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Pope hears Holocaust denial plea

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published December 14, 2006

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert asked Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday to urge Christians to protest Holocaust denials, Israeli government officials said. During their meeting at the Vatican, Benedict told Olmert he would consider the request, which followed an Iranian conference questioning the Nazi genocide against the Jews. Benedict met with Olmert alone for 35 minutes and praised Israel's restraint in Gaza, Israeli spokesman Jacob Galanti said. Olmert's request that the pope denounce Holocaust denials in his next homily came one day after the Vatican issued a statement calling on people to remember the Nazi campaign of extermination.

Journalists jailed over cartoons

A court Wednesday sentenced an editor and another journalist from a weekly newspaper to four months in prison for reprinting Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed. It was the third sentence against journalists handed down in recent weeks over the controversy. The cartoons were first printed in Denmark, then in several European papers, and satirized Islam's prophet as violent and backward. Several Yemeni newspapers also printed the cartoons to show what the controversy was about. The court sentenced editor Abdel Karim Sabra and journalist Abdel Rahman Al-Abed, both from the weekly Hurriyah, to four months in prison for "defaming the prophet."

Pastor arrested on kidnap charges

A self-styled preacher who claimed to help couples conceive "miracle babies" through prayer was arrested Wednesday on a warrant to face kidnapping charges in his native Kenya. A Nairobi magistrate issued an international arrest warrant for Gilbert Deya, 54, in September 2005 for his alleged role in a suspected international child trafficking ring. Deya has claimed to help infertile couples conceive "through the power of prayer and the Lord Jesus" but DNA tests have showed that 20 of his "miracle babies" had no genetic connection to their supposed mothers. Nairobi police have said the preacher blessed infertile or post-menopausal women and sent them to Kenya, purportedly to give birth. The women claimed to have delivered babies in as little as two months and then applied to authorities to take them back to London.

Priest convicted for genocide role

A Catholic priest, the Rev. Athanase Seromba, was convicted Wednesday of participating in Rwanda's 1994 genocide by ordering militiamen to set fire to a church and then bulldoze it while 2,000 people were huddled inside. Seromba was sentenced by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to 15 years in prison, although he will get credit for four years already served. The tribunal is based in Arusha, Tanzania. Seromba was charged with directing a militia that "attacked with traditional arms and poured fuel through the roof of the church, while gendarmes and communal police launched grenades and killed the refugees." After failing to kill all the people inside, Seromba ordered the demolition of the church. Last month, the tribunal sentenced a Catholic nun to 30 years in jail for helping militias kill hundreds of people in a hospital. In 2001, two nuns were convicted by a Belgian court for aiding and abetting the murders.

[Last modified December 14, 2006, 00:51:46]