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New Assassination Threat to Obama
Washington, USA, October 31: Security for Barack Obama is the tightest its ever
been as the Presidential election enters its final stages.
"There's a whole host of things that the Secret Service will look at to determine where along the
potential path to violence this plot may have been," said Bradley County Sheriff Tim Gobble to WRBC TV Eyewitness News.
And Gobble should know. He spent 15 years in the Secret Service specializing in criminal investigations and protective
intelligence.
"The Secret Service is conducting at any given time possibly thousands of cases investigating possible threats," said Gobble.
he wasn't surprised to learn that there had existed a plot by two Neo-Nazi Skinheads to assassinate presidential candidate
Barak Obama and kill another 100 plus black people.
The suspects were arrested after one of their girlfriends ratted on them. She was the driver in an attempted burglary,
which failed because the suspects saw dogs and chickened out. The girlfriend got scared and told her mother, who alerted police.
Since this story emerged, Barack Obama's family have told the press of their fears for his life yesterday as he moved
closer to the White House.
The Democratic front-runner's elder half-brother Abongo said Obama was a "big target" and the discovery this week of a
neo-Nazi plot to kill him had been a chilling experience.
He spoke out as Obama and former president Bill Clinton - appearing alongside him on the campaign trail for the first time
- drew a crowd of 35,000 to a rally in Kissimmee, Florida.
Abongo, an accountant who shares Obama's father but has a different mother, said: We are extremely excited about how it's
all going and really positive.
"But when you hear about a threat against Barack's life, you are brought back down to reality.
"All the dangers he is facing become apparent again. We are hoping and praying that he will be protected.
"Based on American history, it's a reality that we have to consider seriously. A lot of people have been assassinated.
When you're in that position, you're a big target.
"Barack is not only in danger because of his race but because of the position he is going for.
There's always a danger and fear he can be hurt."
"America has come a long way in recent years. My brother's progress shows that."
Meanwhile, Obama's frail aunt Zeituni Onyango, who lives in Boston, said: "I just pray for him, that's all."
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.
Another Attempted Poisoning in London

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| Oleg Gordievsky - was he the victim of an attempted poisoning? |
April 6 2008, London: Police are investigating allegations that a former Russian spy who defected to Britain was poisoned
in an attempt to assassinate him.
Oleg Gordievsky spent 34 hours unconscious in hospital after falling ill at his home in Guildford on 2 November 2007.
He was initially partially paralysed and still has no feeling in his fingers.
Gordievsky, the highest-ranking Soviet spy to defect to the West, claimed he was the victim of a Kremlin-inspired assassination
attempt similar to that alleged to have killed the former security agent Alexander Litvinenko.
"I've known for some time that I am on the assassination list drawn up by rogue elements in Moscow. It was obvious
to me I had been poisoned," he told The Mail on Sunday. He accused MI6 of forcing Special Branch to drop its early investigations
into his allegations.
Gordievsky claims he was poisoned with thallium, a highly toxic metal used in insecticides which was favoured by the KGB
in assassinations during the Cold War. Litvinenko was poisoned with polonium, a radioactive element.
Gordievsky, who was awarded one of Britain's highest honours by the Queen last October, was rushed to hospital after collapsing
at home. He lay unconscious and "close to death" for 34 hours. He spent a further two weeks recuperating in a private
clinic paid for by his former bosses in MI6. He was initially left partially paralysed by the alleged attack and still has
no feeling in his fingers.
Gordievsky, 69, defected to the UK after more than ten years living a double life spying for British intelligence. "I've
known for some time that I am on the assassination list drawn up by rogue elements in Moscow," he said. "They murdered
my friend Alexander Litvinenko. I have no doubt my sudden illness last November was a similar attempt on my life. It was obvious
to me I had been poisoned.
"The targets for assassination are well known. First Boris Berezovsky [the multi-millionaire oligarch living in exile
in Britain], next the prime minister of Chechnya, then Litvinenko and then I was fourth. Now I remain third."
Gordievsky suspects one of his long-term friends, a former Russian military intelligence officer, of administering the
poison. After Gordievsky was released from hospital, he accused the man of trying to kill him and gave his name to the police.
Gordievsky was appointed Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) for "services
to the security of the United Kingdom". The honour is the same as the one supposedly held by Ian Fleming's fictional
spy James Bond.
MI6 recruited Gordievsky when he was stationed in Denmark in 1968 after learning that he had become disenchanted with
his work and his country following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
In 1982 he was assigned to the Soviet embassy in London as the KGB "resident" responsible for Soviet intelligence-gathering
and espionage in the UK. While in London, his handler was a young MI6 officer, John Scarlett, who is now head of MI6.
But in 1985 Gordievsky was ordered back to Moscow and arrested at the dacha of one of his superiors. Gordievsky was interrogated
by the KGB for several weeks and, even under the influence of "truth drugs", he never confessed.
In June 1985, he was allowed to return to his Moscow flat and British intelligence officers put in place a daring and
dangerous escape plan.
On July 19, 1985, Gordievsky went for his usual jog and gave his KGB watchers the slip. He boarded a train to the Finnish
border, where he was met by a British embassy car and smuggled across the frontier in the boot.
Gordievsky receives a Ministry of Defence pension, equivalent to that of a British Army colonel. His welfare and security
are overseen by the Re-Settlement Group for Defectors within MI6. Gordievsky has written books about the KGB and is a frequently
quoted media pundit on the subject.
Jackal Targets Putin

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| Shakhvelad Osmanov - is he the Jackal who would assassinate Putin? |
Sunday 16 March, Moscow: Reports of an assassination attempt on Vladimir Putin and Russian president-elect Dmitry Medvedev
were last night shrouded in mystery.
In a scene reminiscent of Frederick Forsyth's thriller The Day Of The Jackal, Kremlin agents seized A man with a sniper
rifle and Kalashnikov assault gun in a rented apartment overlooking Moscow's St Basil's Cathedral, on March 2, the day of
the Presidential election in Russia.
The arrest came as Putin and Medvedev were staging a victory rally following the presidential elections on March 2.
Such a story was unlikely to have been published in the Kremlin-controlled media unless it had been cleared by senior
officials, and tabloid Tvoi Den is known to have good contacts in the government and the secret services.
But last night, Russian news agency Interfax quoted an official from the FSB; the secret service successor of the KGB;
describing the report as "absolutely false", claiming the arrests were connected to an organised crime gang.
Tvoi Den, however, published a detailed account of the murder plot, naming the gunman Shakhvelad Osmanov, a 24-year-old
Tajik national. His sniper rifle was said to be foreign-made and to have optical lenses.
The FSB was said to be hunting for the organisers of the crime. For now, the man is arrested and charged with firearms
offences. The paper said that Osmanov is not thought to be the mastermind behind the assassination bid.

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.
Would be Assassin Arthur Bremer Freed

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| Bremer was captured moments after he shot Wallace |
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."
Benazir Bhutto Attacked by Suicide Bombers

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.
Putin Assassination Plot
Moscow, October 14: The Russian
President, Vladimir Putin, has been warned of a plot to assassinate him during a visit to Iran
this week, a Kremlin spokesperson said Sunday. Interfax news agency, citing a source in Russia's special services, said suicide bombers would to carry out the assassination.
Putin is due to travel to Tehran on Monday night from Germany after meeting Chancellor Angela Merkel. During his visit to Iran, Putin will meet with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and attend Tuesday's summit of Caspian Sea nations.
Officials have reported uncovering at least two other plots to kill Putin on foreign trips since he became president
in 2000. Ukrainian security officials said they foiled an attempt to kill Putin during a summit in Yalta in August 2000.
In 2001, Russian security officials said a plot to assassinate Putin earlier that year in Baku,
the capital of Azerbaijan, had been uncovered
by the Azeri special services.Russian officials linked both alleged plots to Chechen separatists. Putin had sent troops back
into the southern Russian republic to crush resistance to Moscow's
rule.
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.
Suspected Backer of Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Captured

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| Gandhi's assassin, 17-yr-old Dhanu is the girl with flowers in her hair in the photo |
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

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| 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.

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| Ivory Coast PM Guillaume Soro |
Bouake, Ivory Coast June 30: Officials say several people were arrested in connection with a rocket attack
Friday on a plane carrying Ivory Coast's
Prime Minister Guillaume Soro.
A government spokesman announced the arrests Saturday, but said he could not identify the suspects. Prime Minister Soro was not harmed, but three other people on the plane were
killed when it was hit by a rocket at Bouake's airport in central Ivory Coast.
In a statement late Friday, U.N. Security Council president Johan Verbeke of Belgium
strongly condemned the attack and any attempt to disrupt the Ivory Coast
peace process. The U.N. mission in Ivory Coast
and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also denounced the violence.
It is not clear who was responsible for the attack in Bouake,
a rebel stronghold.
A journalist who was on Soro's plane at the time said two explosions rocked the aircraft as it landed. Witnesses
outside the plane say it was hit by a short-range rocket. There also were reports of gunfire after the initial blast.
Soro is a former rebel leader. He was sworn in as Ivory Coast's
prime minister in April. In March, Mr. Soro and
Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo signed an agreement to restart the stalled peace process between the rebels in the north
and the government in the south.
CIA to Show the World its "Family Jewels"

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| General Hayden (left) with Senator Patrick Leahy |
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

A 27-year-old German man tried to jump into the Pope Benedict XVI’s popemobile today, but was quickly overpowered
by bodyguards and hauled to the ground.
The incident, which immediately recalled the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981, occurred at the beginning
of the Pope's weekly general audience in St Peter's Square
in the Vatican.
Pope Benedict did not seem to notice the man and continued his audience as usual.
A Vatican official said the man, who was wearing a pink
t-shirt, black shorts, a cap and sunglasses, managed to reach the back of the Pope's open-topped vehicle before the pontiff's
team of eight guards wrestled him to the ground. As he was dragged off he reported to have said: 'I Wasn't Trying To Hurt Him'. He is being questioned by Vatican police who have said that the man has 'mental issues'.
Video footage showed the man, leaping the barrier that separates the crowd from the Pope but being watched all the way
by the security guards. Benedict continued waving as he was stopped and the popemobile carried on.
Pope
Benedict has tested the security capacities of the Vatican since his election
in 2005, eschewing the bulletproof glass of Pope John Paul's famous popemobile for a low-slung, jeep-like successor which
leaves him open to the elements and the crowds. Last year he defied threats to his safety to visit Turkey,
the home of Mehmet Ali Agca, the gunman who tried to kill his predecessor 25 years earlier.
His visit to Brazil
last month demanded a security effort known as "Operation Archangel" involving more than 11,000 officers in the sprawling
city of Sao Paulo.
The security lapse will do nothing to alleviate concerns in what is a busy week for the Italian capital.
President Bush is visiting Rome on Friday after attending
the G8 summit in Germany.
His plans to call on the Pope, Romano Prodi, the Italian Prime Minister, and the Italian President and stroll through the
picturesque Trastevere have already led to the closure of Rome's airspace and several schools and roads. Achille Serra, the prefect
of Rome,
said today that thousands of police would be on duty to marshal at least two planned protests to the visit.
Russia Claims Litvinenko was an Assassin

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| Andrei Lugovy Denies Assassination |
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.
PM Zoran Djindjic’s Assassins Jailed for 40 Years

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| The Funeral of Zoran Djindjic |
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

|
| Assassin Zvezdan Jovanovic |
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."

Rare JFK Photo to be Auctioned
Dallas, USA, April
13: A fingerprint-smudged black-and-white photo
taken when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas is going up for auction.
The grainy Polaroid
taken by Mary Ann Moorman shows JFK and the first lady ducking as their motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963.
Abraham Zapruder, who famously filmed the assassination, is visible in the distance.
The picture had been on loan for years to the
Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, but Moorman -- who's now in her 70s -- decided to sell it.
The company brokering the sale expects the picture will have a minimum reserve of about $500,000 when it becomes available
on Monday 16.
Accused Assassins Seek Compensation
Moscow, Russia, April 8: Two businessmen who met former Russian security agent Alexander Litvinenko
in London
the day he fell ill are seeking compensation from a charity created by his widow.
Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun were questioned by investigators about the death in November of Litvinenko, who was
poisoned with polonium after meeting them in a bar. They deny involvement in his death.
Lugovoi and Kovtun, who were exposed to radiation and spent weeks in hospital, want compensation from the Litvinenko
Justice Foundation, created this week by exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, Litvinenko's widow Marina and his friend
Alex Goldfarb.
Goldfarb angrily dismissed the men's demands. "These two individuals deserve not a compensation but a life sentence,"
he said.
Meanwhile, former chess champion Garry Kasparov, now a political opposition leader in Russia, said he never eats or drinks when he flies Aeroflot and tries to avoid
travel with the Russian carrier.
"If the state wants to go after me they will, but what else can I do?" he said in London.
Dalai Lama Threatened
Bhopal,
Tibet
April 3: Pro-Tibet activists joined a protest march after the Pakistan
based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) threatened to assassinate the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.
'Mahatma Gandhi Tibet
Freedom Movement' activists accused China
of being behind the threats. They shouted slogans against and burnt posters of Chinese President Hu Jintao.
"The Dalai
Lama receiving a threat from the LeT is a solid proof that the threat has been issued at the behest of China because China
feels directly threatened by the ever increasing popularity of the Dalai Lama across the globe. China
is also scared of the popular opinion tilting in favour of Tibet.
We condemn this act and appeal to the Indian government and the rest of the world to ensure the safety and security of his
holiness the Dalai Lama," said Mahesh Yadav, an activist.
The Dalai Lama has a three-ring security cover with the innermost
guarded by special security persons of the Tibetan security department and the outermost by the police.
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.
LA Women Poisoned in Moscow

MOSCOW, March 7,
2007 - The US Embassy confirmed that two American women, Marina Kovalevsky, 49, and her daughter, Yana, 26, were hospitalised
in Moscow for thallium poisoning.
Both women are Soviet-born
and emigrated to the United States in 1989 but have visited Russia repeatedly since then. They arrived in Moscow in mid-February to attend a wedding and fell ill on February 24.
Moscow's most senior public health doctor, Nikolai Filatov
said that they were in a “moderately serious” condition. The two women were given an antidote called Prussian
Blue to counteract the effects of thallium and had undergone dialysis to help clean their bodies of toxins.
How they may have ingested
the poison - a colourless, tasteless substance that can be fatal in doses of as little as one gram - was not clear.
There was no indication
of whether the women had business or political interests in Russia
that could have made them a target.
Thallium was initially
suspected in last year's fatal poisoning in London of former
KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, who was later determined to have ingested polonium-210. Thallium was used by Saddam Hussein,
who poisoned several of his Iraqi opponents. The CIA also considered using thallium against Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
Thallium works by knocking
out the body's supply of potassium, essential for healthy cells, and attacking the nervous system, the stomach and kidneys.
Its effects are not immediately noticeable and frequently take weeks to kick in; symptoms include hair loss and a burning
sensation in extremities. Thallium has been used in rat poison in the past, and it is still used to make lenses, semiconductors,
dyes and pigments.
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Be Careful What You Say...Man arrested for Obama threat
Miami, USA, August 8: Investigators have foiled an assassination plot on the presidential campaign trail. Secret
Service agents arrested Raymond Giesel in Miami for threatening to kill Senator Barack Obama. Investigators say he told people
at a bail bondsman training class, "if he gets elected I'll assassinate him myself." The Secret Service searched
his hotel room and SUV and turned up a stash of military-style weapons along with body armor and fatigues. Giesel
denies making the threat. If convicted on charges of threatening a presidential candidate he would face up to five years
in prison.
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.
Lone Wolf Hunts Bush
Minnesota, USA, April 2: Secret Service agents in Minnesota are investigating an imprisoned
felon from Fargo, N.D., who they say brought a gun to a 2005 rally featuring President Bush and later made threats against
the president.
David Cvijanovich
began serving 19 months in jail in 2006 after a conviction for damaging government property and threatening a federal officer
in 2001.
The possible assassination plot was uncovered by fellow inmates,
who informed authorities. During a search of Cvijanovich's property,
agents found a gun and several disguises. Cvijanovich denies the assassination attempt, saying lying convicts are just looking to get time off
their sentences. He has not been charged for any activities at the rally, but is facing charges for the threats
JFK Assassination Papers Revealed
Dallas, Feb 25, 2008: After spending nearly two decades locked in a District Attorney's safe, papers and various items relating
to the 1963 assassination of President John Kennedy have been revealed for the first time.
Presented by Dallas County district attorney Craig Watkins, the items include a purported transcript between Kennedy assassin
Lee Harvey Oswald and Oswald's killer, nightclub owner Jack Ruby; a leather gun holster that held the weapon Ruby used to
shoot Oswald; brass knuckles found on Ruby when he was arrested; and a movie contract signed by then-Dallas district attorney
Henry Wade.
Mr Watkins said he was told about the contents of the blue, two-door safe shortly after he took office in 2007. He decided
that "this information was too important to keep secret".
One of the most fascinating items is the transcript of an supposed conversation between Oswald and Ruby. The transcript
- already been called far-fetched by some - includes talk of killing the president at the behest of the Mafia. It is widely
suspected that this was part of a movie script that Wade had been working on.
Despite this being the most likely explanation, as Watkins said: "it will open up the debate as to whether there
was a conspiracy to assassinate the president."
The transcript is dated October 4, 1963, and the conversation was supposed to have taken place at the Carousel Club, a
Dallas nightclub. The Dallas News has already put them online and has asked for its readers to try and spot anything of particular
interest. Watch this space...
See the new JFK material here
Assassinaton Attempt on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf Kills Seven
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.
Fidel Castro Claims He Foiled Assassination Attempt on Reagan

|
| Reagan's Lucky Escape in 1981 |
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.
Security and police officials held in Russian Journalist Slaying

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.
She worked at Novaya Gazeta and the paper’s
current editor in chief Dmitry Muratov said: "We are fully satisfied with the way the investigation proceeded. It was an honest,
unbiased and efficient investigation. What's more, we fully cooperated with the investigators and they didn't hide anything
from us."
Muratov said that the investigation revealed that officers from the Interior Ministry police and the Federal
Security Service, or FSB, played "very instrumental" roles in setting up the hit,
"We know everything the investigators
know, and they know everything we know. This is why the authorities couldn't hide the results of the investigation even if
they wanted to."
Pro-Kremlin media made statements that the order to assassinate Politkovskaya came from opponents
of Vladimir Putin living abroad and was aimed at casting suspicion on the president's government. That same argument was later
used after Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned last year.
Putin said that the 2004 killing in Moscow of
Paul Klebnikov, the American editor of Forbes magazine's Russian-language edition, might have been designed by Russian exiles
to discredit his government.
The main target of such accusations appears to be exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky,
a former Kremlin insider who helped bring Putin to power but is now one of the Russian president's fiercest critics. Litvinenko
was an associate of Berezovsky, who has political asylum in Britain.
At
the news conference, Chaika asserted that the damage to Russian authorities from Politkovskaya's killing was so massive that
her killing must have been ordered by the government’s enemies.
Acussed Pope Plotter Found Dead at Home

|
| Undated file photo of Sergei Antonov |
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.
Was
Millionaire’s Death an ‘Accident’?
London,
July 1: An Egyptian millionaire who mysteriously fell to his death from the balcony of his London flat after being named as a Mossad spy was writing a book that threatened to expose
the murky world of Arab-Israeli espionage.
Ashraf
Marwan, the son-in-law of the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt,
was more than halfway through a book about the 1973 Yom Kippur war - in which he is alleged to have played a key intelligence
role - when his body was discovered last week.
Marwan’s
death, which police are treating as “unexplained”, has sent ripples across the Middle East and shocked some of
Britain's wealthiest people.
The
62-year-old financier was a former shareholder of Chelsea
football club and counted Ken Bates, its former chairman, Adnan Khashoggi, the Saudi arms dealer, and Tiny Rowland, the late
business tycoon, among his acquaintances.
But
it was Marwan’s espionage activities that have surrounded his death with intrigue. Israeli intelligence sources claimed
this weekend that he had been one of the greatest spies recruited by Mossad.
They
said Marwan had supplied the Israeli secret service with a treasure trove of information, including the secret plans drawn
up by Egypt’s leaders to cross the Suez Canal and attack Israel in 1973.
Ahron
Bregman, an Israeli historian at King’s College London, however, believes Marwan was a double agent who misled the Israelis
over Egypt’s plans for the war.
This weekend Bregman said the Egyptian had left three messages on his answerphone last Tuesday, urgently asking him to make
contact.
“I
was out, but eventually spoke to him at around 4pm,” said Bregman. “He asked me about the recent libel case in
Israel.”
The
case involved two former Israeli intelligence officers, one of whom had accused the other of leaking Marwan’s name as
a spy. Bregman said Marwan had described the court case as “a headache” and asked to meet him at King’s
College the following day.
“It
was very clear that we were going to meet, but there was no call on Wednesday and I heard later in the day that he had died,”
said Bregman, who claimed in an Egyptian newspaper article in 2003 that Marwan had been a double agent. “He told me
never to send anything to his address because it was watched. He was always very cautious and never referred to himself by
name.”
Marwan
fell four floors to his death from his flat at Carlton House Terrace overlooking St James’s Park. Police are exploring
three possibilities: that he was murdered, that he jumped - although no suicide note has been found - or that he fell.
One
possibility is that Marwan was taking medicinal drugs that made him faint. He had had three heart operations, according to
a friend, Marwan, lived with his wife at the London flat where he died, was writing about the Yom Kippur war, in which he
may have played a key intelligence role, and “had been very unwell”.
Other
friends believe that he feared being assassinated after being “outed” as a Mossad spy.
The
son of an Egyptian general, Marwan studied at Cairo university where he met Mona, Nasser’s daughter. He was 21 and she was 17. The couple married a year later and went on to have
two sons, Gamal and Ahmed.
Marwan
was soon leading a double life. In 1969, according to Israeli sources, he slipped into the Israeli embassy in London and - before being ejected - told a security guard: “Send my name to Tel Aviv.
They’ll know who I am. I’ll be back in a week’s time.”
A
week later one of Mossad’s most senior controllers - known by the initial D - flew to Britain and lavished five-star hospitality on Marwan. It was the start of a 30-year
relationship that saw highly classified information, including the minutes of meetings between Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president,
and other world leaders regularly passing into Mossad’s hands.
“It’s
as if we were sleeping in the bedroom of the Egyptian presidential couple,” recalled an Israeli source.
Marwan,
who worked in Sadat’s office, made only two conditions in return for his services: he was to be paid £50,000 for each
significant meeting he had with his Israeli handlers and he insisted that D was to be his sole controller.
Before
long Marwan’s raw intelligence became essential reading for Golda Meir, the Israeli prime minister, and Moshe Dayan,
her defence minister. “When information arrived from Marwan it was sent directly to the leaders,” said an insider.
“It was better than any John le Carré espionage thriller.”
By
1972 Marwan was a millionaire and had revealed details to Mossad about secret arms deals between Egypt
and the Soviet Union, according to Israeli sources.
But
the best was yet to come. Marwan invited D to a meeting in London at which he handed his controller
a suitcase full of documents outlining Egypt’s plans to cross Suez and attack Israel.
Intelligence sources claim that overconfident Israeli military chiefs ignored the plans and they were left to sit in a safe
in Tel Aviv.
In
September 1973 King Hussein of Jordan tipped off Meir that Syria was also about to launch an attack. Meir sought Marwan’s
advice.
But
Marwan could not be reached. Finally, only 24 hours before the outbreak of war, a message was intercepted in the Mossad HQ
in Tel Aviv: “Meet me tomorrow in London.”
Marwan
managed to leave Sadat’s side by convincing the Egyptian president that he should travel to Libya to warn Colonel Gadaffi about the imminent conflict. From Tripoli,
he flew to Malta and on to London.
Mossad
stopped El-Al’s last flight to London as it prepared
for take-off. The Boeing 707 waited on the tarmac for more than 30 minutes. Passengers saw a car speeding towards the aircraft
and two fair-haired men climbed in. They were Zvi Zamir, the head of Mossad, and D, Marwan’s controller.
According
to Israeli sources, Zamir rang Tel Aviv in the early hours of the morning and told colleagues: “Call Golda [Meir]. It’s
today at 6pm, both Syria and Egypt.”
Marwan’s
tardiness raised suspicions that he was a double agent but he was exonerated by Mossad. In Egypt Marwan remained a hero and
was decorated by Sadat before moving to London, where he became
active in the business world.
Meanwhile,
in Tel Aviv, Marwan’s former controller, D, received the news of his death with sadness. With Marwan’s book unfinished,
perhaps the motives for his secret life will never be fully explained.
Taliban Missiles Targeted Harmid Khazi
Kabul, June 11 - Afghan President Hamid Karzai has no plans to restrict his travel or beef up personal security after surviving a
third assassination attempt in a rocket attack outside the capital.
Taliban insurgents fired several rockets at a building where Karzai was giving a speech on Sunday. Karzai was speaking
to the elders of impoverished Andar district when the audience began to flee after rockets crashed down a hundred metres away.
Karzai urged them to stay and finished his speech. The incident highlighted the dangers for Karzai of travelling outside his
heavily fortified base in Kabul.
"The president's schedule is business as usual," a presidential spokesman Khaleeq Ahmad said. "His security has done
a great job and no changes will be made ... The president will continue his provincial visits all over Afghanistan."
Since installed to lead Afghanistan
in 2001, following the overthrow of the Taliban, Karzai has now survived three assassination attempts, including a previous
rocket attack during a helicopter trip in the 2004 presidential election race.
In 2002, a Taliban fighter tried to shoot him during a visit to southern Kandahar
city -- his birthplace and the stronghold of Taliban insurgents.That attack and the assassination of one of Karzai's deputies in broad daylight in Kabul,
prompted Washington, the president's staunch supporter, to provide him protection with scores of U.S. security guards.
In the face of criticism by some Afghans over the protection by U.S.
bodyguards, Karzai publicly relies largely on his American-trained Afghan security apparatus.
The president is known as the "mayor of Kabul" to his
critics, who say his power does not extend much beyond his palace, which hides behind sandbag ramparts, concrete blocks, razor
wire and machine-gun nests in the capital.
Lugovy Responds to Charges
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.

|
| Andrey Lugovoy training at his security firm |
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.

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| Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi speaking before the attack |
Mogadishu, Somalia, May 18,
2007: A ROADSIDE bomb exploded
near Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi's convoy yesterday as it sped through the capital Mogadishu
The attack came a day after suspected insurgents killed four African Union peacekeepers from Uganda in a remote-controlled blast aimed at their convoy
in the city centre.
Yesterday's bomb exploded near the former parliament building as
Gedi's convoy headed to the airport to see off the plane carrying the dead Ugandans home.
"Fortunately no one was hurt. The bomb exploded away from the vehicle.
One of two men suspected of planting the bomb was captured on the site," government spokesman Abdullahi Muhyidin Mohamed said
by telephone.
Another suspect had fled the scene and soldiers were hunting him,
Mohamed said. It is at least the third assassination bid against Gedi, a former veterinary lecturer with no previous political
experience since taking office in late 2004.
He has also survived a bomb detonated at a Mogadishu stadium where he was speaking and another attack against his convoy.
Many soldiers and other government personnel
have been killed in guerrilla-style attacks since January when Ethiopia-backed government troops defeated Islamist rivals.
Earlier this week, a Mogadishu district commissioner was assassinated by unknown gunmen who managed to escape.
A government soldier in Somalia
was shot to death Thursday morning at a crowded marketplace in Mogadishu,
witnesses and business owners said.
A man in civilian clothes shot the soldier in
the head before melting into the frenzied crowd at Bakara market and escaping, the witnesses added.
Government forces have been demolishing illegal
kiosks in the Bakara market in recent days. The troops have also been providing security at the busy marketplace, following
an agreement between the government and local businesses.
Yesterday, another government soldier was fatally
shot in the same market when he tried to disarm an armed man.
The Somali transitional government is struggling
to restore central rule in Mogadishu after 16 years of factional
conflict and crime, but rebels have vowed to wage war until all foreign troops, including African Union peacekeepers, are
withdrawn.

|
| The accused assassin, Zvezdan Jovanovic |
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.
Ltvinenko Wife: “I want justice for Sasha for his son”
| Boris Berezovsky at Litvinenko's Highgate Funeral |

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| Reuters |
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.

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| The Assassination of Anwar Sadat |
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.
Bush Escaped Assassination in Jordan

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.

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| Ivan Safronov |
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