Oscar Pistorius Facing Yet Another Court Case

By Bazi Kanani
@bazikanani
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Mar 1, 2013 3:09pm

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While Oscar Pistorius is fighting a murder charge for the shooting death of his girlfriend, the famous athlete could also end up in court soon on another legal matter, according to attorneys involved in the separate case.

Pistorius’s lawyers are trying to reach an out-of-court settlement with a woman Pistorius is suing for allegedly damaging his reputation when she called police on him.

Watch the full story on “20/20: The Fast Times of Oscar Pistorius” TONIGHT at 10 ET

The case stems from an incident in September 2009, when, Pistorius has said, he escorted a former neighbor out of his house during a party because she was drunk and insulting other guests.

(Alexander Joe/AFP/Getty Images)

The neighbor, Cassidy Taylor-Memmory, 21, has filed a counter-suit asking for a public apology. She said Pistorius injured her foot when he slammed the front door on her. Pistorius claimed she kicked at the front door and must have injured her foot that way.

Full Coverage: Oscar Pistorius Case

Police said they were called to the house, but the assault case was immediately dropped. It came to public attention again during Pistorius’ 4-day bail hearing last week when the lead police detective in the murder case against Pistorius, Hilton Botha, testified he was the officer who responded to the 2009 incident. After Botha’s poor performance on the stand and admission of investigative errors, he was immediately dropped from the murder case.

Pistorius’ attorney, Gary Pritchard, told ABC News Friday his client lost two speaking engagements and an endorsement deal because of the publicity surrounding her 2009 assault claim. He said he had asked for a settlement weeks before Pistorius was arrested on Valentine’s Day for the shooting death of model Reeva Steenkamp.

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The lawsuit against Taylor-Memmory was scheduled to go to court Feb. 20 but was delayed because of the bail hearing, according to Taylor-Memmory’s attorney, Ladine Botha. Botha told ABC News she has given Pistorius’ legal team until March 5 to agree on a settlement or the case will proceed to court.

Pistorius is scheduled to appear in court again on June 4 for a pre-trial hearing in the murder case against him. He was granted bail last week after a magistrate determined he was neither a flight risk nor threat to the community.

Pistorius claimed he shot Steenkamp accidentally, mistaking her for an intruder in the middle of the night. Prosecutors have said he killed her after a late-night argument.

Heavy fighting over police academy in north Syria

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian government forces fought fierce clashes with rebels attacking a police academy near the northern city of Aleppo on Friday, while the bodies of 10 men — most of them shot in the head — were found dumped along the side of a road outside Damascus, activists said.

Russia, meanwhile, sharply criticized a decision by Western powers to boost their support for Syrian opposition forces trying to topple President Bashar Assad, saying the promised assistance would only intensify the nearly 2-year-old conflict.

Rebels backed by captured tanks have been trying to storm the police academy outside Aleppo since launching a new offensive on the facility last week. The school, which activists say has been turned into a military base used to shell rebel-held neighborhoods in the city and the surrounding countryside, has become a key front in the wider fight for Aleppo.

The Syrian state news agency said Friday that government troops defending the school had killed dozens of opposition fighters and destroyed five rebel vehicles.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activist group also reported heavy fighting Friday around the school, and said there were several rebel casualties without providing an exact figure.

Syria's largest city and former commercial hub, Aleppo emerged as a major battleground in the country's civil war after rebels launched an offensive there in July 2012. Since then, the rebels and regime troops have fought street by street for control of Aleppo in a grinding contest that has laid waste to much of the city, considered one of Syria's most beautiful.

The Observatory said clashes were still raging around Aleppo's landmark 12th century Umayyad Mosque in the walled Old City, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The mosque was heavily damaged in October 2012 just weeks after a fire gutted the old city's famed medieval market.

There were conflicting reports about whether the rebels had managed to sweep regime troops out of the mosque and take full control of the holy site.

Mohammed al-Khatib of the Aleppo Media Center activist group said the Great Mosque was indeed in rebel hands, although clashes were still raging in the area.

"The regime forces left lots of ammunition in it (the mosque) with guns and rocket-propelled grenades," he said via Skype.

Observatory director Rami Abdul-Rahman said rebels have been in control of at least half of the mosque for days, but he could not confirm that they now had captured the entire grounds.

The Observatory also said that at least eight people were killed in a government airstrike on the rebel-held Hanano neighborhood of the city. It said three children were among the dead.

The 10 bodies were discovered on a roadside between the Damascus suburbs of Adra and Dumair, said Abdul-Rahman.

All of the bodies were of men who appeared to be between the ages of 30 and 45, he added. One of the men had been decapitated. Their identities were not immediately known.

Such incidents have become a frequent occurrence in Syria's conflict, which the U.N. says has killed at least 72,000 people since March 2011. The conflict has taken on sectarian overtones, and pits primarily Sunni Muslim rebels against Assad's regime, dominated by his Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Nearly two years into the Syrian crisis, the regime has lost significant swaths of territory to the rebels, particularly in the northeast near the border with Turkey. But while the rebels control most of the countryside, the Syrian military remains in control of most of the cities.

In a bid to boost the opposition, the Obama administration pledged Thursday at a conference in Rome it will provide non-lethal aid directly to Syrian rebels, while also announcing an additional $60 million in assistance to Syria's political opposition.

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said Friday the moves announced in Rome "in spirit and in letter directly encourage extremists to seize power by force, despite the inevitable sufferings of ordinary Syrians that entails."

Russia is a close ally of Syria, and has continued to supply arms to Assad's regime as well as shielding it from U.N. Security Council sanctions.

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Syria, Iran say Assad to remain in power till 2014

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Iran and Syria condemned a U.S. plan to assist rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad on Saturday and signaled the Syrian leader intends to stay in power at least until 2014 presidential elections.

The remarks came against the backdrop of a strategic victory for the regime as the military regained control over a string of villages along a key highway to open a potential supply route in Syria's heavily contested north.

The army command boasted of the achievement in a statement, saying it had eradicated the remnants of "terrorist agents and mercenaries" in the area that links the government-controlled central city of Hama with Aleppo's international airport.

The reversal of gains, confirmed by Syrian activists, has the potential to change the outcome of the battle in Aleppo, Syria's largest city where government troops and rebels have been locked in a stalemate for months.

Syrian rebels have long complained that they are hampered by the world's failure to provide heavier arms to help them battle Assad's better-equipped military. The international community is reluctant to send weapons partly because of fears they may fall into the hands of extremists who have been gaining influence among the rebels.

But U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Thursday that the Obama administration was giving an additional $60 million in assistance to Syria's political opposition and would, for the first time, provide non-lethal aid directly to the rebels.

Assad told the Sunday Times, in an interview timed to coincide with Kerry's first foreign trip as the top U.S. diplomat, that "the intelligence, communication and financial assistance being provided is very lethal."

In their first official statements on the U.S. decision, the Syrian and Iranian foreign ministers accused Washington of having double standards and warned it will only delay an end to the civil war.

Iran is a staunch ally of the Syrian regime and has stood by the embattled Assad throughout the conflict.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem and his Iranian counterpart, Ali Akbar Salehi, also set clear parameters for any future talks with the opposition, saying that whether Assad stays or goes will be decided in presidential elections scheduled for next year. Salehi went further to say Assad may run for another term.

"Assad is Syria's legal president until the next elections. Individuals have the freedom to run as candidates. Until that time, Assad is Syria's president," Salehi said at a joint news conference in Tehran. Al-Moallem said the Syrian people have the right to choose their leaders through the ballot box.

The remarks are likely to complicate already faltering diplomatic efforts to start a dialogue between the government and the opposition, which has offered to join talks with regime elements but insists that Assad must step down.

Assad was quoted by the Sunday Times as saying that he had no intention of going into exile. He said during the interview in Damascus last week that "no patriotic person will think about living outside his country."

He accused Kerry of wasting time by trying to ease him out of power, according to the newspaper, saying it was an internal issue "so I'm not going to discuss it with anyone from abroad."

The U.N. estimates that 70,000 people have died since the uprising against Assad began in March 2011.

Syria's opposition chief has offered to sit down for talks with regime elements, but insists that Assad must step down.

Al-Moallem said it was inconceivable that Washington would allocate $60 million in assistance toSyrian opposition groups while it continues to "kill the Syrian people" through economic sanctions imposed against the country.

"If they truly wanted a political settlement, they wouldn't punish the Syrian people and finance (opposition) groups with so-called non-lethal aid," he said. "Who are they kidding?"

The Damascus official called Syria's sovereignty a "red line."

He directly accused Turkey and Qatar and other countries he did not name of supporting and funding "armed terrorist groups" operating in Syria, using the regime's terminology for the rebels. Both countries are strong rebel backers and have offered logistical and other assistance to Syrian opposition groups.

His Iranian host, Salehi, said "double standards were being applied by certain countries that serve to prolong and deepen the Syrian crisis" and lead to more bloodshed.

Syrian rebels control large swaths of land in the country's northeast, including several neighborhoods of Aleppo.

For weeks they have been trying to storm the Aleppo airport, a major prize in the battle for Syria's commercial capital. The rebels ousted troops from several bases protecting the facility and cut off a major highway the army used to supply its troops inside the airport complex.

Syrian army officials said troops had secured the facility and regained control of several villages along the highway leading to the airport after days of fighting.

An opposition spokesman, Rami Abdul-Rahman, director the Britain-based anti-regime activist group the Observatory for Human Rights, confirmed the army's victory Saturday, calling it a "significant achievement."

"Securing these villages, assuming the regime can hang on to them, has the potential to turn around the direction of the conflict in Aleppo," Abdul-Rahman said.

In other violence Saturday, clashes broke out in the northeastern Raqqa province, and activists said dozens of people on both sides were reported dead or wounded.

Ahrar al-Sham Movement, a militant Islamic brigade fighting with the rebels, announced in an online video posted Saturday that it was starting a wide scale operation against military and infrastructure targets in the area along with other extremists including Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaida-affiliated group designated by the U.S. as a terrorist group.

Sporadic clashes also continued near Syria's Rabiya border crossing with Iraq. Syrian fighter jets fired at least two missiles and rebels on the ground fired at the jets, according to a witness on the Iraqi side of the border.

The fighting comes a day after Iraqi officials said a Russian-made rocket fired from Syria slammed into Iraqi territory, intensifying concerns that violence from Syria's civil war could spill across the border. No one was injured in the strike.

A police officer at the Iraqi Rabiya border crossing said five Syrian soldiers and one officer fled the clashes into Iraqi territory. Three of the soldiers were wounded and evacuated to a hospital in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, he said. A doctor confirmed the figure.

Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release information to the media. They didn't say what happened to the other three who fled.

The chief of Syrian rebel forces, Salim Idris, accused Iraqi soldiers of firing at rebel positions inside Syrian territory and claimed Iraq's government was backing Assad's regime.

Iraq's Defense Ministry denied that Iraqi forces were backing the Syrian army during clashes with rebels. A statement said Iraqi forces are deployed in the border regions only for routine duties and one Iraqi soldier was wounded during the exchange of fire.

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Work continues near sinkhole that swallowed man

FILE - This undated photo provided by Jeremy Bush shows Jeff Bush. Jeremy Bush heard a loud crash and screaming coming from his brother's room early Thursday, March 1, 2013 in Seffner, Fla. A large sinkhole opened under Jeff's bedroom and he disappeared together with most of the bedroom furniture. Jeremy jumped into the hole and was quickly up to his neck in dirt. Jeff is presumed dead. (AP Photo/Jeremy Bush, HO)

An engineer, tethered with a safety line, walks in front of a home where a sinkhole opened up underneath a bedroom late Thursday evening and swallowed a man in Seffner, Fla. on Saturday, March 2, 2013. Jeffrey Bush, 37, was in his bedroom Thursday night when the earth opened and took him and everything else in his room. Five other people were in the house but managed to escape unharmed. Bush's brother jumped into the hole to try to help, but he had to be rescued himself by a sheriff's deputy. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

SEFFNER, Fla. (AP) — Engineers worked gingerly Saturday to find out more about a slowly growing sinkhole that swallowed a Floridaman in his bedroom, believing the entire house could eventually succumb to the unstable ground.

It could be days before officials decide whether they will attempt to recover Jeff Bush's body, and they were still trying Saturday to determine the extent of the sinkhole network and what kind of work might be safe. As the sinkhole grows, it may pose further risk to the subdivision and its homes.

Bush, 37, was in his bedroom Thursday night in Seffner — a suburb of 8,000 people 15 miles east of downtown Tampa — when the earth opened and took him and everything else in his room. Five others in the house escape unharmed.

On Saturday, the normally quiet neighborhood of concrete block homes painted in Florida pastels was jammed with cars as engineers, reporters, and curious onlookers came to the scene.

At the home next door to the Bushes, a family cried and organized boxes. Testing determined that their house also was compromised by the sinkhole, according to Hillsborough County Fire Rescue spokesman Ronnie Rivera. The family, which had evacuated Friday, was allowed to go inside for about a half-hour to gathering belongings.

Sisters Soliris and Elbairis Gonzalez, who live on the same street as Bushes, said rumors are swirling among neighbors, with people concerned for their safety.

"I've had nightmares," Soliris Gonzalez, 31, said. "In my dreams, I keep checking for cracks in the house."

They said the family has discussed where to go if forced to evacuate, and they've taken their important documents to a storage unit.

"The rest of it, this is material stuff, as long as our family is fine," Soliris Gonzalez said.

"You never know underneath the ground what's happening," added Elbairis Gonzalez, 30.

Experts say thousands of sinkholes erupt yearly in Florida because of the state's unique geography, though most are small and deaths rarely occur.

"There's hardly a place in Florida that's immune to sinkholes," said Sandy Nettles, who owns a geology consulting company in the Tampa area. "There's no way of ever predicting where a sinkhole is going to occur."

Most sinkholes are small, like one found Saturday morning in Largo, 35 miles away from Seffner. The Largo sinkhole, at about 10 feet long and several feet wide, is in a mall parking lot. Such discoveries are common throughout the year in Florida.

The state is prone because it sits on limestone, a porous rock that easily dissolves in water, with a layer of clay on top. The clay is thicker in some locations — including the area where Bush became a victim — making them even more prone to sinkholes.

Jonathan Arthur, the state geologist and director of the Florida Geological Survey, said other states sit atop limestone in a similar way, but Florida has additional factors — extreme weather, development, aquifer pumping and construction — that can cause sinkholes. "The conditions under which a sinkhole will form can be very rapid, or they can form slowly over time," he said.

But it remained unclear Saturday what, if anything, caused the Seffner sinkhole.

"The condition that caused that sinkhole could have started a million years ago," Nettles said.

Engineers had been testing in the area of the Bush house since 7 a.m. Saturday. By 10 a.m., officials moved media crews farther away so experts could test a home across the street.

Experts spent the previous day on the property, taking soil samples and running tests — while acknowledging that the entire lot where Bush lay entombed was dangerous. On Saturday, officials were still not allowing anyone in the Bush home.

Jeremy Bush, who tried to rescue his brother when the earth opened, lay flowers and a stuffed lamb near the house Saturday morning and wept.

He said someone came to his home in the Tampa suburb of about 8,000 people a couple of months ago to check for sinkholes and other issues, apparently for insurance purposes, but found nothing wrong. State law requires home insurers to provide coverage against sinkholes.

"And a couple of months later, my brother dies. In a sinkhole," Bush said Friday.

The sinkhole, estimated at 20 feet across and 20 feet deep, caused the home's concrete floor to cave in around 11 p.m. Thursday as everyone in the Tampa-area house was turning in for the night. It gave way with a loud crash that sounded like a car hitting the house and brought Jeremy Bush running.

Engineers said they may have to demolish the small house, even though from the outside there appeared to be nothing wrong with the four-bedroom, concrete-wall structure, built in 1974.

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Judge: France's terror risk grows with Mali effort

PARIS (AP) — The longer that France's military intervention goes on in Mali, the greater the risk that homegrown Islamic militantswill organize to plot attacks back in France, a top French counterterrorism investigator told The Associated Press.

Investigating Judge Marc Trevidic said young radicals in France see the Paris government as enemy No. 1 in the "new jihad" and consider France's intervention in Mali, which started last month to help the Malian government fight al-Qaida-linked militants, as an aggression against Islam. Small groups of France-based militants have already headed to Mali.

"The longer it goes on, things rot, the groups get organized, and the more networks constitute themselves. The longer it goes on, the more dangerous it grows," Trevidic said in an interview late Thursday. "The groups will need time to catch their breath, set up networks and possibly take action."

The investigating judge, who has been involved in some of France's biggest terrorism cases in recent years, spoke after diplomats and other French officials acknowledged to the AP this week that French forces are likely to remain in Mali at least through July.

President Francois Hollande and his major ministers have talked about a gradual pullout of the 4,000 troops now in Mali starting this month. But the combat in rugged Sahara Desert mountains is growing harder, and the threat is rising that the militants will turn to suicide attacks, hostage-takings and other guerrilla tactics.

Meanwhile, it's proving tougher to mobilize African troops to eventually take over the security lead from the French and to get European trainers on the ground to help better professionalize Mali's bedraggled soldiers.

Authorities in France for years have monitored radical Islamists — many whose families hail from former French colonies in northern Africa — who travel abroad to wage jihad, or holy war, and could return home with battle skills and know-how to carry out terrorist attacks.

But unlike Iraq, or the border regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan, which continue to draw some French militants, Mali and much of West Africa were once French colonies. Thousands of French and dual nationals reside there, do business and maintain family ties. And that makes it especially tricky to monitor suspect travelers.

Mali "is the fashionable jihad at the moment. ... In this new jihad, the enemy is clearly France," Trevidic said.

The 7-week-old French campaign, backed by Malian and other troops notably from Chad, has driven al-Qaida's affiliates out of the cities in northeast Mali that they controlled for 10 months. Now, French officials say, the hardest fighting is taking place where many insurgents have holed up in the Adrar des Ifoghas range along the extensive Algerian border.

Trevidic said French judicial cases involving Mali were first opened in June. Extremists took advantage of a power vacuum in Mali after a coup last year and started imposing harsh rule on cities across northern Mali.

"We noticed excitement from the moment that young French radical Muslims learned that Shariah law was being applied in north Mali," he said. Many French radicals with dual citizenship — French-Malian, French-Nigerien, French-Nigerian, French-Congolese — wanted to go.

About 15 people have traveled to the region, and a few have returned to France, Trevidic said. Legal cases have been opened involving about 10 people — most of whom never left France but sent allies to Mali to join Islamic groups.

A challenge for French authorities is monitoring them to see if they plot attacks and not arresting them right away — to solidify judicial cases against them — and especially trying to "control" those who do return home to France.

The French military intervention that started Jan. 11 all but halted militants' departures toward Mali, Trevidic said. "For now, the situation is too tumultuous," he said. "We're in a bit of wait-and-see about what happens in the months to come."

Since the French air and ground campaign began, militants in France have lowered their profiles.

"Everybody ... has ducked. They're not getting noticed. A big problem in the current legal cases is when people in groups being monitored converse and have normal relations, and then suddenly cut all ties. They don't call each other, they stop seeing each other," Trevidic said.

"You think, 'it's because of the military action, it's hot, and they don't want to get noticed'," he added. "But it can also be worrisome, sometimes, it could be a sign that they are getting close to an action."

"Maybe it will calm down, by some miracle. But it's all going to depend on the states involved and how they manage their own problems," he said. "If the French army leaves, will the Malian military be strong enough to thwart the counterattacks of the Islamists? For the moment, we don't quite have that impression."