Moroccan convicted of 9/11 complicity
A Moroccan man was convicted of being an accessory to murder in the Sept. 11 attacks, as a German appeals court ruled Thursday that evidence showed he knew the plotters planned to hijack and crash planes.
The Federal Court of Justice found that a Hamburg court decided wrongly last year to acquit Mounir el Motassadeq of direct involvement in the attacks, even as it convicted him of membership in a terrorist organization and sentenced him to seven years in prison.
El Motassadeq, 32, was a close friend of hijackers Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah when they lived and studied in Hamburg. He has acknowledged training at an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan but insists he knew nothing of their plans.
“The defendant is guilty not only of membership in a terrorist organization, but also as an accessory to murder of the 246 passengers and crew members of the crashed aircraft,” the federal court said.
It ordered the Hamburg court to reconsider his sentence. El Motassadeq, who was not present for the ruling, now could face a maximum of 15 years in prison.
Mexico City
Government critic slain in home
A former general manager of one of Mexico’s oldest newspapers was found slain in his apartment in the capital Thursday, officials said, a week after he went public with his book criticizing the federal government, the business community and newspaper employees.
Jose Manuel Nava, 53, who was the last top administrator and editor of the Excelsior newspaper when it was still being run as a cooperative, was found by a cleaning lady who entered his apartment, said Mexico City Police Department spokeswoman Patricia Espinoza.
It appeared that Nava had been stabbed to death, said authorities at the scene who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record to the media.
Espinoza said Nava’s death was being considered a homicide, but she could not say immediately how he was killed.
Gauhati, India
Overrun by rats, region fears famine
A rare flowering of wild bamboo plants has caused the rat population to explode in northeastern India, raising fears of famine as the rodents rampage through rice paddies, officials said Thursday.
An alert has been declared in Mizoram state, with authorities supplying rat poison free to nearly 10,000 farmers and paying them to make bamboo traps, said local Agriculture Minister H. Rammawi.
“The situation in Mizoram state is alarming. Farmers are killing rats in tons after we directed them to do so using poison or locally made traps,” Rammawi told the Associated Press.
The rat population is growing rapidly as they feast on flowering wild bamboo plants – a phenomenon that usually occurs roughly every 50 years, Rammawi said. The last time the bamboo flowered in the region, in 1959, a famine ensured, he said.