Mercenaries

Re "America's own unlawful combatants?" Oct. 15 The government of Iraq wants Blackwater USA out of Iraq. Can you blame it? Blackwater contractors are accountable to neither U.S. courts nor Iraqi courts. They are mercenaries immune from justice. Get them out. Use the money we are paying them to raise the salaries of U.S. soldiers. Maybe then our military men and women will be more likely to reenlist rather than "going Blackwater."

When Hector Soto answered the phone at Mama Fina's Dominican restaurant early Thursday, he did so with a question. "Did he sign?" Soto asked in Spanish. There was no need to ask who "he" was. Albert Pujols was coming to Southern California with a fresh $254 million to spend. And for Soto that was good news — not only for the Angels but for his Bellflower business as well. "It's great that they gave that money to a Dominican," Soto said. "He'll come to the restaurant.

Sixty suspected mercenaries detained in Zimbabwe have been charged with immigration and firearms violations, their lawyer said. They were among 70 men detained March 7 after authorities seized their airplane in Harare, the capital, and accused them of plotting a coup in Equatorial Guinea. Lawyer Jonathan Samkange said today that Zimbabwean law had no provision to charge the men with plotting a coup against the government of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

A group of mercenaries has offered to help Moammar Kadafi's fugitive son and onetime heir apparent evade arrest and trial, an international prosecutor said Friday. The International Criminal Court warned that authorities might intercept any aircraft linked to the suspected plot to shield Seif Islam Kadafi from facing war crimes charges pending against him. ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo also said his office had had "informal contact" with the younger Kadafi, once regarded as the reformist face of his father's regime in Libya.

A group of mercenaries has offered to help Moammar Kadafi's fugitive son and onetime heir apparent evade arrest and trial, an international prosecutor said Friday. The International Criminal Court warned that authorities might intercept any aircraft linked to the suspected plot to shield Seif Islam Kadafi from facing war crimes charges pending against him. ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo also said his office had had "informal contact" with the younger Kadafi, once regarded as the reformist face of his father's regime in Libya.

European mercenaries crushed a popular uprising on the Comoros and tightened their grip on the Indian Ocean island group amid rumors of an imminent French expedition to oust them. Hours after street protests erupted against mercenary control of the islands, foreign journalists were expelled to Kenya. Hundreds of Comorans, blaming French mercenaries for the Nov. 26 killing of President Ahmed Abdallah, had marched in the capital, Moroni, to demand that the Europeans leave.

A grizzled, limping soldier of fortune ended his latest power grab in Africa on Thursday by quietly leading his band of white mercenaries into French custody. The subdued surrender on the Comoro Islands off Africa's eastern coast came after a lightning invasion of French troops ended a short-lived coup by Bob Denard, two dozen mercenaries and about 300 allied Comoran soldiers.

A French mercenary who once was the armed power behind the presidency of the Comoros led a new coup attempt Thursday in the impoverished island nation, taking the president hostage. Bob Denard, 66, led a group of foreign mercenaries that attacked the presidential palace and captured President Said Mohamed Djohar, officials at the Comoros Embassy in Paris said.

Former Alabama mercenary school instructor Frank Camper was attacked in Leavenworth's federal prison and scalded with boiling water, forcing prison officials to isolate him, his sister said. Camper, 41, is serving a 14-year sentence for playing a role in the August, 1985, firebombings of cars belonging to two disgruntled former teachers with a chain of prep schools in Orange and San Bernardino.

The camouflage-suited men in the Miami motel room had a bold plan: slip into Nicaragua, steal a Soviet helicopter gunship and fly it out to collect an advertised bounty of $1 million. One of the leaders, the man armed with the German PPK .38 automatic handgun who called himself "Col. Flaco," advocated a second objective.

They huddle beneath dry-docked boats at the edge of the Mediterranean, petrified that the rebel gunmen who now own the streets will confuse them with mercenaries for the despot. "We are workers, we are not soldiers," said Godfrey Ogbor, 29, voicing a plea shared by hundreds of men from sub-Saharan Africa trapped at this makeshift coastal camp 15 miles west of Tripoli. "We don't know politics. We have no guns. " But the new masters of Tripoli suspect that many are something else: shock troops for a reviled regime, collaborators who deserve no pity.

About a dozen African men stood lined along a hallway of the courthouse in the eastern city of Benghazi. The men were suspected of being mercenaries fighting on behalf of Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi and had been rousted from their homes in the morning, turned in by residents responding to a rebel campaign urging them to report "suspicious people. " We are construction workers, one of the men said, pleading his innocence to a Times reporter visiting the courthouse, which now serves as the headquarters of the rebel government.

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday denounced Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi for using "mercenaries and thugs" against his own people and called on the embattled ruler to step down immediately. She said the Obama administration was considering every option against Kadafi and that nothing was "off the table. " Addressing the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Clinton said governments of the world must support the push for democracy in the Middle East.

On walls across Libya's second-largest city are the same scrawled graffiti: Game Over. Days after protesters took control of Benghazi after fierce attacks by Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi's militia and alleged mercenaries left many dead and injured, demonstrations continued at the courthouse where they began a week ago. People called for Kadafi's resignation and expressed support for anti-government efforts in the capital, Tripoli, and other cities....

Hollywood is releasing a family comedy, a romantic comedy, a teen-targeted spoof, a cheesy 3-D thriller and an African American-targeted comedy this weekend. But more moviegoers may stick with the same old action heroes. Director and star Sylvester Stallone's "The Expendables" has the best chance to be No. 1 for the second weekend in a row, said people who have seen surveys of potential moviegoers. The aging-mercenaries tale is projected to sell $15 million to $17 million worth of tickets in the U.S. and Canada, down a little more than half from its strong opening weekend.

How expendable is "The Expendables"? That depends on who you are and why you're asking. If that sounds a little Zen-like, that's because the new action opera co-written and directed by and starring Sylvester Stallone exists in a "Twilight Zone" dimension of its own outside of normal critical time and space. In other words, if you want to see old-fashioned nonstop mayhem with stars so venerable that "The Leathernecks" (and I don't mean Marines) might be an alternative title, reviews are going to be superfluous.

Those Iraqis who killed Americans and then mutilated the bodies are criminals who deserve to pay for their crimes, but reports of heavily armed ex-SEALS and Rangers working as civilian personnel for the U.S. in Iraq are also of concern (April 1-2). Combatant nonmilitary employees exist in a legal never-never land, not subject to military law or Iraqi civil law. If they have a "special" relationship with the military but make many times the salaries of soldiers, the question must be asked: Why aren't sworn soldiers doing these jobs?

A munitions expert pleaded not guilty Monday to charges he violated the Neutrality Act by training Nicaraguan Contras and said the Reagan Administration has made him a scapegoat for an Oliver L. North operation. Jack Terrell, 47, said he was the head field adviser for a military training operation in Honduras between October, 1984, and March, 1985. He said he worked with the knowledge and approval of the U.S. government.

The governance of intercollegiate sports is an ongoing national embarrassment. Just last week, dozens of major universities took part in an unattractive scramble to realign their conference memberships in an effort to maximize their television revenue. While that greed-induced feeding frenzy was going on, the governing National Collegiate Athletic Assn. was hypocritically meting out severe punishment to USC largely because two of its "student athletes" had been accused of the same kind of self-enriching behavior that their school routinely engaged in with impunity.

One team is led by an ancestral chant, stolen from early vaudeville and turned into a guttural cry that has become a Cajun heartbeat. "Who Dat?" the New Orleans Saints fans scream this weekend, the two syllables echoing hope through the mist and cobblestone. The other team is led by a tune rejected from "American Idol." "Pants on the ground!" Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre sang to his teammates last week, botching the words to the shallowest of songs. As with most things in life, when trying to figure out today's NFC championship game, just feel the rhythm.