Minnesota: Man pleads not guilty in terror group funding case
ST. LOUIS (AP) — A Minnesotan says he’s not guilty of plotting to send money to a terrorist group in Somalia that the U.S. says has ties to al-Qaida.
Thirty-five-year-old Abdi Mahdi Hussein of Minneapolis entered the plea Monday in U.S. District Court in St. Louis, where he was indicted last month with St. Louis taxi driver Mohamud Abdi Yusuf and another man.
Hussein remains free on his own recognizance.
The government contends that Yusuf and Hussein sent money by wire transfer to al-Shabab supporters in Somalia between 2008 and at least July 2009.
Hussein, who is also of Somali descent, is charged with one count of conspiracy to structure monetary transactions. Yusuf also faces that count, as well as providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization.
South Dakota: Woman pleads guilty in 1975 reservation killing
PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — A woman has been sentenced to five years of probation and a suspended prison term for her role in the killing of an American Indian Movement member on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge reservation 35 years ago.
Attorney General Marty Jackley says Thelma Rios pleaded guilty to being an accessory to kidnapping in the 1975 slaying of Annie Mae Aquash (AH’-kwash).
Prosecutors say Aquash was shot to death because she was a suspected government informant.
Jackley says Rios was sentenced to five years in prison, but the judge suspended the sentence and ordered Rios to serve five years of probation.
Virginia: U.S. piracy trial for 5 Somali men begins
NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — Jury selection was scheduled to begin in the Virginia piracy trial of five Somali defendants accused of attacking a U.S. Navy ship off the coast of Africa.
U.S. District Judge Mark S. Davis will preside over the trial, which began Tuesday in Norfolk. If convicted of the piracy charge, the five Somali nationals face mandatory life terms.
The defendants are accused in the April attack on the USS Nicholas, which was part of an international flotilla combating piracy in the seas off Somalia.
According to court filings, the government is expected to call as an expert witness the chief of the counter-piracy branch of the Office of Naval Intelligence.
Legal scholars say this is the first piracy prosecution to go to trial in the U.S. since the Civil War.
Arkansas: GI slaying suspect threatens to fire attorney
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — The man charged in the shooting death of a U.S. Army private outside a Little Rock recruiting center is threatening to fire his attorneys.
Abdulhakim (ahb-DOOL’ hah-KEEM’) Muhammad is charged with capital murder and attempted capital murder in the June 2009 shooting.
A letter from Muhammad filed in Pulaski County Circuit Court says he’ll fire his attorneys if they delay his case and will “represent my damn self.”
Defense attorneys want the case thrown out of court. Attorney Claiborne Ferguson told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette the alleged crimes are governed by federal anti-terrorism laws and only the federal government can prosecute Muhammad.
Muhammad has told The Associated Press the shootings were justified because of U.S. military action in the Middle East.
The trial is to begin Feb. 23.
Maryland: Inmate murder trial is last chapter in Md. tragedy
CUMBERLAND, Md. (AP) — A state prison inmate faces trial on a first-degree murder charge that’s the latest chapter in a tragic story.
Thirty-six-year-old Christopher White was scheduled for trial Tuesday. He is accused of strangling cellmate Clarence Meyers Jr. in December at the North Branch Correctional Institution.
Meyers was serving two life sentences for setting a house fire in Hancock that killed his girlfriend’s two adolescent daughters in 2009.
Three weeks before Meyers died, he was charged with contracting with a prison gang to murder the girls’ mother. The alleged contract wasn’t carried out.
White is serving 23 years for a 1995 conviction in Wicomico County for kidnapping, larceny, assault and weapons violations.
Pennsylvania: Man says he will take lawyer in homicide case
LANCASTER, Pa. (AP) — A central Pennsylvania man says he has changed his mind and will allow public defenders to represent him in one of two homicide cases against him.
Twenty-eight-year-old David Vasquez Jordan of Lancaster Township had said last week that he didn’t want a lawyer in his criminal homicide trial in the death of 25-year-old Lemar Lewis last year. But before jury selection began Monday, Jordan said he had reconsidered, and two public defenders appointed earlier were reinstated.
The (Lancaster) Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era says Judge Howard Knisely also agreed to let the defense argue that Jordan believed Lewis was in a gang.
Jordan and three other men have also been charged in the 2004 death of 24-year-old Heather Nunn. Police say she was killed in her kitchen while her two daughters were upstairs taking a bath.
California: Friars ask state high court to review ruling files
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Franciscans have asked California’s high court to review an appeals court decision ordering them to make public the confidential files of friars accused of sex abuse.
Brian Brosnahan, an attorney for the Franciscans, says the Roman Catholic religious order filed the petition Monday.
That puts on hold any release of internal church documents while the high court considers whether to hear the case.
Twenty-five plaintiffs settled lawsuits for $28.4 million in 2006, and the agreement called for the release of confidential files.
Most of the accused friars, however, did not sign the settlement agreement.
A trial judge ruled that the public interest outweighed the friars’ privacy rights, but six of the friars appealed.
