Pinochet faces more charges

Fri., Nov. 25, 2005

Compiled from wire reports The Spokesman-Review

Santiago, Chile Former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet was indicted on human rights charges Thursday and placed under house arrest, hours after he made bail on unrelated corruption charges filed only a day earlier.

In a widely expected decision, Judge Victor Montiglio charged Pinochet in connection with the kidnapping and disappearance of six dissidents in the early years of his 1973-90 dictatorship, his office said. Montiglio sent a court secretary to Pinochet’s Santiago mansion to inform the general of the charges, which will force him to spend his 90th birthday today under arrest. The judge did not grant Pinochet bail.

The new indictment involves the disappearance of six dissidents arrested by Pinochet’s security services in late 1974. They were among 119 people, some of whose bodies were later found in Argentina, who disappeared in a case known as Operation Colombo.

Jordan king prods premier on terrorism

Amman, Jordan Jordan’s King Abdullah II appointed a new prime minister Thursday and urged him to launch an all-out war against Islamic militancy in the wake of the deadly triple hotel bombings earlier this month.

Abdullah also called for a new anti-terrorism law to replace the current, general one that does not specify punishment for different terrorist acts and their perpetrators.

The appointment of a new premier came after Prime Minister Adnan Badran, 69, resigned earlier Thursday.

Serb leader suggests partitioning Kosovo

Belgrade, Serbia-Montenegro

Serbia’s president on Thursday formally proposed dividing Kosovo between its independence-seeking Albanian majority and a Serb minority as the chief U.N. mediator met with government officials.

Martti Athisaari, the envoy who was appointed earlier this month by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and is on his initial fact-finding mission in the Balkans, said the troubled province’s final status will ultimately be decided by the Security Council after his report.

The U.N.-sponsored process is aimed at settling one of the most intractable disputes left over from the ethnic and sectarian wars in former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Opposition leader charged in Uganda

Kampala, Uganda Uganda filed new charges of terrorism and illegal firearms possession against the country’s jailed opposition leader Thursday in a military court controlled by the president’s trusted aides.

Opposition leader Kizza Besigye believes the charges, which carry the death penalty, are baseless and he refused to answer them at a closed military court session, said defense lawyer Sam Njuba. The military charges came as Besigye was expected to appear before Uganda’s civilian High Court for a bail hearing that might have set him free on the civilian charges. The government did not specify why it was accusing Besigye of terrorism.

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