Russia foils 'Chechen plot' to assassinate Vladimir Putin

Russian and Ukrainian security services have foiled a plot to blow up Vladimir Putin shortly after this Sunday's presidential election in Russia, it emerged on Monday.

Russia's and Ukraine's secret services have arrested two men over an alleged plot to assassinate Prime Minister Vladimir Putin: 

State television in Russia said that special forces had seized two conspirators in Odessa, southern Ukraine, after an explosion in an apartment in January.

The Chechen alleged ringleader, Adam Osmayev, 31, has reportedly confessed to planning the assassination on the orders of Doku Umarov, the emir of the Islamist insurgency against Moscow's rule in the North Caucasus region.

Channel One showed Osmayev in detention saying: "The ultimate aim was to travel to Moscow and try to assassinate Premier Putin." The plan was exposed after the explosion in Odessa on January 4, which was initially thought to be a domestic gas explosion. However, it transpired to be an accident during the preparation of an explosive device.

One of the men, Ruslan Madayev, 26, died in the blast but Ukrainian special forces seized a second, Ilya Pyanzin, 28, two days later. Osmayev, who was shown with blotches of green antiseptic covering wounds on his face, was captured separately later. The men had a laptop with several videos of Mr Putin's cortege travelling through Moscow on it.

Osmayev – who had reportedly been on a federal arrest warrant since 2007 – said they planned to use a tank mine to kill Mr Putin rather than a suicide bomber, although Madayev had been prepared to become a martyr.

Mr Putin did not comment on Monday morning but his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, confirmed the murder plot was real.

There is likely to be speculation that news of the plot – apparently exposed several weeks ago – was deliberately released by Kremlin-controlled media just before the presidential vote, in order to bolster one of Mr Putin's favourite electoral tactics: suggesting that foreign-backed wreckers are trying to destabilise the motherland.

Channel One made a point of mentioning that Osmayev lived for several years in London, which is also home to Akhmed Zakayev, the Chechen rebel envoy whom Moscow has tried unsuccessfully to extradite.

An FSB (Russian Federal Security Service) operative showed videos of Mr Putin's cortege found on Osmayev's computer. "These were in order to understand where the bodyguards sit and how many cars are escorting, from different angles and streets," he explained.

Madayev and Pyanzin, a Kazakh citizen, were said to have flown to Ukraine from the United Arab Emirates via Turkey "with precise instructions from representatives of Doku Umarov."

Afghans halt convoy of boys 'headed for suicide training camps'

Afghan police said they rescued a convoy of 41 children, some aged as young as six, from being smuggled over the border to Pakistan and trained as suicide bombers.

The children were being sent to be trained to attack Afghan and international forces 

The children were stopped in a convoy of cars driven by four Afghan men in the mountainous eastern province of Kunar, police and interior ministry officials said.

They said their parents had been fooled into believing they were sending their children to religious schools across the border, but were instead being sent to be trained to attack Afghan and international forces.

“They were bringing these children in the name of education, but they were not being sent to schools,” a police official in the province said, “They were being sent to be suicide bombers”.

The children were to be taken to a madrassah at Shamshato, close to Peshawar, which officials said was a recruiting ground for militants belonging to Hizb-i-Islami, one of Afghanistan’s main insurgent factions.

However the children, when shown to local reporters, insisted they had no links with insurgents and were being sent only to receive free schooling and escape their poverty-stricken villages.

Several they were from the violent Pech and Korengal valleys and had lost their fathers in clashes between American troops and insurgents, or in Nato airstrikes.

They told reporters that with their fathers gone, their families could not afford to look after them so they were being sent to private madrassahs where they would receive free food and clothes.

Afghan intelligence officials have blamed insurgents including the Taliban for launching a wave of child suicide bombers against targets in the country in the past few years.

Young boys are chosen because they are gullible and less likely to be frisked at checkpoints which would stop a grown man.

“Children are not searched. A policeman will never search a child,” explained one senior Afghan intelligence official.

Afghanistan blames hundreds of privately-funded madrassahs in Pakistan’s border regions for brainwashing boys with extremist propaganda against their government and its Western allies and then persuading them to wage jihad or become suicide bombers.

Poor pashtun families often send their sons to madrassahs to receive a free education and to escape the conflict in the Afghanistan. Wealthy donors allow the schools to offer free tuition, food and sometimes a stipend to study.

Seddiq Seddiqi, spokesman for the interior ministry, said: “It was obvious what was happening with these boys. They were being taken across the border, without any paperwork or documentation, to Pakistan where there are lots of these madrassahs.

“They train these children and then they send them back to carry out attacks.”

The four men accompanying the children, Fazl Maula, Syed Habib, Samiullah and Amir Gul, were all arrested, while the boys were sent back to their families, he said.

The senior intelligence official estimated there were almost 2,000 privately-run madrassahs in the border regions.

“Now most of these madrassahs are training camps,” he said.

“Pakistan’s government is trying to help us, but they don’t have access to many of these areas.”

Dominique Strauss-Kahn freed from custody over alleged prostitution ring

Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been freed from French police custody after two days of questioning about an alleged prostitution ring but faces a further grilling next month.

Dominique Strauss-Khan's wife has decamped to Morocco, and demonstrators and the media follow his every move 

The French politician also heard that the first court hearing in a US civil case, brought by the New York hotel maid who alleges that he sexually assaulted her, will take place on March 15.

DSK, as he is known in France, will thus face legal proceedings on both sides of the Atlantic next month.

A French judicial source said Mr Strauss-Kahn, once considered a front-runner to become the next president of France, would be summoned to appear before investigating magistrates in Lille on March 28 on charges linked to prostitution and corruption.

The 62-year-old former Socialist minister was released after being detained for about 32 hours for questioning on the charges of "abetting aggravated pimping by an organised gang" and "misuse of company funds".

He was swiftly whisked away in a car under a police motorcycle escort from the police station in the northern city of Lille, where dozens of journalists had gathered.

During his interrogation, Strauss-Kahn told investigators he did not suspect women he met at orgies were prostitutes, as they were introduced to him by senior police officers, a source close to the probe said.

"He explained himself fully about all the events he was questioned on," Strauss-Kahn's lawyer Frederique Baulieu said, but she declined to comment on his future summons.

He was also to be quizzed by France's police internal affairs department, the IGPN, which is conducting a separate inquiry into a senior officer, Commissioner Jean-Christophe Lagarde, who has been charged with pimping.

Under French law, aggravated organised pimping carries a prison term of up to 20 years and profiting from embezzlement five years and a fine.

Investigating magistrates want to know whether he was aware that women who entertained him at parties in restaurants, hotels and swingers' clubs in Paris and Washington were paid prostitutes.

They will also ask whether Strauss-Kahn knew the escorts were paid with funds allegedly fraudulently obtained from a public works company by his hosts.

Paying a prostitute is not illegal in France, but profiting from vice or embezzling company funds to pay for sex can lead to charges.

Lawyer Henri Leclerc has said his client may not have known he was with prostitutes as "in these parties, you're not necessarily dressed. I defy you to tell the difference between a nude prostitute and a nude woman of quality."

The former managing director of the International Monetary Fund acknowledges having an uninhibited sex life, but rejects any role in pimping or corruption and has indicated he will deny any criminal wrongdoing.

New York prosecutors abandoned a sex assault case against Strauss-Kahn last year, but his accuser, an immigrant hotel maid, lodged a civil suit.

The US hearing next month will air arguments on pretrial motions and is not the start of the trial itself.

The Bronx Supreme Court announced the new stage in the saga with a brief statement saying "oral argument on the motions in the Diallo v Strauss-Kahn case pending in Bronx Supreme Court will be held on March 15."

Nafissatou Diallo says Strauss-Kahn attempted to rape her in his Manhattan Sofitel hotel room where she had gone to clean on May 14 last year. Strauss-Kahn was arrested later that day but insisted he was being framed and prosecutors later dropped charges, saying the maid had credibility problems.

The civil suit seeks unspecified damages from Strauss-Kahn, who is married to a wealthy French journalist.

Friends of Strauss-Kahn have claimed a conspiracy to bring him down, removing what had been seen as a viable challenge to French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Two businessmen, Fabrice Paszkowski, a medical equipment tycoon with ties to Strauss-Kahn's Socialist Party, and David Roquet, former director of a local subsidiary of building giant BTP Eiffage, have already been charged in the French prostitution case.

The pair are alleged to have links to a network of French and Belgian prostitutes centred on the Carlton Hotel in Lille, a well-known meeting place of the local business and political elite in a city run by the Socialist Party.

In all, eight people are facing trial in connection with the "Carlton affair", including three executives from the luxury hotel itself, a leading lawyer and the police chief, Lagarde.

The last of the sex parties is said to have taken place during a trip by a group from Lille to Washington between May 11 and 13 last year.

One day later, on May 14, Strauss-Kahn was arrested in New York.

Strauss-Kahn has also been accused by 32-year-old French writer Tristane Banon of attempting to rape her in 2003. Prosecutors decided there was prima facie evidence of a sexual assault, but ruled that the statute of limitations had passed.

Arab League backs Syria opposition

Arab nations on Sunday night called for a joint United Nations peacekeeping force to be sent to the country.

Syrians carrying the revolutionary flag and some of them weapons as they take part in a protest at Clock Square in Idlib, Syria.

At a crisis meeting in Cairo, the Arab League agreed to take exceptional measures to halt President Bashar al-Assad's violent repression of civilian protesters.

It voted to scrap its much criticised observer mission to Syria, severed all diplomatic relations with the Assad regime and reinforced economic sanctions.

The League called for the opening of "communication channels with the Syrian opposition and providing all forms of political and material support to it".

In a landmark decision it asked the United Nations for support in sending a joint peacekeeping force. Nabil al-Arabi, the League's secretary general, urged ministers to move quickly to end the "vicious cycle of violence".

The Syrian regime immediately rejected the resolution "categorically".

The UN-Arab team proposed by the League would replace the 170 Arab observers deployed in December and recalled last month. The Sudanese general who led the mission, and was accused by opposition activists of bias towards the regime, resigned yesterday.

The announcement marks an urgent effort to end the bloodshed after Russia and China used their UN Security Council veto to block an Arab-drafted and Western-backed plan to have Mr Assad replaced by a transitional government.

At the start of the session, Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, asked the delegates: "How long will we stay as onlookers to what is happening to the brotherly Syrian people, and how much longer will we grant the Syrian regime one period after another so it can commit more massacres?"

As the Arab leaders met, rockets continued to fall on the Syrian opposition stronghold of Homs. Activists reported more than 500 people have died there since February 4.

The Syrian army was reportedly distributing gas masks to its soldiers, leading to fears that chemical weapons will soon be used against protesters.

On Saturday, 31 people were killed across the country according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Of the ten who died in Homs, nine were in the opposition neighbourhood of Baba Amro. Graphic YouTube clips documenting casualties of the conflict flood show mutilated and charred corpses – alleged victims of government shells.

One video posted on Twitter shows a doctor in Baba Amr struggling to treat the gravely injured without even basic medical equipment. A makeshift hospital has been erected in a mosque after the local field hospital was destroyed. The doctor spoke to the camera over blasts of gunfire.

"This is a small mosque and there are a huge number of injured people. All of these are serious injuries that resulted from bullets. Most of them are unconscious," he says pointing to several lifeless men lying on the ground.

"Many children have been killed. The death toll up to now is around 40."

On the same day in Damascus, opposition militants assassinated Dr Issa al-Kholi, a Syrian General in charge of the Hameish military hospital. Syria's Arab News Agency reports that Dr Kholi was gunned down as he left his home in the morning. He, like the ruling Assad family, was a member of the elite Alawite Shia minority.

The conflict even spread to Tripoli, where on Saturday Lebanese forces moved into stop clashes between Sunni and Alawite neighbours. Two people were killed.

Saturday's high death toll comes just one day after a coordinated suicide bomb attack in Aleppo left 28 dead and 235 injured, according to government figures. US intelligence has pointed to al-Qaeda as the likely culprits.

As the conflict in Syria enters its eleventh month, having so far claimed an estimated 5,400 lives, the Arab League talked on Sunday about amassing a force of up to 3,000 observers to halt violence. Arabi told ministers he had already proposed the idea to the UN General Secretary.

Arab ministers are meanwhile engaged in intensive talks with Russia and China in the hope they can encourage Bashar Assad to allow peacekeeping forces into the country. Ends

Syria unrest: Aleppo bomb attacks 'kill 28'

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Syria Crisis

• Analysis: Syria's complex and bloody crisis
• Homs maps and videos
• Army under pressure
• Under fire in Homs

At least 28 people have been killed and 235 wounded in two bombs targeting security compounds in Syria's second city of Aleppo, state media report.

State television said the death toll included both civilians and members of the security forces and blamed "armed terrorist gangs" for the attacks.

Within minutes, it broadcast footage showing corpses and mangled body parts.

The rebel Free Syrian Army said it was operating in the area at the time, but was not responsible for the blasts.

Col Malik al-Kurdi, the FSA's deputy leader, told BBC Arabic that it had been monitoring the activity of security forces personnel and members of the pro-government Shabiha militia inside a Military Intelligence compound and a riot police base in Aleppo on Friday morning.

"When they were gathering in a square to go to the mosques and repress demonstrations, two groups from the FSA targeted the two buildings with small arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire," he said.

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We hold the Syrian regime entirely responsible for this explosion”

Izzedine al-HalabiAleppo opposition activist

• In pictures: Explosions

"After violent clashes, there was an explosion inside the Military Intelligence building. At first we didn't know what it was, but we think it was the regime trying to stop the operation of the FSA," he added.

Another FSA spokesman, Col Mahir Nouaimi, told AFP: "This criminal regime is killing our children in Homs and carrying out bomb attacks in Aleppo to steer attention away from what it is doing in Homs."

Opposition members also blamed the government, accusing it of trying to discredit the uprising.

Izzedine al-Halabi, an activist in Aleppo, told the BBC there had been suspicious activity by security personnel who sealed off the area around the main intelligence compound shortly before the blasts.

"We hold the Syrian regime entirely responsible for this explosion," he said.

Body parts

A weeping Syrian state TV reporter said the bomb targeting the Military Intelligence compound went off near a park, where people had gathered for breakfast and children had been playing.

Some children were killed in the blast, he said, holding up an inline-skate.

Aleppo has seen only minor protests and relatively little violence until now

Bulldozers could be seen in the TV footage clearing debris that filled the street, and nearby buildings appeared to have had their windows shattered.

"Civilians and members of the military were martyred and wounded in the terrorist explosions,'' the channel reported.

The channel showed similar footage from the site of the second explosion, which the reporter said was the result of a suicide car bombing.

The blast left a crater several metres wide in the road and blew a lorry onto its side.

Emergency workers were shown holding up body parts which they placed in black bin bags.

Syrian security forces have launched assaults on key opposition-held cities in the past week

Aleppo has seen only minor protests and relatively little violence since the uprising against President al-Assad erupted in March, which human rights groups say has left more than 7,000 civilians dead.

On 6 January, 26 people were killed in what officials said was a suicide bombing in Damascus.

Two weeks earlier, 44 reportedly died in twin suicide bomb attacks targeting security compounds in the capital.

'Outrageous bloodshed'

Meanwhile, residents of the central city of Homs say tanks are massed outside several opposition-held districts.

Overnight, tanks entered the district of Inshaat, next to the protest centre of Baba Amr, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

There was also sporadic shelling and gunfire throughout the city on Friday. At least four people were reportedly killed in Baba Amr.

Activists say the intense bombardment of many parts of Homs by security forces since Saturday has left more than 400 people dead. US President Barack Obama has condemned the "outrageous bloodshed".

The opposition called for nationwide protests on Friday to denounce Russia's veto of a UN Security Council resolution demanding President Bashar al-Assad's government stop killing its own people.

The Local Co-ordination Committees, another activist group, said troops had opened fire to disperse thousands of protesters who filled the streets following Friday prayers in Aleppo, Homs, the north-western coastal city of Latakia, the southern city of Daraa, and Damascus suburbs.

Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said the opposition "bore full responsibility" because it had refused to begin talks with the government and accused Western powers of being "accomplices".

But Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah criticised Russia's support of Mr Assad.

"There is no doubt that the confidence of the world in the United Nations has been shaken," he said on Saudi state TV on Friday. "Unfortunately, what happened in the UN, in my opinion, is an unfavourable initiative."

Costa Concordia: mystery over Captain's lover deepens

The mystery over the involvement of Moldovan dancer Domnica Cemortan in the Costa Concordia disaster has deepened after one of her relatives denied reports that the young woman was in a relationship with the ship's captain.

Domnica Cemortan has said she was in love with Concordia captain Francesco Schettino

Cemortan, 25, reportedly told investigators last week that she was "in love" with Capt Francesco Schettino, as it emerged that search and rescue divers had found her lingerie, clothing and make-up bag in his cabin.

But in an interview with Italian television, her aunt insisted that there was no romantic relationship between the two.

"Was my niece Schettino's lover? I really think not. A lot of things in this whole business have been misinterpreted," said Lucica Cemortan Gurina.

"Show me a passenger who took a photo of the two of them caressing, embracing or kissing. I don't believe there is one."

She said her niece certainly "admired" Capt Schettino, whom she met when she worked on the Costa Concordia as a crew member.

"Maybe Domnica saw something in him that she wasn't able to find in others, namely friendship."

Mrs Gurina said her niece had been badly affected by the death of her father, who drowned in 1996.

Ms Cemortan was interviewed for nearly six hours last week by prosecutors in a police station in Grosseto, Tuscany, where the investigation into the January 13 accident is based.

They want to know whether she was on the bridge at the time that the Concordia rammed into rocks off the Tuscan island of Giglio, and whether her presence may have distracted the captain and his officers.

On Thursday a court in Florence will decide whether Capt Schettino, 52, should remain under house arrest, be released on bail or – as prosecutors have asked – sent to prison pending the outcome of the investigation.

A mass will be held for the victims of the disaster on Sunday in Rome.

The mass, in the Basilica of Santa Maria of the Angels and Martyrs, will be led by Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the president of the Italian Bishops' Conference.

It will be attended by Giorgio Napolitano, Italy's president, and broadcast live on state television.

Iran vows to hit any country that stages attack

Iran will target any country where an attack against it is staged, a senior Revolutionary Guard commander warned on Sunday, the latest threat amid growing tensions over its nuclear programme and Western sanctions.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard testing Shabab-3 missiles in Tehran

Gen Hossein Salami, deputy commander of the elite Revolutionary Guard, Iran’s most powerful military force appeared to be warning to Iran’s neighbours not to let their territory or airspace be used as a base for an attack.

“Any place where enemy offensive operations against the Islamic Republic of Iran originate will be the target of a reciprocal attack by the Guard’s fighting units,” Gen Salami said according to the semiofficial Fars news agency.

The Revolutionary Guard started manoeuvres in the country’s south on Saturday, following naval exercises near the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil export route, additional muscle flexing by Iran to ward off the prospect of a military strike against its nuclear facilities. Iran has threatened to close off the strait if Western sanctions limit Iranian oil exports.

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Sunday that economic and military might are the country’s only guarantee for peace and security following the latest developments in Iran and Syria.

“In the past few days we received a reminder of what kind of neighbourhood we live in,” Mr Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting.

“In such a region the only thing ensuring (our) existence, security and prosperity is strength.

“We shall continue to build the military, economic and social strength of Israel; that is the only guarantee for peace and also Israel’s only defence if peace collapses.”

The US and its Western allies charge that Iran is producing atomic weapons. Iran says its programme is meant to produce fuel for future nuclear power reactors and medical radioisotopes needed for cancer patients.