TUESDAY, FEB. 19, 2002
WORLD NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 7A
American loses appeal in Peru
The Associated Press
LIMA, Peru — Peru's Supreme Court has upheld a 20-year prison sentence against American Lori Berenson for collaborating with leftist rebels to seize Congress, the presiding justice said yesterday.
Guillermo Cabala said that four of the five judges on the panel that oversees criminal appeals voted to confirm the 20-year sentence. One judge voted to reduce the sentence to 15 years, Cabala said.
The panel was Berenson's last option for an appeal in the Peruvian justice system.
Cabala said the judges voted last week, but the decision was only announced yesterday.
Berenson, 32, was convicted in June of terrorist collaboration in a failed bid by the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement to take over Peru's Congress in 1995. She was acquitted of being a member of the rebel group.
The New York native was sentenced to 20 years in prison but is due to be released in 2015 because she had already served five years under an earlier terrorist conviction by a secret military tribunal.
In 1996, a military court of hooded judges sentenced Beren-
son to life in prison without parole on charges she was a rebel leader. After years of pressure from the United States, a higher military tribunal overturned the ruling in August 2000 and sent her case to a civilian anti-terrorism court.
That court ruled that Berenson aided the Tupac Amaru rebels by renting a house that served as their hide-out and posing as a journalist to enter Congress to gather intelligence with a ton rebel commander's wife.
Berenson said she didn't know her housemates were rebels, and hired the commander's wife as a photographer to
help with articles she was writing for magazines in the United States.
Berenson considers herself a political prisoner and says authorities unfairly portrayed her concern for social justice as a terrorist agenda.
Her parents, Mark and Rhoda Berenson of New York, have begun a campaign to pressure Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo to grant her a pardon. Peruvian officials had declined to comment on the possibility of a pardon as long as the case was in the courts. There was no official reaction to yesterday's verdict.
United agrees to union demands
The Associated Press
CHICAGO — United Airlines announced a tentative contract agreement with the union representing its 12,800 mechanics and aircraft cleaners yesterday, less than 36 hours before a strike deadline.
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers scheduled a March 5 ratification vote by mechanics on an agreement it said included improvements on retroactive pay and retirement benefits.
The announcement came on the fourth day of urgent talks following the mechanics' rejection
"Our negotiating team and United's labor committee of the board of directors have accepted the terms of the IAM's proposal." Jack Creighton, chairman and chief executive of United parent UAL Corp., said in a prepared statement. "With the agreement, our customers can be confident that United will continue to operate without disruption."
of United's contract offer last Tuesday. The mechanics were preparing to walk off the job at 12:01 a.m. EST Wednesday if no settlement were reached.
Chief union negotiator Scotty Ford said the agreement would
give United mechanics the industry-leading contract they had been seeking.
"This negotiating committee unanimously recommends a "yes" vote on the agreement reached today," said Ford, who did not make a recommendation before last week's vote.
One key change, the union said, was that mechanics would now be allowed to vote separately on the terms of future concessions the airline seeks as part of its financial recovery plan. Last week they were asked to approve unspecified concessions as part of the contract terms.
Despite Creighton's repeated
assurances that he was confident an agreement would be reached. United had acknowledged a decline in bookings for the coming days, reflecting public fears of a shutdown.
Negotiators for the two sides held talks through the weekend in a hotel in suburban Rosemont, Ill., near both O'Hare International Airport and UAL headquarters.
Mechanics over the weekend began removing their tool boxes and personal belongings from United maintenance centers in preparation for a strike.
The Associated Press
The tentative deal means its jets will continue to operate without disruption, United said.
NEW YORK — The firefighters' movements are calm as they arrive at the burning north tower of the World Trade Center. Their eyes grow wide as the magnitude of their mission becomes clear. Then come the thumps — one after another — and a voice saying that people are jumping.
The horrific noises continue as the videotape shot by two French filmmakers keeps rolling: A drone followed by a sudden bang accompanies the image of a second plane slamming into the south tower and later, a white
noise builds to a crescendo as that tower collapses and people run for cover.
The tape by brothers Gedeon and Jules Naudet is an extraordinary account of courage and dread, of composure under pressure and of the cataclysmic moments that, for many of the men captured on it, were their last.
It has made the rounds of New York firehouses since Sept. 11 and was recently reviewed by The Associated Press. CBS plans to air footage on March 10 to commemorate the six-month anniversary of the attacks.
"When I sat down to watch this video, I was very apprehensive,"
said John Vigiano, a retired firefighter whose sons, firefighter John and police Det. Joseph, died in the attacks. "But when I was finished watching it, the overwhelming emotion I had was pride. There was never a sign of panic in anybody."
The fire department is using the tape as an investigative tool, but it also contains historical significance and great personal meaning, spokesman Francis Gribbon said. Rights to the tape belong to the Naudets, who have worked closely with the department on its use.
"They've been very sensitive to the families and the fact that
they've had this footage of a significant number of people who perished that day," Gribbon said.
The brothers were shooting a documentary about the life of a probationary firefighter, as they had been doing for many weeks, when the attacks began.
The opening shot has been seen by millions. The camera, tapping firefighters checking a gas leak in lower Manhattan, pans up and captures the first plane slamming into the north tower. Most of the footage was shot by Jules, who accompanied firefighters to the north tower where they set up their first command center.
Dozens more bodies uncovered near crematory
The Associated Press
NOBLE, Ga. — Grim-faced investigators yesterday unearthed dozens more corpses scattered around a northwest Georgia crematory, finding skeletons sealed in vaults and bodies that had been dragged into a shed. The count rose to 139.
Forensics teams said they had identified 27 bodies, and agents warned they expected to find many more. "I can't even begin to guess" what the total will be, said
Dr. Kris Sperry, the state's chief medical examiner.
Ray Brent Marsh, operator of Tri-State Crematory in this rural town 20 miles south of Chattanooga, Tenn., was arrested for a second time and authorities filed 11 new theft-by-deception charges against him, bringing the total to 16.
Marsh, 28, had been arrested Saturday and was released from jail Sunday on $25,000 bond. He was back in Walker County jail yesterday. A bond hearing had not been scheduled because
Marsh does not have an attorney, chief magistrate Jerry Day said.
Forensics experts studied 51 urns, and said nine likely contained powdered cement rather than human remains, Sperry said. The other 42 appeared to be human remains, but it was not clear whose he said.
The bodies have been discovered in varying conditions, some estimated to be weeks old and some decayed for more than a decade. Handlers had been "just merely dragging them out there or dropping them out there," Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson said.
As investigators combed the grounds, grief-streaked families arrived with urns of ashes, wondering whether loved ones they thought had been cremated were instead among the corpses.
In almost all cases, Tri-State Crematory had picked up the bodies from funeral homes and delivered ashes later in return, said Walker County coroner Dewayne Wilson, who is not related to the sheriff.
New York students create Sept.11 art
The Associated Press
BERLIN — New York high school junior Nicholas Lara felt his school shake on Sept. 11 when the second plane hit the nearby World Trade Center.
After being evacuated to Battery Park, the 16-year-old watched the first tower waver and remembers thinking it might fall where he and his classmates were standing.
Invited by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to Germany after the attacks, Lara and 24 other New York students from the four high schools nearest ground zero on Monday began a mural as part of their visit, artistically expressing their feelings about that day.
Lara, a student at the High School for Leadership and Public Service, painted two large white doves and many smaller ones flying through green trees into a blue sky.
"The doves are for peace, the trees are for life," he explained. "That's how I want the future to be with people living in peace."
- with people living in peace."
The students visiting Germany are being drawn from all New York City high schools,
public and private, but the first 25 are from the four closest to ground zero. The students are the first of 1,000 who will cross the Atlantic over the next 18 months.
Led by artist Christine Haberstock, the group worked on three 6-foot-by-8-foot wooden panels.
"They're so honest," said Haberstock, a South African painter and illustrator who spent a decade in Los Angeles before relocating to Berlin. "They were totally loaded with ideas — I didn't have to do anything."
Obinna Onwuchekwa, 16, from the High School for Economics and Finance, painted the twin towers in simple black, then wrote the words "FDNY, NYPD, Port Authority, Victims and Never Forget 9-11-01" around the peripheries.
"There's so much good art here," he said gesturing at the mural, "that I just thought: something simple."
After all the 1,000 students have worked on additional panels, the mural will be about 30 yards long, Haberstock said. It will likely be brought back to the United States as a touring display, and perhaps visit other countries.
Iranian officials upset about U.S.allegations
The Associated Press
TEHRAN, Iran — There were no al-Qaida members among the more than 100 people detained after crossing into Iran from Afghanistan and Pakistan, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told journalists yesterday. He said most were women and children.
Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency reported last week that authorities had arrested about 150 foreigners who entered the country, including a number of Arabs, and were questioning them about links to al-Qaida or the Taliban.
Kharrazi confirmed that more than 100 people are being held — about 70 children, 40 women and several men—and said "we did not find any al-Oaida among them."
United States officials have said Iran is not doing enough to stop or round up suspected Taliban or al-Qaida members fleeing into Iran.
CIA Director George Tenet said this month that Tehran had failed "to move decisively against al-Qaida members who have relocated to Iran from Afghanistan."
Kharrazi said Iran shares no "commonalities" with al-Qaida that would lead it to help
the organization after its defeat in Afghanistan, and lashed out at the U.S.
He said the U. S. is trying to create a "world dictatorship" and criticized President Bush for lumping Iran with Iraq and North Korea in an "axis of evil" in his State of the Union speech last month.
"The United States is trying to complete its hegemony on the world. While Iran is calling for dialogue among civilizations, America is calling for war," Kharrazi said.
Relations between Iran and the U.S. seemed to improve following the Sept. 11 attacks, which Iran condemned. At the time, Iran also publicized its vigorous opposition to the Taliban, which harbored al-Qaida in Afghanistan.
But the comments from Bush and other U.S. officials ended that mood.
Dismissing U.S. claims that Iran was trying to undermine Afghanistan's interim government, Kharrazi said the reconstruction of Afghanistan was in Iran's national interest.
"We are determined to remain in Afghanistan as long as the government and the people want us to do so," he said. He said Afghanistan's interim prime minister, Hamid Karzai, was expected for talks in Tehran next week.
LIBERTY HALL 644 Mass 749 1912
IN THE BEDROOM (m) 4:00 7:00 8:40
GOSFORD PARK (m) 4:16 7:10 9:60
2 for 4 admissions on 1sundays
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