Bin Laden driver sentenced to Five and Half years

CNN

Osama bin Laden's former driver Thursday was sentenced to 66 months in prison following his conviction on charges of providing material support to al Qaeda.

Salim Hamdan, who has been imprisoned at the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay since 2002, has already been credited with five years served.

Hamdan was found guilty Wednesday of receiving weapons training and transporting and delivering arms. A jury of six military officers rejected charges that he conspired with others to carry out al Qaeda attacks.

Earlier Thursday, during his sentencing hearing, Hamdan told a military court that he never suspected bin Laden was a terrorist until after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Prosecutors weren't buying his story and recommended he be sent to prison for 30 years to life.

Hamdan, speaking through a translator, gave the unsworn testimony one day after six officers convicted him of providing material support to al Qaeda but cleared him of terrorism conspiracy charges.

Hamdan tried to make the case to jurors that he was only a lowly driver, and described his relationship with bin Laden as "normal." Watch how Hamdan described bin Laden »

He said he treated bin Laden as an employee would treat a boss and, in turn, bin Laden treated him in a way that took into account his position.

"I respected him, and he respected me," Hamdan said. "I regarded him, and he regarded me."

He was taken into custody in southern Afghanistan in November 2001. Though the car he was driving contained missiles, he has said all along that the car was borrowed and the missiles weren't his. He repeated his assertions Thursday.

He made some of his comments in a closed session, which the government said was necessary in case classified information was raised.

Hamdan testified he had wanted to settle in his native country, Yemen, but after the 2000 attack by an explosives-laden motorboat on the USS Cole in Yemen's Gulf of Aden, which killed 17 American sailors, he and his wife left the country on a pilgrimage.

Hamdan said Yemeni media were blaming the attack on the Israeli Mossad, and he didn't know until later that al Qaeda was behind it.

He also said he was "shocked" to hear that al Qaeda carried out the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

"It was impossible in my mind that Osama bin Laden would be behind it," said Hamdan, who was still working for him at the time.

"My view and my thinking had changed completely. It was a big shock for me when someone had treated you with respect and regard, and then you realize what they were up to," he said.

When the U.S.-led war began in Afghanistan after 9/11 Hamdan said, he took his family to Pakistan for their safety, and he left them to return the borrowed car to its owner.

During the trial, prosecutors argued that Hamdan became a member of al Qaeda in 1996 and conspired with the group on terrorist attacks. They alleged that Hamdan overheard conversations about 9/11 and claimed to have other information showing he was part of bin Laden's inner circle.

The defense contended Hamdan was a low-level driver who knew little about the workings of bin Laden's al Qaeda network. They said he worked for wages, not to carry out war against America.

NYPD acquittals in groom shooting spark anger, outrage

By TOM HAYS, Associated Press Writer

Three detectives were acquitted Friday in the 50-shot killing of an unarmed groom-to-be on his wedding day, a case that put the NYPD at the center of another dispute involving allegations of excessive firepower.

Scores of police officers surrounded the courthouse to guard against potential chaos, and as news of the verdict spread, many in the crowd began weeping. Others were enraged, swearing and screaming "Murderers! Murderers!" or "KKK!"

Inside the courtroom, spectators gasped. Sean Bell's fiancee immediately walked out of the room; his mother cried.

Bell, a 23-year-old black man, was killed in a hail of gunfire outside a seedy strip club in Queens on Nov. 25, 2006 as he was leaving his bachelor party with two friends. The case ignited the emotions of people across the city and led to widespread protests among those who felt the officers used unnecessary force.

Officers Michael Oliver, 36, and Gescard Isnora, 29, stood trial for manslaughter while Officer Marc Cooper, 40, was charged with reckless endangerment. Two other shooters weren't charged. Oliver squeezed off 31 shots; Isnora fired 11 rounds; and Cooper shot four times.

The case brought back painful memories of other NYPD shootings, such as the 1999 shooting of Amadou Diallo — an African immigrant who was gunned down in a hail of 41 bullets by police officers who mistook his wallet for a gun. The acquittal of the officers in that case created a storm of protest, with hundreds arrested after taking to the streets in demonstration.

Though emotions ran high, there were no immediate problems outside the courthouse Friday, where many wore buttons with Bell's picture or held signs saying "Justice for Sean Bell." Some people approached police after the verdict was read, but they were held back and the jostling died down quickly.

William Hardgraves, 48, an electrician from Harlem, brought his 12-year-old son and 23-year-old daughter to hear the verdict. "I hoped it would be different this time. They shot him 50 times," Hardgraves said. "But of course, it wasn't."

The officers, complaining that pretrial publicity had unfairly painted them as cold-blooded killers, opted to have the judge decide the case rather than a jury.

The judge, Justice Arthur Cooperman, indicated when he delivered the verdict that the officers' version of events was more credible than the victims' version. "The people have not proved beyond a reasonable doubt that each defendant was not justified" in firing, he said.

Hours later, the officers appeared at a news conference.

"I'd like to say sorry to the Bell family for the tragedy," Cooper said, thanking God, his lawyers and the police officers who supported him.

The U.S. attorney's office said after the verdict that it had been monitoring the state's prosecution and would conduct an independent review of the case. The Rev. Al Sharpton, who represents Bell's family, called for a federal investigation.

"This verdict is one round down, but the fight is far from over," Sharpton said on his radio show. "What we saw in court today was not a miscarriage of justice. Justice didn't miscarry. This was an abortion of justice."

Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives Endowment Association, responded angrily to Sharpton's suggestion that the verdicts were unfair.

"That's despicable for him to say that because we have the greatest criminal justice system on earth," he said.

The nearly two-month trial was marked by deeply divergent accounts of the night.

The defense painted the victims as drunken thugs who the officers believed were armed and dangerous. Prosecutors sought to convince the judge that the victims had been minding their own business, and that the officers were inept, trigger-happy aggressors.

Both sides were consistent on one point: The utter chaos surrounding the last moments of Bell's life.

"It happened so quick," Isnora said in grand jury testimony. "It was like the last thing I ever wanted to do."

Bell's companions — Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman — offered dramatic testimony. Both were wounded in the shooting; Guzman still has four bullets lodged in his body.

Referring to Isnora, Guzman said, "This dude is shooting like he's crazy, like he's out of his mind."

The victims and shooters were set on a fateful collision course by a pair of innocuous decisions: Bell's to have a last-minute bachelor party at Kalua Cabaret, and the undercover detectives' to investigate reports of prostitution at the club.

As the club closed around 4 a.m., Sanchez and Isnora claimed they overheard Bell and his friends first flirt with women, then taunt a stranger who responded by putting his right hand in his pocket as if he had a gun. Guzman, they testified, said, "Yo, go get my gun" — something Bell's friends denied.

Isnora said he decided to arm himself, call for backup — "It's getting hot," he told his supervisor — and tail Bell, Guzman and Benefield as they went around the corner and got into Bell's car. He claimed that after warning the men to halt, Bell pulled away, bumped him and rammed an unmarked police van that converged on the scene with Oliver at the wheel. The detective also alleged that Guzman made a sudden move as if he were reaching for a gun.

Guzman said Isnora "appeared out of nowhere" with a gun drawn and shot him in the shoulder — the first of 16 shots to enter his body.

"That's all there was — gunfire," he said. "There wasn't nothing else."

With tires screeching, glass breaking and bullets flying, the officers claimed that they believed they were the ones under fire. Oliver responded by emptying his semiautomatic pistol, reloading, and emptying it again, as the supervisor sought cover.

The truth emerged when the smoke cleared: There was no weapon inside Bell's blood-splattered car.

Curious details discovered on J.F. Kennedy's assasination

Associated Press

A curious transcript purportedly about President John F. Kennedy's assassination has been discovered among boxes of memorabilia that were long forgotten in an old safe at the Dallas County district attorney's office.

While the transcript reads like a conspiracy theorist's dream — Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby plotting to kill Kennedy — the DA's top assistant said it's likely material for a proposed movie.

Other items found in an old safe on the 10th floor of the county courthouse include letters to and from former DA Henry Wade, the now-dead prosecutor in the Ruby trial, The Dallas Morning News reported in Sunday's editions. Ruby shot and killed Kennedy assassin Oswald two days after the president's death.

There are also letters to Ruby, records from his trial, a gun holster and clothing that probably belonged to Ruby and Oswald, said District Attorney Craig Watkins, who planned to discuss the find at a news conference Monday.

Much of the attention is bound to focus on the transcript purporting that Ruby and Oswald met at Ruby's nightclub on Oct. 4, 1963, less than two months before the Nov. 22 assassination. In it, they talked of killing the president because the Mafia wanted to "get rid of" his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

Says Oswald in the transcript, "I can still do it, all I need is my rifle and a tall building; but it will take time, maybe six months to find the right place; but I'll have to have some money to live on while I do the planning."

Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum near where the president was shot, hasn't seen the transcript but doubts it's real. It is well-documented that Oswald was in Irving the evening of Oct. 4, at a home where his wife was staying, Mack said.

"The fact that it's sitting in Henry Wade's file, and he didn't do anything, indicates he thought it wasn't worth anything," Mack said. "He probably kept it because it was funny. It's hilarious. It's like a bad B movie."

Terri Moore, Watkins' top assistant, said she believes the latest transcript is part of a movie Wade was working on with producers. The former prosecutor wrote about the proposed movie, "Countdown in Dallas," in letters found in the safe.

"It's not real. Crooks don't talk like that," Moore said. "If that transcript is true, then history is changed because Oswald and Ruby were talking about assassinating the president."

The transcript resembles one published in a report by the Warren Commission, which investigated Kennedy's assassination and determined that Oswald was the lone gunman. The FBI determined that conversation between Oswald and Ruby about killing the governor was definitely fake.

The account in the commission report was "re-created" for authorities by a now-deceased Dallas attorney who claimed he recognized Oswald in a newspaper photo as the man he saw talking to Ruby.

It's unknown whether the boxes Watkins and others found in the courthouse about a year ago have information previously undisclosed to the public or the Warren Commission.

The search began after Watkins was told the gun used to kill Oswald was somewhere in the courthouse. They didn't find the gun, which Mack said is privately owned. The boxes probably sat in the safe since being moved when the courthouse opened in 1989.

The items are still being processed and eventually will be donated to an entity that can authenticate them, preserve them and make them available to the public, Watkins said.

"It's interesting, and it's not ours," Watkins said. "It's the public's."

Babysitter set to die for 1994 death of 3-month-old

Associated Press

A neighbor in a suburban Austin neighborhood appeared to be the perfect babysitter for Eryn Baugh’s infant son and his 2-year-old sister.

“She’s the most sweet, endearing person in the world and put forward this good Christian front,” Baugh said of Cathy Lynn Henderson, who lived two blocks away. “She could sell snow to an Eskimo.”

But just weeks after Henderson started working for the Baughs, 3-month-old Brandon was dead and Henderson had fled the state. The infant’s body was found buried 60 miles away with his skull crushed, wrapped in his yellow-trimmed white blanket and stuffed into a box that previously held Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers.

Henderson, 50, is set to die in less than three weeks for the 1994 slaying that made her one of the most hated women in Texas. She would be just the 12th woman among the nearly 1,100 convicted killers executed since capital punishment resumed in the United States in 1977.

Henderson insists Brandon died in an accidental fall and that her decision to bury him and flee was made in panic, not in cold blood.

‘I wasn’t thinking clearly’
“It’s apparent I wasn’t thinking clearly,” Henderson told The Associated Press recently from the state’s female death row outside Gatesville.

“I think I was in shock, disbelief. I just didn’t know what I was doing. That baby was dead. I didn’t want to deal with that. There was too much sorrow. It hurt, it hurt,” she said, tearing up. “When I look back at it, it does kind of look like I was guilty, doesn’t it?”

Henderson’s case has been championed by Sister Helen Prejean of “Dead Man Walking” fame.

Supporters say new engineering data interpreting Brandon’s skull fracture could better support Henderson’s contention the child’s death was an accident and her life should be spared.

“What I would like to happen is to either get a new trial or charge me with what I’m really guilty of, and murder is not one of them, even injury to a child is not one of them,” Henderson said.

“I think involuntary manslaughter, negligence, something in those areas, because I did not wake up to intentionally harm Brandon,” she said.

Henderson is scheduled to be executed on June 13. It was postponed from last month after her lawyers won a delay.

“We’re getting experts, a new kind of expert for head injuries,” said Prejean, based in New Orleans. “They look into the physics of it.”

Suspect recalls incident
Recalling that morning 13 years ago, Henderson said Brandon was cranky, so she was swinging him around to try to calm him.

“I fell. I stepped on a toy. He flew out of my hands. He hit the bottom of the garage, which had been converted to a playroom,” she said.

After hitting the concrete floor, he stopped breathing, she said. Henderson said she tried CPR for an hour.

Why not call 911?

“I knew that was a dead end,” she replied. “I had tried for too long myself. What good would it have been?”

She fled, driving Brandon’s sister and her own preschool daughter to the home of a relative, paying an 11-year-old there $10 to watch them.

“Even though I reacted abnormally, that doesn’t make me a bad person,” she said, crying. “I just didn’t want to face what happened. I felt responsible. I took a life. That is very hard to deal with, especially a child.”

Prosecutors disagree
Travis County prosecutors and Brandon’s parents aren’t buying it.

“If a child sustains an accidental fall, we’re going to freak out and get help,” prosecutor Dayna Blazey said. “We’re going to run to a neighbor, call 911. That’s human nature — not to put the baby in a wine cooler box, throw it in the trunk of a car and bury it in a shallow grave. Then she flees to Missouri and changes appearance.”

A medical examiner testified Brandon’s injuries were inconsistent with an accidental fall of about 4 feet but were the equivalent of a fall from a two-story building.

“We’re not talking about linear skull fractures,” Blazey said. “The entire back of his head was shattered.”

A change of mind
But in a new appeal filed late last week, Henderson’s lawyers included an affidavit from the medical examiner who had previously testified against her.

Dr. Roberto Bayardo, who retired last year as Travis County’s chief medical examiner, said based on new scientific evidence presented to him by the experts hired by Henderson’s legal team, he “cannot determine with a reasonable degree of medical certainty whether Brandon Baugh’s injuries resulted from an intentional act or an accidental fall.”

Eryn Baugh said Henderson had him completely fooled.

“Just tell me what happened that day. Tell me exactly what she did and why she did it. Then she can ask me for forgiveness. I’ll probably give it — once she drops the lies and tells the truth. There’s been too many years of lying. We just want her to come clean,” he said.

Henderson insisted she did her job well.

“I took good care of Brandon,” Henderson insisted. “In my mind, I thought I was doing the Baughs a favor by not having to tell them their son was dead.”

Ex-Coke worker gets eight years for trade-secret theft

By HARRY R. WEBER, AP Business Writer

A federal judge ignored a former Coca-Cola secretary's plea for mercy Wednesday and sentenced her to eight years in prison for conspiring to steal trade secrets from the world's largest beverage maker.

U.S. District Judge J. Owen Forrester told Joya Williams, 42, that he was giving her a longer sentence than recommended by federal prosecutors and sentencing guidelines because, "This is the kind of offense that cannot be tolerated in our society."

Williams had faced up to 10 years in prison on the single conspiracy charge in a failed scheme to sell Coke's trade secrets to rival Pepsi for at least $1.5 million.

But sentencing guidelines, which federal judges are not bound by, called for a sentence of 63 months to 78 months. Williams was convicted Feb. 2 following a jury trial in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, where The Coca-Cola Co. is based.

"I can't think of another case in 25 years that there's been so much obstruction of justice," the judge said.

As for the sentencing guidelines, Forrester said, "The guidelines as they are written don't begin to approach the seriousness of this case."

A co-defendant, Ibrahim Dimson, was sentenced to five years in prison.

Forrester ignored a tearful apology by Williams, which marked the first time she acknowledged what she did. Williams had testified during the trial that she did not commit a crime.

"Your honor, I have expanded my consciousness through this devastating experience," Williams said before she was sentenced. "This has been a very defining moment in my life. I have become infamous when I never wanted to become famous."

She added, "I am sorry to Coke and I'm sorry to my boss and to you and to my family as well."

The government said Williams stole confidential documents and samples of products that hadn't been launched by Coca-Cola and gave them to Dimson and a third defendant, Edmund Duhaney, as part of a conspiracy to sell the items to Pepsi. Duhaney, like Dimson, pleaded guilty to conspiracy.

Duhaney will be sentenced later.

The conspiracy was foiled after Pepsi warned Coca-Cola that it had received a letter in May 2006 offering Coca-Cola trade secrets to the "highest bidder." The FBI launched an undercover investigation and identified the letter writer as Dimson.

Williams was fired as a secretary to Coca-Cola's global brand director after the allegations came to light.

Williams' apology Wednesday lasted for several minutes and she asked the judge to show mercy, though Forrester had told her before she spoke that he planned to depart from sentencing guidelines.

"Punishment is the memories and the moments that I'm going to miss," she said. "Punishment is never having a family of my own."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Byung J. Pak told the judge that Williams didn't deserve leniency.

"Choices have consequences and she made those choices," Pak said. "She chose to go to trial and she lied on the stand."

At the hearing, prosecutors disclosed that Williams has two prior convictions, one involving making false statements related to unemployment insurance.

Williams' lawyers had repeatedly asserted in court and out of court that Williams had no criminal past, and the government until Wednesday did not challenge that assertion.

Va. Tech panel fights to get gunman's records

Associated Press

The panel studying last month's massacre at Virginia Tech will go to court if necessary to get gunman Seung-Hui Cho's medical and mental health records, the group's chairman said.

Former State Police Superintendent W. Gerald Massengill said in Wednesday editions of the Richmond Times-Dispatch that he thinks his panel can get the records though a law that requires state oversight of mental facilities and by arguing that it has a right to review counseling records that Virginia Tech may have on Cho.

He said he had discussed the issue with the state attorney general's staff.

"We're going to get what we need, one way or the other," Massengill said. If that fails, "we'll have to go to the courts."

University officials say federal privacy laws bar them from sharing the records.

Cho killed 32 people in two campus buildings before committing suicide in a classroom on April 16.

A year and a half earlier, he had been found "mentally ill and in need of hospitalization," according to court papers. A judge ordered him into involuntary outpatient treatment, but there is no indication that he complied.

University counsel Kay Heidbreder said the laws, even for someone who is deceased, mean the records cannot be shared even among departments at the university.

As it is constituted, the panel cannot issue subpoenas to compel testimony and obtain documents. Delacey Skinner — a spokeswoman for Gov. Timothy Kaine, who convened the panel — said the governor has assured members the attorney general will help them get information.

Man denies Ipswich prostitute murders

By Michael Holden

A forklift truck driver accused of murdering five women in Suffolk will go on trial next year after he denied the charges in court on Tuesday.

Steve Wright, 49, was arrested following one of Britain's biggest manhunts after five prostitutes were murdered in the space of 11 days in December last year.

The naked bodies of Gemma Adams, Tania Nicol, Anneli Alderton, Paula Clennell and Annette Nicholls were found dumped at rural locations around Ipswich.

In a hearing at Ipswich Crown Court, Wright was asked how he pleaded to the charge of murder in the case of each of the five women. He replied each time in a clear firm voice: "Not guilty".

The judge, David Calvert-Smith, said the case would continue to be heard in Ipswich. The trial is scheduled to start on January 14 next year and is due to last up to eight weeks.

Wright is being held at Belmarsh high security prison in east London.

Detectives launched their murder investigation on December 2 when 25-year-old Adams' body was found in a stream. The body of 19-year-old Nicol -- last seen on October 30 and the first to be reported missing -- was discovered in the same stream on December 8.

The other three bodies were found over the next four days amid a media frenzy.

The local police chief said the murders of five separate women in such a short span of time was unprecedented in British criminal history.

Supreme Court upholds ban on controversial abortion procedure

By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer

The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on a controversial abortion procedure Wednesday, handing abortion opponents the long-awaited victory they expected from a more conservative bench.

The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.

The opponents of the act "have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.

The administration defended the law as drawing a bright line between abortion and infanticide.

The decision pitted the court's conservatives against its liberals, with President Bush's two appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, siding with the majority.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia also were in the majority.

It was the first time the court banned a specific procedure in a case over how — not whether — to perform an abortion.

Abortion rights groups as well as the leading association of obstetricians and gynecologists have said the procedure sometimes is the safest for a woman. They also said that such a ruling could threaten most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy, although government lawyers and others who favor the ban said there are alternate, more widely used procedures that remain legal.

The outcome is likely to spur efforts at the state level to place more restrictions on abortions.

"I applaud the Court for its ruling today, and my hope is that it sets the stage for further progress in the fight to ensure our nation's laws respect the sanctity of unborn human life," said Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, Republican leader in the House of Representatives.

Said Eve Gartner of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America: "This ruling flies in the face of 30 years of Supreme Court precedent and the best interest of women's health and safety. ... This ruling tells women that politicians, not doctors, will make their health care decisions for them." She had argued that point before the justices.

More than 1 million abortions are performed in the United States each year, according to recent statistics. Nearly 90 percent of those occur in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and are not affected by Wednesday's ruling.

Six federal courts have said the law that was in focus Wednesday is an impermissible restriction on a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.

The law bans a method of ending a pregnancy, rather than limiting when an abortion can be performed.

"Today's decision is alarming," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in dissent. She said the ruling "refuses to take ... seriously" previous Supreme Court decisions on abortion.

Ginsburg said the latest decision "tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists."

She was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens.

The procedure at issue involves partially removing the fetus intact from a woman's uterus, then crushing or cutting its skull to complete the abortion.

Abortion opponents say the law will not reduce the number of abortions performed because an alternate method — dismembering the fetus in the uterus — is available and, indeed, much more common.

In 2000, the court with key differences in its membership struck down a state ban on partial-birth abortions. Writing for a 5-4 majority at that time, Justice Breyer said the law imposed an undue burden on a woman's right to make an abortion decision.

The Republican-controlled Congress responded in 2003 by passing a federal law that asserted the procedure is gruesome, inhumane and never medically necessary to preserve a woman's health. That statement was designed to overcome the health exception to restrictions that the court has demanded in abortion cases.

But federal judges in California, Nebraska and New York said the law was unconstitutional, and three appellate courts agreed. The Supreme Court accepted appeals from California and Nebraska, setting up Wednesday's ruling.

Kennedy's dissent in 2000 was so strong that few court watchers expected him to take a different view of the current case.

Kennedy acknowledged continuing disagreement about the procedure within the medical community. In the past, courts have cited that uncertainty as a reason to allow the disputed procedure.

But Kennedy said, "The law need not give abortion doctors unfettered choice in the course of their medical practice."

He said the more common abortion method, involving dismemberment, is beyond the reach of the federal ban.

While the court upheld the law against a broad attack on its constitutionality, Kennedy said the court could entertain a challenge in which a doctor found it necessary to perform the banned procedure on a patient suffering certain medical complications.

Doctors most often refer to the procedure as a dilation and extraction or an intact dilation and evacuation abortion.

The law allows the procedure to be performed when a woman's life is in jeopardy.

The cases are Gonzales v. Carhart, 05-380, and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood, 05-1382.

For Columbine survivors, anger and resignation

Those touched by Columbine violence say few lessons have been learned

Associated Press

When the topic turns to school violence, Tom Mauser usually lectures about guns.

Mauser became a national advocate of gun control after his 15-year-old son, Daniel, was among those slain in the April 20, 1999, shootings at Columbine High School.

But resignation punctuated Mauser’s remarks Monday when he learned of the killings at Virginia Tech.

“I am not going to just say gun laws are going to take care of this,” he said.

“I think my primary thought is about anger. Anger and suicide. Why do we have so many people who think they have to take others’ (lives) with them when they take their own?”

Other Columbine victims and experts on school violence expressed similar thoughts about the Virginia killings.

Brooks Brown, a former Columbine student who knew the gunmen and repeatedly tried to warn authorities about threats they had made, said the Virginia slayings didn’t surprise him.

“Once you’ve reached the point where you have lost everything it is not hard to be pushed in any direction,” he said of campus shooters.

Brian Rohrbough, whose son, Danny, 15, died at Columbine, blames school shootings on a society that tolerates, even glorifies, violence.

“We teach students that anything you want to do is up to you and you can decide whether anything is right or wrong,” he said.

Incomplete probe?
Rohrbough said the investigation of the Columbine tragedy was incomplete and left unanswered questions about the psychology of school shooters.

Authorities did learn that Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold played violent games, made violent videos at school, and were the victims of bullying because they befriended the Trench Coach Mafia, a group of students who clashed with school athletes.

Rohrbough and others have fought for public disclosure of depositions given by the teens’ parents, Wayne and Kathy Harris and Tom and Susan Klebold.

They argue the depositions could provide valuable insights into the home lives of the two teens, who killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before killing themselves.

But a federal judge two weeks ago ordered the depositions sealed for 20 years.

“That is why we were fighting so hard to get that information — because we need to know what was going on inside the heads of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold,” said Delbert Elliott, director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado.

‘The main motive is revenge’
Killing others before committing suicide is not a new phenomenon, though the Virginia Tech numbers are shocking, said Tom McIntyre, coordinator of the Graduate Program in Behavior Disorders at Hunter College in New York.

“Freud said homicide is just suicide turned inside out,” said McIntyre, who began studying school violence after Columbine. “The main motive is revenge.”

In the past, a pre-suicide killing usually involved a specific target — as in the case of a husband finding his wife with a lover, Elliot said.

The victims in the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings appeared to be random targets, he said.

“I don’t know how many times we have to go through things like this before we can try to learn what is going on,” Elliot said. “I think there is an element of wanting to go out and creating a huge media effect, although that is only a part of what is going on.”

Family background of Virginia Tech gunman

President comforts Virginia Tech after student kills 32 and himself

MSNBC and NBC News

President Bush joined Virginia’s governor and dozens of other state and national officials Tuesday to bring comfort to the students, faculty and staff of Virginia Tech a day after a 23-year-old student shot 32 people to death Monday before killing himself.

“Laura and I have come to Blacksburg today with hearts full of sorrow,” the president said. “This is a day of sadness for our entire nation.”

The president and Gov. Timothy Kaine, who flew back overnight from a trade mission in Asia, decided to join a convocation for a university and town reeling after the worst mass shooting in American history. So many people showed up for the session in the school’s basketball arena that the overflow was sent to Lane Field, the university’s 50,000-seat football stadium.

“I hope you know that people all over this country are thinking about you and asking God to provide comfort for all who have been affected,” Bush said.

Kaine said the world had been inspired by the response of the campus and the surrounding community.

“It’s not just you that needs to maintain that spirit, but the world needs you to,” he said. “The world saw you and saw you respond in a way that builds community. The world needs that example before it.”

Zenobia Hikes, the university’s vice president for student affairs, captured that spirit when she said: “What has happened to these beloved members of our family has brought us closer together in our grief and our shared sense of disbelief.”

She added: “We will eventually recover, but we will never ever forget.”

Police: Bomb threat found
At least 26 people were taken to hospitals, some of them seriously injured. after Monday's shooting. Twelve students remained in hospitals in stable condition Tuesday, and most were expected to be released soon, NBC News’ Michelle Kosinski reported from Montgomery Regional Medical Center.

Police identified the shooter as Cho Seung-Hui (pronounced Choh Suhng-whee), of Centreville, Va., a resident alien who immigrated to the United States from South Korea in 1992, who was a senior in the English Department at Virginia Tech.

Police sought a search warrant for Cho’s room in Harper Residence Hall, saying in a court affidavit that they had found a “bomb threat note ... directed at engineering school department buildings” near his body, The Washington Post reported on its Web site. “The note is connected with the shooting incident,” the affidavit said.

Police said that there had been bomb threats on campus over the past two weeks but that they had not determined a link to the shootings.

After the shootings, all campus entrances were closed, and classes were canceled for the rest of the week. The university set up a spot for families to reunite with their children.

Student alarmed instructors
Instructors, meanwhile, said Cho’s creative writing was so disturbing that he was referred to the school’s counseling service.

Professor Carolyn Rude, chairwoman of the university’s English department, said she did not personally know the gunman. But she said she spoke with Lucinda Roy, the department’s director of creative writing, who had Cho in one of her classes and described him as “troubled.”

“There was some concern about him,” Rude told The Associated Press. “Sometimes, in creative writing, people reveal things and you never know if it’s creative or if they’re describing things, if they’re imagining things or just how real it might be. But we’re all alert to not ignore things ike this.”

She said Cho was referred to the counseling service, but she said she did not know when or what the outcome was. Rude refused to release any of his writings or his grades, citing privacy laws.

Otherwise, Cho was a young man who apparently left little impression in the Virginia Tech community. Few of his fellow residents of Harper Hall said they knew the gunman, who kept to himself.

“He can’t have been an outgoing kind of person,” Meredith Daly, 19, of Danville, Va., told MSNBC.com’s Bill Dedman.

‘Very quiet, always by himself’
In Centreville, a suburb of Washington where Cho’s family lived in an off-white, two-story townhouse, people who knew Cho concurred that he kept to himself.

“He was very quiet, always by himself,” said Abdul Shash, a neighbor. Shash said Cho spent a lot of his free time playing basketball and would not respond if someone greeted him. He described the family as quiet.

Rod Wells, a postal worker, said that characterization of Cho did not fit the man’s parents, who, he described as “always polite, always kind to me, very quiet, always smiling. Just sweet, sweet people.”

“I talk to particularly everybody here,” Wells told NBC News. “So I guess nobody had any intimation that he was like that. I don’t think the parents did, because they were quite the opposite.”

South Korea’s Foreign Ministry expressed its condolences, saying that there was no known motive for the shootings and that South Korea hoped the tragedy would not “stir up racial prejudice or confrontation.”

Ballistics evidence points to student
The bloodbath ended Monday morning with Cho’s suicide, bringing the death toll from two separate shootings — first at the dormitory, then in a classroom building — to 33 and stamping the campus in the picturesque Blue Ridge Mountains with unspeakable tragedy.

Wielding two handguns and carrying multiple clips of ammunition, Cho opened fire about 7:15 a.m. on the fourth floor of West Ambler Johnston, a high-rise coeducational dorm, then stormed Norris Hall, a classroom building a half-mile away on the other side of the 2,600-acre campus. Some of the doors at Norris Hall were found chained from the inside, apparently by the gunman.

Col. Steve Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, said it was reasonable to assume that Cho was the shooter in both attacks but that the link was not yet definitive.

“There’s no evidence of any accomplice at either event, but we’re exploring the possibility,” he said.

Two law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the information had not been officially announced, said Cho’s fingerprints were found on the two guns used in the shootings. The serial numbers had been filed off, the officials said.

Law enforcement officials told NBC News that Cho was carrying a backpack that contained receipts for the purchase of a Glock 9mm pistol in March.

As a permanent legal resident, Cho was eligible to buy a handgun unless he had been convicted of any felony criminal charges. Immigration officials told NBC affiliate WSLS-TV of Roanoke that they would not have approved renewal of his green card in late 2003 if a criminal record had shown up.

‘He didn’t say a single word’
As the gunman made his way through Norris Hall, students jumped from windows in panic.

Trey Perkins, who was sitting in a German class in Norris Hall, told MSNBC-TV on Monday that the gunman barged into the room about 9:50 a.m. and opened fire for about a minute and a half, squeezing off 20 to 30 shots.

The gunman first shot the professor in the head and then fired on the students, Perkins said, who added: “He didn’t say a single word the whole time.”

“He didn’t say, ‘Get down.’ He didn’t say anything. He just started shooting,” said Perkins, 20, of Yorktown, Va., a sophomore studying mechanical engineering. “I got on the ground, and I was just thinking, like, there’s no way I’m going to survive this. All I could keep thinking of was my mom.”

Students angry at university’s response
Students said there were no public-address announcements after the first shots. Many said they learned of the first shooting in an e-mail message that arrived shortly before the gunman struck again.

University President Charles Steger defended the university’s conduct, saying authorities believed that the shooting at the dorm was a domestic dispute and mistakenly thought the gunman had fled the campus.

Steger emphasized that the university closed off the dorm after the first attack and decided to rely on e-mail and other electronic means to spread the word, but he said that with 11,000 people driving onto campus first thing in the morning, it was difficult to get the word out.

“We can only make decisions based on the information you had at the time. You don’t have hours to reflect on it,” Steger said.

Va. Tech gunman writings raised concerns

By ADAM GELLER, AP National Writer

The gunman suspected of carrying out the Virginia Tech massacre that left 33 people dead was identified Tuesday as an English major whose creative writing was so disturbing that he was referred to the school's counseling service.

News reports also said that he may have been taking medication for depression, that he was becoming increasingly violent and erratic, and that he left a note in his dorm in which he railed against "rich kids," "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans" on campus.

Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old senior, arrived in the United States as boy from South Korea in 1992 and was raised in suburban Washington, D.C., officials said. He was living on campus in a different dorm from the one where Monday's bloodbath began.

Police and university officials offered no clues as to exactly what set him off on the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.

"He was a loner, and we're having difficulty finding information about him," school spokesman Larry Hincker said.

Professor Carolyn Rude, chairwoman of the university's English department, said she did not personally know the gunman. But she said she spoke with Lucinda Roy, the department's director of creative writing, who had Cho in one of her classes and described him as "troubled."

"There was some concern about him," Rude said. "Sometimes, in creative writing, people reveal things and you never know if it's creative or if they're describing things, if they're imagining things or just how real it might be. But we're all alert to not ignore things like this."

She said Cho was referred to the counseling service, but she said she did not know when, or what the outcome was. Rude refused to release any of his writings or his grades, citing privacy laws.

The Chicago Tribune reported on its Web site that he left a note in his dorm room that included a rambling list of grievances. Citing unidentified sources, the Tribune said he had recently shown troubling signs, including setting a fire in a dorm room and stalking some women.

ABC, citing law enforcement sources, reported that the note, several pages long, explains Cho's actions and says, "You caused me to do this."

Investigators believe Cho at some point had been taking medication for depression, the Tribune reported.

The rampage consisted of two attacks, more than two hours apart — first at a dormitory, where two people were killed, then inside a classroom building, where 31 people, including Cho, died after being locked inside, Virginia State Police said. Cho committed suicide; two guns were found in the classroom building.

One law enforcement official said Cho's backpack contained a receipt for a March purchase of a Glock 9 mm pistol. Cho held a green card, meaning he was a legal, permanent resident, federal officials said. That meant he was eligible to buy a handgun unless he had been convicted of a felony.

Investigators stopped short of saying Cho carried out both attacks. But ballistics tests show one gun was used in both, Virginia State Police said.

And two law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the information had not been announced, said Cho's fingerprints were found on both guns. The serial numbers on the two weapons had been filed off, the officials said.

Col. Steve Flaherty, superintendent of the Virginia State Police, said it was reasonable to assume that Cho was the shooter in both attacks but that the link was not yet definitive. "There's no evidence of any accomplice at either event, but we're exploring the possibility," he said.

Officials said Cho graduated from a public high school in Chantilly, Va., in 2003. His family lived in an off-white, two-story townhouse in Centreville, Va.

"He was very quiet, always by himself," neighbor Abdul Shash said. Shash said Cho spent a lot of his free time playing basketball and would not respond if someone greeted him. He described the family as quiet.

Virginia Tech Police issued a speeding ticket to Cho on April 7 for going 44 mph in a 25 mph zone, and he had a court date set for May 23.

South Korea expressed its condolences, and said it hoped that the tragedy would not "stir up racial prejudice or confrontation."

"We are in shock beyond description," said Cho Byung-se, a Foreign Ministry official handling North American affairs.

A memorial service was planned for the victims Tuesday afternoon at the university, and President Bush planned to attend. Gov. Tim Kaine was flying back to Virginia from Tokyo for the gathering.

Classes were canceled for the rest of the week.

Many students were leaving town quickly, lugging pillows, sleeping bags and backpacks down the sidewalks.

Jessie Ferguson, 19, a freshman from Arlington, left Newman Hall and headed for her car with tears streaming down her red cheeks.

"I'm still kind of shaky," she said. "I had to pump myself up just to kind of come out of the building. I was going to come out, but it took a little bit of 'OK, it's going to be all right. There's lots of cops around.'"

Although she wanted to be with friends, she wanted her family more. "I just don't want to be on campus," she said.

The first deadly attack was at the dormitory around 7:15 a.m., but some students said they didn't get their first warning about a danger on campus until two hours later, in an e-mail at 9:26 a.m., around the time the second attack began.

Two students told NBC's "Today" show they were unaware of the dorm shooting when they walked into Norris Hall for a German class where the gunman later opened fire.

The victims in Norris Hall were found in four classrooms and a stairwell, Flaherty said. Cho was found dead in one of those classrooms, he said.

Derek O'Dell, his arm in a cast after being shot, described a shooter who fired away in "eerily silence" with "no specific target — just taking out anybody he could."

After the gunman left the room, students could hear him shooting other people down the hall. O'Dell said he and other students barricaded the door so the shooter couldn't get back in — though he later tried.

"After he couldn't get the door open he tried shooting it open ... but the gunshots were blunted by the door," O'Dell said.

Virginia Tech President Charles Steger emphasized that the university closed off the dorm after the first attack. He said that before the e-mail was sent, the university began telephoning resident advisers in the dorms and sent people to knock on doors to warn them.

"We can only make decisions based on the information you had at the time. You don't have hours to reflect on it," Steger said.

Until Monday, the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history was in Killeen, Texas, in 1991, when George Hennard plowed his pickup truck into a Luby's Cafeteria and shot 23 people to death, then himself.

Previously, the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history was a rampage that took place in 1966 at the University of Texas at Austin, where Charles Whitman climbed the clock tower and opened fire with a rifle from the 28th-floor observation deck. He killed 16 people before he was shot to death by police.

22 dead in Va. Tech shooting rampage

Associated Press

A gunman opened fire in a dorm and classroom at Virginia Tech on Monday, killing 21 people in the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history. The gunman also was killed.

“Today the university was struck with a tragedy that we consider of monumental proportions,” said Virginia Tech president Charles Steger. “The university is shocked and indeed horrified.”

The university reported shootings at opposite sides of the 2,600-acre campus, beginning at about 7:15 a.m. at West Ambler Johnston, a co-ed residence hall that houses 895 people, and continuing about two hours later at Norris Hall, an engineering building.

Some but not all the dead were students. One student was killed in a dorm and the others were killed in the classroom, said Virginia Tech Police Chief W.R. Flinchum.

The name of the gunman was not released. It was not known if he was a student.

NBC's Pete Williams said two law enforcement officials told him the gunman killed himself. They also said the gunman used two 9-mm handguns during the rampage, Williams reported. He said the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was trying to track the weapons.

Up until Monday, the deadliest campus shooting in U.S. history took place in 1966 at the University of Texas, where Charles Whitman climbed to the 28th-floor observation deck of a clock tower and opened fire. He killed 16 people before he was gunned down by police. In the Columbine High bloodbath near Littleton, Colo., in 1999, two teenagers killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before taking their own lives.

After Monday’s shootings at Virginia Tech, all entrances to the campus were closed.

The university set up a meeting place for families to reunite with their children at the Inn at Virginia Tech. It also made counselors available and planned a convocation for Tuesday at the Cassell Coliseum basketball arena.

After the shootings, students were told to stay inside away from the windows.

“There’s just a lot of commotion. It’s hard to tell exactly what’s going on,” said Jason Anthony Smith, 19, who lives in the dorm where shooting took place.

Aimee Kanode, a freshman from Martinsville, said the shooting happened on the 4th floor of West Ambler Johnston dormitory, one floor above her room. Kanode’s resident assistant knocked on her door about 8 a.m. to notify students to stay put.

“They had us under lockdown,” Kanode said. “They temporarily lifted the lockdown, the gunman shot again.”

“We’re all locked in our dorms surfing the Internet trying to figure out what’s going on,” Kanode said.

Madison Van Duyne, a student who was interviewed by telephone on CNN, said, “We are all in lockdown. Most of the students are sitting on the floors away from the windows just trying to be as safe as possible.”

Police said there had been bomb threats on campus over the past two weeks but they had not determined a link to the shootings.

It was second time in less than a year that the campus was closed because of a shooting.

In August 2006, the opening day of classes was canceled and the campus closed when an escaped jail inmate allegedly killed a hospital guard off campus and fled to the Tech area. A sheriff’s deputy involved in the manhunt was killed on a trail just off campus.

The accused gunman, William Morva, faces capital murder charges.

Virginia Tech reports shooting, 1 killed

Associated Press

A shooting at a Virginia Tech dorm Monday left one person dead and one wounded, a state government official with knowledge of the case told The Associated Press.

A gunman was "loose on the campus" the state university said on its Web site. The advisory said a shooting had occurred at a residence hall and that students should stay in their homes away from windows.

"There's just a lot of commotion. It's hard to tell exactly what's going on," said student Jason Anthony Smith, 19, who lives in the building where shooting took place.

The shooting was reported at West Ambler Johnston Hall.

Officials ordered the campus closed, the second time in less than a year the 26,000-student campus was shut because of a shooting.

In August 2006, the opening day of classes was canceled and the campus closed when an escaped jail inmate allegedly killed a hospital guard off campus and fled to the Tech area. A sheriff's deputy involved in the manhunt was killed on a trail just off campus.

The accused gunman, William Morva, faces capital murder charges.

Saddam boosted fitness training for hanging: lawyer

By Suleiman al-Khalidi

Less than 48 hours before he was hanged, Saddam Hussein said he had doubled the workout on his treadmill to be in good shape when he faced the gallows, according to his Iraqi lawyer.

Wadood Fawzi Shams Deen, who met the ousted leader at a U.S. military camp in one of his former palaces on December 28, says Saddam told him and another lawyer that he had done 35 minutes of exercise in the previous two days.

"I am making extra effort to prove to them that an Arab dies with honor and dignity defending honourable principles," Shams Deen quoted Saddam as saying.

Saddam's hanging, secretly recorded in footage distributed on the Internet, has turned him into a martyr in parts of the Arab world, overshadowing memories of his often brutal and bloody rule and of his conviction for crimes against humanity.

Pictures of his composed conduct and erect bearing in the face of taunting at a shambolic execution has helped the supporters who have already begun burnishing his image as a hero -- even as the court still trying Saddam's associates shows pictures of thousands of Iraqi Kurds killed in chemical attacks.

The value of posterity was not lost on Saddam. "The execution will turn Saddam Hussein into a symbol for another hundred years," he said, according to the lawyers, who took extensive notes of their last conversation with him.

Saddam, smoking a Cuban Cohiba cigar and wearing the same black overcoat he wore when he was hanged on December 30, told the lawyers he had turned down an offer of tranquilisers from a U.S. doctor when the appeals court upheld his death sentence.

"I told him that God has given me enough faith to do without them," Shams Deen said Saddam told him and Bander Awad al-Bander, the lawyer son of one of Saddam's co-defendants.

"I will face my creator with a brave heart and clean hands."

Offering cigars to his visitors and a nearby U.S. guard, Saddam said he had been crossing the Tigris River in broad daylight, swimming part of the way and using a small fisherman's boat for the rest, only days before his arrest in a tiny farmhouse cellar near his hometown, Tikrit, in December 2003.

POEMS

Saddam recited poems about chivalry, endurance, heroism and holy war (jihad), saying poetry had helped him deal with his years in U.S. captivity, much of it in solitary confinement, Shams Deen said.

"We have humbled the long nights and it has not broken our will," he quoted Saddam as saying. "Poetry was my window to the world."

Saddam said he had read the Koran, the Muslim holy book, eight times over during the holy fasting month of Ramadan.

Other titles he requested and got were poetry by the eminent Arab poet Al-Mutanabi and a copy of the U.N. human rights declaration.

Saddam said he had predicted to a senior American interrogator a week after his arrest in December 2003 that Iraq would be a magnet for all the groups that "hated America":

"They will fight America in Iraq, all in their own way and with their own agenda. It is better that you leave sooner rather than later."

Iraq would be a "bigger quagmire than Vietnam for the United States," Shams Deen quoted Saddam as saying, and by early 2007 U.S. troops would have been "driven out of Iraq in humiliation."

"They have reached a point of powerlessness," Saddam said, adding that the insurgency had gained strength throughout his detention.

"Maybe in the first three months they were in need of Saddam. But the resistance now doesn't need Saddam Hussein ... and will, God willing, defeat the occupiers of great Iraq," he said, according to the lawyers.

As he said farewell to his visitors, Saddam said he would leave his people "content that the moment of America's end in Iraq is fast approaching."

Saddam Aides to Die This Week

Culled From BBC

The Iraqi government has said that the executions of two senior associates of former leader Saddam Hussein will take place some time during the week.

CONDEMNED MEN

Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti (right) - Saddam Hussein's half-brother, former head of the intelligence service

Awad al Bandar - former chief judge of Revolutionary Court

This is despite an appeal from the new UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, that they should not go ahead.

Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the execution orders for Barzan al-Tikriti and Awad al-Bandar had been signed, and there was no way back.

Saddam Hussein's execution has led to a chorus of international criticism.

Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam Hussein's intelligence chief, and Awad al-Bandar, a former chief judge, were convicted along with Saddam Hussein for their part in the killing of 148 Shia Muslims in the Iraqi village of Dujail in the 1980s.

Mr Dabbagh said that while the government respected the UN's view, it also had to respect the victims of Saddam Hussein and his henchmen.

"Certainly, the execution orders have been signed and are ready to be implemented," he said.

"There are some technical preparations that need to take place in order to carry out the court's decision."

Saddam Hussein was hanged on 30 December amid chaotic scenes.

I think we can sum this up as a deplorable set of events... completely unacceptable Gordon Brown, UK Chancellor

UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, who had been criticised for saying nothing on the issue, has now joined the critics.

His officials now say the prime minister does believe the way Saddam Hussein was taunted and filmed before he was hanged was completely wrong.

Earlier, the man expected to succeed Mr Blair as prime minister, Chancellor Gordon Brown, described events at the execution as deplorable and completely unacceptable.

'Domestic affair'

Mr Ban has been criticised for failing to state the UN's policy of opposing the death penalty.

He said capital punishment "was for each and every member state to decide" - words that seemed at odds with the UN's policy of opposing the death penalty.

But in a letter to the Iraqi representative at the UN, Mr Ban urged restraint in carrying out death sentences imposed by the Iraqi High Tribunal.

The UN said Mr Ban's letter "also refers to the secretary general's view that all members of the international community should pay due regard to all aspects of international humanitarian and human rights laws".

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has reacted angrily to the international outcry over the execution.

He said his government could review relations with any country that criticised the action.

Mr Maliki said the hanging was a "domestic affair" for the benefit of Iraq's unity, adding that the former president had received a fair trial.

International protest has continued, however. On Saturday Rome's mayor lit up the Colosseum to highlight Italy's support for a global ban on the death penalty.

Italy this week began a diplomatic push to have the issue taken up by the UN General Assembly.

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi called the execution a "political and historic error".

Several Sunni Arab countries have criticised the hanging as sectarian.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said it had turned the former leader into a martyr.

Genocide charges against Saddam Dropped

By David Byers

Genocide charges against Saddam Hussein for the killing of 180,000 Kurds in the 1980s have been dropped in his absence as the case against six co-defendants resumed.

As the trial of those accused of the al-Anfal killings re-started this morning, including that of Saddam's cousin often referred to as 'Chemical Ali,' the accused ex-dictator's seat was empty after he went to the gallows on December 30.

Shortly after the case re-started this morning, the chief judge dropped the case against Saddam in his absence. The ex-dictator was hanged after being found guilty in an earlier trial of the killing of 148 Shia Muslims in the town of Dujail, but many Kurds were disappointed that he was executed before facing justice for his role in the al-Anfal campaign, which was numerically the most serious of his crimes and one which drew horror and revulsion around the world.

Speaking at the start of this morning's case, Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, the chief judge, said the court decided to stop all legal action against the former president, since "the death of defendant Saddam death was confirmed".

Saddam was hanged in a chaotic execution which led to global criticism. As the tyrant was taken to the gallows, mobile phone footage taken by observers was transferred all over Iraq and placed on the Internet. It showed Saddam being taunted and becoming involved in slanging matches with his executioners and observers.

International observers feared that the manner of the execution could simply lead to an increase in the sectarian violence in the divided country.

All seven defendants in the al-Anfal case, including Saddam, had denied charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Saddam and one other man also pleaded not guilty to the additional charge of genocide.

After the decision to drop charges against Saddam, a bailiff called out the names of the other accused, and the six men walked silently into the courtroom one after another.

Saddam Hussein's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" because of his alleged use of chemical weapons against the Kurds, started the trial by trying to read a prayer from the Koran in memory of Saddam, but the judge ordered him to stop. He also wore a long beard as a sign of mourning.

The defence claims that the campaign - codenamed al-Anfal, or "the spoils of war" - was a legitimate operation to quell a rebellion after some Kurds sided with the enemy during the Iran-Iraq war while the prosecution and the West labels it as a war crime and genocide.

The trial had been in recess since 21 December. Its resumption will throw the spotlight back on the Iraqi judicial system, which came under international criticism for the handling of Saddam's execution.

After the chaotic execution, the United Nations called for a stay of execution for two others sentenced to death in the Dujail trial, but the Iraqi Government says the execution of Barzan al-Tikriti and Awad al-Bandar - the other parties found guilty alongside Saddam - will take place this week.

Meanwhile, Tony Blair's spokesman said on Sunday that the manner of Saddam's killing was "completely wrong." The Prime Minister's comments, which he is expected to reiterate personally this week, followed similar condemnations by Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Mr Blair's expected successor when he leaves office later this year, along with John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, and Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary.

New video of Saddam's Corpse on Internet

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer

A new video of Saddam Hussein's corpse, with a gaping neck wound, was posted on the Internet early Tuesday, the second leaked release of clandestine pictures from the former leader's hanging.

The video appeared to have been taken with a camera phone, like the graphic video of the hanging which showed guards taunting Saddam in the final moments of his life.

The footage pans up the shrouded body of the former leader from the feet. It apparently was taken shortly after Saddam was executed and placed on a gurney. He was hanged shortly before dawn on Dec. 30.

As the panning shot reaches the head region, the white shroud is pulled back and reveals Saddam's head and neck.

His head is unnaturally twisted at a 90 degree angle to his right. It shows a gaping bloody wound, circular in shape, about an inch below his jaw line on the left side of his neck. His left cheek is marked with red blotches, and there is blood on the shroud where it covered his head.

The newest video leak was likely to increase the angry reaction over the way the execution was carried out. There already has been a global outcry about the undignified manner in which the Shiite-dominated government hanged Saddam, a Sunni.

The 27-second video was posted on an Iraqi news Web site that is known to support Saddam's outlawed Baath Party.

"A new film of the late immortal martyr, President Saddam Hussein," the web site said in a headline over a link to the video.

Voices could be heard on the video. As the shroud is pulled back, one voice says, "Hurry up, hurry up. I'm going to count from one to four. One, two ... . Hurry up you're going to get us into a catastrophe."

Then another voice, apparently the man taking the pictures, says, "Just one second, just one second, Abu Ali. I'm about finished."

Then a third voice says, "Abu Ali, you take care of this."

It was the second clandestine video to have leaked, the first showing Saddam being taunted in his final moments. That clandestine video showed the former leader dropping through the gallows floor as he offered chanted prayers. It ends with his dead body swinging at the end of a rope.

The hanging video was in sharp contrast with an official video that was broadcast not long after Saddam's execution which showed him standing silently on the gallows as the noose was put around his neck. The official video was muted.

The leaked hanging video, however, was shot from the floor of the gallows chamber, looking up at Saddam. Voices could be heard taunting him with cries of "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada," referring to radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia and a key support of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

The prime minister pushed for Saddam to be executed before the end of 2006 and just four days after the death sentence was upheld by the appeals court. U.S. official sought to delay the execution.

Calls grow to stay Saddam aides' hanging

By Jay Deshmukh

Pressure was mounting on Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to halt the executions of two of Saddam Hussein's henchmen amid growing international criticism over the way the ousted dictator was hanged.

With former secret police chief Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and revolutionary court judge Awad Ahmed al-Bandar expected to be hanged in days, New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Monday the executions would further highlight "the Iraqi government's disturbing disregard for human rights and the rule of law."

"The execution of these two, however heinous the crimes involved, is cruel and inhuman punishment that will only drag a deeply flawed process into even greater disrepute," HRW director Richard Dicker HRW said in the statement.

"The haste and vengeance infusing Saddam Hussein's hanging should prompt the Iraqi government to halt these executions," said Dicker.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon at the weekend "strongly" urged Iraq to suspend the executions of Barzan, Saddam's half-brother, and Bandar, who were found guilty along with the deposed leader of executing 148 Shiite civilians from Dujail, north of Baghdad, in the 1980s.

In a statement released by the United Nations, Ban "strongly urged the government of Iraq to grant a stay of execution to those whose death sentences may be carried out in the near future."

Their executions have been postponed several times amid the growing global outcry, with one official from Maliki's office admitting the delays were "due to international pressure."

But Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told the BBC's Arabic service Sunday that the two could be executed in two days and powerful Shiite politician Abdel Aziz al-Hakim on Monday called for the hangings to be carried out swiftly.

"We demand in the name of the Iraqi people that the prime minister and the government accelerate the carrying out of the execution of those criminals who have been sentenced," said Hakim, who heads the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the main Shiite party in the Iraqi government.

The December 30 hanging of Saddam sparked outrage after the leak of an unofficial, grisly cellphone video of his execution that showed a guard taunting the former dictator moments before his death.

A number of leaders criticized the hanging, saying it appeared more like a sectarian lynching than a court-directed punishment after a guard, believed to be a Shiite, taunted the Sunni former president in his final moments.

The strongest criticism came from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who said the execution had made Saddam a "martyr".

Even staunch Iraq ally Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair said the manner of Saddam's execution was "completely wrong", according to his Downing Street office.

But Maliki on Saturday lashed out at his critics, threatening to "review" relations with countries that criticised the bungled execution and arguing the hanging was an internal matter.

"The Iraqi government could be obliged to review its relations with any state that fails to respect the wish of the Iraqi people," warned Maliki, who has ordered an investigation into the illegal filming of the execution.

Human Rights Watch said Maliki's rejection of criticism over the hanging was reminiscent of the former regime itself which grossly violated human rights.

"Human Rights Watch recalls comparable statements from Hussein's former Baath party regime in attempting to rebuff criticisms of its horrific human rights violations," it said.

The condemned men's lawyer meanwhile described his clients' agonising wait for death as "more terrifying" than the execution itself.

On the day of Saddam's hanging "the Americans went to see Barzan al-Tikriti and Awad al-Bandar in their cells. It was after 1 am and they woke them up to inform them they will be executed," said Jordanian attorney Issam Ghazzawi.

He said they were taken to a building, asked to write their last will and testament and left waiting to die for more than seven hours before they were told the execution was postponed.

"This sort of wait is frightening and more terrifying than the execution itself. Had it happened in any other country the execution would have been scrapped," said Ghazzawi.

Barzan and Bandar both wept over Saddam's death, and Bandar said he wished he had been executed along with the ousted president, the lawyer said.

Iraq Trial Tapes tell of 'Extermination' Plan

Culled From CNN

Saddam Hussein and his cousin "Chemical Ali" discussed killing thousands with chemical weapons before unleashing them on Kurds in 1988, according to tapes played on Monday in a trial of former Iraqi officials.

Nine days after Hussein's hanging, his front-row seat in the dock was conspicuously empty, but Ali Hassan al-Majeed and five other Baath party officials remained on trial for their roles in the 1988 Anfal, or Spoils of War, campaign in northern Iraq.

"I will strike them with chemical weapons and kill them all," a voice identified by prosecutors as that of Majeed, Hussein's cousin and a senior aide, is heard saying.

"Who is going to say anything? The international community? Curse the international community," the voice continued.

"Yes, it's effective, especially on those who don't wear a mask immediately, as we understand," another voice, identified as Hussein, is heard saying on another tape.

"Sir, does it exterminate thousands?" a voice asks back.

"Yes, it exterminates thousands and forces them not to eat or drink and they will have to evacuate their homes without taking anything with them, until we can finally purge them," the voice identified as Hussein answers.

Prosecutors did not explain who ordered the recordings or when or why they were made and court officials could not elaborate. Audiotapes have been introduced in the court before and Hussein is believed to have recorded some of his meetings.

Prosecutors: Anfal campaign killed 180,000

Prosecutors said 180,000 people were killed, many of them gassed, in the Anfal campaign.

Many Kurds regret the chief suspect can no longer face justice for his role in the campaign against them, but they hope others share his fate on the gallows.

Hussein was hanged on December 30 after being convicted in an earlier trial for his role in killing 148 Shiites in the 1980s.

Majeed, who faces charges of genocide, is considered the main enforcer of the Anfal campaign.

Defendants have said Anfal was a legitimate military operation targeting Kurdish guerrillas who had sided with Shiite Iran during the last stages of the Iraq-Iran war.

Chief Prosecutor Munqith Faroon also played on Monday video showing women and children lying dead on village streets and mountain slopes after what he said was a chemical attack ordered by Hussein.

"These are the honorable battles they claimed to have launched against the enemy," he told the court.

Hussein death ends charges against him

Judge Mohammed al-Ureybi, in his first order of business, formally dropped charges of genocide and crimes against humanity against Hussein.

He cut off the microphones when Majeed stood up and started to read the Quran in tribute to his former chief.

"In virtue of the confirmation of the death of defendant Saddam Hussein, the court decided to finally stop legal procedures against defendant Saddam Hussein according to the Iraqi Penal Procedures Law," Ureybi told the court.

Looking tired and sporting an uncharacteristic white stubble, Majeed refused to take his chair and insisted on reading a line from the Quran as he stood behind Hussein's empty chair.

"Make him sit down, make him sit down," Ureybi ordered the bailiffs.

Furor over execution continues

For supporters of the U.S.-sponsored High Tribunal, Monday was a day to return the focus to sober judicial process after the undoubted embarrassment that illicit video of Hussein's execution has brought to a court judging Iraq's former rulers while its current government is struggling to avert civil war.

Yet controversy over Hussein's last minutes and the sectarian taunts he faced from Shiite officials on the scaffold goes on.

Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government in Iraq has yet to complete an investigation into the jeers and the video -- one court officer has accused a senior official of filming the event -- and al-Maliki has offered a robust defense of the execution.

But his government has found itself on the receiving end of one of the first public appeals by the new United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, whose chief of staff has written to Baghdad urging "restraint" in the use of the death penalty.

British Finance Minister Gordon Brown, the likely next prime minister of Washington's main ally in occupying Iraq, called the execution "deplorable." A spokeswoman for outgoing leader Tony Blair has said he believes the way the hanging was done was "completely wrong."

Two of Hussein's aides, his half-brother Barzan al-Tikriti and former judge Awad al-Bander, are likely to be hanged any day now after being convicted along with Hussein for killing Shi'ites.

German court gives Moroccan max for 9/11

By SIMONE UTLER, Associated Press Writer

A Moroccan convicted as an accessory to murder in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was sentenced Monday to the maximum 15 years in prison, minutes after telling the son of a woman killed that day "my future is ruined."

A federal appeals court convicted Mounir el Motassadeq, a friend of three of the suicide pilots, in November of knowingly helping the hijackers and sent the case to a state court in Hamburg for sentencing.

Just before Monday's verdict, the 32-year-old defendant spoke with an American whose mother died on board one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center.

Dominic Puopolo Jr., a co-plaintiff in the case, earlier joined prosecutors in calling for the maximum penalty, urging the judges to consider the "human and emotional cost" of the 2001 attacks.

"Anyone who helped in this has earned stiff punishment," presiding Judge Carsten Beckmann said after announcing Monday's verdict.

When the court granted El Motassadeq a final chance to speak, the slightly built, bearded man turned to Puopolo to say, "I understand your suffering. ... The same thing is being done to me, my kids, my parents, my family — my future is ruined."

Puopolo said he forgave el Motassadeq, and reminded him that he would one day be freed.

"You have a chance to rebuild your life and be back with your family. Others don't," Puopolo said. "Your life is not over, but my mom's is."

Defense lawyers said they may appeal to a European court.

The federal appeals court had ruled that the Hamburg judges wrongly acquitted el Motassadeq in 2005 of direct involvement in the attacks, even though they sentenced him to seven years in prison for belonging to a terrorist group.

The appeals court convicted el Motassadeq as an accessory to the murder of the 246 passengers and crew members aboard the four jetliners used in the attacks, and ordered the state court to set a new sentence.

Ladislav Anisic, a lawyer for el Motassadeq, said they would seek a retrial and maybe appeal to the European Court of Justice.

"We have a clear mandate, and that is to ensure that our client receives the acquittal," he said.

El Motassadeq was a close friend of pilots Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah when they lived and studied in Hamburg. He has acknowledged training at an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan and that he was close to the three hijackers, but insists he knew nothing of their plans.

However, the federal appeals court said evidence showed el Motassadeq knew that the hijackers planned to hijack and crash planes. It found that his actions — for example, transferring money, and helping the hijackers keep up the appearance of being regular university students by paying tuition and rent fees — facilitated the attacks.

The federal court also said it was irrelevant to el Motassadeq's guilt whether he knew of the plot's timing, dimension or targets.

Monday's decision was the latest in a legal saga that started with el Motassadeq's arrest in November 2001 and featured two full trials.

He was convicted and sentenced to the maximum 15 years in prison in 2003, but that verdict was overturned by a federal court the following year — largely because of lack of evidence from al-Qaida suspects in U.S. custody.

At a retrial that resulted in the 2005 conviction, the U.S. provided limited summaries from the interrogation of, among others, Ramzi Binalshibh, a suspected liaison between the Hamburg hijackers and al-Qaida.