■ Sweden
Lindh suspect tied by DNA
DNA from the man sus-pected of stabbing foreign minister Anna Lindh matches traces found on his clothes and the knife used to kill her, a Swedish prose-cutor said yesterday. "Taken together, the existing evi-dence is good," prosecutor Agneta Blidberg said in an interview with Swedish radio. Swedish police said on Wednesday that they had finished their initial inves-tigation in the Sept. 10 stabbing of Lindh and are ready to try Mijailo Mijai-lovic for murder. The report will be given this week to Mijailovic lawyer, who has three weeks to read the report before prosecutors can file charges. Mijailovic says he is innocent.
■ Rwanda
Genocide witnesses targets
Witnesses to Rwanda's genocide are being intimi-dated and killed to stop them testifying in court against those who took part in the 1994 slaughter of up to 1 million people, it was claimed Wednesday. Geno-cide suspects who fear prosecution are behind a spate of recent murders intended to deter people from cooperating with the courts, according to Ibuka, an umbrella organization for genocide survivors. One or two survivors are being killed on average each month, but recently three were killed in Gikongoro Province, it said. All were potential witnesses.
■ Iran
Inspection pact to be inked
Iran was scheduled to sign an agreement yesterday to allow intrusive inspections of its nuclear sites, Vice President Gholam Reza Aghazadeh told reporters on Wednesday. Aghazadeh, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, said signing the agreement would demonstrate Iran's commitment to peaceful uses of nuclear power. "Signing the protocol will also end the propaganda campaign against the nuclear program," he said. On Oct. 21, Iran agreed to sign the additional protocol to the non-proliferation treaty. During a visit by the foreign ministers of Britain, Germany and France, Iran agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment pro-gram and allow unfettered inspections but demanded technical cooperation for its peaceful nuclear program.
■ United States
Oft-weds fall for each other
A man and a woman who allegedly worked together in several sham green card marriages to illegal immi-grants apparently are in love and want to get married again -- this time to each other. Luis Narvaez, 40, already married seven times, and Evelyn Rivera, 48, who has been married eight times, applied for a marriage license to marry each other while they were jailed at Rikers Island in New York. The pair have been charged with perjury for lying on licenses for the bogus marriages from 1996 through last month. Narvaez and Rivera met when she stood as a witness in at least two of his weddings, an official said.
■ United States
Human smuggler convicted
A Thai man was convicted on Wednesday of smuggling Thai women into the US to work as prostitutes and of plotting to have a hit man kill an FBI agent investi-gating the brothels. Nanta-wat Naovasaisri, 34, was convicted on all five charges he faced following 90 minutes of deliberations in New Jersey, officials said. Sentencing was set for April 2. He faces up to 20 years in prison for the attempted murder of a federal agent and terms of five to 10 years on the other charges.
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