Yemen

Execution of al-Qaida operative postponed

Yemen postponed the execution Saturday of a convicted spy and suspected al-Qaida operative, an official said.

It was the second time in a week that Nabil Nanakli Kosaibati, a Syrian-born Spaniard, has had his execution postponed.

Kosaibati was sentenced to death in 1998 for spying for Saudi Arabia and plotting to assassinate the Yemeni prime minister and other politicians.

His name surfaced recently during a Spanish judge’s investigation of al-Qaida. Kosaibati was alleged to be an aide to al-Qaida’s leader in Spain, Imad Eddin Barakat Yarkas, and to have received money from an al-Qaida financier.

The Spanish judge had called for Yemen to hold off on Kosaibati’s execution so he could be interviewed.

Guatemala

U.S. detains boat carrying 124 migrants

A U.S. Coast Guard cutter stopped a boat carrying 124 Ecuadorean migrants and turned them over to Guatemalan authorities Saturday. One U.S. official said they had been saved from “certain death.”

The Coast Guard ship found the Ecuadorean craft Friday adrift off the Guatemalan coast. Passengers were packed tightly aboard the 66-foot vessel with little food or water.

The passengers said the boat had left the Ecuadorean port of Guayaquil several days earlier, and that the ship’s crew abandoned the passengers after the motor broke down.

Iraq

U.S. soldier shoots tiger at Baghdad zoo

A U.S. soldier shot and killed a tiger at the Baghdad zoo after it bit another soldier who had reached through the bars of its cage to feed it, a zoo security guard said Saturday.

The soldiers had been drinking beer when they entered the zoo Thursday night after it closed, said the guard, Zuhair Abdul-Majeed.

After the man was bit, the other American shot the tiger three times in the head and killed it, Abdul-Majeed told The Associated Press.

It was impossible to reach the U.S. military spokesman’s office because the telephones have not worked for three days.