■ United Kingdom
Report clears services
A parliamentary report has cleared intelligence and security services over the July 7 suicide bombings in London last year, the BBC reported yesterday. The report, from the Intelligence and Security Committee, says they cannot be blamed for failing to prevent the transport bombings that killed 52 people and wounded more than 700, the BBC said. But it questions why one of the bombers, Mohammad Sidique Khan, had not been investigated despite being known to police. The BBC said the report is also critical of the secretive and complicated system of national threat and alert levels, which dropped from "severe, general" to "substantial," just before the bombings.
■ Iraq
Shiite account contradicted
An Iraqi commander who led a weekend raid with US special forces says the target was a Baghdad office complex used by an armed militia and not a mosque, confirming a US account of what happened, Time magazine reported on Wednesday. A hostage freed in the operation also backed the US version of the attack, Time said, contradicting some Shiite officials and local residents who said the US and Iraqi troops targeted a Shiite mosque and killed at least 16 unarmed worshipers in Sunday's raid. "We didn't find a mosque," Time quoted an Iraqi special forces commander, whom it did not identify, as saying. "We only killed men who were armed and fired at us." He said his men didn't find prayer mats or books but they did find instruments of torture.
■ United States
Jury mulls Moussaoui's fate
Zacarias Moussaoui's fate rested with a jury after US prosecutors said on Wednesday that he should be executed because his lies led to nearly 3,000 deaths in the Sept. 11 attacks, while a defense lawyer said he was only an al-Qaeda "hanger-on and a nuisance." The jury began deliberations late on Wednesday after the closing arguments. They were due to resume yesterday. Both sides said Moussaoui was a liar in wrapping up the death penalty trial for the only person charged in the US in the Sept. 11 hijacking plot. Moussaoui pleaded guilty last year to all six conspiracy counts against him -- three of which carry the death penalty.
■ United States
Former lobbyist sentenced
Disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff was sentenced to nearly six years in prison on Wednesday for fraud in the purchase of a Florida casino cruise line. Abramoff, who is cooperating in a federal investigation into whether politicians gave his clients favorable treatment in exchange for illegal gifts, was also ordered to pay US$21.7 million, together with a co-defendant, in restitution.
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