World Scene

AUSTRALIA

Indian doctor freed after terror link error

BRISBANE — An Indian doctor was freed from custody after Australia’s chief prosecutor said yesterday that a charge linking him to failed terrorist bombings in Britain was a mistake.

Prosecutors withdrew the charge against Dr. Mohamed Haneef in the Brisbane Magistrates Court after a review of the evidence by the federal Director of Public Prosecutions Damian Bugg found that his office should never have recommended it.

The government responded by saying Dr. Haneef, 27, will be freed from custody while Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews considers whether to change his decision to revoke the doctor’s visa.

Dr. Haneef has been in custody since July 2, when he was arrested at Brisbane International Airport as he was about to fly to India.

RUSSIA

Gorbachev says U.S. sowing world disorder

MOSCOW — Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev yesterday criticized the United States, and President Bush in particular, for sowing disorder across the world by seeking to build an empire.

Mr. Gorbachev, who presided over the breakup of the Soviet Union, said Washington sought to build an empire after the Cold War ended but failed to understand the changing world.

“The Americans then gave birth to the idea of a new empire, world leadership by a single power, and what followed?” Mr. Gorbachev asked reporters at a press conference in Moscow.

“What has followed are unilateral actions, what has followed are wars, what has followed is ignoring the U.N. Security Council, ignoring international law and ignoring the will of the people, even the American people.”

RUSSIA

Court orders payment to Chechen victims’ kin

BRUSSELS — The European Court of Human Rights ordered the Russian government to pay damages of $196,000 to the family members of 11 Chechen civilians killed by Russian soldiers in 2000.

The court, in a Thursday ruling, suggested that by not bringing the soldiers to justice, Russian prosecutors implicitly accepted the massacre in Novye Aldi, when security forces rampaged through the town, setting fire to houses and killing at least 50 civilians.

Moscow denies that its security forces are guilty of atrocities in the southern Muslim republic of Chechnya, where two wars were fought to re-establish Russian control following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

BRITAIN

Sacred bull killed amid Hindu protests

LONDON — A sacred bull with bovine tuberculosis that sparked a row between a British Hindu temple and the Welsh government over whether it should live or die was finally killed, officials said yesterday.

Shambo, who lived at the Skanda Vale community in Llanpumsaint, west Wales, was put down with a lethal injection Thursday night, a Welsh Assembly spokesman said, following a standoff between monks, supporters and police over access to the retreat.

Officers had to force protesters — many of whom had come from abroad after hearing of the 6-year-old Fresian’s plight — to back off from its enclosure to allow health officials to take it away.

Monks said their shrine was desecrated as Shambo was taken away for killing.

From wire dispatches and staff reports