Woman describes Berlusconi’s parties
MILAN – Silvio Berlusconi’s private disco featured not only aspiring showgirls performing striptease acts as sexy nuns and nurses, but one woman dressed up as President Barack Obama and a prominent Milan prosecutor whom the billionaire media mogul has accused of persecuting him, according to the first public sworn testimony by the Moroccan woman at the center of the scandal.
Karima el-Mahroug’s testimony Friday at the trial of three former Berlusconi aides accused with procuring her and other women for prostitution confirms a sexually charged atmosphere at the “bunga bunga” parties of the then-sitting premier. The trial is separate from the one in which Berlusconi is charged with paying for sex with a minor – el-Mahroug when she was 17 – and trying to cover it up.
The three Berlusconi aides are accused of recruiting women for prostitution at the parties and abetting prostitution, including of a minor. They deny the charges.
Bombs target Sunnis, kill at least 76 in Iraq
BAGHDAD – Bombs struck Sunni areas in Baghdad and surrounding areas Friday, killing at least 76 people in the deadliest day in Iraq in more than eight months, officials said, as a spike in violence has raised fears the country could be on the path to a new round of sectarian bloodshed.
The attacks in Baghdad and surrounding areas pushed the three-day Iraqi death toll to 130, including Shiites at bus stops and outdoor markets in scenes reminiscent of the retaliatory attacks between the Islamic sects that pushed the country to the brink of civil war in 2006-2007.
Torture evidence found in Syrian prisons
BEIRUT – Rights activists visiting abandoned government prisons in the first Syrian city to come under rebel control have found torture devices and other evidence that detainees were abused there, Human Rights Watch said in a report Friday.
Raqqa, in eastern Syria, was overrun in late February by rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad. The rebels facilitated the New York-based group’s access to facilities that had belonged to a government security agency and military intelligence in late April.
Associated Press
