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Nepal deports US climber for having pro-Tibet banner

Nepal has deported an US mountaineer found on Mount Everest with a “Free Tibet” banner and has banned him from all climbing activities in the country for two years, officials said yesterday.

William Brant Holland of Midlothian, Virginia, was expelled for violating regulations, tourism ministry official Krishna Gyawali said.

Holland, who left Nepal on Monday for home, was found at the Everest base camp last week with the banner and told to leave the mountain. When he arrived back in the capital, Kathmandu, he was questioned by officials who decided he should leave the country for violating a ban on anti-China activities.

Holland is the first mountaineer to be stopped by soldiers and police stationed on Nepal’s side of the mountain to prevent protests during a planned Olympic torch relay by Chinese climbers to the Everest summit.

The relay, expected to start soon, will take place on the Chinese side of the mountain. But Nepal’s government, under pressure from Beijing, has posted soldiers on the southern side and banned climbing near the summit from tomorrow to May 10.

Police and soldiers have been ordered to stop any protest on the mountain using whatever means necessary, although the use of deadly force is authorized only as a last resort.
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