National/World news
Most U.S. prisoners ready to face tribunal
Washington Most of the 594 U.S. prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, appear willing to go before a tribunal that would give them a chance to convince military officers they have been wrongly detained, the Navy secretary said Friday.
Gordon England, who is overseeing the tribunal process at the Navy base, said the first hearings will begin next week or early the following one. He offered no assessment of the prisoners’ chances for release but said anyone found to be wrongly held would be returned to his home country.
The Guantanamo tribunals were set up soon after the Supreme Court ruled the prisoners there have a right to go to U.S. civilian courts to challenge their detention. The Pentagon said the purpose of the tribunals is to prepare for those court challenges by showing that a panel of military officers has reviewed each prisoner’s case.
No charges against GI accused of cowardice
Denver The military has decided not to pursue charges against a U.S. soldier accused of cowardice after he sought help for panic attacks.
After Staff Sgt. Georg-Andreas Pogany asked for counseling while in Iraq, his commanders sent him home to Fort Carson to face a court-martial on a cowardice charge, which can be punishable by death.
The Army later replaced it with the lesser dereliction-of-duty charge, which could have put Pogany behind bars for six months.
On Thursday, Pogany and military officials confirmed the case is finished.
Sgt. 1st Class Blake Waltman, a public affairs officer with the Army’s Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, N.C., said charges were dropped because the military learned Pogany “may have a medical problem that requires care and treatment.”
Pogany, 32, had been the first U.S. soldier since Vietnam to be charged with cowardice.
A five-year veteran, Pogany said his problems surfaced after he saw the mangled body of an Iraqi man cut in half by American gunfire.
Pogany said he has physical and psychological problems that stem from brain damage caused by a reaction to the anti-malaria drug Lariam. He is part of a military study looking into complaints from U.S. troops exposed to drugs and chemicals.
$4.8 million tendered for Roman glass bowl
London A bidder paid $4.8 million for an ancient Roman glass bowl, believed used some 1,800 years ago as an oil lamp.
The bowl, known as the Constable-Maxwell cage-cup, dates from the third century A.D. and was sold Wednesday at Bonhams auction house in London to a telephone bidder, who wasn’t identified.
The 10- by 8-inch honey-colored artifact is thought to have originated in the eastern Mediterranean.
“It’s exceptionally fragile and cut from a single block of glass,” said Joanna van der Lande, head of antiquities at Bonhams. “It’s something that would have been highly important in its day.”
Love prompted suits, plaintiff explains
Bucharest, Romania Sandu Gurguiatu first sued for money. Then he sued for love.
The love-struck Romanian took his company to court four years ago for what he said was unfair dismissal. But after setting eyes on Judge Elena Lala, he sued his employers and others dozens of times – just to see her.
“I fell madly in love with her and when I found out she was married, I didn’t know how I would manage to see her,” he told the daily Libertatea. “The only way was to see her in the courtroom, so I looked in the law book and came up with all kinds of excuses.”
Sometimes he would approach her in the halls of the courtroom in Focsani, a city some 125 miles northeast of Bucharest, but was too timid to talk to her about anything but legal matters, the paper reported.
The Focsani court declined to comment on the report in the newspaper. Lala, the object of Gurguiatu’s affection, told the paper she was “stunned.”
“I remember judging his cases, but for me all cases are equal,” she said.
Gurguiatu lost his first suit. But he won some subsequent ones against other companies – including the right to have two towels and more soap.