Former ruler is sentenced to death

ADDIS ABABA - Ethiopia's supreme court sentenced former Marxist ruler Mengistu Haile Mariam to death yesterday, granting a prosecution appeal that a life sentence he received last year did not match the seriousness of his crimes. Mengistu, who has lived a life of comfortable exile in Zimbabwe since he was driven from power in 1991, is unlikely to face punishment unless Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe, loses a run-off election next month and cedes power. Mengistu had been found guilty of genocide arising from thousands of killings during his 17-year rule, which included famine, war, and the "Red Terror" purges of suspected opponents. He and more than a dozen other senior officers were found guilty after a 12-year trial. (Reuters)

BRUSSELS - European Union defense ministers agreed yesterday to keep the bloc's 2,500 peacekeepers in Bosnia, citing concern that tensions in Kosovo could spill over into other parts of the Balkans. "The region is not yet fully stable," said Slovenia's defense minister, Karl Erjavec, who chaired the meeting. Some EU nations had hoped that growing stability in Bosnia would allow them to pull the troops out, leaving just a police and civilian mission. However, the failure of Bosnia's ethnically based political parties to agree on a new constitution and the tensions over Kosovo mean the soldiers needed to stay, Erjavec told reporters. (AP)

SANTIAGO - Ninety-eight former government agents were indicted yesterday in the 1975 kidnapping of 119 dissidents who were believed to be later killed. Judge Victor Montiglio revealed the indictments in the case of Operation Colombo - an attempt by Chilean security services to blame the dissidents' deaths on infighting among radical leftists during Augusto Pinochet's 1973-1990 regime. According to court documents, Pinochet's feared secret service seized the 119 dissidents in July 1975 and killed them. (AP)

LAGOS - Nigeria's main militant group carried out the latest in a spate of oil-pipeline bombings yesterday, cutting output from Africa's biggest oil industry and pressing its demand that the government send more oil money to the region. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, said the sabotage of a pipeline-switching station marked the anniversary in office of President Umaru Yar'Adua, who took power May 29, 2007, with a promise to calm the oil region. (AP)

OTTAWA - Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier resigned yesterday after admitting that he had left classified documents in an unsafe place, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said. Bernier had been under increasing pressure to quit amid revelations that a former girlfriend was suspected of being linked to figures in the Hells Angels motorcycle gang. "Minister Bernier has learned and informed me that he left classified government documents in a non-secure location. This is a serious error," a grim-faced Harper told reporters. Harper gave no further details. (Reuters)