World Digest: Feb. 4, 2016
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Version 0 of 1. A Jerusalem court handed out lengthy prison sentences Thursday to two Israeli youths found guilty of kidnapping and brutally murdering a Palestinian teenager in a revenge attack during the summer of 2014. The Israeli teens, now ages 16 and 17, were found guilty in November of murdering Mohammad Abu Khieder, 17, who was abducted from outside his family home in East Jerusalem and burned alive in a nearby forest. On Thursday, the 17-year-old was given the 25-year maximum life sentence for a minor with another three years added. The younger teen received 21 years. A few days before the murder, the bodies of three students of a yeshiva, or Jewish religious school, were found in a field in the West Bank. They had been kidnapped and killed by two Palestinians affiliated with the Islamist militant group Hamas. The teens sentenced Thursday and their ringleader, Yosef Haim Ben-David, 31, admitted to police that Abu Khieder’s murder was a revenge attack. Ben-David, for whom the court is considering a claim of insanity, is likely to be sentenced next week. — Ruth Eglash The head of the airline whose jet was damaged in an explosion shortly after takeoff from Somalia said Thursday that investigators have found what appears to be residue from explosives. The discovery furthers the possibility that a bomb caused the blast that tore through the Airbus 321 carrying 74 people shortly after takeoff from the Somali capital, Mogadishu. “There’s a residue, they’re saying, of explosives,” Daallo Airlines chief executive Mohammed Ibrahim Yassin said. “But that cannot really make 100 percent that it’s a bomb.” He said he expects initial findings to be released within days. Somalia’s government confirmed Thursday that a passenger who had been missing since the explosion had died. It did not say how he died. — Associated Press The body of an Italian student who disappeared in Cairo was found half-clothed by the roadside with cigarette burns and other signs of torture, a senior Egyptian prosecutor said Thursday. In Rome, Italy’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Egyptian ambassador to express concern over the death of Giulio Regeni, 28, who disappeared on Jan. 25. The body of the Cambridge University doctoral student has been taken to a Cairo morgue, a morgue worker and Egyptian security officials said. Officials said an investigation had begun. Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi requested that Regeni’s body be returned as soon as possible; a source from his office said an Italian police team had been sent to Cairo. Regeni disappeared after leaving his home in Cairo to meet a friend, another friend said. His body was found at the start of the main road between Cairo and Alexandria, security officials said. — Reuters Man admits killing former Dutch official: A man accused of killing a former Dutch health minister admitted the slaying at a court hearing Thursday, claiming that it was an “order from God” because the minister was responsible for the Netherlands’ euthanasia law. The suspect, identified as Bart van U., is accused of stabbing to death Els Borst two years ago. Borst drafted the nation’s 2002 law legalizing euthanasia. A prosecution spokeswoman said Van U.’s statement would be taken into account in a psychiatric assessment. — From news services |