Word: ermacora
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...funny thing happened to Felix Ermacora's report to the United Nations on human rights violations in Afghanistan. The document, the result of a two-week stay by the Vienna University law professor among Afghan refugees along the Pakistani border, catalogs intensified Soviet military operations, continued air raids by occupying Soviet forces against civilian targets, the use of gas and chemical weapons and booby-trapped toys, and torture -- supervised by Soviet observers -- in Afghan prisons...
...twelve-page section of the report detailing the most serious accusations was in a separate appendix from the main text. U.N. officials told Ermacora that the separation was a "mistake." The appendix, moreover, was not translated from English into Russian or any other official U.N. language with the rest of the report. That saved about $100,000, the U.N. said...
...Soviets, for their part, did not acknowledge Ermacora's report. In the tradition of countering with a good offense, though, the Soviets joined 78 other U.N. members in voting last week for a General Assembly resolution condemning the U.S. bombing of Libya in April...
...sure, Ermacora was not entirely altruistic. He readily admitted losing $1,300,000 on the horses. He even invested in a flashy $11,000 Ferrari 330 G.T., explaining that it "was just a condemned man's last cigarette. I knew I'd soon be arrested and would take the subways the rest of my life...
Said his lawyer, Jacques Isorni: "He saw himself as an avenger against a capitalist society that exploited people. [While] his acts were serious, his.motives were loftier." Retorting that swindling is swindling. Judge Max Trouiller saw to it that Ermacora would not ride the subways for a while, much less drive his Ferrari. He sentenced Ermacora to seven years in prison...