Japanese gangster sentenced to hang for mayor's assassination

TOKYO, 27 May — A Japanese court on Monday sentenced a gangster to death by hanging for gunning down the mayor of Nagasaki in a rare assassination that led the country to tighten controls on guns.

Tetsuya Shiroo, 60, who was associated with Japan's largest criminal syndicate, was convicted of shooting Mayor Iccho Ito as he campaigned for re-election in April last year.

"This was a crime that shook the democratic system from its root and was equivalent to denying the electoral process," Judge Yoshimichi Matsuo said in the southwestern city, as quoted by Jiji Press.

Shiroo's "crime was premeditated with a strong intention of murder. Shiroo made the decision to assassinate him immediately after he expressed his candidacy," Matsuo said.

The judge said Shiroo blamed his personal financial problems on the mayor's administration and decided to "flaunt his power" by killing him.

Shiroo had previously had a dispute with the city authorities over compensation for a traffic accident.

Shiroo, wearing a pale pink shirt underneath a suit, stood and showed no emotion as the judge read the verdict, Jiji Press said.

He said during the trial that he was ready to be hanged.

"I would like to sincerely receive the ultimate punishment," he had said.

A court official confirmed to AFP that the death sentence was handed down.

Ito, 61, was an outspoken pacifist born just weeks after Nagasaki's best-known event -- the world's second and last atomic attack.

His assassination led Japan, which already had strict gun control laws, to raise punishments for illegal possession of firearms.

More than 1,130 people rushed to the courthouse Monday to grab tickets for only 39 seats for the session, media reported.

Japan is the only major industrial nation other than the United States to administer capital punishment, but it is rare for courts to give a death sentence to people who have killed only one person.

Prosecutors called for the death penalty, saying that the assassination was "an atrocious act, an act of terrorism aimed at an election."

Shiroo "planned to prevent a re-election and obstructed the right to have an election in a way that has no precedent in the criminal history of our country," said a closing statement read out by a prosecutor.

Japan has one of the world's lowest crime rates. Most gun violence is linked to gangs, which have vast interests in nightlife and other underworld businesses.

The country has seen several attacks on politicians in recent years. In 2002, an ultra-nationalist stabbed to death Koki Ishii, an opposition lawmaker known for his aggressive investigations of corruption.

In Nagasaki, Shiroo had grievances with the city authorities after his vehicle was damaged at a construction site five years ago. He had reportedly gone more than 30 times to a city office seeking up to 2.7 million yen (26,150 dollars) in compensation.

Zimbabwe military 'plotting' Tsvangirai assassination

May 19, 2008 NAIROBI — A top official of Zimbabwe's opposition party on Monday accused the government's military intelligence of plotting to assassinate its leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

"President Robert Mugabe and his cronies are natural killers," Tendai Biti, secretary general of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) told AFP during a visit to Nairobi.

"They have been killing our people since 1980 and now Mugabe's military intelligence has compiled a list of 36 to 40 people to be assasinated. Top of the list are our leader Morgan Tsvangirai, myself and our spokesman Nelson Chamisa," he said.

After more than a month out of the country due to fears for his safety, Tsvangirai had been expected back in Harare on Saturday to begin campaigning ahead of a run-off presidential election in June.

Yet his return was delayed following MDC claims of an assassination plot against him. The opposition party had not previously specified who was behind the alleged conspiracy.

Tsvangirai beat veteran president Mugabe in a first round of voting in March, but not by enough to secure outright victory. He has made a series of demands to ensure a fair run-off, including the presence of foreign peacekeepers and election monitors.

"We know that there is a group of about 18 snipers from the military intelligence who have been assigned to carry out the killing of our leader and the rest of us. But we will not be cowed," Biti claimed.

"This is the same group that has been killing our people for some time now," he said, adding that the same purported had already assassinated two MDC youth leaders.

Benazir Bhutto Assassinated

Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, 54, was assassinated during a suicide attack on a party rally in Rawalpindi's Liaquat Bagh area ahead of the January 8 polls.

Witnesses said Ms. Bhutto, who was appearing at a political campaign rally, was fired upon at close range by a gunman, and then struck by shrapnel from a bomb detonated by a suicide bomber.

Bhutto, who had twice been the country’s prime minister and was a leading contender to be the next prime minister after elections in January, was declared dead by doctors at a hospital in Rawalpindi at 6:16 p.m. local time.

Officials said she had just finished addressing the rally and was sitting in a car waving at the crowd when she was hit in the head by a bullet fired by a sniper who was concealed in a nearby building. The car moved on for another twenty metres before a suicide attacker blew himself up.

Doctors tried to revive her for 35 minutes, but her shrapnel wounds and head injuries were too sever and her heart failed.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf declared a three-day period  of mourning. World leaders condemned the attack. President Bush said “The United States strongly condemns this cowardly attack by murderous extremists who are trying to undermine Pakistan’s democracy.”

Ms. Bhutto’s death is the latest blow to Pakistan’s treacherous political situation, and leaves her party leaderless in the short term and unable to effectively compete in hotly contested parliamentary elections

At the hospital where Ms. Bhutto was taken, a large number of police began to cordon off the area as angry party workers smashed windows. Many protesters shouted “Musharraf Dog.” One man was crying hysterically, saying his sister had been killed. Dozens of people in the crowed beat their chests and chanted slogans against Mr. Musharraf.

Nahid Khan, a close aide to Ms. Bhutto, was sobbing in a room next to the operating theater, and the corridors of the hospital swarmed with mourners.

The assassination comes just days after Mr. Musharraf lifted a state of emergency in the country, which he had used to suspend the Constitution and arrest thousands of political opponents, and which he said he had imposed in part because of terrorist threats by extremists in Pakistan.

Ms. Bhutto’s assassination immediately raised questions about whether the parliamentary elections scheduled for January will now go ahead or be postponed. Mr. Musharraf was carrying out an emergency meeting with top government officials Thursday following Ms. Bhutto’s death, the aide to Mr. Musharraf said. He said no decision had been made on whether to delay the national elections.

Ms. Bhutto, 54, returned to Pakistan this year at a time of great volatility in a state that has been under military rule for eight years. She was the leader of the country’s largest opposition political party, founded by her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, one of Pakistan’s most flamboyant and democratically inclined prime ministers.

WASHINGTON Saturday 10 November: Arthur H. Bremer, who as a young loner in 1972 made a bold grab for notoriety by shooting Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, was released from state prison early Friday morning after officials said he had turned himself into "a model prisoner."

Now 57, the man who put Wallace in a wheelchair was set free by a Maryland state law mandating his supervised release because he had amassed numerous credits for good behaviour behind bars. But authorities said Bremer must adhere to strict guidelines, never leave the state and "stay away from any local, state, federal or foreign official or office holder, as well as a current candidate."

His release appears to mark the first return to freedom for any of the perpetrators of a string of successful or attempted assassinations from the 1960s to the early 1980s. Lee Harvey Oswald was killed in custody shortly after shooting President Kennedy. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassin, James Earl Ray, died of natural causes in prison. Others have been denied parole, including Sirhan Sirhan, who shot Robert F. Kennedy; Mark David Chapman, killer of John Lennon; and Sara Jane Moore and Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, who made separate failed attempts on President Ford in 1975.

The only other one close to getting out appears to be John W. Hinckley Jr., who shot and wounded President Reagan in 1981. He has been allowed to leave a Washington mental institution for brief visits with his family.

"I would describe Arthur Bremer as a model prisoner," said Rick Binetti, spokesman for the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. "He kept to himself. He stayed out of trouble."

Wallace, whose cry of "segregation forever" catapulted him to national attention, was running a racially charged campaign for president when he was confronted by Bremer in a shopping mall parking lot in Laurel, Md., on May 15, 1972. The candidate was shaking hands with supporters as Bremer jammed the barrel of a .38-caliber revolver against Wallace's abdomen.

The young man from Wisconsin started firing rapidly, hitting Wallace four times, sending one of the bullets into his spine. Three others in the crowd also were shot.

Wallace would never walk again. His presidential prospects effectively ended that afternoon.

His son, George C. Wallace Jr., said his father spent the rest of his life in constant pain. Before his death in 1998, the former governor and White House hopeful wrote to Bremer in prison, offering his forgiveness and telling him that if he accepted Jesus Christ as his savior, as he had, "we'll be in heaven together, Arthur."

Records and Bremer's personal diaries from before the shooting showed that he also had considered shooting then-President Nixon, and that his ultimate goal was to seize notoriety after a childhood of shyness that often left him the target of cruel jokes in school.

Bremer pleaded insanity, but a jury convicted him of four counts of assault with intent to murder. He was sentenced to 53 years, and if he violates the terms of his release, he could be returned to prison until 2025.

He spent most of his incarceration at a state penitentiary, largely forgotten.

Maryland prison officials said that over the years Bremer changed dramatically. They said he worked as an educational aide to other inmates, and sometimes earned up to $1 a day. But he has never spoken about the shootings. He repeatedly turned down requests for interviews. On Friday, he was released before dawn so as to avoid the cameras.

Roger Bremer of Milwaukee, his younger brother, told the Baltimore Sun he was uncertain how Arthur would adapt to life outside prison.

"I'd be afraid to see him," Roger Bremer said. "Nobody knows what he'll be like after all these years. He's 57 years old. How's he going to find a job?"

He added that authorities said his brother was "kind of like a hermit" in prison and "doesn't talk and won't say what's on his mind."

Roger Bremer agreed with that assessment: "He was always a loner."

Karachi, Pakistan, October 19: At least 135 people were killed and 545 injured when two bombs exploded near Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s truck during her homecoming parade in Karachi.

Bhutto escaped unhurt and was evacuated to her residence in the city. A procession that had attracted several hundred thousand supporters was abandoned in chaos.

The attack came hours after a teary-eyed Bhutto had set foot on her home soil for the first time after 1999 when she fled Pakistan to escape arrest on corruption charges.

General Pervez Musharraf had dropped the charges against Bhutto, paving the way for her return apparently under a power-sharing deal

Two weeks ago, Baitullah Masood, a Taliban commander, vowed to send suicide bombers to kill her. The Taliban threatened to assassinate Ms Bhutto after she suggested that she would help American troops hunt for Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida fugitives inside Pakistan. "She has an agreement with America. We will carry out attacks on Benazir Bhutto as we did on General Pervez Musharraf," Taliban commander Haji Omar said yesterday.

Last night's attack, one the deadliest in the country's history, is likely to deepen the ongoing political crisis against the backdrop of a surge in Islamist violence.

Local television stations captured the two blasts, which occurred in quick succession near a heavily protected truck carrying Ms Bhutto and her party leaders through the throng. A blazing police vehicle stood beside the deserted Bhutto truck, which was emblazoned with the slogan "Long Live Bhutto".

Television footage showed onlookers running towards the vehicle after the first blast, only to be caught in the second explosion. Party official Qasim Zia said Ms Bhutto had descended into the vehicle to use the bathroom at the time of the explosion.

About 20,000 security personnel lined the route and sophisticated anti-bomb jamming devices were fitted to her vehicle. Mobile phone signals were blocked in the area and armed bodyguards accompanied her truck. The rooftop had been fitted with a bullet-proof enclosure but she spent most of the day standing at the front, chatting to party officials and waving at well-wishers.

Many of the dead were thought to be police and party security officials who had formed a moving security cordon around the vehicle. A local television cameraman also died.

Government security officials met in Islamabad last night to discuss further measures to protect Ms Bhutto, who had planned to hold a rally in her home town, Larkana, this weekend.

Charismatic Sheik Assassinated a Week After he Met George Bush

Baghdad, September 13: A high-profile Sunni Arab sheik who collaborated with the American military in the fight against jihadist militants in western Iraq was killed by a bomb near his desert compound. Two guards were also killed in the attack.

The precisely-planned assassination of Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi was meant to undermine one of the Bush administration’s trumpeted achievements in the war.

Just last week he had shaken hands with President Bush during the president’s surprise visit to Anbar to extol the Sunni cooperation that has made the province, once Iraq’s most dangerous, relatively safe.

Iraqi and American officials were caught off guard by the assassination, which came just hours before Mr. Bush addressed the American people about his plans for Iraq. But they said it would not derail the collaboration of the alliance of Sunni clans, known as the Anbar Awakening Council, and groups in other provinces.

In his speech, Mr. Bush acknowledged the killing. “Earlier today, one of the brave tribal sheiks who helped lead the revolt against Al Qaeda was murdered,” he said. “In response, a fellow Sunni leader declared: ‘We are determined to strike back and continue our work.’ And as they do, they can count on the continued support of the United States.”

Sheik Sattar, 35, who was also known as Abu Risha, had become the public face of the Sunni Arab tribes in lawless Anbar Province that turned against the Sunni jihadists of Al Qaeda and began to fight on the side of the Shiite-led Iraqi government and the American military. His council was formed a year ago.

He had credibility with the tribes because he and his family had suffered so much at the hands of jihadist extremists. In an interview earlier this year, he said that his father had been killed in an attack by Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia in 2004 and that two of his brothers had been abducted and never heard from again; a third was shot dead. He had survived three car bombs outside the Anbar home he shared with his wife and five children.

On Thursday, the American military said a bomb destroyed the vehicle he was in, but it was unclear whether it was a roadside bomb or a suicide bomber. No group had claimed the assassination by late Thursday, but security officials in Iraq appeared convinced that responsibility lay with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

Thai authorities have arrested a top LTTE terrorist who allegedly financed the assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Kumaran Padmanathan, aka KP, who was holding an Eritrean passport, was captured by Interpol in Bangkok.

Padmanathan, also known as Shanmugan Kumaran Tharmalingham, was based in Thailand and Cambodia and controlled a global network that supplied weapons to the Tamil Tigers. His extradition could help unravel the conspiracy behind the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi who was assassinated by a 17-year-old Tamil Tiger as he began his election campaign in 1991.

D R Karthikeyan, who headed the assassination Special Investigation Team suggested that KP had a hand in arranging the explosives which the suicide bomber, Dhanu, used to kill the former Prime Minister.

The Sri Lankan authorities also want to question Padmanathan and this has held up Pakistan’s extradition request. KP would be a prize catch for Sri Lanka, desperate to quell the Tamil insurgency which has terrorised the country for decades.

KP's detention comes at a time when Sri Lankans appear to be gaining a distinct edge in their long drawn battle against the Tamil Tigers fighting for the creation of a separate state to be carved out of the Tamil-dominated pockets in northern and eastern Sri Lanka.

FBI Spied on Coretta King

Atlanta, USA. August 30: Newly released documents show federal agents spied on the widow of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. for several years after his 1968 assassination. The documents were obtained by Houston television station KHOU.

The information reveals the FBI worried about Coretta Scott King following in the footsteps of the slain civil rights icon. The Bureau voiced concerns that she might attempt "to tie the anti-Vietnam movement to the civil rights movement."

One memo shows that the FBI read and reviewed King's 1969 book about her late husband, "My Life With Martin Luther King Jr." The agent made a point to say that her "selfless, magnanimous, decorous attitude is belied" by her "actual shrewd, calculating, businesslike activities."

Four years after MLK's death, the FBI closed its file on Coretta Scott King, saying, "No information has come to the attention of Atlanta which indicates a propensity for violence or affiliation of subversive elements." Coretta Scott King died in 2006 at the age of 78.

The Rev. Joseph Lowery served as president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King co-founded in 1957, says the documents illustrate the FBI's pattern of "despicable and devious" behaviour against the organisation and those affiliated with it.

Apartheid-Era Officials Laced Cleric’s Underwear With Poison

Johannesburg, South Africa, August 17: Two of the apartheid era's most visible faces of government repression have pleaded guilty to attempting to assassinate an opponent in 1989. They received suspended sentences under a deal made with prosecutors.

Former law and order minister Adriaan Vlok and former police chief Johannes van der Merwe entered their pleas in the Pretoria High Court along with three lower-ranking policemen.

The men were charged with attempting to kill cleric Frank Chicane, then a leading anti-apartheid figure, by lacing his underwear with poison during a trip to the United States. He became violently ill but survived the incident.

Chikane, now a top adviser to President Thabo Mbeki, welcomed the plea bargain. "I'm pleased that this thing is over and that we can move forward," he said

Hundreds of apartheid-era criminals have won amnesty from the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission which encouraged people who had committed atrocities to reveal their misdeeds in exchange for protection against prosecution.

The commission, which was headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu during the mid-1990s, is regarded as an international model for societies attempting to overcome legacies of violence and repression. But it also left many South Africans feeling as though their oppressors had escaped punishment.

Yet despite demonstrations outside the courtroom Friday, many South Africans said they were pleased the case had been resolved, even if Vlok and the others managed to avoid prison.

Vlok, who has undergone a religious conversion, gained prominence because of a public act of repentance last year, when he apologized to Chikane and washed his feet.

Russian Hitman Intercepted by M16 as he Attempted to Assassinate Boris Berezovsky

London, July 17: A Russian hitman planned to execute an outspoken “enemy of Moscow” at the Hilton Hotel on London’s Park Lane, the English newspaper The Sun has revealed.

He sought to shoot exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky — who has called for the violent overthrow of Russian president Vladimir Putin — in the back of the head. The assassin was accompanied by a child in a cold-blooded attempt to avoid raising suspicion.

But MI5 and MI6 intercepted intelligence about the plot — due to have been carried out within the last fortnight. The hitman was seized before he could open fire.

The murderous mission was revealed 24 hours after Britain ordered the expulsion of four Russian diplomats. And its disclosure will plunge the cold relations between London and Moscow into the deep freeze.

Mr Berezovsky, 61, fled to Britain from Russia in 2000 and was granted political asylum three years later. Today he mixes in the highest echelons of society and lives in a 172-acre Surrey estate he bought for £10million from radio DJ Chris Evans.

Mr Berezovsky was also a friend of former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko — poisoned with a lethal dose of radioactive Polonium-210 in a London sushi bar last November.

The targeted tycoon is at the centre of a hotbed of opposition to the Putin regime and is the Russian president’s fiercest critic. He is understood to have offered cash, housing and support to a string of Russian exiles, including Litvinenko.

The hitman planned to strike after luring Mr Berezovsky to a meeting in a room at the Hilton. But details of the plot were rumbled by Britain’s security services. Together with anti-terrorist cops from Scotland Yard, they mounted a round-the-clock surveillance operation to shadow Mr Berezovsky and the assassin.

They took over a room adjoining the meeting place and seized the hitman before he could open fire.

A source said: “The Russian suspect was monitored attempting to buy obvious weaponry for the planned mission. Disturbingly, he was accompanied by a child in an attempt to blend into the background. This ‘family persona’ tactic is also thought to have been used in the murder of Litvinenko.”

Security officials stressed there was no direct connection between the assassination plot and the row which has led to the expulsion of the Russian diplomats. The officials got the boot after Mr Putin refused to allow the extradition from Moscow of former KGB agent Andrei Lugovoy, the prime suspect in the Litvinenko case.

But despite the lack of a link, a senior Government security source said: “We cannot tolerate a situation where Russian hit squads can roam the streets of London trying to take out enemies of their regime. In the case of Litvinenko, the lives of hundreds of Londoners were put at risk by the use of a radioactive substance.

“It is clear Mr Berezovsky has been a persistent critic of Mr Putin and his regime. It is our experience that the Russians have no compunction about taking action against their critics abroad. We only have to look at the cold-blooded murder of Mr Litvinenko to see the lengths to which they will go.”

Last night Mr Berezovsky said there had been a series of plots to murder him in Britain. He told the BBC’s Newsnight: “There were several attempts to kill me in this country.” He added: “Scotland Yard pay a lot of attention to my protection and I’m happy about that.”

He also accused Mr Putin of killing Mr Litvinenko. He said: “I’m 100 per cent sure that behind this murder is not just Andrei Lugovoy but Putin himself. That’s the reason Russia protects Lugovoy, because they are protecting Putin.”

Mr Berezovsky built a fortune after the Cold War ended in car sales, oil and the media. His estate is guarded by a squad of ex-French foreign legionnaires. The complex features bullet-proof windows, reinforced steel doors, laser monitors and spy cameras.

Even before the Putin era, he was in the sights of the Russian mafia, surviving several attempts to kill him. In 1994 his Mercedes was blown up by a car bomb, decapitating his chauffeur and leaving Berezovsky with serious burns.

When Putin came to power, he was at first a cordial friend of the new President. But they fell out over Putin’s decision to probe how oligarchs like Mr Berezovsky made their money. The tycoon fled to Britain when charges of tax evasion and embezzlement were brought against him.

He now runs several businesses here while also plotting Putin’s demise. He boasts of bankrolling a group in Russia who aim to bring Putin down by force.

CIA to Show the World its "Family Jewels"

Washington DC, Monday June 25: The US Central Intelligence Agency is preparing to release a set of documents compiled more than 30 years ago detailing the agency’s involvement over the previous quarter century in crimes both at home and abroad. These include assassination attempts against foreign heads of state, covert spying on newspaper columnists and other US citizens, the infiltration of left-wing groups and the testing of mind-alerting drugs on unwitting American subjects.

The CIA’s current director, Gen. Michael Hayden, announced the decision to release the documents, known within the agency as the “family jewels,” at a conference in Washington of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.

The 693-page document was compiled in response to a 1973 directive issued by then-CIA Director James Schlesinger ordering senior agency officials to provide an accounting of all CIA activities that had been conducted in violation of the agency’s charter, which specifically bars it from carrying out domestic operations.

Schlesinger’s order to catalogue these illegal activities was prompted by the arrest of two longtime CIA operatives—E. Howard Hunt and James McCord—in connection with the break-in at the Democratic Party’s Watergate offices. The Watergate crisis exposed broader agency involvement in the so-called “dirty tricks” carried out by the Nixon administration against its political opponents.

It was under these conditions, and in the wake of Richard Nixon’s resignation, that Schlesinger’s successor at the CIA, William Colby, assembled the record of the so-called “skeletons” in the agency’s closet and presented them to President Gerald Ford.

While some of the material in the document had previously been leaked and much of its contents were publicly exposed in the course of House and Senate investigations of the agency—the Pike and Church committees—in the mid-1970s, the CIA had until now steadfastly refused to release the material.

There is little doubt that what is to be made public will be carefully vetted for material that could still incriminate living participants in the crimes of that period, not least of them former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who remains a key advisor of the Bush administration.

In his speech to the historians’ conference, Hayden cautioned: “Remember that nothing about intelligence and declassification happens without human intervention. We do not—we cannot—just kick these things out the door. We have to examine each and every page through the real-world security prism I mentioned. It takes time. It takes care. It takes talent.”

In conjunction with Hayden’s announcement, the National Security Archive at George Washington University posted on its web site a series of documents. These include a summary of the “family jewels” prepared for the US Justice Department and memorandums of conversations between Colby, Schlesinger, Kissinger and Ford on their implications and on how to protect the CIA and the administration itself from the political consequences.

Among the crimes cited by Colby in his presentation to DOJ was the forcible three-year confinement of a Soviet defector, which Colby acknowledged “might be regarded as a violation of kidnapping laws.”

He also acknowledged multiple episodes of CIA spying on journalists in an attempt to discover their sources. Among those targeted was Jack Anderson and his assistants—including the current right-wing Fox News anchor Brit Hume—Washingon Post national security reporter Michael Getler and two syndicated columnists, Robert Allen and Paul Scott.

Also included in the report were break-ins at the homes of former CIA employees and covert mail openings of letters to and from the Soviet Union and China.

Colby also acknowledged the CIA’s participation in assassination plots against Cuban President Fidel Castro, Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba and Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo.

Colby claimed that the CIA played no active role in the assassination of either Lumumba or Trujillo, but admitted to a “faint connection” between the CIA and the latter’s killers.

The CIA director also admitted that the agency had engaged in spying upon and infiltrating antiwar organisations and other left-wing opponents of the government in the 1960s and 1970s, amassing the names of some 10,000 people active in opposing the Vietnam War.

Also acknowledged was the use of “unwitting” American participants in experiments using drugs being tested for use in interrogations as well as the testing of polygraph and wire-tapping equipment on subjects in the US.

The memorandum of the conversation between Kissinger and Ford portrays the then-secretary of state and architect of some of Washington’s bloodiest crimes as apoplectic. He warned the president that the Times story on massive domestic spying represented “just the tip of the iceberg.” As to the facts not included in the story, he said, “If they come out, blood will flow.” As an example, he pointed to the role played by Robert Kennedy (the former attorney general and president’s brother) in personally directing the assassination campaign against Castro. The implications, he added could be “worse...than Watergate.”

Kissinger noted, the “Chilean thing” was not in Colby’s report, hinting darkly that it was kept out as “sort of a blackmail on me.” In the 1973 Chilean coup, Kissinger and the CIA played the decisive roles in organizing the military overthrow of an elected government and the subsequent reign of terror in which tens of thousands of Chileans were murdered and tortured.

Indeed, this and other crimes were not included in Colby’s “family jewels,” presumably because the CIA hierarchy believed that they did not represent a violation of the charter under which the agency was founded in 1947.

The coup in Chile was only one in a long series of bloodbaths, coups and dirty wars organized by the CIA in Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia, Congo, Vietnam, Afghanistan and many other countries.

Hayden’s attempt to cast the limited number of crimes that found their way into the dossier compiled by Colby as relics from some distant and long-surpassed era hardly stands up to scrutiny.

Indeed, the release of documents dating from nearly 35 years ago almost has the character of a distraction from far more current and serious crimes being carried out presently.

There is ample evidence that the agency has seldom been involved in as much criminal activity as it is today, while the limited restraints placed upon the national security establishment following the revelations of the mid-1970s have been largely swept aside since 2001, with the enactment of the USA Patriot Act and the assumption of ever-more-sweeping powers, including massive domestic surveillance, by the Bush White House.

In his remarks at the conference in Washington, Hayden acknowledged that the press of increased operations had slowed down some of the agency’s declassification work. “The ops tempo we have maintained since 9/11—and must continue to maintain—is unmatched in our agency’s history,” he said. “The good news here is that we’re producing great stuff for future historians.”

What will this “great stuff” include? Among the current “ops” that have been at least partially exposed is the CIA’s involvement in the illegal abduction of alleged suspects, and their rendition to secret prisons in many parts of the world where they have been subjected to torture and in some cases murdered. CIA agents have been indicted and brought to trial in Italy for one such “extraordinary rendition.”

In addition, CIA death squads and assassination teams have been deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and elsewhere.

It is unlikely, to say the least, that the agency is preparing the release of documents detailing these criminal activities. As Hayden told his audience of historians, “Of course, we cannot tell the American people everything we do to protect them without damaging our ability to protect them.”

Man tries to attack Pope Benedict XVI by jumping into his popemobile

Russia Claims Litvinenko was an Assassin

Moscow, June 3: Former Federal Security Service officer Alexander Litvinenko who died in London of polonium-210 poisoning last year, had come to Chechnya to kill the witnesses of Boris Berezovsky's ties with international terrorist Shamil Basayev, Russia's Deputy Interior Minister Arkady Yedelev told reporters.

"We have reliable information about Litvinenko's stay in Chechnya, which he entered through Georgia. He came to remove traces of Berezovsky's funding illegal paramilitary groups and Basayev's contacts," Yedelev said, adding that the former FSB officer did it on Berezovsky's instruction.

According to the police official, the Prosecutor General's Office and the Federal Security Service, while investigating the criminal cases over the attack on Dagestan and terrorist attacks in Volgodonsk, Moscow, Buinaksk and the Stavropol territory, obtained evidence of Berezovsky's funding Basayev's gangs.

"Witnesses have been identified, who directly testified that several million roubles passed by Berezovsky to Basayev for remodeling a plant, never came to the plant, but were spent on weapons. Litvinenko then came to remove the witnesses but failed," Yedelev underlined.

At a news conference on Thursday, Russian businessman Andrei Lugovoi, whom Britain accuses of involvement in the murder of Litvinenko, made startling revelations, claiming that the case against him was doctored and that British secret agents sought compromising information on President Vladimir Putin and his family.

"I'm ready to make a statement that must shed light on this dark political story /the murder of Litvinenko," Lugovoi said, "British secret services and their agents - Berezovsky and late Litvinenko - played the main role in it."

The Russian Prosecutor General's Office said it was ready to examine the materials against Lugovoi, but warned that his extradition to Britain was out of the question.

On Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Britain was politicizing the Litvinenko case. "We see, instead of professional investigation, the attempt to turn a criminal case into a political campaign. It should be handled by law-enforcement bodies," Lavrov said.

Belgrade, May 23: Two former members of a Serbian paramilitary police unit and 10 co-conspirators were found guilty on Wednesday of the assassination of reformist Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic four years ago.

The trial, which ended with the two main accused each being jailed for 40 years, was Serbia's biggest and most controversial since the fall of Slobadan Milosevic in 2000. Two witnesses were murdered and a judge quit after death threats.

But Djindjic supporters say the three-and-a half year trial failed to uncover who ordered the March 12, 2003 assassination.

Former special police commander Milorad "Legija" Ulemek, once a Foreign Legionnaire, and his deputy Zvezdan Jovanovic were convicted of conspiring with fellow paramilitary and underworld figures to carry out the shooting.

"It was all prepared by Ulemek. Jovanovic fired the shots," said judge Nata Mesarevic.

They planned to first kill Djindjic, then other state officials, to create a climate of fear and bring hardliners to power so as to "earn profit, power and influence," she added

Ulemek and Jovanovic half-smiled on hearing the verdict. Their 40-year sentences were the maximum allowed.

Four accomplices were given prison sentences of 35 years, five of 30 years, and one of eight years. Five of the 12 are on the run and were judged in absentia in what local media called Serbia's "trial of the century".

Serbia is still recovering from the loss of Djindjic, fatally wounded by a bullet from Jovanovic's rifle as he got out of his car to enter his office in downtown Belgrade.

His death threw the country into a state of emergency, crippling the pro-Western reform programme that he instigated.

"The executioners have been sentenced," said Vladan Batic, a justice minister under Djindjic. "Now comes the hard part, to find the instigators of this assassination."

Serbia's organised-crime prosecutor said he would appeal to ensure all 12 got the maximum 40 years. Lawyers for the accused said they would appeal for the sentence to be annulled.

Serbian President Boris Tadic, who now leads Djindjic's Democratic Party, was in court for the verdict. A few hundred people gathered outside carrying the party flag and banners demanding the truth about the conspiracy.

"Even 40 years is not enough", said one slogan.

Djindjic's followers booed relatives of the accused as they left the court. Ulemek supporters, many sporting the red rose tattoo of his feared police unit, made obscene gestures in turn.

Most defendants were members of the Zemun mafia gang, and many fought as paramilitaries in the Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo wars backed by the late autocrat Milosevic.

Djindjic, a youthful pro-Western reformer, took power after Milosevic was ousted in October 2000. He was vilified by nationalists as a traitor in 2001 for extraditing the strongman to the Hague war crimes tribunal.

Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, a former ally who turned against Djindjic over the Milosevic extradition, said the murder had been a "very hard blow for Serbia."

"The end of the proceedings, the ruling and the delivery of justice...carries the message that the state and the hand of the law will reach all those who have committed crimes," he said.

The indictment said the defendants killed Djindjic, 50, to bring ultranationalists back to power, to avoid being sent to The Hague, and to halt a crackdown on lucrative organised crime.

But Djindjic's supporters say the roots of the conspiracy go deeper, and prominent politicians have accused each other of knowing more than they let on.

"I believe the people who ordered the murder may be found among the anti-Hague lobby, the (Milosevic-era) tycoons and politicians," Batic said.

15 May 2007, Hollywood, USA: H2O Motion Pictures has acquired rights to three books by Anna Politkovskaya and plans to develop a feature about the Russian journalist shot to death in a suspected contract killing in Moscow in the autumn of 2006.

Launch of a Politkovskaya project comes on the heels of duelling Hollywood projects about Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB officer who accused Russian leader Vladimir Putin of ordering Politkovskaya's assassination and was later poisoned.

Politkovskaya's books include "A Russian Diary," an account of contemporary Russia under the current government; "Putin's Russia," which details Putin as an individual and his mishandling of the Moscow theater hostage crisis in 2002; and "A Severed Head," an unpublished manuscript about her journey into the violent province of Chechnya.

The deal comes as Columbia and Michael Mann race against Warner Bros. and Johnny Depp to mount a film about Litvinenko. Columbia reached a deal in January for rights to "Death of a Dissident," a book that Alex Goldfarb and the subject's widow, Marina Litvinenko, are co-writing; Red Wagon partners Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher will produce with Mann's Forward Pass. Mann is attached to direct.

WB, Depp and Graham King's Initial Entertainment already had made an option deal to base a Litvinenko film on "Sasha's Story: The Life and Death of a Russian Spy," by Alan Cowell, London bureau chief for the New York Times.

Former CIA agent, Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt claims he was involved in the JFK assassination

The "deathbed confession" audio tape in which former CIA agent and Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt admits he was approached to be part of a CIA assassination team to kill JFK was aired today.

Saint John Hunt, son of E. Howard Hunt, appeared on Coast to Coast AM radio to discuss the revelations contained in the tape. Hunt said that his father had mailed cassette the tape to him alone in January 2004 and asked that it be released after his death. The tape was originally 20 minutes long but was edited down to four and a half minutes for the Coast to Coast broadcast.

Hunt promises that the whole tape will be uploaded soon at his website. Click here to listen to a clip of the tape.

E. Howard Hunt names numerous individuals with both direct and indirect CIA connections as having played a role in the assassination of Kennedy, while describing himself as a "bench warmer" in the plot. Saint John Hunt agreed that the use of this term indicates that Hunt was willing to play a larger role in the murder conspiracy had he been required.

Hunt alleges on the tape that then Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was involved in the planning of the assassination and in the cover-up, stating that LBJ, "Had an almost maniacal urge to become president, he regarded JFK as an obstacle to achieving that." Sadly, that tape did not provide links to any evidence and so this might simply be another wild goose-chase for JFK conspiracists.

Bin Laden Personally Planned Cheney Assassination

A senior Taliban commander, Mullah Dadullah, has claimed in an interview with Arabic news agency Al Jazeera that Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda's leader, is alive and well.

Dadullah also claimed that Bin Laden personally masterminded the failed assassination attempt against US Vice-President Dick Cheney last February. Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman, said later of Dadullah’s claims, "It's an interesting claim but I haven't seen any intelligence that would support that."

Russia’s ‘Mad Max’ Assassination Captured on Film

KIEV, Ukraine, Mar 28 : A sniper's brazen, daylight assassination of a Russian businessman outside a courthouse fuelled fears Wednesday that contract killings are again on the rise in this former Soviet republic.

Maxim Kurochkin, known as ``Mad Max,'' was shot in the heart Tuesday evening as he stepped out of a Kiev courthouse where he was on trial for extortion. Two snipers acted together in a daring plan. Firing from an attic window, one sniper was there to take out any bodyguards blocking the view of the assassin who shot Kurochkin through the heart at a range of 300m. Witnesses said two men wearing black masks fled the scene in silver car, leaving their weapons behind.

Kurochkin’s assassination was captured on video. As he was being escorted out of the courthouse, surrounded by TV crews, he was asked if he regretted coming to Ukraine where he was arrested. "I do not regret it," Kurochkin said in footage shown on NTN television. Moments later, he was shot.  

Earlier this month, three other businessmen connected to Kurochkin were gunned down as they rode in a car, and another associate was shot dead last October.

Kurochkin ran an organisation that supported the pro-Russian Yanukovych during the bitter 2004 presidential campaign and subsequent Orange Revolution protests that swept his pro-Western rival, Viktor Yushchenko, to the presidency. Discontent among Ukrainians over the slow pace of change led to divisions among the Orange Revolution partners, causing them to lose parliamentary elections a year ago. Yanukovych's party won the most votes, and he returned to the position of prime minister.

Kurochkin, a millionaire who owned vast properties in Ukraine, was arrested in November on charges of extortion. The businessman claimed he had survived 18 assassination attempts, including a 2004 car bombing that seriously wounded his bodyguards.

Police insisted they worked to protect Kurochkin, noting that 18 policemen were in the courthouse to provide security instead of the usual three. But his Defence lawyer Sergei Vlasenko said police clearly violated procedural rules when escorting him. "The car that was to pick him up should of course have come very close to the gate of the court and Mr. Kurochkin's getting into the car should have been done so that no one could have either visual or any other contact with him," he told Russian state-run television.

There were 56 contract murders in the Ukraine last year, 29 of which were solved. In 2002, there were 54, with 15 solved. In the first three months of this year, there have been 11 contract killings, four of which have been solved.

A String of Assassination Gaffes Hits America

For some reason, prominent Americans have been getting into a fix with the word assassination.

First off on May 17, former Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee was speaking Friday to the NRA, when there was a loud bang. Instead of continuing his speech, he aimed a joke at Barack Obama.

Huckabee apologized for his "offhand remark," saying it was not "intended to offend or disparage Senator Obama." Obama, for his part, refused to comment. You can see the clip here.

Next came Mark Madden, who made his reputation with bold, outlandish attacks on famous people, has been permanently removed from the air by ESPN.

His dismissal, which came down from ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Conn., came five days after he made a scurrilous remark about U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on his 1250 ESPN talk show, which ran from 3 to 7 p.m. weekdays.

At the opening of his show last Wednesday, Madden said this about Sen. Kennedy, who days earlier had been diagnosed with brain cancer:

“I’m very disappointed to hear that Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts is near death because of a brain tumour. I always hoped Senator Kennedy would live long enough to be assassinated.

“I wonder if he got a card from the Kopechnes.”

This was followed by US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton who faced a firestorm after raising the 1968 assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy to justify her decision to prolong her White House campaign.

Clinton told a newspaper board in South Dakota she could not understand calls for her to quit, arguing that history showed that some past nominating contests had gone on into June.

"My husband (Bill Clinton) did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary, somewhere in the middle of June, right?" Clinton said Friday in an interview with the Argus Leader newspaper editorial board.

"We all remember, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California, I don't understand it," Clinton said.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton condemned her comment as "unfortunate" and said it "has no place in this campaign."

Clinton appeared to reference the Kennedy killing at the end of the 1968 Democratic presidential race to show that previous Democratic nominating contests have stretched well into June.

But referring to political assassinations is fraught with sensitivity, especially for supporters of Obama, who accepted Secret Service protection last year, long before the time it is offered to most presidential candidates, because of unspecified threats.

Clinton quickly launched a damage control effort, saying that the Kennedys had been in her thoughts, after Senator Edward Kennedy was diagnosed with brain cancer this week.

"I regret that if my referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation, and particularly for the Kennedy family was in any way offensive. I certainly had no intention of that, whatsoever," Clinton said.

"My view is that we have to look to the past and to our leaders who have inspired us and give us a lot to live up to, and I'm honored to hold Senator Kennedy's seat in the United States Senate from the state of New York."

The Argus Leader's executive editor, Randell Beck, issued a statement saying: "(Clinton's) reference to Mr Kennedy's assassination appeared to focus on the timeline of his primary candidacy and not the assassination itself."

On Thursday, Clinton brought up what for Democrats is the nightmare of the 2000 presidential recount debacle to demand the reinstatement of Florida and Michigan delegates.

She also referred to political turmoil in Zimbabwe.

"People go through the motions of an election only to have it discarded and disregarded," she said.

"We're seeing that right now in Zimbabwe -- tragically an election was held, the president lost, they refused to abide by the will of the people. So we can never take for granted our precious right to vote."

On Thursday, a top Clinton supporter, New York Governor David Paterson, told WAMC Northeast Public Radio that he thought that Clinton was showing "a little desperation" in the last throes of the nominating process which ends June 3.

The dust-up overshadowed the release of medical records by Republican White House pick John McCain, as doctors said he had no health condition that would bar him from the presidency.

The Arizona senator, who turns 72 in August, would be the oldest president ever inaugurated for a first term and age issues will likely surface, especially if he faces a much younger Democratic opponent in Obama, 46.

Rawalpindi, Pakistan: In yet another gruesome suicide attack near the Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s army headquarters in Rawalpindi, seven people, including the bomber, were killed.

The blast occurred at a police checkpoint about 1.5 miles away from the headquarters of the Pakistan army and the office of General Musharraf. The powerful blast left 11 women and children injured.

City police officer Mohammed Saeed said that a lone suicide bomber approached the checkpoint on foot, on a main road in the city and blew himself up. Among those who were killed were three policemen.

Deputy information minister Tariq Azim Khan said that General Musharraf was safe in his office. The security situation in Pakistan has continued to deteriorate with the country being hit by a string of suicide attacks, mostly blamed on Islamic militants.

While a suicide attack on the homecoming parade of the former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in Karachi, 12 days ago, killed more than 140 people, two blasts last month killed 25 people and wounded more than 60. Many of them were travelling on a defence ministry bus when the blast occurred.

Havana, Cuba, September 13: Cuba once saved the life of US President Ronald Reagan by giving American officials information about an assassination plot, President Fidel Castro wrote in an essay published Wednesday.

The extraordinary essay, in the Communist party newspaper Granma, was Castro's first public mention of the incident.

Castro wrote that a Cuban security official stationed at the United Nations told US mission security chief Robert Muller about an extreme right-wing group that was planning to assassinate Reagan during a planned trip to North Carolina in 1984.

"The information was complete: the names of those implicated in the plan; day, time and hour where the assassination could occur; the type of weapon the terrorists had and where they kept their arms; and along with all that, the meeting place of those elements planning the action as well as a brief summary of what had occurred in said meeting," Castro wrote.

Castro added that Cuban authorities learned later that the FBI had arrested several people in North Carolina. Several days after that, Muller expressed America's thanks to the Cuban official over lunch in a UN dining room.

Castro did not reveal how the Cubans had stumbled on the plot but said their authorities learned later that the FBI had arrested several people in North Carolina.

The FBI said it would take some time to check the veracity of the claims. Records show Mr Reagan did visit Charlotte in North Carolina in October 1984, to boost local Republican campaigns.

 Castro has not appeared in public since mid-2006, when he underwent intestinal surgery and ceded power to his younger brother Raul. In late March, he began writing occasional essays, most on international themes.

Moscow 28 August: Ten suspects, including Russian police and security officials, have been arrested for last year’s assassination of crusading investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

Russian Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika told reporters. "I would like to point out that regretfully former and current officers of the Interior Ministry and the Federal Security Service took part in tracking Politkovskaya and obtaining information on her. They have been arrested,"

Those being held have not been identified but one suspect is thought to be a Chechen man who allegedly headed a contract murder gang.

Politkovskaya, was shot in the head at the entrance to her apartment building in October 2006. She was an outspoken critic of President Vladimir V. Putin who had gained international praise for her reporting on Moscow's actions in the war with Chechnya. She was born in New York and is the daughter of a Soviet diplomat.

Sofia, Bulgaria, August 1: Sergei Antonov, the Bulgarian accused of plotting the failed assassination bid against late Pope John Paul II on behalf of the Soviet Union, has died of natural causes, officials said today.

Antonov, 59, was found dead in his apartment in downtown Sofia, the interior ministry said. It did not reveal the cause of the death, but doctors said he had probably died two days earlier.

A former representative of Bulgaria's national airline in Rome, Antonov was accused, but later acquitted, of working as an agent for Bulgaria's communist-era secret services, which were closely tied to the Soviet KGB, and planning the May 13, 1981 attack.

He stood trial with two other Bulgarians and three Turks for the failed assassination bid, in which Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca shot the late Pontiff and was arrested minutes later.

Before his conviction of attempted murder, Agca fingered Antonov as a co-conspirator.

But prosecutors failed to prove the Bulgarian secret service had hired Agca to kill the Pope on behalf of the Kremlin, which feared John Paul's influence in events that eventually led to the collapse of communism in eastern Europe 1989.

An Italian court acquitted Antonov in 1986 after a two-year trial, saying there was insufficient evidence for a conviction.

But Antonov's health and mental condition deteriorated after his trial and he spent the later years of his life in isolation.

During a visit to Bulgaria in 2002, John Paul rejected allegations that Bulgaria's former communist government was involved in the assassination attempt and said he had never believed in the so-called "Bulgarian connection".

Last year, a report by an Italian parliamentary commission established to investigate the case said the leaders of the former Soviet Union were behind it. Both Russia and Bulgaria have condemned the report.

Attempt Made on the Life of Pakistan's President, Pervez Musharraf

Islamabad, July 7: A plane carrying Pakistan's President, Pervez Musharraf, has come under fire.

It was taking off from a military airfield in Rawalpindi when witnesses say they heard fire from a machine gun on the roof of a nearby house.

Military chiefs at first denied there had been any attack. But the Information Ministry later confirmed that there was an assassination attempt.

Two people have been detained and a weapon seized. The plane later arrived safely in the south-western town of Turbat.

Musharraf has survived two previous assassination attempts, both in Rawalpindi and both believed to have been orchestrated by al-Qaeda linked militants angry at his close ties with the United States.

Moscow, June 1:Last week British prosecutors accused Andrey Lugovoy of killing Alexander Litvinenko with the radioactive substance polonium-210. Lugovoy responded with his own accusations against the British government and the exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, and he also cast suspicion on a Russian businessman allegedly involved in organized crime.

Among his many sensational claims, Lugovoy declared that the British intelligence agency MI6 had repeatedly tried to recruit him during his frequent business trips to the UK and that the fugitive Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky traded state secrets to the spy agency for political asylum in Great Britain. During the 1990s Boris Berezovsky held numerous Russian government posts while amassing a large personal fortune.

During his press conference, Lugovoy put forward a theory about Litvinenko's death - that the ex-Federal Security Service officer was murdered in revenge for cooperating with Spanish police in the late 1990s to bring down Zakhary Kalashov, who was then a powerful figure in the Russian underworld. One of Kalashov's former associates has dismissed the accusation as "a fairy tale".

There is no doubt that Litvinenko made many enemies while working in the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB)'s elite counter-organized crime unit, particularly after he befriended Boris Berezovsky in the mid-1990s. At that time, Berezovsky was the richest man in Russia and boasted about his influence over President Yeltsin's inner circle. Berezovsky was widely despised by many members of the security services, who viewed him and his fellow oligarchs as criminals who were impoverishing Russia. When the future President Putin became director of the FSB in 1999, Litvinenko was dismissed from FSB and charged with corruption and misappropriating department resources. During this same time period, Berezovsky employed an ex-KGB bodyguard named Andrey Lugovoy to run security for his ORT television network.

At the press conference Lugovoy was accompanied by Dimitri Kovtun, the other Russian businessman who met Litvinenko in London on November 1, 2006. For his part, Kovtun claimed that Litvinenko bragged to him about alleged plans to blackmail Boris Berezovsky and other Russian oligarchs. Kovtun also claims that Litvinenko discussed his work as an intermediary between Chechen separatists and Ahkmed Zakayev, their spokesman in London. Kovtun added that Litvinenko confided in him that he had travelled to the Pankisi Gorge, an area where US, Russian, and Georgian special forces have hunted international jihadists.

Mikhail Lyubimov, a veteran KGB officer who is now a writer on intelligence issues, has dismissed all of the claims surrounding the case, ""All of these guys - the deceased Litvinenko, [Berezovsky] and Lugovoy - are crooks and should not be taken seriously." A senior Russian government source echoed this view. Speaking on condition of anonymity to Russia's Kommersant newspaper ("Lugovoy Gives his Version of Events") , the source dismissed Lugovoy's allegations as nonsense taken straight out of spy novels.

Although Russian prosecutors have charged Chechen separatist spokesman Ahkmed Zakayev with sponsoring terrorism, there is no evidence that his "good friend Sasha" Litvinenko ever travelled to Georgia after leaving Russia for good in 2000. However, a spokesman for the FSB has said that the agency is looking into Lugovoy's allegations.

22 May, London UK: The CPS charges Andrey Lugovoy with the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. Click here for their full statement.

Britain made a bold extradition request for a former KGB bodyguard in the poisoning death of an ex-Soviet spy turned Kremlin critic. Russia immediately refused the request, creating a standoff with Europe's leading energy supplier and threatening to plunge relations to a post-Cold War low.

British prosecutors say they have enough evidence to charge Andrei Lugovoi with the murder of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko. Lugovoi met with Litvinenko at a London hotel the day his tea was poisoned with polonium-210, a radioactive substance.

Lugovoi, a former KGB bodyguard, denied involvement, saying the charges were politically motivated.

The Russian ambassador was summoned to the Foreign Office, and Prime Minister Tony Blair's office said it expected full cooperation.

"Murder is murder; this is a very serious case," Blair's spokesman said, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with government policy. "The manner of the murder was also very serious because of the risks to public health."

On his deathbed, the 43-year-old Litvinenko accused President Vladimir Putin of being behind his killing. He had also accused Russian authorities of being behind a deadly 1999 apartment blast and the murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

The Russian government has denied any involvement in Litvinenko's death.

Although there is an extradition agreement between Russia and Britain, Russian law forbids the extradition of nationals.

The Russian prosecutor-general's office said it would not hand over Lugovoi to British authorities. "Citizens of Russia cannot be turned over to foreign states," spokeswoman Marina Gridneva told reporters.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said it was awaiting more details on the charge from British prosecutors, but also signalled that Lugovoi's extradition was unlikely.

"As far as the question of extradition is concerned, it is well-known that turning over Russian citizens to foreign nations contradicts the Constitution of the Russian Federation," the ministry said.

A formal extradition request will be handed to the Russians this week.

Relations between Britain and Russia have long been sour.

Britain has refused to turn over Russian exiles, including Chechen opposition leader Akhmed Zakayev and Boris Berezovsky - once an influential Kremlin insider who fell out with Putin and fled to Britain in 2000 to avoid a money-laundering investigation.

British officials have complained of growing numbers of Russian spies operating within Britain. Russia last year passed a law that allowed security forces to use force abroad against people considered threats.

Russia's Federal Security Service, meanwhile, accused four British diplomats of spying after state-run television said British diplomats had contacted Russian agents using communications equipment hidden in a fake rock in a Moscow park.

Britain's ambassador to Russia, Anthony Brenton, has recently complained of being harassed by a pro-Kremlin Russian youth group called Nashi. He has been heckled on speaking engagements and trailed by group members carrying banners, shouting abuse and blocking his car.

Analysts say Britain's push for extradition could backfire.

Britain exports oil and gas but depleting supplies have raised concerns about future reliance on the Gulf states and Russia. The European Union gets a third of its oil and about 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia.

One-fifth of the world's gas reserves are in Russia and are controlled by Gazprom, the giant Russian utility. Gazprom, which has a minor presence in Britain, is targeting 20 percent of the domestic gas market by 2015.

"It's foolish," said London-based ex-U.S. intelligence officer Bob Ayers. "Russia is becoming a monopoly when it comes to energy supplies in Europe and the last thing you want to do is jeopardize that supply."

Lugovoi joined the KGB in 1987 after serving in the Kremlin guard corps. During his time in the KGB he provided security for Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, among others.

He also headed a group of guards for Berezovsky, who at that time was deputy head of the Russian Security Council, and later headed the security corps for ORT television, Russia's most widely broadcast channel. He now has a security company and has interests in the production of the Russian drink kvas.

"I consider this decision to be political, I did not kill Litvinenko," Lugovoi was quoted as saying by RIA-Novosti news agency. "I can only express a well-founded distrust for the so-called basis of proof collected by British judicial officials. My family and I were exposed to radiation while we were in Britain and for this I demand proper accountability," Lugovoi said.

Zoran Djindjic Case Nearing End

Verdicts in the trial of thirteen Serbian paramilitaries and gang figures indicted in the assassination of Serbian Prime Minister, Zoran Djindjic, will be announced May 23.

Chief judge Nata Mesarevic announced the date as the three-year trial ended Friday with the accused sniper, Zvezdan Jovanovic, denying he shot Djindjic in March 2003 in front of Belgrade’s government headquarters.

The prosecution and lawyers representing Djindjic's family have demanded maximum forty-year prison sentences for his suspected killers. The sentences will also be announced on May 23.

All but one of the suspects most of them war veterans from the era of former President Slobodan Milosevic have denied they organized and carried out the assassination. Five of the thirteen suspects were being tried in absentia because they went into hiding after the killing.

Djindjic spearheaded the 2000 removal of Milosevic and later extradited him to the U.N. war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to answer for his role in the 1990s wars during the break-up of the Yugoslav federation.

The indictment against Djindjic's alleged killers says they carried out the attack to halt pro-Western reforms and bring nationalists back to power. The trial has been delayed by bureaucratic and legal wrangling between lawyers and the prosecution, and attempts by the current conservative government to influence the trial proceedings.

Mayor of Nagasaki Assassinated

Nagasaki, Japan, April 18: The mayor of the Japanese city of Nagasaki has died early after being shot by a member of a criminal syndicate. Itcho Ito, 61, seeking re-election for a fourth term on Sunday, was shot twice in the back outside his campaign office just before 8pm on Tuesday.

Tetsuya Shiroo, 59, a senior member of a local gang affiliated with Japan's largest crime syndicate, the Yamaguchi Gumi, was arrested by police. A revolver he had with him was also confiscated.

The motive for the shooting remained unclear, but public broadcaster NHK said Shiroo was upset at the city's handling of a traffic accident four years ago in which his car was damaged as it passed a public works construction site.

After an emergency operation that lasted for around four hours, Ito was kept alive for some time by an artificial heart and lungs but died at 2.28am due to loss of blood.

Doctors had told a news conference that two bullets had reached his heart.

TV footage earlier showed the mayor lying face down on a sidewalk with his eyes closed as paramedics performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation after he was gunned down.

"I hope the truth will be revealed through vigilant investigation by authorities," Kyodo news agency quoted Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as saying.

Japan has very strict gun control laws and firearms are mostly in the hands of yakuza gangsters or hunters.

Nagasaki, on the southernmost main island of Kyushu and some 980km southwest of Tokyo, was the second city to suffer an atomic bombing by the United States on August 9, 1945.

Presidential Assassination Foiled

April 16, Antananarivo, Madagascar: Assassins have been keeping the Madagascan Presidential Guard busy recently. The government has revealed that there have been at least four serious attempts to assassinate President Marc Ravalomanana since November last year.

On April 2, a gunman who sneaked into a sports stadium where the president was about to address a mass meeting organized by his supporters. He was captured as he tried to push his way to the stage. 

The next day three assassins slipped into the president’s official residence in the capital city of Antananarivo, but were captured after a short battle with security guards.

On November 20 last year, would-be assassin Yvon Randriaovy was arrested outside a church where he was awaiting to shoot the president.

On November 17, president Ravalomanana had to make a forced landing in Mahajanga, one of Madagascar's six autonomous provinces, on his return from Mauritius instead of Antananarivo international airport following a rumour that General Andrianafidisoa, intended to overthrow him in a coup.

The first two attempts came in the run-up in to the December elections which Ravalomanana won with 54% of the vote.

The most recent attempts came as Madagascans voted on changes to the constitution which gave the President more powers (Ravalomanana now has the power to create and enforce new laws in a State of Emergency) and made English the national language.

London, UK, April 4:

The wife of murdered former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko spoke publicly about his death from radiation poisoning for the first time, describing how she watched him waste away for more than a month.

"It's not easy for me," she told a press conference held a stone’s throw from Downing Street in. "It was not just one moment. I saw him over one month and three days ... he just wasted away."

She was speaking alongside exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky and her lawyer, Louise Christian, among others, at the launch of a new campaign to press the Russian and UK authorities to find the killers.

Speaking in a faltering voice, Mrs Litvinenko said she had written to Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, telling him that she would not rest until her husband's killers had been brought to justice. “What I do I do for the murder of my husband, his memory. I don't want it to happen to somebody else... I want justice for Sasha for his son," she said.

Berezovsky, who also lives in London, has been among several people to blame the murder on forces working on behalf of Mr Putin. "For me it is almost clear that it is a murder by the Russian state and Putin personally involved in that," he said. Mr Berezovsky said Mr Putin had hated Litvinenko personally and that his killing was a message to those in the Russia security services that they could not turn against the regime. Mr Berezovsky has said several times that he believes another former KGB employee, Andrei Lugovoi, probably carried out the murder.

Mr Lugovoi - who has protested his innocence - and two other Russians met Litvinenko on November 1 last year, the day he fell ill. Traces of polonium-210 have been found in several places Mr Lugovoi visited in London.

Scotland Yard detectives travelled to Russia to interview potential suspects and witnesses, but have yet to make any arrests.

Sadat Assassin Freed

Cairo, Egypt, April 2: A senior Jihad member, a paramilitary organization which participated in planning Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's assassination in October 1981, has been freed from prison.

Nabil Bakr was sentenced to life in prison by a military tribunal in 1982. Under Egyptian imprisonment laws a life prison term is fifteen years, but Bakr was kept in custody ten years longer.

The group's leader, Aboud El-Zomor - an ex-intelligence senior officer thought to be the mastermind behind Sadat's assassination - has time and again contested the legality of keeping him in prison, but so far to no avail. You can watch rare footage of the Sadat assassination here.

Iraq's Deputy PM Returns to Hospital

AMMAN, Jordan, March 29 : The deputy prime minister of Iraq has been admitted to hospital in Jordan for treatment of the wounds sustained in last week's al-Qaida-linked attempt to kill him, the Iraqi ambassador said Thursday.

Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zubaie is in "a stable condition," Ambassador Saad al-Hayyani said in a phone interview, adding he should be released "within a few days."

Al-Zubaie is the most senior Sunni figure in Iraq's Shiite-led government.

On Friday, a suicide bomber detonated himself during prayers at al-Zubaie's home in Baghdad, seriously wounding the deputy prime minister and killing nine other people, including al-Zubaie's brother and an aide.

Al-Zubaie was treated in a Baghdad hospital and was flown Wednesday to Amman and taken to the King Hussein Medical City, a military hospital in the suburbs of the Jordanian capital. 

There he underwent medical tests, and is receiving "treatment for wounds in his chest, abdomen and shoulder, caused by shrapnel and the burns he suffered in last week's explosion," al-Hayyani said.

The Islamic State in Iraq, a network of terror groups that includes al-Qaida in Iraq, has claimed responsibility for the attack on al-Zubaie. The Iraqi military has said that an al-Qaida fighter infiltrated al-Zubaie's security detachment.

AMMAN, Jordan, March 7 - Jordanian authorities said there was a plot to assassinate U.S. President George W. Bush during his visit last November.

Three suspects were indicted Wednesday at the State Security Court on charges of "conspiracy to commit terrorist acts and possession of unlicensed automatic weapons and illegal explosives for illicit use."

The men were charged with planning to assassinate Bush and blowing up the US and Danish embassies in the capital, Amman.

The US President came to Amman last November and met with Jordan's King Abdullah and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki amid extra tight security across the kingdom.

The three suspects were identified as Nidal Momani, 29, Sattam Trad, 28, and Tharwat Ali Daraz, 24. All hail from the impoverished town of Zarqa, the same hometown as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaeda leader in Iraq who was killed in a U.S. air strike last year in Iraq. The sources did not say whether the suspects were al-Qaeda affiliates.

The authorities said they discovered the plot and arrested the suspects on the day Bush arrived on November 28.

Another Putin Critic Dies

MOSCOW, March 8 - A critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin who died mysteriously last week was preparing to write a story claiming the Kremlin was secretly providing Syria with missile systems.

If Ivan Safronov's story had proved right, it could have caused deep embarrassment to Mr Putin, who had assured Israel and the United States that the arms deal had been scrapped.

An investigation was opened this week into the death of Safronov, defence correspondent for Russia's most authoritative newspaper, Kommersant, who died on Friday after falling from a window at his fourth-floor apartment.

He had recently returned from an arms fair in the United Arab Emirates, where he claimed to have learnt of a clandestine plan to rekindle a deal to supply Syria with Iskander-E missiles. The missiles would have given Syria the capability to strike targets in central and northern Israel at will. In 2005, Mr Putin said he had vetoed the deal, bowing to pressure from Washington and Jerusalem.

But Safronov's sources told him the missiles would be delivered via Belarus to muddy the trail. Kommersant said it was unable to substantiate the story but had decided to publish details because it could be connected to the journalist's death.