BBC news 2009-10-28 加文本

BBC 2009-10-28


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BBC News with Nick Kelly.

The prosecution of the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague has opened its case against the former Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic. Prosecutors called him the supreme commander of the campaign of ethnic cleansing during the Bosnian War of the 1990s. Mr. Karadzic was not in court. He is boycotting the trial because he says he needs more time to prepare his defence. The trial judge, O-Gon Kwon, ruled that the proceedings should not be delayed by his absence.
"Although the accused has duly been informed of the commencement of the trial, he has chosen not to exercise his right to be present. In light of the accused voluntarily and unequivocally waiving his right to be present at these proceedings, the chamber is of the view that this hearing can proceed in his absence."
Mr. Karadzic’s successor as Bosnian Serb President, Biljana Plavsic, has arrived back in Serbia after serving 2/3 of an 11-year sentence for crimes against humanity. Mrs. Plavsic was sentenced by the Hague Tribunal in 2003 after surrendering to the court and pleading guilty to one count as part of a plea bargain. Mrs. Plavsic, who is now 79, was released early for good behaviour.

A former French interior minister, Charles Pasqua, has been jailed for a year for his part in an illegal shipment of arms to Angola in the 1990s, during the country’s civil war. A son of the former French president Francois Mitterrand, Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, was given a suspended sentence and fined over half a million dollars in the same case. Mr. Pasqua is to appeal. Alex Sanford reports from Paris.
The 82-year-old former interior minister, who wasn’t in court, was given a three-year jail sentence with two suspended and fined. Jean-Christophe Mitterrand, an advisor on African affairs when his father was president, was given a two-year suspended sentence for taking kickbacks of more than two million dollars. In the deal, tanks, warships, helicopters and anti-personnel mines were shipped to Angola from Eastern Europe in sales worth nearly 800 million dollars.

Prosecutors in the United States have charged two men with conspiring to commit acts of terror on overseas targets, including a Danish newspaper at the centre of a controversy four years ago over cartoons it published of the Prophet Mohammad. The two men, David Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, live in the Chicago area. Jonathan Beale reports.
David Headley was arrested earlier this month by FBI agents as he was preparing to travel to Pakistan. Court papers say that David Headley made two separate trips to Denmark this year. It’s alleged that he’s visited offices belonging to the Danish newspaper that published the highly controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. The prosecution says that earlier Headley had posted a message on a website saying that he was disposed towards violence. Tahawwur Hussain Rana has been accused of helping with those plans.

World News from the BBC.

Eight American soldiers have been killed in bomb attacks in southern Afghanistan, making October the deadliest for US forces since the war against the Taliban started eight years ago. Fifty-five soldiers have died this month either in combats or in accidents. President Obama is currently considering a request from a senior American general in Afghanistan to send an extra 40,000 soldiers there.

Police in India have taken control of a passenger train which has been stopped and stormed by hundreds of militia members linked to Maoist insurgents. The train, the Rajdhani Express, was attacked in a remote jungle area of West Bangle on a journey from Delhi. The authorities are now making arrangements to get the hundreds of stranded passengers back to Delhi.

An international conference is taking place in Nepal with the aim of saving the tiger from extinction. Participants of the conference, which is backed by the World Bank, will discuss strategies for tiger conservation. Sarah Rainsford reports.
Tiger hunting is already illegal worldwide and the trade in tiger parts is banned by dozens of countries. But the tiger population is still declining. With fewer than 4,000 of the big cats still left in the wild, the case of protecting them is urgent. The prime minister of Nepal says the main threats today are from the loss of habitat and from poaching and he’s calling for collective international action to prevent the tiger population from dying out.

And the New York Supreme Court has ruled that the most prestigious event in sailing, the America’s Cup, cannot be held in the United Arab Emirates. The UAE was chosen as the venue by the defending champions, the Swiss team Alinghi. But the US Challenge Oracle argued that the venue was unsafe because it’s close to Iran and Alinghi had broken the rules by choosing it. The court agreed and ruled the next challenge must take place either in the southern hemisphere or in the Spanish port of Valencia, where the last settled races were held in 2007.

BBC News.