Indictments

A Spanish judge Wednesday indicted 40 Rwandan army officers on charges of mass murder and crimes against humanity in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwanda genocide, asserting a concept of justice championed by his nation known as "universal jurisdiction." Judge Fernando Andreu of Spain's National Court said he also had sufficient evidence to implicate current Rwandan President Paul Kagame in a long string of reprisal massacres after he and his forces seized power, ending the genocide.

A federal grand jury in New York indicted a Denver man on a terrorism charge Thursday after federal authorities alleged that he and possibly three others had gone on a buying spree of bomb-making chemicals and were preparing an attack on U.S. soil. The one-count indictment alleges that Najibullah Zazi, 24, worked for more than a year on a plot to detonate a weapon of mass destruction. Justice Department documents did not name the alleged co-conspirators, but said that three other Denver-area residents had bought unusual amounts of chemicals from beauty-supply stores, including hydrogen peroxide and acetone, which can be used to make explosives.

Five members of a Christian motorcycle gang were charged Friday with a variety of felony weapons and gang crimes after high-profile raids this week targeting the Anaheim-based group. The charges marked a retreat from Wednesday, when authorities arrested seven members of the Set Free Soldiers, including founder and pastor Phillip Aguilar, on charges of conspiracy to commit murder. An eighth member was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.

Two law enforcement officers working in Los Angeles County face charges of illegal conduct with underage girls in unrelated cases, Orange County prosecutors said Thursday. Frank Ricci, a 30-year-old Los Angeles Police Department officer who lives in Mission Viejo, pleaded not guilty to committing a lewd act on a child and attempting another such act, both felonies. The alleged acts occurred with a 15-year-old girl he knew and involved sexual touching, said Deputy Dist. Atty.

A federal grand jury Friday indicted five former and current city pension board officials for their role in approving an investment scheme that has left the city struggling with a $2-billion pension deficit, the worst financial debacle in city history.

Federal authorities Thursday accused a south Los Angeles County street gang of a litany of crimes, including the murder of a sheriff's deputy and racially motivated attacks designed to drive African Americans from their town.

The surgeon who ran the liver transplant program at St. Vincent Medical Center was indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday for allegedly covering up the misallocation of a liver -- a significant breach of transplant rules that prompted the hospital to close the program four years ago. Dr. Richard R. Lopez Jr., 54, is accused of lying to national transplant officials and directing his staff to falsify records involving a September 2003 transplant....

Authorities announced charges Thursday against a Mexican gang that took Tijuana-style violence to the upscale suburbs of San Diego County, kidnapping, torturing and killing well-to-do residents, even after some families paid large ransoms. The gang, a rogue cell of the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix drug cartel, moved across the border in 2002 and posed as U.S. law enforcement, donning FBI and police uniforms and caps while snatching victims outside homes and public places, said San Diego County prosecutors.

A San Francisco transplant surgeon was criminally charged Monday with excessively prescribing drugs to a 25-year-old disabled man last year in order to hasten his death and harvest his organs sooner. The felony charges are believed to be the first in the nation against a physician for his role in a transplant.

Bruce Karatz, who rode the housing boom to become one of the highest-paid executives in the country, was indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday on charges of manipulating stock options -- becoming one of the few executives to face criminal charges in the nation's options backdating scandal. Karatz, 63, served as chairman and chief executive of Westwood-based KB Home from 1986 to 2006, when he resigned under fire.

The owner of a Claremont doughnut shop was indicted Tuesday on federal charges that he bought endangered-elephant ivory on EBay and smuggled it into the United States from Thailand three years ago. Moun Chau, 50, of Montclair was charged with conspiracy and the illegal importation of wildlife, according to the indictment, which cited violations of the Endangered Species Act and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. The alleged smuggling was discovered in November 2006 when authorities found four African elephant tusks in a shipment purported to be toys.

Two Chicago men were indicted Thursday on charges of planning an attack on a Danish newspaper and of helping lay the groundwork for the November 2008 terrorist rampage that killed more than 170 people in the Indian city of Mumbai. Businessman Tahawwur Rana and his associate David Coleman Headley already had been charged with assistance to terrorism, but the new 12-count indictment expanded allegations against Rana to include the Mumbai attacks. Both are in federal custody in Chicago.

The surgeon who ran the liver transplant program at St. Vincent Medical Center was indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday for allegedly covering up the misallocation of a liver -- a significant breach of transplant rules that prompted the hospital to close the program four years ago. Dr. Richard R. Lopez Jr., 54, is accused of lying to national transplant officials and directing his staff to falsify records involving a September 2003 transplant....

It's been nearly 24 years since Robbin Brandley, 23, was stabbed to death in a parking lot after leaving a piano concert at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo. Her killing sparked successful efforts to make college campuses safer by requiring better lighting in parking lots and the disclosure by schools of information about crimes on campus. Still, no one has ever been prosecuted for her death. On Monday, a former Marine who confessed more than a decade ago to stabbing Brandley to death and killing four other women in Southern California was indicted by an Orange County grand jury, setting the stage for an eventual trial.

Santa Barbara County officials charged two men Thursday with misdemeanors for allegedly sparking the destructive Jesusita fire in May by clearing a trail with gas-powered weed cutters. Craig Ilenstine, 50, and Dana Neil Larsen, 45, failed to obtain a so-called hot-work permit as required by county code before undertaking clearance on the Jesusita trail near Cathedral Peak, said Jerry Lulejian, a Santa Barbara County deputy district attorney. The fire erupted May 5 after the men used gas-fueled trimmers to clear brush and limbs from the trail, Lulejian said.

Three Riverside County businessmen and four associates were criminally charged Thursday after prosecutors said they sold false investments and committed grand theft in a scheme that bilked clients of $17 million and left many broke. "The schemes . . . collected tens of millions of dollars and victimized both individual investors and financial institutions," U.S. Atty. George S. Cardona said at a news conference in Riverside. "Using storefronts across the Inland Empire and numerous phone lines assigned to their shell companies, the schemers misled banks into believing that prospective borrowers had significant assets, when in fact the schemers were engaging in a mortgage fraud shell game built on lies to both their investors and the banks."

A politically connected Beverly Hills financial firm and three current or former executives were indicted Thursday on charges that they defrauded government agencies across the country by rigging bids to invest the proceeds of municipal bond offerings. The nine-count indictment, issued by a federal grand jury and filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, accuses CDR Financial Products Inc. of steering business to investment firms that paid it kickbacks. Also charged in the indictment are the firm's owner and president, David Rubin; its vice president, Evan Andrew Zarefsky; and its former chief financial officer, Zevi Wolmark.

A San Bernardino man was charged Tuesday with five counts of murder for allegedly setting the massive 2003 Old fire that destroyed nearly a 1,000 homes. Rickie Lee Fowler, 28, who has been in state prison since 2003 for burglary, also was charged with arson and aggravated arson, authorities said. If convicted, he could face the death penalty. "The investigators in this case never gave up; there was tremendous follow-up," San Bernardino County Dist. Atty. Mike Ramos said at a news conference Tuesday.

A federal grand jury in New York indicted a Denver man on a terrorism charge Thursday after federal authorities alleged that he and possibly three others had gone on a buying spree of bomb-making chemicals and were preparing an attack on U.S. soil. The one-count indictment alleges that Najibullah Zazi, 24, worked for more than a year on a plot to detonate a weapon of mass destruction. Justice Department documents did not name the alleged co-conspirators, but said that three other Denver-area residents had bought unusual amounts of chemicals from beauty-supply stores, including hydrogen peroxide and acetone, which can be used to make explosives.

Eric H. Holder Jr. is an attorney general of great integrity and deep experience, but he did neither President Obama nor the country a service Monday when he appointed a longtime federal prosecutor to investigate whether CIA interrogators should be criminally prosecuted for abusive interrogation of Al Qaeda prisoners. The president himself -- with the unqualified support of Leon Panetta, the new director of Central Intelligence -- has already ordered an end to the use of torture against suspected terrorists.