' I was tortured by police to confess I killed Scarlett' says chief suspect in Goa murder

The man accused of raping and murdering British schoolgirl Scarlett Keeling on a beach in Goa has admitted leaving her there semi-conscious – but insisted he was not responsible for her death.

Samson D’Souza, 29, was dramatically freed last week when a judge ruled there was no evidence linking him to the crime in February.

He had spent seven months in custody after the 15-year-old was found dead in the resort of Anjuna following her mother Fiona MacKeown’s decision to continue a six-month holiday by travelling in the region without her.

Speaking for the first time since being released on bail, Mr D’Souza admitted leaving Scarlett in a comatose state on the beach where she was found dead just hours later.

But he said: ‘All I am guilty of is being the last person as far as I am aware to leave her behind at the beach. Scarlett was very drunk on the night she died. She was falling all over the place and could not stand.

‘The safest option was to leave her on the beach. It is not a crime to do what I did.’

Mr D’Souza’s release on Thursday, which effectively leaves the investigation back at square one, is the latest twist in the horrific story of Scarlett’s death and the sorry circumstances leading to it.

When her body was found battered and semi-naked, police initially claimed she had drowned accidentally after taking drugs.

A toxicology report revealed she had consumed a cocktail of drugs, including cocaine, and alcohol.

In the aftermath, Mrs MacKeown, 43, accused the Indian authorities of a cover-up, while her critics questioned her judgment in leaving behind her daughter with an older boyfriend, 25-year-old Julio Lobo, in an atmosphere rife with drink, drugs and sex.

A second post-mortem examination revealed the teenager had in fact been raped, had 50 abrasions on her body and was killed when her head was forcibly held under water for between five to ten minutes.

Mr D’Souza, an Indian who worked at Lui’s bar where Scarlett was drinking on the night she died, was the second person arrested in connection with her death.

The first, Placido Carvalho, was charged with supplying her with cocaine, ecstasy and LSD and was released on bail in April. Mr D’Souza was charged with rape and murder.

Several key witnesses reported seeing the barman lying on top of Scarlett outside the bar shortly before her body was found. But this week, Goa’s Children’s Court ruled there was no forensic evidence linking him to Scarlett, of Bideford, Devon.

‘Other than the accused last being seen with Scarlett prior to her death, there is no other material bringing out his role in her rape or death,’ the court order said.

Now, Mr D’Souza claims he was tortured into a confession by police desperate to find a scapegoat.

Scarlett’s mother has accused him of ‘messing around with her’ and of knowing who her killers were, but said: ‘I don’t think he raped and murdered her.’

The barman says Scarlett was a tragedy waiting to happen due to what he claims was her mother’s negligent attitude to her upbringing. He claims Mrs MacKeown was fully aware that Scarlett was drinking heavily and taking drugs throughout their family holiday in Goa.

Speaking from the home he shares with his French wife Bridget and their 16-month-old-daughter Lya just outside Anjuna, Mr D’Souza said: ‘It was a well known fact around Anjuna that Scarlett was always drinking.

‘She used to go from bar to bar racking up credit bills and even used to go up to people and steal their drinks. She was very like most Britishers – when she started drinking she could not stop.

‘She boasted she had been drinking for three days without sleeping. What mother leaves their 15-year-old girl on their own in Goa to get drunk and end up in such trouble?’

On the night Scarlett died, Mr D’Souza was working at Lui’s bar. He said: ‘Scarlett was drinking in the bar and by the end of the evening she could not walk. I tried to call her a taxi to take her home but she insisted on being left on the beach. I’m afraid that’s what I did. It was only the next morning that I heard she was dead.’

Mr D’Souza added: ‘In hindsight, knowing that she died, it is sad, but I did the most responsible thing that I could at the time.’

He said he believed she drowned while trying to swim when drunk and under the influence of drugs, adding: ‘I cannot say any more than that because I was at home when she died.’

Mr D’Souza said he only confessed to her murder because police tortured him. He added: ‘They held me without charge from February 21 until my first court appearance
in March.

‘To get the confession out of me they initially beat me with their fists. Then they used plastic rods to beat my feet. When that didn’t work they used electric shock diodes on my head and body until I said I would confess to anything they wanted. But I am totally innocent.’

The case was handed to India’s Central Bureau of Investigation in June after local police were criticised for the way they handled it.

Mr D’Souza said he hopes to settle in France once he is formally cleared. He added: ‘We are going to start all over again. My life here is ruined. I cannot stay.’

Fiona MacKeown’s spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, said: ‘Samson D’Souza has been bailed but he is still facing a most serious charge.’

Pictured: At least 40 people killed as fire sweeps through Marriott hotel in Pakistan after suicide car bomb

A car bomb has exploded outside the Marriott in the Pakistani capital Islamabad killing at least 40 people and starting a fire which swept through the hotel.

The explosion happened hours after new President Asif Ali Zardari, widower of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, made his first address to a joint sitting of parliament.

"A car laden with explosives rammed the gate at the Marriott and so far we have brought out 40 dead bodies, but the number could well be higher," police chief Asghar Raza Gardazi said.

Television pictures showed flames and smoke pouring out of the 290-room hotel, located close to the city centre and popular with tourists. A senior official said it appeared to have been a suicide attack.

The blast brought down the ceiling in a banquet room where there were about 200 to 300 people at a meal to break the fast during the holy month of Ramadan.

Imtiaz Gul, a journalist, was among them.

"We just ran for cover, I could see a lot of injured people lying around me," Gul said.
Zardari has pledged to fight Islamist militants who have been blamed for a string of bomb attacks in the country.

But he told parliament that Pakistan would not tolerate any infringement of its territory in the name of the fight against militants. A series of U.S. strikes on militants along the Pakistan-Afghan border have infuriated many Pakistanis.

Zardari won a presidential election this month to replace U.S. ally Pervez Musharraf, who stepped down in August under threat of impeachment.

The United States and Afghanistan say al Qaeda and Taliban militants operate out of bases in remote ethnic Pashtun lands on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border.

The blast outside the Marriott was the biggest to hit Islamabad and destroyed dozens of cars outside and shattered windows and damaged buildings hundreds of metres away. The Marriott chain has its headquarters in the United States.


Police at the scene said people were still trapped inside. A crane was brought in to try to get people out.

There was a large crater in the road by the hotel's heavy security barriers. The street was littered with debris and broken branches from roadside trees and acrid smoke drifted in the air.

The hotel has been bombed twice before but the Saturday evening blast was the most serious in the Pakistani capital since the country joined the U.S.-led campaign against militancy in late 2001.

Al Qaeda-linked militants based in sanctuaries in the Afghan border have launched a bloody campaign of bomb attacks in retaliation for offensives by the security forces.

Russian troops take first steps deep into Georgian territory

Russia's opening of a second front saw it strike 20 miles inside Georgia near the breakaway province of Abkhazia. The move cut the country in two by seizing a key road and rail junction.

The capture of the town of Senaki in western Georgia marked the moment the ground war spread beyond the boundaries of the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It underlined the ease with which Russia has so far been able to act against its tiny neighbour, incurring nothing but harsh words from the West.

The Senaki operation by about 300 Russian troops coincided with Georgia's heavily outnumbered forces abandoning the central city of Gori and going into full retreat.

After their operations were complete, Russian forces withdrew from the city.

“Russian forces have destroyed Senaki military base and have left it,” said Shota Utiashvili, a spokesman for the Georgian interior ministry.

His comments confirmed an earlier Russian statement.

President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia accused Russia of the "invasion, occupation and annihilation of an independent democratic country". He added that Russia was carrying out the "pre-planned, cold-blooded and pre-meditated murder of a small country".

Mr Saakashvili urged the international community to act.

President George W Bush criticised Russia's "disproportionate" actions and said that Georgia's "sovereignty must be respected".

Bernard Kouchner, the French foreign minister, arrived in Georgia and visited Gori, areas of which have been heavily bombed. "We are here to stop this bloody war," he said. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, which hold the European Union's rotating presidency, is expected to visit Georgia tomorrow and then fly on to Moscow to urge a truce.

Gordon Brown said there was "no justification for continued Russian military action in Georgia, which threatens the stability of the entire region and risks a humanitarian catastrophe". The Prime Minister added: "There is an immediate and pressing need to end the fighting and disengage all military forces in South Ossetia. The Georgian Government has offered a ceasefire, which I urge the Russians to reciprocate without delay.

Georgia declared a unilateral ceasefire on Sunday and withdrew its forces from South Ossetia, where the fighting began last week. This enclave, populated largely by Russian citizens, is now firmly in the Kremlin's grasp.

President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia said that the "major part" of his country's operation in South Ossetia was over. But he gave no indication of whether he would follow Georgia and call a ceasefire. Later Russia stepped up its attacks in the main body of Georgia.

In Senaki, 40 Russian lorries and armoured personnel carriers stood at a junction on the main highway linking east and west Georgia. By striking from Abkhazia and seizing this key position 20 miles inside Georgian territory, the Russian troops had severed a crucial communications artery.

Georgia's Black Sea coast and the port of Poti are now sealed off from the rest of the country. In effect, Russian forces have sliced Georgia in two.

"We are here for protection, just protection," a platoon leader told The Daily Telegraph before ordering us out of the area. Within hours the Russian troops had taken a military base inside Senaki and were turning away traffic.

Pressure on Poti is now being exerted on two fronts. A Russian warship patrols the Black Sea coastline and is believed enforce a 50-mile exclusion zone. To the East, the capture of Senaki cuts off the port's land links.

Poti was also bombed last week and nine people died. Alan Middleton, the port's British general manager, said that although no ship had been courageous enough to test the proposition, he assumed that Poti was now blockaded from the sea.

Elsewhere, Russian artillery deployed in South Ossetia bombarded the village of Tkviavi, which lies five miles inside Georgia, near the road southwards to Gori. Air strikes on Georgian military positions nearby also took place.

Later, Russian helicopter gunships flew low over Gori, dropping flares as a precaution against missile attack. Georgian troops promptly abandoned the city and retreated eastwards towards the capital, Tbilisi - only an hour's drive away. They began establishing defensive positions around the city in case of another Russian advance.

But Russia's defence ministry denied that any of its troops had actually entered Gori. No independent evidence suggests that Gori has fallen. But Mr Saakashvili claimed - without offering any evidence - that "the majority of Georgia's territory is occupied".

He added: "All that we have had from the international community is humanitarian aid, which is starting to arrive, and statements.

"Of course this is important, but we need much more."

Yew must be kidding! Lord spends £5,000 to trim his hedge...which is 40ft high

Even the most ardent gardener can find trimming the hedge a bit of a chore. But next time you pick up the shears with a heavy heart, count yourself lucky you don't have this giant to contend with.

Towering 40ft into the sky, it is the tallest yew hedge in Britain. And however unkempt your borders look, tidying them up is a doddle in comparison with the mammoth job involved in maintaining it.

For it takes no less than a pair of workers, a cherry-picker and two days of solid hard work, costing more than £5,000, to give the 300 year old hedge on Lord Allen Apsley's Bathurst Estate in the Cotswolds its annual trim.

All the graft does not just result in an immaculate looking garden, either. The cutting back of six inches of new growth this year produced more than a ton of clippings, which are then used to produce a life-saving cancer drug.

Yews produce compounds called taxanes which can stop the creation of new cells, and are thus invaluable to halt the growth of tumours.

The Bathurst clippings are collected by an agency which then sells them on to pharmaceutical companies who chemically extract the taxane from the clippings, purify it, and convert it into the chemotherapy drug docetaxel.

The drug has helped thousands of women in Britain overcome breast and ovarian cancer, and is also used to treat cancers of the lung and head.

The hedge is 33ft wide and stretches for 150 yards along the side of Lord Apsley's historic mansion near Cirencester.

As this year's trim was under way, he said: 'It runs right along the front of the house. You can actually see it from the town as it's taller than the wall.

'It's difficult to know exactly how old it is, but we think it was planted in about 1710.'

The 47-year-old father-of-two described how the hedge has pride of place in his garden, running in a semi-circle around the house.

He said: 'Cutting it isn't too dangerous but you do have to be careful. Luckily a man called Tim Day has been cutting it for 35 years so I think he knows what he's doing.'

Before cherry pickers were used in recent years, teams of staff at the estate used to climb up onto rickety ladders leaned together in an A-shape to trim the bush with garden shears.

Lord Apsley said: 'It must have been a very dangerous operation which took many people a long time to complete.'

The Apsley family have been on the estate since 1695 and use most of its 14,500 acres to grow crops.

According to the Guinness Book of Records, the world's tallest hedge of any type is the beech hedge at Meikleour in Perthshire, which ranges from 80ft to 120ft.

Could this be the daughter of King Tutankhamun?

Egyptian scientists are performing DNA tests on two mummified foetuses found in the tomb of Tutankhamun to discover whether they were the boy king's children.

British archaeologist Howard Carter found the mummified foetuses when he discovered the Pharaoh's tomb in 1922.

Many scholars believe their mother to be Ankhesenamun, the young pharaoh's only known wife.

Ankhesenamun was the daughter of Nefertiti, renowned for her beauty.

'For the first time we will be able to identify the family of King Tut,' Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt's Supreme Council for Antiquities said.

Tutankhamun, born in 1341 BC, died less than a decade after taking the throne at the age of eight or nine.

His significance stems from his rejection of religious innovations introduced by his predecessor Akenhaten, who tried to compel Egyptians to worship the god Aten.

The boy king's family lineage has long been a source of mystery among experts.

The identity of his parents is not certain though many experts believe he is the son of the 18th dynasty pharaoh Akhenaten.

However, the Council said that if the foetuses are not related to Tutankhamun, they may have been placed in his tomb to allow him to 'live as a newborn in the afterlife'.

He was also buried alongside hundreds of richly decorated objects. It was believed he would travel with these in his afterlife.

Egypt has been trying to check the identity of all its royal mummies using DNA and CT scans.

Tutankhamun's was one of the first mummies to be examined with the technology in 2005.

The latest DNA tests and computerised tomography (CT) scans, to be performed at Cairo University, should be finished by December.

Pictured: The orphan deer adopted by a pack of bloodthirsty fox hounds

The heaving mass of fox hounds would intimidate even the biggest stag.

But tiny orphan deer Bam Bam isn't scared.

Like his namesake Bambi the 10-week-old is a friendly creature and trots along with huntsman Adrian Thompson, 42, and his pack of 60 hounds.

The pack immediately accepted the lost fallow deer when they found him shivering by the Thompsons' front gate just an hour after he had been born.

Rather than being overwhelmed by the attention of such a large pack of dogs, from the Chiddingfold, Leconfield and Cowdray hunt, the confused little fawn thought he'd found his family.

A surprised Mr Thompson said: 'Now Bam Bam thinks he's a Fox Hound because they all treat him like one of their own.

'He won't be going on any hunts though - he doesn't have the stamina for it. It's a fantastic sight to see although we know it's a strange one and Bam Bam certainly gets a lot of funny looks from passers-by.

'People shake their heads in astonishment when they spot Bam Bam in among all the hounds as if they can't believe what they're seeing.'

The friendly fawn is happiest among his fellow hounds on their daily walk.

Mr Thompson's wife, Karen, 41, said: 'Bam Bam seems most content when he's ambling along with the hounds. He's about the same size as them now so he fits in perfectly and walks along with the pack like they're his brothers and sisters.'

Although the Fox Hounds have come to accept Bam Bam as one of their own, Mr Thompson's other dogs are rather less tolerant.

He said: 'A pack of domestic dogs would most certainly kill a deer that came across it's path - I also have two terriers and they would certainly kill anything that came into the garden. They're only just starting to accept little Bam Bam but I still wouldn't leave them alone with him.

'My Fox Hounds are very different though - the image of them as savage killers is completely wrong. They can be very placid animals and are very accepting of other animals - especially deer.'

After Bam Bam was discovered by the dogs earlier this summer he was brought into the family home in Petworth Park, West Sussex by Mr Thompson's 12-year-old son, Tommy.

When Karen came down for breakfast that morning she was stunned to see the pair sitting happily on the living room floor.

She said: 'It was such a surprise, the deer wasn't afraid at all. He seemed to think that Tommy was his mum because he followed him around the room, and would hide behind the furniture if Tommy ever left.'

It was uncertain whether Bam Bam would survive without the care and attention of his mother who had deserted him just yards from the Thompsons' home, possibly scared off by the dogs.

Karen said: 'It was touch and go for the first few days. We had to feed him half an ounce of lamb's milk every hour - this had to be done 24 hours a day and was quite draining.'

Bam Bam is now regarded by the Thompsons as a member of the family.

Karen said: 'He wanders around the garden and comes to play with us. We've had a few garden parties and he is such a favourite with the guests - he's so friendly and is adored by everyone who meets him.'

Bam Bam, who will grow into a 177 pound adult, will stay with the family until they feel he can be safely released into the wild.

Karen said: 'We can't release him into the park here because there are too many people about. Bam Bam is not afraid of humans and we're worried that this may make him dangerous.

'He already gives us a nudge when he wants to eat and it's not so bad because he's only little but imagine what a nudge could do when he's got a fine pair of antlers.'

The Thompsons will be sad to lose such a treasured member of the family but they know they can't keep him forever and plan to set him free once he's fully grown.

Next year they intend to rehome Bam Bam in a private park where he will be able to join a herd and finally learn how to be a deer.

Traditionally, deer hunting involves chasing the animal with a pack of dogs until it surrenders to exhaustion and can be shot.

This practice was banned under the Hunting Act 2004.

Deer stalking, where the hunter is close enough to kill the animal with a clean shot, is still permitted but with no more than two dogs.

School robots divide experts over teaching of phonics

"Wow," says Charlie, five, when he first sees Red the Robot.

"He doesn't look like a robot," says his best friend, Roxy, also five. "Robots aren't usually that ugly."

The two children from London's East End are learning to read using phonics at school. They sound out the letters using perfect phonetic pronunciation and seem confident using Red's scanner on the pages of the book to identify the right letters and short words.
Four-year-olds love a cuddly toy - especially one that can speak, has flashing lights and is allowed in class. Red the Robot is all those things, but he won't play Power Rangers. Instead, he wants to sit down to some good, old-fashioned phonics.

An army of Red the Robots is being deployed in schools and nurseries to help pupils as young as three learn to read. The 40cm-high toy can read stories and quiz pupils on their ABCs. Its manufacturer says it captures the imagination of children put off by traditional classes at a time when the government is desperately worried about children's literacy skills.

But it has been labelled a gimmick by opponents of phonics, the well-established but sometimes controversial method of teaching reading whereby children learn each sound then go on to decipher whole words. Red - rapid educational development - costs £130, inclusive of reading material. About 200 have been bought by schools and three local authorities have signed up to distribute them through primaries.

Academics at the Institute of Education who undertook an evaluation in three schools concluded that the robot "makes learning fun" where used appropriately. Children seemed to love it but teachers were "less inclined" to allow the robot to take the whole class. Dylan Wiliam, acting head of the institute, says: "The research on the use of such technology shows that when it is well-designed it can actually be better than teaching even by the best teachers."

Its manufacturer, Headstart, the educational wing of the toy company Impact International, says it could become an important aid to improving reading and writing. Representatives have had meetings with the Qualification and Curriculum Authority in an attempt to win the government's backing.

But some child experts expressed concern. Sue Palmer, author of Toxic Childhood, said: "Robots can't teach. The only effective teaching is by breathing, living teachers who can look a pupil in the eye and respond to them."

It comes amid a battle over the inclusion of phonics in new targets for nurseries and childminders. From September all early years providers will have to show that children are reaching 69 separate goals by the time they start school at the age of four or five.

One says they must be able to "use phonic knowledge to write simple words and make phonetically plausible attempts at more complex words". The children's authors Philip Pullman and Michael Morpurgo have joined dozens of academics to oppose the reforms.

Margaret Edgington, of the OpenEye campaign, set up to oppose the government's proposals, said: "Of course children might take to it but that does not necessarily mean it's good for them. Three-year-olds should not be doing phonics. They should do what's normal in nurseries: singing, rhyming and playing."

But Red is having a bad day. Sometimes he forgets which book he's reading. Sometimes his mind drifts and he goes quiet in the middle of one of the exercises, which are designed to be perfectly in tune with what Charlie and Roxy are learning at school.

Usually there would be a teacher or assistant to sort the problems out but we all look at the robot a bit disappointedly.

"I'm bored," declares Charlie.

What's good about Red? "He's red," says Roxy.

What's bad about Red? "He doesn't work," says Charlie.

Who's better, the robot or your teacher? "The robot," says Charlie.

Charlie and Roxy settle in to playing "teachers" with the robot and an assortment of cuddly toys. Ten minutes later Red the Robot is happily teaching penguins to cross a road safely.

Why beaming messages to aliens in space could destroy our planet

Thanks to the foolish antics of a downmarket TV company and a website favoured by self-obsessed teenagers, planet Earth could be in for a nasty shock towards the end of this century.

For if, in the decades to come, a fleet of flying saucers arrives with malicious intent, they will be the culprits.

This week it was announced that documentary-maker RDF and Bebo, a 'social networking site' for dippy youngsters, are to use a big radio telescope in Ukraine to send a powerful focused beam of information - 500 messages from the public in the form of radiowaves - to a nearby star called Gliese 581.

A 'mere' 20 light years (120 trillion miles) away, Gliese not only lies in our cosmic backyard but astronomers think it is also home to one or possibly two Earth-like planets which could be home to life.

The Gliese 581 solar system is, in other words, probably the likeliest home for our cosmic next-door neighbours.

Surely this is a harmless piece of nonsense? What danger could there possibly be from sending a big 'Hello' from Earth to a nearby star system?

After all, aliens are probably just a myth and if they are out there they will come in peace. That's the idea anyway.

Let's get one thing straight: I am not part of the UFO brigade. I have seen no convincing evidence whatsoever that aliens have yet visited the Earth in person.

I know The X Files is a work of fiction, not a documentary, and I accept that those who claim to have seen flying saucers and even to have been abducted by strange little aliens are either sincerely mistaken, mendacious or mad.

I have no truck with crop circle mystics and those who believe the pyramids were built by little green men from the Planet Tharg.

We have been looking for alien life for several decades now, sending probes to Mars and Venus, and listening out for radio messages from the stars.

And, so far, we have found nothing. Not even a microbe.

And yet, I also accept that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We have been looking for extraterrestrials for only a very short time.

We have really considered the possibility of their existence for a few centuries at most - a tiny proportion of the time that we humans have been around.

Most of all, I accept that although we have not found aliens yet, the statistical probability that there are intelligent lifeforms somewhere out there must be very high.

There are, after all, a hundred thousand million stars in our galaxy - and more than a hundred billion galaxies besides.

Astronomers now think that most of these stars - more stars than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of Earth - have retinues of planets around them.

So far, they have discovered only about 250 of these potentially life-bearing worlds or 'exoplanets' but there are many hundreds of thousands of millions more out there.

Not all of them will be habitable, but many millions will probably be 'Goldilocks worlds' - not too cold, not too hot, not too big and not too small, but just right, in theory, for life to have evolved.

Indeed at least one of the planets orbiting Gliese 581 is maybe such a Goldilocks world.

And even if we accept that life will not evolve everywhere it can, we must also accept that on the one world we know life has emerged - our own - it did so with startling rapidity.


Life on Earth is very nearly as old as Earth itself, and this suggests that if conditions are right then biology of some form will come into being.

Of course 'life' is not the same as 'intelligent life'. The galaxy could be swarming with microbes and algae, shrubs and lichen, even rabbits, lizards and fish (or their alien equivalents).

Discovering that this is so would be interesting and marvellous, but it would not be the same as discovering fellow intelligent beings out there.

And even intelligent life does not mean 'spacefaring life'; it took us thousands of years to get from the invention of the wheel to the first space rockets and radio telescopes.

But the sheer size and age of our galaxy suggests that at least some other worlds should be inhabited by creatures at least as bright as us - creatures able to build radio telescopes and pick up messages and think about doing something about it when they do.

And herein lies the problem. One of the most plausible reasons that we have seen of no signs of aliens may be simply that they haven't found us yet.



Which brings us to the fact that the most likely means of our discovery by alien life is by sending radio waves announcing our presence through space.

Indeed, there are those who point out that radio and TV signals from Planet Earth have been leaking inadvertently into space since the dawn of the radio age 86 years ago.

Surely intelligent alien lifeforms - if they are out there - would have detected these Earthly signals by now, they argue.

After all, the signals travel on through space at the speed of light, so all star systems closer than about 80 light years away could, in theory, have picked up hints of our transmissions by now.

But in reality, picking up these signals will be hard, even for the most advanced civilisation.

Weak and undirected, ordinary television and radio transmissions become almost undetectable at cosmic distances. Yet powerful, focused signals such as the one to be sent by RDF/Bebo are different - they are far easier to detect.

So far, just a handful of such signals have been sent, the first message fired out by the Arecibo radio telescope in 1974. And these have generated immense controversy.

Some scientists, notably the physicist and writer David Brin, have pointed out the danger of shouting 'we are here' to a potentially hostile cosmos.

The fact is that if a civilisation even a few centuries in advance of ours (in technological terms) were to get wind of our existence then the results could be catastrophic.

For what if Gliese is home to a belligerent lifeform with infinitely superior technology to ours? After all, the history of Earth tells us that when advanced civilisations meet technologically backward ones, the results have been, almost without exception, disastrous for the people with bows and arrows.

If we are unlucky, the inhabitants of Gliese could send an invasion fleet. Since they are 20 light years away, the signal will not reach them until 2028 and it will be some decades after that before the fleet arrives here.

It is important to remember that any aliens capable of flying across the great voids between the stars will be in possession of technology so advanced that fighting them would be like taking on a modern army with spears.

We would have no chance. So the best thing may be to keep shtum.

Or to hope that the inevitable self-obsessed triviality that is bound to comprise any message sent by the Bebo community will be enough to convince any purple-tentacled aliens who are on Gliese 581 that there is no intelligent life on Earth whatsoever - and to leave us well alone.