was now being taken to a secret location.

"Qaddafi's body is with our unit in a car and we are taking the body to a secret place for security reasons," Mohamed Abdel Kafi, an NTC official in the city of Misrata told Reuters.

Nato said they couldn't yet confirm reports from revolutionary fighters that Qaddafi was captured or killed in the fall of his hometown. In Washington, US officials were also still working to confirm the reports, a senior Obama administration official said.

However, television networks around the world are broadcasting an apparent photograph of the former leader's body released by the NTC.

The photo, apparently taken on a mobile phone, showed a pale, bloodied and dead-eyed man closely resembling the deposed Libyan ruler, with dark frizzy hair and similar facial features.

It was not clear if the man was dead or wounded. He appeared to be bandaged and had a blank expression. He had a stream of blood from the side of his mouth and was wearing a bloodstained, dark-coloured shirt.

It is common for anti-Qaddafi fighters to photograph and record scenes from the battlefield.

The Misrata Military Council, one of multiple command groups for revolutionary forces, earlier released a statement that said Qaddafi was dead. Another commander, Abdel-Basit Haroun, said Qaddafi was killed when an airstrike hit a convoy trying to flee.

Previous reports of Qaddafi family deaths or captures have later proved incorrect.

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Cairo on alert after 24 people killed in riots

Associated Press

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CAIRO // Dozens of "instigators of chaos" were arrested today after clashes between Christians, Muslims and security forces that left 24 dead and at least 200 wounded.

Thousands of Egyptian Christian Coptic protesters took to the streets after the burning of a Coptic Christian church in the southern province of Aswan. The protests turned violent leaving 24 people killed and 40 injured in clashes between the protesters and military forces in Cairo.

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Sunday's clashes, sparked by a recent attack on a church in southern Egypt, were the worst sectarian violence since the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak in February.

The Mena news agency did not report whether those arrested were Christians or Muslims.

Egypt's state television reported authorities stepped up security at vital installations in anticipation of renewed unrest, deploying additional troops outside parliament and the cabinet.

The rioting in downtown Cairo lasted until late into Sunday night, bringing out a deployment of more than 1,000 security forces and armoured vehicles to defend the Nile-side state television building, where the trouble began.

The clashes spread from outside the television building to nearby Tahrir Square, drawing thousands of people to the vast plaza that served as the epicentre of the protests that ousted Mr Mubarak. On Sunday night, they battled each other with rocks and firebombs, some tearing up pavement for ammunition and others collecting stones in boxes.

At one point, an armoured security van sped into the crowd, striking a half-dozen protesters and throwing some into the air. Protesters retaliated by setting fire to military vehicles, a bus and private cars, sending flames rising into the night sky.

After midnight, mobs roamed downtown streets, attacking cars they suspected had Christian passengers. In many areas, there was no visible police or army presence to confront or stop them.

Christians, who make up about 10 per cent of Egypt's 80 million people, blame the country's ruling military council for being too lenient on those behind a spate of anti-Christian attacks since Mubarak's ouster. As Egypt undergoes a chaotic power transition and security vacuum after the uprising, the Coptic Christian minority is particularly worried about the show of force by ultraconservative Islamists.

The prime minister, Essam Sharaf, addressing the nation in a televised speech, said the violence threatened to throw Egypt's post-Mubarak transition off course.

"These events have taken us back several steps," he said. "Instead of moving forward to build a modern state on democratic principles we are back to seeking stability and searching for hidden hands - domestic and foreign - that meddle with the country's security and safety."

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"I call on Egyptian people, Muslims and Christians, women and children, young men and elders to hold their unity," Sharaf said.

The Christian protesters said their demonstration began as a peaceful attempt to sit in at the television building. But then, they said, they came under attack by thugs in plainclothes who rained stones down on them and fired pellets.

"The protest was peaceful. We wanted to hold a sit-in, as usual," said Essam Khalili, a protester wearing a white shirt with a cross on it. "Thugs attacked us and a military vehicle jumped over a pavement and ran over at least 10 people. I saw them."

Mr Khalili said protesters set fire to army vehicles when they saw them hitting the protesters.

Ahmed Yahia, a Muslim resident who lives near the television building, said he saw the military vehicle plough into protesters. "I saw a man's head split into two halves and a second body flattened when the armoured vehicle ran over it. When some Muslims saw the blood they joined the Christians against the army," he said.

Television footage showed the military vehicle slamming into the crowd. Coptic protesters were shown attacking a soldier, while a priest tried to protect him.

At least 24 people were killed in the clashes, the health ministry official, Hisham Sheiha, said.

State media reported that Egypt's interim cabinet was holding an emergency session to discuss the situation.

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