The judge agrees that he does not recognise his own grandchildren and therefore is unfit to stand trial…

H/T LBC

Paul Ozin, for Greville Janner, challenged the legality of the decision to force him to come to court tomorrow.

Lord Janner is wheelchair-bound, no longer leaves the house and has developed Parkinson's symptoms, his lawyer tells high court.

— Josh Halliday (@JoshHalliday) August 13, 2015

But Lady Justice Rafferty and Mr Justice Irwin disagreed, he will have to appear…

Lord Janner was absent as his child abuse proceedings began at Westminster Crown Court today. Dr James Warner told the court:

“There is no doubt in my mind that Lord Janner has dementia and that it is severe… The only possibility here is progressive deterioration… There is no chance he will improve from his current state… [he] would find the whole environment potentially very perplexing and bewildering”

Yet Judge Howard Riddle ruled that Janner is fit to attend and has asked why he can’t turn turn up this afternoon…

Via @CourtNewsUK, @TimesCrime

Thought for the Day this morning on yet-to-be-privatised BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme was presented by Laura Klausner – Senior Rabbi to Reform Judaism. An interesting choice.  She is also Lord Janner’s daughter.  One can not hold a man’s deeds against his daughter, clearly, though the BBC’s sensitivities might be open to question. Was this not an occasion where one of the show’s journalists would have been justified in asking ‘how’s yer father?’

Back in 1999, the BBC reported on the discovery that Konrad Kalejs, an alleged Nazi war criminal, was living in a nursing home in Leicestershire:

“Former Labour MP Lord Janner, chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said he would ask Home Secretary Jack Straw to investigate the allegations against Mr Kalejs. And he said that if there was sufficient evidence, Mr Kalejs should be prosecuted under war crimes legislation. If there was not enough evidence for a prosecution, the government should follow the example of the United States and Canada and deport him, he said.  “They only do that if they are sufficiently satisfied that a person is guilty of war crimes. They don’t want him in their country. If that is correct, we don’t want him in our country either,” Lord Janner told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.”

So Janner says you can prosecute of deport elderly wrong ‘uns, but not investigate the claims of his paedophilia because his memory is a bit hazy…