ee herds NEW DELHI, India (AP) - An lephant alert was sounded yesterday n India's West Bengal state after for- sttngers reported seeing 55 elephants n three herds advancing toward vil- ges and towns. "There is need to take precautions g'* now. Otherwise, we are in for me serious trouble," said Subimal oy, 'West Bengal's chief wildlife a'den. OQne herd of nine adults and two aloes already reached populated ar- fMidnapore district, causing panic mong residents, Roy said. They ate e rice crop in the village of ahishdoba and were moving on in earch of more food. Ls1 year, frightened villagers used toes, spears and torches to attack a r0I'of 50 elephants that had fled a rush fire in West Bengal's Jaldapara ildlife sanctuary. The elephants went n a rampage, crushing six people to eath and trampling crops. India's 20,000 wild elephants are rodtted by the law and cannot be illW unless they are declared rogues. India's population of 900 million ople.is growing more than 2 percent ygar,. reducing the size of forests here the elephants and other endan- ered species such as tigers live. An adult elephant needs a quarter of ton of food per day, and some can nly'find it in villages and farmland. Roy said two other herds were seen oving out of forests toward idnapore district, 100 miles west f 'Calcutta, a city of I1 million eople. Trained elephants with drivers were rdered in to guide the wild herds out f populated areas. NATI "WORLD The Michigan Dal"y"- Wednesday, September 6, 1995 -13A Common law courts use their own brand of justice Los Angeles Tmes COLUMBUS, Ohio - The Com- mon Law court of Ohio, Our One Su- preme Court, comes to order one night a week inside a cavernous strip mall bingo parlor where embittered cast- aways from American justice act out dreams of legal revolution. It is acourt with no legal standing and no connection to the judicial system, an experiment steeped in frustration, con- ducted without lawyers, without judges, without ponderous codes of criminal and civil procedure. Sitting on folding chairs in front ofan idled bingo blower, a jury of 12 men deliberates, issuing rulings based on its flawed interpretations of common law - the fundamental English legal prin- ciples that underpin America's laws. The jurors are re- tirees and machin- . ists, janitors and electricians, farm- ers and carpenters bound together by their disgust with America's courts and a willful insis- tence that they can dispatch their own justice. "You're here to become freemen," Larry Russell, the court clerk, intones 66They'frE dungeons dragons legal Syst4 --Bei Kansas jury for a night. But the movement's most radical activists have honed their populist yearnings into tactics of ha- rassment, using the tribunals to inter- fere in genuine legal cases, issue dubi- ous claims and plague the judicial sys- tem with thousands ofpages of baseless filings. "They're playing dungeons and drag- ons with the legal system. It's spooky," said Berry F. Laws Ill, a Kansas City attorney who ignored an order to ap- pear in June before a Wichita "people's grand jury." Scores ofCommon Law court indict- ments have been sent to baffled judges, bankers and police. In San Francisco and Little Rock, Ark., Common Law "marshals" wearing authentic-looking badges have barged into federal court- rooms, trying to serve their docu- plyng ments on judges. Officials tar- geted by Common Law courts often Ith the dismiss them as nuisances, but . It's some have grown alarmed. Small- town magistrates andclerks in West- rry F. Laws II1 ern states have City attorey been threatened. Authorities are in- vestigating the ac- tivities of Common Law courts in Ar- kansas, Florida, Kansas and Oklahoma. In Missouri, state police have tied an extremist Common Law court member to the attempted assassination ofa high- way patrolman. "Law enforcement needs to take these people very seriously," said Missouri Highway Patrol Sgt. Miles Parks, lead investigator of the sniper attack on Cpl. Bobbie J. Harper, who was wounded last year after arresting a Common Law activist. Common Law courts are rooted in the same thicket of conspiracy theory that tangles the militia movement. But where paramilitary groups claim legal justification in the right to bear arms, the Common Law phenomenon is based on an obscure legal doctrine known as constitutionalism. Its knotty canon derives from Biblical passages, kernels of historical truth and skewed interpretations of the Constitution and the common law. And, at its core, is the dogma of the Posse Comitatus, the short-lived rural movement that vio- lently espoused anti-government and anti-tax beliefs. The theories have little basis in fact, but Common Law court adherents study them with the zeal of first-year law students. Among the most outlandish: The Constitution is missing an original 13th Amendment, one that would have outlawed lawyers. Americans are di- vided between real citizens and "14th Amendment slaves" who allow them- selves to be ruled by the federal gov- ernment. The legal system's courts only have authority over maritime cases. "There may be afew grains oftruthin what they say, but a lot of this stuff is wacky," said Stephen Presser, a scholar of traditional common law and profes- sor of legal history at Northwesterr University. "To the unschooled, it car all sound real." Among those at Tuesday court ses sions in Columbus are "Patriots" whf swear on the Bible by vowing, "Sohel; me Yahweh." The Old Testament He braic reference to God is used in lega documents--as well as religious refer ences - by former Posse Comitatu members and Christian Patriots, be lievers in the white-supremacist Chri: tian Identity movement. Yet interest in Common Law cour has spread beyond the paramilitary fringes. Among the curious who come to Columbus are people with no ap- parent extremist affiliation - senior citizens angry about taxes, couples embittered by their lack of job secu- rity, even Russell Thompson, a Cin- cinnati chemist disillusioned after he vainly fought a speeding charge in local court. "If this gets some judges to listen to the people," Thompson said, "how can it hurt?" o .secutor Angeles T'nes NEW YORK - A prosecutor por- ayed Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman as e leader of a self-styled jihad army esigned to wage a holy war of terror- m against an infidel America as the ight-month trial of the radical cleric nd nine followers moved toward its rnclusion yesterday. In his summation to the jury, Assis- nt U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald id the sheik approved a panoply of lots ranging from a scheme to assassi- ate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak plans to blow up commuter tunnels nking New York with New Jersey and e Manhattan headquarters of the FBI an effort to diminish U.S. support for rael. "America was the number one en- y," Fitzgerald said. "He (Abdel- ahman) made nobones about it. Each Uncovered A student from University College In London works alongside Egyptian , archeologist Ahamed Hassan (right) In the dunes of Wadi Tumala In Egypt as they excavate the remains of a man from 3200 BC on Aug. 17. in NYbombcs ielk a errst lae to 100 sympathizers who have come from across Ohio, Kentucky and Indi- ana to watch. Then he leads the jury on a long night of validating "quiet title" declarations, under which the court's petitioners expect, in vain, to liberate themselves from the yoke of govern- ment. Several dozen Common Law courts have sprouted throughout the Midwest, South and West in the past year, law enforcement officials and civil libertar- ians report. Movement leaders boast of up to 100 courts in 30 states - a claim unverified, say those monitoring the phenomenon, because so many operate in secrecy. Most are little more than clubs for the disaffected, a chance to play judge and person in this courtroom was pre- sented a choice - did they want to wage a war against the U.S. and they agreed." Among the charges the defendants face is seditious conspiracy-a rarely- used statute dating to the Civil War making it a crime for two or more people to agree to wage war against the United States or to forcefully oppose U.S. authority. In their summation expected later this week, defense lawyers will seek to convince the jury that the blind, dia- betic, 57-year-old Egyptian cleric, who also suffers from heart disease, did noth- ing more than exercise his right of free speech. Fitzgerald alleged that another de- fendant in the case, El Sayyid Nosair, telephoned Abdel-Rahman in Egypt before the 1990 assassination in a Man- hattan hotel of Rabbi Meir Kahane, the militant founder of the Jewish Defense League. A state court jury acquitted Nosair of murdering the controversial clergy- man, but convicted him on weapons charges. Nevertheless, Fitzgerald said Nosair killed Kahane, later confessing three times to the shooting, and while in prison had participated in the plot to blow up the World Trade Center, which killed six people, injured more than 1,000 and caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage. "The rabbi's murder is not a murder mystery," the prosecutor added. "El Sayyid Nosair killed Rabbi Kahane." The government lawyer charged the assassination "was only the beginning" of a series of plots. i It r... r r .r.r. rrrr . r , Yow rain, camel pox found in Ik Angeles Times reactor, the Iraqis told the U.N. inspec Amo WASHINGTON - In their most tors. cialists mprehensive revelations about bio- Iraq says it dismantled the program orrhagi gical weaponry, Iraqi scientists have following the 1991 Persian Gulf War, a mum c mitted to conducting ground-break- claim that U.N. inspectors must now in the g tesearch on viruses that make eyes verify. bleed. T eed and cause lethal diarrhea in in- Iraqi officials disclosed the dimen- the vir nts and on toxins that can eliminate sions of the program, which is proving Anol tire crops, U.N.investigators and U.S. far more ambitious than Western intel- chronic icials said yesterday. ligence and U.N. arms inspectors had children Iraq's program, which is turning out expected, to U.N. investigators last third wa be one of the most extensive in the week. pox and story of biological warfare, included Until then, Iraq had claimed that its None o ork on viruses and toxins ranging program employed only 10 people biologic nr yellow rain and camel pox to who wrote six research papers on bio- said. xins that produce gangrene. logical warfare over a four-year pe- The "No country I know of has evereven riod. two oth ayedwiththeideaofdevelopingmany But U.N. investigators now say the yellow - these into instruments of war," a biological weapons program involved hemorr ior U.N. scientist said. "It represents up to 150 scientists and senior techni- disease ghly innovative thinking and a very cians, not including support staff, secu- area and ge investment." rity and other aides. formerl Iraqi scientists, seeking to threaten vilians as well as troops, also worked t a novel way to make their deadly or bilitating germs rain down on wide as, the sources said. "WINNfaN B They modified "drop tanks," origi- W NONA Ily designed as auxiliary fuel sources UNPROTE( r warplanes, so that they could spray olbgical agents over the countryside GET PROTECTED WIT om high altitudes. INTERNATIONAL The initial targets now appear to Below Retail prices Delivered ye' included Israel as well as re- onal rivals and any opposition troops ITEM # DESCRIPTION RETA obilized against Iraq after its inva- #500 Super Econo Car Club* on. #501 Super Econo Truck Club* Israel was a target in part because ofq 1980 bombing of an Iraqi nuclear #350 Safe Entry - Light/Alarm** 4 w #E17 Hep Me - Personal Alarm ! f 's' HAM M ike Clubt aq weapons ng the viral agents, U.N. spe- said, was one that causes hem- c conjunctivitis, which at mini- auses temporary blindness and worst case causes the eyes to The onset is within 24 hours, and us is highly transmissible. ther was a virus that causes diarrhea that can be lethal in n and incapacitating to troops. A as camel pox, which, like small- d monkey pox, produces lesions. fthe three has ever been used in cal warfare, the U.N. scientist Iraqis also considered making er viral agents, those that cause fever and the Crimean Congo hagic fever, which is a tick-born common to the Crimean Sea d the region of the Zaire River, y known as the Congo. 4 I ~TDD FOR ONLY 1Iy -,PER WEEK INCLUDING SUNDAYS As a college student, the Chicago Tribune knows your time and money are valuable. That's why we bring the1+ world to you with all the regional, national and inter- national news you want at a price you can afford ORDER TODAY using the coupon below or, for faster service, call 1-800-TRIBUNE 1-800-874-2863,<* Ask for operator 201. CTED* H WINNER IL PRICE YOUR PRICE TOTAL 34.95 24.95 36.95 26.95 9.95 28.95 1395 139 :1.9 3:.9 I