Crime Archive

Kenyans will elect a new president Dec. 27 in polls that are expected to be the most competitive since the East African country gained independence from Britain 44 years ago. More than 14 million voters, the highest number ever, will pick from nine contestants for Kenya’s top seat and from about 2,600 candidates for the country’s 210 parliamentary seats. But the real presidential contest will be between friends-turned-foes Mwai Kibaki, the incumbent, and Raila Odinga, a maverick opposition leader. Kibaki, the country’s third president, fell out with Odinga after the former allegedly reneged on a power-sharing agreement sculpted by a […]

WASHINGTON – It remains unclear whether Congress will support the Bush administration’s request for an initial $550 million to help Mexico and other Latin American countries beef up their law enforcement and militaries in the fight against drug cartels and other organized crime. The proposed aid package, known as the “Merida Initiative,” has been hailed by the White House and Mexican President Felipe Calderón as “a new paradigm” of strengthened law enforcement and counternarcotics relations between the United States and Mexico. However, the initiative has no shortage of skeptics here and in Mexico, where, according to one Democratic staffer with […]

BEIRUT, Lebanon — One looks in vain for names in the 22-page report. Last week, Special Investigator Serge Brammertz submitted the ninth U.N. report on the murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. But hopes that the 45-year-old Belgian prosecutor would name suspects went unfulfilled. Invoking the confidentiality of the investigations, for the seventh time since assuming his responsibilities in January 2006, Brammertz declined to identify the possible perpetrators of the crime. Brammertz’s predecessor, Detlev Mehlis, had proceeded otherwise. In the first report of the United Nations International Independent Investigation Commission (UNIIIC) in […]