The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Thursday, October 18, 2012 - 3A NEWS BRIEFS LANSING State Senate OKs bills attacking child pornography The Michigan Senate has unanimously passed three Republican-introduced bills that supporters say would make it easier to prosecute people for child pornography. The bills approved Wednes- day go to the state House for con- sideration. Attorney General Bill Schuette says the bills help update laws written in the 1990s when he says "the Internet was still in its infancy." A bill by Tom Casperson of Escanaba amends criminal pro- cedures to make it easier for prosecutors to use evidence gathered in undercover police operations against child preda- tors at sentencing. NEW YORK Feds: One arrested in plot to attack Federal Reserve A Bangladeshi man who came to the United States to wage jihad was arrested in an elaborate FBI sting on Wednesday after attempt- ing to blow up a fake car bomb out- side the Federal Reserve building in Manhattan, authorities said. Before trying to carry out the alleged terrorism plot, Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis went to a warehouse to help assemble a 1,000-pound bomb usinginertmaterial, accordingto a criminal complaint. He also asked an undercover agent to videotape him saying, "We will not stop until we attain victory or martyrdom," the complaint said. Agents grabbed the 21-year-old Nafis - armed with a cellphone he believed was rigged as a detonator - after he made several attempts to blow up the bomb inside a vehicle parked next to the Federal Reserve, the complaint said. JERUSALEM Israeli religious activist arrested at Western Wall Israeli police say they have arrested a female Jewish activist leader for wearing a traditionally male prayer shawl at a Jerusalem holy site, an act police prohibit because of Orthodox Jewish sen- sitivities. She was with an Ameri- can Jewish women's group. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld says police detained the activist for causing a public distur- bance and wearing the garment. Police say they seek to prevent scuffles with Orthodox Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall, one of Judaism's holiest sites. Anat Hoffman leads the liberal Jewish group Women of the Wall. She was arrested while leading prayers for 200 American Jewish women from the Hadassah orga- nization. She said police strip-searched her and detained her over- night. She says she was released Wednesday after agreeing to stay away from the site for a month. LARISSA, Greece Brothels rescue cash-strapped - Greek soccer team The world's oldest profession is giving a whole new meaning to love of the game. Players on a cash-strapped Greek soccer team now wear pink practice jerseys with the logos "Villa Erotica" and "Soula's House of History," two bordel- los it recruited as sponsors after drastic government spending cuts left the country's sports clubs facing ruin. Other teams have also turned to unconventional financing. One has a deal with a local funeral home and others have wooed kebab shops, a jam factory and producers of Greece's trademark feta cheese. -Compiled from Daily wire reports Report: Libyan rebels 'executed' Gadhafi, loyalists Khalid Sheikh Mohammed sits at a defenseotable wearinga camouflage vest in front of military judge U.S. Army Col. James Pohl Accused 9 11 plotter speaks to tribunal about hypocrisy 50-page report says militias took revenge on prisoners CAIRO (AP) - Libyan reb- els appear to have "summar- ily executed" scores of fighters loyal to Moammar Gadhafi, and probably the dictator him- self, when they overran his hometown a year ago, a human rights group said Wednesday. The report by Human Rights Watch on alleged rebel abuses that followed the October 2011 capture of the city of Sirte in the final major battle of the eight-month civil war is one of the most detailed descriptions of what the group says were war crimes committed by the militias that toppled Gadhafi, and which still play a major role in Libyan politics today. The 50-page report, titled "Death of a Dictator: Bloody Vengeance in Sirte," details the last hours of Gadhafi's life on Oct. 20, 2011, when he tried to flee the besieged city. The longtime leader's convoy was struck by NATO aircraft as it tried to escape and the survi- vors were attacked by militias from the city of Misrata, who captured and disarmed the dic- tator and his entourage. Misrata was subjected to a brutal weeks-long siege by Gad- hafi's forces that killed hun- dreds of residents, and fighters from the city became among the regime's most implacable foes. HRW says it seems the Misratans took revenge against their prisoners in Sirte. "The evidence suggests that opposition militias summarily executed at least 66 captured members of Gadhafi's convoy in Sirte," said Peter Bouck- aert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch. The New York-based group's report says that new evidence unearthed in its investigation includes a mobile phone video clip taken by militiamen show- ing a large number of prisoners from Gadhafi's convoy being cursed and abused by opposi- tion fighters. The remains of least 17 of the detainees in the phone video were later identified in a group of 66 bodies found at Sirte's Mahari hotel, some still with their hands tied behind their back. Human Rights Watch said it used hospital morgue photos to confirm the victims' identities. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed wears previously banned camouflage vest GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) - The self-styled terrorist mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks lectured a military court on government hypocrisy Wednesday and wore a previously banned camou- flage vest to his pretrial hear- ing before being rebuked by the judge for his comments. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was in court as part of a week- long hearing focusing largely on the secrecy rules that will gov- ern legal proceedings against him at the U.S. base in Cuba. Mohammed was allowed to wear a hunting-style camou- flage vest with his white tunic and turban over the objections of prosecutors, who feared it might disrupt the proceedings. It had no apparent effect, but his five-minute speech denouncing the government's arguments about the need to protect national security trans- fixed the court and drew a repri- mand from the judge. Until that point, the 47-year- old Mohammed sat quietly through a day of courtroom arguments on proposed rules for handling classified evidence in the war-crimes case. When he finally spoke, it was to point out what he saw as the prosecu- tion's hypocrisy for seeking to keep secret some details of what happened to him during years of captivity in the CIA's secret pris- ons. Mohammed told the judge, Army Col. James Pohl, that "the government uses national secu- rity as it chooses," urging him to keep that in mind as he considers requests from defense lawyers and the American Civil Liberties Union to scale back the rules for evidence and testimony. "Many can kill people under the name of national security, and to torture people under the name of national security," the Ara- bic-speaking Mohammed said through a translator. "And detain theirunderagechildrenunder the name of national security." In an apparent reference to Osama bin Laden, Moham- med noted that "the president can take someone and throw them into the sea in the name of national security." He also made an oblique ref-' erence to Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-Yemeni militant killed in a September 2007 U.S. drone strike, and told the judge not to be affected by the "crocodile tears" of prosecutors when they refer to the nearly 3,000 people killed in the 2001 attacks. "When the government feels sad for the killing of 3,000 on Sept. 11, we also should feel sorry that the U.S. government ... has killed thousands of people," Mohammed said, before cor- rectinghimself to say millions of people. "Your blood is not made of gold and ours is made of water. We are all human beings," he said. Pohl had allowed Mohammed to make the statement, but then said he wouldn't allow it to hap- pen again. "This is a onetime occur- rence," the judge said. "No mat- ter how heartfelt, I am not going to entertain personal comments of any accused about the ways things are going." Mohammed, who has told authorities he was behind the hijacking plot, is charged along with four co-defendants with crimes that include terrorism and murder. He has a history of making inflammatory state- ments in the handful of times when he has had an opportunity to speak. In a closed 2007 appearance before a panel of military offi- cers, he compared bin Laden to George Washington, boasted about planning the Sept. 11 attacks "from A to Z," and said he personally beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl with his "blessed right hand," according to atranscript. At his first public court hear- ing in 2008, he chanted verses of the Quran and said he would welcome becoming a martyr for his Sept. 11 role. The following year he released a written state- ment callingthe attacks a "noble victory." Mohammed, whose bushy beard is dyed a rust color with henna, sees himself a prisoner of war and has sought the same right to wear a uniform as Japa- nese and German troops prose- cuted for war crimes after World War II. In the defendant's case, his uniform is similar to what he wore as a mujahideen fighter in Bosnia and Afghanistan, said one of his lawyers, Army Capt. Jason Wright. Man pleads guilty in plot to kill Saudi ambassador Supposed drug dealer hired to carry out bombing in Washington NEW YORK (AP) - A Texas man pleaded guilty Wednes- day to plotting to assassinate Saudi Arabia's ambassador to' the United States, agreeing to hire what he thought was a drug dealer in Mexico last year for $1.5 million to carry out the attack with explosives at a Washington restaurant. Manssor Arbabsiar, 57, entered the plea to two con- spiracy charges and a murder- for-hire count in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, where Judge John F. Keenan repeat- edly asked Arbabsiar whether he intended to kill the ambas- sador. Arbabsiar, a U.S. citizen who holds an Iranian passport, said he did. Sentencing was set for Jan. 23, when defense lawyers are likely to cite their claims that Arbabsiar is bipolar in asking ag O for leniency. He faces up to 25 years in prison. Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Kim asked Arbabsiar if Iranian military officials based in Iran were involved in the plot. Arbabsiar said they were. In a news release issued after the plea, Attorney Gener- al Eric Holder cited the efforts of law enforcement and intelli- gence agencies in disrupting "a deadly plot approved by mem- bers of the Iranian military to assassinate a sitting foreign ambassador on U.S. soil." U.S. Attorney Preet Bhar- ara noted that the harm likely would have extended beyond the ambassador, call- ing Arbabsiar "the extended murderous hand of his co- conspirators, officials of the Iranian military based in Iran, who plotted to kill the Saudi Ambassador in the United States and were willing to kill as many bystanders as neces- sary to do so." He said Arbabsiar "was in telephone contact with his Iranian confederates while he brokered an audacious olot." 'Binders full of women' effort predated Romney according to women's coalition Employees deny candidate requested applications BOSTON (AP) - Members of a coalition of Massachusetts women's groups on Wednesday disputed Mitt Romney's asser- tion that he requested the names of potential female candidates for high-level, state positions when he was elected governor. "To be perfectly clear, Mitt Romney did not request those resumes," Jesse Mermell, a former executive director of Massachusetts Government Appointments Project, told reporters during a conference call arranged by the Democratic Party. Democrats arranged Wednesday's call to help blunt the Republican's efforts in the final weeks of the presidential campaign to appeal to female voters. Polls show women favor- ing President Barack Obama over Romney. Romney, responding to a question during Tuesday night's presidential debate about equal pay and opportunities for women, said that in the process ofassemblinga cabinet as gover- nor he was disappointed to find that most applicants were men. He said he then asked women's groups for help finding qualified female candidates. "I went to a number of wom- en's groups and said, 'Can you help us find folks,' and they brought us whole binders full of women," Romney said. The "binders full of women" remark sparked an instant wave of social media parodies of the phrase. Mermell, a Democrat and town official in Brookline, Mass., said Romney did not request any names after his 2002 election. Instead, she said MassGAP approached Rom- ney's team as part of its effort, begun before the election, to make sure that more women were appointed to senior posi- tions in the new administration. MassGAP describes itself as a nonpartisan coalition of women's groups interested in boosting the number of women in top state government jobs. The coalition said it approached the nominees of both major par- ties after the election, Romney and Democrat Shannon O'Brien, and secured commitments from both that, if elected, they would work with the organization to identify potential female candi- dates for senior-level positions. Romney's campaign declined to respond to Mermell and referred questions to Kerry Healey, who was Romney's lieu- tenant governor. Healey said Romney went beyond the ini- tial contact with MassGAP by reaching out to acquaintances in the business world and oth- ers to help meet his pledge to fill more administration posts with women. Healey served as a liaison to MassGAP and reviewed the binders with resumes of poten- tial candidates. "Gov. Romney not only sup- ports equal pay for equal work, but he goes beyond that by working to support women to reach the highest levels of gov- ernment," Healey said. Mermell questioned Rom- ney's commitment to helping women get ahead in the work- place. "The fact that he needed our help says everything you need to know about his true com- mitment to advance women in office," she said. Mermell added that it was "shocking that after 25 years of professional experi- ence at the very highest level of corporate America, Mitt Rom- ney needed our help." In a statement, MassGAP said the number of women in senior- level posts climbed from about 30 percent to 42 percent during the first two years of Romney's administration. A 2004 survey by the State University of New York found Massachusetts was first in the nation in the percentage of women in top state positions. MassGAP, however, noted the percentage later dropped to 25 percent in Romney's final two years in office. The way it worked was not quite the way it was described last night," said Ruth Bramson, who was hired as Romney's chief human resource officer after her resume was spotted in a binder. "He was half-right."