THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 25, 2007
NEWS
LAW
3A
Dario Lopez-Mills/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Anti-abortion activists, wearing skull masks, protest near the City Legislator on Tuesday in Mexico City as legislators prepare to vote on legalizing abortion this Tuesday. The proposal, which would take effect with the leftist mayor's expected signature, has alarmed Mexico's conservative ruling party and prompted the Vatican to send its top anti-abortion campaigner to the Mexican capital.
Mexico City legalizes abortions
BY MARK STEVENSON ASSOCIATED PRESS
MEXICO CITY — Mexico City lawmakers voted to legalize abortion Tuesday, a decision likely to influence policies and health practices across Mexico and other parts of heavily Roman Catholic Latin America.
The proposal, approved 46-19, with one abstention, would take effect with the expected signing by the federal district's leftist mayor. But abortion opponents have already vowed to appeal the law to the Supreme Court, a move likely to extend the bitter and emotional debate in this predominantly Catholic nation.
The law alarmed Mexico's conservative ruling party and prompted the Vatican to send its top anti-abortion campaigner to the Mexican capital.
Nationally, Mexico allows abortion only in cases of rape, severe birth defects or if the woman's life is at risk, and doctors sometimes even deny the procedure under
those circumstances. The new law will require city hospitals to provide the procedure and opens the way for private abortion clinics.Girls under 18 would have to get their parents' consent.
The procedure will be almost free for poor or insured city residents, but is unlikely to attract patients from the United States, where later-term abortion is legal in many states. Under the Mexico City law, abortion after 12 weeks would be punished by three to six months in jail.
U.S.military charges minor
》 WAR CRIMES
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The U.S. military filed a murder charge Tuesday against the Canadian son of an alleged al-Qaida financier, who was captured at age 15 in Afghanistan and has spent almost five years at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.
Al-Qaida-trained teenager allegedly threw grenade at soldier
Omar Khadr, now 20, allegedly joined the Taliban in Afghanistan and threw a grenade that killed a U.S. Green Beret soldier in July 2002. He was captured as he lay wounded after that firefight at an al-Qaida compound in eastern Afghanistan.
The U.S. military charged him with murder, attempted murder, providing support to terrorism, conspiracy and spying under rules for military trials adopted last year and first used to try David Hicks, the Australian sentenced to nine months in prison after pleading guilty.
The military. said the Torontoborn Khadr would be arraigned within 30 days. He faces a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
Khadr's Pentagon-appointed defense attorney, Marine Lt. Col. Colby Vokey, said the U.S. would become the first country in modern history to try a war crimes suspect who was a child at the time of the alleged violations. The conspiracy charge is based on acts allegedly committed when Khadr
was younger than 10, Vokey said.
The attorney urged Canada and the United States to negotiate a "political resolution" of the case to spare Khadr from a guaranteed conviction by "one of the greatest show trials on earth."
Opponents of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay criticized authorities for subjecting Khadr to
the same military trial system as adult terror suspects. In any other conflict, he would have been treated as a child soldier, said Jumana Musa, advocacy director of Amnesty International.
28, of Albuquerque, N.M., and wounded Army Sgt. Layne Morris, of West Jordan, Utah. The charges say those acts were carried out "in violation of the law of war," but did not elaborate.
Speer's widow and Morris filed a civil lawsuit against Khadr and his father. In February, a judge awarded them $102.6 million.
"From the beginning, he was never treated in accordance with his age. He was treated like any adult taken into custody."
JUMANA MUSA Amnesty International
"This was, in fact, a child," Musa said. "From the beginning, he was never treated in accordance with his age. He was treated like any adult taken into custody."
The U.S. military said Khadr hurled a grenade that killed Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer,
"The Defense Department will continue to uphold the law and bring unlawful enemy combatants to justice through the military commissions process," he said.
A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr, Jeffrey Gordon, said Khadr must be held accountable.
The military alleges that Khadr also conducted surveillance of U.S. troops and planted land mines targeting American convoys.
Khadr allegedly received a month of basic training from al-
Qaida in June 2002 that included the use of rocket-propelled grenades, rifles, pistols and explosives, according to the charge sheet signed by Susan J. Crawford, the convening authority for the military commissions.
Several of Khadr's family members have been accused of ties to Islamic extremists. His Egyptian-born father, Ahmad Said al-Khadr, was killed in Pakistan in 2003 alongside senior al-Qaida operatives. Canada is holding Khadr's brother Abdullah on a U.S. extradition warrant accusing him of supplying weapons to al-Qaida.
Suicide bombing kills nine Americans
BY KIM GAMEL ASSOCIATED PRESS
BAGHDAD, Iraq — An al-Qaida-linked group claimed Tuesday that it used "new methods" in staging a double suicide bombing with dump trucks that blasted a paratrooper outpost in volatile Diyala province, killing nine Americans from the 82nd Airborne Division and wounding 20.
The attack underscored the ability of guerrillas of the Sunni Arab-dominated insurgency to wage war
in traj four years after the U.S.-led invasion, and it came in a region that has seen violence escalate since U.S. and Iraqi troops launched the security crackdown in Baghdad.
The first truck hit outlying concrete barriers surrounding the outpost at Sadah and exploded after soldiers opened fire. A second truck rammed into the wrecked vehicles, dragging it and other rubble before it exploded 30 yards from the building housing the post's troops, said Lt. Col. Michael Donnelly, U.S. military spokesman in north Iraq.
According to a senior Pentagon official, at least some of the casualties may have been caused by two walls of the former two-story schoolhouse collapsing from Monday's blast. The official said 15 of the wounded soldiers had returned to duty.
All the casualties were in the 5th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, which has been conducting operations in largely impoverished villages in the area.
April is now the deadliest month of the year for the U.S. military.
KU Students' Graduation Headquarters JayhawkBookstore.com
Jayhawk Bookstore...at the top of Naismith Hill
WALTER S. SUTTON LECTURE SERIES
THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND THE KU INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR ETHICS IN BUSINESS PRESENT AN EVENING WITH
Peter Eigen
FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN OF THE ADVISORY COUNCIL OF TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL
"Corruption in a Global Economy - The Role of Civil Society Organizations to Improve Governance"
Friday, April 27th, 2007 5:00 P.M. SPENCER MUSEUM OF ART