Rwandan found guilty of genocide
ARUSHA, Tanzania (AP) - He
painted himself as a lowly village
mayor powerless to halt the “force of
evil" that engulfed Rwanda in 1994.
Still, prosecutors held Jean-Paul
Akayesu responsible for die slayings
of 2,000 minority Tutsis who had
sought his protection.
After nearly four years of work,
the International Criminal Tribunal
for Rwanda rendered a verdict
Wednesday, the first of its kind by an
international court: Guilty of geno
cide. Guilty of crimes against human
ity. <juilty of rape, murder and tor
ture.
Akayesu winced and knotted his
fingers behind his back as chief
Judge Laity Kama read out each ver
dict in a subdued courtroom, where
bulletproof glass shielded the defen
dant from the public gallery. It was
the U.N. tribunal’s first conviction.
His lawyer said Akayesu, who
maintained his innocence throughout
his 20-month trial, would appeal.
Akayesu, bom in 1953, could be
sentenced to a maximum of life in
prison - not enough to satisfy some
survivors of the slaughter of more
l-—
than 500,000 minority Tutsis and
moderate Hutus.
“The penalty doesn’t match the
crime,” said one TUtsi widow, Chantal
Kayitesi, who came to this remote
northern Tanzanian town to hear the
long-awaited decision.
In neighboring Rwanda, where the
tribunal has beat harshly criticized for
mismanagement, corruption and slow
ness, Wednesday^ verdict was greeted
dispiritedly by those who bothered to
listen to a live radio broadcast
“I don’t see the people in Rwanda
going to the streets to congratulate
die international court on this one,”
said Patrick Mazimhaka, a Rwandan
state minister. “It has gone on for so
long -1 think people have given up.”
Still, the 300-page judgment was
heralded as historic because it marks
the first conviction for genocide, an
offense defined in 1948 after the
Nuremberg trials. It is also the fust
time an international tribunal defined
rape as a genocidal crime.
Prosecutor Pierre Prosper said die
decision provides “a road map for
how we are to proceed” in similar
cases.
-1
229-passenger plane
crashes in Canada
■ The Swissair jetliner
went down after the pilot
attempted an emergency
landing.
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia (AP) -
Swissair jetliner with 229 people
aboard crashed off Nova Scotia late
Wednesday after the pilot reported
smoke in the cabin and attempted an
emergency landing at Halifax air
port
Rescuers said people had been
found in the water southwest of
Halifax but it is unclear whether
anyone had survived the crash.
Swissair Flight 111 left New
York’s Kennedy International
Airport about 7:30 pjn. bound for
Geneva and declared an emergency
about an hour later, said Lt Cmdr.
Glenn Chamberlain of die Halifax
Rescue Coordination Center.
The pilot reported smoke in the
cabin of the McDonnell Douglas
MD-11 shortly before losing con
tact with the air traffic control tower
in Moncton, New Brunswick,
Canadian Press said.
The plane also dumped fuel over
nearby St Margaret’s Bay before
crashing, the news agency quoted an
airport worker as saying.
Some aircraft debris was
believed found off Clam Island
between Blandford, about 20 miles
southwest of Halifax, and die popu
lar tourist retreat ofPeggys Owe, the
Canadian Broadcasting Corp. said.
Lt Cmdr. Mike Considine of the
Search and Rescue Center in
Halifax said the weather in the area
was good, with clear skies and rela
tively calm seas.
CBC reported deteriorating
weather conditions at the scene,
including rain
Chamberlain said rescue crews
were searching for the aircraft seven
miles offPeggys Cove.
Residents told of hearing loud
noises from an aircraft passing over
head. Dozens of ambulances were
dispatched to the scene and rescue
vessels began combing the waters
off the coast
Local fishermen were called to
the area because they are familiar
with die waters.
Canadian air force Col. Brian
Alritt said federal emergency offi- ✓
cials informed him at 9:50 pm. that
an airliner was believed to have gone
down off the coast and the military
was preparing a rescue operation.
“We heard the plane go over our
home, then my husband and son
heard quite an explosion,”
Blandford resident Audrey
Bachman told The Associated Press.
She said she was sleeping at the time
of the crash.
«-;
I don’t see the people in Rwanda going to
the streets to congratulate the international
court on this one. It has gone on for so long
-I think people have given up”
Patrick Mazimhaka
Rwandan state minister
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi
Annan called the judgment “a testa
ment to our collective determination to
confront die heinous crime of genocide
in a way we never have before.” „
The three-^udge panel rejected the
argument that Akayesu was powerless,
asserting Wednesday that a mayor in
Rwanda “was treated with a lot of def
erence ... and had a lot of power.”
The former mayor was held
responsible in what the court called a
“meticulously organized” genocide
that included the killings of 2,000
Tutsis in the Taba area and the rapes
of dozens of women, even though
police and military committed most
of the acts.
Akayesu also was found guilty of
ordering the deaths oflhtsi intellec
tuals, and telling militiamen to kill
five teachers.
The judges rejected arguments
that the genocide was a sad but
inevitable consequence of Rwanda’s
civil war, saying obvious noncombat
ants such as children and newborns
were killed. . _
“It is clear that the massacres that
occurred in Rwanda in 1994 had a
special object, namely the extermina
tion of Tutsi (people),” Kama said.
■Eari, moving at 90 mph,
caused Florida’s governor
to call a state of emergency.
PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP)-Gulf
Coast residents cleared out and
boarded up Wednesday as unpre
dictable tropical storm Earl revved up
into a 90-mph hurricane, veered east
ward and began pouring heavy rain
on northern Florida.
Gov. Lawton Chiles declared a
state of emergency, mandatory evac
uations were ordered for barrier
islands southwest of Tallahassee and
traffic built on some coastal roads as
people headed inland.
“We decided to leave when the
news was bad,” said Eleanor Griffin,
70, of Dothan, Ala., who cut short a
four-day family vacation on Santa
Rosa Island west of Panama City.
“We decided to run for higher
ground.”
Hurricane warnings were posted
from Pascagoula, Miss., to Florida’s
Big Bend, about 100 miles north of
Tampa.
A tropical storm watch was in
effect along the Florida.,Gulf Coast
south to Tampa. Watches and warn
ings west of Mississippi had been lift
ed earlier, but a tropical storm watch
was re-established for extreme south
eastern Louisiana on Wednesday -
from the Mississippi line west to
Grand Isle - as forecasters warned
they still had “considerable uncer
tainty” about Earl's path.
Although the storm's advance
slowed down to a crawl during the
afternoon, forecasters said it was
most likely that Earl’s poorly defined
center would come ashore late today
near Panama City, then cut across
southern Georgia into South
Carolina.
“It's like a plate of spaghetti here,
trying to pick the center of it,” Jerry
Jarrell, director of the National
Hurricane Center in Miami, said
Wednesday.
Before the third hurricane of the
season took a right turn and headed
for Florida on Wednesday, it had been
tracking almost due north, and Texas
and Louisiana seemed to be the tar
gets on Tuesday.
Earl’s maximum sustained wind
speed jumped from 60 mph early in
the day to 90 mph by early afternoon;
the minimum strength for a hurricane
is 74 mph. ' ...
The storm surge near the center
could be S to 7 feet above normal
tides and 10 inches of rain were pos
sible. A flood watch covered a wide
area from Tallahassee east to
Jacksonville on the state's Atlantic
coast and south to the Tampa Bay
area.
Stephen Jenkins, working as a
janitor at a waterfront restaurant in
Panama City, said Wednesday that he
planned to be “nowhere near this
Government OK’s company’s sale of‘morning-after’ pill
WASHINGTON (AP) -
For fee first time, a company
won government permission
Wednesday to advertise and
sell regular contraceptive pills
as “morning-afto’* pills to pre
vent pregnancy after unprotect
ed sesL
The technique, which uses
regular birth control pills, has
been sanctioned as safe and
effective by federal officials for
more than a year. But without
anyone trying to sell it to
women or their doctors, experts
say it has hardly been used.
Thai could change as more
women learn ofthe pills, which
have been 75 percent effective
at preventing pregnancy in tests
when taken within three days of
sex. By contrast, regular con
traceptive pills are 99 percent
effective, if taken property.
“Physicians are kind of
waiting to be asked. Since
women don’t know about it,
they don’t ask,” said Dr. Felicia
? • : \..«• -.v • 'v. ’.:/ ^ -;
Stewart of the Kaiser Family
Foundation, which surveyed
doctors and patients about the
{rills last yean
The morning-after pills are
different from RU-486, the
French abortion pill, which
ends a pregnancy several weeks
after it has begun.
The PREVEN kits, made
by Gyneties Inc. of Somerville,
N J., will be available by pre
scription by the end of
September. The company,
which won Food and Drug
Administration approval
Wednesday, anticipates that
women will seek them out after
unprotected sex-or keep them
in their medicine cabinets.
European women have
used this technique for years,
but most contraceptive makers
here have resisted selling emer
gency birth control, citing liti
gation and political concerns.
Until now, it has been com
plicated for women to correctly
use the morning-after tech
nique. It involved taking regu
lar birth control pills, but fiom
regular birth-control packets
that contained several types of
pills. Thus women had to sort
through to choose the right
ones.
In contrast, die PREVEN(
kits will include only the four
pills needed for emergency
contraception. Each kit will sell
for about $20 and also include a
pregnancy test
* '' * * * * . • ■ - _ . ■ • ~ • - -* . , •‘.
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Wall Street encourages
rally in world markets
LONDON (AP) - Wall Street’s
dramatic rebound sent Asian and
European stocks higher Wednesday,
but some analysts wondered whether
the rallies could be sustained against a
gloomy outlook in many economies.
Traders in New York were slow to
recognize the serious potential fallout
from the financial troubles in Asia
and Russia, and uncertainty might
hang on for some time in markets that
now lack any firm sense of direction,
said Jeremy Batstone, an analyst at
NatWest Stockbrokers in London.
“Sentiment is finally beginning to
crack,” Batstone said. “The market is
beginning to wake up.”
Blue chips were up by about 2
percenter more in early dealings on
the biggest European stock markets
London, Paris and Frankfurt,
Germany - following rallies in
Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore.
London^ Financial Times-Stock
Exchange 100-share index had
climbed 109.6 points, or 2.2 percent,
to 5,278.7 by midday.
Internet pom ring cracked
In 12 countries, 40 arrested
LONDON (AP) - Police in the
United States, Britain and 10 other
countries raided the homes of more
than 100 suspected pedophiles today
in what authorities called one of the
largest efforts ever to break an
Internet child pornography ring.
The British National Crime
Squad coordinated the pre-dawn
raids as part of a five-month investi
gation into the Wonderland Club,
which authorities said exchanged
pornographic pictures of children as
young as 2 cm the Internet
During the investigation, police
found a database containing more
than 100,000 pornographic pho
tographs of naked boys and girls and
confiscated computers and computer
programs from dozens of suspects.
Police said they targeted 180 sus
pects and arrested more than 40 peo
ple in die raids, which took place on
three continents - in Australia,
Austria, Belgium, Britain, Finland,
France, Germany, Norway, Portugal,
Sweden and the United States.
Officials: Smaller dummies
needed for airbag testing
WASHINGTON (AP) - In a
move to protect the people who
appear most at risk from airbags, the
Department ofTrsmsportation is call
ing for a new crash-test dummy to
represent small women.
Transportation Secretary Rodney
Slater had earlier proposed certificar
tion for new crash dummies repre
senting toddlers and infants as well.
“This continues our comprehen
sive series of efforts to preserve the
benefits of air bags and minimize
their risks, in this case to small
women,” Slater said. The new
dummy will be 5 feet tall and weigh
110 pounds.
Until now, the government has
required automakers to pass crash
tests for air bags using only adult
male dummies. But the 105 people
killed in the United States by inflating
air bags have been mostly children
and small women, the very people
automakers were not required to
design for in order to meet govern- ■
merit regulations.