■ Morocco
Bombings suspect arrested
Moroccan authorities arrested a French national suspected of involvement in the May 16 suicide bombings in Casablanca that killed 43 people, the official MAP news agency said. Quoting sources close to the investigation, the agency said Robert Richard Antoine-Pierre, who used the aliases Lhaj and Abu Abderrahmane suggesting that he converted to the Islamic faith, was arrested in the northern city of Tangiers. Thirty-one people were killed in the attacks along with 12 suicide bombers who almost simultaneously targeted five sites in the city, including a Spanish restaurant, a five-star hotel and a Jewish community center.
■ Finland
HIV rapist jailed
A Finnish man who had unprotected sex with 23 victims over seven years in the full knowledge that he had HIV has been jailed for 10-and-a-half years. According to the daily Helsingin Sanomat, one woman contracted HIV after having sex with him and the court in Espoo ordered him to pay her 87,000 euros in damages. His total bill for damages came to 265,000 euros. The case scandalized Finland when it came to light last year after a 16-year-old girl he had raped came forward. None of his victims knew about his condition and some had slept with him willingly. When they saw his face on TV and heard what he had done many called the police and had Aids tests.
■ United States
Arab immigrants guilty
Two Arab immigrants accused of gathering intelligence on potential targets from Disneyland to an air base in Turkey were convicted of conspiring to support Islamic terrorists, the first guilty verdicts involving a "sleeper cell" uncovered after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. A third man was found guilty only on a fraud charge, and a fourth was acquitted of all counts. The case began on Sept. 17, 2001, with a raid on a Detroit apartment that turned up videotape and sketches of what investigators said were potential terrorist targets, including Las Vegas and Disneyland.
■ Spain
Train crash kills five
At least five people have been killed and some 40 injured in a train collision in eastern Spain, Transport Minister Francisco Alvarez-Cascos told journalists yesterday at the scene. He said another 21 people remained unaccounted for after the crash late Tuesday involving a main-line passenger train from Madrid to Cartagena and a freight train in the Albacete region. Authorities feared the people could be trapped in the mangled wreckage. The dead were the two drivers of the freight train and the driver, mechanic and ticket inspector on the passenger train, Alvarez-Cascos said.
Agencies
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