I share with you in full this fine report from the BBC today. I can only echo the view of the Irish Playwright, Brendan Behan, in "Borstal Boy" that they charged him in abstentia, they tried him in abstentia so they can now go ahead and hang him in abstentia!
"The taste of honey was just too tempting for a bear in Macedonia, which repeatedly raided a beekeeper's hives. Now it has a criminal record after a court found it guilty of theft and criminal damage.
But there was an empty dock in the court in the city of Bitola and no handcuffed bear, which was convicted in its absence. The case was brought by the exasperated beekeeper after a year of trying vainly to protect his beehives.
For a while, he kept the animal away by buying a generator, lighting up the area, and playing thumping Serbian turbo-folk music. But when the generator ran out of power and the music fell silent, the bear was back and the honey was gone once more.
"It attacked the beehives again," said beekeeper Zoran Kiseloski.
Because the animal had no owner and belonged to a protected species, the court ordered the state to pay for the damage to the hives - around $3,500 (£1,750; 2,238 euros).
The bear, meanwhile, remains at large - somewhere in Macedonia."
BBC News - 17th March 2008.
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