A police personnel and volunteers help visually impaired school girls cross an intersection during the march to commemorate the ‘White Cane Safety Day,’ in Mumbai on Oct 15. The day is meant to promote awareness for those who are blind or visually impaired and the ‘white cane law.’ When a blind person carrying a white cane attempts to cross a street all drivers must come to a complete stop until the person is safely across. (AFP)
Indian police arrest 60-yr-old Australian Man wanted by US authorities for alleged Afghan corruption NEW DELHI, Oct 15, (AFP): Indian police have arrested a 60-year-old Australian man who is wanted by US authorities for alleged corruption while working in Afghanistan, the US embassy in New Delhi said Friday. Australian Neil P. Campbell, 60, has been indicted in the United States on a charge of receiving a bribe while working for an organisation receiving government funds. “Campbell is facing extradition from India to the United States to answer this charge,” the embassy said, adding that the former employee of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) was detained at Delhi airport. Campbell is accused of soliciting a 190,000-dollar bribe this year from subcontractors working on a hospital and college project that were being built with money from USAID, the US Agency for International Development.
According to the indictment, Campbell worked for the IOM, which since 2002 has received more than 260 million dollars in funding from USAID. The maximum sentence on the charge is 10 years in prison and a 250,000-dollar fine, the embassy said, although the likely prison term for the offence is in the range of 41 to 51 months. “The United States is committed to working with its law enforcement partners in India and throughout the region to fight transnational crime and eliminate the scourge of corruption,” the embassy said. Campbell’s son, Reid Campbell, sent a statement to the Brisbane Times newspaper saying his father had been “placed under an enormous amount of stress over a long period of time.”
“He has been through hell. Dad had left Afghanistan for the last time and was looking forward to a safe and stress-free retirement,” he said. “We are still waiting for details about what will happen to him next. We are anxious to ensure he gets adequate legal representation. “We love our dad very much and are just hoping that this can be sorted out quickly.” Reid Campbell said his father had spent five years in Afghanistan, had been caught up in several gunfights and once had a 10,000-dollar bounty placed on his head by the Taleban. Graft is a major issue in Afghanistan, which is rated by international monitor Transparency International as second only to lawless Somalia on its scale of the world’s most corrupt countries.