Militia Leader

Even after decades of well-documented murder and plunder, even after the International Criminal Court indicted him and a U.S. president dispatched a special forces team to help catch him, African warlord Joseph Kony remained largely obscure to the West. That changed with startling swiftness this week, with the viral proliferation of a smoothly produced 29-minute video, "Kony 2012," that calculatedly taps the power of social media in an effort to make the fugitive leader of the Lord's Resistance Army a figure of global infamy.

The youthful head of a self-styled Alaska militia that collected firearms and grenades and talked of killing judges and government employees was sentenced Tuesday to more than 25 years in prison, despite his lawyer's claim that he suffered from paranoid delusions. Prosecutors had sought 35 years for  Schaeffer Cox , who had gained a following in far-right circles across the West with his message that the government had strayed from its constitutional authority. Secretly  he and his followers began accumulating weaponry and plotting retribution.  Tuesday's hearing in Anchorage marked a substantial turnaround for the 28-year-old former leader of the Alaska Peacemakers Militia, who spent his trial in May and June denying wrongdoing and accusing the government of putting his political beliefs on trial.

A Florida militia leader pleaded innocent in Tampa to federal charges that he planned to blow up electric power lines in Florida and Georgia. Donald Beauregard, 31, of St. Petersburg, was arrested Dec. 8 after he was indicted by a federal grand jury in Tampa on six criminal charges. The indictment alleges that he planned to steal explosives from National Guard armories in Florida to blow up power transmission towers and lines near Tampa and Atlanta.

It's been nearly four months since "Kony 2012" exploded into public consciousness as a rare bird: an Internet video that captivated the multitudes with a story of geopolitics and human suffering, not a pop diva's star turn. The video about a brutal militia leader in central Africa topped 70 million views in the first week of its release in March. Invisible Children, the human rights group that produced the piece, just as quickly became the object of derision. Critics said the San Diego-based organization had oversimplified and distorted the story of Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA, which has kidnapped children and turned them into sex slaves and boy soldiers for more than a quarter of a century.

A notorious militia leader surrendered his handgun to police in a largely symbolic gesture and vowed to abandon violence in his fight against independence for East Timor. Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid had threatened to have Eurico Guterres arrested if he refused. But the surrender came as Indonesia's military admitted that many gang members in Indonesian West Timor were hiding weapons in defiance of a weeklong campaign to disarm them.

East Timorese militia leader Eurico Guterres was arrested on charges he ordered his followers to hide rather than turn over their weapons, police said. Indonesian national police chief Gen. Bimantoro Suroyo also accused Guterres of instructing hundreds of his men to take back guns already handed over to police. Guterres could be imprisoned for six years if convicted. Earlier this week, he warned that his followers would unleash a new wave of violence if he was arrested.

Mourners paid their last respects to a former Lebanese militia leader slain by a remote-controlled bomb, lining up Friday to view Elie Hobeika's coffin at a Maronite Christian church. Syria, meanwhile, joined Lebanese officials in accusing Israel of being behind Hobeika's slaying--a claim Israel has denied. Hobeika was an ally of Syria, which maintains troops in Lebanon. Hobeika, 45, was killed Thursday along with three of his bodyguards when a 22-pound bomb went off near his car.

A Somali suspected of being a militia leader during the 1993 "Black Hawk Down" battle in which 18 Americans died was arrested in Sweden on suspicion of war crimes, police said. The man, identified as onetime Somalian Interior Minister Abdi Hassan Awale, was taken into custody after Somalis living in Sweden recognized him and told police, said Gillian Nilsson, the organizer of a conference Awale was attending.

A militia leader accused of conscripting and enlisting children younger than 15 became the first Congolese suspect sent for trial at the International Criminal Court, the court announced. Thomas Lubanga was at a temporary detention center near The Hague, in the Netherlands. He had been flown from the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly known as Zaire, aboard a French military plane.

Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid, the militia leader who helped draw Somalia into years of civil war, famine and virtual anarchy and whose forces killed 18 U.S. soldiers trying to hunt him down, has died. Aidid, who effectively forced U.N. peacekeepers to withdraw from Somalia in humiliation, died of a heart attack Thursday, his militia said. He had been reported shot during factional fighting last week. Thousands of weeping Somalis poured into the streets of south Mogadishu.

NEW DELHI - Brahmeshwar Singh, a wealthy landlord known as the "Butcher of Bihar," was killed in a hail of bullets Friday while taking his morning walk, ending a notorious chapter in Indian history. Singh, 67, the leader of a banned militia of upper-caste members known as Ranvir Sena, hit the headlines in the 1990s after he and fellow landlords were accused of the massacre of scores of lower-caste Dalits, or so-called untouchables, in central Bihar state. As news of his killing spread, supporters gathered in Singh's hometown of Arrah, yelling antigovernment slogans, burning vehicles and chasing away police who sought to recover his body for an autopsy.

ANCHORAGE - With his Boy Scout good looks and schoolboy cap, Schaeffer Cox was known for striding happily through the treacherous backwater between rabble rousing and revolution. In university auditoriums and community meeting halls throughout the West over the last few years, the 28-year-old Cox has preached the gospel of free will, no taxes and unregulated firearms. He's also warned growing legions of supporters that the dictionary defines "terrorism" as government through intimidation - and that its logical antidote is "horrible rebellion.

Even after decades of well-documented murder and plunder, even after the International Criminal Court indicted him and a U.S. president dispatched a special forces team to help catch him, African warlord Joseph Kony remained largely obscure to the West. That changed with startling swiftness this week, with the viral proliferation of a smoothly produced 29-minute video, "Kony 2012," that calculatedly taps the power of social media in an effort to make the fugitive leader of the Lord's Resistance Army a figure of global infamy.

President Obama is sending about 100 special forces troops to central Africa to help target the leadership of the Lord's Resistance Army, a notorious militia that has been raping and pillaging in the remote jungles of northern Uganda and neighboring countries for more than two decades. The first team of armed advisors arrived in Uganda on Wednesday. Over the next month, the remaining U.S. troops, most of them Army Green Berets, will be sent to Uganda and surrounding countries, including South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Congo.

Col. Moammar Kadafi has depicted this coastal city of squat concrete homes and graceful blue harbor as the staging ground for an Al Qaeda takeover of Libya. A radical Islamic caliphate, Kadafi claims, is based in Derna, inside rebel-held eastern Libya, and is directing the uprising against him. That characterization draws a belly laugh from Mabrouk Salama, an Irish-educated chemistry professor who serves on the rebel leadership council in Derna. "Al Qaeda? Here? Ha!" Salama said, shaking his head.

A suicide bombing killed at least 34 people and injured more than 40 at a funeral held by an anti-Taliban tribal militia Wednesday in northwest Pakistan, prompting militia leaders to angrily rebuke the government for failing to provide enough support for their battle against insurgents. The attack occurred in the village of Adezai, about 15 miles south of the city of Peshawar and just east of the volatile tribal areas where Al Qaeda and Taliban militants maintain strongholds. A teenage boy appeared at the funeral and was thought to be a mourner, witnesses and local police said.

Sunni Muslim militia leader Mustafa Saad of Lebanon, seriously wounded Monday by a car bomb in the port city of Sidon, was reported in stable condition Thursday after eye surgery at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. However, doctors said it may be a week before they know whether the surgery was successful. Saad's wife, Lobove, 33, also injured in the blast, was stable after surgery Wednesday and was to undergo more surgery.

A U.N. court convicted a former Rwandan Hutu militia leader Monday of ordering the deaths of thousands of Tutsis and sentenced him to life in prison for genocide and crimes against humanity. Georges Rutaganda "deliberately participated in the crimes and has not shown the slightest remorse," Judge Laity Kama said. Rutaganda, convicted on three of eight counts of genocide and crimes against humanity, was vice president of the Interahamwe militia.

Reports that a U.N. tribunal will blame the Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah for the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri have triggered fears of violence in this small, unstable country. Hezbollah chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said late Thursday that Saad Hariri, the current prime minister and son of the slain Sunni politician, had told him that United Nations investigators examining the assassination would pin responsibility on "undisciplined members" of Hezbollah.