London: Prosecutors dismiss report about Lockerbie

The Scottish prosecutors’ office dismissed a published report Friday that Abu Nidal, the Palestinian terrorist whose death was announced in Iraq this week, was behind the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, for which a Libyan has been convicted.

The Arabic newspaper al-Hayat on Friday published an interview with Atef Abu Bakr, a former spokesman for Fatah-Revolutionary Council, the radical group headed by Abu Nidal, saying Abu Nidal told a meeting of the group’s council that his organization was behind the bombing of the Pan Am flight in which 270 people were killed.

A special Scottish court convicted former Libyan intelligence agent Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi in the Netherlands in 2000. In March this year, a Scottish appeals court upheld the murder conviction of al-Megrahi, who was sentenced to life in prison, with no possibility of parole for 20 years.

Germany: Officials suspect more than 100 in terrorism

German authorities have opened criminal cases against more than 100 Islamic extremists who have trained at terrorist camps or fought in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia or Somalia, according to the country’s top police official.

The suspects German residents born in Northern Africa and the Middle East are part of an interwoven, international network that procures weapons and explosives, creates fake identification papers and supports itself through credit card fraud, Ulrich Kersten, president of the BKA, the German federal police, said in an interview Friday.

“They are all ready and able to commit violence,” Kersten said. “These groups exist in Europe and we are convinced that they exist in America, Canada, the Near and Middle East, and even in the Far East.”

Russia: Heavy fighting drags on near Chechen village

Russian troops battled rebels for the fourth straight day outside a Chechen village Friday, while eight soldiers were killed in the last 24 hours, officials said.

Meanwhile, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said authorities had information about a rebel group he said might have been involved in the Russian helicopter crash in Chechnya on Monday that killed 116 people. He declined to name the group.