World in brief: Sept. 11 participant screams in court
The last local member of the infamous Hamburg sleeper cell that planned and carried out the Sept. 11 terror attacks broke four years of silence Friday to scream out his innocence when he appeared before a German court for sentencing.
Mounir el Motassadeq, a 32-year-old former engineering student from Morocco, laughed as he settled down behind the bulletproof glass of a Hamburg court.
This was his third time appearing before a Hamburg court to be sentenced for crimes related to the Sept. 11 attacks. Twice, higher courts had thrown out those sentences – at issue a U.S. refusal to allow terror suspects to appear as witnesses he said would exonerate him.
In November, German prosecutors narrowed the charges against him, focusing on the 246 people who died in the jet crashes rather than the almost 3,000 victims of the attacks. Germany’s highest appeals court, which tossed out earlier sentences, found him guilty of accessory to murder and of being a member of a terrorist group.
Court officials believe the sentence will be pronounced Monday. He faces a maximum 15 years in prison.
SAO PAULO, Brazil
Slides, flooding leave 27 dead
Mudslides and flash floods triggered by torrential downpours killed at least 27 people and drove thousands from their homes during the past five days in southeastern Brazil, officials said Friday.
Poor areas in the mountainous region of Rio de Janeiro state, about 310 miles northeast of Sao Paulo, were the worst hit, civil defense authorities said.
Most of the victims were poor people whose homes – built precariously on the hillsides surrounding the four cities – were buried in mudslides. More than 12,000 people were forced to abandon their homes for temporary shelter in churches, schools, sport gymnasiums and other public buildings.
The latest deaths were registered early Friday in Sumidoro, where six people were buried alive under tons of mud.
Some of those killed were children asleep when the mudslides occurred.
PUNTA ARENAS, Chile
American rescued at sea after storm
An American sailor who spent three days adrift after a storm dashed his round-the- world voyage was headed toward land Friday after being rescued in treacherous waters off the southern tip of South America.
Ken Barnes, 47, waved as a navy plane guided the Polar Pesca 1 fishing vessel across calm waters. An inflatable boat with four men aboard approached his yacht early Friday some 500 miles from the western entry to the Straits of Magellan.
A Chilean navy plane spotted the crippled 44-foot ketch after Barnes fired a flare on Wednesday evening.
Barnes’ only injury was a long gash in his right thigh, but Valenzuela said the wound had been treated and covered.
His boat, the Privateer, was heavily damaged by a storm with strong winds and 40-foot waves that thwarted Barnes’ attempt to become the first American to circumnavigate the world in a solo, nonstop voyage from the West Coast. He left California on Oct. 28.