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Libyans get life for airline bombing

A FRENCH court yesterday handed down life sentences to six Libyans, including Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's brother-in-law, for the 1989 bombing of a French airliner over Africa which killed 170 people.
None of the six was present in court or on French territory. Because the trial took place in their absence, they will have to be tried again if they ever fall into French hands.
The verdict was handed down at a trial which lasted only three days and during which State Prosecutor Gino Necchi said evidence showed Libyan authorities had orchestrated the attack.
Lawyer Francis Szpiner, representing 77 families of the victims, told reporters after the ruling: "We now have to do everything necessary to make sure Libya applies the verdict."
Szpiner said means to press Libya into doing this would be to reinforce embargoes against Tripoli, or open international negotiations on the topic, or for Libya itself to re-try the six at home under international control.
The most senior of the six accused was Abdallah Senoussi, Gaddafi's brother-in-law and reportedly deputy head of Libya's secret services. The other accused were diplomat Abdallah Elazragh and four alleged secret agents — Abdelsalam Shibani, Ibrahim Naeli, Abdelsalam Hamouda and Arbas Musbah.
UTA flight 772 was flying over the west-central African state of Niger on September 19, 1989, en route for Paris, when an explosion in a baggage container blew it out of the air. There were no survivors. The blast occurred at a time of high tension between Paris and Tripoli over Chad where French and Libyan forces had clashed in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Paris trial was held as Gaddafi seemed about to hand over two Libyans to face charges in Europe in a similar case, that of the bombing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988 in which 270 people died.
Prosecutor Necchi cited two possible motives: "The desire to kill a Libyan opponent who was meant to be on board the plane, or retaliation against France which was foiling Libyan designs in Africa."
Unlike Britain and the United States in the Lockerbie case, France did not demand the extradition of suspects in the UTA bombing, preferring to try them in their absence and then seek action from Libya if they were found guilty.
However, it has issued international arrest warrants in case the six ever leave Libya. "Just because this is a trial in absentia does not mean that it loses its force or strength. The international community should understand that our country is determined to see justice done," Necchi said.
Diplomatic sources said they thought Libya would be prepared to pay damages to families of the victims if the Paris court linked the accused to the UTA bombing, but the men would probably not serve any prison terms.

Serbs offered sweetener
on UN sanctions

SENIOR US envoy Richard Holbrooke began crisis talks with Slobodan Milosevic yesterday, pushing for a Kosovo settlement even as Yugoslav forces battled ethnic Albanian rebels in both the north and the south of the province.
Holbrooke huddled with fellow Western envoys and ambassadors of the six-nation Balkan Contact Group before entering the Yugoslav president's palace at noon for talks aimed at breaking down Milosevic's resistance to a peace plan.
Senior sources close to the talks said Holbrooke was offering Milosevic a partial lifting of stiff economic and political sanctions imposed against Yugoslavia in exchange for his approval of the peace deal. But there was no hint of a softening in Yugoslav opposition to the plan, especially the provision calling for 28,000 Nato troops to police the deal. And it appeared the ethnic Albanians were backsliding on their pledge to sign on too.
On Monday, US officials said the KLA general staff indicated it would sign the deal, which gives the ethnic Albanians broad autonomy, but not the independence they seek. However, the KLA representative in London, Pleurat Sejdiu, said yesterday that the rebels would not sign up while the war was going on in Kosovo and there were attacks on their villages.
KLA spokesman Jakup Krasniqi, one of the rebel leaders who supposedly accepted the plan on Monday, said yesterday that chances for the guerrillas to sign are 50-50.
More than 2,000 people have died and hundreds of thousands displaced in a year of fighting between Yugoslav troops and ethnic Albanian rebels. Albanians make up 90% of the population in Kosovo, a province in the Yugoslav republic of Serbia.
Peace talks that produced little progress toward a settlement last month are set to resume in Paris on Monday, but envoys are trying to win pledges from both sides beforehand.
Reflecting the problems, a top ethnic Albanian official and negotiating team member, said his delegation would return to France only to sign the agreement, not to negotiate.
"The agreement reached in Rambouillet can only have technical changes," Fehmi Agani said. "It is unacceptable to start negotiations all over in Paris as the Serb side insists."
As the talks continued in Belgrade, troops and Serb police were pushing ahead with an operation to establish control of an ethnic Albanian-populated area along Kosovo's southern border with Macedonia, while witnesses said fighting broke out this afternoon near the northern town of Vucitrn, about 18 miles north-west of Pristina.
Along the Macedonian border, the UN refugee agency said it had reports of at least four villages burning in the hills . Yugoslav forces backed by tanks and other heavy weapons have been sweeping through villages along the border across from where Nato forces are gathering, sending as many as 4,000 more ethnic Albanian villagers fleeing, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
Aid workers delivered relief supplies and were trying to evacuate residents of three villages in rocky, remote hills near the border — afraid to flee because of the overwhelming Yugoslav military presence in the area, including Serb tanks and armoured personnel carriers on the road.
In the village of Kotlina, surrounded on three sides by Yugoslav forces, about 600 people waited nervously while an estimated 400 others were hiding in nearby woods. One house had been hit by mortar, and aid workers said the Serbs had destroyed seven or eight houses near the village the previous day. Several people were reported missing. "They feel they're essentially trapped in their own village," UNHCR's Paula Ghedini said.
In the village of Ivaja, which Serb police attacked on Tuesday, most houses had been burned and were still smouldering. One elderly man, whose face was cut and bruised, said police beat him with a submachine gun butt. He refused to give his name.
Three bodies were found, at least two of them men who had been shot in the back. Residents said neither was in the KLA. A neighbour of one of the dead, Mustaf Lika, said the victim had called on a mobile phone to say police were coming into the village and they were going to make a run for it.
Elsewhere in the troubled province, there were reports of continuing clashes in the northern Podujevo area between Serb forces and the rebels, and international monitors said a policeman was wounded in shooting along the Malisevo-Lapusnik road.
"The situation is essentially deteriorating rather than improving ahead of the resumption of peace talks," UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski said in Geneva.

Monica can't tell if Clinton's
good wishes are heartfelt

MONICA LEWINSKY yesterday said she can no longer tell when President Clinton is being honest and could not fully accept his good wishes towards her at the weekend.
In an interview with Woman's Hour on BBC Radio 4, she said she "appreciated" his remark, but said it was also sad.
"I now look at him and I think I have heard that tone of voice and I have seen that look before and it wasn't true. So I don't know any more when he is being honest and when he is not."
When the President was asked at the weekend about the former White House intern whose affair with him dragged her through the highest American courts, Mr Clinton said: "She paid quite a high price for a long time and I feel badly for that.
"You know, this was a pretty tough thing for everybody involved. And I wish you well. I hope it works out all right for you."
Miss Lewinsky, 25, expressed her own regrets for the damage the affair had done to Mr Clinton's family, saying: "In retrospect it is something that weighs on my mind a lot, more than it did then."
But she quickly passed over an opportunity to apologise to his wife Hillary, and said she felt more sorry for his daughter Chelsea.
''I think I feel worse for her because she means so much to him, so I have a lot of guilt for that."
She is in Britain to promote the book Monica's Story, which reveals she aborted another man's child while she was seeing Clinton.
She told Woman's Hour interviewer Jenni Murray that it was double standards for critics to express distaste that she was be having two relationships at once.
"Somehow as a woman I am questioned why - when the President was involved with at least one other woman, his wife - why I might be looking for a more fulfilling relationship with someone else.
''I felt it was important for people to understand what was going on in my life right before I made the horrible decision of confiding in Lynda Tripp, which was sort of out of character for me. I think I was clinically depressed at the time," she said.
Miss Lewinsky was on the verge of pulling out of the Woman's Hour appearance yesterday, but finally agreed to a recorded interview.
Miss Lewinsky burst into tears at her first British photocall in Harrods bookstore on Monday and was smarting from a critical Daily Telegraph interview with Jan Moir published yesterday.
But it was evidently not being called "vain and shallow" that upset her so much, but slurs on her "thick ankles" and dumpy walk.
"When a woman writes about another woman and writes such a derogatory article, they should run a full page picture of themselves as well and then sometimes people would understand where they are coming from.
"I think the cruellest things have been said by women."

Dalai Lama speaks out against China

ON the 40th anniversary of his people's exile, the Dalai Lama yesterday accused China of lacking the ''political will and courage'' to seek a compromise on autonomy for Tibet.
Meanwhile, Tibetan protesters in New Delhi burned 40 Chinese flags, lit firecrackers and burned an effigy representing Chinese President Jiang Zemin.
The crowd also stood in silence for a minute to honour Tibetans who had died over the last four decades of Chinese rule.
An estimated 5,000 people, many in traditional Tibetan dress, strode behind the Tibetan flag toward the Indian parliament building, chanting slogans against what they call the Chinese occupation of their Himalayan homeland.
In the northern town of Dharmsala, the Dalai Lama told 4,000 Tibetans and international observers that China has intensified the repression of his people and was not prepared to hold talks.
''A lack of political will and courage on the part of the Chinese leadership has resulted in their failure to reciprocate my numerous overtures over the years,'' he said.
Among his listeners were 600 refugees who reached Dharmsala last month after making the dangerous trek across some of the highest mountain passes in the world in the dead of winter.
Tibetans are marking 40 years since the uprising against Chinese rule that resulted in the crackdown that forced the Dalai Lama to flee into exile. March 10 is known as Tibetan National Day in the Tibetan calendar.
About 5,000 Tibetans also demonstrated yesterday in the Nepalese capital of Katmandu. ''We want free Tibet. Tibet for the Tibetans, Long Live Dalai Lama,'' chanted the protesters.
The Dalai Lama has been facing increasing pressure from younger Tibetans to abandon his moderate approach and demand full independence. But he said in his speech he was confident he could control the radicals if China agreed to a ''just and fair solution.'' He pledged to ''use my moral authority to persuade the Tibetans not to seek separation.''
In his speech, the Dalai Lama said secret talks with China through unidentified intermediaries broke down late last year ''without obvious reason.'' That ended 18 months of hopeful informal contacts.
China sent its army into Tibet in 1950, claiming it was historically a Chinese province. Tibetans say they were independent for generations. Since the Dalai Lama fled, about 120,000 Tibetans have followed him into exile in India. Thousands more live in Europe and North America. Hollywood stars Richard Gere and Goldie Hawn were among the audience for the Dalai Lama's speech.

US claim bin Laden still
at large in Afghanistan

SUSPECTED terrorist Osama bin Laden is believed to be still in Afghanistan, despite Afghan leaders' assertion that he left, a senior US official said.
"We do believe he remains in Afghanistan itself," Karl Inderfurth, assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, told a congressional hearing yesterday.
"We have seen no effort by the Taliban to expel him."
In mid-February, Afghanistan's Taliban rulers said bin Laden, a Saudi exile, had disappeared from Afghanistan, where he has been training terrorists for years. The Taliban say they do not know where he went, although 10 Afghan agents are reported to be with him, both to protect and to spy on him.
Meanwhile, the UN has told US officials that some of its relief workers are getting ready to go back to Afghanistan more than six months after a UN Adviser's death there prompted evacuation of its international staff.
US authorities want bin Laden captured to face criminal charges in connection with the terrorist bombings last August that devastated US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing more than 200 people, including a dozen Americans.
In retaliation, President Bill Clinton ordered US missiles to strike bin Laden's Afghanistan training camps on August 20. Since then, the Taliban, which controls close to 90% of Afghanistan amid a civil war, has claimed it is pressuring bin Laden to rein in his activities.
Inderfurth, who has met with Taliban officials, told the Senate Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee the US attack hurt bin Laden's operations, but he remains a threat. His satellite phone communications have been curtailed, but he remains on the move, Inderfurth said.
"Despite hollow protestations that Osama bin Laden is missing, there is no evidence he has left Afghanistan," Inderfurth said. "Our experts and other informed observers believe he remains in Taliban-controlled territory. The Taliban are playing a risky and unwise game in attempting to convince us otherwise."

Doctors attack strangle
claim in Woodward case

A US television news magazine report on the case involving British au pair Louise Woodward brought a strong response from a group of more than 70 physicians, who debunked the broadcast as preposterous.
The US programme 60 Minutes reported on Sunday that two doctors believe eight-month-old Matthew Eappen was strangled — not shaken and slammed by Louise Woodward as prosecutors charged.
In a letter sent on Tuesday to TV network CBS, the paediatricians and forensic experts said the network and the two doctors interviewed by the programme owe an apology to the baby's parents, Drs Sunil and Deborah Eappen.
Many of the physicians who signed the letter put their names on another missive in November 1997 that attacked Ms Woodward's defence theory.
During her murder trial, Ms Woodward's lawyers argued the baby died from an old injury that suffered a "re-bleed" prior to his hospitalisation.
On 60 Minutes on Sunday, neuropathologist Dr Floyd Gilles and radiologist Dr Marvin Nelson, both affiliated with Children's Hospital in Los Angeles, offered the theory that Matthew was strangled up to 48 hours before his hospitalisation on February 4, 1997.
Defence lawyers said they may return to court with what the doctors said. Prosecutors said there is no evidence to warrant reopening the case.
Ms Woodward denied harming Matthew, but jurors convicted her of second-degree murder. A judge later reduced that to manslaughter and set her free.
The group of letter-writing physicians, led by Dr Carole Jenny of Brown University's School of Medicine in Providence, Rhode Island, said the strangulation theory is not supported by medical literature.
"Our doctors have seen the evidence first hand. These doctors who wrote the letter haven't," said Kevin Tedesco, a spokesman for 60 Minutes.
Supporters of the Eappens yesterday continued to criticise the 60 Minutes report after it was disclosed that a freelance journalist said she got microscopic samples of Matthew's brain tissue through one of Woodward's lawyers and took them to the Los Angeles doctors for analysis.
Katie Leishman got the samples after the 1997 trial, The Boston Globe reported yesterday.
Leishman's report on the case was the basis of the 60 Minutes programme.
Giving samples of the child's brain tissue to Leishman has raised questions of ethics and appropriateness.
"To take a piece of their child and give it away to a reporter to support their cause is unconscionable, and it's sleazy," said Matthew McClue, a friend of the boy's parents, told the Globe.

Woodward trial brain tissue was handed over to reporter

A JOURNALIST says she was given microscopic brain tissue from Matthew Eappen, the child killed by British au pair Louise Woodward, from a defence lawyer.
Katie Leishman, a freelance journalist, got the samples after the 1997 trial at which Louise Woodward was convicted of the murder of the eight-month-old boy, The Boston Globe reported.
Leishman's report on the case was the basis of US TV's 60 Minutes programme, in which two California doctors suggested Matthew was strangled, not killed by being shaken and having his head slammed against something hard, as prosecutors charged.
Giving samples of the child's brain tissue to Leishman has raised questions of ethics and appropriateness.
''My God, there's got to be some kind of ethical limitations to what a defence attorney can do with evidence they get in a criminal trial,'' said Matthew McCue, a friend of the boy's parents, Drs Sunil and Deborah Eappen.
''It's a body part, and the family has a right to have that treated with respect,'' said George Annas, professor of health law at Boston University's School of Public Health.
"It can't be shipped around the country,'' he said.
''The defence obtained these samples for use in a criminal case, and that's why I believe it's inappropriate for them to forward it on to a media source, said Fredric Ellis, lawyer for the Eappens. ''The law's not clear on this.
"As far as I can tell, it's an area that hasn't really been addressed, but it's clearly a disturbing practice,'' he said.
But Middlesex County District Attorney Martha Coakley, a prosecutor in the case, said she would have made the sample available for investigation by ''somebody we trusted to look at it.''
Leishman told the Globe she watched the 1997 trial and decided to do some research because of the ''polarisation of experts'' testifying about the boy's injuries.
She said she sought a brain tissue sample from the defence after Coakley told her the defence and prosecution had identical samples.

Two killed in death sentence demonstrations

PALESTINIAN police opened fire on protesters yesterday, killing two teenagers, after a military court sentenced a security agent to death for his involvement in the killing of another agent.
In the Gaza town of Rafah, near the Egyptian border, where the sentenced man lives, protesters from his extended family hurled rocks and bottles at the house of the man he was convicted of killing and troops opened fire to disperse the crowd.
In an effort to quell the unrest security forces clamped a curfew on the area. Troops stopped people on the street and asked non-residents - including journalists - to leave.
The case highlighted the difficulties of reining in rival security branches that do not have clear mandates and illustrated the friction between powerful families and the rule of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority.
As he was led away from the Gaza City court, Raed Attar, 25, shouted ''There is no justice in Palestine. This court decision has been fabricated.''
Outside the courtroom, about 100 members of Attar's family shouted ''We want justice!'' and ''We will not allow this sentence to pass!''
The severity of the sentence was unexpected, although Captain Rifat Joudeh's family had demanded a death sentence.
It was not clear when Attar was to be executed by firing squad - a death sentence handed down last month against a Palestinian security official was carried out within hours.
The five judge court also handed down long prison sentences to two of Attar's colleagues for their role in the killing of Captain Rifat Joudeh, a member of the Preventive Security Service, in a gun battle last month .
All three were former members of the Islamic militant group Hamas who had joined a small band of ex-vigilantes, the Special Security Bureau.

Charles' appeal to allow
Falklanders to live in peace

BRITAIN'S Prince of Wales yesterday appealed to the people of Argentina to let Falkland Islanders live in peace.
But as the Prince spoke at a presidential dinner in the Argentine capital Buenos Aires, 200 anti-British demonstrators — some with banners proclaiming ''Pirate Prince Go Home'' — battled with heavily-armed police on the streets nearby.
Protesters burned the Union flag as police in riot gear fired tear gas and called in water cannon when demonstrators threw a petrol bomb at a road block.
Inside the Alvear Palace Hotel, Charles called for reconciliation over the Falklands which had brought Britain and Argentina to war in 1982.
He told an influential audience, including Argentina's President Carlos Menem:
''My hope is that the people of modern, democratic Argentina, with their passionate attachment to their national traditions, will in the future be able to live amicably alongside the people of another modern, if rather smaller, democracy lying a few hundred miles off your coast and be able to do so in a spirit of mutual understanding and respect, so that neither will again need to feel any fear from, or hostility towards, the other.
''Such an understanding can only reinforce our own friendship,'' he added. ''Today, so many old friendships between us are being rebuilt.''
The forthright speech was as close as the Prince could go without becoming embroiled in the wrangle over sovereignty of the Falklands.
He concluded by toasting the Argentine nation in Spanish.
In his speech to the dinner, in honour of the Prince, President Menem made no reference to the Falklands.

Death sentence hangs
over multiple murderer

THE prosecution seeking the death sentence for convicted multiple murderer Charles Ng concluded its case last night after presenting more evidence from victims' relatives.
Denise Gerald, sister of Jeff Gerald, who disappeared on February 24, 1985, said: "It's just unbelievable. There are so many victims, so many besides my brother."
British-educated Ng, 38, was convicted on February 24 of killing six men, three women and two baby boys during the mid-1980s. Only two bodies were ever identified.
After yesterday's short hearing, Judge John Ryan, sitting in Santa Ana, California sent the jury home until April 12, when defence lawyers return to argue against the death penalty.
Ng was accused of helping Leonard Lake in a spree of kidnapping, bondage and sadism in Northern California.
Prosecutors argued that Ng helped Lake kill men to get their valuables and identification; the pair allegedly used kidnapped women as sex slaves and killed the babies because they were in the way.
During the trial, jurors watched home video-tapes of Ng and Lake taunting two bound women at Lake's house. The women were never seen again.
An arrest warrant was issued for Ng after Lake was stopped in June 1985 by police in South San Francisco. Lake killed himself with a cyanide capsule after officers turned up murder evidence while questioning him about a shoplifting.

Slap attack on Premier
widow blow for feminism

A WOMAN who slapped the busty blonde widow of Greece's Socialist patriarch Andreas Papandreou told a court yesterday she was striking a blow for feminism.
But three Athens judges convicted Anastasia Athini of assault, and jailed her for seven months for hitting Dimitra Liani. She appealed and was released.
Athini became a household name when she slapped Liani on live television as the widow was launching a tell-all autobiography about her life with the late Premier Papandreou.
She accused former airline stewardess Liani, 43, of insulting women with her behaviour.
"My action was not kind but it was dignified," Athini told the court. "I was offended as a woman, as a mother and as a Greek citizen. I was offended that the premier ran after her like a little dog."
Liani's best selling book, 10 Years and 54 Days, describes her extramarital affair with Papandreou, who was twice her age.
The scandal — which featured almost daily topless photographs of Liani in newspapers — contributed to Papandreou's election defeat in 1989 after eight years in power.
He divorced his wife, married Liani, and was re-elected in 1993 but his new wife was criticised for unduly influencing his administration.
Athini said: "All I care about is that my action was judged as positive in the Greek people's conscience." 

Woman charged with
shooting daughter

A 67-YEAR-OLD Florida woman was charged with shooting her daughter in the head after hearing the younger woman's plans to put her in a nursing home, police said on Tuesday.
Shirley Egan was arrested and jailed on Monday on a charge of attempted murder in connection with the shooting of her daughter, Georgett Smith, 42. Smith was declared clinically dead on Tuesday and the charge was expected to be upgraded to murder, Orange County Sheriff's Cpl. Angelo Nieves said.
Investigators said Egan overheard a conversation between Smith and her boyfriend, Larry Videlock, 50, at the apartment the three shared.
Egan allegedly shot Smith in the head with a four-inch (mm) revolver, then pointed the gun at Videlock. She fired, missing him, and Videlock wrestled the gun from her and called for help. Nieves said investigators did not know why Smith wanted to put her mother in a nursing home, but they believed the older woman had medical problems. 

Aficionado of Nazi era is
sentenced for drug dealing

A MAN who distributed more than nine tons of marijuana and used the profits to buy around $2 million of Nazi memorabilia was sentenced on yesterday to 30 months in federal prison.
Brynn Garrett Downey (46) used his drug proceeds to purchase Field Marshal Hermann Goering's Luftwaffe coat and personal wedding sword, among other items, prosecutors said.
The memorabilia, worth up to $2 million, were forfeited after Downey's guilty plea, in May 1997, to one count of conspiracy to distribute marijuana and three counts of filing false tax returns. Prosecutors said US Attorney General Janet Reno would decide what to do with the Nazi items.
Downey distributed the drugs for a Mexican drug cartel, headed by kingpin Angel Rios, which sold some $7 million worth of marijuana between 1993 and 1996, prosecutors said. He received a light sentence because of his guilty plea, his repayment to the Internal Revenue of $500,000 and his volunteer work in his hometown of Laguna Beach, California, since being arrested.

© Examiner Publications Ltd, 1999