MIDDLE EAST

PRIME MINISTER’S SON GETS NINE MONTHS FOR CORRUPTION

JERUSALEM – The son of the stricken Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, received a nine month jail sentence for corruption yesterday although the court delayed the start until August 1 so he could spend time at his comatose father’s bedside. Omri Sharon, 41, received a further nine months suspended and was fined about $78,000 for arranging illegal financial support for his father’s campaign in the 1999 Likud party leadership race.

His lawyers accused the court of persecuting him because of his prominent political position as the son of the prime minister. They said they would appeal against the sentence.

– The Daily Telegraph

PERSIAN GULF

SADDAM SAYS HE IS ON HUNGER STRIKE

BAGHDAD – Saddam Hussein and other defendants at his trial yesterday declared they had started a hunger strike to protest the stricter attitude adopted by the presiding judge. The session began as it had the previous day, with Saddam shouting defiance and his half-brother dressed in pajamas. “For three days we have been holding a hunger strike protesting against your way in treating us – against you and your masters,” Saddam told the judge, Raouf Abdel-Rahman. The claim of a hunger strike could not be confirmed, but a court spokesman, judge Raid Juhi, did not deny the defendants were refusing food. During the session, in which three former members of Saddam’s regime gave evidence in connection with a massacre of 140 Shiite villagers in 1982, the judge repeatedly pounded his gavel to restore order. Saddam taunted him: “Take that hammer and knock yourself on the head.”

– The Daily Telegraph

IRAN SAYS 135 SWANS DIED OF BIRD FLU; VIRUS MAY BE IN GERMANY, AUSTRIA

TEHRAN, Iran- Iran yesterday said 135 wild swans died of bird flu in marshlands near the Caspian Sea in the country’s first case of the spreading virus, and officials in Germany and Austria said the virus had apparently reached there as well.

The disease’s likely spread to three new countries follows the recent deaths of humans from the H5N1 strain of bird flu in Turkey and Iraq, Iran’s neighbors, and the march of the disease into European countries Greece and Italy. Olympic officials in Italy said bird flu posed no threat to the Turin Olympics, but a Nigerian official warned that bird flu was fast spreading in that country, and a U.N. expert said the strain may have surfaced in a second African country.

– Associated Press

EAST ASIA

MORE THAN 115,000 CHINESE DISCIPLINED FOR CORRUPTION

BEIJING – The Chinese Communist Party disciplined more than 115,000 members for corruption and related violations last year and turned more than 15,000 of them over to the courts for prosecution, the government reported yesterday. The numbers, from a year-end compilation by the party’s Central Discipline Inspection Commission published in the official press, provided a high-level hint at the breadth and depth of the corruption that has arisen in China during a quarter-century of economic liberalization. The issue has become a serious liability for President Hu’s government.

– The Washington Post

SOUTH ASIA

NEPAL FREES POLITICAL PRISONERS, INCLUDING FORMER PRIME MINISTER

KATHMANDU, Nepal – The prime minister ousted by Nepal’s king was freed yesterday as the country’s monarch faced a new challenge to his rule – this time from the country’s courts. While the legal actions weren’t as dramatic as the opposition protests and rebel attacks that have undermined King Gyanendra, they could present as serious a challenge. Sher Bahadur Deuba, the prime minister Gyanendra ousted before seizing power, was freed after Nepal’s Supreme Court abolished the powerful anti-corruption commission that had imprisoned him. Forty-three human rights activists, students leaders, and political activists were also released.

– Associated Press

EASTERN EUROPE

U.S. JOURNALIST’S SHOOTING PROMPTS MYSTERY

MOSCOW – Paul Klebnikov was the kind of journalist who always had more stories than time, and always worked late. On this night, someone was waiting. The barrel of a gun appeared. Within moments, the 41-year-old New Yorker was dead.

Today, two alleged Chechen gangsters and their purported cohort in a gun-for-hire mob will go on trial in a Moscow courtroom for Klebnikov’s murder. But the trial, which initially began last month but had to be halted when the judge fell ill, already seems to have raised as many questions as it has answered about who would have wanted to kill the editor of Forbes Russia. One immediate question that arises about the government’s case is that all those charged are Chechens, while Klebnikov in his own last words identified his attacker as a Russian. Klebnikov may simply have been mistaken, but some insiders point out that Chechens make easy fall guys in today’s Russia.

Three men are on trial, only two of them charged with the murder of Klebnikov, as well as the slaying 13 days earlier of the former deputy prime minister of Chechnya, Yan Sergunin. The two men, Kazbek Dukuzov and Musa Vakhayev, are also charged with a number of other acts of extortion and racketeering committed by a gang originating in the Chechen town of Urus-Martan. A third defendant, Moscow notary public Fail Sadretdinov, is accused of being involved with the gang. All three have pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors have drawn no connection between the murder of Klebnikov and that of Sergunin, except to say both were committed by the same culprits.

– Los Angeles Times

SOUTHEAST ASIA

TWO AUSTRALIANS SENTENCED TO DEATH IN BALI DRUG SMUGGLING CASE

BALI, Indonesia – Two Australians were sentenced yesterday to death by firing squad for leading a drug smuggling ring on Indonesia’s resort island of Bali, verdicts that could strain ties between the countries. Andrew Chan, 22, and Myuran Sukumaran, 24 – who masterminded the trafficking of 18 pounds of heroin to their homeland – showed little emotion as their verdicts were read in a packed courtroom. Four other members of the so-called “Bali Nine,” all of them Australian, have been given life sentences. The sentences for the final three were expected today.

– Associated Press