Islamic militiamen break up wedding

The Islamic militiamen controlling the Somali capital broke up a wedding celebration because a band was playing and women and men were socializing together, witnesses said Saturday, describing the latest crackdown by a group feared to be installing Taliban-style rule in this African nation.

The Islamic fighters beat band members with electrical cables and confiscated their equipment, said Asha Ilmi Hashi, a singer with the group Mogadishu Stars.

“We had warned the family not to include in their ceremony what is not allowed by the sharia law. This includes the mixing of men and women and playing music,” Sheik Iise Salad, who heads an Islamic court in the northeastern Huriwaa District, told the Associated Press. “That is why we raided and took their equipment.”

“What was going [on] there was un-Islamic,” Salad said.

The late Friday attack came three days after militiamen in central Somalia shot and killed two people at the screening of a World Cup soccer broadcast banned because it violated the fighters’ strict interpretation of Islamic law.

Mexico City

Judge drops genocide charges

Genocide charges were dropped against former Mexican President Luis Echeverria on Saturday when a judge ruled that the statute of limitations had expired, his lawyer said.

Attorney Juan Velazquez said that the federal judge had overturned a house arrest order on the genocide charges, which stemmed from a 1968 student massacre.

Echeverria was interior secretary when the massacre took place. He went on to serve as president from 1970-1976.

The decision was the latest blow to prosecutors’ attempts to bring charges against Echeverria for his actions during Mexico’s so-called Dirty War, a violent crackdown on leftist dissidents in the 1960s and 1970s.

Prosecutors can still appeal the decision, but Velazquez said he was confident that the ruling would be upheld.