AP - April 29th, 2006

NEW DELHI (AP) -- Thirteen people abducted by insurgents were found dead Saturday but 37 others were freed, according to media reports.

The rebels had abducted 52 people from a single village in the district of Dantewada on Tuesday. Two were found dead Friday and 13 on Saturday, local police superintendent Sant Kumar Paswan told the Press Trust of India news agency.

The other 37 captives were released, PTI reported.

''The released villagers are in a state of shock and are not able to tell where they were or how they were treated,'' PTI quoted an unnamed police official as saying.

Local police could not be reached for comment.

The communist rebels have been fighting for more than two decades, demanding land and jobs for agricultural laborers and the poor.

The rebels have often targeted police and government officials, whom they accuse of colluding with landlords and rich farmers to exploit the poor.

The villagers had taken part in a march Tuesday to protest rebel violence that has killed more than 6,000 people.

The rebels, known as Naxalites, are mainly active in six of India's 28 states -- Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Karnataka, Orissa and Chattisgarh.

MINSK (Reuters) - A court in ex-Soviet Belarus sentenced main opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich to 15 days in prison on Thursday for leading a big rally the previous day that police said was unlawful.

Milinkevich has become a focus for opposition to President Alexander Lukashenko, accused in the West of crushing dissent in his state lying between Russia and three European Union members.

The EU, which said Lukashenko's landslide re-election last month was blatantly rigged, demanded Milinkevich's immediate release.

Looking calm as the judge read out the sentence, the bearded Milinkevich denied he was guilty of any crime. ``This is a political action, a political sentence,'' Milinkevich told the court. ``Leaders of leading political parties are behind bars.''

Other leading opposition activists were also given short prison sentences in an apparent crackdown by authorities after about 7,000 demonstrators took part in Wednesday's rally.

Benita Ferrero-Waldner, EU Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighborhood Policy, expressed dismay at the detentions.

``I call for the immediate release of all those arrested and detained because of their opinions,'' she said in a statement.

Ronald Pofalla, general secretary of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic party, described the sentence as ``completely unacceptable.''

``We condemn the tyrannical treatment of political opponents by President Lukashenko,'' he said in a statement.

The EU has already imposed visa bans on top Belarus officials following the March 19 election.

``It is important that the Belarussian authorities take note of the fact that further action has not been ruled out...'' said EU Commission spokeswoman Emma Udwin.

EU SUPPORT

Milinkevich came a distant second in the election, but the EU showed its support by inviting him for high-level talks in Vienna and Strasbourg in an apparent rebuke to Lukashenko.

Lukashenko has become increasingly isolated after 12 years in office. He planned to meet his main ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin, in St. Petersburg on Friday.

Lukashenko remains popular among rural and elderly voters who say he provides stability lacking in other ex-Soviet states. On Thursday, he signed a decree raising pensions by 7 percent.

The opposition rally on Wednesday was timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster -- traditionally a focus for anti-Lukashenko protests. Some demonstrators took a route police had told them was off limits.

The court took an hour to find Milinkevich guilty, calling two witnesses, both police officers. He was then escorted from the rear of the building to a bus, which took him to prison.

Activists said Vintsuk Vechorko, another veteran opponent of Lukashenko, was detained on Wednesday and also given a 15-day sentence for public order offences. Sergei Kalyakin, a communist and senior opposition figure, was sentenced to 14 days.

Another opposition figure said he had been beaten when taken in for questioning on Wednesday at the offices of the national security service -- still known by its Soviet-era KGB acronym.

``My car was stopped, several plainclothes people dragged me out. They beat me in the stomach (and) in the back,'' Anatoly Lebedko, who heads the small United Civic Party, told reporters.

He said he had been released after five hours. A KGB official said Lebedko's account was not credible.

Milinkevich told Wednesday's rally the opposition planned to push Lukashenko out of office within two years by using civil disobedience. New protests were planned, starting from May 1.

``Our objective is to create a stir in society,'' Milinkevich told Reuters in the court.

Around 5,000 protestors in Belarus have held a rally in the capital Minsk, to mark the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

The protestors accused the authorities of lying about the effects of Chernobyl and chanted anti-government slogans.

Earlier, Alexander Milinkevich, the main opposition leader, was briefly detained and told not to attend.

The world's worst nuclear disaster in neighbouring Ukraine left one quarter of Belarus contaminated with radiation.

The march was prevented from entering October Square - the scene of violent clashes with police after the disputed presidential elections on 19 March.

The square was sealed off with metal barriers and there was a heavy police presence. Vans full of riot police were parked nearby and the nearest metro station was closed to discourage people from turning up.

Mr Milinkevich said the closure of the square showed the authorities were scared.

"If the authorities are afraid of us, that's OK. But if the authorities are afraid to talk with the people, that's a tragedy," he told protesters.

Full story here.

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia charged eight former policemen on Tuesday with the 1999 killing of 48 Kosovo Albanians, the first charges stemming from the discovery of hundreds of bodies in a mass grave near Belgrade.

All but one of the victims were from the same family, herded into a cafe in the town of Suva Reka during the 1998-99 war in Kosovo and shot dead. They included 13 children and a pregnant woman, Belgrade media reported.

``Serbia's war crimes prosecutor accuses them of killing 48 people, all but Abdulah Esljani members of the Berisha family, on March 26, 1999 in Suva Reka, in Kosovo,'' said a statement from the office of the Serbian war crimes prosecutor.

All those charged have been in custody since October and five were on active police duty when arrested. They include former Suva Reka police chief Radoje Repanovic and the former deputy commander of the Serbian gendarmerie, Radoslav Mitrovic.

The killings took place two days after NATO launched its 78-day bombing campaign to drive Serb forces from the southern Serbian province, accusing them of atrocities against Albanian civilians in a two-year war with separatist guerrillas.

The bodies were among more than 800 trucked north from Kosovo and buried in pits on a police training ground just outside Belgrade and in eastern Serbia.

Irrefutable proof of a bid to rid the scene of the crime of evidence of atrocities, they were unearthed in 2001 after reformists ousted former Serb strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

Tuesday's indictment was the first stemming from the gruesome discovery and comes as the United Nations is steering Serbia and the Kosovo Albanians through negotiations to decide the future of Kosovo, which has been run by the U.N. since 1999.

The United Nations hopes to complete the talks by the end of the year, with the 90-percent ethnic Albanian majority pushing for independence.

An estimated 10,000 Kosovo Albanians died in the war, and 800,000 more fled into neighboring Albania and Macedonia.

Belgrade currently faces a new end-of-month deadline to hand over top war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic to the United Nations war crimes tribunal or face a freeze on negotiations with the European Union on closer ties.

Serbia's special war crimes court, set up three years ago to show Serbia is ready to face up to its bloodstained path, has pledged to prosecute lower-level perpetrators the U.N. tribunal in The Hague does not have the time or resources to deal with.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Handwriting experts confirmed Saddam Hussein's signatures on two more key documents in the ousted Iraqi leader's trial -- one approving death sentences for 148 Shiites, the other ordering confiscation of farmlands, the judge said Wednesday.

Dressed in his black suit, Saddam was unusually silent throughout the three-hour session. But his half-brother and co-defendant Barzan Ibrahim angrily rejected the experts' report as biased.

Defense lawyers demanded a neutral, international panel of experts be formed to look at documents presented by the prosecution that allegedly were signed by Saddam or the other seven defendants.

Chief judge Raouf Abdel-Rahman did not rule on the demand for international experts, but he appeared dismissive of it and ordered Iraqi experts to continue examining remaining documents for the next session, scheduled for Monday.

Saddam and the former officials from his regime are on trial for the deaths of the 148 Shiites and the imprisonment of hundreds of others in a crackdown following an assassination attempt against Saddam in the mainly Shiite town of Dujail in 1982.

Prosecutors aimed to use the documents to show Saddam, Ibrahim and the others were closely involved in the crackdown.

The former Iraqi president has refused to confirm or deny the signatures are his -- and Ibrahim and some other defendants called the documents forgeries. Saddam and Ibrahim refused to give handwriting samples, so the Iraqi experts relied on comparisons with other documents signed by the men unrelated to the Dujail case.

In Wednesday's session, Abdel-Rahman read the report from the experts saying the signatures on two memos, dated Oct. 10, 1982, and June 16, 1984, ''matched the signatures of Saddam Hussein.''

The 1984 memo approved the death sentences against the 148, issued by Saddam's Revolutionary Court two days earlier. The 1982 document ordered that farmlands taken from Dujail families in retaliation for the assassination attempt be handed over to the Agriculture Ministry.

The judge then adjourned the trial until next week to allow experts to look at more documents.

On Monday, the experts said they had authenticated Saddam's signature on a 1982 memo approving rewards for six intelligence agents involved in the crackdown. They also said signatures on other documents were those of Ibrahim, the former head of the Mukhabarat intelligence agency.

The authentications may verify Saddam signed off on the executions and confiscations, but on their own are far from sealing the case against him.

Iraqi law requires the president's approval on any execution orders, and Saddam, a Sunni, has acknowledged in court that he ordered the trial of the 148 Shiites. But he and the other defendants argue that their actions were not a crime since they were responding to the shooting attack against him.

The prosecution has sought to show that the crackdown went far beyond the perpetrators of the attempt on Saddam's life, with entire families -- including women and children -- arrested in the sweep that followed. It says the 148 sentenced to death included minors as young as 11 years old.

Chief defense lawyer Khalil al-Dulaimi repeated his demand that an international team of experts be called in to examine the documents.

The current team ''lacks the experience and appropriate means to examine the handwriting,'' he said.

Ibrahim denounced the experts' report as a ''script directed by (chief prosecutor) Jaafar al-Moussawi to give credibility'' to the case.

''The general prosecution is obviously biased and wants to use everything to convict us,'' Ibrahim said. ''I demand a non-biased and non-Iraqi committee (of handwriting experts) because there is a crisis in trust between us.''

''I'm not afraid of the punishment but I'm afraid of my reputation being defamed,'' he said. ''Why should I kill 148 people? ... Al-Dujail's people are our family and part of our country. They know exactly who arrested them and who razed their farms. If you want to put it on my head, then show the proof.''

The prosecution is wrapping up its case and the defense is expected to begin its arguments in upcoming sessions.

Saddam and his seven co-defendants face possible execution by hanging if convicted in the Dujail case.

LONDON (Reuters) - British transplant experts accused China on Wednesday of removing organs from executed prisoners without their consent in order to sell them.

The British Transplantation Society (BTS) said there is an accumulating body of evidence that suggests organs of executed prisoners are being removed for transplants and sold without the prior consent of the prisoners or their families.

Although the exact number of organs taken from prisoners is unknown, the BTS said the figure could be in the thousands.

``The British Transplantation Society condemns unreservedly any activity that transgresses an individual's human rights or involves the coercion of an individual to become an organ donor,'' Stephen Wigmore, chairman of the BTS ethics committee, said in a statement.

``The alleged use of organs from executed prisoners without consent is considered a breach of human rights and is an unacceptable practice,'' he added.

Human rights groups have also criticized the use of organs from executed prisoners and the hospitals that have allegedly turned to organ sales and transplants to raise funds.

Last month China said it would ban the sale of human organs and strengthen procedures for transplants by requiring written consent and limiting the number of hospitals doing the surgery.

A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry said there had been cases where organs of executed prisoners were used without their consent.

But he said the cases were rare and against the law. He added that the same strict procedures apply to using organs from executed criminals as using them from deceased volunteer donors.

The BTS described the alleged sale of organs from executed prisoners as a ``lamentable practice.''

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli veteran statesman Shimon Peres, responding to the latest verbal attack on the Jewish state by Iran's president, said on Saturday that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would end up like Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

In a speech to a conference on the Palestinian issue on Friday, Ahmadinejad said: ``The Zionist regime is a decaying and crumbling tree that will fall with a storm.''

Peres, in a statement quoted by Israel Radio, called Ahmadinejad's comments a direct threat to Israel's existence.

``His statements are reminiscent of those voiced by Saddam Hussein. Ahmadinejad will end up like Saddam Hussein,'' he said, referring to the Iraqi leader ousted by a U.S. invasion in 2003 and on trial for the killings of 148 Shi'ites two decades ago.

``Ahmadinejad represents Satan, not God,'' Peres said. ''History has denounced the madmen and those who waved the sword.''

Peres, a former prime minister, is a senior member of acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's centrist Kadima party. He is expected to hold a top cabinet post in the government Olmert is forming, following Israel's March 28 election.

Last year, Ahmadinejad was quoted by Iran's official IRNA news agency as telling a conference that Israel must be wiped off the map.

Ahmadinejad has repeatedly questioned the veracity of the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany. In December he described it as a myth.

On Friday, he said: ``Are the consequences of the establishment of this (Israeli) regime less than the Holocaust which you (the West) are claiming? If there are doubts regarding the Holocaust, there is really no doubt regarding the Palestinian disaster and holocaust.''

Ahmadinejad, a religiously conservative former member of the hardline Revolutionary Guards, came to power last year. He has toughened government policies, including on nuclear issues.

On Tuesday, Ahmadinejad declared that Iran had enriched uranium to a level used in power stations and wanted to pursue industrial-scale production. He said the achievement meant the world should now consider Iran a nuclear power.

The West believes the move is part of Iranian efforts to develop nuclear bombs, a charge Iran denies.

Giora Eiland, head of Israel's National Security Council that reports to the government, said despite Ahmadinejad's declaration, it was not too late for international diplomacy to try to head off production of an Iranian atomic bomb.

``It's true they (the Iranians) have taken a certain step up in capability, and have created a research and development capability in uranium enrichment,'' Eiland told Israel Radio.

``But there's a technological and time gap between this stage ... and the ability to manufacture a realarsenal,'' he said, without giving a timeframe.

ROME (AP) -- The Sicilian town of Corleone will celebrate the April 11 arrest of reputed Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano as Liberation day and name a street for the event.

The decision by the city council of Corleone -- made famous by the ''Godfather'' movies -- came as forensic experts searched the rundown farmhouse nearby where Provenzano was captured Tuesday, seeking clues that might identify people who helped him elude authorities for decades.

''April 11, 2006, marks the end of a long, dark night that marked the destinies of too many generations of Corleone residents who were forced to suffer the Mafia's criminal violence,'' the council said in a statement.

''The dawn of hope, the rebirth and the release can finally rise over Corleone.''

In its action Wednesday night, the town also said it would name one of its streets April 11.

Provenzano had been on the run for more than 40 years and escaped capture many times, earning the nickname ''The Phantom of Corleone.''

Experts on Thursday continued to search his farmhouse outside of town for any clues, such as fingerprints or DNA traces, that might help identify individuals who helped conceal Provenzano's whereabouts, the Italian news agency ANSA reported. Police arrested three people Wednesday accused of aiding the fugitive by delivering notes about the administration of Cosa Nostra affairs on the island.

Many of the notes, called ''pizzini,'' were written in code to conceal the identities of those he dealt with, ANSA reported.

Experts were also using infrared equipment to search for tunnels on the property where he was found and to try to locate any documents he may have hidden there, ANSA said.

Among the other evidence under review is a box of medicine for treatment following a prostate operation in Marseille, France, in October 2003, ANSA said.

Provenzano is believed to have taken over leadership of the Sicilian Mafia following the 1993 arrest of former boss Salvatore ''Toto'' Riina. During his years as a fugitive, Provenzano was convicted in absentia and given life sentences for more than a dozen murders of mobsters and investigators.

PALERMO, Sicily (Reuters) - Bernardo Provenzano, the undisputed chief of the Sicilian Mafia who had been on the run for more than four decades, was arrested on Tuesday while hiding in a farmhouse near Corleone in Sicily.

``Thank God. The hunt is finally over,'' said Palermo police chief Giuseppe Caruso after agents seized Italy's most wanted man, scoring the state's biggest success against the Mafia in more than 13 years.

National anti-Mafia prosecutor Pietro Grasso accused businessmen, politicians and other professionals of shielding Provenzano for many years, but did not elaborate.

Provenzano, known as the ``Phantom of Corleone'' after his native hill town, made famous by the Godfather films, has been running the Mafia since former ``boss of bosses'' Toto Riina was arrested in 1993.

He was arrested when some 50 policemen swooped on a farmhouse in the countryside near Corleone. Police said their lucky break came when they tracked a package that had been sent to Provenzano by his wife, who lived in Corleone.

Provenzano, who put up no resistance and acknowledged his identity after first denying it, appeared surprised to be caught, police said. He was flown to Palermo and taken to the main police station there. Roads leading from the airport into town were closed to traffic.

An angry crowd shouted ``Assassin'' and ``Bastard'' at Provenzano as policemen wearing black balaclavas escorted him into the building.

``We are the real Sicily,'' chanted an angry group of youths from an anti-Mafia association.

President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi expressed his delight at the arrest to Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu.

The news bumped even national election results off the top spot on television news bulletins.

Provenzano, 73, has been wanted since 1963 and was known as Italy's ``super-fugitive.''

He had been sentenced in absentia to life in jail in connection with the Mafia's most notorious crimes of recent decades, including the killings in 1992 of top anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino.

One of the last pictures police had of him was taken when he was 25. They had since been using computer depictions of how he might have aged, aided by information from turncoat Mafiosi.

CRYPTIC NOTES

Police said they had found cryptic notes on small pieces of paper known as ``pizzini'' which Provenzano used to communicate with accomplices and his family. More notes were found in the pockets of the jeans he was wearing when he was arrested.

Grasso said he doubted Provenzano would ever collaborate with the authorities.

As a young man he was known as ``Binnu the tractor'' because of the way he mowed down enemies when a rising hitman of the Corleone clan.

His ability to evade capture for so many years while remaining in Sicily had become legendary.

Investigators say that while running the Mafia for the past 13 years, Provenzano instituted a ``kinder, gentler'' style in an attempt to give the crime organization a lower profile in the hope that the police would pay it less attention.

They say one of two crime bosses -- Salvatore Lo Piccolo, on the run since 1983, or Matteo Messina Denaro, a fugitive since 1993 -- was in pole position to take over running the mob.

LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - EU foreign ministers are expected to endorse a decision to cut direct aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian government at a meeting on Monday, while seeking to limit the effect on ordinary Palestinians.

Gathering in Luxembourg, the ministers will also approve visa bans on Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko and 30 other officials accused of rigging a March 19 election and are expected to warn them of the possibility of further sanctions.

Diplomats said the ministers would reiterate concerns about Iran's nuclear program and be briefed by Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson on faltering global trade talks.

The quartet of Middle East peace brokers, the EU, the United States, Russia and the United Nations, is trying to push Hamas to renounce violence, recognize Israel's right to exist, and express clear support for the peace process.

On Friday, the 25-member EU and the United States announced a suspension of aid to the new Hamas-led Palestinian government, putting further financial pressure on the Palestinian Authority. Norway announced an aid freeze on Sunday.

A statement from Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar on Sunday urged EU ministers not to stop direct aid.

``Dr Zahar urged countries of the European Union to respect the democratic choice of the Palestinian people ... and not to take steps that could harm Palestinian citizens,'' it said.

Israel stepped up pressure on the Hamas-led government on Sunday, severing all direct contacts with a ``hostile entity'' and firing shells into Gaza to combat rocket attacks by militants.

Diplomats said the freeze covered all direct aid to the Palestinian government and payment of public employee salaries with EU funds through the World Bank, but not humanitarian aid through international and non-governmental organizations.