theSun | TUESDAY JANUARY 6 2009
news without borders
France foils two Somali
pirate attacks, holds 19
PARIS: A French warship on Sunday
foiled attempts by Somalian pirates
in the Gulf of Aden to seize two cargo
vessels and intercepted 19 people,
the French president’s office said.
“Three days after a French vessel
thwarted an attack on a Panama-
nian cargo ship”, the frigate Jean de
Vienne conducted a “decisive action”
against “two new attacks”, it said in
a statement.
“The 19 Somali pirates who
tried to seize the two boats were
intercepted,” it added, saying they
carried weapons, ammunition and
material for boarding ships. “They
will be transferred to the Somali
authorities.”
The French defence ministry
said pirates attempted to attack a
Kidnapped British, Spanish
journalists freed
NAIROBI: Two journalists, from
Britain and Spain, were released
on Sunday after almost six
weeks in captivity in Somalia’s
breakaway Puntland state,
police and the two governments
said.
“The two journalists are free
after their ordeals,” the head of
Puntland police, Abdullahi Said
Samatar, said.
“They are taking some rest-
ing now and will be available
later. I’m happy to see them
recovering their freedom,” he
said.
The release was confirmed
by the Spanish government in
Madrid, whose ambassador to
Kenya travelled to Puntland from
Nairobi to meet British writer
Colin Freeman and Spanish pho-
tographer Jose Cendon on Sunday
afternoon.
Cendon arrived in Kenya
Croatian and a Panamanian ship
and that French forces seized
assault rifles, two rocket launchers,
and more than 1,000 litres of oil.
On Thursday, a French war-
ship thwarted an attack by pirates,
presumed to be Somalis, on a Pana-
manian-flagged cargo vessel. They
arrested eight suspects to be handed
over to the Somali authorities.
In October, the French navy
handed over nine suspected pirates
to the authorities in the breakaway
state of Puntland in the northeast of
the country.
Another 12 suspected pirates
are currently being held in France.
They were arrested during two
separate operations to free the crew
of two French yachts in April and
late Sunday, a Spanish foreign
ministry spokesman said, adding
that he would remain overnight
at the Spanish ambassador’s
residence in Nairobi.
The spokesman said he
was not sure when Cendon, a
freelancer based in Ethiopia who
worked for various media outlets
including AFP, would return to
Spain.
Later on Sunday Cendon him-
self said by phone as he travelled
to the Spanish ambassador’s
residence in Nairobi: “I am very
happy to have been released, I
feel absolutely fine.”
Cendon, 34, and reporter
Freeman, 39, of The Sunday
Telegraph were working on a
piracy story when they were
kidnapped on Nov 26 while on
their way to the airport in the
northern Somali port of Bosasso.
– AFP
Living
in fear
of price
increases
pg 13
September of last year.
Somalia, which has been ravaged
by civil war since 1991, has become
a global hotspot for piracy in recent
years. An Islamist militia which
briefly controlled most of Somalia
in 2006 had all but rooted out piracy
but attacks surged again after the
hardline movement was ousted by
an Ethiopian troop invasion.
More than 100 attacks occurred
in the pirate-infested waters off the
coast of the lawless Horn of Africa
country in 2008 alone.
The pirates have been undeterred
by the presence of foreign navies
patrolling in the Gulf of Aden and
the Indian Ocean in a bid to secure
one of the world’s busiest shipping
routes. – AFP
Hasina cleared of
extortion charge
DHAKA: An extortion charge against Bang-
ladesh prime minister-elect Sheikh Hasina
Wajed has been dropped, one day before
she is due to be sworn in as leader of the im-
poverished country, police said yesterday.
Hasina was accused in April last year
of extorting 30 million taka (RM1.5 million)
from the Bangladesh-based regional head
of a Malaysian power company. The charge
formed part of the outgoing army-backed
government’s crackdown on corruption.
“We found the charges to be false and
fabricated. Sheikh Hasina has been cleared
of all extortion charges in this case,” police
investigation chief Lutfur Rahman said, add-
ing that charges against the country chief of
the power company Westmont may follow.
“The court is looking at whether he has
made false allegations,” Rahman said.
Hasina, who was prime minister between
1996 and 2001, was jailed for one year on
more than a dozen graft-related charges.
She was released, although charges against
her remained active, as part of a deal with
the outgoing authorities so that she could
contest last Monday’s elections, which she
won by a landslide margin. – AFP
briefs
Guatemala mountain
landslide kills 22
GUATEMALA CITY: At least 22 people
died in northern Guatemala on Sunday
when part of a mountain collapsed on
a walking trail, emergency authorities
said.
The landslide happened in a sparse-
ly populated area in the district of Alta
Verapaz, 200km from Guatemala City.
Emergency workers were still looking
for more victims on Sunday night.
Landslides are common in Guate-
mala, but usually occur during the rainy
season between June and November.
– Reuters
4,000 attend funeral
for snowmobile
avalanche victims
MONTREAL: Some 4,000 people
on Sunday attended the funeral of
eight snowmobile enthusiasts who
died last week near the small town
of Sparwood in western Canada
after a series of avalanches.
Family and friends of the victims,
aged 20 to 45, turned out to give
eulogies at a ceremony broadcast
live on major Canadian television
channels. The men were found on
Monday and Tuesday after they
went missing last Sunday when they
were caught in avalanches in the
mountains some 300km southwest
of Calgary, British Columbia. Three
other men survived the ordeal.
The victims were all from Spar-
wood, which has a population of
3,600. – AFP
Aso under pressure as
parliament meets
TOKYO: Japan’s parliament convened
yesterday for a session on measures
to revive the flagging economy, with
Prime Minister Taro Aso under pres-
sure both from within and outside the
ruling bloc to call a snap election.
Aso, whose support has dwindled
to around 20% in recent polls, is
introducing a 4.79 trillion yen (RM181
billion) supplementary budget for the
year to March 2009 and a record-high
annual budget for fiscal 2009.
The packages include tax cuts, cash
rebates and other incentives aimed
at stimulating the world’s second
largest economy, which has slipped
11
into recession.
“We face a mountain of difficult
issues. But let us be united and go
through the parliament session,” Aso
told his ministers in the new year’s first
cabinet meeting.
He later told lawmakers from his
Liberal Democratic Party: “We are con-
fident that we submitted the best plan
possible and that the legislation is the
best remedy to boost the economy.”
However, the Aso government
faces tough battles on the legislative
floor. The opposition, which controls
the less powerful upper house, is
gearing up to block bills from the ruling
party and is demanding an early snap
election. – AFP
Bangkok mall blaze
kills one
BANGKOK: One person was killed
and 41 injured in a blaze at a Bang-
kok shopping mall, just days after a
fire at a nightclub in the Thai capital
killed scores of people, police said
yesterday.
Firefighters rescued dozens of
people from the nine-storey Sua
Su plaza in the city centre after
the fire broke out on Sunday night,
police Lt-Coll Maetee Thanak said.
The blaze took around two hours
to put out and rescuers afterwards
found one person dead inside the
building. The injured suffered minor
burns and smoke inhalation.
The cause of the fire was not
immediately clear but it appeared
to have started in an area where
there are several mobile phone
shops, police said. – AFP
Indonesian lawmaker
jailed 8 years for bribery
JAKARTA: Indonesia’s powerful anti-
corruption court found a lawmaker
guilty of bribery and extortion yester-
day, sentencing him to eight years in
prison.
Al Amin Nasution received more
than US$200,000 (RM696,000) from
local authorities in return for helping
push through the development of trop-
ical forests on an island off Sumatra,
judge Edward Pattinasarani told the
court. “The defendant has been proved
legally and convincingly guilty of cor-
ruption and must be sentenced to
eight years in jail and fined 250 million
rupiah (RM80,910),” he said.
Nasution had received 325 million
rupiah (RM123,279) and S$300,000
(RM714,000) for the land deal in Bintan
on the Riau Islands near Singapore, he
said. – AFP