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Politics : Israel to U.S. : Now Deal with Syria and Iran -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (2408)	10/18/2003 9:40:54 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 22250

OT: Trial over murder of Belgian leader Ian Black in Brussels Saturday October 18, 2003 The Guardian The trial of eight men charged with Belgium's most sensational political killing, the 1991 murder of the former deputy prime minister, Andre Cools, began in Liege yesterday. There was heavy security as jury selection started. In 1998 a Tunisian court jailed two Tunisians for 25 years for the killing, but it has never been established who ordered the assassination of the socialist politician.The case has come to symbolise Belgium's chaotic and slow-moving justice system. Only five of the eight suspects appeared in court yesterday. The others remain at large. A ninth, Alain Van der Biest, a former minister for the Walloon regional government and a protégé of Mr Cools, committed suicide last year. The eight are charged with paying the killers, bringing them to Belgium, housing and arming them and disposing of the evidence. The hitmen were hired via a chain of contacts reaching from Liege to Sicily. Opinions are divided over whether Mr Cools was killed because he was outraged that Van der Biest and others were taking backhanders - allegedly from the proceeds of a £312m bond robbery at Brussels airport - or because he was annoyed the money was not going into party funds. The investigation laid bare corruption scandals in the socialist party, including the payment of bribes by the Italian aircraft maker Agusta in return for a Belgian military contract. That led to the resignation of four socialist ministers, the suicide of an army general and the downfall of the former deputy prime minister Willy Claes as Nato secretary-general in 1995. The trial is expected to last two months. guardian.co.uk Latin America and Africa both have their own banana republics... and Europe's got a banana kingdom! That guy André Cools was murdered by his own political mafia with the help of Belgium's police apparatus. Gus