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MIDDLE EAST
SAUDI ARABIA: FORCED MARRIAGES BANNED The country's top cleric, Grand Mufti Sheik Abdul Aziz al-Asheik, who heads the Council of Senior Islamic Scholars, has banned the practice of forcing women to marry against their will, saying those responsible should be imprisoned, the official Saudi Press Agency reported. "Forcing a woman to marry someone she does not want and preventing her from wedding that whom she chooses is not permissible" under Islamic law, he said. According to Saudi news media, half of the marriages in the country end in divorce, and the high number of forced marriages is thought to be the main reason behind the growing divorce rate. (Agence France-Presse)
IRAN: LAWMAKERS ALLOW ABORTION IN LIMITED CASES Parliament approved a bill to allow abortion in the first four months of pregnancy if the life of the mother is in danger or if the fetus is malformed. The bill requires the consent of both parents and approval by three doctors and the coroner's office. The measure still needs approval from the watchdog Guardian Council before it can become a law. Nazila Fathi (NYT)
IRAN: CANADIAN DEMAND FOR AUTOPSY IS REJECTED The spokesman for the country's judiciary said the judges had rejected a demand by Canada to return the remains of Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian photojournalist who died while in detention in Tehran in 2003, for an autopsy. "Even though she had Canadian citizenship, an Iranian court will investigate her case because she was an Iranian citizen," he said. An Iranian doctor, Shahram Azam, who is in exile in Canada, said this month that he had examined Ms. Kazemi in Tehran and had seen signs that she had been tortured and raped while in custody. Iran's position is that Ms. Kazemi, 54, died after falling and hitting her head. In Canada, a spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew, denounced Iran's decision, saying it was consistent with its "pattern of cover-up and lies." Nazila Fathi (NYT)
WEST BANK: PALESTINIAN YOUTH WITH PIPE BOMBS HELD Israeli troops seized a 15-year-old Palestinian boy at a major West Bank checkpoint when he tried to detonate one of five pipe bombs hidden in his overcoat, the military said. It said the youth aroused suspicion at the Hawara checkpoint outside Nablus because he was wearing a heavy coat on a day when temperatures were in the 80's. The soldiers pounced on him when he removed one of the pipe bombs and tried to light it, the military said.
Hassan Hashash, a Palestinian aged 15, was detained by the Israeli military on Tuesday, April 12, at the Hawara checkpoint south of Nablus in the West Bank. Hashash had been hiding five explosive charges under a winter coat before attempting to ignite one in the presence of Israeli soldiers, the military said. In the sweltering 26°C (78°F) heat, the teenager's incongruous attire caught the attention of an IDF paratrooper nicknamed Muli.

"The boy pulled out a matchbox, held up a pipe bomb, and attempted to detonate it," said Muli. "We aimed our weapons at him and told him to move away from us" (Ynet).

The military reported that after taking the youth to an isolated area they searched him and found another four explosives.

"You could see it's a young child who was sent by someone," said Muli. "I looked into his eyes: he was on the brink of tears and scared to death."

The Hawara checkpoint has seen this kind of trouble before. In April 2004, soldiers there arrested a 16-year-old, also Palestinian, with a suicide bomb strapped to his body. The teenager, Hussam Abdo, later told an Israeli newspaper he was on a mission to kill Israeli soldiers. 

Israeli radio noted that this is the third Palestinian child in the past two months caught attempting to transfer explosives past Israeli checkpoints.