Saudi Arabia

Court sends professor to prison for dissent

A Saudi court sentenced a university professor to five years in prison Sunday on charges of sowing dissent after he compared U.S. killings of Iraqi civilians with Osama bin Laden’s terror attacks.

Saeed bin Mubarak al-Zaeer, a 57-year-old university professor, was sentenced by the court in the capital Riyadh. The sentencing took place without the presence of a lawyer representing al-Zaeer.

Al-Zaeer was detained by security forces in April after he appeared on the Al-Jazeera television station and made comments comparing the killing of civilians in terror attacks by bin Laden’s al-Qaida group with Iraqi civilians killed by U.S. forces or Palestinians killed by Israelis.

The professor was detained in April for showing “blatant support and compassion for terrorist acts, and his justification of the deeds of its perpetrators — in spite of how this goes against Islamic teachings,” the Interior Ministry said at the time.

Berlin

Fringe parties make gains in state elections

Voters in two east German states angry over high unemployment and cuts in social programs handed a rebuke Sunday to Germany’s two biggest parties, giving big gains to far right and former Communist groups, projections showed.

Though projections based on partial returns gave the fringe parties no share of power in Saxony or Brandenburg, the results were a fresh setback for Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrats — and for opposition conservatives.

“This has to be a warning for Germany’s democratic parties,” said secretary-general Laurenz Meyer of the conservative Christian Democrats after they lost heavily in both states, where nearly 6 million citizens were registered to vote.

Franz Muentefering, head of the Social Democrats, called the 9.3 percent taken by the far-right National Democratic Party in Saxony a “disaster,” but insisted their political influence would remain small.