INT'L news in brief

91-year-old ex-chief gets 90 years in jail for 1971 war crimes

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP):

A 91-year-old former chief of an Islamic party in Bangladesh was sentenced to 90 years in jail on Monday for crimes against humanity during the country's 1971 independence war, angering both supporters who said the trial was politically motivated, and opponents who said he should be executed.

A special tribunal of three judges announced the decision against Ghulam Azam in a packed courtroom in Dhaka, the capital. The panel said the former leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami party deserved capital punishment, but received a jail sentence instead because of his advanced age and poor health.

Azam was in the dock when the verdict was delivered while protesters outside rallied to demand his execution. Both the defence and the prosecution said they will appeal.

Azam led Jamaat-e-Islami in then-east Pakistan in 1971 when Bangladesh became independent through a bloody war. He is among several Jamaat-e-Islami leaders convicted by a tribunal formed in 2010 by the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to try those accused of collaborating with the Pakistani army in the war.

Snowden may have NSA 'blueprints'

Rio De Janeiro (AP):

Edward Snowden has highly sensitive documents on how the National Security Agency (NSA) is structured and operates that could harm the U.S. government, but has insisted that they not be made public, a journalist close to the NSA leaker said.

Glenn Greenwald, a columnist with The Guardian newspaper who first reported on the intelligence leaks, told The Associated Press that disclosure of the information in the documents "would allow somebody who read them to know exactly how the NSA does what it does, which would in turn allow them to evade that surveillance or replicate it."