International News, February 18, 1998

Libya wins first round in Lockerbie legal battle

Kashmir separatists clash with Indian paramilitary police in Srinagar, India, yesterday, on the eve of the last round of Indian general elections. Sixteen were arrested during the clashes as police used tear gas and batons to chase protesters.
LIBYA won the first round of a bitter legal battle over the Lockerbie bombing yesterday when the United Nations' top court threw out British and U.S. objections to its involvement in the case.
The International Court of Justice ruled it had jurisdiction to hear Libyan complaints against Britain and the United States over their 10-year pursuit of the bombers of PanAm flight 103.
A majority of the ICJ's 15 judges also declared Libya's applications to the court were admissible, although they challenged the legality of U.N. Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions on the North African country.
PanAm 103 exploded in December 1988 as it flew above the Scottish village of Lockerbie, killing all 259 on board and 11 people on the ground.
London and Washington wasted little time in pinning the blame on Libya and demanding the extradition of two suspected bombers for trial in Britain or the U.S.
To back up their demands, they encouraged the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on Libya.
U.S. and British insistence on trying the two suspects at home lie at the heart of Libya's original complaint to the court in March 1992. In that document, Libya contends it should be allowed to try the men itself.
Until yesterday's ruling, the case had been bogged down in a legal quagmire of objections and counter-objections.
The way is now clear for the court to proceed to the next stage of legal argument, probably in the next few months.
"We are very happy. This is a victory for law and for Libya," Libyan ambassador Hamed Ahmed Elhouderi said, renewing his government's call for an end to punitive sanctions.
The British legal team left after the one-hour hearing without comment. In London, a spokesman for Prime Minister Tony Blair said the government needed to consider the verdict. U.S. officials, whose arguments were thrown out in a later session, were disappointed but not altogether surprised, diplomatic sources said.
Presiding judge Christopher Weeramantry said the court's jurisdiction stemmed from the fact that Libya filed its complaint in March 1992, before the U.N. Security Council adopted its resolutions.
He also threw out U.S. and British claims that the court's involvement undermined the Security Council.
"The court concludes that it has jurisdiction to hear the disputes...The court concludes that Libya's application is admissible," he said in his summing up.
Libya's ambassador Elhouderi said his country stood by a recent offer to hand the suspected bombers over for trial in a third, neutral country.
The gesture has won support from African and Arab countries, but diplomatic sources said there was no softening in U.S. opposition to the idea.
Jim Swire, who represents the families of British victims of Lockerbie, said he was happy with the world court's ruling.
"This is a tremendous day. Our group has long been dissatisfied with the Security Council's resolutions," he said.
He went on to advise Britain and the U.S. to negotiate an out of court deal with Libya for a trial in a third country.
"Otherwise they may have to accept a trial in Libya, if the court's final ruling goes against them."
The world court's rulings are binding and without appeal but ultimately may depend on the U.N. Security Council to enforce them — a catch 22 if permanent members like the U.S. or Britain object.
Relatives of American victims of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 expressed horror and outrage at the World Court ruling that could delay for years more the trial of two Libyan suspects.
But a spokesman for a group of British relatives welcomed the decision as the only path forward in a deadlocked case.

Dr Spock reduced to begging to pay medical bills

THE world's most famous baby doctor, Dr Benjamin Spock, who made £18 million from his book, is having to beg for money to pay his medical bills.
His wife Mary (54) is asking for money from friends and family to help settle his home care medical bills of £6,000 a month.
"I'm sorry to say we have exhausted all our resources. Our needs are urgent," said Mrs Spock, the doctor's second wife, in an appeal letter. They live in a £1,800 a month rented home in San Diego, California.
Dr Spock will be 95 on May 2, the day the seventh edition of Baby and Child Care is due to be published.
It is America's most successful book, selling more than 50 million copies since 1945, and literary agent Richard McDonough estimates it has earned Dr Spock up to £18 million. Dr Spock has suffered a heart attack and a stroke. His second wife, who has been married to him for 23 years, said he also had pneumonia six times last year, but is mentally alert and not suffering from a specific disease now.
Mrs Spock told the Boston Globe her husband earned £300,000 last year and spent £27,000 on medical expenses, which she figured would increase to £73,000 this year. She said his total expenses last year were £326,000, much of it for agents and secretaries.
She wrote in her plea for help that home "is the only place where Ben can get the constant care, attention, and love that are keeping him alive." She added that home care requires two to three full-time helpers, special foods, and equipment, and asked that cheques be sent to the "Help Dr Spock Fund." Mrs Spock said that much of her husband's early income was spent on his fight against the Vietnam war, especially the 1968 trial for conspiracy to aid resistance conscription. A guilty verdict was overturned on appeal.
He also invested heavily in his 1972 race for President as a People's Party candidate — he received 80,000 votes. He also reportedly paid a hefty settlement in divorcing his first wife, Jane, in the mid-1970s.
Over the past 20 years or so, Mrs Spock said, much of what her husband earned was donated to civil rights, anti-war, and anti-nuclear causes.
Mrs Spock said: "People can think what they want, but I can't afford to keep Ben at home. I'm not a great manager of money. I hadn't planned for this."

Austrian bishops admit their cardinal molested children

AUSTRIA'S top bishops yesterday broke the Roman Catholic Church's silence about a cardinal accused of molesting young boys, suggesting the charges were true.
''We have come to the moral certainty that the accusations raised against ... Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, are in essence true,'' the statement said.
''We have to bear his silence, but we ourselves cannot remain silent, if we want to do justice to our responsibility to the church.
''We feel morally obliged to make this statement particularly because continued silence would really harm the church's pastoral mission through a paralysing general suspicion that the reputation of a cardinal is more important to the church than the wellbeing of young people.''
The Bishops' statement was the first acknowledgement by senior Roman Catholic churchmen that the charges against Groer were likely true.
Although other churchmen have been criticised in other countries by their peers before, Groer was believed to be the most senior ever called to task.
The statement came after months of building resentment among predominantly Catholic Austrians over what was seen as a Church cover up.
Groer was removed from his post as Archbishop of Vienna after the first charges of homosexuality surfaced in 1995.
But he remained silent, and the Vatican made no move at the time to investigate.
New charges against Groer were made in December by a monk who said Groer had molested him as a child. Groer subsequently stepped down as the prior of Austria's Goettweig Abbey, and the Vatican announced further steps, including sending inspectors to the abbey for an investigation to begin on Monday.
In Rome for the installation of his successor as cardinal last weekend, Groer met the Pope at the Vatican, However, no statements were issued, further infuriating Catholics in Austria.
Yesterday's statement was signed by the chairman of the Austrian Bishops' Conference, Johann Weber of the city of Graz; Schoenborn; Salzburg's Archbishop Georg Eder and the Bishop for the province of Carinthia, Egon Kapellari.
Unnamed other bishops were said to be in agreement with it.
It was a clear attempt to ease growing disenchantment among Austrian Catholics with the way the church had dealt with the accusations and other issues ahead of a June visit by the pope.
''Let us all pull together, so that the pope can see a Church on its way to renewal in our land after all the shocks of the past years,'' the statement read.
Although most Austrians are registered Catholics, only about one-quarter — some 1·2 million — attend Mass. Some Catholics blame declining participation on the number of conservative bishops appointed by Rome over the past decade.

McGregor wins third actor award in a row

by Anthony Barnes
EWAN McGREGOR yesterday completed a hat-trick by picking up his third Best British Actor trophy.
The Scottish star was presented with his Empire Movie Awards prize at a celebrity-packed event at London's Park Lane Hotel.
The annual awards are voted on by more than 25,000 readers of the film magazine Empire, rather than by industry figures.
McGregor, who won the title for his role in A Life Less Ordinary, told guests he was taken aback by the award. "I was asked to come here to present best actress," he said.
"This is lovely, and ridiculous. This has been brilliant work we've been doing this year, and let's carry on."
Oscar nominee Kate Winslet — who was not at the ceremony — won the Best British Actress award for her part in Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet.
She told guests in a pre-recorded interview played at the ceremony: "It's wonderful to receive this award because Titanic is receiving so much publicity, but Hamlet is just as important to me as Titanic was."
Another Oscar nominee, The Full Monty — the most successful British film ever made — was named Best British Film.
Anthony Minghella added to his Oscar for The English Patient by winning the Best British Director prize.
Actor Gary Oldman collected the Best Debut award for his direction on the film Nil By Mouth.
The Best Actor award was given to a past Oscar winner, Kevin Spacey, for his part in LA Confidential, while two-time Oscar nominee Joan Allen received the Best Actress title for The Crucible.
Cameron Crowe was named Best Director for the box office smash Jerry Maguire.
The best film, according to Empire readers, was the special effects-packed blockbuster Men In Black.
The most popular award with guests came when Dennis Hopper was given a lifetime contribution award, which was presented by his old friend Marianne Faithfull.
"I was pretty depressed when Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda got nominated for this year's Academy Award, but this certainly makes up for it. Thank you," Hopper said.
"I hope Jack wins, however."
The veteran star, who appeared alongside Nicholson and Fonda in Easy Rider, said his biggest inspiration had been Rudyard Kipling's poem If, which he proceeded to read to the guests at the ceremony.

Clintons go on the piste for Chelsea's birthday

PRESIDENT Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary celebrated daughter Chelsea's 18th birthday yesterday at an exclusive ski resort high in the Rocky Mountains.
The Clintons had initially planned to visit their daughter for parents' weekend at California's Stanford University, where she is a freshman, but they switched to Utah at the last minute because Chelsea wanted to ski.
They borrowed a vacation home owned by Hollywood executive Jeffrey Katzenberg for the weekend.
The president does not plan to take to the slopes himself. His only experience on skis 14 years ago in Sun Valley, Idaho, left him with torn ligaments in his left knee after repeated falls.
Although he quickly recovered, and his doctors told him that the injury to his right knee in 1997 would not stop him from the sport, Clinton said he planned to read rather than ski.
His wife and daughter, however, have hit the slopes since arriving earlier in the week.
Clinton came to Utah on Thursday after travelling to central Florida and northern California, where he met victims of El Nino-inspired storms that caused a string of deadly tornadoes in Florida.

Cable car jet may have had faulty altimeter

The Italian lawyer for the crew of the US warplane jet that swooped low and severed a ski gondola cable in the Alps, killing 20, said the plane's altimeter may have malfunctioned.
Hinting for the first time at the crew's explanation for the tragedy, Bruno Malattia said he has asked for tests on the altimeter.
Although the lawyer and the US military said the investigation is still under way, Italian media reported last week that an Italian air force investigation blamed pilot error.

Protesters get message from sky

ISLAMIST protesters got a surprise from the skies yesterday when a helicopter hired by the Turkish post office bombarded them with secularist leaflets.
Witnesses said the helicopter made two runs over a square in central Istanbul to scatter thousands of printed sheets of paper on Islamists demonstrating outside the 16th-century Beyazit mosque against government bans on Islamic attire in education.
The leaflets urged Turks to send postal votes for Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the secularist founder of Turkey.

Top concert line-up for Di tribute

A LIST of performers who will take part in a tribute concert for Princess Diana was announced yesterday.
The line-up will include; Sir Cliff Richard, Chris de Burgh, Wet Wet Wet, Lesley Garrett, Julian Lloyd Webber, Jimmy Nail, Royal Academy of Music, Chicken Shed Theatre Company, Andrea Bocelli, New College Choir, and Soweto String Quartet.

Woman jailed for cake poisoning

A FRENCH court yesterday sentenced a 79-year old woman to 18 months in jail for poisoning her neighbour and his day-nurse with chocolate eclairs.
Marie-Madeleine Perrin was ordered by the judge to move house and not approach her victims when she gets out of jail.
Perrin gave Rene Michaud a bag of eclairs which he shared with his nurse and shortly afterwards the pair fell into a coma. Tests showed they had been heavily laced with tranquillisers.

Death sentence for teen cult head

THE teenage leader of a cult of self-professed vampires was sentenced yesterday to die in the electric chair for the beating deaths of a middle-aged Florida couple.
Rod Ferrell, 17, led a coven of teenagers from rural Kentucky who drank each others' blood and engaged in sex rites and animal-mutilation rituals.
In November 1996, while on a trip to Florida with friends, Ferrell inducted 15-year-old Heather Wendorf into his vampire clan, then bludgeoned her parents, Richard and Naoma Ruth Wendorf, to death with a crow bar.

Conman escapes jail for hotel scam

A CONMAN who tried to take European leading hotels and restaurants to the cleaners escaped jail yesterday.
Simone Rossi, 33, who fired off hundreds of letters claiming a waiter had spilled food over his hand-made Savile Row silk suit, was given 150 hours' community service.
The majority of his four-star and five-star targets paid up unhesitatingly after receiving Rossi's letters.

Britain asked to stop nuclear leak

SCANDINAVIAN environment ministers yesterday called on Britain to stop leakage from a nuclear plant of radioactive material that has drifted as far as Norway.
The call by the ministers' meeting in Gothenburg comes a month after reports that technetium-99 traced to the Sellafield plant had been found in shrimp near the fjord leading to Oslo.

Buggery case may fall to UK

BRITAIN could foot the legal bill for a labourer charged with indecently assaulting a sheep on military base territory in Cyprus, it emerged yesterday.
The alleged offence took place on a farm inside the British Sovereign Base area of Dhekelia.
The sheep's owner, Hambis Chiratou, told British base police he caught the suspect, 29-year-old Jaswinder Singh, naked below the waist in his barn carrying out a beastly act.
Singh was employed as a labourer at a nearby fish farm.
A base spokeman said Singh had been remanded for psychiatric reports and given a chance to seek legal aid.