Polygamist leader held for sex charges in Texas - Reuters

By Jim Forsyth

SAN ANTONIO, Texas | Wed Dec 1, 2010 4:15pm EST

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) - Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, whose rape conviction in Utah was overturned on appeal in July, has been extradited to Texas, where he was ordered held without bond on Wednesday on sexual assault and bigamy charges.

Jeffs, 54, whose word was considered God's will by thousands of followers, is the self-proclaimed prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a breakaway Mormon sect known to practice illegal plural marriages.

Jeffs was indicted by a Texas grand jury in July 2008 following a raid on an FLDS ranch near the tiny west Texas town of Eldorado. He is charged with bigamy and with sexual assault involving two girls, aged 12 and 13, whom he allegedly took as wives.

All three counts are felonies that carry penalties ranging from five to 99 years in prison if convicted.

State authorities removed more than 400 children from the FLDS compound at the time of the raid, sparking a child custody battle that gripped the nation with lurid allegations of adolescent brides and teenage pregnancies. But the children were all later returned to relatives.

The mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the official name of the Mormon faith, renounced polygamy more than a century ago as Utah was seeking statehood and tries to distance itself from splinter groups that still espouse it.

FLDS men typically marry one legal wife while taking others as their "spiritual wives" -- a practice that attempts to skirt the law and entitles the women and their children to various welfare benefits.

Female members of the sect wear long, pioneer-style dresses, keep their hair in long-braided plaits and are raised to be submissive to their husbands. Church members are generally suspicious of outsiders.

Revered as infallible by some and reviled as power-crazed by others, Jeffs has been characterized by his lawyers as an "unpopular religious figure" unfairly singled out for prosecution on the basis of unorthodox beliefs and teachings.

He spent 15 months on the run and made the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list of fugitives before his August 2006 arrest near Las Vegas.

Jeffs was convicted in Utah in September 2007 on two counts of first-degree felony rape as an accomplice, stemming from a 2001 marriage between a 14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old cousin performed by Jeffs over the girl's objections.

At the time of the April 2008 raid on the sect's ranch in Texas, he was serving a prison sentence of 10 years to life in the Utah case and awaiting trial on a similar charge in Arizona, which was later dropped.

The Utah Supreme Court threw out his conviction in July of this year and ordered a new trial, ruling the presiding judge had given faulty instructions.

Last week, Utah's high court ruled Jeffs could be extradited to Texas, a move defense lawyers said would effectively end the case against him in Utah by denying his rights to a speedy retrial.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said Jeffs was picked up in Utah by Texas Rangers on Tuesday night and "escorted into the state," where he was booked into the county jail in San Angelo, about 200 miles northwest of San Antonio.

Twelve other FLDS men from the Yearning for Zion Ranch near Eldorado were indicted on charges ranging from setting up sham marriages to bigamy and child sexual assault. Seven of those have either pleaded guilty or been convicted and have been sentenced to prison.

(Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Jerry Norton)

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Germany: Obama too strong a leader to be deterred - BusinessWeek

By ELAINE GANLEY

PARIS

President Barack Obama is too strong a leader to be deterred by his party's setbacks in the U.S. midterm election, Germany's foreign minister said Wednesday, but there was some concern that Democratic losses in Congress could affect Obama's nuclear disarmament plans.

"One would massively underestimate the president of the United States if one wanted to think that he would be weakened in foreign policy," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told ZDF television, noting that the U.S. campaign was driven by "domestic and economic issues."

"America is a strong country; the American president is a very strong and decisive president," he added.

Obama's Democrats held onto the Senate in the vote Tuesday but gave up their majority in the lower house to Republicans, which could make it harder to pass new legislation.

Westerwelle called on new members of Congress to support Obama's nuclear disarmament bid.

"We cannot fall back on the issue of disarmament," Westerwelle said. "I call on those newly elected to support the president's initiative on this."

Roman Joch, head of a conservative think tank in the Czech Republic, said New Strategic Arms Control Treaty signed by Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in April -- "one of the biggest successes of Obama's foreign policy -- is facing problems."

"It is now possible that the treaty won't be ratified," Joch said.

The treaty would lower limits on the two countries' nuclear arsenals. However, there is concern among some Republicans that the United States can't verify whether Russia is sticking to the treaty.

Spanish Foreign Minister Trinidad Jimenez was among those betting on Obama's strengths rather than the Democrats' stinging losses.

"It happened with President Clinton and I'm convinced that with that political capability he (Obama) has always shown, he will be able push through all the projects he feels are necessary and opportune for the U.S. public," she said.

Some analysts said the election results are more likely to change U.S. domestic policy than foreign policy.

"America is a democracy and policies do not revolve around one person in the United States. Therefore, I do not expect any change in the U.S. foreign policy," said Ishtiaq Ahmad, a professor of international relations at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan.

Will the delicate Middle East peace process be a victim of the midterms?

Zalman Shoval, a confidant of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., thinks not. "Foreign policy is the prerogative of the president, even if he is weak," said Shoval.

At least one African country, Sierre Leone, praised the vote.

Ibrahim Ben Kargbo, the West African nation's information minister, said it was good to see a country in which "elections are conducted swiftly and results announced without any controversy."

He added, however, "that the African-American population should have provided more support for the Democratic Party."

And in Indonesia, where Obama spent part of his childhood, some still hoped that Obama's experience in their country would help bridge ties between the West and the Muslim world.

"It will be harder for him, yes," said Sonni Gondokusumo, a former playmate of Obama's. "But he's not going to give up. He's going to keep struggling, because this isn't just what's best for the world but for Americans. He still has two years to prove himself."

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Associated Press reporters Tini Tran in Beijing, Geir Moulson in Berlin, Jan Olsen in Copenhagen, Clarence Roy-Macaulay in Freetown, Sierra Leone, Ali Kotarumalos and Irwan Firdaus in Jakarta, Indonesia; Katharine Houreld and Kathy Gannon in Kabul, Afghanistan; Munir Ahmed in Islamabad; Karel Janicek in Prague contributed to this report.

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Bronx Gang Claim Gay Recruit Torture Was Forced by Leader - ABC News

Members of a Bronx gang who allegedly beat and tortured a new recruit they thought was gay along with two other men in separate attacks early this week are claiming that the gang's leader threatened them into participating in the assaults.

Police told the New York Daily News that several members of the gang, known as the Latin King Goonies, claimed that the gang's leader, Ildefonso (Cheto) Mendez, orchestrated the assault and told them that they would be slashed and beaten as well if they did not participate.

Eight members of the gang are being held on charges of burglary, robbery, assault, menacing, unlawful imprisonment and criminal sex acts, which are being added as a hate crime, police said. One suspect, Rudy Vargas-Perez, 22, is also being sought in the incident.

The alleged attacks came amid heightened attention nationwide to anti-gay bullying after a string of suicides last month were attributed to harassment they had suffered.

New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the first of the alleged assaults occurred at about 3:30 a.m. Sunday in the Morris Heights section of the Bronx.

In the first incident, gang members allegedly forced a 17-year-old potential recruit for the street gang to an empty apartment in the Bronx that they used for parties and sex, Kelly said.

"He was thrown into a wall, made to strip naked, hit in the head with a beer can, cut with a box cutter and sodomized with the wooden handle of a plunger," the commissioner said.

The alleged attackers, apparently angry he was gay, yelled anti-gay insults and questioned him about his contact with a 30-year-old man, according to police.

The teen was eventually released by the attackers and instructed not to tell anyone, police said. He then walked to a hospital where he was treated, but he reported that his injuries were from a robbery, according to police.

The gang members then attacked another 17-year-old also thought to have had a relationship with the 30-year-old and then the older man as well, police said. They allegedly lured both to the same apartment with a story that there was a party there.

The second teen was allegedly assaulted at about 8:30 p.m. on Sunday, according to police.

When the 30-year-old arrived about an hour later, the nine gang members allegedly stripped him to his underwear and tied him to a chair opposite the other teen, who they forced to burn the man with cigarettes, police said.

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