India hangs man for 1993 terror attacks
NEW DELHI — Ignoring pleas and petitions by civil society groups, India on Thursday hanged Yakub Abdul Razak Memon, an accountant convicted of supporting the 1993 Mumbai bombings that killed 257 people in the country’s worst terrorist attack.
Memon was executed on his 53rd birthday at the prison in western India where he had been incarcerated since 1994. Memon’s lawyers had mounted a last-ditch effort to save him, including arguments at the Supreme Court just two hours before the sentence was carried out.
Prominent citizens, including retired Supreme Court judges, had urged President Pranab Mukerjee to commute Memon’s sentence. A total of 100 people have been convicted, and death sentences were issued for 10 of them but were commuted to life in prison.
Executions are rare in India only two others have taken place, both of terror convicts like Memon. The earlier conducted in extreme secrecy after the fact.
U.S. sanctions Russia
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed further Russia and Ukraine-related sanctions on Thursday, adding associates of a billionaire Russian gas trader, Crimean port operators and former Ukrainian officials to its list of those it is penalizing in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
The measures are meant to compel Russia to comply with peacekeeping commitments signed this year in Minsk that would end fighting in eastern Ukraine, in which pro-Russian separatists are battling Ukrainian forces.
PKK hits Turkish forces
ANKARA, Turkey — Kurdish rebels have attacked Turkish security forces in two separate assaults in southeast Turkey, killing five people, officials said. One rebel also was killed.
Violence has flared in the region in the past week, with Turkey launching raids against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, positions in northern Iraq and southeast Turkey, and the rebels escalating attacks against Turkey’s security forces. The fighting has shattered a fragile peace process that the two sides started in 2012.
Ai to travel to Berlin
BEIJING — Last week, Chinese officials returned Ai Weiwei’s passport, ending a four-year travel ban. On Thursday, the art-world darling and Chinese government critic boarded a flight to Germany to visit his 6year old son.
China’s most famous artist has spent much of his life testing the limits of free expression in the People’s Republic, and musing, very publicly, about the results.
Pacific talks at impasse
LAHAINA, Hawaii — Pacific trading partners are deadlocked over intellectual property protections, including monopoly periods for next-generation drugs, Japanese Economy Minister Akira Amari said on Wednesday.
He said talks between ministers from the 12 countries negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership would continue Thursday.