Dutch, Britons, Germans warned to leave Benghazi

FILE - In this Friday, Sept. 14, 2012 file photo, President Mohammed el-Megarif, center, visits the U.S. Consulate to express sympathy for the death of the American ambassador, Chris Stevens and his colleagues in the deadly attack on the Consulate last Tuesday, September 11, in Benghazi, Libya. Britain's Foreign Office urged U.K. nationals to immediately leave the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi in response to an imminent threat against Westerners. (AP Photo/Mohammad Hannon, File)

FILE - In this Friday, Sept. 14, 2012 file photo, Libyan military guards check one of the U.S. Consulate's burnt out buildings during a visit by Libyan President Mohammed el-Megarif, not shown, to the U.S. Consulate to express sympathy for the death of the American ambassador, Chris Stevens and his colleagues in the deadly attack on the Consulate last Tuesday, September 11, in Benghazi, Libya. Britain's Foreign Office urged U.K. nationals to immediately leave the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi in response to an imminent threat against Westerners. The Arabic on the building reads, "God is Great, and there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his messenger." (AP Photo/Mohammad Hannon, File)

LONDON (AP) — Britain, Germany and the Netherlands urged their citizens to immediately leave the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi on Thursday in response to what they called an imminent threat against Westerners.

European officials told The Associated Press that schools were among the potential targets.

The warnings came a day after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton testified to Congress about the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya. The warnings also came as French troops battled al-Qaida-linked militants in the West African nation of Mali, and followed the deaths of dozens of foreigners taken hostage by Islamist extremists in Algeria.

It remained, however, unclear if those two events were linked to the latest concerns about Libya.

The foreign ministries of the three European countries issued statements describing the threat as specific and imminent but none would elaborate.

The U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, Libya's capital far to the west of Benghazi, noted the Europeans' warnings but said there was "no specific information pointing to specific, imminent threats againstU.S. citizens."

Benghazi, with a population of 1 million, is Libya's second-largest city and where the Libyan uprising against longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi began in February 2011. Gadhafi was eventually toppled and killed after NATO backed the rebel movement, and the Arab country has since struggled with increasing insecurity.

Al-Qaida-linked militants operate in Libya alongside other Islamist groups, and the country is awash in weapons looted from Gadhafi's many military depots.

Schools, businesses and offices of non-governmental organizations were among the possible targets, according to two European officials familiar with the threats made and who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to be quoted by name in the media. They refused to give any other details.

Violence in Benghazi has targeted both foreigners as well as Libyan officials in recent months, with assassinations, bombings and other attacks.

It was not immediately clear how many people could be affected by the European warnings; Britain's Foreign Office said likely "dozens" of its citizens were in the city, while Dutch spokesman Thijs van Son said four Dutch citizens were registered there, and possibly two more were in the city. A German Foreign Ministry official, who requested anonymity because government policy did not allow him to be quoted by name, said "very few" Germans were in Benghazi.

Several countries have for months advised against all travel to the city, especially after the U.S.mission was attacked. Residents say many foreigners had already left in recent weeks.

Air Malta canceled Thursday's flights between the Mediterranean island and Benghazi following the British advice but said flights to Tripoli were not affected. The airline said its next flight to Benghaziwas scheduled for next Tuesday, adding that it will keep reviewing the situation.

Adel Mansouri, principal of the International School of Benghazi, said U.K. and foreign citizens were warned in the last few days about a possible threat to Westerners. He said the school's teachers were given the option of leaving but decided to stay.

The school has some 540 students. Most are Libyan, with some 40 percent holding dual nationality. Less than 5 percent are British while 10 to 15 students have U.S.-Libyan nationality, he said. Classes were not due to resume until Sunday because of a holiday Thursday.

"We told the British ambassador we are staying, and we'll be in touch," said Mansouri, who has both Libyan and British citizenship. "We don't see a threat on the ground."

Saleh Gawdat, a Benghazi lawmaker, said French doctors who were working in the city's hospitals have left Benghazi and that the French cultural center closed out of concerns about potential retaliation over the French-led military intervention against Islamist militants in Mali, which began two weeks ago.

In addition to the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. mission, an Italian diplomat's car was fired on by militants in Benghazi earlier this month. The consul, Guido De Sanctis, wasn't injured but the attack prompted Italy to suspend its consular activities in the city and send its foreign staff home.

Islamist extremists in the area are often blamed for targeting security officials who once worked under Gadhafi, taking revenge for those who tortured or imprisoned them in the past. Many residents also blame Gadhafi loyalists who they say are trying to undermine Libya's new leaders by sowing violence.

Ibrahim Sahd, a Benghazi-based lawmaker and politician, said the new government is putting together a plan to beef up security in the city and this "might have worried the Westerners of a backlash."

Noman Benotman, a former Libyan jihadist with links to al-Qaida who is now an analyst at London's Quilliam Foundation, said other groups inspired by the terror network have been gaining a following in Libya since Gadhafi's fall. There have been nearly a dozen attacks against Western targets in Libya recently, he said.

"It's the same al-Qaida ideology that is driving these militants," Benotman said.

He added, however, that the militants were unlikely to target oil or gas installations in Libya because they need support from the population.

"Targeting these installations would turn Libyan workers and tribes against them," he said.

Oil companies working in other parts of Libya said they were aware of the European warnings to foreign citizens in Benghazi but said there were no immediate plans for evacuations.

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Associated Press writers Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, Juergen Baetz in Berlin, Maggie Michael in Cairo, Paisley Dodds and Gregory Katz in London, Nicole Winfield in Rome, and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

Irishwoman at center of IRA tapes fight found dead

FILE - In this file photo dated June 4, 1972 Dolours Price, left, and her sister Marian attend a civil rights demonstration in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Police say Thursday Jan. 24, 2013, Dolours Price, a veteran Irish Republican Army member at the center of allegations against Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams has been found dead at her home. Dolours Price had alleged that Adams was her IRA commander in Belfast in the early 1970s and was involved in ordering several Catholic civilians to be abducted, executed and buried in secret. (AP Photo, File)

DUBLIN (AP) — An Irish Republican Army veteran who accusedSinn Fein party chief Gerry Adams of involvement in IRA killings and bombings has been found dead in her home, police and politicians said Thursday.

Dolours Price, 61, was a member of the Provisional IRA unit that launched the very first car-bomb attacks on London in 1973. She became one of Irish republicanism's most trenchant critics of Adams and his conversion to political compromise in the British territory of Northern Ireland.

Police said her death Wednesday night at her home in Malahide, north of Dublin, was possibly the result of a drug overdose and foul play was not suspected. But it could have implications as far away as the U.S. Supreme Court.

In interviews Price repeatedly described Adams as her IRA commander in Catholic west Belfast in the early 1970s when the outlawed group was secretly abducting, executing and burying more than a dozen suspected informers in unmarked graves. Adams rejects the charges.

Since 2011 Northern Ireland's police have been fighting a legal battle with Boston College to secure audiotaped interviews with Price detailing her IRA career to see if they contain evidence relating to unsolved crimes, particularly the 1972 kidnapping and murder of a Belfast widow, Jean McConville. Price allegedly admitted being the IRA member who drove McConville across the Irish border to anIRA execution squad.

Boston College commissioned the collection of such interviews with veterans of Northern Ireland's paramilitary warfare on condition their contents be kept secret until each interviewee's death.

In October, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the handover of the Price tapes pending resolution of a string of other connected lawsuits and legal challenges in lower U.S. courts. Her death could trigger a new wave of legal petitions on both sides.

Boston College in a statement expressed regret at news of Price's death but said it couldn't speculate on its potential legal consequences.

Ed Moloney, the Irish journalist who oversaw collection of the taped testimonies, and Anthony McIntyre, the former IRA convict who actually conducted the interviews from 2001 to 2006, lauded Price as "both a friend and a valued participant in the Belfast Project."

They blamed the police's pursuit of her testimony for hastening her death — and vowed that their own legal fight to prevent police from receiving any tapes from the Boston College archive would continue "with renewed vigor."

"Throughout the last two years of our fight to prevent her interviews being handed over to the police in Belfast, our greatest fear was always for the health and wellbeing of Dolours," Moloney and McIntyre said in a statement. "Now that she is no longer with us, perhaps those who initiated this legal case can take some time to reflect upon the consequences of their action."

Price joined the IRA as a Belfast teenager, in part because her father Albert was a senior IRA figure. She led a 10-member IRA unit that planted four car bombs in central London on March 8, 1973, including outside the Old Bailey criminal courthouse and Scotland Yard police headquarters. Two detonated, wounding more than 200 people.

After the Provisional IRA cease-fire of 1997 paved the way for Adams' Sinn Fein party to enter a new power-sharing government in Northern Ireland, Price denounced Adams as a hypocrite who had betrayed the cause of forcing Northern Ireland into the Irish Republic.

And in a 2012 interview with Britain's Sunday Telegraph, Price accused Adams of sanctioning the 1973 bomb attacks during a Belfast IRA meeting.

"Adams started talking and said it was a big, dangerous operation. He said: 'This could be a hanging job.' He said: 'If anyone doesn't want to go (to London), they should up and leave now through the back door at 10-minute intervals.' The ones that were left were the ones that went. I was left organizing it, to be the OC (officer commanding) of the whole shebang," Price was quoted as saying.

Adams made no reference to Price's accusations in a prepared statement on Price's death.

"She endured great hardship during her time in prison in the 1970s enduring a hunger strike which included force-feeding for over 200 days. In more recent years she has had many personal trials," Adams said.

When asked later about Price's criticisms, Adams said he had "no concerns about any of those issues because they are not true."

Price had been counseled for depression and alcoholism for more than a decade after being convicted of using forged prescriptions to acquire drugs in 2001.

Price was diagnosed with psychological problems, including anorexia nervosa, during her prison sentence. She and her younger sister Marian, who also was imprisoned for the same bomb attack, received early paroles in 1980 on compassionate grounds. Britain sent Marian Price back to prison in 2011 over her alleged continued involvement in dissident IRA circles.

Dolours Price married the Belfast actor Stephen Rea in 1983, and they had two sons, but he divorced her in 2003.

North Korea threatens war with South over U.N. sanctions

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea threatened to attack rival South Korea if Seoul joined a new round of tightened U.N. sanctions, as Washington unveiled more of its own economic restrictions followingPyongyang's rocket launch last month.

In a third straight day of fiery rhetoric, the North directed its verbal onslaught at its neighbor on Friday, saying: "'Sanctions' mean a war and a declaration of war against us."

The reclusive North has this week declared a boycott of all dialogue aimed at ending its nuclear program and vowed to conduct more rocket and nuclear tests after the U.N. Security Council censured it for a December long-range missile launch.

"If the puppet group of traitors takes a direct part in the U.N. 'sanctions,' the DPRK will take strong physical counter-measures against it," the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said, referring to the South.

The committee is the North's front for dealings with the South. DPRK is short for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The U.N. Security Council unanimously condemned North Korea's December rocket launch on Tuesday and expanded existing U.N. sanctions.

On Thursday, the United States slapped economic sanctions on two North Korean bank officials and a Hong Kong trading company that it accused of supporting Pyongyang's proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The company, Leader (Hong Kong) International Trading Ltd, was separately blacklisted by the United Nations on Wednesday.

Seoul has said it will look at whether there are any further sanctions that it can implement alongside the United States, but said the focus for now is to follow Security Council resolutions.

The resolution said the council "deplores the violations" by North Korea of its previous resolutions, which banned Pyongyang from conducting further ballistic missile and nuclear tests and from importing materials and technology for those programs. It does not impose new sanctions on Pyongyang.

The United States had wanted to punish North Korea for the rocket launch with a Security Council resolution that imposed entirely new sanctions against Pyongyang, but Beijing rejected that option. China agreed to U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang after North Korea's 2006 and 2009 nuclear tests.

NUCLEAR TEST WORRY

North Korea's rhetoric this week amounted to some of the angriest outbursts against the outside world coming under the leadership of Kim Jong-un, who took over after the death of his father Kim Jong-il in late 2011.

On Thursday, the North said it would carry out further rocket launches and a nuclear test, directing its ire at the United States, a country it called its "sworn enemy".

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the comments were worrying.

"We are very concerned with North Korea's continuing provocative behavior," he said at a Pentagon news conference.

"We are fully prepared ... to deal with any kind of provocation from the North Koreans. But I hope in the end that they determine that it is better to make a choice to become part of the international family."

North Korea is not believed to have the technology to deliver a nuclear warhead capable of hitting the continental United States, although its December launch showed it had the capacity to deliver a rocket that could travel 10,000 km (6,200 miles), potentially putting San Francisco in range, according to an intelligence assessment by South Korea.

South Korea and others who have been closely observing activities at the North's known nuclear test grounds believe Pyongyang is technically ready to go ahead with its third atomic test and awaiting the political decision of its leader.

The North's committee also declared on Friday that a landmark agreement it signed with the South in 1992 on eliminating nuclear weapons from the Korean peninsula was invalid, repeating its long-standing accusation that Seoul was colluding with Washington.

The foreign ministry of China, the North's sole remaining major diplomatic and economic benefactor, repeated its call for calm on the Korean peninsula at its daily briefing on Friday.

"The current situation on the Korea peninsula is complicated and sensitive," spokesman Hong Lei said.

"We hope all relevant parties can see the big picture, maintain calm and restraint, further maintain contact and dialogue, and improve relations, while not taking actions to further complicate and escalate the situation," Hong said.

But unusually prickly comments in Chinese state media on Friday hinted at Beijing's exasperation.

"It seems that North Korea does not appreciate China's efforts," said the Global Times in an editorial, a sister publication of the official People's Daily.

"Just let North Korea be 'angry' ... China hopes for a stable peninsula, but it's not the end of the world if there's trouble there. This should be the baseline of China's position."

(Additional reporting by Michael Martina in Beijing; editing by Jeremy Laurence and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Doubts raised about fairness of Delhi rape trial

NEW DELHI (AP) — In the court of public opinion, the men being tried in the gang rape of an Indian university student should be hanged in a public square.

That demand for swift justice might make it impossible for them to get a fair trial in a court of law. Already, there are plenty of portents.

Amid the heightened emotions that have surrounded this case a local bar association has stopped its members from representing the men citing the heinous nature of the crime. The three grandstanding lawyers who have rushed in to represent the accused spent weeks taking potshots at each other instead of coordinating a defense. Two lawyers fought for days over which one was representing one of the defendants.

And the case is being heard by a brand new fast track court, set up in the wake of the rape to deal with sexual assaults in the capital, that is under pressure to reach a verdict within weeks. Finally, whatever is said or submitted in court has to stay in the room -- a gag order by the judge prevents the media from reporting anything about the case.

"However wicked and depraved society may perceive a person to be, he deserves a fair trial. He deserves a good defense," said Markandey Katju, a retired judge of India's Supreme Court.

"That some of those charged are the real culprits and some are innocent ... that is a very real possibility," he said, adding that in India the police "spreads its net wide."

As details of the attack have emerged Katju said he feared the trial may be overrun by emotion rather than the calm voice of reason.

"You can't decide cases on sentiment. That's lynch law."

The specifics of the gang rape are horrifying. According to the police report, the attack lasted at least 45 minutes. There were six attackers, one of whom claims to be a juvenile and is being tried separately. Each of the men raped the 23-year-old woman, with at least two taking turns driving the bus. They penetrated her with two metal rods, causing such severe internal injuries that doctors later found parts of her intestines floating freely inside her abdomen.

The battered woman and her badly beaten male friend were then thrown out of the moving bus and lay naked and bleeding on the side of a busy road on a cold December night.

The attack was so brutal that the woman died two weeks later in a Singapore hospital.

Within two days of the attack the police arrested the six accused. According to the police all six confessed their crimes. The police report said that DNA evidence from the men tied all of them in the rape and murder. According to police documents blood and saliva swabs from the accused matched the DNA found on the victim's injuries. The victim's blood was also found on the clothes, underwear and slippers of the accused.

The attack in the heart of New Delhi brought protesters into the streets demanding the government protect women and ensure those attacked get justice. In response, the city government set up five fast track courts to swiftly handle those cases, keeping them out of India's overburdened regular court system, where trials can drag on for years if not decades.

As the police framed charges against the men and prepared for trial the bar association of Saket, the district where the case is being heard, declared that their members would not represent the men. They were following a precedent set by lawyers' groups across India over the last few years, which have banned their members from representing those accused of terrorism and other heinous crimes.

"This is completely unconstitutional and unethical," said Katju. "Right minded lawyers should defy and ignore such rulings."

Outside the courtroom the cries for a quick trial and execution of the five men have persisted.

"They should be handed over to the public and hanged," said Prakash, a 51-year-old gardener who had come to court on a personal matter but waited to get a glimpse of the accused being whisked into court. She uses only one name.

The three men who rushed forth to represent the accused were not members of the local bar and have spent more time fighting each other than putting up a defense.

One insisted he would ask the Supreme Court to move the trial out of Delhi because emotions were too high to hold a fair trial here. But when a second lawyer made a similar appeal, the first changed his mind and vehemently opposed it.

One lawyer, M.L. Sharma, has accused police of planting the other two defense lawyers to ensure a guilty verdict.

"I'm the only hurdle standing in their way," Sharma said earlier this week. Even as he made his allegations, fellow defense counsel V.K. Anand stepped up to say that Sharma's client had decided to fire his lawyer — and hire him.

The dispute over who would represent the defendant was only resolved Thursday — the day the trial started. Sharma dropped out of the trial, saying he feared his client would be tortured to get him to change his lawyer. Anand replaced him.

Sharma has accused police of beating all five men to extract their confessions, then later amended that to say only his client was beaten. He also made unsubstantiated accusations that the victim's male friend was somehow responsible for the deadly assault, only to backtrack later.

Another lawyer, A.P. Singh, said the only reason he agreed to represent two of the accused was because their families had begged his mother for help.

"My mother has a kind heart and an order from her is like an order from God," he said, posing dramatically for the cameras.

Anand hasn't spoken about his strategy, but both Sharma and Singh have claimed at least once that their clients were not even on the bus during the attack.

In the past, courts across the country have criticized the police for coercing confessions and even planting evidence to get convictions.

"We set so little store by how the police functions in this country. There's no reason to accept the police's version of events in this case without thorough legal scrutiny," said Jawahar Raja, a lawyer and activist.

The defense is made even more complicated by the fact the case is being tried in a fast track court. As a result the police has put together its case at rapid speed. The trial has started even as defense lawyers are falling into place.

"Justice takes some time. It's all very easy to talk about fast track courts," said Katju, adding that cases should be tried quickly and efficiently but without a looming deadline.

"A judge has to read all the documents, hear the lawyers, apply his mind. It's not a magic lamp that with a swish you can dispose of a case."

Indian women given kitchen knives, chili to fend off rapists

MUMBAI (Reuters) - India's radical Hindu nationalist party governing Mumbai has handed outkitchen knives and chili powder to women following a gang rape in the capital New Delhi that ignited a national debate on the best way to tackle sex crimes.

The Shiv Sena party, an ally of the main opposition BJP, said it had handed out 21,000 knives with three-inch blades to women in the city and surrounding areas and plans to distribute 100,000.

Mumbai police said they were examining the knives and considering legal action.

"This is a symbolic gesture," said Shiv Sena spokesman Rahul Narvekar, adding that a knife shorter than six inches in length does not fit the definition of a weapon. The party also handed out small bags of chili powder - apparently to throw into an attacker's eyes.

"It's only to pass a signal to eve-teasers, anti-social elements and perpetrators of crime against women that women are empowered and they can take care of themselves," Narvekar said.

Eve-teasing is a euphemism for molesting women.

"Don't be afraid of using this knife if someone attacks you," Ajay Chaudhari, running the knife campaign, was quoted by the party newspaper, Saamana, as saying.

"We have set up a team of nine advocates to protect you from any potential court cases that may arise."

A 23-year-old physiotherapy student was raped and beaten on a moving bus in on December 16 before being thrown bleeding on a expressway in New Delhi, dubbed India's "rape capital". Mumbai is generally considered a safer city for women.

The attack and the student's death two weeks later caused public outrage at the failure of the government and police to protect women from rising sexual offences in a country where one rape is reported on average every 20 minutes.

In response, more women are taking up self-defense classes and carrying pepper spray. A government commission set up to recommend revisions to India's sex crime laws this week said women who kill an attacker during a attempted rape should be able to plead self-defense.

(Reporting by Kaustubh Kulkarni; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)