Tokyo

Colleague: Japanese hostage may not be alive

A security worker who survived an ambush in Iraq has said a Japanese colleague believed to have been taken hostage was severely wounded and is likely dead, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said Saturday.

The Ansar al-Sunnah Army claimed on its Web site Monday that it ambushed a group of five foreign workers, killing four and kidnapping the fifth — 44-year-old Akihito Saito.

Today, the group issued a video on its Web site purportedly showing their attack, but Saito’s image could not be confirmed in the video clip, Japan’s Kyodo News agency reported from Cairo. The report provided no other details.

Tokyo has been unable to confirm Saito’s whereabouts or condition.

The witness, identified only as a non-Iraqi man who worked with Saito at the international security firm Hart GMSSCO in Baghdad, met Japanese officials outside Iraq late Friday, providing new details of their desperate escape from the ambush, a ministry spokesman said on condition of anonymity. The official said the government considered the account reliable.

Colombia

Official: Cocaine seizure is record

Leftist guerrillas, a far-right paramilitary group and a drug trafficking organization all had a stake in 15 tons of cocaine seized in southwest Colombia, the largest haul ever in this South American country, police said Saturday.

The $400 million worth of cocaine was discovered by authorities Thursday hidden in a wood-lined underground chamber near the Pacific coast. Found nearby were eight speed boats that likely would have been used to move the cocaine, originally estimated at 13.8 tons.

Judicial Police chief Col. Oscar Naranjo said guerrillas, paramilitaries and drug traffickers each likely planned to pay an even share of the costs of transporting the huge shipment to the United States.

He said transport of the drugs was the only clear “union point” for the three groups. The outlawed rebel and paramilitary groups have been battling each other across Colombia, but apparently cooperate occasionally in drug trafficking to increase profits.

Five people were captured when the cocaine was discovered Thursday in the jungle in Narino state, which lies along the Pacific coast and the Ecuador border, but those arrested are bit players in the drug-running gang, Naranjo said.

Naranjo said Thursday’s haul is the largest ever recorded on Colombian soil.

Chile

Document blames Pinochet for killings

Chile’s former secret service chief has provided courts with a document that claims to list the whereabouts of hundreds of people who disappeared during the 17-year rule of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, casting blame for their killings away from himself and directly toward the former Chilean military chief.

Lawyers for retired Gen. Manuel Contreras submitted to Chile’s Supreme Court on Friday a 32-page document that lists about 580 people — almost half the number still considered “disappeared” — and purportedly reveals exactly what was done with the bodies. Human rights groups immediately questioned the information and its source, citing Contreras’ years of deception and denials of responsibility for human rights abuses.

In an 11-page letter accompanying the spreadsheet, Contreras, 75, wrote the court that Pinochet personally ordered human rights violations. He described the former military ruler’s claims that his subordinates were responsible for any abuses as “an intolerable injustice.”

Pinochet, who led a coup to overthrow president Salvador Allende in 1973, has been indicted twice, but Chilean courts have ruled that the 89-year-old is too ill to stand trial.

Pakistan

Report denies CIA killed al-Qaida operative

Pakistan on Saturday denied a media report that an unmanned CIA Predator aircraft killed a senior al-Qaida operative near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border earlier this week.

ABC News, quoting unidentified intelligence sources, reported Friday that senior al-Qaida operative Haitham al-Yemeni was killed by a missile fired from an unmanned CIA Predator aircraft.

But Pakistan’s Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Amhed told The Associated Press that, “No such incident took place near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.”

A U.S. military spokeswoman in Afghanistan, Lt. Cindy Moore, said forces from the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan were not involved in such an incident, but she couldn’t say whether it had taken place.

Vatican City

German, Spanish nuns beatified in St. Peter’s

A German-born nun who cared for leprosy patients on a Hawaiian island and a Spanish nun who started a missionary society were beatified Saturday in St. Peter’s Basilica in a ceremony led by a top Vatican cardinal representing Pope Benedict XVI.

Benedict’s decision not to preside over the ceremony marks a shift from Pope John Paul II, who beatified and canonized more faithful than all his predecessors over the past 500 years combined. John Paul, weather permitting, would hold his saint-making ceremonies in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday mornings to encourage huge turnouts.

Benedict designated Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins to lead the beatification ceremony marking the last formal step before possible sainthood. The cardinal heads the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of the Saints.