Free Republic

BELLINZONA, Switzerland - A court acquitted seven men Wednesday of providing logistical support to a Saudi terror cell in the first Swiss trial of alleged al-Qaida associates. The accused were among 10 people arrested in Switzerland in early 2004 in connection with attacks the previous year on foreigners' residential compounds in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that killed 35 people. Swiss authorities had said the men — Yemenis, a Somali and an Iraqi — did not appear to be directly linked to the attack but alleged that they provided logistical support for future attacks. Prosecutors argued that two of the men —...

NEW YORK - Two executives of the International Longshoremen's Association and a reputed mobster who went missing mid-trial were acquitted Tuesday of charges that they helped the Mafia keep its grip on the New York waterfront. Supporters gasped and burst into tears as a federal jury in Brooklyn found union officials Harold Daggett and Arthur Coffey not guilty of extortion and fraud charges. The jury also acquitted Lawrence Ricci, an alleged Genovese crime family associate who had been accused of wire and mail fraud. But the victory may turn out to be empty for Ricci, who vanished in the middle...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) - A jury acquitted former paramilitary leader Louis-Jodel Chamblain of murder charges Tuesday after a secretive trial that began in the middle of the night, angering human rights groups who blamed the country's U.S.-backed government. Chamblain and co-defendent Jackson Joanis were acquitted just after dawn in the murder of Antoine Izmery, a former justice minister and financier of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, according to Stanley Gaston, an attorney for Chamblain. Three witnesses were called during the one-day trial, and only one of them was for the prosecution, said Viles Alizar with the National Coalition for Haitian Rights....