Somali president pardons jailed Westerners (AP)

MOGADISHU, Somalia – Somalia has pardoned six foreigners sentenced to at least 10 years in prison each for bringing millions of dollars intended for pirate ransom into the country, a government spokesman said Sunday.

Abdirahman Omar Osman said the three British nationals, an American and two Kenyans, will be free after the court completes processing their release. The country's president granted them a pardon from their sentences, he said.

The men were arrested in Mogadishu last month after their planes were found to be carrying millions of dollars in cash. Two of the defendants were sentenced to 15 years in prison and a $15,000 fine, the others were sentenced to 10 years and a $10,000 fine on June 18.

Osman said $50,000 fines for each of the planes would need to be paid before they could be released.

Pirates have been receiving millions of dollars in ransoms for several years now but this was the first time Westerners were sentenced for their role in paying out the ransoms.

The average ransom paid to pirates has reached nearly $5 million. The ransoms are often air-dropped down to hijacked ships. Somalia has been mired in conflict since longtime dictator Siad Barre was overthrown by warlords in 1991 who then turned on each other.

The conflict inland has helped piracy flourish on the waters off the horn Africa country.

There were a record high 142 piracy attacks worldwide in the first quarter of this year, according to the International Maritime Bureau, a global maritime watchdog. Nearly 70 percent or 97 of the attacks occurred off the coast of Somalia, up sharply from 35 attacks in the same period a year earlier.

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Bahrain opposition activists jailed for life

Bahrain's Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa said he was seeking a national dialogue with protesters last month.Defendants are forcibly taken out of court after the verdictThe verdicts come after human rights groups have urged Bahrain to stop the trials"This court does not meet international standards for human rights," an activist says

(CNN) -- A Bahrain court sentenced eight Shiite opposition activists to life imprisonment after finding them guilty of plotting to overthrow the country's Sunni royal family, state media said Wednesday.

They were among 21 people who were tried and convicted on terrorism-related charges in connection with the anti-government protests in the country, the Bahrain News Agency said.

Soon after the judge read the verdict, the defendants protested loudly -- prompting officials to forcibly remove them from the courtroom.

Zainab al-Khawaja, a spectator, disputed her father's life sentence by yelling "God is Great" and was arrested.

Most defendants hauled before Bahrain's special military court are facing blatantly political charges, and trials are unfair.
--Joe Stork, Human Rights Watch.

Rights groups have urged Bahrain to halt the special military court proceedings, with Human Rights Watch deeming them a violation of international law.

"Most defendants hauled before Bahrain's special military court are facing blatantly political charges, and trials are unfair," said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

In a meeting earlier this month with U.S. President Barack Obama last week, Bahrain's Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa pledged he is seeking national dialogue with the protesters.

Bahrain's crackdown contradicts statements the prince made, Human Rights Watch said.

Bahraini human rights activist Nabeel Rajab also said he disapproved of the trials.

"This court does not meet international standards for human rights and for fair trials. The people were sentenced for expressing their opinion and for opposing the government," Rajab said. "This goes against the government saying it wants a dialogue."

Bahrain is one of several Middle Eastern and North African countries embroiled in anti-government protests. The ruling royal family -- Sunnis in a majority-Shiite nation -- accuses protesters of being motivated by sectarian differences and supported by Iran.

Also on trial in Bahrain are dozens of doctors and nurses who are accused of taking control of a hospital during the anti-government protests, storing weapons and keeping people prisoner.

The doctors, their lawyers and international human rights activists say the defendants were tortured to extract confessions against a background of demonstrations in the kingdom.

From CNN's Jenifer Fenton

CNN

US delegation meets with American jailed in Cuba (AP)

HAVANA – Members of a visiting U.S. delegation met with a jailed U.S. contractor Thursday and reported that he has lost nearly 100 pounds in captivity but is otherwise doing well.

Democratic political strategist Donna Brazile, who was part of the delegation, said they talked for about two hours with Alan Gross in an air-conditioned room across from the cell he shares with two other prisoners at a military hospital. She said the meeting was apparently being monitored, but there were no Cuban officials in the room.

"He's in good spirits although he's clearly lost a lot of weight," Brazile said. "He wants to come home. He does not want us to forget him."

About 50 pounds overweight when he was taken into custody, Gross has lost 95 pounds by his own estimation, she said.

Gross, of Montgomery County, Maryland, was working on a USAID-funded democracy building program when he was arrested in December 2009. This March, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison after being convicted of bringing communications equipment into Cuba illegally. His lawyer is appealing.

Havana, which considers the millions of dollars spent on USAID-funded projects to be aimed at toppling the government, calls Gross a spy. U.S. officials say relations with Havana cannot improve while he remains in jail.

Brazile said at Havana's international airport before flying back to the United States on Thursday that Gross and his visitors had a "down-home" conversation about the Washington Redskins, U.S. politics and crab cake recipes. She said he was not bitter and had "a remarkable sense of humor."

"This has taken a huge toll on his family, his wife, his daughter, his mother, and I assured him that ... I will visit his family and also relate to them his condition," Brazile said.

Gross' daughter and elderly mother both have cancer, and State Department officials have expressed hope that Cuba might release him on humanitarian grounds.

David Dreyer, another member of the delegation who said he and Gross belong to the same Jewish congregation in Washington but had never met before, showed journalists a plastic wristband that Gross apparently fashioned while in custody.

"He pulled this bracelet out of his pocket which he had knitted together from the bottle caps of the bottled water that he drinks every day, and he said that he wanted us to bring this bracelet home so that he would not be forgotten," said Dreyer, who planned to address the congregation back home this weekend.

Gross has said he was working to improve Internet communications for Cuba's Jewish community, though Jewish leaders denied dealing with him.

"Some news about the States is coming through," Dreyer said. "We asked him about that, and the first thing he responded was, 'Anthony Weiner?'" referring to the U.S. congressman who admitted this week that he had sent lewd photos and text messages to women.

The delegation, which arrived Sunday, consisted of U.S. women leaders brought to Cuba by the Center for Democracy in the Americas, which works to improve U.S. relations with Cuba and other countries and is a critic of Washington's decades-old economic embargo against the island.

Former U.S. Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat who resigned in February and now heads the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, also was part of the group.

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Jailed tycoon Khodorkovsky to file for parole (AP)

MOSCOW – Imprisoned Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky intends to file for parole, his lawyer told The Associated Press on Monday.

A Moscow appeals court last week upheld the second conviction of Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, keeping him behind bars until 2016 on politically tainted charges of stealing oil from his own company.

He is eligible for early release since he has served half of his 13-year sentence. It would be Khodorkovsky's second parole motion; his first was denied in 2008 by a judge who cited Khodorkovsky's refusal to take part in sewing classes while in prison, and other alleged misdemeanors including failure to hold his hands behind his back during a prison walk.

Khodorkovsky's lawyer Vadim Klyuvgant refused to say when the parole request would be submitted. Khodorkovsky is still expected to appeal his second conviction at the Supreme Court.

The oil magnate received a sentence of 8 years for his first conviction, and of 13 years for his scond, but a judge ordered they run concurrently.

Khodorkovsky was seen as a political threat to Vladimir Putin, who was president in 2003 when Khodorkovsky was arrested, and who remains Russia's most powerful leader now that he is prime minister.

Khodorkovsky is still in a Moscow pre-trial detention center, awaiting transfer to a prison camp. Lawyers say it's unclear where he will serve out his sentence, Klyuvgant said.

The state-controlled national television network NTV ran a rare, seemingly balanced piece on Khodorkovsky late Sunday, in which he is cited as saying he "refuses to acknowledge the court decisions" and that "I will try to exercise my right to an early release" in written responses to the station's questions.

Coverage of Khodorkovsky in the Russian media, which Putin brought to heel in his first term as president from 2000 to 2004, has been overwhelmingly negative.

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Singer Pete Doherty jailed on cocaine charge (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters Life!) – Musician Pete Doherty was jailed for six months on Friday after pleading guilty to possession of cocaine, the Press Association reported.

The 32-year-old was arrested in January last year by police investigating the suspected overdose death of heiress Robyn Whitehead.

The controversial Babyshambles singer has been jailed twice before and has repeatedly admitted possession of banned substances.

Judge David Radford said he had an "appalling record" of committing offences, having made 13 other court appearances in the past.

Peter Wolfe, 42, who had pleaded guilty to two counts of possession of cocaine and one count of supplying cocaine to Whitehead, was sentenced to a total of 12 months in prison.

Whitehead, 27, the granddaughter of the late Teddy Goldsmith, founder of The Ecologist magazine, spent the last 10 days of her life making a documentary about Doherty.

Prosecutor Alison Morgan said paramedics were called to Wolfe's flat in Hackney, east London, where Whitehead collapsed on January 24 last year.

They tried to resuscitate Whitehead but she was pronounced dead shortly afterwards.

Toxicology reports found she had a combination of cocaine and heroin in her body and had died of heroin poisoning.

Footage filmed inside the flat two days earlier showed her in the flat with Wolfe and him passing her a crack pipe, which she then smoked.

The prosecutor told Snaresbrook Crown Court that Doherty later joined them and was also filmed smoking on the crack pipe and putting crack cocaine inside it.

She said the drugs offences to which the two men had been charged had been committed between January 22 and 24 but that the crack cocaine that Wolfe had supplied Whitehead with could not have been what killed her.

Judge Radford said she had died from the poisoning of another illegal drug which she had chosen to take.

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Jailed Chinese dissident's art unveiled in New York

Ai Weiwei was noticeably absent from his own exhibit in New York He was detained by his government last month for unspecified "economic crimes"Ai's work was nonetheless celebrated by Manhattan's art aficionados.

New York (CNN) -- A Chinese artist was noticeably absent from his own exhibit in New York after having been detained by his government for unspecified "economic crimes."

Ai Weiwei, considered among China's best-known contemporary artists, was arrested at Capital Airport in Beijing on April 3 by state authorities.

But his absence from the exhibit opening on Wednesday did not deter Manhattan's art aficionados from celebrating his work.

"Today, we stand in solidarity with the millions of people around the world who are hoping that Ai Weiwei is quickly and safely released," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg told reporters.

"Even though he could not be here physically, he continues to speak to us, to delight us, and to challenge us through his art."

The exhibit is called "Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads" and consists of 12 large bronzed animal heads, which represent the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac.

The mayor said Ai's work is an effort to reinterpret a water clock-fountain that once stood at Yuanming Yuan, an elaborate imperial retreat of the Qing dynasty in Beijing that was pillaged by British and French troops in 1860.

Situated atop marble bases, each sculpture stands approximately 10 feet high and weighs nearly 1,000 pounds.

Ai, who has remained in detention, has been unreachable to family and friends, according to Larry Warsh, founder of Abbey Warsh Asia, a private organization that promotes Chinese art.

Warsh said that while Ai has been a harsh government critic, his work exhibited on Wednesday is rooted more in Chinese nationalism.

"He uses the old historical motifs and invents another language of communication."

"People might be a little scared or fearful of having his art if you're in mainland China," he added. "But in five or ten years, I think he will be a hero and an icon, just like father."

Ai was raised in a labor camp in China's remote northwestern region of Xinjiang. His father, Ai Qing, was a nationally regarded poet who was purged in the 1950s after being denounced as "an enemy of the state and a rightist."

The younger Ai helped design the iconic Bird's Nest stadium for the Beijing Olympics in 2008, but he later called for a boycott of the games because he said it was being used as propaganda.

"They crack down on everybody who has different opinions -- not even different opinions, just different attitudes," he told CNN last year. "Simply to have different opinions can cost (dissidents) their life; they can be put in jail, can be silenced and can disappear."

The pieces from Wednesday's exhibit are located on the Pulitzer Fountain, near Manhattan's landmark Plaza Hotel, where they will be on display through July 15.

Similar works are expected to be displayed in London, Los Angeles, Houston, Pittsburgh and Washington D.C.

CNN

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Quran-burning pastor jailed for refusing to pay $1 bond to protest at mosque

In Dearborn, Mich., anti-Islam Pastor Terry Jones and an assistant were ordered to jail tonight after they refused to pay a $1 peace bond to hold a rally at the largest mosque in North America, the Detroit Free Press reports.

After a two-day trial-like hearing, a jury sided with prosecutors and agreed that Jones would likely "breach the peace" with his planned rally outside the Islamic Center of America. Authorities argued that a riot could erupt.

Posecutors had estimated the cost of additional security at about $46,000. But the judge set the so-called peace bond at just $1.

Jones, 59, head a small, fundamentalist Christian congregation in Gainesville, Fla. He has gained notoriety for burning the Muslim holy book last month, leading to deadly riots in Afghanistan, including the killing of U.N. workers.

During the hearing, he said that he and and another pastor intended to protest jihad and Sharia law and did not plan to burn Qurans or images of the prophet Mohammed.

"We are not criminals," said Jones, dressed in faded blue jeans, a black Harley Davison T-shirt and worn motorcycle jacket. "All we want to do is exercise our First Amendment rights."

Counter-demonstrators have been holding their own rally today near the courthouse.

The Free Press, a sister paper to USA TODAY, is live blogging events.

See our earlier post today about Jones accidentally firing his .40-caliber handgun last night.

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