Opening a new phase in the Wa-shington-area sniper trial, prose-cutors on Monday began recreating the morning of Oct. 3 last year when four people were killed in suburban Maryland in less than three hours and the nation became aware that someone with a high-powered rifle was stalking random victims.
Describing the autopsy of Premkumar Walekar, a 54-year-old cab driver who was shot at a gas station in Montgomery County that morning, the state's deputy chief medical examiner said Walekar had died from wounds caused by a single bullet fired by a high-powered rifle.
The authorities say they confiscated a high-powered Bushmaster rifle, a commercial version of the military's M-16 rifle, from the car of John Muhammad, the former soldier who has been accused of being the mastermind behind the shootings.
The medical examiner, Dr. Mary Ripple, described how the single shot shredded Walekar's left arm, disintegrated internal tissue and created a "lead snow storm" of fragments that left tears, scrapes and bruises along their path.
A few minutes earlier, Walekar's widow, Margaret, was escorted from the courtroom because she was sobbing during the testimony of a pediatrician who tried to save Walekar in his dying moments.
Muhammad has been charged with capital murder in the killing of Dean Meyers, a 53-year-old engineer who was shot while pumping gas in Manassas, Virginia, on Oct. 9. The man the authorities say was Muhammad's accomplice, Lee Malvo, 18, has been charged with capital murder in the killing of Linda Franklin, a 47-year-old FBI analyst, outside a Home Depot in Arlington, Virginia, on Oct. 14. Malvo's trial is to begin in two weeks.
Although Muhammad is on trial only for Meyer's killing, prosecutors plan to introduce evidence from at least 16 shootings, 10 of them fatal, in order to meet the requirements of the two Virginia death penalty laws under which they have charged him.
Until now, most of the prosecution's evidence has dealt with shootings in Maryland, Alabama and Louisiana in which, the authorities say, Malvo and Muhammad wounded or killed people during robberies.
With Monday's testimony about Walekar's shooting, the prosecution began laying the foundation for its terrorism case. Four days and three killings after the shooting, the police found a note from the sniper demanding US$10 million and warning the authorities to "prepare your body bags" if it was not delivered.
The jury also heard testimony from Muhammad's cousin, who said he visited her in Baton Rouge in August last year. The witness, Charlene Anderson, a security guard at Southern University, said Muhammad had told her he was working with special operations forces to find 500 pounds of stolen plastic explosives that were being transported in shipments of marijuana.
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
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RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
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