LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY
“It’s time for criminals to stop
using the Palestinian cause to justify their terrorist actions.”
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad,
denouncing Monday’s deadly shooting attack at a Jewish school in France and condemning the gunman’s linking it to the killings of Palestinian children Article, this pageZimbabweans fined over uprising video
HARARE, Zimbabwe - A Zimbabwe court said Wednesday that it took a “compassionate approach” by not sending to jail six civic activists convicted of conspiring to commit public violence during a meeting in which they watched video footage of the mass uprisings in Egypt.
Harare magistrate Kudakwashe Jarabini fined the activists $500 each and ordered them to carry out 420 hours of community service or face a year in jail. He suspended another 12 months imprisonment on condition they don’t commit a similar offense over the next five years.
Jarabini said he sought to pass a deterrent sentence but didn’t want to send out “a sense of shock” to Zimbabweans.
The group was arrested last year for holding a meeting it said was an academic lecture on democratic rights.
Jarabini found the activists guilty Monday, saying that while watching a video was not a crime, the “manner and motive” of the February 2011 meeting showed bad intent. He ruled that showing footage of uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt that included “nasty scenarios” was intended to arouse hostility toward Zimbabwe’s government.
The activists had faced a maximum prison sentence of up to 10 years. Original charges of treason carrying a possible death sentence were dropped in months of legal wrangling.
39 rebels slain, Colombia reports
BOGOTA - Colombian troops have killed 39 rebels, most of them in a bombardment of a guerrilla camp, the defense minister said Wednesday.
The military bombed a rebel camp in northeast Arauca state early Wednesday, killing 33, Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzon said at a news conference. Other rebels were killed in the past two days in operations in Arauca and other parts of the country, Pinzon said.
He described the bombing of the rebel camp as the biggest blow against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in the past five years. The military has not yet publicly shown the bodies.
Twelve purported rebels also were captured during the military operations Tuesday and Wednesday, Pinzon said.
The bombardment in Arauca, near Colombia’s border with Venezuela, came in the same region where 11 soldiers were killed Saturday in an attack blamed on the rebels.
Massacre witnesses: 1 gunman seen
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - None of the Afghans who witnessed the March 11 massacre of 16 villagers has reported personally seeing more than one gunman, despite claims that many U.S. soldiers took part in the killings, two Afghan officials said Wednesday.
Afghan villagers disputed U.S. statements that only one gunman was involved in the killings in the southern Panjwai district. Afghan investigators heard villagers claim more than a dozen Americans were involved.
The two Afghan officials said accounts of many gunmen were based on hearsay.
“To my knowledge, everybody in the villages said only that somebody had told them that they had seen several foreign troops in the villages where the shootings occurred,” said Fazal Mohammad, the top government official for Panjwai district. “But nobody personally said that they had seen a group of troops in this incident.”
Sardar Mohammad Nazari, chief of police for Panjwai district, also said that he never found one person who had seen a group of foreign troops with his own eyes.
Burma vote-monitor move pleases U.S.
The United States said Wednesday that it was “encouraged” that Burma had invited U.S. and European representatives to monitor elections April 1, a milestone for the country as it emerges from decades of military dictatorship.
Earlier this month, Burmese President U Thein Sein said the country was seeking more “international recognition” through “continuous efforts to win further trust.”
Voting in recent years has been witnessed by a handful of foreign diplomats, including a delegation from North Korea, but the announcement Wednesday signaled the first time in recent memory that Western countries were invited as observers. At stake for Burma is the possible lifting of sanctions.
On Tuesday, the head office of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of which Burma is a member, announced that observers from each of the nine other Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries were invited to witness the elections.
Adrienne Nutzman, a spokesman for the U.S. mission in Burma, said by e-mail that Washington was encouraged by the invitation but “concerned by reports of irregularities, local intimidation and a recent attack” on opposition supporters.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 03/22/2012