Colombia

Kidnapped tourist escapes to safety

A British tourist kidnapped nearly two weeks ago in this nation’s northern jungles escaped his captors and took refuge in an Indian village until he was picked up Wednesday by troops, Colombia’s armed forces chief told reporters.

Matthew Scott, 19, apparently slipped away from his kidnappers three days earlier, said Gen. Carlos Alberto Ospina. Scott then hiked through dense undergrowth along the remote slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain range until he came across members of the Kogui indigenous group.

The search was still on for seven tourists abducted with Scott, including another Briton, a Spaniard and a German. The abductors, believed to be leftist rebels, seized them Sept. 12.

Sweden

New suspect arrested in minister’s killing

In an abrupt about-face, police freed one suspect and arrested another Wednesday in the stabbing death of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh.

Authorities would not say why the 35-year-old drifter picked up last week was let go, but they said evidence against the new suspect was stronger than anything they had before.

“We have stronger suspicions against this suspect than the previous one, but we’re not releasing any details,” police spokesman Lars Groenskog said.

London

Drug raid joint effort of Britain, Colombia

Police in Britain and Colombia raided homes and made arrests in a coordinated strike against a major cocaine-smuggling and money-laundering operation.

Police in London said they had broken the largest known drug operation in Britain, arresting 10 men and two women and seizing $412,500 in cash. In the two-year investigation, British authorities previously reported 20 arrests and the seizure of $32 million in cocaine.

In Colombia, Gen. Teodoro Campo of the National Police said authorities arrested 14 people and seized an undisclosed amount of cash. He also said two people were arrested in Spain, but Spanish authorities could not confirm that.

Russia

Entrance blocked at refugee camp

Police have barred humanitarian workers and other outsiders from a Chechen refugee camp in Ingushetia in what some refugees see as part of an effort to forcibly relocate them back to neighboring Chechnya.

Ivan Pomeshchenko, the head of the Ingushetia branch of the Federal Migration Service, denied that the entry restrictions at the Bella tent camp near the village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya were part of a plan to force the refugees back to Chechnya in advance of the Oct. 5 regional presidential election.

The Kremlin has touted the election as part of its effort to bring peace and stability to the region after nearly a decade of war and chaos.

Germany

Court rules in favor of Muslim headscarf

A Muslim teacher who insists on wearing her headscarf in the classroom won a victory Wednesday in Germany’s highest court.

The court battle began in 1998 when Fereshta Ludin, a 31-year-old German of Afghan origin, applied for a job at a public elementary school in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, and was turned down over her insistence on wearing the Muslim headscarf on the job.

The school said that would violate the religious neutrality the German constitution requires of state institutions. Ludin argued her rejection violated her right to religious freedom.

The German Constitutional Court ruled the state was wrong to deny Ludin a job but only because Baden-Wuerttemberg currently has no law banning headscarves.