UN tribunal names Hariri suspects

29 July 2011 Last updated at 15:36 GMT Wanted: Four men accused of murdering Rafik Hariri A UN-backed tribunal has released the names of the four indicted suspects in the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

They are all connected with the Lebanese Shia movement, Hezbollah.

The wanted men are Mustafa Amine Badreddine, a senior Hezbollah figure, Salim Jamil Ayyash, Hussein Hassan Oneissi and Assad Hassan Sabra.

Hezbollah is a key part of the Lebanese government and has said it will not allow the men to be arrested.

Their identities had already been leaked, as had their association with Hezbollah.

The tribunal said it was releasing the information in order to facilitate the arrest of the men.

Pre-trial judge Daniel Fransen ordered the lifting of confidentiality on the names, aliases, biographical information, photographs and charges against the individuals named in the indictment, the tribunal said in a statement.

Following the issue of the arrest warrants, the Lebanese authorities have until 11 August to inform the tribunal of the action they will take in response.

Rafik Hariri and 22 others were killed in February 2005 in central Beirut when a huge bomb went off near his motorcade.

The assassination plunged Lebanon into a series of political crises, killings and bombings that led to sectarian clashes in 2008, dragging the country to the brink of civil war.

Hariri's son, Saad, has welcomed the indictments and described them as a "historic moment" for Lebanon.

However, there are widespread doubts about whether the authorities will act on the indictments and arrest the wanted men, says the BBC's correspondent in Beirut, in view of the influence wielded by Hezbollah in government.

Earlier this month, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the authorities would never arrest his members.

He dismissed the accusations as unfounded and a failed attempt to bring down Lebanon's new, Hezbollah-backed government.

"They cannot find them or arrest them in 30 days or 60 days, or in a year, two years, 30 years or 300 years," Nasrallah said at the time.

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Six suspects lynched in Guatemala

2 July 2011 Last updated at 17:42 GMT The lynchings happened some 220km (135 miles) north of the capital, Guatemala City Six people have been lynched and killed by members of an indigenous community in northern Guatemala, officials say.

Emergency services said local residents of San Pedro Carcha in Alta Verapaz province marched five men and a woman to a corn field, where they were beaten, blindfolded and shot dead.

The villagers suspected the six of killing a local businessman.

Prosecutors say 194 people have been lynched since 2004, mainly in areas where there was little police presence.

Guatemala's Prosecutors Office for Human Rights says the cases of lynchings have been rising year on year, with a marked increase in indigenous communities, where there is little trust in the authorities.

In the latest case, villagers tracked down a man known as The Clown, who they believed was behind the murder of local businessman Nicolas Choc on Thursday.

They beat him until he confessed and revealed the names of his five alleged accomplices, who were then also hunted down and shot dead.

Police said the locals prevented them from entering the village, but did allow emergency services to take the bodies to the morgue.

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Spain arrests Anonymous suspects

10 June 2011 Last updated at 14:29 GMT Anonymous has carried out web attacks to help Wikileaks Three suspected members of the Anonymous hacking group have been arrested in Spain.

The trio are said to have been involved in co-ordinating the group's activity in that country.

The arrests were made simultaneously in three Spanish cities - Barcelona, Valencia and Almeria.

Anonymous has claimed responsibility for attacks on Sony, Spanish banks and co-ordinated action in defence of whistle-blowing site Wikileaks.

A statement from the Spanish national police force said that a computer seized in the home of one person it arrested was used in the hacks.

The arrests were the culmination of an investigation that began in October 2010.

It involved Spanish cyber police combing through millions of lines of chat logs to identify who was behind the group's activities.

Some of the attacks made by Anonymous members used a web-based tool called Loic to bombard target sites with data. The websites of PayPal, Mastercard and Amazon were all targeted using this tool.

It seems that Loic did a poor job of hiding the identity of the people using it. It is believed that some police forces have already moved against the group based on this information.

Arrests have been made in the US, UK and Holland of Anonymous members, prior to the raids in Spain.

Anonymous grew out of the online picture sharing site 4Chan and describes itself as a group of concerned internet citizens.

As well as attacking sites that it perceives as not supporting Wikileaks, the loosely organised collective has also attacked government sites in Tunisia and Egypt to aid popular protest movements.

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