UN Court

A court in Hameenlinna, Finland, on Monday fined and paroled two officials of the Finnish state-owned arms company Patria for bribing Croatian officials during a sale of armed vehicles in 2007.

Heikki Hulkkonen and Patria's former representative in Croatia, Reijo Niittynen, were given 20 months parole and a 297,000 euro fine each for offering a bribe of 1.6 million euro.

A 19-year-old man, identified only by the initials ?.K., has been convicted of sexually assaulting a 21-year-old Japanese tourist on the Diyarbak?r-Mu? highway in southeastern Turkey, but has had his sentence postponed for ?good conduct.?

The third consecutive trial for the murder of the journalist Dusko Jovanovic began on Monday in the High Court in Podgorica, with the only defendant, Damir Mandic, accusing the police of "planting evidence".

A court ruling in the case into the death of a 26-year-old woman has stirred fresh controversy, after it acquitted two suspects of murder, based on the possibility of the woman?s suicide, daily Milliyet has reported.

The main suspect in the brutal slaying of 20-year-old woman Özgecan Aslan in southern Turkey was arrested early Feb. 16 with his two accomplices, as Turks showed their mourning and anger by wearing black.

My name is Kübra. My husband hit me; I had a brain hemorrhage. I am dead now.

My name is Mekkiye. My husband shot me in the heart, then shot my two daughters. Now, all three of us are dead. My name is Ay?e. My boyfriend of three months stabbed me, my son and my 11-year-old daughter. My daughter survived, my son and I are dead.

An Istanbul court late Feb. 14 ordered the arrest of 17 of 21 police officers detained with charges of illegal wiretapping and espionage.

The officers were accused of being members an organization, engaging in espionage and attempting to topple the Turkish government.    

The judge released four other officers, but they were banned from leaving the country.

A Turkish prosecutor has described the ?parallel structure? led by U.S.-based Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen as an ?armed terror organization,? citing the Balyoz (Sledgehammer) case, in which allegedly Gülenist police and judiciary members had cracked down on army officers with the same accusation.

A set of 12 gold-plated animal head sculptures by China's Ai Weiwei sold for 2.8 million ($4.3 million, 3.8 million euros) at auction on Feb. 12, setting a new record for the dissident artist's work.
      
The 2010 work "Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads" led a contemporary art sale by auction house Philips in London.
      

Turkey's highest administrative court has made a landmark ruling, convicting the Prime Ministry over the leaking of a report that included illegitimate records about the main opposition leader while ordering it to pay compensation.