WASHINGTON – Pentagon prosecutors have charged an alleged al-Qaeda operative with capital murder in helping to plan the 1998 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania, the first time prosecutors have sought the death penalty at a military commission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for anyone other than an alleged conspirator in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who was held in secret CIA custody for more than two years before arriving at Guantanamo Bay in late 2006, was accused of plotting and carrying out the embassy bombing as part of his work for al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. The attack, on Aug. 7, 1998, killed at least 11 people and injured nearly 100 more.
The Washington Post
Tornadoes, floods,
snow wallop Midwest
OKLAHOMA CITY – A strong storm system rolled across the nation's midsection yesterday, spawning damaging tornadoes, flooding roads with heavy rains and dropping snow several days into spring.
Residents in northern Oklahoma County began cleaning up from a twister that touched down before dawn and tore a roof off a house and damaged other buildings. No injuries were reported.
National Weather Service meteorologist Rick Smith said an investigation showed the damage was caused by a short-lived tornado.
Several roads in northwest Oklahoma County were closed by high water. Pawhuska in far northern Oklahoma received 3.88 inches of rain.
Heavy rains moving across Illinois delayed hundreds of flights. The Chicago Airport System said that more than 450 flights at O'Hare International Airport had been canceled and that delays stretched to two hours.
Snow also fell across parts of Minnesota and Colorado.
Associated Press
Freed inmate held
in fatal home invasion
NEW BRITAIN, Conn. – A sex offender recently released from prison invaded a home, shot two women meeting for morning coffee and abducted one of them, whose body was found about 10 miles away, police said yesterday.
Leslie Williams, 31, told police that he entered the unlocked home Sunday morning looking for money and a car, but that when two women inside saw his face, he had no choice but to shoot them, according to an arrest warrant.
Carol Larese, 65, was seriously wounded while her visiting friend, MaryEllen Welsh, 62, was abducted.
Police said they arrested Williams when he crashed Welsh's car about 25 miles away in Watertown after a police chase.
Welsh's body was found in a wooded area of Bristol early yesterday, Sgt. Darren Pearson said.
Associated Press
Court won't review
office-search ruling
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it would not review a lower court's decision that an FBI raid on Rep. William Jefferson's congressional office violated the Constitution, a ruling federal prosecutors had said could make lawmakers' offices a “sanctuary for crime.”
Without comment, the court decided not to get involved in the legal fight between the Justice Department and Congress over the 2006 search of the Louisiana Democrat's Washington office. Jefferson subsequently was indicted on charges that he solicited more than $500,000 in bribes. He pleaded not guilty, and his case has not yet gone to trial.
Jefferson was indicted without the use of the seized documents, but the Justice Department worried that the ruling would endanger other probes.
The Washington Post
