Freed

A British hostage held for 2 1/2 years by a militant Iraqi Shiite Muslim group was freed Wednesday in a move his family hailed as "the best Christmas present ever." Computer consultant Peter Moore was freed as the United States handed over to Iraqi authorities Qais Khazali, the leader of the group suspected of kidnapping him and four British security guards, and an undetermined number of Khazali's followers. The U.S. had blamed the group Asaib al Haq, or League of the Righteous, for the killings of five American soldiers.

SAN FRANCISCO - A prison inmate whose triple-murder arson conviction was overturned after he demonstrated "actual innocence" will be retried rather than released, prosecutors said. U.S. District Judge Anthony W. Ishii ordered the state last month to release George Souliotes, 72, or retry him immediately. After finding that Souliotes had proved his innocence, the judge overturned his conviction on the grounds he had been incompetently represented by his lawyer. Souliotes has spent 16 years in prison for murder in the deaths of Michelle Jones, 31, and her two children, Daniel Jr., 8, and Amanda, 3. The three died when a fire erupted in the home the family was renting from Souliotes.

The investigation into ricin-laced letters addressed to the president, a U.S. senator and a Mississippi judge highlighted a personal feud Wednesday and an unusual cast of characters - starting with Paul Kevin Curtis, an Elvis impersonator who had pestered officials for years about his conspiracy theory that the federal government was involved in an organ-harvesting plot. Government plot or no, Curtis was, of course, glad that officials had decided to drop the charges against him. He had been arrested last week, days after the letters were sent, and was freed Tuesday.

The charges, her defenders maintained, were absurd from the start: an unarmed middle-aged indigenous woman who stood barely 5 feet tall was accused of kidnapping six federal police officers. Jacinta Francisco Marcial said she was innocent and had been railroaded. This week, after spending three years in prison, she was set free. The Mexican judiciary that had handed her a 21-year sentence decided she probably wasn't guilty after all. She received no apology, and was bundled out of prison Wednesday under cover of darkness in the predawn hours of Mexican Independence Day, when much of national attention was diverted by holiday frolic.

A lawyer said a former executive of dismantled oil giant Yukos, who was jailed in 2006 and suffers from AIDS and cancer, has been freed after posting $1.8 million bail. Vasily Aleksanian faces money-laundering and embezzlement charges. He is in a Moscow hospital, where he was moved in February while lawyers demanded that he be freed because of his health. Drew Holiner, a lawyer for Aleksanian, said guards surrounding Aleksanian's ward had been dismissed. The Moscow City Court set bail for Aleksanian this month, with rights groups calling it too high.

A Malaysian journalist detained in an apparent government crackdown using a tough security law was freed, but an opposition lawmaker and another journalist remained under arrest, officials said. Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar defended the trio's seizure Friday under the Internal Security Act, which allows indefinite detention without trial. He said it was necessary to prevent racial conflicts and denied that it was to thwart opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim's bid to seize power by Tuesday.

A top Palestinian official said Sunday that a West German relief worker reported kidnaped in the southern Lebanese port of Sidon will probably be freed soon. Zeid Wehbeh, the Palestine Liberation Organization representative in Lebanon, told Visnews television news agency that the man, whom he named as Marcus Quint, "will maybe be in our hands in a few hours." He said Palestinian groups were doing their best to find the 24-year-old Quint, reported kidnaped Thursday with two other West German workers for the ASME-Humanitas relief agency.

A West African regional court ordered Niger to pay compensation to a woman who was sold into slavery at age 12 and held for a decade. It ruled that the country had failed to implement its anti-slavery laws. Hadijatou Mani, now 24, has testified that she was forced to work as a domestic servant and sexual slave until 2005, when her former master freed her in an apparent bid to legalize his relationship with her as his wife. West Africa has a long history of slavery, and the practice persists in some places.

A woman convicted of public indecency for wearing trousers outdoors was freed, despite her desire to serve a month in prison to protest Sudan's draconian morality laws. The judge who convicted journalist Lubna Hussein had imposed a $200 fine as her sentence, avoiding the maximum sentence of 40 lashes in an apparent attempt to put an end to a case that had raised international criticism of Sudan. Hussein's refusal to pay the fine would have meant a month's imprisonment. She told the Associated Press that she was freed after the fine was paid without her knowledge by the Sudanese Union of Journalists, which is headed by a member of the ruling party.

MEXICO CITY - Gen. Tomas Angeles Dauahare, who once held the plum post of military attache to the Mexican Embassy in Washington, was rumored to be the next defense minister of Mexico. Until that day in May last year when he and three other top military men were arrested on suspicion of working on behalf of a notorious drug cartel. It was the largest indictment of army officers on charges of drug-trafficking in recent memory, hailed in many quarters as proof of then-President Felipe Calderon's determination to root out corruption at every level.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- A family of French tourists, including four children, held hostage by an Islamist militia in northern Nigeria has been freed, according the French and Cameroonian officials. Tanguy Moulin-Fournier, his wife Albane, brother Cyril and four sons ages 5 to 12 were kidnapped in February after visiting a wildlife park in northern Cameroon and were whisked by motorcycles across the border into Nigeria. The Islamist militia Boko Haram later claimed responsibility and demanded the release of prisoners in Nigeria and Cameroon.

A 72-year-old man who has served 16 years of a life sentence for setting a fire that killed his tenant and her two young children was ordered released Friday by a federal judge who found that he did not receive a fair trial because of inadequate representation. District Judge Anthony W. Ishii ordered George Souliotes released unless California prosecutors decide to retry the Greek immigrant for the 1997 fire. Ishii concurred with the recommendations of a magistrate judge who found in a 93-page opinion last month that Souliotes should be freed because his trial was "fundamentally unfair.

After more than two decades in prison, David Ranta walked out of a Brooklyn courtroom a free man Thursday, no longer charged with murdering a rabbi in one of the city's more well-known homicides.  “To say I'm sorry for what you've endured would be an understatement.… But I say it anyway,” Judge Miriam Cyrulnik said before releasing Ranta. “I'm overwhelmed. I feel like I'm underwater, swimming. Like I said from the beginning, I had nothing to do with this case,” Ranta told reporters after leaving state court.

It took more than 13 years and appeals at nearly every level of the state and federal court system, but with the simple turn of a key by a state correctional officer on Tuesday afternoon, Daniel Larsen was unshackled and free. "I feel good, feel blessed," Larsen said with an ear-to-ear grin as he rode the elevator down to the main floor of the U.S. Central District Court in downtown Los Angeles, surrounded by friends and family. Magistrate Judge Suzanne Segal ordered Larsen's release, finding that he was "actually innocent" of carrying a concealed knife during a 1998 bar fight in Northridge.

WASHINGTON - Immigration officials acknowledged Thursday that they had released 2,228 illegal immigrants from detention in February and early March, not several hundred as they previously had announced, in an effort to reduce spending in advance of mandatory budget cuts. John Morton, director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told a House subcommittee hearing that four of those discharged were rearrested after agents discovered they had violent criminal records. At least six others had felony convictions or had repeatedly violated immigration laws, Morton said, and dozens more had been arrested for shoplifting and petty larceny, or cited for drunk driving.

Oh dear, Nero's back. The Roman emperor who gave aesthetes a murderous name is once again rasping orders about the fabulous new pageant he wants to produce while pawing men, women and eunuchs with a rapaciousness that would make Hugh Hefner blush. The occasion for this return visit is Amy Freed's comedy "You, Nero," which had its world premiere Friday at South Coast Repertory. And riotously played by Danny Scheie as a sexually omnivorous imp suffering a Liza Minnelli complex, Nero just wants to lavishly entertain us. So what if Rome smells like it's starting to burn.

Somalia hostages: The headline on an article in Wednesday's Section A about the release of abducted European aid workers said that 10 had been released. Two workers had been abducted, and both were freed.

BEIRUT - Twenty-one United Nations peacekeepers captured by Syrian rebels have been taken to the Syrian-Jordanian border to be handed over to Jordanian authorities, according to news agency reports on Saturday. There was no immediate confirmation from the U.N. or the Jordanian government. The 21 peacekeepers, all Filipinos, were seized Wednesday  by insurgents in southern Syria near the Israeli border. The incident drew condemnation from the U.N., the United States, the Philippines and other nations, which demanded their immediate release.

BEIRUT - Twenty-one members of a United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Syria near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights were taken captive Wednesday, apparently by armed rebels, according to the U.N. and opposition activists. The action represents a potentially serious escalation of the violence and chaos sweeping Syria, where an armed insurgency seeking to topple the government of President Bashar Assad is nearing its second year. Amateur video purportedly from the scene shows armed men flanking three white vehicles emblazoned with U.N. logos.