Libya rebels fear for Gaddafi prisoners

The notorious Abu Salim prison was stormed by rebels earlier this week

Rebel military spokesman Col Ahmed Omar Bani said almost 50,000 people arrested in recent months were unaccounted for.The rebels believe they may be being held in underground bunkers, which have since been abandoned.Rights groups have seen evidence that dozens of people have been massacred near prisons, but Col Bani did not accuse anyone of killing the prisoners."The number of people arrested over the past months is estimated at between 57,000 and 60,000," he said in a news conference in Benghazi."Between 10,000 and 11,000 prisoners have been freed up until now... so where are the others?"The colonel appealed for anyone with information to come forward, and said it would be "catastrophic" if they had been killed.

Hunt for Gaddafi

The BBC's Jon Leyne in Benghazi says many rebels and their supporters were detained by fighters loyal to fugitive leader Col Muammar Gaddafi during the struggle for Benghazi and other cities.He says many other activists - and even those just suspected of supporting the revolution - were arrested in waves of security crackdowns, particularly when Col Gaddafi was trying to stop the revolution from spreading to Tripoli.Human Rights Watch has said it has evidence that pro-Gaddafi forces killed at least 17 prisoners and carried out "suspected arbitrary executions of dozens of civilians,

including professionals" in the days before Tripoli fell to the rebels.Reuters news agency claimed earlier this week to have discovered an apparent massacre site in Tripoli; and separately about 50 charred corpses were found in a warehouse south of the capital on Saturday.But it was unclear who was responsible for any of the killings.The rebels stormed Tripoli earlier in the week and took control of almost all of it after two days of fighting.Although sporadic gunshots could be heard in the capital on Sunday, the rebels say they are now in control and are trying to restore basic utilities such as water supply.However, Gaddafi loyalists are continuing to fight in other parts of the country - particularly around Col Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte.Some rebel commanders believe the colonel and his inner circle are likely to have fled to Sirte.But other rumours swirling
around include allegations that the Gaddafis are hiding in Tripoli; that some of them fled to Algiers; or that some have already taken refuge in Europe.On the weekend, a spokesman for the Gaddafi regime offered to open talks with the rebel government, the National Transitional Council.But the NTC rejected the offer, describing the colonel as a criminal who should be put on trial.The UK Foreign Secretary William Hague described the offer of talks as delusional.

Libyan rebels head to the captured town of Bin Jawad, 62 miles from Gaddafi's last coastal stronghold of Sirte. Photograph: Gianluigi Guercia

Blast in China's Kashgar kills at least three

BEIJING — An explosion rocked the far-west Chinese city of Kashgar Sunday, killing at least three people including a policeman in the latest in a series of attacks in the region this month, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported.
 
The explosion came about 16 hours after two other blasts were reported in Kashgar and eight people were killed in a knife attack in the city, in the restive Xinjiang region near Tajikistan.
A group of Uighur exiles from the region said martial law had been imposed in Kashgar and that at least 100 people had been arrested.
Xinjiang is strategically vital to China and Beijing has shown no sign of loosening its grip on the territory, which accounts for one-sixth of China's land mass, holds rich deposits of oil and gas and borders Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Central Asia.
Police apprehended two suspects after Sunday's blast, which also wounded three people, Xinhua said.
There were no other details immediately available and Xinjiang regional officials did not answer calls to land and mobile telephone lines.

Earlier Sunday, Chinese media reported that two men wielding knives attacked a truck driver and then a crowd of people following two explosions in Kashgar Saturday night, leaving eight people dead including one of the attackers, according to tianshannet.com, a Xinjiang government-run website, and Xinhua.
One of Saturday's blasts was from a minivan while another occurred in a food market, Xinhua said.
There were no other details from the reports.
Xinjiang is home to many Uighurs, a mostly Muslim Turkic-speaking people native to the region, many of whom resent the growing presence of majority Han Chinese who have moved there. Some Uighur groups have campaigned for independence.

TIGHT SECURITY
Eighteen people including 14 "rioters" were killed in an attack on a police station in Xinjiang on July 18, according to the government. The dead included two policemen and two hostages in what Chinese authorities described as a terrorist attack.That clash was the worst violence in about a year in Xinjiang.Rights groups say Xinjiang remains under tight security, more than two years after its capital Urumqi was rocked by violence between Han Chinese and Uighurs that killed nearly 200 people.Since then, China has executed nine people it blamed for instigating the riots, detained and prosecuted hundreds and ramped up spending on security, according to state media and overseas rights groups.Saturday's attacks began with the two blasts, Xinhua said. Two men jumped into a truck waiting at a stoplight and stabbed to death the driver, Xinhua and tianshannet.com said.The pair then plowed into a crowd, left the truck and started attacking people, killing six, Xinhua said.The crowd retaliated, beating one of the attackers to death and capturing the other, according to the accounts, which did not further identify the attackers.Twenty-eight people were treated in hospital, it said.
There were no other immediate details. The reports did not say if authorities suspect there is any link to a Uighur separatist movement or to the July 18 attack."The entire city of Kashgar is under martial law, and authorities have arrested at least 100 Uighurs," the German-based World Uyghur Congress said.
"There is no way to protest peacefully the Chinese suppression there, and the policy of calculated resettlement," group spokesman Dilxat Raxit said in a statement sent by email to Reuters, referring to ethnic Han Chinese being relocated to live in Xinjiang.

Libyan rebel leader: Our military chief killed

Rebel commander Abdel Fattah Younes speaks during a rally in Benghazi on July 6.

The head of the Libyan rebels' military campaign against Moammar Gadhafi was shot dead by assailants on Thursday, the top rebel leader said.
Abdel Fattah Younes was part of the group involved in the 1969 coup that brought Gadhafi to power, and was interior minister before he defected and took a senior position in the rebellion in February.
"We received news today that ... Younes and two of his bodyguards were shot at after he was called in to appear before a judicial committee investigating military issues," rebel leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil told reporters in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.
Some rebels were never comfortable with an army leader who had until recently been so close to Gadhafi, and Younes had been involved in a dispute over the leadership of the rebel forces.
Jalil said Younes was shot before appearing in front of the judicial committee and the head of the armed cell that killed him had been arrested.
It was not clear where Younes and his bodyguards had been killed or how Jalil had learned of their deaths, but Jalil said all efforts were being made to find their bodies.
Shortly afterwards, gunmen burst into the grounds of the hotel where Jalil was speaking and fired bursts of shots in the air, a Reuters reporter said.

* News * World news * US military US soldier arrested near Fort Hood 'with bomb-making material'

A US army soldier has been arrested after police found him in possession of possible bomb-making material at a motel near Fort Hood, Texas.
FBI special agent Eric Vasys said the soldier, who was absent without leave from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, was being held in a jail in the Texas town of Killeen, near Fort Hood, on an unrelated child pornography charge.
The soldier was identified as 21-year-old Naser Jason Abdo, originally from the Dallas area. He disappeared from Fort Campbell over the 4 July weekend, Bob Jenkins, a spokesman at the base said.
"Whatever threat Mr Nassar [sic Naser] posed yesterday or up until yesterday has been eliminated and mitigated, and there was nothing to indicate he was acting with anyone else," Vasys said.
He did not elaborate on the apparent threat, or on the charges Abdo might face. Vasys said he had no knowledge of any other arrests of soldiers.
Abdo was arrested on Wednesday after a "concerned citizen" reported that he had firearms and smokeless gunpowder in his Killeen motel room, Vasys said. "A search of his motel room revealed that he had some components which could be considered bomb-making materials."
Abdo applied for conscientious objector status in 2010 after he decided Islamic standards would prohibit his service in the US army in any war, military officials said.
Fort Hood was the scene of a November 2009 massacre in which 13 people were killed and 32 others wounded.
Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Malik Hasan was charged with the shootings and is expected to face a court martial in March 2012.

Scotland Yard Arrests Accused LulzSec Spokesman

LONDON (AP) — Scotland Yard's cybercrime unit on Wednesday arrested a teenager it accuses of working as the spokesman for the Lulz Security hacking collective, the force said in a statement.
Scotland Yard said its Central e-Crime Unit arrested a 19-year-old at an address in Scotland's remote Shetland Islands. His name wasn't released, but the force said he used the online nickname "Topiary."
LulzSec, an offshoot of the amorphous hacking collective known as Anonymous, has claimed responsibility for a series of hacking attacks on both sides of the Atlantic. In interviews with media organizations including The Associated Press, Topiary described himself as one of LulzSec's six members.
Topiary's once-plentiful Twitter feed was practically wiped clean Wednesday. The only remaining post, from nearly a week ago, read: "You cannot arrest an idea."
Scotland Yard also said it was searching a residential address in Lincolnshire, in central England, and interviewing a 17-year-old under caution in connection with the investigation. The second teen has not been arrested.

'Marine massacre': Hundreds of dead sharks buried at sea

Hundreds of dead sharks illegally fished inside Ecuador's Galapagos National Park were returned to the sea after scientists counted and sampled what one expert called a "marine massacre."
John Bruno.The sharks seized aboard this fishing vessel had their fins sliced, a sign the fins would be sold in Asia for the market in shark fin soup.
"It was literally like a funeral at sea," University of North Carolina marine biologist John Bruno told msnbc.com. "It was rough and windy and the sun was going down and all 379 sharks were dragged to a gap in the gunwale and eased in the water as the ship slowly moved along.
"They slowly sank — which was for some reason the most powerful aspect of the whole day for a lot of people on board — lots of tears were shed."
Ecuadorian law required that illegally caught fish must be returned to the sea, a prosecutor told Bruno.

Moreover, three of the 30 fishermen arrested, the ship's captain and two crew, were taken with the team for the burial last Saturday "so they could see that we did put all of them into the ocean, i.e., didn't sell them ourselves,"The prosecutor with the team "told me the whole sharks would go for about $2,000 each" in the ship's homeport of Manta, Ecuador, Bruno added.All the sharks were from species (bigeye thresher, blue, Galapagos, hammerhead, tiger and mako) listed as vulnerable or near threatened.
"This happens every day somewhere in the world," he said. "In fact, this was a pretty small scale operation."
The crew will face criminal charges, park officials have said, since shark fishing, and any commercial-scale fishing, is illegal inside the park and its marine reserve.In the Galapagos, illegal shark fishing and finning — the act of cutting off the fins — took off in the late 1990s when the local sea cucumber fishery collapsed.
The Galapagos, an island chain made famous by Charles Darwin and his "Origin of Species," was declared a U.N. World Heritage site in 1979.