News Briefs

Crucifixion artist flees Russia, fears jail as censorship rises

Oleg Mavromatti, 45, a film maker and performance artist, fled to Bulgaria in 2000 after the Russian Orthodox Church complained about a movie he was shooting in which he is crucified. He was accused of violating a criminal code that includes inciting religious hatred and denigrating the church, an offense punishable by as many as five years in prison.

Last month, the Russian consulate in Sofia refused to renew Mavromatti's passport.

Mavromatti's case highlights what human-rights activists see as a return to Soviet-style censorship, with a resurgent Russian Orthodox Church playing a central role and the Kremlin supporting it.

Last month, four artworks by Avdei Ter-Oganian were temporarily withheld by Russian authorities from an exhibition at the Louvre Museum in Paris because, a Culture Ministry official said, they incited religious hatred. This summer, two prominent art curators were found guilty of the same crime because several works in the "Forbidden Art" exhibition they organized in 2007 were considered offensive, including a depiction of a Christ figure with a Mickey Mouse head.

Mavromatti has spent the past decade in Sofia and New York where he regularly showed at Exit Art, a nonprofit exhibition space. In his performance-art pieces, his subjects have included the financial crisis and the war in Iraq.

After Russian authorities released Ter-Oganian's work, the Prague-based artist announced he wouldn't participate in the Louvre show unless Mavromatti's passport is renewed.

Arsonists set fire to mosque in West Bank town

Arsonists set fire to a mosque in this Palestinian town early Monday, charring Korans, burning holes into the carpet and scrawling "revenge" in Hebrew near the doorway.

The attack, which residents blamed on Jewish settlers, threatened to stir passions amid a crisis in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks over settlement construction. It was strongly condemned by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

The Israeli police and army said an investigation was underway in cooperation with Palestinian security forces.

The arson was the third incident of vandalism in a West Bank mosque in the past year, and it carried a hallmark of previous assaults on Palestinian property: the words "price tag" written on a wall. The term has been used by militant settlers to describe violence against Palestinians in response to moves against settlers by Israeli authorities.

Netanyahu is under intense international pressure to extend a moratorium on new settlement construction after a 10-month freeze expired last week, leading to an effective suspension of the peace negotiations. Settlers have voiced concern that Netanyahu will renew the building restrictions.

Times Square bomber gets life in prison

Faisal Shahzad received a life prison sentence Tuesday for driving a bomb-laden car into New York's Times Square in May and trying unsuccessfully to blow it up.

U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum handed down the sentence in a 25-minute proceeding in federal court in Manhattan. There is no parole in the federal penal system.

Shahzad, 31, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Pakistan, admitted he drove a Nissan Pathfinder into the crowded Manhattan intersection laden with improvised explosives. He fled when they failed to go off and was arrested May 3 at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport after boarding a flight to Dubai.

Shahzad told Cedarbaum when he pleaded guilty that he set the bomb's detonator to go off between 2 1/2 to 5 minutes and then walked away. He said he carried a loaded 9 mm Kel-Tec rifle with him to Times Square, folded it, and put it in a computer laptop bag before walking to the Grand Central Terminal train station, about five blocks away.

He told investigators that he planned to detonate a second bomb if he hadn't been arrested for the foiled May 1 attack, U.S. prosecutors have said.

The government argued Shahzad deserved a life prison term because his crime was premeditated and because he exploited the benefits of his citizenship to join a foreign terrorist organization intent on attacking the U.S.