Police detain Nepal protesters
Katmandu, Nepal Baton-wielding police beat protesters and arrested hundreds Monday during nationwide rallies against the king’s emergency rule, while communist rebels torched buses and threatened to step up attacks against the government.
The demonstrations coincided with Monday’s U.N. Human Rights Conference in Geneva, which was expected to criticize King Gyanendra’s power grab of Feb. 1, when he imposed emergency rule and suspended civil liberties.
Police on Monday clubbed demonstrators in at least two southern towns, injuring at least nine people.
The insurgency, which the rebels say is inspired by Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong, has claimed more than 10,500 lives.
Kosovo’s ex-PM pleads not guilty
The Hague, Netherlands Kosovo’s former prime minister pleaded not guilty Monday to a list of atrocities he allegedly committed as a commander of the Western-backed ethnic Albanian separatists, and a former Bosnian Serb paramilitary commander surrendered to the U.N. war crimes tribunal – the 11th suspect to do so this year.
Ramush Haradinaj, 36, who resigned Wednesday as Kosovo’s prime minister, responded “not guilty” to each of 37 counts of war crimes allegedly committed in 1998.
U.N. prosecutors say Haradinaj and his deputies executed a criminal plan to persecute, murder, rape and abuse Serbs and Gypsies in the Albanian-dominated province.
He also was accused of personally participating in beatings and torture, including the abuse of Albanian civilians who were believed to have collaborated with Serbs.
Koreans cut off fingers over islands
Seoul, South Korea Two South Korean demonstrators each cut off a finger outside the Japanese Embassy in Seoul on Monday to protest Tokyo’s territorial claim to a set of islets controlled by South Korea, and Japan recalled its ambassador over the same issue.
The demonstrators’ protest followed a proposal by Japanese provincial lawmakers to establish a commemoration day to bolster Tokyo’s claim to the small islands, called Dokdo in Korea and Takeshima in Japan.
South Korea has warned it is willing to risk its relations with Japan over the territorial dispute.
U.N. tribunal jails Rwandan ex-official
Arusha, Tanzania A U.N. tribunal sentenced a former local government official in western Rwanda to six years in prison Monday after he pleaded guilty to committing crimes against humanity and apologized for his role in the 1994 genocide.
Vincent Rutaganira, 60, was accused of directing police and extremist Hutu militias to kill thousands of Tutsis who had sought refuge in a church in Rwanda’s western Kibuye province.
Rutaganira, who was a councilor in Kibuye, was initially charged with 19 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the Geneva Conventions.
Last year, prosecutors agreed to reduce the charges to one count of crimes against humanity by extermination in exchange for a guilty plea.
Rutaganira was only the fourth person to plead guilty before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
More than 500,000 people, most of them minority Tutsis, were killed in the genocide.
During the trial, Rutaganira admitted he did not try to protect Tutsi who sought refuge in his locality, and expressed remorse for the killings.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has convicted 21 people and acquitted three since it was set up in November 2004. Currently 25 people are on trial and 18 others waiting.