Word: clerical
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...last remaining strongholds near the town of Pikit. The generals initially said they were after a band of kidnappers. But the MILF took a pounding, just weeks before more peace talks were to be held in Kuala Lumpur. Feeling betrayed, the MILF's frail 61-year-old spiritual leader, cleric Hashim Salamat, made an emotional appeal for all Muslims with access to arms to "fight until death." In a taped speech broadcast on Feb. 24 by a Cotabato regional radio station, he said, "We are pushed to the wall, we have to fight back...
...altar boy, to 41/2 years in prison; in Hong Kong. Lau is one of eight current or former priests of Hong Kong's Roman Catholic Church accused of pedophilia, and he was defrocked in 1995 after an in-house investigation found him guilty. It is the first time a cleric has been jailed for sex crimes in the territory...
...blow came with the arrest last fall of the group's leader, Mullah Krekar, while he was passing through the Netherlands en route to Norway, where he is applying for asylum. Krekar, a Marxist turned cleric whose real name is Najmuddin Faraj and who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, flatly denies that his group has ties to al-Qaeda or Saddam. "I never had links with Saddam's family, government, party--not in the past, not now, not inside Iraq or outside," he told the BBC last week in Oslo. Ultimately, Kurdish officials are less impressed with the group...
RELEASED. AYATULLAH HOSSEIN ALI MONTAZERI, 80, Iran's most prominent dissident cleric; from five years of house arrest imposed after he challenged the institution of supreme clerical rule; by the Supreme Council of National Security; in Qum. Montazeri was once in line to lead the country but was stripped of that status by Ayatullah Khomeini in 1989 after he accused the judiciary of "murdering" political opponents, among other criticisms of the government. He has vowed to "continue to talk about issues...
ACQUITTED. JAFAR UMAR THALIB, 40, Muslim cleric and leader of the Indonesian militia Laskar Jihad, of charges of inciting his followers to commit violence against Christians; in Jakarta. The prosecution said Jafar had made incendiary remarks in a speech last April in Ambon, capital of the Maluku Islands, just two days before a gang of Muslims attacked a Christian village and killed 12 people. The court ruled that the speech was insufficient evidence, leading some observers to question the country's commitment to combating Islamic militancy. In recent years, Laskar Jihad has been blamed for the deaths of hundreds...