World / Nation Briefs March 18, 2012

US citizen handed over to the United Nations

BAGHDAD - Wearing a U.S. Army uniform and flanked by Iraqi lawmakers, an American citizen announced Saturday that he was being released from more than nine months of imprisonment by a Shiite militia that for years targeted U.S. troops.

The man did not identify himself. But at a bizarre press conference outside the Green Zone in Baghdad, lawmakers showed U.S.-issued military and contractor ID cards that identified him as Randy Michael Hultz.

Speaking calmly and tripping over Arabic names in a monotone voice, Hultz said he was grateful for his release.

"It was explained to me that this is a gift to me, my family and to the American people who oppose the war," he said at the press conference that was held for Iraqi media.

He gave scant details of what he described as a "kidnapping," or how he was treated while captured.

Twin suicide bombers kill 27 in Syrian capital

DAMASCUS, Syria - Two suicide bombers detonated cars packed with explosives in near-simultaneous attacks on heavily guarded intelligence and security buildings in the Syrian capital Damascus Saturday, killing at least 27 people.

There have been a string of large-scale bombings against the regime in its stronghold of Damascus that suggest a dangerous, wild-card element in the year-old anti-government revolt. The regime blamed the opposition, which denied having a role or the capabilities to carry out such a sophisticated attack. And after other similar attacks, U.S. officials suggested al-Qaida militants may be joining the fray.

The early morning explosions struck the heavily fortified air force intelligence building and the criminal security department, several miles apart in Damascus, at approximately the same time, the Interior Ministry said. Much of the facade of the intelligence building appeared to have been ripped away.

State-run news agency SANA said a third blast went off near a military bus at the Palestinian refugee camp Yarmouk in Damascus, killing the two suicide bombers.

"All our windows and doors are blown out," said Majed Seibiyah, 29, who lives in the area of one of the blasts. "I was sleeping when I heard a sound like an earthquake. I didn't grasp what was happening until I heard screaming in the street."

Alleged Nazi camp guard dies at 91

BERLIN - John Demjanjuk was convicted of being a low-ranking guard at the Sobibor death camp, but his 35-year fight on three continents to clear his name - a legal battle that had not yet ended when he died Saturday at age 91 - made him one of the best-known faces of Nazi prosecutions.

The conviction of the retired Ohio autoworker in a Munich court in May on 28,060 counts of being an accessory to murder, which was still being appealed, broke new legal ground in Germany as the first time someone was convicted solely on the basis of serving as a camp guard, with no evidence of involvement in a specific killing.

It has opened the floodgates to hundreds of new investigations in Germany, though his death serves as a reminder that time is running out for prosecutors.

Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk steadfastly maintained that he had been mistaken for someone else - first wounded as a Soviet soldier fighting German forces, then captured and held as a prisoner of war under brutal conditions.

- The Associated Press