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Terrorist Organisation Broken Wide Open

* 82 British Wixen arrested in surprise simultaneous raids
* Smugglers, thieves, arms dealers, assassins and more
* International law enforcement operation across seven countries

A year long international operation came to a close yesterday with the world wide arrest of almost four hundred criminals either in or known to deal primarily with the so-called Hunters, a dangerous vigilante group responsible for the deaths of potentially more than a thousand people over the last decade. Lead by the British Auror Office, this highly classified operation has been delving underground for months to infiltrate the vast criminal network supporting these terrorists, working their way up through the dark hierarchy to find and arrest key figures from all levels.

"It is not enough to simple cut off a head," one Auror said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "You do that, and another grows back. You have to cut off the head, and the feet, and burn both ends to be sure. Burn them down and salt the earth." When asked if they meant that literally, the Auror refused to answer any more questions.

While it is not believed that all members have been arrested, nevertheless this represents a significant blow to the group. The DMLE will issue a full statement once processing is complete, which is expected to take a few days and is likely to lead to further raids and arrests.

* Full article pages 12-15

Isla Burke-Shaklebolt Named Chief Warlock

* Daughter in law of former Minister of Magic Kingsley Shacklebot
* Long history of charitable good works and political activity
* Received narrow majority of votes

Ms Isla Burke-Shaklebolt has been promoted to Chief Warlock after rounds of ranked preferential voting (RPV) eliminated seven other candidates before providing Burke-Shaklebolt with a narrow majority. The position of Chief Warlock is voted on solely by members of the Wizengamot of good standing at the time the previous Chief Warlock leaves the position or, as in the case of Tiberius Ogden, dies. Under RPV, if no first choice candidate receives more than half of the votes, the candidate with the least votes is eliminated and votes transferred, meaning the final candidate has majority support.

Formerly a proprietor of family antique business, Borgin and Burkes, Chief Warlock Burke-Shaklebolt was long active in charitable circles before joining the Ministry at the behest of her husband, the late Aldrich Shaklebolt. She rose quickly through the civil service. The Chief Warlock is known for a meticulous attention to details and to have a strong distaste for those who manipulate data for specific purposes, a reputation that no doubt gained her support when compared to her more strong politically leaning rivals. It is understood that the Chief Warlock did not place herself in the running, but accepted the nomination when put forward by a select group of her peers.

"I hope to serve with the same sure, even hand as my predecessor," said the Chief Warlock in her acceptance speech. "It has always been the duty of the Wizengamot to ensure the careful and steady progress of all wixen under our purview, and my only aim in taking this seat is to ensure that continues as intended."

The Chief Warlock is a widow and has no known children.

* Full article page 7

New Azkaban To Open

* Increased capacity to cope with recent record-breaking arrests
* Azkaban security to be improved for worst of worst criminals
* Modern facility promises security and safety, reduced costs

The immediate opening of the newly christened Ogden Secure Rehabilitation Unit was announced today as new Chief Warlock Isla Burke-Shaklebot started her term by overseeing the agreement into law of the long sought after Prison Reform Act. Azkaban prison has long held pride of place as the most secure facility to hold the darkest of criminals and in that respect, at least, it excels. Over the decades, however, there have been increasing concerns that it was being forced to hold more and more people who had committed fewer and lesser crimes with a corresponding increase in resources. The Prison Reform Act was the solution, allowing for a secondary secure facility that would reduce the burden on Azkaban and allow it to focus solely on what it does best.

"The DMLE's been needing restructuring since the end of the war," said Elaine Lestrange-Potter, Wizengamot member and proponent of prison abolition.

"There's no reason Aurors -- who historically were strictly tasked with investigating Dark Arts practitioners -- should be acting as prison guards," agreed Nicodemus Zabini, Wizengamot member and primary author of bills on sentence reform.

OSRU is a modern secure facility centred in six hundred and forty acres of isolated, Unplottable land. Exact details are being kept redacted for obvious reasons. A broad range of experts from the DMLE, backed up by the Unspeakables, have worked on ensuring it is as escape proof as Azkaban while also providing for the comfort and security of its staff and the needs of its inmates. With the aid of expansive grants from private investors, including Adrien Pucey and Michael Flint, OSRU has been constructed swiftly and surely to Ministry approved blueprints and designs that will provide the best a prison service can.

"Azkaban is a pile of [strong expletives]," said an inhabitant of Flint Manor asked for comment, "and you can [expletive] quote me on that."

Final details of OSRU's board will be announced shortly with the facility expected to receive its first inmates next week.

* Full article pages 4-5

Chief Warlock Ogden dies, aged 174.

* Tiberius Samuel Ogden, Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, has died.
* Elections for the new head of the Wizengamot to be held next week.
* Family long known producers of whiskey.

Tiberius Samuel Ogden, the long residing Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, has died today, aged 174, after a brief illness exacerbated an underlying liver condition. He is survived by three children, William, Leonard, and Nichelle Ogden-Higgs, seven grandchildren and four great grandchildren. The service will be held Sunday at 2:30pm at St Jerome's Church, in Godric's Hollow. Burial will be in the family plot at Ogden Hall. Friends may call at the Church resting hall from 6 to 9pm.

Warlock Ogden was born in Godric's Hollow in 1891. He attended Hogwarts, where he is recorded as being a steadfast student. After his NEWTs, he joined his family business in 1908, making firewhiskey. As is the custom, he started at the bottom, working each job so that he had experience of the whole process. Consequently, he became embroiled in the Labour Right's movements of 1915, leading to the reforms of 1919. Warlock Ogden continued to work closely with the Ministry thereafter, tackling the unrest that began with the rise of Gellert Grindlewald. During the war, he helped guide labour efforts towards preparations and defences and, after Grindlewald's defeat by Albus Dumbledore in 1945, Warlock Ogden helped with the efforts to rebuild.

* See page 7 for a brief history of the Labour Rights movement.
* See pages 9-11 for more in depth coverage of his war efforts.

Rewarded for his services with a seat on the Wizengamot in 1949, Warlock Ogden briefly resigned from the Wizengamot in 1996 in protest at the behaviour of then Minister Cornelius Fudge, but returned to his position after the conclusion of the Second Voldemort War. In 2007 he was voted in to the position of Chief Warlock, where he approved the appointment of Harry Potter to Head Auror. He remained in that position, steering the court with an even hand, until his death. The position of Chief Warlock is chosen from existing members of the Wizengamot, who put their names forward and are elected with a quorum; the vote for his replacement will take place next week.

* See infobox for more details of Wizengamot procedure
* See pages 7 and 8 for tributes from colleagues and friends

His great grandson Robert Ogden assured this paper there is no truth in rumours that Warlock Ogden arranged to have himself interred in a giant barrel of the family's firewhiskey in order to add some body to it.

From an editorial in the Daily Prophet.

Twenty-seven people were arrested yesterday evening. Twenty-six, so-called "hunters", will be tried before the Wizengamot on charges of murder, aiding and abetting murder, and conspiracy to commit murder. One, Freddie Boot-Marlowe, unrelated to this criminal mob, will be tried as an accessory to the assault on Christina Flint. What most connects these two is a third crime: the unspeakably senseless and tragic murder of Willow Grace Smith, a young woman poisoned and left to die agonizingly alone in the snow.

Willow was not a saint by anyone's reckoning. Raised and abandoned by abusive parents, a difficult and deprived childhood gave way to desperate, drug-fueled teenager years. A werewolf without a formal education has no prospects, no friends, no comfort and no support. Despite all her struggles, including repeated attempts to get clean under impossible circumstances, Willow managed to foster a musical talent that gave her a thin chance to escape her upbringing. She made friends that didn't want to use and abuse her, who she lied to because it was all she had ever known and who stayed anyway and so taught her to lie less. She made fans, people who only saw the musician, the girl she wanted to be and not the girl she was. She tried desperately to be better, and sometimes she succeeded. And sometimes she failed.

We can't ask Willow if it was jealousy that motivated her attack on Christina Flint, though the DMLE has now evidence to prove her the culprit. We know she acted with a single accomplice without the permission or knowledge of her alpha, we know what she did, we know how she did it, but we can't know why. We can't ask if she felt threatened, if it was the drugs, if someone else put her up to it, or even if she thought she was doing Christina a favour, bringing Christina closer to her family by passing on the curse. We can't know Willow's motivation because the Hunters murdered her, in cold blood, not because they had evidence of her crimes--they did not--but simply because she existed. Armed only with the knowledge that she was a werewolf, they stalked her, got her alone, shot her with poisoned arrows and then left her alone to die, scared and in pain, as she had been for all her life.

The Hunters, as they have termed themselves, are a violent cult dedicated to a form of genocide based on a simple association fallacy. Some people are werewolves and some werewolves genuinely are dangerous criminals, therefore, say the Hunters, all werewolves are dangerous criminals and must be murdered. If they have not killed yet, the argument goes, they will certainly kill in the future. Society's treatment of werewolves isolates and disadvantages them, which makes it easy for a werewolf to miss the dose of Wolfsbane Potion that keeps them sane under the full moon, that keeps at bay a curse whose only motivation is to spread itself. Better to murder them first, the Hunters say, to prevent the tragedy, for the greater good. The Hunters justify the secrecy, their operation without oversight by society, law or government, in terms of protection and self-preservation.

Freddie Boot-Marlowe might think of his actions in the same way. The DMLE can at least ask him his motivation in helping Willow bypass the security on Christina Flint's house. Freddie was uniquely placed to do so, not simply because he and Willow were dating, something we understand to be the first serious relationship for both of them. Born with a defective magical core, a rare genetic condition, Freddie was raised as a squib, in but not of magical society, in but not of muggle society. He suffered as the result of his condition, experiencing random uncontrollable outbursts of magic that damaged his body, leaving him weak, crippled and isolated. Still, he studied, mastering muggle technology and magical theory alike. These skills combined allowed him to teach Willow how to disable wards and alarms alike, and that is the crime for which he will soon be tried by the Wizengamot.

The DMLE moves slowly but surely. They do not make wild accusations. They well remember the Second War, that taught us how easily our institutions can become corrupted by special interests. They compile testimony and evidence before they act. They act with surety and professionalism and faith in due process. With the help of wizards and werewolves alike, the DMLE and the Ministry for which they stand have seen to it that justice will be done. Extra-judicial killing is murder, no matter the target. Assault is assault, no matter the motive. The punishment will be measured, take into account all circumstances, and fit the crime. This is how it works. This is how it should work. But it is only part of what must be done.

Willow Grace Ellis does not deserve your unthinking hatred. Frederick Boot-Marlowe does not deserve your unconditional sympathy. The Hunters do not deserve your swift dismissal. Like all lost children, they deserve your empathy. Each of them has found themselves in some way dismissed, ridiculed and overlooked; no matter how overstated their problems, how poor their solutions, or how distasteful their methods may be, each of them had or has genuine concerns that we as a society are failing to address. To prevent further escalating tragedy, address them we must. It is clearly not enough to punish crime; action must also be taken not only to reduce its reoccurrence but to prevent its occurrence in the first place.

For people who are werewolves are people. People who are hunters are people. People who are born with limited or flawed access to their magic are people. People who are born without magic are people. People who appreciate the traditions and history of our culture and people who see problems with the implementation of our culture are people. They are all people first. We are all people first, whatever else we may be after, for good or for ill. We are all people first--and when you push people out into the cold, what else are they going to do but start fires?

The training camp is far from the roads and beaten tracks, flanked by dense forest and sudden sharp drops splattered with granite spurs and dusted with heathers. The non-magical forestry service get diverted at the three mile point by a series of repelling charms. Eight hundred yards beyond that, the stronger magical defences begin, buried distraction curses and notice-me-not charms and quick-nature wards work to turn every inward path into brambles and thickets for the unauthorised visitors. Another mile in, the ground rising the whole way, the traps are just that: disillusioned bushes to distract from the trip wires and toothed springs and spike pits that have been disguised, not with magic, but grass and leaves and fallen branches. A mile after that, the fortifications begin, the bunkers and the hides and the lookout points. Only the last half mile or so up to the cabin is clear, but this too is a kind of trap; every direct approach is visible to the Hunters working there, assuming there are people on lookout.

But nobody is, of course. Not now. Not today. Not when it's a full moon night. Not when they're all getting ready for the hunt, secure in the knowledge that nobody outside their society has ever been told about this place, that nobody has even hints that it might exist, so how would anyone even begin to look for it? The defenses are there for practice and theatre, that's all. They're not necessary, not really. They all know it, in their hearts, in their minds, in their bones, in their history. True safety lies in knowing the threat, the werewolves, and knowing how to deal with it, with poison and silver and fire and righteous fury.

So not one person sees the sudden shift in the sky as the anti-apparation ward blooms and rolls down over them.