Taiwan prison standoff ends in suicides
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Six armed inmates who held a warden and guards hostage in a failed bid to escape a prison in southern Taiwan committed suicide early today and all the hostages were freed, a top justice official said.
The Justice Ministry said authorities had rejected the inmates' demands for safe exit from the prison during the hours-long standoff after the inmates seized weapons Wednesday. By the pre-dawn hours of today, the inmates had released all hostages except the warden. They then shot themselves, and the warden was able to walk free, Deputy Justice Minister Chen Ming-tang said.
The ministry did not offer any video or other evidence of the reported suicides.
Chen said "there was no police raid." Four of the inmates shot themselves first, and the remaining two fired additional shots at them to make sure they were dead before shooting themselves, Chen said.
Five prison staff members were slightly injured during the standoff, he said.
The episode started when the inmates -- serving long sentences for burglary, murder and drug crimes -- took four rifles, six handguns and more than 200 bullets from the prison's armory, the ministry said.
The ringleader, Cheng Li-te, belonged to the notorious mafia-type organization Bamboo Union and was serving a 28 ½-year sentence for homicide, the ministry said. The other five inmates were serving sentences ranging from 25 years to life.
Morocco rousts, arrests illegal aliens
RABAT, Morocco -- Moroccan security forces raided a mountain camp and arrested hundreds of illegal aliens in a crackdown aiming to halt continuing attempts by foreigners to reach Europe, activists and officials said Wednesday.
Police officers and riot squads rounded up 1,200 people who had been camping on Mount Gourougou in tents and bused them to remote towns like Taroudant and Rachidia in southern Morocco.
The Interior Ministry said the illegal camps there and elsewhere were being dismantled as part of a new immigration policy. The government Wednesday described the operation as the "liberation" of foreigners forced to live on the mountain by human traffickers.
For the past year, sub-Saharan immigrants have made almost weekly attempts to reach Europe via the two Spanish enclaves on the Moroccan coast, Melilla and Ceuta. Spain says 2,000 crossed into the enclaves in 65 storming attempts last year.
Several hundred made one last attempt Tuesday morning to storm Melilla's fences. Most were repulsed, but Spanish authorities said 35 made it across.
Human-rights organizations have criticized Morocco and Spain for their treatment of the foreigners.
Crematorium's ashes called often 'dirt'
MEXICO CITY -- A crematorium where 60 rotting bodies were found last week often handed mourners floor sweepings instead of their loved ones' ashes, a prosecutor said Wednesday.
But the scene in the southern state of Guerrero was apparently not related to the state's other recent tragedy, the disappearance of 43 college students, he said.
Guerrero state prosecutor Miguel Angel Godinez said Wednesday that the bodies belonged to 34 men and 26 women ages 35-70. The college students were younger.
Godinez said a witness who once worked at the crematorium reported that the facility "swept up ashes, dirt and dust from the floor, and handed that over to families."
Tests are being carried out to identify any uncremated bodies from the facility, and families whose relatives were cremated there may not really have their ashes, officials said.
Belgium sentences Islamic group chiefs
ANTWERP, Belgium -- An Islamic group that recruited youths to fight in Syria was a terrorist organization that wanted to overthrow democracy and impose Shariah law, a Belgian court ruled Wednesday.
The court in Antwerp sentenced Sharia4Belgium's leader, Fouad Belkacem, to 12 years of imprisonment and gave dozens of other members lesser sentences. Some other senior leaders of the group were sentenced to 15 years because judges said that, unlike Belkacem, they were actively involved in terrorism in Syria.
Forty-six Muslims were originally indicted, though only a handful appeared in court. Others are believed to be fighting with Sunni armed groups in Syria or to have died in its civil war.
Belgian police have carried out a string of raids and arrests since a firefight with suspected Islamic terrorists in the eastern industrial town of Verviers, which occurred shortly after terror attacks in Paris last month.
A Section on 02/12/2015