Colombia

Army rescues kidnapped bishop

Colombian army troops rescued one of Latin America’s leading Roman Catholic bishops and another priest on Friday after a gunbattle with their rebel captors in an Andean mountain region.

Laughing with joy and his face covered with several days’ white stubble, Bishop Jorge Enrique Jimenez was flown in a military Huey helicopter to an army base in Bogota, where he was mobbed by family members, camouflage-clad soldiers and journalists.

Jimenez, 60, and the Rev. Desiderio Orjuela were kidnapped Monday in the mountains of central Colombia by suspected rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Jimenez is the president of the Latin American bishops conference, which determines Roman Catholic Church policy in the 22 nations of Latin America, home to nearly half the world’s Catholics.

One rebel was killed and two were captured in Friday’s dramatic rescue.

South Africa

U.S. fugitive willing to face murder charges

A former member of the radical Symbionese Liberation Army, who was arrested in South Africa last week after 27 years on the run, is willing to return to California to face murder charges, his lawyer said Friday.

James Kilgore had been negotiating for more than six months to stand trial in the United States and did not object to returning.

“My client wants to go back to the United States sooner rather than later, but it must be in terms of a documented (extradition) request,” Kilgore’s lawyer, Anton Katz, said in court.

The comments came amid a chaotic day for the 55-year-old Kilgore, who was charged in a 1975 California bank robbery that left a woman dead.

After a brief hearing Friday, a judge ordered Kilgore freed pending a formal U.S. extradition request. But police immediately re-arrested him for violating immigration laws.

Kilgore, married with two children, entered South Africa seven years ago under a false name and lived a quiet suburban life, working as a researcher at the University of Cape Town until his Nov. 8 arrest at home.

Iran

Hard-liners rally for death sentence

About 1,000 supporters of Iran’s hard-line clerics took to the streets Friday calling for the execution of a reformist scholar convicted of insulting Islam.

The sentence against Hashem Aghajari, a history professor who challenged the ruling clerics’ interpretation of Islam, has touched off the biggest protests in Tehran in three years, with thousands of university students demanding the reversal of his death sentence.

Hossein Allahkaram, leader of the hard-line group Ansar-e-Hizbollah that led Friday’s demonstration, said Aghajari had renounced his religious faith and deserved death.

“He insulted the principles of our religion and must be hanged,” he said.

The sentence will be considered final on Dec. 2 unless Aghajari appeals or the judge or prosecutor general reverses it.

Havana

NAACP says Cuba agrees to buy food

Cuba agreed to buy food from black American farmers under a U.S. law that allows direct sales of farm products to the island, an NAACP delegation announced Friday.

The U.S. law passed in 2000 chips away at the U.S. embargo imposed in the early 1960s after Castro took power. Since Cuba started taking advantage of the law a year ago, it has purchased more than $200 million worth of American food in cash, much of it from large agribusiness corporations. Black farmers, most of whom have small operations, also are interested in finding new markets.

“This is a historic announcement and one that I personally find very heartening,” said Kweisi Mfume, head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “President Fidel Castro promised to establish trade links with black farmers and it appears he has kept his word.”

No specific deals were announced.