The world in brief

The world in brief

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny (center) enters a cage to attend a Tuesday court hearing in Moscow on defamation charges against him.
(AP)
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny (center) enters a cage to attend a Tuesday court hearing in Moscow on defamation charges against him.
(AP)

Slander fine sought for Russia's Navalny

MOSCOW -- Prosecutors on Tuesday asked a Moscow court to fine jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on charges of defaming a World War II veteran, maintaining pressure on the top Kremlin foe.

Navalny rejects the accusations of slandering the veteran who was featured in a video last year promoting constitutional amendments that allowed an extension of President Vladimir Putin's rule.

Navalny, 44, an anti-corruption investigator and Putin's most prominent critic, was arrested last month upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusation.

Earlier this month, a Moscow court sentenced Navalny to two years and eight months in prison for violating terms of his probation while recuperating in Germany. The sentence stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that Navalny has rejected as fabricated and the European Court of Human Rights has ruled to be unlawful.

During Tuesday's hearings at Moscow's Babushkinsky District Court, prosecutors asked the judge to order Navalny to pay a fine of about $13,000 for slandering the 94-year-old veteran. Navalny rejected the slander charges and described them as part of the authorities' efforts to disparage him.

Rockets kill U.S. coalition worker in Iraq

BAGHDAD -- A U.S.-led coalition contractor was killed and an unspecified number of other civilians were wounded when a barrage of rockets struck outside an airport near where U.S. forces are based in northern Iraq, Iraqi security and coalition officials said.

More than a dozen rockets hit late Monday in areas between the civilian international airport in the city of Irbil in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish-run region and the nearby base hosting U.S. troops.

A little-known Shiite militant group calling itself Saraya Awliya al-Dam, Arabic for Guardians of Blood Brigade, claimed responsibility for the attack.

U.S. Army Col. Wayne Marotto said Tuesday that a civilian contractor with the coalition who was not a U.S. citizen was killed.

Marotto also said a U.S. military service member and eight civilian contractors were wounded in the assault. An unspecified number of Iraqi and Kurdish civilians were wounded as rockets hit busy residential areas close to the airport.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. was pledging its support for investigating the attack.

Turkey vows pursuit of Kurds into Iraq

ANKARA, Turkey -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed Tuesday to expand cross-border operations against Kurdish militants in northern Iraq, after the killing of 13 Turkish soldiers, police and civilians who had been abducted by Kurdish insurgents.

In a speech to his ruling party's supporters, Erdogan also said that the killings have strengthened Turkey's will to form a secure zone along its border in northern Iraq to protect Turkey's frontiers from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party.

The bodies of the 13 victims were discovered in a cave complex in northern Iraq's Gara region, near the Turkish border, during an operation against the Kurdistan Workers' Party, launched Feb. 10, that had aimed to free the hostages.

Officials said 12 of the victims were shot in the head and one died of a shoulder bullet wound. The hostages had been kidnapped inside Turkey in 2015 and 2016.

No charges in bombing, court affirms

BERLIN -- The European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday rejected a complaint against Germany's refusal to prosecute an officer who ordered the deadly bombing in 2009 of two fuel tankers in northern Afghanistan.

Scores of people died when U.S. Air Force jets bombed the tankers hijacked by the Taliban near Kunduz. The strike was ordered by the commander of the German base in Kunduz, Col. Georg Klein, who feared insurgents could use the trucks to carry out attacks.

Contrary to the intelligence on which Klein based his decision, most of those swarming the trucks were local civilians invited by the Taliban to siphon fuel from the vehicles after they had become stuck in a riverbed.

An Afghan man who lost two sons aged 8 and 12 in the airstrike, Abdul Hanan, took the case to the European Court of Human Rights after German authorities declined to prosecute Klein. He alleged that Germany failed to conduct an effective investigation.

The Strasbourg, France-based court rejected the complaints. It found that German federal prosecutors were "able to rely on a considerable amount of material concerning the circumstances and the impact of the airstrike."

It also noted that courts including Germany's highest, the Federal Constitutional Court, rejected cases by Hanan.

-- Compiled by Democrat-Gazette staff from wire reports

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