Austria

Iran’s president-elect may be linked to slayings

Austrian authorities have classified documents suggesting that Iran’s president-elect may have played a key role in the 1989 execution-style slayings of an Iranian Kurdish leader and two associates in Vienna, a newspaper reported Saturday.

Austria’s Interior Ministry and the public prosecutor’s office are investigating alleged evidence pointing to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s possible involvement in the attack, the daily Der Standard reported.

Officials were not immediately available to comment on the report Saturday.

The allegations against Ahmadinejad come as some of the Americans who were taken captive in Iran in 1979 implicate the newly elected leader in the hostage crisis. Radical Iranian students took over the U.S. Embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

In Austria, Green Party leader Peter Pilz told the newspaper he wants a warrant issued for the arrest of Ahmadinejad, who he alleged “stands under strong suspicion of having been involved.”

West Bank

Abbas asks Hamas to join his government

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has asked Hamas militants to join his Cabinet to improve prospects of a peaceful takeover of the Gaza Strip following Israel’s withdrawal this summer, Abbas’ office confirmed Saturday.

Hamas’ West Bank leader, Hassan Yousef, said the group was considering the offer. A Hamas official, speaking on condition of anonymity requested at the time because no decision had been taken on the group’s response, had first reported the offer on Friday.

The militant group, which wants to see Israel destroyed, is Abbas’ greatest rival. But Abbas, a weak leader, cannot ignore Hamas’ strong grass-roots presence in Gaza or the group’s demand to help rule the area after Israel’s pullout, which is to begin in August.

Israel, which is afraid Abbas is too weak to prevent chaos in Gaza after the pullout, denounced the idea of Hamas’ joining the Palestinian government.

“Hamas is a murderous terrorist organization responsible for countless acts of senseless violence against innocent civilians,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev told The Associated Press. “Hamas is no partner for us in any sort of political process. They are part of the problem, not part of the solution.”

Montreal

Notorious female prisoner set for release

The most reviled woman in Canada is set to walk out of prison Monday, facing death threats and rage from a public still bitter that she only served 12 years for the rapes and murders of teenage girls, including her younger sister.

Karla Homolka is so frightened someone might harm her that her attorneys are demanding an unprecedented media blackout on her release and subsequent whereabouts, a move that will be challenged by media attorneys in a Montreal courtroom Monday.

Many in this French-speaking city believe Homolka has done her time and should be given her second chance at life, which she got after making a deal with the state in exchange for testifying against her ex-husband.

Dubbed “English-Canada’s monster,” by Quebecois, the 35-year-old former veterinarian assistant who grew up near Niagara Falls has said she intends to settle in Montreal, hoping for anonymity amid those perhaps less familiar with her crimes.

Homolka was convicted of manslaughter in 1993 and given the relatively light sentence of 12 years for her role in the rapes and murders of Ontario teenagers Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy. In return, she agreed to testify against ex-husband Paul Bernardo, a Toronto bookkeeper serving a life term in an Ontario prison for two counts of first-degree murder.