7 slain CIA workers honored
Obama commemorates deaths in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama told hundreds of CIA employees Friday that the deaths of seven of their colleagues in a suicide bombing Dec. 30 in Afghanistan amounted to a “summons … to carry on their work, to complete this mission, to win this war and to keep our country safe.”
Security was tight around the CIA’s suburban Washington headquarters as Obama joined agency leaders at a memorial service for the five CIA officers and two contractors. The seven died when a Jordanian they thought was working for them against al-Qaida blew himself up at an outpost outside Khost.
The bombing, which also killed a Jordanian intelligence officer, was the costliest attack against the agency since a 1983 strike on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut took the lives of eight CIA officers.
The service wasn’t on Obama’s publicly released schedule, and reporters who made the 14-minute trip with him from the White House to the CIA’s sprawling compound at Langley, Va., were not allowed into the ceremony.
A White House statement released later said that more than 1,000 CIA officers and family members of the dead had attended. The statement said Obama referred to the dead CIA workers as “seven heroes” and thanked their families for their sacrifice.
“Everything you instilled in them — the virtues of service and decency and duty — were on display that December day. That is what you gave them. That is what you gave to America. And our nation will be forever in your debt,” Obama said, according to the White House.
CIA Director Leon Panetta said the attack, whose victims included the head of the CIA station in Khost, would not discourage the agency from confronting al-Qaida.
“We will carry this fight to the enemy,” the White House quoted Panetta as saying. “Our resolve is unbroken, our energy undiminished and our dedication to each other and to our nation unshakable.”
There was no mention in the White House statement of reports last week that the Pakistani Taliban leader linked to the attack had died from wounds suffered in a U.S. drone strike.
American officials in Afghanistan and news reports in Pakistan said Hakimullah Mehsud had died after attacks targeted him Jan. 14 and Jan. 17 in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region.
The Taliban denied the claim and officials in Washington said they could not confirm it, but U.S. officials in Afghanistan said they thought the reports were true.
Mehsud hasn’t been heard from since the reports of his death.
Flooding kills at least 15 in Mexico
MEXICO CITY — A woman hands a child to Mexican police using a boat on a flooded street in the Valle de Chalco neighborhood Friday after heavy rains. Several hundred families there were evacuated after a sewage canal overflowed. The rains, which began earlier last week, killed at least 15 people across the country. More than half of the country was affected. Hardest hit was the western state of Michoacan, where at least 13 people were killed by landslides and flooding. An unknown number of people were missing Friday. Two children drowned trying to cross the swollen Chapulin River in the central state of Guanajuato.
NATION
Woman gets 45 yearsin ’08 torture, slaying
EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. — A judge sentenced a woman to 45 years in prison Friday in the torture slaying of a pregnant, developmentally impaired mother, saying the beatings, scalds and gunshot wounds she suffered were beyond anything anyone should have to endure.
Madison County Circuit Judge Charles Romani Jr. was not swayed by convict Michelle Riley’s expressions of remorse for the January 2008 death of Dorothy Dixon, 29. What Riley and her cohorts inflicted on Dixon, who had been five or six months pregnant when she died, “was brutal and heinous, to say the least,” he said.
Riley, 37, told the court, “I’m sorry that I can’t take it back.”
Investigators have said Dixon was at times beaten with a plunger handle, burned with a hot glue gun and used for target practice with a BB pistol.
Lodge workers protected
PRESCOTT, Ariz — Two employees of a motivational speaker facing manslaughter charges told authorities they had no reason to be alarmed when participants in a deadly Arizona sweat lodge ceremony began vomiting and passing out, because their boss told them such responses were to be expected, according to documents released Friday.
Megan and Josh Fredrickson participated in the October sweat lodge ceremony near Sedona, which authorities say led to the deaths of three people. The event was led by self-help guru James Arthur Ray.
Authorities interviewed the Fredricksons on the condition that nothing they said would be used against them. Ray is charged with manslaughter.
WORLD
Afghan police fatally shoot 7 civilians in error
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Afghan border police mistook a group of villagers gathering wood near the Pakistan border for insurgents and opened fire, killing seven civilians, a police official said Saturday.
All six officers involved in Friday’s pre-dawn shooting have been arrested and the incident is under investigation, said Gen. Abdul Raziq, commander of the border police of southern Afghanistan.
The Afghan-Pakistan border area is a common transit route for both Taliban militants and smugglers, and border police regularly are attacked in the area.
The officers were driving through Kandahar province’s Shorabak district before sunrise Friday when they spotted the group of seven men and thought they were about to be ambushed, Raziq said. They started shooting from about 400 yards away and only discovered when they went to recover the bodies that none were armed, he said.
The officers then confirmed with local residents that the dead were not militants, he added.
Acres of poppies razed
GUATEMALA CITY — Guatemalan police say they have destroyed about 1,200 acres of opium poppies along the border with Mexico.
National police spokesman Donald Gonzalez says about 250 police officers worked for four days to destroy the crops in the mountains of the province of San Marcos in western Guatemala.
He said Friday that no arrests were made. He values the plants at $950 million.
Russian police chief slain
MAKHACHKALA, Russia — The police chief of the capital of Russia’s violence-wracked region of Dagestan was shot dead Friday in an attack on his car, officials said.
Akhmed Magomedov died on the way to the hospital Friday after unidentified assailants opened fire on his car in Makhachkala, Dagestan police spokesman Mark Tolchinsky said.
Two bodyguards of Magomedov’s were killed instantly, Tolchinsky said. Magomedov’s shooting came just hours after a senior police official was killed when an explosive device struck his vehicle.
Attacks on officials are frequent in Russia’s North Caucasus as authorities struggle to contain an Islamist insurgency.
Magomedov met with Russia’s interior minister in the aftermath of a Jan. 6 suicide bombing that killed five police officers and wounded 18, giving assurances that those responsible would be caught.
In the neighboring Chechnya province, a clash between militants and security forces killed five troops and wounded six others.
THE NEWSMAKER
Judge: Hand over tape in Edwards’ case or else
PITTSBORO, N.C. — A judge wants to put a purported sex tape of two-time presidential candidate John Edwards “under lock and key,” demanding Friday that a former aide turn over the video by this week.
Superior Court Judge Abraham Penn Jones reprimanded Andrew Young during a brief court hearing for not surrendering the video when deputies went to retrieve it recently. Jones said the estranged Edwards confidant could face jail for contempt.
