Israeli teen, then murders him}
Jerusalem Post ^ | Oct. 22, 2003 | THE JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Posted on 10/21/2003 8:57 PM EDT by yonif
The Ofer Military Court on Tuesday convicted Amani Mona of Bir Naballah of voluntary manslaughter in the terrorist murder of a 16-year-old boy.
The Palestinian woman lured Ashkelon teen Ofir Rahum to his death in Ramallah by offering to have sex with him during an Internet conversation.
Mona, 24, will be sentenced at a later date. The Israel Police Computer Crimes Squad carried out forensics on Rahum's computer, reconstructed old files through data recovery, and helped track down Mona and pin her to the crime.
Israeli security forces arrested Mona in early 2001 after Rahum's bullet-riddled body was found on a West Bank road.
Mona frequented Internet cafes in the Ramallah area and struck up conversations over the Internet with Israelis and others using ICQ, identifying herself as Sali.
It was during this period she introduced herself to Rahum, telling him her father was Moroccan and her mother Israeli and that she had arrived a year earlier from Morocco. All the chats between the two were in English.
After a number of conversations she informed her friend, Fatah activist Hassan Kadi that Rahum was a suitable candidate.
A scheduled meeting between the two last December fell through, when Rahum informed her he was unable to travel to Jerusalem and she turned down Rahum's suggestion that they meet in Ashkelon.
In the week prior to Rahum's murder, Mona pressed him to meet her in Jerusalem, where she said the two could have sex in her girlfriend's apartment. She warned Rahum not to inform his parents, saying she would ensure that he would return home at his usual hour.
On January 17, the two agreed to meet at the Jerusalem Central Bus Station. She had previously arranged with Kadi where they would meet, and confirmed that he had organized a hiding place and getaway car.
She met Rahum at the bus station and they got a taxi to her car at the A-Ram junction north of the city.
She drove him toward Ramallah, stopping at the site she had previously arranged with Kadi. Shortly after he arrived, armed with a Kalashnikov, and Kadi ordered Rahum to get out of the car and when he refused, shot him.
He and accomplice Fatah Doola placed Rahum's body in the trunk of their car and drove off. Mona followed them in her car and drove to the Fatah office in El-Bira, parking her car a distance away because of the bloodstains on it. She then met a girlfriend for lunch, visited an aunt in the hospital, and attended a defensive driving course in Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, Kadi gave the vehicle to a third party, who buried Rahum's body.
Mona was arrested three days later, and Rahum's body was returned to Israel as a result of the intensive actions of Israeli security officials, who investigated his disappearance and demanded that the Palestinians hand the body over to them.
Reuters ^ | Mon 20 October, 2003 12:35 BST
Posted on 10/22/2003 3:03 AM EDT by miltonim
Bandits kill 100 villagers in west Sudan
Mon 20 October, 2003 12:35 BST
KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Bandits killed 100 people, displaced a further 15,000 and burned down 15 villages in west Sudan last week, a ruling party official has been quoted as saying.
Khalid Ballal, a member of the consultative council of the ruling National Congress Party, said the armed gang had robbed the villagers in the western Darfur region before setting their homes ablaze, the privately owned Alwan newspaper reported on Monday.
"The locality of Jalingi was subjected to an attack by unknown persons on Thursday and Friday," the newspaper quoted Ballal as saying, referring to a predominantly African tribal area near the border with Chad.
Rivalry between Arab cattle herders and African farming communities in Darfur is common and fuelled by competition over dwindling water resources and pastures caused by desertification.
It was not immediately clear if the villages targeted were among more than six which a Sudanese parliamentarian last week said had been torched by Arab tribal militias in a raid which killed 34.
Darfur's African tribes accuse Sudan's Islamist government of supporting the Arab tribesmen or turning a blind eye.
The latest attacks did not appear linked to an uprising in the west by the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A), which has recently signed a ceasefire with the government. The SLM/A accuses the government of marginalising the region.
In October 1986, a young Irishwoman, Anne Murphy, was duped by her Jordanian boyfriend, Nezar Hindawi, into carrying a bag with 3 pounds of plastic explosives when boarding an El Al Israel flight at London's Heathrow Airport. The support for the operation was from Syrian Intelligence on behalf of the Palestinians.
Hindawi told Ann-Marie at the Hilton Hotel on Park Lane, that he loved her and wanted to marry her. He was eager to introduce her, his future bride, to his old Palestinian parents who lived in an Arab village in Israel. He told her to go and visit them and receive their blessing. Then, when she arrived back in England, they would get married. Overjoyed, she agreed to go, not realizing that the address he gave her in Israel was bogus.
El Al personnel detected the explosives before Murphy, five months pregnant with Hindawi's child and en route to Israel to marry him, boarded the jet.