UFO Info Week-End

The military leader escaped unharmed but 17 other people were killed

The military leader escaped unharmed, but 17 other people were killed.Meanwhile, a former CIA agent has disclosed that he was sent to Afghanistan 11 days after the 11 September attacks and ordered by the CIA’s counter-terrorism chief, Cofer Black, to “capture Bin Laden, kill him and bring his head back in a box on dry ice”. The former agent, Gary Schroen, said it was the first time in 30 years of service he had been ordered to kill a target.. It was a gruesome killing that looked, at first sight, a robbery that had gone wrong. The badly beaten body of Kassi Manlan, director of the World Health Organisation in Burundi, was found in the shallows of Lake Tanganyika in November 2001. Three rings remained on his fingers and bloodstains were found at his suburban home.Thirteen people were sentenced yesterday for their part in what turned out to be a conspiracy that ensnared some of the most senior officials in the central African country.Four former senior security and prison officials were sentenced to death and nine others were jailed for terms ranging from two years to life.A lawyer for Emile Manisha, a former police chief who was sentenced to death, said: “I am very surprised by the ruling. I am myself very shocked.”Dr Manlan, from the Ivory Coast, had been in Burundi for only three months. His body was found by fishermen near the Cercle Nautique yacht club, once a favoured haunt of Belgian expatriates.

There was a large bruise on his forehead and blood was seeping from an eye.A month later, police arrested Gertrude Nyamoya, a Burundian who had worked for Dr Manlan, and accused her of conspiring with a colleague, an epidemiologist, to kill their boss before he exposed a scam involving WHO money. Ms Nyamoya, a WHO employee for more than 30 years was jailed and her colleague fled the country under diplomatic immunity. Her brother, Francois Nyamoya, a lawyer, campaigned to clear her, saying she was the “patsy” in the case which involved far bigger fish.His investigations, which involved tracing phone records and vehicle licence plates, led him to claim that hired thugs had forced Dr Manlan to delete computer files containing information on how aid money to buy malaria drugs had been diverted to private bank accounts then killed him.During the trial of the 13 conspirators convicted yesterday, a defence lawyer, Bernard Maingain, claimed that former president Pierre Buyoya and his wife ordered Dr Manlan’s killing, linking the WHO official’s death to the embezzlement of an unspecified sum meant for malaria prevention and treatment in Burundi. Mr Buyoya stepped down in 2003 to make way for his deputy and is now a visiting senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies in Rhode Island, USA WHO spokesman in Geneva said: “The WHO was very concerned about what happened to our representative in Burundi. We did everything we could to help the authorities with their investigation.” He added that Ms Nyamoya had been released and exonerated, with her WHO colleague, of all charges.Burundi, a tiny, coffee-producing nation of seven million, is gingerly emerging from a decade of civil war that pitted the Hutu majority against the politically dominant Tutsi minority and left 300,000 dead. It is to hold elections for parliament to elect a president by 26 August..

The banking group HBOS has pledged to stop using wild animals in commercials, after protests about a television advertisement featuring a white tiger cub. The society also claimed that the US company that supplied the tiger cub has in the past been cited by the US Department of Agriculture for its failure to provide veterinary care, shelter and minimum space.Craig Redmond, the campaigns officer for Caps, said Halifax refused to act on its request until the society wrote to Lord Stevenson, the chairman of HBOS. Lord Stevenson then asked the bank’s head of marketing, Philip Hanson, to reply on his behalf, with the commitment that HBOS had “instructed [its] advertising agency to avoid using captive wild animals in the production of future advertising”.HBOS rejected suggestions the tiger had been mistreated, stressing it had been obtained from a “reputable sanctuary” certified by the US Department of Agriculture and that during filming the tiger’s well-being was monitored constantly by the American Humane Association.The bank said it had listened to the concerns that some customers raised. The bank removed the tiger ad from its website yesterday and said that the television version had come to the end of its “natural run” at the end of April..

IBM, the world’s largest computer company, is to axe 13,000 jobs, primarily in Europe, as part of a global cost-cutting drive. Further details will be provided in a webcam address by Mr Loughridge at 8am today.. Heron, the property group run by the entrepreneur Gerald Ronson, finally withdrew its £479m offer for the housebuilder Crest Nicholson yesterday, sending Crest’s shares down as much as 8 per cent in early trading. A teacher who became a cause c?bre when she was jailed for firing an airgun during a row with a gang of youths has been freed by the Court of Appeal.
Three appeal judges set aside Linda Walker’s six-month prison sentence yesterday after hearing that the 48-year-old’s family had been terrorised by “yobs”. Campaigners claimed the special-needs teacher had been victimised by the courts and presented ministers with a petition of more than 10,000 signatures calling for her release. Tony Blair said he sympathised with Walker, from Urmston, Greater Manchester.At a hearing at Manchester Crown Court in March, Walker was convicted of affray and possessing a firearm. She had fired the pellet gun at the pavement during a stand-off with youths outside her home in August.She told police that she had received phone calls abusing her family, her garden shed had been broken into and a car and her garden had been vandalised.