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American contractor accused in Afghan's death

By wire services
Published October 1, 2005

KABUL, Afghanistan - Guards for a U.S. security firm obstructed an investigation into whether one of its supervisors fatally shot his Afghan interpreter, an Afghan police chief said Friday.

Noor Ahmad, 37, was shot in the head Tuesday at the compound of his employer, U.S. Protection and Investigations, at Tut village in Farah province, police and provincial officials said.

The American accused of shooting him reportedly worked as the local supervisor for USPI, a Houston company that provides security for foreign contractors.

"An American guy shot his translator. Next morning, a helicopter came and took the foreigner to Kabul," said Allah Udin Noorzai, a provincial police chief. He had no details about who had taken him.

The Interior Ministry in Kabul confirmed that a foreigner allegedly shot an Afghan working for USPI and had been taken to Kabul, but gave no further details. The man's name was not released.

Noorzai said he sent a criminal investigation team to the USPI compound, but security guards blocked his men from entering.

Bill Dupre, USPI's country operations manager in Kabul, said the company had no comment.

The U.S. Embassy said it was looking into media reports about the case. The American military said it had no information.

Foreigners working on civilian projects are generally subject to Afghan law, but the legal status of security contractors is unclear. U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan come under American military jurisdiction.

MIAMI - The season's 19th tropical depression formed over the far eastern Atlantic Ocean on Friday but posed no immediate threat to land.

Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami said the system could develop into a tropical storm by today.

At 5 p.m. Friday, the depression had sustained winds of 30 mph and was centered 665 miles west-southwest of the Cape Verde Islands. It was moving west at only 2 mph, forecasters said.

The depression would be named Tropical Storm Stan if it strengthens into the 18th named system of the season.

Meanwhile, in the Pacific Ocean, newly formed Hurricane Otis swept toward a sparsely populated stretch of Baja California on Friday, forcing dozens of people to evacuate low-lying neighborhoods on the outskirts of the resort city of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

Extended forecasts expected a weakened Otis to bring rain to parts of the southwestern United States by early next week.

Otis was the 15th named Pacific storm of the season. Pacific storm names are doled out independently of named storms in the Atlantic.

The Category 1 storm was moving at 8 mph and had maximum sustained winds of about 85 mph late Friday. It was about 120 miles southwest of Los Cabos, according to the hurricane center.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - In a case that shocked South Africa for its brutality, a white farmer was sentenced to life in prison Friday for the murder of one of his black workers, who was attacked with machetes, tied up and thrown into a lion enclosure, where he was devoured.

Many in the courtroom in the northern town of Phalaborwa whistled and cheered in approval when Mark Scott-Crossley, 37, was led out after the sentencing.

Judge George Maluleke sentenced Scott-Crossley to the maximum of life in prison for the killing of Nelson Chisale, 41. Scott-Crossley's employee and co-defendant, Simon Mathebula, was sentenced to 15 years because the judge found he had been coerced. They were convicted in April.

JAPAN: A Japanese court on Friday handed a rare victory to opponents of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to a controversial war shrine, ruling that the visits violated Japan's constitutional separation of religion and the state.

[Last modified October 1, 2005, 01:46:16]