Argentines shocked by verdicts in sex slave trial

Un grupo de mujeres protesta frente a la representación del gobierno de la provincia de Tucumán en Buenos Aires, el miércoles 12 de diciembre de 2012. La exoneración de 13 acusados en un caso de esclavitud sexual ha provocado indignación en todo el país (AP Foto/Víctor R. Caivano) Susana Trimarco, center, listens to the verdict during the trial of the alleged kidnappers of her daughter Marita Veron in San Miguel de Tucuman, Argentina, Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2012. The 13 defendants, who were charged with kidnapping and forcing Veron to be a prostitute in 2002, were found innocent. (AP Photo/Atilio Orellana)

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — The acquittal of 13 people accused in the disappearance of a young woman who was allegedly kidnapped and forced into prostitution for "VIP clients" spread shock and outrage across Argentina on Wednesday, prompting street protests and calls by political leaders to impeach the three judges who delivered the verdict.

Many called the ruling a setback for Argentina's efforts to combat sex trafficking, which began largely as a result of Susana Trimarco's one-woman, decade-long quest to find her missing daughter, Maria de los Angeles "Marita" Veron. Her attorneys said she would pursue appeals.

Trimarco's search exposed an underworld of organized crime figures who operate brothels with protection from authorities across Argentina.

Security Minister Nilda Garre called the verdict "a tremendous slap in the face for the prospect of justice."

"It's not only a reversal for this particular case of the kidnapping and disappearance of Marita Veron, that made society feel deeply the drama of this kind of 21st century slavery, covered up for decades by the customs of a network of machista culture," she said.

It also "renders invisible the suffering of the victims of human-trafficking networks and sexual exploitation, who gave such courageous testimony during the trial, and consecrates judicial impunity for these crimes," Garre said.

Other officials also rallied around Veron's mother, denouncing the verdicts and praising government efforts to save women from prostitution.

"Today, more than ever, we stand united with Susana and her family in their quest to find Marita and we honor the courageous work she has done to defend the victims and the survivors of human trafficking in Argentina and all over the world," U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Ana Duque-Higgins said.

President Cristina Fernandez personally called her to express her surprise and outrage.

"I thought I would find her destroyed, but I found her more together than ever, more committed to keep fighting," the president said. "I told her, 'Susana you can always count on me,' and she told me 'President don't worry, I'm going to keep fighting."

Fernandez also said that while she can't prove it, she's sure that judicial corruption influenced the verdicts, showing the need to reform how judges are picked and allowed to remain in their jobs. Political rivals have called this campaign an attack on judicial independence.

Trimarco's lawyers said the verdict shows that impunity still reigns, and they said they would pursue appeals.

"The reality is that the police are not investigating Marita's disappearance. It's Susana Trimarco who is investigating and it's been this way from the beginning," attorney Carlos Garmendia told The Associated Press.

"The Marita case is emblematic. As a result, much was learned about trafficking networks,

how they move (people), how they operate," he said.

When Veron disappeared a decade ago, sexual exploitation and people-trafficking got much less attention around the world, let alone in northwestern Argentina, where she was allegedly kept as a sex slave by an organized crime ring with close ties to authorities in the provinces of Tucuman and La Rioja.

Much of the case was built years later, as Trimarco's efforts produced witnesses who said they suffered alongside Veron in the brothels. One said she saw Veron being beaten; another said she saw her being held captive to provide sex to VIP clients.

Andrea D., one of these women, testified that she had seen Veron with her hair dyed blonde wearing blue-tinted contacts at a brothel in La Rioja. She said she had been kidnapped at gunpoint and forced into prostitution by the same organized crime ring, and testified that some of the accused said Marita had been sold off to brothels in Spain.

Defense lawyers dismissed the women's testimony as the lies of unreliable witnesses, and the lack of any physical evidence linking the defendants to Veron proved decisive, the judges said in a brief explanation from the bench. A fuller written justification for their verdicts is expected to be made public in several weeks.

"It's obvious that this process made mistakes," Garmendia acknowledged. "Above all, this ruling is a message that the trafficking business will continue as usual."

Some of Wednesday's street protests became violent, with people throwing eggs and trying to vandalize provincial offices in Tucuman and Buenos Aires. Trimarco called on her supporters to keep the peace, even as she expressed her anger at a news conference Wednesday, accusing the judges of taking bribes.

The lead trial judge, Alberto Piedrabuena, didn't respond to the bribery allegations, but he countered in a local radio interview that the evidence failed to resolve reasonable doubts or overcome the principle of being innocent until proven guilty.

Prostitution remains legal in Argentina, but managing brothels and trafficking in people have been federal crimes since 2008, under a law Congress passed after lobbying by Trimarco.

Garre credited her ministry's enforcement of this law with saving 938 people last year from trafficking — 215 people from the sex trade and 723 from other workplace exploitation — and more than 800 so far this year.

Hundreds of women also have been saved by a foundation Trimarco created in her daughter's name in 2008 with seed money from the U.S. State Department's "Women of Courage" award. The foundation also provides legal help, but its lawyers have found that proving sex slavery is difficult without full support from the same police who often get paid to protect prostitution rings.

To date, the foundation has helped 20 former sex-trafficking victims bring cases against their captors, but they have yet to win a single case. Of these, 12 resulted in federal charges, but a handful were bounced back to even more uncertain justice in provincial courts around Argentina.

"They don't investigate. There's a lack of commitment and capability," said Agustin Araoz Teran, one of the foundation's lawyers, who called the Tuesday night's verdicts "an act of cowardice."

Teran joined Trimarco's movement after his father, a juvenile court judge in Tucuman, was shot to death in his home in 2004 after investigating local police officers who were allegedly freeing juvenile delinquents so that they could peddle drugs on their (the police's) behalf.

114 countries back new Syrian coalition

Moaz al-Khatib, head of a new coalition of Syrian opposition groups arrives at a meeting of the Friends of the Syrian People in Marrakech, Morocco, Wednesday Dec. 12, 2012. The Syrian opposition called for "real support" and not just recognition on Wednesday, hours after the U.S. declared its new coalition was the "legitimate representative" of its country's people. Bnner behind reads: 4th meeting of the group of "Friends of the Syrian People". (AP Photo/Abdeljalil Bounhar)

MARRAKECH, Morocco (AP) — More than 100 countries on Wednesday recognized a new Syrian opposition coalition, further isolating the regime and opening the way for greater humanitarian assistance to the forces battling Bashar Assad.

The opposition has been under intense international pressure to create a more organized and representative body to receive foreign aid, so it formed the Syrian National Coalition in Doha, Qatar, in November, and it was widely applauded at the conference in Morocco.

"With every day that passes, the regime's hold on power weakens. Territory slips from its grasp. The opposition becomes more unified and organized," said U.S. Deputy Secretary of State for the Middle East William Burns. His boss, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, was expected to attend the conference but canceled following an illness.

"We look to the coalition to continue creating more formal structures within the opposition and to accelerate planning for a democratic political transition that protects the rights, the dignity and the aspirations of all Syrians and all communities," Burns said. He also announced that the leadership of the new coalition has been invited to Washington.

As the conference was taking place, an explosion occurred near the Syrian Interior Ministry in Damascus, according to state TV, possibly another audacious rebel attack at the center of the regime's power. Fighting has intensified in the southern districts of the Syrian capital and its suburbs.

The world's recognition of the Libyan opposition gave it a huge boost in the battle against Moammar Gadhafi last year and paved the way for Western airstrikes. Military intervention does not appear to be in the cards for Syria, however, where the government has the powerful backing of Russia, China and Iran.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius called the "Friends of the Syrian People" conference meeting inMarrakech, Morocco, "extraordinary progress." He noted that the European Union is now renewing its weapons embargo on Syria every three months, rather than annually, to be more flexible as the situation on the ground changes.

"We want to have the ability to continue or to change our attitude on this point. The fact that the coalition, which is asking for the right to defend itself, is now being recognized by a hundred countries — yesterday the U.S. and first France — I think this is a very important point."

The conference's final statement said Assad, Syria's president, has lost all legitimacy but stopped short of calling for him to step down, something attending ministers did say individually. The statement also warned that any use of chemical weapons "would draw a serious response" from the international community.

"I believe that of all the meetings we have had so far for the friends of Syria, this will turn out to be the most significant," British Foreign Secretary William Hague said at the final news conference.

The Syrian military's recent movement of chemical weapons prompted the United States to warn Assad that he would be "held accountable" if his forces used them against the rebels.

In Marrakech, conference members announced new humanitarian assistance for Syrians, including $100 million from Saudi Arabia and a fund to be managed by Germany and the United Arab Emirates for the reconstruction of the country after Assad falls. The U.S. announced $14 million in humanitarian aid as well.

Participants expressed worry over the 2 million displaced people in the country as well as the estimated 40,000 dead in 21 months of fighting.

Western countries have been reluctant to send arms to Syria, however. That's not the least because of their experience in Libya, where the West actively backed one side in a civil war in a country that later became awash in militant groups.

Syrian opposition members have repeatedly asked for increased military assistance.

"We need not only bread to help our people," opposition member Saleem Abdul Aziz al Meslet told The Associated Press. "We need support for our Syrian army. We need to speed up things and get rid of thisregime."

Part of the problem, however, is that the many of the recent battlefield successes by the rebels appear to be by groups with jihadi tendencies, like Jabhat al-Nusra, which the U.S. declared had ties to al-Qaida and put on the terrorism watch list.

The move caused a stir among the Syrian opposition.

In his speech at the conference, the newly selected president of the Syrian National Coalition, Mouaz al-Khatib, urged the U.S. to "reconsider" the designation since the Jabhat al-Nusra group was performing a valuable service in the battle against the regime.

The West fears that Islamist fighters will come to dominate the revolt. They have been at the vanguard of the conflict, in part because of their greater fighting experience. They also have claimed responsibility for a string of bomb attacks striking at the very heart of the regime, such as Wednesday's explosion in Damascus.

"The step that we took with regard to the designation of the al-Nusra Front raises an alarm about a very different kind of future for Syria, about the direction that a group like al-Nusra will try to take Syria to impose its will and threaten the socials fabric of Syria," Burns told journalists.

In his speech at the conference, al-Khatib did condemn "all forms of extremism" — a veiled reference to the jihadi groups operating in the country. He specifically called for reconciliation with the country's Alawite minority, from which Assad comes, and urged Alawites to launch a campaign of civil disobedience against the regime.

"We call on them to accept the extended hand and work together against the violence of the regime," he said.

Why more people didn't die in Clackamas mall shooting

Improved police practices and greater public awareness about what to do in an 'active shooter scenario' may have limited casualties during the Clackamas mall shooting Tuesday in Portland, Ore.

This photo provided by the Clackamas County Sheriff's Department shows Jacob Tyler Roberts, the suspect in a shooting at an Oregon Mall on Tuesday Dec. 11, 2012. Roberts, who killed two people and himself in the shooting rampage, was 22 years old and used a stolen rifle from someone he knew, authorities said Wednesday. Roberts had armed himself with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and had several fully loaded magazines when he arrived at a Portland mall on Tuesday, said Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts. (AP Photo/Clackamas County Sheriff's Department)

Citizens' coolheadedness and individual preparation for coping with gunfire in public settings may have curtailed the casualty count from Tuesday's shooting at a Portland, Ore., shopping mall, law officers suggested on the day after the tragedy.

Two people died and one was critically wounded before the shooter, 22-year-old Jacob Tyler Roberts of Portland, killed himself a few minutes after running into the food court at the Clackamas Town Center mall. Officials say Mr. Roberts, wearing camouflage and a white hockey mask, had methodically fired "multiple" rounds from an assault-style rifle at random shoppers.

Most of the 10,000 Christmas shoppers at the mall appeared nearly as ready and able as police to deal with a gunman appearing suddenly in their midst, Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts said on Wednesday.

"Many people have asked me why there were so few victims during this incident," said Sheriff Roberts. He listed the fact that Mr. Roberts's AR-15 semiautomatic rifle intermittently jammed and noted a well-practiced mall lockdown procedure. But he also credited "10,000 people in the mall who at one time kept a level head, got themselves out of the mall, helped others get out, secured themselves in stores.… It was really about a whole group of people coming together to make a difference."

RECOMMENDED: A Second Amendment quiz

Law officers said during a Wednesday press conference that they did not know whether any member of the public carrying a concealed weapon had counterattacked Roberts. But they said they are certain that Roberts died by his own hand after fleeing down a stairwell from the mall's upper level.

The death rate from mass shootings has ticked up slightly in recent years, even as deaths in single-victim incidents have decreased, according to a recent analysis of FBI crime data by the Huffington Post. The worst recent mass shooting came in July in Aurora, Colo., where a gunman killed 12 people and injured 58 during a midnight screening of a new "Batman" movie.

Gun-control advocates seized on the mall shooting as a possible result of the expiration in 2004 of a national ban on assault weapons.

"Santa Claus could have been shot in the mall," said Penny Okamoto, executive director of CeasefireOregon, in an interview with the Portland Tribune. "If you're sick of this, you should call your legislators to tell them to fix the laws so that assault weapons don't end up in the hands of felons."

Many versions of the AR-15 were banned under the assault weapons law, but it's not known if the gun used in the Clackamas mall shooting was one of them.

Police said Roberts had no criminal record and had stolen the AR-15 from "someone he knew."

Does the collected response by shoppers at the Clackamas Town Center indicate that Americans are becoming less daunted by senseless violence and, perhaps, better ready to react? Those who back broad gun rights under the Constitution's Second Amendment suggest a shift may be under way in people's readiness to respond.

In blocking Illinois's ban on concealed weapons, the last such law in the nation, Seventh US Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner on Tuesday implied that self-defense readiness in public is not only protected by the US Constitution, but may be good social policy. An awareness "that many law-abiding citizens are walking the streets armed may make criminals timid," he wrote in his ruling.

"As far as a social shift, I think people are getting more intelligent and appropriate in their reactions to shooters," says Dave Kopel, research director at the Independence Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank in Golden, Colo. "Police training has changed in significant ways since the Columbine [High School] shooting [in 1999], where they no longer wait for the SWAT team to arrive but go in immediately with … the army they have. There's also an awareness [among police and the public] that if you're trying to stop a gangster from robbing a liquor store, you may have a [heck] of a fight on your hands, but that these publicity-seeking guys with mental illness, they basically crumble at first opposition."

The upshot, says Mr. Kopel: "Lying down and cowering doesn't seem to work very well, so law enforcement has gotten smarter and civilians have gotten smarter."

In Clackamas County, Sheriff Roberts said local law-enforcement personnel had trained earlier this year for a shooting scenario at Clackamas Town Center, an exercise that involved both police and retailers. On Tuesday, arriving police, in keeping with evolving police tactics nationwide, formed small teams and quickly entered the mall to pursue the shooter. Police could not say Wednesday whether any officers saw the shooter before he killed himself.

Dennis Curtis, the mall's general manager, noted that police officers told him that they were amazed "how many stores were secured and people were locked in place" upon entering the mall to look for the shooter.

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Israeli troops clash with Palestinian protesters

HEBRON, West Bank (AP) — Thousands of Palestinians marched through the streets of Hebron on Thursday, chanting anti-Israel slogans and waving green Hamas flags during a funeral procession for a teenager killed by Israeli troops in this volatile West Bank city.

Dozens of youths clashed with Israeli soldiers throughout the day, throwing stones and bottles while troops responded with volleys of tear gas and rubber bullets. No serious injuries were reported.

Wednesday's shooting of 17-year-old Mohammed Suleima has raised tensions in Hebron, where several hundred ultra-nationalist Jewish settlers live in heavily fortified enclaves in the midst of more than 180,000 Palestinians.

The shooting occurred near a holy site known to Jews as the Cave of the Patriarchs and to Muslims as the Ibrahimi Mosque. Tradition holds that it is the place where their shared patriarch, Abraham, or Ibrahim to Muslims, bought a burial plot.

Israel's paramilitary border police force said it shot Suleima after he brandished a gun that later turned out to be fake. But relatives of the Palestinian youth said he was unarmed.

The relatives initially said Suleima had been hard of hearing and did not hear soldiers' orders for him to halt. But family members later said the boy's hearing was fine.

Some 5,000 people joined Thursday's funeral procession, praising God and vowing revenge. "Our blood will redeem the martyr," the crowd chanted.

Suleima's body was wrapped in a green Hamas shroud as it was carried on a stretcher through the streets. Dozens of people held green Hamas flags aloft during the procession. Suleima's family is known to support Hamas, and his brother was released last year in a prisoner swap between Hamas and Israel that freed an Israeli soldier held for five years in Gaza.

The march was a rare show of force in the West Bank by Hamas, whose members have been subjected to both Israeli and Palestinian crackdowns since the Islamic militant group seized power in the Gaza Strip five years ago, leaving the Palestinians' Western-backed president, Mahmoud Abbas, in control only of the West Bank.

But the two sides have made gestures toward each other following an eight-day Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip last month and Abbas' successful bid at the United Nations to win international recognition of a de facto Palestinian state.

For North Korea, next step is a nuclear test

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea's next step after rattling the world by putting a satellite into orbit for the first time will likely be a nuclear test, the third conducted by the reclusive and unpredictable state.

A nuclear test would be the logical follow-up to Wednesday's successful rocket launch, analysts said. The North's 2009 test came on May 25, a month after a rocket launch.

For the North and its absolute ruler Kim Jong-un, the costs of the rocket program and its allied nuclear weapons efforts - estimated bySouth Korea's government at $2.8-$3.2 billion since 1998 - and the risk of additional U.N. or unilateral sanctions are simply not part of the calculation.

"North Korea will insist any sanctions are unjust, and if sanctions get toughened, the likelihood of North Korea carrying out a nuclear test is high," said Baek Seung-joo of the Korea Institute of Defense Analyses.

The United Nations Security Council is to discuss how to respond to the launch, which it says is a breach of sanctions imposed in 2006 and 2009 that banned the isolated and impoverished state from missile and nuclear developments in the wake of its two nuclear weapons tests.

The only surprise is that the Security Council appears to believe it can dissuade Pyongyang, now on its third hereditary ruler since its foundation in 1948, from further nuclear or rocket tests.

Even China, the North's only major diplomatic backer, has limited clout on a state whose policy of self reliance is backed up by an ideology that states: "No matter how precious peace is, we will never beg for peace. Peace lies at the end of the barrel of our gun."

As recently as August, North Korea showed it was well aware of how a second rocket launch this year, after a failed attempt in April, would be received in Washington.

"It is true that both satellite carrier rocket and (a) missile with warhead use similar technology," its Foreign Ministry said in an eight-page statement carried by state news agency KCNA on August 31.

"The U.S. saw our satellite carrier rocket as a long-range missile that would one day reach the U.S. because it regards the DPRK (Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea) as an enemy."

CASH IN EXCHANGED FOR COLDER WAR

The end-game for the North is a formal peace treaty with Washington, diplomatic recognition and bundles of cash to help bolster its moribund economy.

"They might hope that the U.S. will finally face the unpleasant reality and will start negotiations aimed at slowing down or freezing, but not reversing, their nuclear and missile programs," said Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Kookmin University in Seoul.

"If such a deal is possible, mere cognition is not enough. The U.S. will have to pay, will have to provide generous 'aid' as a reward for North Koreans' willingness to slow down or stop for a while."

Recent commercially available satellite imagery shows that North Korea has rebuilt an old road leading to its nuclear test site in the mountainous northeast of the country. It has also shoveled away snow and dirt from one of the entrances to the test tunnel as recently as November.

At the same time as developing its nuclear weapons test site, the North has pushed ahead with what it says is a civil nuclear program.

At the end of November, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the construction of a light water reactor was moving ahead and that North Korea had largely completed work on the exterior of the main buildings.

North Korea says it needs nuclear power to provide electricity, but has also boasted of its nuclear deterrence capability and has traded nuclear technology with Syria, Libya and probably Pakistan, according to U.S. intelligence reports.

It terms its nuclear weapons program a "treasured sword".

The missile and the nuclear tests both serve as a "shop window" for Pyongyang's technology and Kookmin's Lankov adds that the attractions for other states could rise if North Korea carries out a test using highly enriched uranium (HEU).

In its two nuclear tests so far, the North has used plutonium, of which it has limited stocks. However it sits on vast reserves of uranium minerals, which could give it a second path to a nuclear weapon.

"An HEU-based device will have a great political impact, since it will demonstrate that North Korean engineers know how to enrich uranium, and this knowledge is in high demand among aspiring nuclear states," Lankov said.

(Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)