Published:Wednesday, July 23, 2008 11:06 AM PDT
Serving the South Coast of Oregon

Sect leader, others indicted in Texas
Wednesday, July 23, 2008 11:06 AM PDT

ELDORADO, Texas (AP) — Polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs, already convicted in Utah of being an accomplice to rape and awaiting trial in Arizona on other charges related to underage marriages, is now accused of assaulting a girl in Texas in January 2005.

A grand jury in this tiny western Texas ranching community indicted Jeffs and four of his followers Tuesday on charges of felony sexual assault of a child. Another was indicted for failing to report child abuse.

State Attorney General Greg Abbott said five members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are charged with one count of sexually assaulting girls under age 17, a felony.  One of them, not the 52-year-old Jeffs, faces an additional charge of bigamy.

Agent: Detainees not advised of rights

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) — An FBI agent testifying at the first Guantanamo war crimes trial said interrogators did not advise detainees here of any rights because the military prison is dedicated to intelligence gathering, not law enforcement.

Agent Ali Soufan, an al-Qaida expert and star witness for the prosecution, said Tuesday the Guantanamo Bay Navy base is the only place in the world where he has not informed suspects of a right against self-incrimination.

Defense lawyers asked the judge in Salim Hamdan’s trial to throw out all the Guantanamo interrogations, arguing that intelligence-gathering sessions should not be used against him in court. But Judge Keith Allred, a Navy captain, ruled Monday that constitutional protections against self-incrimination do not apply to the man declared an “enemy combatant.”

Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, is charged with conspiracy and aiding terrorism. His lawyers have cast him as a low-level employee of the terrorist leader without any role in al-Qaida.


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