In Libya, More Novice Soldiers in Defense of Qaddafi

Now Refat, who was not fully identified because of the fear of retribution from Libyan security forces, is patrolling the rebellious neighborhood of Souq al-Juma wearing a mismatched uniform, riding in a small white government car and worried for his life each night because of the growing number of rebel attacks within the capital on soldiers like him.

Just last Thursday, he said, four armed rebels ambushed a group of his fellow soldiers at a checkpoint, killing another amateur soldier named Walid, a 20-year-old student, and leaving another in the hospital.

“We are afraid,” Refat said. “We are standing under the light and they come from the darkness.”

Novice soldiers like Refat, whose account provided the first confirmation of widespread rebel reports of their nocturnal guerrilla attacks, appear to be an increasingly important part of the Qaddafi government’s defense against potential insurrection in Tripoli, the Libyan capital. The professional soldiers of the Qaddafi militias who once cruised the streets of neighborhoods like Souq al-Juma in their white Toyota pickup trucks, he said, have all been called away to fight on the front lines near Misurata, the Nafusa Mountains or the eastern oil city of Brega.

As anxiety hung over the capital Friday on the four-month anniversary of the start of the Libyan uprising, Refat was patrolling the streets with another amateur soldier, a petroleum engineer in civilian life, under the supervision of an older, nonuniformed leader who made his living as a teacher.

“No one has a gun or a Kalashnikov,” Refat said, to prove the degree of calm in the neighborhood as he gave a tour to a pair of foreign journalists picked up for roaming the city without an official minder.

With rumors of a planned rebel attack or demonstration, though, security was tight. Foreign journalists were almost completely barred from leaving their hotel until after 4:30 p.m., and two who did slip out briefly in the morning reported seeing truckloads of riot police officers. To counter any potential opposition, the government organized a rally by thousands of Qaddafi supporters for much of the day in the city’s central Green Square — the largest such demonstration here in several weeks.

Loudspeakers and state television broadcast a defiant recorded message from Colonel Qaddafi. “NATO will be defeated,” he predicted, calling the rebels challenging his rule “sons of dogs.” (On Thursday, he delivered a radio address in the city of Bani Walid, urging residents to march together against the rebels based in Misurata.)

A few hours earlier, NATO jets had again buzzed the city and dropped bombs in broad daylight, increasing the tension. One large explosion south of the city sent a thick cloud of black smoke snaking over the skyline.

About 100 miles to the east, Qaddafi forces remained locked in battle with rebels attempting to advance from Misurata toward the barracks town of Zlitan. The Associated Press reported that rebel fighters and a woman living nearby had been killed when the Qaddafi forces fired Grad rockets and artillery at the rebels’ front lines.

In Tripoli, the streets of Souq al-Juma were full of what appeared to be plainclothes police officers and security agents — several ultimately came forward to confer with the soldiers — and some residents said they were afraid to be seen talking to reporters.

For a while, a group of young men smoking shisha pipes under a tree at a roadside cafe whispered of their nightly battles with Qaddafi forces, their gratitude for the NATO bombing and their hopes that rebel fighters would eventually reach the capital. When a reporter mimicked a popular Qaddafi slogan, a young man replied with a stony look, saying, “Don’t say that here! You are in Souq al-Juma!” And he insisted that even beyond the neighborhood, “90 percent” of Tripoli residents want Colonel Qaddafi to go.

Then another group of men pulled up chairs. The first group turned anxious and silent. And then the newcomers explained that all of Souq al-Juma, like all of Tripoli, supported Colonel Qaddafi.

A few blocks away, two young men in plainclothes, who had been sitting by a wall, stood up to introduce themselves as deputy police officers. Then they summoned the soldiers to escort the journalists away.

Touring the neighborhood, Refat noted the hollow shell of the police stations that rebels had burned down during the initial uprising four months ago. And he pointed out where each night the rebels had painted anti-Qaddafi graffiti on the walls of schools, mosques and other buildings, forcing Refat and his fellow soldiers to cover it up with pro-Qaddafi graffiti the next morning. As a civilian, he said, he had been “addicted to the Internet,” and he missed it badly since the Qaddafi government had shut it down (with the exception of the hotel housing foreign journalists) at the start of the uprising. Still, he said, he understood the reasons, “because people were putting up bad things about Libya, like ‘Qaddafi kills people,’ and, on the other side, to cut the communication between these people.”

By nightfall, the rumored rebel attack in the capital had failed to materialize. Some said they still expected local rebels to mark the day with some actions after the final evening prayer, at 10 p.m. But by then, the foreign journalists were sealed in their hotel, its phone lines were down and the Internet was no longer working there either.

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Russia Seeks Pledge From NATO on Missile Defense

“We do not want any missiles aimed at Russia,” the foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said after talks in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad with his counterparts from Germany, Guido Westerwelle, and Poland, Radek Sikorski.

The meeting in Kaliningrad was part of an effort by the three countries to work together over political, security, energy and visa issues.

“This is about cooperation, not confrontation, about discussing concrete projects,” Mr. Westerwelle told hundreds of students at Kant University who had gathered to question the three officials.

Mr. Lavrov said Russia wanted “some kind of written guarantees from NATO that the missiles will not threaten Russia.”

Russia has in the past threatened to place missiles in Kaliningrad — a small area with a population of nearly one million that is sandwiched between two European Union countries, Poland and Lithuania — in response to NATO’s plans to deploy part of its missile shield in Eastern Europe.

President Obama, who is to visit Poland next week, intends to deploy Patriot missiles there, but not the original missile shield system that the administration of President George W. Bush had promised to do. The Bush administration’s plans to place parts of the missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, which were once part of the Soviet military alliance, led to a sharp deterioration of relations between Washington and Moscow. The Russian prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, has said that the deployments would undermine Russia’s security.

Mr. Obama’s decision to shift strategy was not only because of the costs and the need to modify the scope of any missile defense system that would provide a much broader security umbrella over Europe. The administration said it also wanted to “reset” its relations with Russia.

During Saturday’s discussions, the ministers agreed that their meeting could evolve into something more permanent — like the Weimar Triangle, which the French, German and Polish foreign ministers set up 20 years ago after the reunification of Germany. The Weimar Triangle helped to lead to reconciliation between Poland and Germany, ending decades of enmity and distrust.

Mr. Lavrov acknowledged that Russia could not ignore Poland’s new role on the Continent, now that it is a member of the European Union and it is scheduled to take over the rotating presidency on July 1.

The three officials also discussed Belarus on Saturday. Poland and Germany, with support from France, want European foreign ministers to impose more sanctions against Belarus. The sanctions, already imposed on the top leadership, could be extended to some enterprise managers. At the same time, Poland and Germany intend to strengthen their ties to civil society and the democratic opposition.

Russia, however, said it opposed more sanctions. “This will only lead to further isolation,” Mr. Lavrov said. “That will do nothing to help the way towards direction.”

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The Texas Tribune: 30-Year-Old Capital Case Returns to Court, With Defense Alleging Bias

The United States Supreme Court overturned Mr. Banks’s death sentence in 2004, finding that the Bowie County prosecutors who tried the case suppressed evidence and deliberately covered their mistakes for decades.

“It’s really a remarkable tale of misconduct — just about every kind of thing the prosecution could do that was improper,” said Robert C. Owen, co-director of the Capital Punishment Center at the University of Texas School of Law, who was one of Mr. Banks’s appellate lawyers.

Now, the same district attorney’s office — including one of the same prosecutors who was involved in the original trial — is again seeking the death penalty for Mr. Banks. Despite the Supreme Court’s rebuke, James Elliott, who has been a prosecutor on the case for more than 30 years, has maintained that he will pursue Mr. Banks until he “gets what he deserves.”

At a hearing Monday in a Bowie County state district court, Mr. Banks’s lawyers will ask Judge Nathan E. White to disqualify Mr. Elliott and the local district attorney’s office from the case and to assign different lawyers to represent the state.

“Mr. Elliott’s misbehavior proves that he cannot serve as a disinterested prosecutor and is laboring under a conflict of interest that will prevent Mr. Banks from receiving a fair trial,” lawyers wrote in court documents.

Mr. Banks, who is black and was 21 when the crime was committed, was convicted of killing Mr. Whitehead, who was white, so he could take off with his car. The police found Mr. Whitehead’s body in a park near Texarkana and soon discovered that Mr. Banks had been with him on the last night he was seen alive.

There were no witnesses to the killing and no physical evidence linking Mr. Banks to it. The prosecution’s case relied largely on the testimony of Robert Farr and Charles Cook, both admitted drug users; Mr. Cook also had convictions for robbery by assault and forgery.

Mr. Cook told the jury that he met Mr. Banks in Dallas the morning after the murder. He said Mr. Banks had blood on his pants and told him he decided to “kill the white boy for the hell of it and take his car and come to Dallas.”

Mr. Farr testified that he, Mr. Banks and another man drove to Dallas on the day that Mr. Banks was arrested so Mr. Banks could retrieve a gun to use in armed robberies. Mr. Farr said Mr. Banks told him he would “take care of it” if any trouble arose.

Mr. Banks had no criminal history, and people who were with him and Mr. Whitehead on the last night that Mr. Whitehead was alive testified there was no ill will between the two. Nonetheless, an all-white Bowie County jury convicted Mr. Banks, who was sentenced to death.

In 1999 — almost 20 years after the trial — a federal judge forced Bowie County to open its case records, and Mr. Banks’s lawyers discovered a transcript showing that Mr. Cook’s testimony had been extensively rehearsed and coached. They also learned that the police had paid Mr. Farr, an informant who had an unreliable record, $200 for his role in the investigation.

Mr. Farr, in an affidavit, said he was afraid that the police would arrest him on drug charges. In exchange for the money, and to avoid jail, he agreed to set up Mr. Banks, he said, persuading him to drive to Dallas to get a gun.

Prosecutors allowed Mr. Cook and Mr. Farr to lie in court and never told jurors that their information was false, the Supreme Court found. Mr. Cook denied on the stand that anyone had helped him with his testimony, and Mr. Farr said he had not been paid for his help in the case. During closing arguments, Mr. Elliott told jurors that they should believe Mr. Cook and Mr. Farr.

In arguments before the Supreme Court, state lawyers did not dispute that Mr. Cook had been coached and that Mr. Farr was paid for his help. But they said Mr. Banks’s lawyers were at fault for not uncovering the information sooner.

The Supreme Court ruled that without the testimony of Mr. Cook and Mr. Farr, Mr. Banks might not have been sentenced to death. “It has long been established that the prosecution’s ‘deliberate deception of a court and jurors by the presentation of known false evidence is incompatible with rudimentary demands of justice,’?” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the court’s majority opinion.

Mr. Elliott declined to comment last week about the case. “We’re in litigation,” he said. “The newspaper is the wrong place to be trying cases — it just is. So I can’t give any comment.”

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Suicide Bomber Attacks Afghan Defense Ministry

KABUL, Afghanistan — An insurgent wearing an Afghan Army uniform and a vest laced with explosives opened fire inside the heavily fortified Ministry of Defense headquarters on Monday, killing at least two soldiers, a ministry spokesman said.

A spokesman for the Taliban, which claimed responsibility for the attack, said the intended target was France’s minister of defense, Gérard Longuet, who was scheduled to visit the compound later in the day. Soldiers shot the attacker before he could detonate his vest, said the Afghan military spokesman, Gen. Zahir Azimi.

The attack was the third in three days on government compounds by insurgents disguised as members of the Afghan national security forces. Their seemingly easy access to even the most heavily guarded locations has intensified concerns over Taliban infiltration of the police and military forces, just as they are preparing to take over security from the American-led coalition in some parts of the country this summer and the entire country by the end of 2014.

Zabiullah Mujaheed, a Taliban spokesman, said the insurgent was from Panjshir Province — the heartland of the Northern Alliance, which helped the United States oust the Taliban in 2001 — and had been serving in the Afghan Army for three years.

But General Azimi said such assertions were premature. “We don’t know whether he was a member of the army or not,” he said. “All I can say is that he was wearing an Afghan National Army uniform. It doesn’t mean he was an army soldier. We are doing our investigation to find out.”

General Azimi said the attacker entered the compound about 11:30 a.m. and opened fire, killing two soldiers and wounding seven close to the defense minister’s office before being fatally shot. An explosives ordnance team then defused his vest. The defense minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak, was not present at the time, General Azimi said.

Soldiers continued searching the compound, which covers several city blocks in downtown Kabul, looking for other possible attackers late into the afternoon. Contrary to earlier reports, the general said no hostages had been taken. A doctor at Kabul’s military hospital said three soldiers had been killed; there was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy in the death toll.

Mr. Longuet, who had arrived on Sunday to meet with French troops deployed here, was not in the ministry at the time of the attack, according to the military command in Paris. He had been scheduled to attend a joint news conference with Afghan military officials at 1:30 p.m.

It was the latest in a string of attacks aimed at Afghan government and military officials in what the Taliban has called the beginning of its spring offensive. On Saturday, a suicide bomber killed five NATO service members in eastern Afghanistan. A day earlier, a suicide bomber killed the police chief of Kandahar Province. In both attacks, the bombers were dressed in Afghan Army or police uniforms.

“Using these kinds of attacks is very useful for us in recruiting someone and working inside Afghan forces,” Mr. Mujaheed, the Taliban spokesman, said in a telephone interview after Saturday’s attack. “This inflicts more casualties and does not cause any civilian casualties.”

He added, “We have many more youths who are already in Afghan military ranks waiting for their chance to attack.”

General Azimi said the government was working to root out insurgents from the army and police forces, but acknowledged that the task was daunting. “We have set up a security team who is watching suspicious people inside military forces, but it’s hard to recognize them,” he said.

Even when they are not in the military, insurgents have easy access to police and army uniforms, General Azimi said. An elder in a remote village in the eastern province of Paktika, along the Pakistan border, recently told a reporter for The New York Times that insurgents had been showing up in his village dressed in Afghan Army and police uniforms.

“You know, finding uniforms is easy,” General Azimi said. “They can find it anywhere, and they can make it. People sell military equipment in the bazaar. We have collected and confiscated uniforms several times, but again it’s hard to collect all of them. Besides, you can find them in the provinces as well.”

The attack on the Defense Ministry was just part of a bloody two days for Afghan security forces. In Ghazni Province, south of the capital, six police officers were killed when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb, said Musa Khan Akbar Zada, the provincial police chief.

Three more police officers were killed Sunday night in Oruzgan Province when their vehicle struck an improvised explosive device, said the provincial police chief, Fazal Ahmad Shirzad.

Sharifullah Sahak contributed reporting from Kabul, Scott Sayare from Paris, and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar.