Reuters - January 31st, 2004

LONDON (Reuters) - A program made by Britain's BBC says North Korea is killing political prisoners in experimental gas chambers and testing new chemical weapons on women and children.

Titled ``Access to Evil'' and being aired on Sunday, the program features an official North Korean document that says political prisoners are used to test new chemical weapons.

In a statement, the BBC said the documentary included comments by Kwon Hyuk, a new name given to a former military attache at the North Korean embassy in Beijing and chief of management at Prison Camp 22.

Using a drawing, he describes a gas chamber and the victims he says he saw at the prison in the northeast of the secretive communist state, near the Russian border.

``I witnessed a whole family being tested on suffocating gas and dying in the gas chamber. The parents, son and a daughter. The parents were vomiting and dying, but till the very last moment they tried to save kids by doing mouth-to-mouth breathing,'' he said.

``Normally, a family sticks together (in the gas chamber)... and individual prisoners stand separately around the corners. Scientists observe the entire process from above, through the glass.''

Asked how he felt about the children, he said: ``It would be a total lie for me to say I felt sympathetic about the children dying such a painful death. Under the society and the regime I was in at the time, I only felt that they were the enemies. So I felt no sympathy or pity for them at all.''

The documentary for the BBC's ``This World'' series was to be broadcast at 9 p.m. (2100 GMT).

EXPERIMENTS

North Korean officials in London were unavailable to comment. BBC journalist Olenka Frenkiel told Reuters she had three independent confirmations that Kwon Hyuk was genuine.

The human rights group Amnesty International said it had been unable to confirm previous reports of such testing.

``We have heard of these allegations but we cannot confirm them,'' a spokeswoman said.

North Korea -- described by President Bush as part of an ``axis of evil'' because of a nuclear weapons program and authoritarian system -- has denied accusations of human rights abuses.

A top-secret North Korean document also says political prisoners are used for ``human biological experimentation and for production of biological weapons,'' the BBC said.

It interviews a person said to be a former prisoner in North Korea who had been ordered to poison others.

``An officer ordered me to select 50 healthy female prisoners. One of the guards handed me a basket full of soaked cabbage, told me not to eat it but to give it to the 50 women,'' Sun Ok Lee said, according to the BBC statement.

``All who ate the cabbage leaves started violently vomiting blood and screaming with pain. It was hell. In less than 20 minutes, they were quite dead.''

Frenkiel said she had also seen other official North Korean documents, one of which referred to the transfer of a prisoner ``for the purpose of human experimentation of liquid gas for chemical weapons'' in February 2002.

Former Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic has been convicted of persecution by The Hague war crimes tribunal. Babic, 47, pleaded guilty to charges of persecuting non-Serbs in a deal with prosecutors on Tuesday.

The court agreed to drop four charges of murder, cruelty and the wanton destruction of villages during the war in Croatia in the early 1990s.

As part of the plea-bargaining, Babic signed a confession in which he admitted he was aware of the forced eviction and persecution of Croats; that he helped spread pro-Serb propaganda; and that he helped distribute weapons among the Serb population.

Full story here.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq (news - web sites) plans to investigate allegations that dozens of officials and businessmen worldwide illegally received oil in exchange for supporting former leader Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), officials said Tuesday.

Their statements came after al-Mada, an independent Baghdad newspaper, published a list it said was based on oil ministry documents showing 46 individuals, companies and organizations from inside and outside Iraq who were given millions of barrels of oil.

The list includes members of Arab ruling families, religious organizations, politicians and political parties from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Sudan, China, Austria, France and other countries.

Organizations named include the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Communist Party, India's Congress Party and the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

Oil ministry officials say they have stopped selling oil to companies that may have acted as fronts to supporters of the toppled leader.

Full story here.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As part of an agreement to rid Libya of weapons of mass destruction, the United States took possession on Tuesday of 55,000 pounds (25,000 kg) of equipment and documents from the country's nuclear weapons and missile programs, including centrifuge parts used to enrich uranium.

An American C-17 transport plane loaded with guidance sets for long-range missiles and other sensitive Libyan components arrived on Tuesday morning at an airport outside Knoxville, Tennessee. The contents were then moved to a ``secure facility'' for analysis.

U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Dick Lugar said the nuclear weapons-related equipment would be destroyed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, the U.S. Department of Energy's largest science and energy laboratory.

Libya has already started destroying its unfilled chemical munitions, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

President Bush has seized on Libya's decision to voluntarily dismantle its banned-weapons programs as an example to other nations with nuclear ambitions.

The shipment was disclosed on the same day he faced pointed questions from reporters about his decision to invade Iraq. The top U.S. weapons hunter concluded Baghdad had no stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons -- the administration's main justification for going to war.

Tuesday's shipment from Libya was the second so far. Last week, another plane left Libya carrying the ``most sensitive documentation associated with the Libyan nuclear weapons program,'' McClellan told reporters.

He said the shipment was a sign of ``real progress'' since Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi pledged on Dec. 19 to abandon efforts to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in a surprise deal with old adversaries Washington and London after years of negotiation.

Bush has suggested that the Iraq war was a factor in Gaddafi's decision.

``This is an important first step,'' said Lugar, an Indiana Republican.

McClellan said the transport plane, which landed at McGhee Tyson airport, was carrying ``critical materials related to Libya's nuclear weapons program and ballistic missile capabilities.''

``These materials include both sensitive documentation and equipment'' -- including centrifuge parts used to enrich uranium as well as uranium hexafluoride.

A centrifuge is a rapidly rotating cylinder that can be used to enrich uranium for use as nuclear bomb fuel. Uranium hexafluoride is a gas used in that process.

McClellan said the shipment also contained ballistic missile guidance sets for longer-range missiles which Libya has voluntarily agreed to eliminate.

``While these shipments are only the beginning of the elimination of Libya's weapons, these shipments as well as the close cooperation on the ground in Libya reflect real progress in Libya meeting its commitments,'' McClellan said.

He said Gaddafi ``made a courageous decision to give up his weapons. And through this transparent process, the world can see that Colonel Gaddafi is keeping his commitment.''

``As the Libyan government takes these essential steps and demonstrates its seriousness, its good faith will be returned,'' McClellan added.

Libya's August 2003 admission of responsibility for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and its December vow to abandon weapons of mass destruction have set the stage for a possible end to U.S. economic sanctions.

But the United States made clear it was not prepared to take that step, at least not yet. ``Obviously, there's more to do,'' McClellan said. Lifting sanctions would let U.S. oil companies resume work in Libya abandoned when sanctions forced them out in 1986.

Editor's commentary: This is not a smoking gun but erupting volcano. No one ever mentioned a single word about Libya's nuclear weapons program and now all this. If crazy Gaddafi could accomplish this then we can only make a wild guess on how much Saddam did. We now know for sure that no WMD found in Iraq are part of international Moscow conspiracy to secretly arm various dictators around the world with nuclear weapons with one goal only and that is destruction of America and the free world. The only thing that prevents Saddam's WMD to be found is international conspiracy of lies and deception. Truth about Holocaust and Nazi terror surfaced the day Nazis were defeated. Until then all we knew were Red Cross reports about concentration camps in Germany where everything is in "satisfactory" order (very similar to UN reports about Iraq). Hitler's buildup of weapons and army were also "alleged", unverified and blatant "lies" according to those who signed Munich Agreement with Hitler in 1938.

BEIJING (AP) -- Amnesty International called Wednesday for the release of 54 people jailed in China for expressing opinions on the Internet, citing a ``dramatic rise'' in the number detained for anything from political speech to spreading news about SARS.

In a report released Wednesday, the London-based group said the 54 cases it had documented represented a significant increase from the 33 people listed in its November 2002 report.

Amnesty said the 54 cases were likely just ``a fraction'' of the actual number of people detained for opinions expressed online.

``China is said to have in place the most extensive censorship of the Internet of any country in the world,'' Amnesty said.

The organization said the prisoners included people who signed online petitions for government reform, published non-official news about SARS, communicated with dissident groups overseas, or called for a review of Beijing's bloody 1989 crackdown on demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. Detainees also include followers of the banned spiritual group Falun Gong, it said.

China's Foreign Ministry could not immediately be reached for comment early Wednesday. In the past, it has denounced Amnesty's claims as biased and baseless.

Amnesty said the number of people detained for sharing information about severe acute respiratory syndrome was especially hard to determine.

The Chinese government was criticized for keeping last year's SARS outbreak under wraps in its initial weeks, and many in China resorted to sharing rumors about the disease by e-mail, online bulletin boards and mobile-phone text messages.

While China eventually allowed more reporting on SARS, Amnesty renewed its call for Beijing to ensure the media can report freely on the disease in the event of another large outbreak.

As Internet use surges in China, so does the government's efforts to control it, Amnesty said. China outlaws any challenges to Communist Party rule, and even people who supply vaguely defined ``state secrets'' to groups overseas can face the death penalty.

The government tries to control all online communication in China by blocking access to sites that discuss sensitive issues. Online information providers are held responsible for postings on their sites.

Amnesty said the 54 detainees -- all of them ``prisoners of conscience'' -- received sentences of between two years and 12 years.

HAMBURG, Germany (Reuters) - Iran's secret service had contacts with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network ahead of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, a German court heard Thursday.

Two members of Germany's Federal Criminal Police told a court in Hamburg a former Iranian spy had informed them of the contacts and had also said he tried to warn Washington about the attacks in mid-2001, but the CIA had not believed him.

The police officers were speaking at the trial of a Moroccan accused of aiding the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Iranian, identified only by his cover name Hamid Reza Zakeri emerged as a surprise witness, postponing the verdict which had been expected to clear the defendant. His credibility is under scrutiny by the presiding judges.

The witness himself was not in court Thursday, but presiding judge Klaus Ruehle read out passages from an interview with him and questioned the two German investigators who had listened to his testimony.

The Iranian said he had been in a department of the Iranian intelligence service that was ``responsible for carrying out terrorist attacks globally,'' one of the officers said.

``In 2001, a delegation with Osama bin Laden's son was in Iran,'' the officer said, quoting the witness.

The witness has been summoned to appear on Jan. 29 at the trial of Moroccan Abdelghani Mzoudi, accused of aiding the Sept. 11 attackers.

Mzoudi, 31, was expected to be cleared of several thousand counts of aiding and abetting murder and membership of a terror organization in a verdict originally due Thursday, but postponed after the emergence of the Iranian witness.

The sudden new evidence may threaten Mzoudi's chances of acquittal.

MYSTERY WITNESS

The police officers told the court the witness had implicated Mzoudi and had said the Iranian secret service had worked with al Qaeda in 1996 in an attack in Saudi Arabia that killed several U.S. citizens.

He had also said it was an Egyptian, Saif al Adel, the military head of al Qaeda, who planned the Sept. 11 attacks.

Prosecutors say Mzoudi, an electrical engineering student based in Hamburg where three of the suicide pilots had lived, handled money for al Qaeda, helped cover for group members' absence and trained at an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan himself.

However, he was released from custody after German investigators informed the court of secret testimony which the trial judge presumed to have come from key al Qaeda figure and U.S. captive Ramzi bin al-Shaibah.

That testimony suggested Mzoudi did not belong to the core group of plotters based in Hamburg.

Prosecutors, who are calling for a 15 year jail term, did not say how they had found their new witness only three days before the verdict was due.

German investigators, asked by judges to assess the credibility of the witness, said he had been keen to be paid for his cooperation, although he had not openly demanded money.

Ruehle said he and the other four presiding judges would continue to assess the credibility of the new witness on the trial's next scheduled sitting next Thursday.

He had told them he had left Iran in mid-2001 and warned the U.S. embassy in Azerbaijan of the impending attacks, informing officials that he had been employed by the CIA since 1992.

The new witness also referred to what he said was an al Qaeda message urging that Mzoudi ``be eliminated'' lest he implicate other al Qaeda members.

On the same day, fellow Moroccan Mounir El Motassadeq is also expected to hear whether an appeal against his conviction last February on similar charges has been successful. Motassadeq was sentenced to 15 years, but could win a retrial.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Special Forces troops have captured a leading figure in Ansar al-Islam, a guerrilla group operating in Iraq that the United States says has ties to al Qaeda, U.S. officials said on Friday.

Husam al-Yemeni was taken into custody during an operation last week near the town of Fallujah, about 30 miles west of Baghdad, said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The official described al-Yemeni as a top associate of Abu Musab Zarqawi -- who is suspected of plotting the murder of a U.S. diplomat in Jordan, overseeing a guerrilla camp in Afghanistan and having links to al Qaeda. The United States last year offered a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to Zarqawi's arrest or conviction.

The U.S. official said al-Yemeni was the highest ranking member of Ansar al-Islam captured by U.S. forces in Iraq to date, and was suspected of having links to al Qaeda as well. The official did not specify the man's nationality.

Full story here.

BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) -- The prime minister was slain by a sniper, and his deputy gets e-mailed death threats. The foreign minister just learned he was on a hit list, and the defense minister has tightened his personal security.

More than three years after the end of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's autocratic regime, Serbia remains shrouded in a menacing atmosphere of intimidation.

It's the politics of fear -- a daily reality for those who dare attempt to weed out crime, corruption and brash nationalism from a government where all three long have flourished.

Now, with the republic veering sharply to the right after big ultranationalist gains in Dec. 28 parliamentary elections, there are worries that Milosevic-style vendetta violence could intensify.

``We are all targets,'' Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic told The Associated Press.

A suspect in the March assassination of reformist Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic recently told investigators that those involved in the conspiracy argued over who they should kill first: Djindjic or Svilanovic.

``I wasn't too happy when I heard that,'' Svilanovic said.

``There are many people who felt threatened that they'd all end up in The Hague, or that they'd lose their carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. We are seen by them as enemies.''

Political killings were a dark hallmark of Milosevic's ruinous 13-year rule. But they have continued since his ouster in 2000 and his extradition to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, where he is being tried on 66 counts of war crimes, including genocide, allegedly committed during the Balkans wars of the 1990s.

Earlier this month, in rhetoric reminiscent of the Milosevic era, leaflets appeared in two Serbian towns that have large Muslim minorities, warning: ``You will be another Srebrenica.'' In 1995, the Bosnian Serbs massacred up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, a U.N. ``safe haven'' for refugees during the war.

Last week, journalists working for a magazine catering to Serbia's Croat minority received phone calls from a man who threatened to kill them if they continued publishing.

``You are all dead,'' he warned.

Many blame entrenched cronyism that has allowed gangsters to thrive with such impunity they are prepared to kill top officials to preserve their criminal enterprises.

Their weapons can be as crude as trucks specially armored for ramming or as refined as remote-controlled explosives and high-powered sniper rifles, but their goals are the same: eliminating politicians seen as threats.

Ordinary Serbs accuse the outgoing pro-Western government of failing to purge the government, military and police of shady characters after toppling Milosevic on Oct. 5, 2000, in a dramatic popular uprising.

Serbia, a local expression goes, ``never had an Oct. 6'' -- a thorough housecleaning of those rewarded for their exploits in the 1990s Balkans wars. Some were given positions of power; others were awarded lucrative state construction contracts, or were allowed to smuggle stolen or counterfeit goods while police looked the other way.

Vuk Draskovic, a prominent opposition leader who narrowly escaped assassination in 1999 and 2000, calls the continuing violence ``a moral indictment against the previous governments, which did not reform this situation.''

Investigators have determined that Draskovic was targeted by the same assassins who gunned down Djindjic. The alleged triggerman, Zvezdan Jovanovic, a former leader of the brutal Red Berets elite police unit, reportedly confessed to killing Djindjic to stop him from extraditing Serbs to the U.N. court.

The unit's ex-commander, Milorad Lukovic, better known as Legija, is the alleged mastermind of the assassination. He remains at large and is being tried in absentia along with 13 other suspects.

Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic disclosed last week that he received two e-mails warning he could ``expect the same fate'' as Djindjic if he did not ``get his hands off Kosovo,'' the ethnically tense province under U.N. and NATO control.

Although Covic suspects ethnic Albanian militants, he said he could not rule out that Serbian mobsters were responsible. Before his assassination, Djindjic had ordered numerous police sweeps against criminal gangs.

Defense Minister Boris Tadic, also targeted by threats, acknowledges he has substantially increased his security, but he remains stoic.

``They've been threatening me ever since I became minister,'' Tadic said.

Draskovic lost four associates, including his brother-in-law, in the plots against him. Devastated, he withdrew from public life until last month, when his moderately nationalist Serbian Renewal Movement and an allied party won 22 parliamentary seats.

Asked about his comeback, he said he feels he owes it to ``the many people who died because they fought Slobodan Milosevic's regime.''

``I knew from the beginning that I was a target,'' Draskovic told the AP, his dark, brooding eyes flashing anger and defiance.

``But if you think about that too much, you'll only lose sleep.''

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States would quickly deploy aid to Cuba after the death of President Fidel Castro to prevent mass migration into the cities or toward Florida, U.S. officials said on Friday.

Roger Noriega, the State Department's top diplomat for Latin America, who is coordinating a task force on a post-Castro Cuba, said Washington views preparations as an urgent matter.

``Castro will not live forever and there will be democratic change and a democratic government in Cuba,'' Noriega said on Friday at a University of Miami seminar on aid for Cuba. ``The stakes are very high for us.''

Concerns about Castro's health resurfaced on Wednesday when Bogota Mayor Luis Garzon said the 77-year-old Cuban leader looked ``very ill'' and had trouble speaking.

President Bush announced the creation of the post-Castro commission in October, vowing to toughen a four-decade-old U.S. trade embargo. The group is to present recommendations to Bush on May 1.

Castro, who has been in power since 1959, last month called the committee a ``group of idiots'' and said Cuba's one-party communist state would survive his death.

Noriega said the report will have recommendations on democracy and the rule of law, the creation of core institutions of free enterprise, improving infrastructure, providing health, and improving housing and urban services.

Some 100 officials culled from the National Security Council, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, and the departments of State, Housing, Treasury, Commerce and Homeland Security began work on the report on Dec. 5.

Washington wants to quickly deploy aid to the Cuban countryside to avoid a massive migration into urban centers or across the Florida Straits to U.S. soil. U.S. officials are urging Cuban-American charities to register with USAID to make them eligible for federal funding.

One recommendation is that relief work be carried out through local Cuban officials to strengthen a transition government that can take credit for improvements. Another proposal calls for Cuba's public schools to be kept open.

USAID plans $7 million in aid for Cuba this year, on top of the $28 million the United States has spent on non-governmental organizations it says are working to promote human rights, a free flow of information and a peaceful transition in Cuba.

Italian police say two members of the Red Brigades guerrilla group have been detained in a joint operation in Egypt.

One is Rita Alganati, 46, who was convicted in her absence of the kidnap and murder of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro in 1978.

The other is Maurizio Falessi, 50, who has a conviction for attempted murder of a politician and other crimes.

Police say the two were arrested at Cairo airport as they tried to board a flight using false identification.

They were immediately flown to Rome. Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu welcomed the arrests.

"Those who, still today, mean to commit political violence, know that sooner or later they will be found by the patient forces of the state and of the law."

Full story here.

About 60 Iranian MPs are staging a sit-in in parliament to protest over hundreds of reformist candidates being barred from next month's elections.

The MPs vowed to continue until the decisions, made by the conservative Guardian Council, were reversed.

President Mohammad Khatami said he did not think the Council's methods were democratic and said he would hold talks with its members to resolve the issue.

Up to half of the candidates registered have reportedly been disqualified.

They include Mr Khatami's brother, who is head of the country's largest reform party, the IIPF.

The 12-member Guardian Council, made up of six clerics and six Islamic lawyers, is empowered to ensure parliament's actions comply with Islamic principles.

But the decision has provoked outrage among reformers. MPs threatened to go further in their protest.

Prominent Iranian reformist MP Mohsen Mirdamadi accused Tehran's hardliners of staging a "coup d'etat" by "non-military means".

"If this decision is upheld, there will not be elections but designations," he said.

Full story here.