Category: People

{{Italian prosecutors called on Monday for a six-year jail sentence and a lifetime ban on holding public office for centre-right leader and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is charged with abuse of office and paying for sex with a minor.}}

The 76-year-old billionaire media tycoon and senator is accused of paying for sex with Karima El Mahroug, better known by her stage name “Ruby the Heartstealer”, when she was under 18, during the now notorious “bunga bunga” parties at his villa at Arcore near Milan in 2010.

However, prosecutors considered by far the more serious charge was that he abused the powers of his office during a separate incident by arranging for her to be released from police custody where she was being held on theft charges.

They requested five years imprisonment for that and a year for paying for sex with a minor. The verdict is expected on June 24.

But no final verdict will be enforced in either case until the appeals process, which can last for years, is exhausted.

Still, Berlusconi’s legal difficulties have created growing tension within Prime Minister Enrico Letta’s governing coalition, which includes the ex-premier’s center-right party.

“At Arcore there was a system of organized prostitution aimed at the satisfaction of the sexual pleasure of Silvio Berlusconi,” Milan chief prosecutor Ilda Boccassini said in a more than six-hour closing argument.

Boccassini said a small army of young women, many of them aspiring starlets, took part in the sex parties at Berlusconi’s residence, hoping to make it big on one of his television channels.

Those who stayed on after dinner were rewarded with cash, cars or free apartments, she said.

The prosecutor said mobile phone records showed that Ruby, a Moroccan runaway, had spent the night at Berlusconi’s home on at least seven occasions between February and May 2010.

“There is no doubt that Ruby had sex with the defendant, from whom she received benefits,” Boccassini said, adding that Berlusconi was well aware she was a minor.

{agencies}

{{Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, the Venezuelan better known to the world as Carlos the Jackal, is returning to court to appeal against his conviction for a series of deadly bombings in France 30 years ago.}}

The 63-year-old, who has been imprisoned in France since being captured in Sudan in 1994, was found guilty in 2011 of masterminding attacks in 1982 and 1983 on two French passenger trains, a train station in Marseille and a Libyan magazine office in Paris.

Already serving life for murder at the time, Carlos was given another life sentence for his role in the attacks that left 11 people dead and nearly 150 injured, earning him the mantle of the world’s most wanted fugitive.

The 1982 to 83 bombings were widely believed to have been carried out in retaliation for France’s detention of two fellow members of a group Carlos ran with the support of East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi.

{{Evidence questioned}}

Prosecutors in France were struggling to secure the evidence they needed to secure a conviction until the release of secret Stasi files in the years that followed the collapse of communism and German reunification.

At the heart of Carlos’ appeal will be a claim that the evidence garnered from these files is fundamentally unreliable.

The panel of judges that will hear the appeal will also review the acquittal of Christa Frohlich, a 70-year-old German, of charges of involvement in one of the attacks.

Frohlich was tried in absentia in 2011 and has informed the court that she will not be attending the appeal, which is scheduled to run until the end of June.

At his first trial, Carlos denied any involvement in the 1982 to 83 bombings while issuing a series of ambiguous pronouncements about his role as a “professional revolutionary” waging a war for the liberation of Palestine and other causes.

In numerous interviews he has given over the years, he has claimed responsibility or involvement in dozens of attacks in which hundreds of people have died.

{{Capture in Sudan}}

After years on the run from Western security services, Carlos was finally arrested in Sudan in 1994 and transferred to France, where he was convicted three years later of the 1975 murder in Paris of two members of the French security services and an alleged informer.

He could yet face a third trial in France as an examining magistrate is still investigating the 1974 bombing of the Drugstore Saint-Germain in the centre of Paris, which left two people dead and 34 injured.

Against that background, he is seen as unlikely to be released any time soon.

Carlos has not given up hope of securing a transfer to custody in his native Venezuela but it is hard to envisage France sanctioning such a move, given the outrage it would inevitably trigger.

Venezuela’s late leader Hugo Chavez was a strong supporter of Carlos, describing him as a revolutionary who had been wrongly convicted.

{{‘Life of a monk’}}

Carlos has spent several years in solitary confinement but his prison conditions in France have, of late, been much more comfortable.

At the Centrale de Poissy in the western suburbs of Paris, he spends his time reading, taking philosophy and literature classes and talking with his many visitors, according to one of his lawyers, Francis Vuillemin.

“It is similar to the life of a monk in an abbey,” Vuillemin said.

According to Aude Simeon, a former teacher in the prison, Carlos’ life also includes access to cigars and Venezuelan coffee served in his cell.

In a memoir entitled “Teacher to the convicts”, Simeon describes Carlos as a very polite and courteous man who could also appear as a “slightly childish know-it-all”.

{reuters}

{{In Russia, a resident of Yegoryevsk, a town in the Moscow region, has been charged with conspiring to kill his ex-wife by offering 20,000 rubles ($650) to an undercover police officer, the Investigative Committee said Wednesday.}}

The suspect, whose name has not been disclosed, decided to hire a hitman out of deep personal hatred for his former spouse caused by the divorce process and the prospect of separation from his child, investigators said.

His search for a hitman became known to the criminal police, who set up a sting operation with one of their officers posing as the potential killer.

During an initial meeting Monday, the suspect offered the undercover officer 20,000 rubles to kill his ex-wife, the Investigative Committee spokesperson Irina Gumennaya said.

The suspect paid the undercover police officer 3,000 rubles in advance and promised to pay the rest when the job was done.

On Tuesday, the police officer presented the disgruntled ex-husband with photos allegedly proving the death of his wife and was paid another 5,000 rubles, at which point he was taken into custody.

It was not clear when the suspect planned to pay the remaining 12,000 rubles.

A criminal case has been opened on charges of soliciting a contract murder, which may carry a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.

Investigators will ask the court to place the suspect under arrest for the duration of their inquiry

The Moscow Times

{{Police in Belgium, Switzerland and France have arrested 31 people in connection with one of the world’s largest robberies of diamonds.}}

Belgian prosecutors say they have recovered large sums of money and some of the diamonds that were taken in a raid at Brussels airport in February.

A gang cut through the airport’s perimeter fence and broke into the cargo hold of a Swiss aeroplane as it waited for take off.

They took $50m (£32m) of diamonds.

The diamonds were “rough stones” being transported from Antwerp to Zurich.

Prosecutors described the thieves as “professionals”.

They had dressed as police, wore masks and were well armed.

They forced their way through security barriers and drove towards the Helvetic Airways plane, forcing open the cargo to reach gems that had already been loaded.

They snatched 120 packages before escaping through the same hole in the fence.

Prosecutors said the whole operation took only about five minutes, no shots were fired and no-one was hurt.

One suspect was arrested in France and eight in Switzerland on Tuesday, Belgian prosecutors said.

The other 24 were rounded up near Brussels early on Wednesday.

{BBC}

{{The uncle of slain Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev arrived in Massachusetts to arrange for his nephew’s burial, while the funeral director struggled to find a cemetery in the state willing to take the body.}}

Ruslan Tsarni arrived Sunday with three of his friends and prepared to wash and shroud his nephew’s body according to Muslim tradition. The 26-year-old died after a gun battle with police on April 19.

Tsarni, of Maryland, said he understands that “no one wants to associate their names with such evil events.”

Funeral director Peter Stefan said he hasn’t been able to find a cemetery in Massachusetts willing to take the body.

He said he plans to ask the city of Cambridge, where Tsarnaev lived, to provide a burial plot, and if Cambridge turns him down, he will seek help from state officials.

Cambridge city manager Robert Healy said in a statement that there has been no formal application for a burial permit or purchase of a cemetery plot. He said he was urging Tsarnaev’s family and the funeral director who has the body not to request a burial permit for the city-owned Cambridge Cemetery.

Healy said the city “would be adversely impacted by the turmoil, protests, and wide spread media presence at such an interment.” He said the families who have loved ones interred at the cemetery also deserve to have their deceased family members rest in peace.

Healey said other federal agencies should take the lead in the burial.

Tsarni told reporters that he is arranging for Tsarnaev’s burial because religion and tradition call for his nephew to be buried. He would like him buried in Massachusetts because he’s lived in the state for the last decade, he said.

“I’m dealing with logistics. A dead person must be buried,” he said.

He said he was grateful to Stefan for agreeing to arrange the burial and to his friends for accompanying him to Massachusetts to aid with the funeral.

“These are my friends who feel for me … as I do understand no one wants to associate their names with such evil events,” he said.

Tsarnaev died days after the April 15 bombing at the marathon finish line, which killed three people and wounded more than 260 others. His 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar, was captured.

Stefan said he has received calls from people criticizing him and calling him “un-American” for being willing to handle Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s funeral.

“We take an oath to do this. Can I pick and choose? No. Can I separate the sins from the sinners? No,” he said. “We are burying a dead body. That’s what we do.”

A half dozen protesters gathered outside the funeral home Sunday holding signs and American flags and chanting “U.S.A.!” One sign read: “Do not bury him on U.S. soil.” Several people drove by the funeral home earlier Sunday and yelled, including one man who shouted, “Throw him off a boat like Osama bin Laden!” The al-Qaida leader was buried at sea after Navy SEALs killed him in a raid on his compound in Pakistan.

The state medical examiner ruled that Tsarnaev died from gunshot wounds and blunt trauma to his head and torso, and authorities have said his brother ran him over in a chaotic getaway attempt.

Stefan said the family won’t request that an independent medical examiner perform a second autopsy, but representatives from the family’s legal team might photograph Tsarnaev’s body before it’s washed.

Tsarni has denounced the acts his nephews are accused of committing and has said they brought shame to the family and the entire Chechen community.

The brothers are ethnic Chechens from Russia who came to the U.S. about a decade ago with their parents. Both parents returned to Dagestan last year.

Tsarni said Sunday that he hopes to eventually see Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is in a prison hospital and faces a potential death sentence if convicted of the terrorism plot.

“This is another person left all to himself,” he said.

{The Moscow Times }