SYRIA
Ex-vice president accused of treason
DAMASCUS — Syria's parliament recommended Saturday that former Vice President Abdul-Halim Khaddam be tried for treason after he claimed President Bashar Assad had threatened a former Lebanese prime minister months before he was assassinated.
The bill recommending the trial was passed unanimously at the end of a daylong parliament session during which members accused Khaddam of treason and lying.
The measure was sent to the Justice Ministry so it could prepare a case against Khaddam.
Faisal Kalthoum, head of the parliamentary Constitutional and Judiciary Committee, said in a statement broadcast on Syrian state television that the recommendation was binding on the Justice Ministry.
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EGYPT
25 dead in clearing of Sudanese camp
CAIRO — The death toll from Egypt's violent clearing of a Sudanese migrant camp rose to at least 25 Saturday as the presidential spokesman expressed sorrow and garbage collectors moved in to clear away the trash of a failed three-month protest.
The Sudanese refugees were gone, but a picture of two of them, a couple holding hands on their wedding day, remained until it was scooped into rubbish bins with the rest of the rubble.
As many as 20,000 riot police swinging clubs swept into the tiny Cairo park to evict 2,000 or so Sudanese squatters early Friday. Police had spent much of the night dousing migrants with water cannons stationed on all four corners of camp. A protest leader said seven children were among those killed.
With scenes from the violent encounter repeatedly playing on television news channels around the world, a spokesman for President Hosni Mubarak expressed the country's "sorrow and pain for all the victims."
RUSSIA
Ex-nuclear minister charged with fraud
MOSCOW — A former nuclear energy minister under indictment in the United States was jailed in Moscow Saturday after his extradition from Switzerland. He was charged with fraud and abuse of power.
Yevgeny Adamov was flown to Moscow from Zurich airport late Friday after a Swiss court had ruled that he should be extradited to Russia rather than the United States even though he faces U.S. charges of conspiracy to transfer stolen money and securities, conspiracy to defraud the United States.
YEMEN
Kidnappers release ex-diplomat, family
SAN'A — A former German diplomat and his family were released unharmed Saturday, three days after being kidnapped by tribesmen while on holiday in the rugged mountains of eastern Yemen, officials said.
Juergen Chrobog, a former German foreign minister, his wife and their three children were flown from the area after they were let go, German and Yemeni officials said.
The kidnappers freed the family after Yemen's government agreed to hold talks about a group of detained fellow tribesmen, said another negotiator, Nasser Ba'oum, deputy governor of Shabwa province.
