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Germany dedicates Holocaust site ■ The same day, Elie Wiesel used personal experiences to relay the realities of the Holocaust. BERLIN (AP) - In a direct and emotional speech to parliament Thursday, Nobel Peace laureate Elie Wiesel held Germans accountable for the murder of 6 million Jews — includ ing his 8-year-old sister. Wiesel evoked personal memories to confront Germans with their history on a day set aside to remember Holocaust victims. Speaking before Germany dedicated the site of a Holocaust memorial planned as an eter nal reminder of Nazi evils, he empha sized that the Nazis were Germans - and the very mention of “Germans” once inspired darkest fears. “No nation, no ideology, no system has ever inflicted brutality, suffering and humiliation on such a scale, on any peo ple, as yours has on mine in such a short period,” Wiesel said. With German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and other leaders sitting directly in front of his podium, Wiesel repeatedly used the word “you” when he referred to the perpetrators - the German people - who set out to annihi late Europe’s Jews. “I know it’s difficult for you - and painful to think in those terms,” he said. The worst crime, he said, were the murders of Jewish children. His own sister, he told lawmakers, was killed along with his mother at Auschwitz. “She was 8 years old, and believe me, she had done nothing to harm your people. Why did she have to die such an atrocious death?” However, Wiesel rejected the idea of collective guilt and praised Germany for its annual remembrance of Holocaust victims on the anniversary of liberation 55 years ago of the Auschwitz death camp, which he too survived. He also honored postwar German democracies for “valiantly and honorably trying to build a new destiny.” Former chancellor Helmut Kohl, who has withdrawn from official life amid a campaign financing scandal, was notably absent from commemora tions, despite his role as one of the Holocaust memorial’s most ardent backers. Just two blocks from the Reichstag building where Wiesel gave his speech beneath its new glass dome, officials ** She was 8 years old, and believe me, she had done nothing to harm your people. Why did she have to die such an atrocious death?" Elie Wiesel Nobel Peace laureate dedicated the plot for the memorial dur ing a brief ceremony intended to give impetus to the controversial project. The ceremony was symbolic, with the unveiling of signs announcing that the vacant plot as big as two football fields will be turned into Germany’s first memorial specifically for Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Work is not expected to begin for another 18 months, and the project will take two years to complete. One of the project’s most vocal crit ics, Mayor Eberhard Diepgen, refused to attend the ceremony in protest. He has complained the design is too monu mental and the decision to locate the memorial^ the heart of Berlin is an invitation to vandals. Parliament president Wolfgang Thierse, however, defended parlia ment’s vote last summer to approve a design by American architect Peter Eisenman. The project will be a vast field of 2,700 close-set concrete slabs resem bling stones in a graveyard. Approval was contingent on the addition of a doc ument center. “It’s the right decision to build this memorial. We owe it to the victims to demonstrate that we have not forgotten the suffering that the Germans caused them,” Thierse said. “We owe it also to ourselves because the process of com ing to terms with 12 years of inhumani ty, contempt for humankind and geno cide remain a part of our society.” Man s bomb plot linked to Saudi terrorist ■ Bin Laden associate’s brother-in-law fled Canada after being detained in Senegal, officials say. MONTREAL (AP) - A man reportedly detained in Senegal on suspicion of planning a bomb attack was under investigation in Canada before he fled the country, an intelli gence spokesman said Thursday. Dan Lambert of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service con firmed that Mohambedou Ould Slahi was a subject of an investigation by Canadian authorities in cooperation with the FBI. The New York Times reported Thursday that Slahi is the brother-in law of one of Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenants. Bin Laden, a millionaire Saudi exile, is one of 18 people indicted in the United States on charges of con spiracy to attack Americans in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans. Bin Laden is believed to be in Afghanistan. Slahi has not been charged, but the United States requested his arrest, and federal prosecutors in New York are preparing formal charges that can be used to seek his extradition, according to the Times. In Washington, a law enforcement official who requested anonymity said investigators were not sure whether the man in Senegal was in control of the operation or merely a messenger, and, if he was just a mes senger, they do not know for whom. U.S. officials also do not know whether the man’s brother-in-law is a key Bin Laden aide or not, the official added. Canadian authorities started their investigation after the Dec. 14 arrest in Port Angeles, Wash., of Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian living in Montreal. Ressam, in a brief appearance Thursday in federal court in Seattle, pleaded innocent to charges he tried to smuggle bomb-making compo nents across the border into Washington state and conspired to blow up buildings and other struc tures. A trial date was set for Feb. 28. After Ressam’s arrest, Slahi left Canada “due, in part, to the investiga tion that was ongoing,” Lambert said. He refused to provide any details of the case. No specific evidence has been released that shows that bin Laden was behind the alleged Algerian plot, and authorities have not suggested possible U.S. targets. A senior government official in Senegal and an officer at the central police station in Dakar told The Associated Press Thursday they knew nothing of Slahi’s detention. A U.S. official in Senegal declined to comment. Another U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the situation was sen sitive. At least four Algerian nationals and one woman married to an Algerian face charges in connection with the alleged plot. Little was revealed about Slahi, a citizen of Mauritania, but investiga tors told the Times he was in constant contact with a construction company in Sudan that was owned by bin Laden and was a front for bin Laden’s international organization, al Qaeda. Last fall, Slahi traveled to Montreal, where he worked closely with Mokhtar Haouri, one of the Algerians charged with helping Ressam. Following Ressam’s arrest, Slahi fled to a Montreal mosque and then left the country, the Times reported. American officials said there are other emerging links between the bomb plot and bin Laden. One involves Hamid Aich, an Algerian who lived for three years in a Vancouver suburb where he shared an apartment with Abdelmajid Dahoumane, the Times said. Dahoumane, accused of being Ressam’s accomplice, remains at large. i *■fi 3pj| * #"i m §, ---1 fete Mv L.aW ^ ^ :*. £ &• »:*....« :$<> liiiliiiii mi? ii.ii::';!ii®i«iiiiii!iii if11 ^ 111: i ? 1§ iiviiiis Snow showers Snow, high 26, low 17 high 29, low 21 NetSraskan m ij?0r: |osh,Fun^ Questions? Comments? Associate Ptews Editor: Ite&cte? Askforithe appropriate section editor at Associate News Editor: Diane Broderick ' .{yfl , . Opinion Editor: JJ. Harder or e'mai1 dn@tml.edu. Sports Editor: Sam McKewon A&E Editor: Sarah Baker General Manager: Daniel Shattil Copy Desk Co-Chief: Jen Walker Publications Board Jessica Hofmann, Copy Desk Co-Chief: Josh Krauter Chairwoman: (402) 477-0527 Photo Chief: Mike Warren Professional Adviser: Don Walton, Design Co-Chief: Diane Broderick (402) 473-7248 Design Co-Chief: Tim Karstens Advertising Manager: Nick Partsch, Art Director: Melanie Falk (402) 472-2589 Web Editor: Gregg Steams Asst. Ad Manager: Jamie Yeager Asst. Web Editor: Jewel Mlnarik Classified Ad Manager: Nichole Lake Fax number: (402) 472-1761 World Wide Web: www.dailyneb.com The Daily Nebraskan (USPS144-080) is published by tne UNL Publications Board, Nebraska Union 20,1400 R St., Lincoln, NE 68588-0448, Monday through Friday during the academic year: weekly during the summer sessions.The public has access to the Publications Board. Readers are encouraged to submit story ideas and comments to the Daily Nebraskan by calling (402) 472-2588. Subscriptions are $60 for one year. Postmaster: Send address changes to the Daily Nebraskan, Nebraska Union 20,1400 R St., Lincoln NE 68588-0448. Periodical postage paid at Lincoln, NE. ALL MATERIAL COPYRIGHT 2000 THE DAILY NEBRASKAN 1 / ' " :V/ . ' . _ ' Criminal inquiry could threaten peace process JERUSALEM (AP) - A criminal inquiry launched Thursday into Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s campaign finances threatened to erupt into a scandal that could hinder his efforts to secure a comprehensive peace by year’s end. The investigation, based on rec ommendations in one of the toughest comptroller reports ever released in Israel, led opposition lawmakers opposed to Barak’s revived peace efforts to call on police to investigate the prime minister himself. The comptroller, Eliezer Goldberg, fined Barak’s party $3.2 million. Barak denied any wrongdo ing and said he would appeal the fine. Goldberg’s report details transfers from overseas sources into nonprofit groups set up to back Barak’s election bid last May. In some cases, the overseas donors apparently did not know where the money was headed. The Camilla fund was set up by Swiss millionaire Oktav Buettner to relieve poverty and pro mote education in Israel. Instead, one of the alleged beneficiaries was “The Association to Advance Taxi Drivers,” which printed pro-Barak bumper stickers. Buettner died in 1998, and the fund has since been administered by Yitzhak Herzog, a lawyer who led Barak’s campaign and is now the Cabinet’s secretary. According to Goldberg, Herzog similarly trans ferred funds from a Canadian charity that employed him into Barak’s cam paign. Goldberg did not name the charity. It is the first major breach in Barak’s credibility and has discomfit ing echoes of the scandals that plagued - and helped Barak defeat - Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under police investigation for bribery and theft allegations. “He knew about the system,” Ariel Sharon, the leader of the opposition Likud party, said of Barak. “Perhaps not all the details, but he knew about the system.” That remark drew derision from government ministers, who noted Likud’s repeated brushes with scan dal. - | World and Nati m Datelines : ■ Florida Air Force security man runs into jet fighter with patrol car EGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. (AP) - An Air Force security man crashed his patrol car into a parked $39 million jet fighter while fum bling for his cell phone, investigators say. The Nov. 5 crash totaled the patrol car and caused more than $62,000 in damage to the F-15’s landing gear, according to an Air Force report released Wednesday. The driver, Airman Raymone Sydnor, was patrolling the flight line at the Florida Panhandle base when he dropped his personal phone and leaned down to search for it, investi gators said. Sydnor suffered a concussion. He received an undisclosed punish ment. As a result of the accident, security personnel have been ordered to get out of their cars every half-hour fora 10-minute break. ■Thailand Bomb threats prompt evacuations in store, school BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - Schoolchildren and shoppers fled into the streets after bomb threats forced evacuations Thursday in a Thai town where earlier this week Myanmar insurgents took hundreds of people hostage in a hospital. Police said anonymous callers had made the threats against a differ ent hospital, a school and a depart ment store in Ratchaburi, 60 miles west of Bangkok, since the hostage drama ended Tuesday. Thai officials and civilians have feared revenge attacks after the com mando raid that ended the standoff and killed all 10 captors. ■ Cuba Cuban boy’s father says U.S. treated grandmothers poorly HAVANA (AP) - Elian Gonzalez’s father expressed rage Thursday at the perceived treatment his boy’s grandmothers received dur ing their reunion with the child, blaming Cuban exiles for difficulties during the meeting. Gonzalez complained that dur ing Wednesday’s meeting in Miami Beach, the grandmothers’ cellular phones were confiscated, making it impossible for him to speak freely with his son. Gonzalez and his family have accused Elian’s Miami relatives of listening in and cutting short tele phone calls between father and son. He also believed the relatives had tried to tell the 6-year-old what to say - and not say. ■ Tanzania Rwandan man convicted of genocide-related crimes ARUSHA, Tanzania (AP) - A former Rwandan tea factory manag er was convicted Thursday by a U.N. tribunal for three genocide-related charges, including raping a Tutsi woman and encouraging four of his employees to rape her as well. Alfred Musema was the second defendant to come before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to be convicted of rape. His was the seventh verdict hand ed down by the tribunal, which was created in 1994 to prosecute chief architects and perpetrators of the 1994 genocide of more than 500,000 minority Tutsis and politically mod erate Hutus.