News Makers

Court jails US man for child sex

A Cambodian court yesterday convicted and sentenced a US man to 10 years in prison for soliciting sex with a 14-year-old Vietnamese girl, a judge said.

Michael James Dodd, 60, from Washington DC, was arrested in October last year while staying with the girl at his rented house in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh.

The judge also ordered Dodd to pay $5,000 in compensation to the victim.

Dozens of foreigners have been jailed for child sex crimes or deported to face trial in their home countries since Cambodia launched an anti-paedophilia push in 2003 to try to shake off its reputation as a haven for sex predators.

French hostage escapes in Somalia

One of a pair of French security agents kidnapped by insurgents in Somalia last month has escaped, Somali officials said yesterday. A military officer said the man is believed to have killed three of his captors.

The agent is safe in the presidential palace and "in a good mood," said the assistant information secretary of the presidential palace, Abdulkadir Hussein Wehliye.

Farhan Asanyo, a government military officer, said the man unexpectedly came up to government soldiers early yesterday, identified himself and said he had escaped.

"The man told them that he was one of the French officials held by militants," Asanyo said. "He said he escaped after killing three of his captors, and we sent him to the presidential palace."

The fate of the other captive were not immediately clear.

The French men were abducted in July from a hotel in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. They were in the country to train Somali government forces, which are fighting Islamist militiamen.

Militants had said the two would be tried under Islamic law for alleged spying and conspiracy against Islam.

(China Daily 08/27/2009 page10)