| Global update |
Today Friday Saturday
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High: 56
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High: 59
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Precip: 20%
IN BRIEF
Officials: Arafat
suffers medical setback
PARIS — Yasser Arafat, hospitalized
in France with a mystery ailment, was
rushed to intensive care after suffering
a setback and was undergoing a new
round of tests, Palestinian officials said
early Thursday. The two officials,
speaking on condition of anonymity,
said the 75-year-old Arafat’s condition
had seriously deteriorated over the
past day, adding that doctors who have
been examining him since Friday still
don’t know the cause of his illness.
Iraqi gunmen seize
second American in week
BAGHDAD, Iraq — Gunmen kid
napped a Lebanese-American busi
nessman — the second U.S. citizen
seized this week in Baghdad — and
videotape Wednesday showed the
beheadings of three Iraqi National
Guardsmen and an Iraqi officer.
Elsewhere, a U.S. soldier was killed
and another wounded in a roadside
bombing 12 miles south of the capi
tal. A suicide driver detonated his
vehicle at a checkpoint near Bagh
dad airport, injuring nine Iraqis and
prompting U.S. troops to close the
main route into the city for hours.
European allies extend
olive branch to Bush
PARIS — European allies alienat
ed by President Bush’s first four
years in power offered Wednesday
to let bygones be bygones, saying
they want to work with the new ad
ministration and seeking, right from
Day 1, to get the new White House
to listen more to overseas opinion.
French President Jacques Chirac, in
a congratulatory letter, said he
hoped Bush’s second term “will be
the occasion for strengthening the
French-American friendship.”
Japanese students
plead guilty to murder
WELLINGTON, New Zealand —
Four young Japanese men have
pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the
beating death of a fellow student at
an academy in New Zealand for
Japanese youths with behavior and
learning problems, local media re
ported Thursday.
Ryu Fukushima, 24, Ryuji Hiraki,
28, Nobu Oshima, 20, and Masato
Fujita, 21, on Wednesday admitted to
the manslaughter of Nozomu Shi
nozaki, 22, at the Columbus Acade
my in the northern city of Auckland
on Feb. 26 last year.
The guilty pleas came after prosecu
tors reduced the charges from murder.
Charges initially were filed
against a group of nine students.
When 12 witnesses refused to re
turn from Japan to testify at the tri
al, prosecutors dropped murder
charges against five of the accused,
who immediately returned to their
homes in Japan.
The witnesses included the dead
student’s father — a surgeon said to
be having business problems — and
his mother, who was earlier reported
to be too sick to travel.
Murder charges against the re
maining four were reduced to
manslaughter two weeks ago, prose
cutors told the High Court in Auck
land, local media reported. They face
maximum life prison terms when
they are sentenced Dec. 3.
— The Associated Press
Nine arrested for slaying filmmaker
Officials believe the murderers were motivated
by Theo van Gogh's criticism of Muslim culture
BY TOBY STERLING
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — Po
lice arrested eight more suspected Is
lamic radicals Wednesday in the slay
ing of a Dutch filmmaker who
criticized Muslim customs. Lawmak
ers questioned why authorities hadn’t
kept tabs on the alleged killer, who
had a record of violent crime and con
tacts with a group under surveillance.
The arrests were made in the 24
hours since Theo van Gogh was
slain while cycling down an Ams
terdam street Tliesday — believed
to be the first Islamic terrorist at
tack in the Netherlands.
Six of the detainees are of Moroc
can ancestry, one is Algerian and the
last has dual Spanish-Moroccan na
tionality, prosecution spokeswoman
Dop Kruimel said. The eight are in ad
dition to the suspect arrested minutes
after the slaying, a 26-year-old Ams
terdam resident of Moroccan origin.
Their ethnic identities raised
questions of links to the March 11
train bombings that killed 191 peo
ple in Madrid, Spain. Twenty-nine
suspects, mostly Moroccans, have
been charged in those attacks; oth
ers arrested were of Algerian, Span
ish, Tbnisian and Egyptian origin.
The Netherlands has arrested more
than 40 terrorism suspects since the
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United
States, including many accused of
providing logistical support for groups
linked to al-Qaida. Muslim youths are
thought to have been recruited in the
country, and experts believe a num
ber of cells in the Netherlands provide
funding to foreign terrorist cells.
The country is home to 3 million
first- or second-generation immi
grants, almost 20 percent of the 16
million population. There are about
300,000 Moroccan nationals in the
Netherlands.
Kruimel said five of the suspects,
whose identities were not released,
were detained and released during
an October 2003 investigation into a
potential terrorist threat.
“They were previously known to
us,” Kruimel said. “As of now only
one suspect is being held for Van
Gogh’s murder, but the investigation
will determine if others may have
been connected.”
The Dutch have reacted with out
rage to the killing of the filmmaker, test
ing the nation’s famed tolerance and
straining already tense relations with
the Muslim immigrant population.
Mainstream Dutch Muslim
groups condemned the killing. A
number of mosques were closed
Tuesday night for fear of vandal
ism, and political figures were giv
en additional police protection.
Newspaper NRC Handelsblad re
ported that conservative politician
Ayan Hirsi Ali, who wrote the script
for van Gogh’s latest provocative
movie criticizing the treatment of
women under Islam, received a
death threat in an e-mail Wednesday
that read, “You’re next.”
The Justice Ministry said the sus
pect in the murder of the 47-year
old filmmaker — a distant relative
of painter Vincent van Gogh — is a
Muslim radical associated with Is
lamic fundamentalists on a terror
ist watch list.
Interior Minister Johan Remkes
confirmed that the suspect was
known to have associated with a
group of 150 radicals who are
watched day and night by the Dutch
secret service for fear they may com
mit a terrorist act.
The suspect himself was not on
that watch list. Authorities didn’t re
lease his name, and Dutch media
identified him only as Mohammed B.
The suspect had contacts with
Samir Azzouz, an 18-year-old Moroc
can immigrant accused of plotting ter
rorist attacks against Dutch targets,
NOS Dutch television reported.
Members of parliament called
for an emergency debate on why
the alleged killer — who police say
had a record of violent crime —
hadn’t been stopped.
“Is this a murder, or is this a ter
rorist attack?” said Jozias van Aart
sen, leader of the conservative VVD
party. “The facts must come out
very, very quickly. ”
Van Gogh released a fictional film
in August about the mistreatment of
Muslim women. In the film, women
were shown naked with texts from
the Quran scrawled on their bodies.
Police and eyewitnesses said the
attacker shot van Gogh, stabbed
him, cut his throat with one knife,
and pinned a note to his chest with
another.
The note is said to have con
tained texts from the Quran in Ara
bic, though police would not con
firm this. According to NRC
Handelsblad, the note called for an
Islamic holy war, or jihad.
Van Gogh’s killing, which came
two years after the murder of pop
ulist anti-immigration politician Pirn
Fortuyn in 2002, stirred outrage and
fears that Dutch people will no
longer feel free to speak their minds.
Immigration Minister Rita Ver
donk told 20,000 Dutch who flocked
to Amsterdam’s central square for a
noisy wake Tliesday night that “we
won’t take this.”
In the past two years, the govern
ment has passed a series of laws
cracking down on violent crime,
which is often blamed on immigrants;
expanding prosecutors’ wiretapping
powers to thwart would-be terrorists;
and restricting further immigration.
Iraq asks Hungary
to extend support
during 'critical stage'
Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany plans to request
a three-month extension to keep 300 troops in Iraq
BY KARL PETER KIRK
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BUDAPEST, Hungary — Hun
gary’s government will ask law
makers to keep its 300 troops in
Iraq for an extra three months be
fore pulling them out by March 31,
the country’s new prime minister
said Wednesday.
The decision to set a firm limit
undercut President Bush’s effort to
hold the multinational force to
gether since Spain pulled out its
1,300 soldiers earlier this year.
The interim Iraqi government
asked Hungary a few weeks ago to
keep its troops there for about
another year.
Prime Minister Ferenc
Gyurcsany said he would ask par
liament to extend the troops’ cur
rent mandate, which expires Dec.
31, until March 31. Hungary’s
largest opposition party, which
wants the soldiers home by year’s
end, signaled it likely would block
the move.
“We are obliged to stay there
until the (Iraqi) elections. To stay
longer is an impossibility,”
Gyurcsany said.
Iraq’s elections are to be held by
Jan.31.
Hungary’s ambassador to the
United States, Andras Simonyi,
said the government’s decision to
seek an extension until after the
Iraqi elections was “serious and
responsible.”
“It is important for Hungary to
be present at this critical stage of
Iraq’s democratization process,”
he said.
Hungary has a transportation
contingent of 300 troops stationed
in Hillah, south of Baghdad. One
Hungarian soldier died in Iraq
when a roadside bomb exploded
by the water-carrying convoy he
was guarding.
Hungary, which joined the Euro
pean Union in May, sent the troops
as part of the U.S.-led coalition. But
the government has been under
mounting pressure from citizens
and opposition parties who object
to the deployment.
Recent polls showed that about
60 percent of Hungarians wanted
the government to withdraw
the country’s troops from Iraq
immediately.
There were no immediate signs
Wednesday that other coalition
governments were considering
pulling out their troops, although
most — including Japan, Britain
and Denmark — are facing domes
tic pressure to do so.
In a letter sent three weeks ago,
Iraq thanked Hungary for its contri
butions so far and asked the coun
try to extend the mission “to help
Iraq’s stabilization process,” Hun
garian government spokeswoman
Boglar Laszlo said.
The government will ask law
makers Monday to extend the
troops’ mandate by three months,
Defense Ministry spokesman Peter
Matyuc said. However, that would
require a two-thirds majority, and
the Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Union,
the main center-right opposition
party, said it only would be willing
to consider an extension if the
multinational force received a
U.N. mandate to stay.
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