Sunday, March 16, 2008
Chad
Kidnap Case Children Head Home
Government and U.N. agencies have begun reuniting the families of 83 children caught up in an adoption row between Chad and France, a Chadian minister said Saturday.
The Chadian children were transported Friday from an orphanage to Adre, a town that borders Sudan, before being taken to nearby villages where their families live, said Ngarmbatina Carmel Souiv, the social action minister. In all, 103 children had been involved in the dispute; the rest will be reunited with their families in coming days, she said.
Six French workers with the charity Zoe's Ark had said the children were orphans from the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan. In October, they tried to fly the children to France for adoption, but Chadians working for the charity alerted police.
In December, a Chadian court found the aid workers guilty of kidnapping and sentenced them to eight years in prison with hard labor. That sentence was commuted to eight years in prison when they were transferred to France under a judicial agreement.
UKRAINE3 Convicted in Reporter's Killing
A Ukrainian court convicted three former policemen Saturday in the 2000 killing of an investigative journalist and prominent critic of then- President Leonid Kuchma.
Heorhiy Gongadze, a Georgian working in Ukraine, wrote about political corruption and criminality at a time when authorities in the former Soviet state kept a tight grip over the media.
His headless corpse was discovered in woods near Kiev two months after he disappeared in September 2000. His head was never found.
The former policemen went on trial in December 2005, after years of investigations, the 2004 Orange Revolution that ushered in a pro-Western government and accusations that Kuchma himself was involved in the killing.
The former president has always denied the accusation.
A court in Kiev sentenced Mykola Protasov to 13 years in prison and Valeriy Kostenko and Oleksandr Popovych to 12 years. A fourth suspect is on the run.
SAUDI ARABIACleric Issues Fatwa Against Writers
Saudi Arabia's most revered cleric said in a rare fatwa this week that two writers should be tried for apostasy for their "heretical articles" and put to death if they do not repent.
Sheik Abdul-Rahman al-Barak was responding to recent articles in the Saudi daily al-Riyadh that questioned the Sunni Muslim view in Saudi Arabia that adherents of other faiths should be considered unbelievers.
"Anyone who claims this has refuted Islam and should be tried in order to take it back. If not, he should be killed as an apostate from the religion of Islam," said the fatwa, or religious opinion, dated March 14 and published on Barak's Web site.
Abdullah bin Bejad al-Otaibi, one of the two writers, said he feared for his life and called on the government to intervene. The other writer was Yousef Aba al-Khail.
"My articles have been met with fatwas before, but it never got to this level of directly inciting murder or directly accusing someone of no longer being a Muslim," Khail said.
COLOMBIATop Rebel Killed in Raid Is Buried
Authorities have quietly buried the body of rebel leader Ra¿l Reyes in an undisclosed location, Colombia's attorney general said Saturday, two weeks after he was killed in a cross-border military raid in Ecuador.
Reyes, 59, whose real name was Luis Edgar Devia, was one of 24 people killed when Colombian troops struck at his camp just inside Ecuadoran territory.
One of the seven members of the ruling secretariat of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, Reyes was buried "not just for health but also security reasons," Attorney General Mario Iguar¿n told Caracol radio.
The government had planned to turn the body over to Reyes's first wife but later decided she could not receive it because she is not a direct relative.
The March 1 raid touched off a diplomatic crisis in which Ecuador and its ally Venezuela both sent troops to their borders with Colombia.
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Israeli Strikes in Gaza Kill 3 Palestinian FightersIsraeli airstrikes in the central and northern Gaza Strip killed three Palestinian fighters and wounded six, Palestinian medical and security officials said. They identified the dead and wounded as members of Islamic Jihad. Israel confirmed two strikes, in which it said five men preparing to launch rockets at Israeli targets were hit.
Kangaroo Cull Halted in Australian CapitalAbout 70 protesters gathered at an abandoned military site in Canberra, the Australian capital, to prevent the slaughter of 400 kangaroos blamed for ruining the habitat of rare lizards and insects. The planned cull by government contractors has triggered international protests.
From News Services
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