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They said that if we wanted to save Salamat and the others, we all had to convert to Islam. It is better, even if we never see him again.”Salamat will never return to his village of Rata Dhotan.Neither can any of the 30 Christian families, all poor labourers, who were chased out of the village after the blasphemy accusations were made. They were forced to flee to nearby Francisabad, one of the few villages in Punjab where Christians outnumber Muslims.”We can never go back,” Salamat’s father said bitterly. How can I protect my son? We are helpless,” said Alladitaa Masih, whose brick house is bare except for a television set, a few blankets and pictures of Jesus Christ “Salamat must go away – leave the country. They have yet to see their son, even though he was spared the noose when a court acquitted him on Thursday of writing graffiti insulting the Prophet.Pakistani police warned the Masihs that it was too dangerous for them to collect their son from prison in Lahore because mobs of Islamic extremists had vowed to kill the boy and, his uncle Rehmat Masih, 44, who was also acquitted.”I’m a poor labourer. Cindy’s owner, Sonja Juetten, denies her dog could could have hurt Tapsi, saying it must have been a cat AFP.

FROM TIM McGIRK

in Gujranwalla, Pakistan
The parents of Salamat Masih, the 14-year-old who faced the death penalty in Pakistan for blasphemy, sat with other Christian families huddled inside a muddy courtyard heaped with straw. The bird’s cage was produced in court to determine if the dog could have thrust its muzzle through the bars to attack the bird. Neo-Nazis banned

Bonn – Two neo-Nazi groups were outlawed. The German federal government banned the Free German Workers’ Party, while the city-state of Hamburg banned a smaller group, the National List AP. Dog bites parrot?

Bonn – A dachshund named Cindy has appeared in court in Krefeld, accused of mauling a neighbour’s parrot, Tapsi.

Greek deadlock

Athens – The Greek parliament failed to elect a head of state in the first round of presidential elections. Neither Costis Stephanopoulos, backed by the socialist Pasok party and by Political Spring, a nationalist grouping, nor Athanase Tsaldaris, the conservative New Democracy candidate, won the required 200 votes AP. Investigators say businessmen routinely monitor competitors by bugging faxes. For the protagonists in the Deri and Ma’ariv scandals, recording the conversations of friends and enemies seems to have been an automatic precaution..

Rabbinical courts, which judge all divorce cases, accept wire- tap evidence. Advertisements for private investigators fill six and a half pages of the Tel Aviv yellow pages and leave no doubt about what services they provide.Many investigators and company security men have backgrounds in state security. But commercial competition is clearly only one element in the case.Until the Ma’ariv scandal, Israel had an easy-going attitude to wire- tapping. Bought a few years ago by Mr Nimrodi, son of Yacov Nimrodi, a multimillionaire who lives in a replica of the White House in Tel Aviv and who has old intelligence connections as Israel’s former “Mr Fixit” in Iran, Ma’ariv has been fighting a ferocious war with the rival daily Yediot Ahronot. But the motive behind the wire-tapping of so many people, some of whom worked for Ma’ariv, is still unclear. Since the extent of the bugging was revealed last May, police have launched an investigation which led to the arrest of David Ronen, the head of security at Ma’ariv and once a senior Shin Bet officer, on 7 February, as he arrived at Ben-Gurion airport from London.Mr Ronen is suspected of illegal wire-tapping and disrupting the police investigation. Press reports say he also bought four villas with government funds.