Four U.S. soldiers face disciplinary action for burning Taliban bodies
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – Four U.S. soldiers face disciplinary action for burning the bodies of two Taliban rebels-a videotaped incident that sparked outrage in Afghanistan-but they will not be prosecuted because their actions were motivated by hygienic concerns, the military said Saturday.
TV footage recorded Oct. 1 in a violent part of southern Afghanistan showed American soldiers setting fire to the bodies and then boasting about the act on loudspeakers to taunt insurgents suspected to be hiding in a nearby village.
Islam bans cremation, and the video images were compared to photographs of U.S. troops abusing prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison. Afghanistan’s government condemned the desecration. Muslim clerics warned of a violent anti-American backlash, though there have been no protests so far.
Car bombs kill 10 in Iraq; More attacks on election workers in run-up to December vote
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Car bombs killed 10 people Saturday in Baghdad and elsewhere in central Iraq, while gunmen opened fire on campaign workers putting up posters in the run-up to next month’s parliamentary elections.
Also Saturday, the U.S. military said it has received information that a top aide to the leader of al Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, was killed last month in Ramadi. The death of Bilal Mahmud Awad Shebah was confirmed by a close relative and “coalition sources,” the military said in a statement.
The violence came two days before Saddam Hussein’s trial resumes after a five-week break.
The first prosecution witnesses are expected to testify before the five-judge panel, offering accounts of the deaths of more than 140 Shiite villagers following an assassination attempt against Saddam in the town of Dujail in 1982.
If convicted Saddam and his seven co-defendants could be sentenced to death by hanging.
Dozens of men arrested in mass gay wedding face hormone treatment
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – More than two dozen gay Arab men-arrested at what police called a mass homosexual wedding-could face government-ordered hormone treatments, five years in jail and a lashing, authorities said Saturday.
The Interior Ministry said police raided a hotel chalet earlier this month and arrested 22 men from the Emirates as they celebrated the wedding ceremony, one of a string of recent group arrests of homosexuals here.
The men are likely to be tried under Muslim law on charges related to adultery and prostitution, said Interior Ministry spokesman Issam Azouri.
Outward homosexual behavior is banned in the United Arab Emirates, and the gay group wedding has alarmed leaders of this once isolated Muslim country as it grapples with a sweeping influx of Western residents and culture.
The Arabian Peninsula, nevertheless, has a long tradition of openly homosexual wedding singers and dancers.
Two jail escapees still on loose, murder suspect and six others caught
YAKIMA, Wash. – Two more jail escapees, one of them a murder suspect, were recaptured Saturday, but two others were still at large after nine inmates broke out of a maximum security area of the Yakima County Jail.
The men broke through the ceiling of the four-story jail and used a rope made of bed sheets to climb down, authorities said. Five were recaptured before they could flee the jail grounds Friday, but four others got away.
County corrections spokesman Cpl. Ken Rink had no information about how or where authorities on Saturday caught Santos Luera, 20, who was facing a Dec. 5 murder trial for the shooting death of his stepbrother, and Terry Moser, 25, who had been charged with assault.