The most famous prisoner to date in Switzerland looks set to be freed in the coming days. The case of “Carlos/Brian” has made headlines for years. The man was originally condemned to 4 years and 9 months in prison for several violent assaults, but during his incarceration this was upgraded to him being sent to a security prison. This meant solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day and during the one hour he was allowed out of the cell he was not allowed to have any contact with other inmates. This was decried as being particularly harsh by human rights organisations, but the prosecution would have liked the sentence to be extended to 6 years. There could be a last minute attempt to block the decision to free him.
The SVP politician Naveen Hofstetter has been fined for making racist prejudiced comments on his private Facebook account. Although he deleted his comments shortly after posting them, another politician started criminal charges against him. He is being fined close to CHF 15 000.- for his act. In Switzerland anyone who publicly (and online) makes disparaging comment about a group or someone based on their race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation can face up to three years in jail.
According to investigators at the SRF agency, Qatar has been spying at FIFA for years. Their project known as Project Merciless was to be informed about all internal decisions at FIFA in order to make sure that their bid to host the World Cup this year would be accepted. 66 spies have been identified to date and the operations date back to 2012. They would infect computers in order to access emails and documents, as well as befriend employees but even their friends and families, all of this in order to access all “internal documents”. You can read more about this here.
The world record for the longest train was set last week on the rail line between Albula and Bernina, when a train pulling 100 wagons (making it 2 kms long) managed to go the 25 kms distance between the two points.
