Page 6
NEWS
Wednesday, June 14,
THE BATTALION
Portrait of an artist
Junior environvental design major, Andrew Smith creates art with oil paints at his painting class on Tues
day. Smith, who has only recently begun painting, has been practicing art his whole life.
Three men acquitted iij
Ireland gun conspiracj
FORT LAUDERDALE,
Fla. (AP) — Three men were
convicted Tuesday of ship
ping weapons to Ireland, but
acquitted of the most serious
charges against them.
Conor Claxton, Martin
Mullan and Anthony Smyth
were acquitted on charges of
shipping weapons to terror
ists and conspiracy to maim
or murder persons in a for
eign country.
If they had been convict
ed of the more serious
charges, they could have
faced up to life in prison.
After the verdict was
read, Claxton turned to his
family and supporters in
the courtroom, smiled and
gave a thumbs-up. He then
hugged his attorney, Fred
Haddad.
Claxton, a 27-year-old
Northern Ireland resident;
Mullan, a 30-year-old
Philadelphia handyman;
and Smyth, a 43-year-old car
salesman in .Weston, a Fort
Lauderdale suburb, were ar
rested last July. All three are
Roman Catholic natives of
Northern Ireland.
They were accused of
buying guns and ammuni
tion in Florida and then
mailing them to Ireland,
where they could be used
against the British govern
ment in Northern Ireland.
Police intercepted 23 pack
ages containing 122 guns
and other weapons alleged
ly mailed by the group.
The weapons and am
munition were intercepted
by investigators in New
York and Ireland. Authori
ties said they had been pur
chased in Florida and
mailed by Smyth, Claxton
and Mullan.
During the monthlong
trial, Claxton insisted that
only he knew about the gun
smuggling and that he did
n't know it was illegal. He
testified that militant Irish-
Americans pushed him to
buy weapons because they
feared Catholics — few of
whom are allowed to own
guns in Northern Ireland —
could be left at the mercy of
the Protestant paramilitary
• Gore >
Vice pr
de
commer
on mi
n
and police forces unde
recent peace accords.
The defense maintil
that the purchases cot]
considered self-defense
en the years of bloodsM
Northern Ireland.
The defense also]
that Mullan didn'tkno«
packages he mailed
Claxton during a fami!
cation contained weap
and that Smyth thoup
was acting as a middle)
for legitimate gun deal-
Smyth's fiancee,iij
han Brown, wasaki
rested and pleadedgd
to one of 33 cop
against her.
She awaits sente - :
this month.
Ra
m;
Italy pardons Turkish gunman
Agca to serve time for killing that took place before pope attack
ROME (AP) — Italy pardoned the
Turkish gunman Tuesday who tried to
kill Pope John Paul II in 1981, and im
mediately moved to transfer him to a
Turkish prison — taking with him the
answers to the mysterious assassina
tion attempt.
Mehmet Ali Agca offered profuse
thanks to the pope, who had personal
ly forgiven and comforted his would-
be killer in a 1983 visit to Agca's prison
cell. The Vatican recently reassured the
government that John Paul supported
clemency for Agca.
"That the granting of pardon
comes during Holy Year celebrations
makes the pope's personal satisfac
tion even more intense," said papal
spokesperson Joaquin Navarro-Valls.
Agca must now serve time in
Turkey for a killing that took place
before the attack on the pope.
On May 13, 1981, Agca pulled a
trigger twice as John Paul rode smiling
and waving in an open car through ex
cited throngs of pilgrims in St. Peter's
Square.
One shot hit the pope's abdomen,
barely missing vital organs. Doctors
say the wound forever weakened the
pope, then an athletic hiker and skier,
now a frail, stooped 80-year-old suf
fering from symptoms of Parkinson's
disease.
The former Soviet bloc was imme
diately suspected in the attack — sus
picions that lingered over the years de
spite denials by former Soviet
President Mikhail Gorbachev and the
onetime spy chief for the former East
Germany.
Soviet spy chiefs were seen as fear
ing the adamantly anti-communist
pope would spur popular revolts
against the Soviet bloc — as John Paul
in fact did, above all in his native
Poland.
Agca had told investigators he acted
at the instigation of the Bulgarian secret
service and the Soviet KGB. But Italian
courts ruled there was insufficient evi
dence to support the accusations, and
Agca himself went on to give widely
varying accounts over his 19 years and
one month behind bars in Italy.
Agca purposefully feigned insani
ty in court to cast doubt on the credi
bility of his own stories, a prosecutor
said Tuesday.
"This extinguishes the last hope of
reaching the truth," prosecutor Anto
nio Marini said of the pardon and ex
tradition.
Committee absolves NATO
of its war crimes in Kosov#
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP)
— The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal
said Tuesday it found no reason to in
vestigate NATO for criminal activity
during its 78-day bombing campaign
in Kosovo last year that killed nearly
500 civilians.
The committee, appointed 13
months ago by war crimes prosecu
tor Carla Del Ponte, reviewed com
plaints by the Yugoslav government
and by international human rights
bodies that the NATO bombing of
civilian convoys and infrastructure
amounted to crimes against human
ity and genocide.
The campaign by the western mili
tary alliance in the spring of 1999 was
intended to force Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic to rein in Serbian
forces trying to evict ethnic Albanians
from the Serbian province of Kosovo.
Del Ponte told the United Nations
last week that she would not initiate
any prosecution for the NATO cam
paign. Amnesty International has re
peatedly charged that NATO "violat
ed the laws of war leading to cases of
unlawful killing of civilians.".
The report released Tuesday gave a
case-by-case justification for declining
to pursue the war crimes allegations.
"We will not open a criminal in
vestigation," the prosecutor said.
Hi
We will not open
a criminal investi
gation. [There
was] no political
motivation, no
political reasons,
just fact and law.”
— Carla Del Ponte
war crimes prosecutor
There was "no political motivation,
no political reasons, just fact and law"
that led to the committee's conclu
sion, she said.
NATO pilots and commanders
were accused of 21 specific incidents of
crime, including the bombingofai'l
voy of 1,000 Albanian refugeesretfl
ing to their homes and thedestrurtl
of the Yugoslav television state I
Belgrade, the capital.
The prosecutor took the unusi
step of publishing the report's!ir; - :-.
to avoid any impression itvvaswfel
washing the allegations.
In its report, the committeeadr
ted its findings were based on pur
statements from NATO and fiwi:
Yugoslav government, andiliab
members did not visit Kowotbr.
firsthand investigation.
When asked (or further ink
tion, the report said, NATO was
sive and refused to answer spe:
questions. ; I
The committee said it foundnol
stances in which purely civiliantarii
were deliberately bombed.
During the campaign, NATO'-; -
planes flew 38,400 sorties and dropfe
23,618 bombs. The committee (■
firmed that among those muiil
were weapons using depleted util
um and cluster bombs, botlil
nounced by human rights.
Texas Ad
Ray M. Bow
return to usi
tor in admis
1996 Hopwi
an end to etl
A&M and c
ties, is overt
"If Hopv
pealed, and
issues to ad
our pre-Ho
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