Nation in brief

Mexican on death row gets clemency

OKLAHOMA CITY - Gov. Brad Henry commuted the death sentence of a convicted murderer from Mexico to life without parole Thursday, in a case where state and foreign officials alike said the inmate's life should be spared.

Henry's decision came the day the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals voted 3-2 to give Osbaldo Torres an indefinite stay of execution. The court granted Torres' request for a lower-court hearing on the state's failure to inform him of his right to contact the Mexican consulate after his arrest.

The governor's decision, which makes the appeals court decision moot, came after the Pardon and Parole Board recommended clemency for Torres on May 7. Torres had been scheduled to die Tuesday for the 1993 deaths of Francisco Morales and Maria Yanez.

Torres, 29, is one of 51 Mexicans on death row nationwide cited in a March 31 ruling by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands. The world court found the inmates' rights were violated because they were not told they could receive help from their governments.

WASHINGTON - The American government worked closely with Nazi war criminals and collaborators, allowing many to live in the United States after World War II, and paying others who worked for West Germany's secret service, according to declassified documents from the FBI, CIA and other agencies released Thursday.

The disclosures came as part of a project to place more than 8-million government documents in the public domain, under legislation passed by Congress in 1998.

"Although we have long known the outlines of the U.S. government's covert dealings with Nazi war criminals, the full scope of these relationships has never been fully documented or revealed," said Elizabeth Holtzman, a member of the working group and a former congresswoman from New York. "Until the work of the IWG, these relationships remained one of the great post-World War II secrets."

The 240,000 pages released Thursday reveal a pattern of U.S. cooperation with questionable people, protected on the grounds that they had valuable intelligence to offer during the Cold War.

WASHINGTON - A national Muslim advocacy group announced Thursday that it is asking Muslims around the world to sign an online petition condemning terrorism as "un-Islamic" and a betrayal of their faith.

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said that its petition, titled "Not in the Name of Islam," is "designed to disassociate the faith of Islam from the violent acts of a few Muslims."

CAIR noted that its initiative was announced two days after a videotape showing the decapitation of an American in Iraq "shocked television viewers worldwide." The tape showed Nicholas Berg's masked assailant shouting "God is Great."

The online petition, posted at CAIR's Web site - www.cair-net.org - is a way for Muslims to demonstrate how they feel about Berg's killing, said CAIR executive director Nihad Awad.

WASHINGTON - Seeking to jump-start a flagging Air Force deal to acquire 100 air refueling tankers from the Boeing Co., the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday reasserted the need for the aging tanker fleet to be replaced as soon as possible.

Language inserted into a $422-billion defense authorization bill would require the Air Force secretary to enter into a multiyear contract for new tankers. It also would allow the deal with Boeing to go forward immediately, waiving a requirement for a lengthy analysis of alternatives that could delay the tanker deal until 2007.

MacDill Air Force Base had been scheduled to get 16 new tankers in 2010 and 16 in 2011.

World and national headlines

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times 490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 Contact the Times | Privacy Policy Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright