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UKRAINIAN prosecutors will today begin an investigation into allegations that state officials tried to assassinate opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko, following weekend confirmation that he was poisoned in the run-up to presidential elections. It is an inquiry that is expected to be hugely divisive because the prime suspect is the head of the Ukraine secret service, the SBU. The official dined with Mr Yushchenko the night he was poisoned, and medical experts say the dioxin is likely to have been administered through the food and drink. Mr Yushchenko, expected to be elected president in re-run elections on 26 December, yesterday promised...

Chirac's would-be assassin jailed The defence said Brunerie needed treatment, not a criminal trial A student who tried to assassinate French President Jacques Chirac at a Bastille Day parade two years ago has been sentenced to 10 years in prison. Maxime Brunerie, 27, was convicted of attempted murder by the court in Paris. He was arrested after firing a hunting rifle as Mr Chirac rode in an open-top car along the Champs-Elysees in Paris on 14 July 2002. During the trial he told the court he wanted to go down in history as someone who committed a "shocking" act. At...

© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com Viktor Yushchenko, before and after illness (courtesy CTV) Suspicions that Ukrainian political leader Viktor Yushchenko was the victim of an assassination plot have now been confirmed, as doctors in Austria say he was deliberately poisoned during the recent election campaign. The London Times reports physicians at Vienna's Rudolfinerhaus clinic are within days of identifying the substance that left Yushchenko's face disfigured with cysts and lesions, believing it was either a biological or chemical agent, or possibly a rare poison. Dr. Nikolai Korpan at the clinic says it's clear the candidate was targeted for assassination in the days before last...

PARIS - A man who said he "had failed in life" admitted Monday he tried to assassinate President Jacques Chirac, and told a court he wanted to go down in history with a "shocking" act. Maxime Brunerie, 27, is accused of pulling a rifle from a guitar case and firing a shot as Chirac passed in a motorcade along the Champs-Elysees during the Bastille Day parade on July 14, 2002. Bystanders pushed the rifle's barrel into the air as the gun went off, and police wrestled the shooter to the ground. The French leader was not hurt. "My name is...

BERLIN, Dec. 3 - German police today arrested three Iraqis who the chief federal prosecutor said appeared to have been planning an attack on Prime Minister Ayad Allawi of Iraq, here for talks with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. The prosecutor, Kay Nehm, said that the men were arrested after a series of raids in three German cities overnight. Intercepts of telephone conversations involving the three suspects had pointed to an attack on Mr. Allawi, he said. "There were indications pointing to a particular event" in Mr. Allawi's program, Mr. Nehm said at a press conference in Karlsruhe, in southwest Germany. Mr....

Dr. Jack Wheeler, creator of a unique intelligence website dubbed "the oasis for rational conservatives," features a column describing what could have turned into a deadly scenario in Chile for President Bush. On his website, To the Point, Wheeler tells a little-known story about a conflict between Bush's security detail and Chile's security over the latter's refusal to have a metal-detector at a state dinner for the president. There is speculation, Wheeler points out, that Bush-loathing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a chum of Fidel Castro, is somehow connected to the incident. Wheeler explains that Chilean officials attempted to block Secret...

BOGOTA, Colombia - President Bush was targeted for assassination by Colombia's biggest Marxist rebel group this week when he visited the Caribbean port city of Cartagena, a top Colombian official said Saturday. "According to informants and various sources, we had information indicating that various members of the FARC had been instructed by their leaders to make an attempt against President Bush," Defense Secretary Jorge Alberto Uribe told reporters. He would not reveal details of the threat. The Secret Service, which protects the president, said it "does not comment or release information regarding our protective intelligence and protective methods." "We do...

Colombia reveals Bush assassination plot A top Colombian official says US President George W Bush was targeted for assassination by Colombia's biggest Marxist rebel group this week when he visited the Caribbean port city of Cartagena. Colombian Defence Secretary, Jorge Alberto Uribe, says informants and various sources had indicated "that various members of the FARC had been instructed by their leaders to make an attempt against President Bush". He would not reveal details of the threat. The US Secret Service, which protects the President, says it "does not comment or release information regarding our protective intelligence and protective methods". "We...

The Washington Timeswww.washingtontimes.com Marxist rebels plotted to kill BushBy Hugh BronsteinREUTERS NEWS AGENCYPublished November 28, 2004 BOGOTA, Colombia -- President Bush was targeted for assassination by Colombia's biggest Marxist rebel group last week when he visited the Caribbean port city of Cartagena, a top Colombian official said yesterday.     "According to informants and various sources, we had information indicating that various members of the FARC had been instructed by their leaders to make an attempt against President Bush," Defense Secretary Jorge Alberto Uribe told reporters.     He would not reveal details of the threat.     The Secret Service, which protects the president, said...

(CNN) -- U.S. President George W. Bush was targeted for assassination by Marxist rebels this week when he visited the city of Cartagena, a Colombian official said Saturday. "We found out through informers and various sources that groups within the [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia] had been instructed from its leadership to make an assassination attempt on President Bush," Colombian Defense Secretary Jorge Alberto Uribe told Caracol TV, a Bogota-based satellite network. Uribe said no evidence of the alleged plot by the group -- Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia or FARC -- has been recovered. The U.S. Secret Service declined...

BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites) was targeted for assassination by Colombia's biggest Marxist rebel group this week when he visited the Caribbean port city of Cartagena, a top Colombian official said on Saturday. "According to informants and various sources, we had information indicating that various members of the FARC had been instructed by their leaders to make an attempt against President Bush," Defense Secretary Jorge Alberto Uribe told reporters. He would not be drawn out on the details of the threat. The White House had no immediate comment. The U.S. Secret Service, which protects the...

The largest guerrilla group in Colombia ordered an assassination attempt on US President George W Bush during a recent visit there, a senior official says. Colombian Defence Minister Jorge Alberto Uribe said Mr Bush was targeted in the city of Cartagena last Monday. Informers and other intelligence sources revealed the attempt, he said.The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have long accused the US of meddling in the country's 40-year civil war. The Farc's seven-man ruling body ordered guerrilla units to make an attempt on Mr Bush's life, Mr Uribe said.Long list of reasonsThe Colombian authorities insisted that the...

The Colombian terrorist group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, threatened to attack President Bush during his stop in Colombia this week. U.S. intelligence officials said reports from the region indicated that the Marxist group, which has conducted numerous bombings and terrorist attacks in the country, had planned to conduct some type of bombing or shooting attack during Mr. Bush's visit. The president traveled to Cartagena, Colombia, on Monday in a show of support for Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. The stop came after the Pacific Rim summit in Chile. Mr. Bush said at a press conference that since...

GEORGETOWN, Guyana (Reuters) -- An Iranian scholar who was abducted in Guyana last month in a case that baffled local police has been found dead with gunshot wounds to the head, police said on Wednesday. The body of Mohammad Hassan Ebrahimi, director of Guyana's International Islamic College for Advanced Studies, was discovered by local people late on Tuesday 45 miles (70 km) south of the capital, Georgetown. Ebrahimi, a well-known member of Guyana's Muslim community, was seized by two gunmen on April 2 in Georgetown as he left the college compound. Police spokesman John Sauers said the partly decomposed body...

A large car bomb has exploded in an attack aimed at Finance Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi in Baghdad that killed at least two people, a government official told Reuters. Mr Mahdi says he was not at home at the time. "I am fine. I was far away from the place where this explosion happened," Mr Mahdi told Reuters by telephone. The car blew up in the street where Mr Madhi lives in a plush section of the capital's Karrada district near the Tigris river, sending a thick plume of black smoke into the sky. Mr Mahdi is a senior official...

WHEN Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician, collected his post from the letterbox on Wednesday he got an unpleasant surprise. Among the bills and junk mail was a letter addressing him as “ugly dog”. It told him he would soon be beheaded. It was an unnerving way to start the day. Only 24 hours earlier Theo van Gogh, the film maker who had often attacked radical Muslims, had been riding along on his bicycle when a Muslim fanatic first shot and then butchered him on a busy street with the nonchalance of an abattoir worker.

In a chilling reminder of the Nazis, a report based on confessions reveals how far the Iraqi regime went to get its enemies. Saddam Hussein established a special assassinations unit that made use of poisons and other James Bond-style weaponry to kill his enemies abroad, according to the report published by the Iraq Survey Group last week. Before the poisons were used in the field they were tested on political prisoners, many of whom died in a macabre series of experiments that ran for two decades until at least 2001. The research, says the US report, was part of a...

... Washington: As the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks approached, CIA and FBI officials were scrambling to stop a secret al Qaeda plot to assassinate President George W. Bush. The public was never told why in August 2002 the new Department of Homeland Security raised the alert level from "yellow" to "orange"--signaling a high risk of terrorist attack. But the federal government had fresh, disturbing intelligence that suggested a major attack on America was slated for Sept. 11, 2002. ... Yet in the summer of 2002, American intelligence was not scrambling based on historical analysis or an...

<p>KABUL, Afghanistan — An apparent attempt to assassinate Afghan President Hamid Karzai failed Thurdsday when a rocket that was fired at his helicopter missed by 300 yards, the U.S. military said.</p> <p>The American military helicopter was preparing to land in Gardez, 60 miles south of Kabul, when the rocket was fired. The aircraft immediately turned around and returned to Kabul, U.S. military spokesman Maj. Mark McCann said.</p>

Halifax man accused of making death threats against President George W. Bush Fri Sep 10, 6:17 PM ET HALIFAX (CP) - A man in Halifax has been charged with making death threats against U.S. President George W. Bush (news - web sites) over the Internet. Timothy George Andrew, 28, has been remanded for a psychiatric assessment and is due back in court next week, the ATV news network reported Friday. Threats allegedly found on an Internet message board included: "Death to the president of the U.S.A. and destruction to that nation's Babylon" as well as "The president of the U.S.A....