NATO concludes Libya mission after seven months

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen speaks at a news conference after talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the Chancellery in Berlin on October 27, 2011.

NATO ends its military operation in Libya at midnight today, seven months after launching an air and sea campaign that helped bring the overthrow and death of Muammar Gaddafi.

In announcing the decision last week, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen called it “one of the most successful” operations in the history of the 62-year-old alliance.

Rasmussen will mark the end of the mission by visiting Libya today, where he will meet Libya’s National Transitional Council and members of civil society, the alliance said.

Despite Rasmussen’s depiction of the mission, the NATO intervention caused sharp rifts in the alliance and went on much longer than Western nations had expected or wanted.



NATO stuck to its decision to end the operation despite NTC calls for it to stay engaged longer and says it does not expect to play a major post-war role, although it could assist the transition to democracy by helping with security sector reform.

NATO took over the mission on March 31, based on a United Nations mandate that set a no-fly zone over Libya and permitted foreign military forces, including NATO, to use “all necessary measures” to protect Libyan civilians.

That mandate was terminated last Thursday, despite a request for the UN Security Council to wait for the NTC to decide if it wants NATO help to secure its borders.

NATO allies have been keen to see a quick conclusion to a costly effort that has involved more than 26,000 air sorties and round-the-clock naval patrols at a time when budgets are under severe strain due to the global economic crisis.

But NATO officials said members of the alliance are free to give further security aid to Libya individually.

The NTC officially announced Libya’s liberation on October 23, days after the capture and death of Gaddafi. NATO commanders have said they believe the interim administration is able to take care of the country’s security.

Libya has been the first NATO operation in which the United States sought to step back from a leading role and prompted some sharp criticism from Washington of the capabilities of allies after they failed to secure the quick results hoped for.

The US ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daalder, and the alliance’s top operations commander, US Admiral James Stavridis, hailed the success of the mission today in a commentary in the New York Times, but reiterated the need for allies to address the shortcomings in capabilities it revealed.

While calling it a “true alliance effort” in which non-US allies flew 75 per cent of the air missions, they said the United States played a leading role in destroying Libya’s air defence system and providing critical resources, including the vast majority of intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and the aerial refuelling assets.

Fourteen NATO members and four other states provided naval and air forces, but only eight NATO nations took part in combat missions. Some big NATO states, notably Germany, had opposed the intervention.

Daalder and Stavridis said US planes flew a quarter of all sorties over Libya, France and Britain a third of all missions ― most of them strike operations ― and the remaining participants flew roughly 40 percent.

UNESCO gives Palestinians full membership

The United Nations’ cultural agency decided today to give the Palestinians full membership of the body, a vote that will boost their bid for recognition as a state at the United Nations.

UNESCO is the first UN agency the Palestinians have joined as a full member since President Mahmoud Abbas applied for full membership of the United Nations on September 23.

The United States, Canada, Germany and Holland voted against Palestinian membership. Brazil, Russia, China, India, South Africa and France voted in favour. Britain and Italy abstained.

Washington is likely to cut funding to UNESCO over the vote.




“The action today will complicate our ability to support UNESCO,” David T. Killion, US ambassador to UNESCO, told journalists after the vote.

“The US has been clear for the need of a two-state resolution, but the only path is through direct negotiations and there are no shortcuts, and initiatives like today are counterproductive.”

The vote highlighted divisions over foreign policy within the European Union, some of whose 27 members voted for and some against Palestinian membership.

Austrian UNESCO ambassador Ursula Plassnik, whose country voted in favour, said she regretted the European Union could not arrive at a common position on the Palestinian issue.

The Palestinians obtained backing from two thirds of UNESCO’s members to become the 195th member of UNESCO, with status as “an observer entity”. Of 173 countries that voted from a possible 185, 107 voted in favour, 14 voted against, 52 abstained and 12 were absent.

Forty representatives of the 58-member board has voted in favour of putting the matter to a vote earlier this month, with four ― the United States, Germany, Romania and Latvia ― voting against and 14 abstaining.

Admission will be seen by the Palestinians as a moral victory in their bid for full UN membership but could be costly for UNESCO.

US legislation stipulates that it can cut off funding to any UN agency that grants full membership to Palestinians.

Israel called the vote a “tragedy”.

“This resolution is a tragedy for UNESCO...UNESCO deals in science and not science fiction and nevertheless (UNESCO) adopted the science fiction reality,” said Nimrod Barkan, Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO.

Israel has said the Palestinian bid would amount to politicisation of the agency that would undermine its ability to carry out its mandate.

Propofol infusion dominates Jackson doctor’s trial

A top medical expert offered damaging testimony against Michael Jackson’s former doctor yesterday, calling one defence theory a “crazy scenario” and offering a dramatic look at how the drug that killed the pop star could have been infused into his body.

The testimony of Dr Steven Shafer, an expert on the drug propofol that is seen as the chief cause of the singer’s death, left defendant Dr Conrad Murray looking exasperated as he sat in the courtroom.





It came as prosecutors were poised to wrap up their involuntary manslaughter case against Murray.

Murray has admitted that on June 25, 2009 — the day Jackson died — he injected the singer with propofol as a sleep aid but has pleaded not guilty to being responsible for his death.

In prior testimony, jurors have heard several doctors slam Murray for administering propofol by himself in a home when the powerful anaesthetic is normally used for surgery in a medical facility full of monitoring and emergency equipment.

Shafer demonstrated yesterday how Murray could have used a clumsy but deadly IV infusion of propofol to administer the drug into a vein in Jackson’s leg to help him sleep.

Jurors watched as the pure white propofol Jackson called his “milk” flowed down an IV tube and mixed with saline fluid, then emptied into a bottle that represented the singer’s body.

Shafer said it was essential for the anaesthetic to drip at a set rate and testified that Murray wrongly did not have a pump to control the flow. “He is responsible for every drop of propofol in that room,” Shafer told jurors.

Murray watched, wide-eyed and exasperated. After the demonstration, he slumped to one side of his chair with his hand at his mouth and a resigned look on his face.

Shafer is the final witness called by prosecutors. Murray’s defence attorneys are expected to cross-examine him today, then begin calling their own witnesses to the stand.

In his second full day on the stand, Shafer also undercut defence theories that Jackson could have given himself propofol and the anti-anxiety drug lorazepam and caused his own death.

Shafer said the 50-year-old “Thriller” singer would have had to inject himself several times with propofol, each time falling in and out of consciousness, to achieve a cumulative rise of the drug in his bloodstream.

“People don’t wake up ... hellbent to give themselves another dose,” Shafer said. “It’s a crazy scenario.”

He used charts to argue the most likely scenario to explain the level of propofol found in Jackson’s bloodstream at autopsy is that Murray had him on an intravenous drip of the drug when the singer went into cardiac arrest.

Before that moment, the propofol caused Jackson to stop breathing with Murray failing to keep watch over the singer, Shafer said. He added that had Murray paid attention, he could have saved Jackson.

“He could easily have just turned off the propofol infusion,” Shafer said. “... And there would have been no injury to Michael Jackson.”

Medical examiners determined Jackson died of an overdose of propofol, with the lorazepam playing a contributing role.

Murray’s defence attorneys, in addition to suggesting Jackson “self-administered” more propofol, have argued the singer could have swallowed more lorazepam than the four milligrams Murray said he infused into the singer.

But Shafer also criticised that theory. He said the amount of actual lorazepam found in Jackson’s stomach — as opposed to the harmless, metabolised form of the drug — was minuscule.

Murray faces a maximum four years in prison if convicted. — Reuters

Video of Gaddafi killed Saddam Hussein hanging execution and dictators death.

The world's infamous dictators and how they met their violent ends

Cut down in the cross-fire between loyalists and rebels, then flung in a truck and executed in front of a baying mob, Gaddafi’s final moments were as brutal as his crimes.

Covered in blood and dirt, he had pleaded for his life - the answer was a bullet to the temple.

So how does it compare to the grisly deaths of other ruthless dictators such as Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Nicolae Ceausescu and Rafael Trujillo? The circumstances varied, but the cold and bloody nature of their final seconds did not.

The end: Saddam Hussein was hanged by vengeful countrymen after overseeing a brutal regime - his death signalled by a loud crack of his neck
'Caught like a rat': Saddam Hussein after being tracked down by U.S. forces
The body of Saddam Hussein in an undated image obtained by the Associated Press from an Arab language web site. Seemingly shot on a camera phone, the image appears to show the former Iraqi leader's corpse, with a gaping neck wound

Charred remains: A soldier of the U.S occupation forces looks over Adolf Hitler's bed

Declared dead: Ceausescu's body is examined after he was executed by firing squad

Cold: An officer makes sure that Ion Antonescu and his fellow politicians are dead by firing into their heads with a pistol

Terminated: The car in which Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo was ambushed - it was riddled with about 60 bullet holes

Mown down: Ceaucescu and his wife Elena died in a hail of bullets

Paraded in front of the cameras: Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife were put on a show trial before their execution

Reviled: The bodies of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, centre, his mistress, Clara Petacci, right, and Achille Starace, former secretary of the Fascist Party, hang by their heels in Milan

Brutal: Antonescu lies dead after being shot by firing squad alongside key members of his regime

No mercy: The Ceausescus were led away to be shot as they screamed in protest

Bombed: The remains of Hitler's bunker, where the dictator was found dead

Suicide: Adolf Hitler is thought to have shot himself in the temple in his Berlin bunker

SADDAM HUSSEIN, December 30, 2006

Seven coils and pre-boiled to take out any stretch. One thing the U.S. and Iraq do have in common is their style of hangman’s noose.

Saddam Hussein, deposed dictator of Iraq, would have had little time to dwell on such trivia as he stood on the gallows to finally face justice.

Like Muammar Gaddafi, he too had been found cowering in a grubby bolt-hole, in December 2003.

As one U.S. military commander said, he was ‘caught like a rat’.

Holed up in an underground chamber little bigger than a coffin, he surrendered without a fight when allied troops cornered him in a farm near Tikrit, his birthplace.

Bearded, thin and exhausted, he had been on the run for 250 days.

On November 5, 2006, he was finally found guilty of crimes against humanity by the Iraqi Special Tribunal. He was then sentenced to be hanged until dead.

Three months later in Baghdad - at 6am on December 30 – he was led to a platform in a concrete chamber by masked men.

Wearing a white shirt and dark overcoat, he refused a hood and shouted ‘God is great’.

Soldiers taunted him with insults until a judge demanded silence.

As he clutched a copy of the Koran, a noose was placed around his neck – nicely waxed to guarantee a clean slide of the knots.

The trapdoor was released and a loud crack was heard and his neck broke.

Left to swing for several minutes, a doctor was called to listen for a heartbeat.
Saddam was dead.


ADOLF HITLER, April 30, 1945


Blood dripped onto the carpet and the smell of burnt almonds filled the air.

Hitler’s valet was the first on the scene after the sound of a single gunshot was heard coming from the Fuhrer’s study.

Holed up in a Berlin bunker, the date was April 30, 1945.

One of the leader’s most trusted commanders, Field Marshall Keitel, had just told him the soldiers protecting the city would run out of ammunition that night.

Two days earlier, Hitler had married Eva Braun – and she too would take her life as the Russians edged ever closer.

Knowing the end was near, he had meticulously prepared for death, even testing cyanide pills on a dog and her puppies to make sure they worked.

Before retiring to his study, he said farewell to his inner circle.

Then, at around 3.30 that afternoon, the man who had survived numerous assassination attempts took out his Walther PPK pistol and shot himself in the head.

He is said to have sat, sunken on a sofa, with blood oozing from his right temple. According to other accounts, his head was slumped on a table.

Braun chose cyanide (which produces a burned almond smell) and was discovered dead in the same room with her legs drawn up.

In accordance with Hitler’s instructions, SS officers took the corpses outside, poured petrol over them and set them alight.

Eyewitness claim it took two hours for the blaze to consume them.

Their remains were hidden under the soil in a bomb crater.

(Mystery shrouds the exact circumstances of Hitler’s death, with some claiming he in fact survived the battle for Berlin.)

NICOLAE CEAUSESCU, December 25, 1989

So many soldiers volunteered to shoot Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena that a lottery was held to allocate places.

And on Christmas Day, 1989, after a brief show trial in Bucharest, the couple faced the firing squad of elite paratroopers.

With Communism crumbling around him, the self-proclaimed ‘Genius of the Carpathians’ realised that his days as ruler of a brutally oppressive regime were over.

He had attempted to flee the country with his wife but they were soon captured by rebel soldiers.

Their trial was held in a bare room, where they were treated with cold contempt.

Accused of crimes ranging from illegal gathering of wealth to genocide, he stood frightened in the dock.

Within 90 minutes, he and Elena were sentenced to death.

At first, they were told they would be shot separately, but they begged to die together – and their final wish was granted.

After the trial they had their hands tied behind their backs with rope, with such force that Elena complained that her arms were breaking.

The soldiers took no pity on them. ‘Nobody will help you now,’ one said.

They were led outside, shouting ‘shame, shame’.

The firing squad were ordered to set their guns to automatic fire.

One paratrooper describes how the first bullets hit Nicolae in the knees, then in his chest, with the next thumping into Elena.

Within seconds they lay dead on the floor, blood flowing along the ground from Elena’s head.




BENITO MUSSOLINI, April 28, 1945

Mussolini made a desperate bid to escape to Switzerland with his mistress Clara Petacci and his fascist entourage, numbering about 15, on April 27, 1945.

But he was stopped by Communist officials and soldiers, despite trying to disguise himself in a German military uniform.

He was shot the following day in the village of Giulino di Mezzegra, along with those travelling with him.

Defiant to the last, the deluded leader screamed at the soldier sent to execute him: ‘Shoot me in the chest!’

The soldier wasted no time in firing.

It's believed Mussolini slumped to the floor in agony, still breathing, so the soldier strode up to him and shot him in the chest again.

His body, along with that of his wife and other executed fascists, was taken to Milan and dumped unceremoniously on the ground outside a petrol station in the middle of the night.

There Italians, reviled by the former leader’s regime, took the opportunity to vent their anger on him.

Even in death, they had no respect for him at all.

For hours they spat on him, kicked him, stoned him and battered his body with whatever they could lay their hands on.

The attack was so violent that the dictator’s head was left misshapen.

Bloodied, dishevelled, and bearing agonised grimaces, Mussolini, Clara and other executed fascist were then hung upside down with meat hooks.

Had they been innocents, Italians would have been horrified by what they saw – but this sight was met with jubilation.

They’d lived a life of luxury and wielded enormous power – now their honour was mercilessly torn away from them.


ION ANTONESCU, June 1, 1946

It’s often said that dictators are deluded, tinged with madness – Ion Antonescu then, was perhaps no different, because even while staring down the barrel of a gun, he held his hat aloft.

He had been Romania’s war-time leader and was said to be responsible for the deaths of 400,000 people.

But justice was eventually served in 1946 when he was prosecuted for war crimes, crimes against the peace, and treason.

The sentence was death, and he was dispatched ruthlessly in a field along with three members of his hated regime.

They were dressed in suits and hats but there was nothing respectful about their deaths.

The firing squad unleashed their shots and the four men crumpled in a split second.

To make sure they were dead an officer steps up to each corpse and shoots it several times.

Cold and brutal, just like Antonescu himself.


RAFAEL TRUJILLO, May 30, 1961

Like a scene from a Chicago gangster film, Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo was gunned down as his chauffeur drove him along a dark road.

The first shot didn’t kill him though - he fought back. But the seven men, assigned to take him out on the orders of the nation’s wealthy elite, were determined and quickly overwhelmed him.

Trujillo, also known as El Jefe (The Boss), had presided over a murderous regime for 30 years between 1930 and 1961.

His political weapons were torture and murder.

Several thousand Haitians, for instance, were massacred in 1937 on his say so.

But as history shows, there is only so much the people will take.

His killers blocked his car with theirs and a fierce gun battle ensued.

The armed chauffeur let loose with a volley of shots and Trujillo, despite being hit, carried on firing back.

They were eventually overpowered - the car was left with 60 bullet holes in it - and left lying dead on the road.


AND THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY...
JOSEPH STALIN

The Russian ruler died in his bed at home near Moscow on March 5, 1953, at the age of 74. He suffered a stroke and had spent four days bedridden before passing away.

Through purges, famine and gulags he is estimated to have been responsible for the deaths of over 20million. Some historians have suggested he could be responsible for over 60million deaths.

The reality - with so few records kept - is no one knows how much damage this dictator truly inflicted on his people.

It is thought that around 14.5million needlessly starved to death and 9.5million were executed in cold blood for opposing his politics.

Stalin was such a ruthless dictator that all of his enemies were murdered. Throughout the 1930s the 'enemies of the people' were murdered - with thousands executed. The purges weakened the army heading into World War II.

The murder of Sergey Kirov, Stalin's rival, in 1934 was the pretext for the fierce repression of Stalin's enemies.

As he grew old, Stalin became increasingly paranoid but he was never himself the victim of the tough 'justice' he meted out.

Gaddafi met a merciless and brutal death

In the end Muammar Gaddafi's death was as violent as his life, gunned down without mercy in the crumbling ruins of his home town - wounded and begging for his life while cowering in a drain pipe.

His love of comic-opera uniforms, exotic female bodyguards and Bedouin tents provided a theatrical backdrop for 42 years of bloody repression that, in the end, could not withstand a determined uprising backed by NATO air power.

Chased out of Tripoli by rebel forces, Gaddafi disappeared - some said into the empty desert spaces in the south of his vast country.

In tandem with his eccentricity, Gaddafi had a charisma which initially at least won him support among many ordinary Libyans. His readiness to take on Western powers and Israel, both with rhetoric and action, earned him a certain cachet with some in other Arab states who felt their own leaders were too supine.

While leaders of neighbouring Arab states folded quickly in the face of popular uprisings, Gaddafi put up a bloody fight, taking on NATO as well as local insurgents who quickly seized half the country.



Together: Nurse Galyna was always close by.Gaddafi's female bodyguards seemed to prove that he ran Libya almost on a whim.Eccentric style: Gaddafi was known for his love of over-the-top military-style uniforms, variously seen in different colours and with a vast array of military awards and medals.Synonymous with terrorism: A young Gaddafi, right, is seen in an undated photo with notorious Ugandan leader Idi Amin.Shunned by the West: Links to revolutionaries , such as Cuba's Fidel Castro, made Gaddafi many enemies around the world

For most of his 42-year rule, he held a prominent position in the West's gallery of international rogues, while maintaining tight control at home by eliminating dissidents and refusing to anoint a successor.

Gaddafi effected a successful rapprochement with the West by renouncing his weapons of mass destruction programme in return for an end to sanctions. But he could not avoid the tide of popular revolution sweeping through the Arab world.




n retrospect, his time had come when he turned his guns on protesters and sent his army to cleanse Benghazi, prompting Western powers and NATO to open up a campaign of aerial bombing that allowed rebel forces eventually to oust him.

As his oil-producing North African desert country descended into civil war, Gaddafi's military responded with the deadly force that he had never been afraid to use, despite the showman image that captivated many abroad.

When the insurgency began in mid-February, protesters were gunned down in their hundreds. As his troops advanced on Benghazi he famously warned rebels there would be 'no mercy, no pity' They would be hunted down 'alley by alley, house by house, room by room'.

Those words may have been his undoing. Days later the United Nations passed a resolution clearing the way for a NATO air campaign that knocked out his air force, tanks and heavy guns.

Raids also targeted his own headquarters in Tripoli. One raid killed his youngest son and three grandchildren. It was not the first time that the West had killed a Gaddafi family member.

In televised addresses in response to the rebellion in the east earlier this year, Gaddafi blamed the unrest on rats and mercenaries and said they were brainwashed by Osama bin Laden and under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs used to spike their coffee.

As the weeks passed, there was repeated speculation that Gaddafi has either been killed or wounded in NATO air raids, but he made carefully choreographed television appearances in response to the rumours.

In May, Gaddafi taunted NATO, saying its bombers could not find him, saying: 'I am telling the coward crusaders that I am at a place you cannot reach and kill me.'

One of the world's longest serving national leaders, Gaddafi had no official government function and was known as the 'Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution'.

He strove for influence in Africa, showering his poorer neighbours with the largesse that Libya's vast oil wealth allowed and styling himself the continent's "King of Kings".

His love of grand gestures was on display on foreign visits when he slept in a Bedouin tent guarded by dozens of female bodyguards.

U.S. diplomatic cables released by the WikiLeaks website shed further light on the Libyan leader's tastes.

One cable posted by The New York Times describes Gaddafi's insistence on staying on the ground floor when he visited New York for a 2009 meeting at the United Nations and his reported refusal or inability to climb more than 35 steps.

Gaddafi was also said to rely heavily on his staff of four Ukrainian nurses, including one woman described as a 'voluptuous blonde'. The cable speculated about a romantic relationship but the nurse, Halyna Kolotnytska, 38, fled Libya after the fighting started.

Gaddafi Dictator Mad Dog begs for his life after being dragged from a drain. Seconds later he was summarily executed

# Gaddafi tried to flee in a convoy hit by American drone
# Vehicles were also shelled by Nato fighter jets...
# ... before being driven back to his compound in Sirte
# Gaddafi in final attempt to flee before final push by rebels
# 'Found in a hole' wearing military-style clothing, shouting 'Don't shoot'
# Rebel forces executed him in front of a baying mob
# His body was paraded through the streets of the city
# Eldest son Saif shot in leg in Sirte day before - some reports say he is dead
# Other son Mutassim confirmed killed in Sirte
# Barack Obama hails 'momentous day' in history of Libya


Pleading: Muammar Gaddafi begged with his captors for his life after he was found cowering in a storm drain.Paraded: Gaddafi struggled with his captors in video footage taken by rebel fighters after he was captured.Chaotic: Gaddafi was pushed around by rebel fighters, one of whom filmed the incident on a mobile telephone.Fear: Becoming increasingly desperate, Gaddafi asked a rebel fighter 'What did I ever do to you'.Terrified: Moments after he begged for his life Gaddafi was shot dead by rebel fighters.Struggle: Video footage shows Gaddafi being hauled off a rebel fighter truck minutes after his capture.Manhandled: Rebel fighters pictured being taken off a truck shortly after he was detained.Arguing: Gaddafi pictured in chaotic video footage minutes before he was killed

Matador cheats death at festival after bull's horn blinds him in one eye and paralyses half his face

A Spanish matador has been blinded in his left eye and paralysed down that side of his face after he was horrifically gored during a bullfight.

The bull's horn pierced Juan Jose Padilla's jaw and emerged through his left eye socket during the grizzly incident at the northeastern city of Zaragoza's Fiestas Del Pilar event yesterday.

With blood gushing from his head, he was helped out of the ring screaming 'I can't see, I can't see'.

Caught: The bull's horn pierced Juan Jose Padilla's jaw and emerged through his left eye socket during the grizzly incident at the northeastern city of Zaragoza's Fiestas Del Pilar

He then underwent a life-saving five-hour operation to repair severe damage to his eye, bone, muscle and skin, said Spain's taurine press.

The bull, called Marques and from the Ana Romero ranch, quickly took its revenge after Padilla slipped and fell in the sand after the placing of the banderillas (barbed sticks).

Doctors had initially thought the goring, of which footage exists on Youtube and was shown on Spanish TV channel Canal+ Toros, would be fatal.

But the bullring's doctor Antonio Val-Carreres later told El Pais newspaper that Padilla was in serious condition and was staying at Zaragoza's Miguel Servet hospital.

It is not the first time Padilla, 38, a popular matador who has won many fans for his courage and willingness to face the toughest bulls, has been gored.

In 2001 the Jerez native suffered serious injuries to his neck during a fight in Pamplona.

Yesterday's incident happened at one of the final bull festivals of a season that saw the spectacle come under increasing pressure from anti-bullfight activists.

Opponents of the bullfight say it is a barbaric ritual which has no place in a modern society. Supporters say it is a unique art form which epitomises Spanish culture.

The Catalonia region has banned the bullfight from next year and 20,000 fans packed Barcelona's Monumental bullring on September 25 to see the last corrida to be held there.

Although matadors are regularly hurt, the last two fatalities of senior matadors were those of Francisco Rivera Paquirri in 1984 and Jose Cubero Sanchez 'El Yiyo' in 1985.

Those events triggered national mourning and led to a resurgence of interest in the bullfight. The six bulls fought at each corrida inevitably are killed.

Marques was later put to the sword by the senior matador on the bill, Miguel Abellan, who killed it with tears streaming down his face.

Topless protesters arrested at Kiev Euro 2012 stadium opening ceremony

Topless women were arrested at the opening ceremony for the Euro 2012 stadium in Kiev after they invaded the pitch as part of a feminist protest.

One woman had to be carried off the pitch by a steward, wearing only a pair of black leggings with two flowers painted over her breasts.

The Ukrainian activists, Femen - who have a history of getting their kit off to promote their causes - believe the tournament will increase sex tourism in their country.






Dressed for impact: A topless Ukrainian feminist is escorted away after her pitch invasion.Final whistle: Stewards carry the blonde protester out of the Olympiyskiy Stadium.Skilful moves: The sex tourism protesters gave stewards at the football stadium the runaround

The demonstrators said in a statement: 'Femen demands that UEFA initiate an explanatory campaign for football fans about the impermissibility of sex tourism and funding the sex industry, and the Ukrainian authorities criminalise the visiting of prostitutes.'

It is believed that four women were arrested after police arrived at the Olympiisky National Sports Complex, which will host some games during next year's tournament.

Their 'Euro without prostitution' protest followed a more modest performance by Colombian pop star Shakira and a whopping 2,000 other artists in front of 60,000 fans.

The group, many of whom are students, have previously stripped in front of Paris Hilton and at the Miss Ukraine beauty contest to show their belief that the beauty industry is a form of prostitution.

Femen also once organised mud wrestling competitions in the capital's main square to protest against what they called the 'dirty' politics of president Viktor Yushchenkos.

Their actions are reminiscent of the controversial feminist 'SlutWalks', in which women dress provocatively for anti-rape demonstrations.

The reconstructed stadium's opening ceremony came as teams from around Europe compete in qualifiers for the competition, which will take place in Ukraine and Poland.

Prostitution in Ukraine is illegal but reports say the country remains one of the main suppliers of prostitutes to Western Europe.

UEFA chief Michel Platini arrived last Monday for an inspection of the 70,000-seat building, and was at yesterday's event alongside the Ukrainian president.

Mr Yanukovich said before the celebrations: 'It's a holiday for the whole of Ukraine.

'The stadium's successful renovation is undoubtedly an exhibition project for Ukraine's image.'

But there was more embarrassment when fireworks set fire to some of the stage props, forcing the evacuation of the two central sectors.