German neo-Nazi trial opens in Munich

MUNICH (AP) — The highest-profile neo-Nazi murder trial in Germany in decades opened Monday amid tight security and intense media interest, with the five accused appearing in public for the first time since their arrest more than a year ago.

Police erected security barriers in anticipation of possible protests by far-right extremist groups, while hundreds of reporters queued outside the Munich courthouse in the hope of gaining one of the few available seats in the packed courtroom for the start of a trial scheduled to last for more than a year.

The main defendant is Beate Zschaepe, 38, accused by prosecutor of complicity in the murder of eight Turks, a Greek and a policewoman between 2000 and 2007. If convicted she faces life imprisonment.

Zschaepe is also accused of involvement in at least two bombings and 15 bank robberies carried out by her accomplices Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boenhardt, who died in an apparent murder-suicide in November 2011. In a break with standard practice the court allowed Zschaepe's face to be filmed as she entered the court in a dark suit, her arms folded, before turning her back to the cameras.

Four male defendants are accused of assisting the self-styled National Socialist Underground in various ways:

— Ralf Wohlleben, 38, and Carsten Schultze, 33, are accused of being accessories to murder in the killing of the nine men. Prosecutors allege that they supplied the trio with the weapons and silencers used in the killings.

— Andre Eminger, 33, is accused of being an accessory in two of the bank robberies and in the 2004 nail bombing in Cologne's old town that injured 22 people, four of them seriously. He is also accused of two counts of supporting a terrorist organization.

— Holger Gerlach, 39, is accused of three counts of supporting a terrorist organization.

Like Zschaepe, the co-defendants were known to German authorities before the existence of the self-styled National Socialist Underground came to light. Many in Germany have asked how the country's well-funded security services, with their network of informants in the far-right scene, could have overlooked the group's existence for so long. For years, police suspected the immigrant victims of being involved with foreign gangs linked to gambling and drugs.

Families of those killed and survivors of the bomb attacks in particular have said they are hoping not just for justice, but answers to questions such as how the group chose its victims, none of whom were high-profile targets.

One of Zschaepe's three lawyers has claimed that his client faces "execution by media."

Wolfgang Stahl told public broadcaster SWR last week that Zschaepe was being portrayed as "evil incarnate, a murderer, a member of a murder gang, a Nazi bride or a Nazi killer" in a way that could prejudice the trial judges.

Her lawyers have said she will remain silent during the lengthy trial. Under German law Zschaepe won't have to make a plea until the end, though her lawyers have said they will contest the prosecution charges.

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Frank Jordans contributed from Berlin. He can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/wirereporter

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Reclusive death penalty lawyer opens up about work

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Judy Clarke is in the business of cheating death, but she rarely talks about it.

Clarke, one of the nation's top lawyers and defender of the despised, broke her silence Friday in a speech at a legal conference, where she spoke about her work saving notorious criminal defendants from execution.

The names of her past clients — Susan Smith, Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski and most recently, Tucson shooter Jared Loughner — run like a list of the most reviled in American criminal history. But she did not say whether she would add to that list the latest name in the news: The suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing.

Clarke was reticent throughout her keynote speech and declined to take questions from the audience. Instead, she talked about how she had been "sucked into the black hole, the vortex" of death penalty cases 18 years ago when she represented Smith, who drowned her two children.

"I got a dose of understanding human behavior and I learned what the death penalty does to us," she said. "I don't think it's a secret that I oppose the death penalty. "

She saved Smith's life and later would do the same for Kaczynski, Loughner and the Atlanta Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph. All received life sentences instead of death.

Before an audience of lawyers, judges and law students at Loyola Law School's annual Fidler Institute, Clarke shared her approach in handling death penalty cases.

"The first clear way death cases are different is the clients," said Clarke, now a visiting professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law in Virginia. "Most have suffered from serious severe trauma, unbelievable trauma. We know that from brain research. Many suffer from severe cognitive development issues that affect the core of their being."

She added that they had another thing in common: When she first meets them, they do not want to plead guilty. Her job is to change their resolve, she said.

"They're looking into the lens of life in prison in a box," she said. "Our job is to provide them with a reason to live."

Connecting with the client by finding out "what brought them to this day that will define the rest of their lives" is the first step, she said. In most cases, she said she finds underlying mental illness. Kaczynski was ultimately diagnosed as schizophrenic and, on the eve of seating a jury, he agreed to plead guilty.

Clarke said a veteran lawyer once told her: "The first step to losing a capital case is picking a jury.

The San Diego-based attorney often appears in court as a federal public defender, and appealed to judges in the audience to provide sufficient funding for death penalty cases. She also told defense lawyers and students that death penalty clients deserve their loyalty.

"Our clients are different," she said. "We should enjoy the opportunity to step into their lives. It can be chaotic. But it's a privilege to be there as a lawyer."

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Britain opens inquest into Berezovsky's unexplained death

By Maria Golovnina

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain opens a judicial inquiry into the death of Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky on Thursday to establish how he died in the locked bathroom of his vast mansion near London.

Berezovsky, who survived years of intrigue, power struggles and assassination attempts in Russia, was found dead on Saturday in his home in Ascot, a town close to Queen Elizabeth's Windsor Castle.

Police said there was no sign of a struggle and the 67-year-old's death was "consistent with hanging", suggesting he might have killed himself.

Berezovsky was the king-maker behind Vladimir Putin's ascent to power in Russia but later became his number-one enemy and fled to Britain in 2000.

Berezovsky's associates have hinted he was depressed after losing a $6 billion court case against another tycoon, Roman Abramovich, last year, when a judge humiliated him publicly by saying he was an unimpressive and unreliable witness.

Other people close to him have said they were not convinced by the official account.

"If he really hanged himself why was that not known from the very beginning?" said Andrei Sidelnikov, an opposition figure who knew Berezovsky. "I don't believe it was a suicide."

In Russia, state media quoted Deputy Prosecutor General Alexander Zvyagintsev as saying the government would continue efforts to "bring back assets that Berezovsky and his accomplices acquired criminally and legalized abroad".

Mass-circulation tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, which supports the Kremlin, ran a front page headline on Wednesday that read: "Did Berezovsky hang himself or did he have help?"

The inquest will open in the town of Windsor on Thursday.

MANIPULATOR

A master of political manipulation, Berezovsky had been known as the "godfather of the Kremlin" and wielded immense influence during a decade that followed the Soviet collapse.

Once a mathematician with Nobel Prize aspirations, he built a massive business empire under former President Boris Yeltsin and was the first of Russia's so-called oligarchs.

He then became one of the first victims of a ruthless political crackdown of the early Putin era after falling out with his protégé.

Once in exile, Berezovsky often said he feared for his life, particularly after the fatal poisoning of his friend and former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko with a dose of the radioactive isotope polonium-210 in London in 2006.

Another friend and business partner, Badri Patarkatsishvili, also died in unclear circumstances two years later.

For many, Berezovsky personified the decade of wild capitalism, chaos and violence that followed the Soviet fall. He left a trail of enemies in Russia and beyond, and no doubt once featured on many a hit list.

Berezovsky survived an assassination attempt in 1994 when a bomb exploded in his car, decapitating his driver.

In his final months he led a much less extravagant life, apparently bitter and broken and rarely seen in public.

He suffered another blow in 2011 when he was forced to pay one of Britain's biggest divorce settlements to his former wife Galina. Media reported the settlement topped $100 million.

"My father was not the typical parent, nothing about him was ordinary," said his daughter Anastasia in a tribute. "He has colored my life in infinite ways, and I know that what he concerned himself most with was making all his children proud."

(Additional reporting by Steve Gutterman in Moscow; Writing by Maria Golovnina; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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Syrian opposition opens first embassy, says world lets it down

By Yara Bayoumy and Regan Doherty

DOHA (Reuters) - A Syrian opposition bloc recognized by the Arab League as the sole representative for Syria opened its first embassy in Qatar on Wednesday in a diplomatic blow to President Bashar al-Assad.

But opposition leader Moaz Alkhatib, who took Syria's seat at an Arab summit in Doha on Tuesday, used the ribbon-cutting ceremony to voice his frustration with world powers for failing to do more to help in the two-year-old struggle to topple Assad.

"There is an international willingness for the revolution not to triumph," he told reporters at the embassy, which was festooned with balloons in the red, green, white and black of Syria's national flag.

Alkhatib, a Sunni Muslim cleric who resigned this week as leader of the Syrian National Coalition, but who is staying on as a caretaker, also alluded to internal differences plaguing the opposition umbrella group formed in Qatar in November.

"The only way to victory is unity," he declared.

Damascus raged against summit host Qatar for helping the opposition into Syria's seat at the League, while Russia and Iran also criticized the move to delegitimize Assad's rule.

Yet although the 22-member Arab bloc lent its support to giving weapons to Syrian rebels, it is unclear how much impact the opposition's diplomatic advances will have inside Syria.

The Cairo-based coalition's control over insurgent groups is tenuous at best. Some of the most militarily effective, such as the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, openly reject its authority.

Alkhatib told Reuters in an interview he was surprised by a rebuff from the United States and NATO to his request for Patriot missiles based in Turkey to help protect rebel-held parts of northern Syria from Assad's helicopters and warplanes.

"I'm scared that this will be a message to the Syrian regime telling it 'Do what you want'," he said.

OPPOSITION DISUNITY

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, speaking to students in Moscow via video link from Brussels, again said the Western alliance had no intention of intervening in Syria.

"We believe that we need a political solution in Syria," he said, noting there was no U.N. mandate for NATO action there.

Disunity among Syria's opposition in exile and the armed factions on the ground have long hindered the struggle against Assad and have contributed to Western reluctance to intervene.

Alkhatib has cited the West's failure to do more to help the opposition, as well as the coalition's internal divisions, as reasons for announcing on Sunday that he would quit as leader.

He offered no clarity on his own political future in his interview with Reuters. "I have given my resignation and I have not withdrawn it. But I have to continue my duties until the general committee meets," the former mosque imam said.

The Arab summit's support for Assad's foes may prove more symbolic than practical, but Syria vented its wrath at Qatar for its pro-opposition actions at the annual gathering.

"The emir of Qatar, the biggest bank for supporting terrorism in the region, began his presidency of the Arab League by hijacking it with tainted oil and money," said state news agency SANA, a mouthpiece for Assad's government.

Qatar's Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani "committed a flagrant violation of the League's pact by inviting the deformed body, the 'Doha Coalition', to usurp Syria's seat in the League", SANA said, in a scathing reference to the opposition.

Qatar has funded political opposition groups and is believed to be funneling money and weapons to rebels in Syria.

Russia, which gives Damascus military and diplomatic support, scolded the Arab League for taking "another anti-Syria step" by giving Syria's seat to the opposition.

Arab nations are far from united on Syria, with Algeria, Iraq and Lebanon often opposing any action against Assad's rule.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar and some others have thrown their support behind the mostly Sunni Muslim rebels in Syria, partly to weaken Shi'ite Iran, the main regional ally of Assad, whose minority Alawite sect is distantly derived from Shi'ite Islam.

Iran, which has sent advisers, money and weapons to help Assad stay in power, also lambasted the Arab League for allowing a foe of Assad to take Syria's seat at the summit, calling this "a pattern of dangerous behavior".

Iran views Assad as a pillar of an "axis of resistance" against Israel and a bulwark against Sunni militants in Syria, a country which for three decades has been the main conduit for Iranian arms supplies to Lebanon's Shi'ite Hezbollah movement.

(Additional reporting by William Maclean in Doha, Oliver Holmes and Erika Solomon in Beirut, Marcus George in Dubai and Gabriela Baczynska in Moscow; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Jon Boyle)

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New pope opens Holy Week at Vatican on Palm Sunday

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis celebrated his first Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter's Square, encouraging people to be humble and young at heart and promising to go to a youth jamboree in Brazil in July, while the faithful enthusiastically waved olive branches and braided palm fronds.

The square overflowed with a crowd estimated by the Vatican at 250,000 people. Pilgrims, tourists and Romans jostled each other in an eager effort glimpse Francis as they joined the new pope at the start of solemn Holy Week ceremonies, which lead up to Easter, Christianity's most important day.

Keeping with his spontaneous style, the first pope from Latin America broke away several times from the text of his prepared homily to encourage the faithful to lead simple lives and resist the temptation to be sad when life's obstacles inevitably come their way.

"Don't let yourselves be robbed of hope! Don't let yourselves be robbed of hope!" Francis told the crowd, in an apparent reference to the economic difficulties people are grappling with as they try to find adequate work amid a poor job market in much of the world.

At the end of the two-hour Mass, Francis took off his red vestments, and wearing his plain white cassock and skull cap, climbed into an open-topped popemobile to circle through the excited crowd. He leaned out to shake hands, kissed and patted the heads of infants passed to him by bodyguards, and often gave children the thumbs-up sign.

His security detail seemed to be reluctantly dealing with this get-close-to-the-people pontiff, scrambling around the vehicle to pick up this child or that one. At one point, the chief bodyguard, Domenico Giani, was sent back to the mother of a child he had greeted to convey a message from the pontiff, and the ever-tense Giani broke into a smile after his mission was accomplished.

Francis even climbed down from the vehicle, kissed a woman in the crowd and chatted briefly with her, and another man in the crowd leaned over a barrier to squeeze the pontiff on a shoulder — an unheard of familiarity in the previous pontificate of the reserved Benedict XVI.

In keeping with his stress on giving examples of humility, Francis kissed the hand of an elderly woman who had outstretched an arm to him.

"There is no doubt that there will be a new spring for the church, a renewal" with this pope, said Sister Emma, an Argentine nun in the crowd.

Palm Sunday recalls Jesus' entry into Jerusalem but its Gospel also recounts how he was betrayed by one of his apostles and ultimately sentenced to death on a cross.

Francis presided over the Mass at an altar sheltered by a white canopy on the steps of St. Peter's Basilica.

Recalling the triumphant welcome into Jerusalem, Francis said Jesus "awakened so many hopes in the heart, above all among humble, simple, poor, forgotten people, those who don't matter in the eyes of the world."

Cardinals, many of them among the electors who chose him to be the Roman Catholic church's first Latin American pope, sat on chairs during the ceremony held under hazy skies on a breezy day. He quoted from Benedict when he told the cardinals that while they are "princes" of the church, their leader is the crucified Christ, a further admonition against attachment to temporal power.

The pope ticked off a litany of evils afflicting the world, including wars, "economic conflicts that hit the weakest" as well as corruption. In the final stretch of Benedict's papacy, the Vatican was embarrassed by a leak of documents from the papal apartment, indicating corruption, ambition and rivalries among upper ranks of the Holy See's management.

Francis told an off-the-cuff story from his childhood in Argentina. "My grandmother used to tell us children, 'burial shrouds don't have' pockets," the pope said, in a variation of "you can't take it with you."

Since his election on March 13, Francis has put the downtrodden and poor at the center of his mission as pope, keeping with the priorities of his Jesuit tradition.

In his homily, Francis said Christian joy "isn't born from possessing a lot of things but from having met" Jesus. That same joy should keep people young, he said.

"Even at 70, 80, the heart doesn't age" if one is inspired by Christian joy, said the 76-year-old pontiff.

The pontiff said he was joyfully looking forward to welcoming young people to Rio de Janiero for the Catholic Church's World Youth Day. So far, that is the first foreign trip on the calendar of Francis' new papacy. "I'm coming in July," Francis said in remarks after Mass from the esplanade of the basilica.

During Mass, at the point when the Gospel recounts the moment of Jesus' death, many faithful knelt on hard cobblestones paving the square, and Francis knelt on a wooden kneeler.

A few young olive trees were inserted in dirt placed around the central obelisk in the square.

Holy Week will see at least one break from tradition with this new papacy. Instead of washing priests' feet in a basilica in a symbolic gesture of humility on Holy Thursday, Francis will wash the feet of young inmates at a juvenile detention center in Rome. Other appointments in public will include the Way of the Cross procession at the Colosseum on Good Friday night. Next Sunday, Francis will celebrate Easter Mass in the square.

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Conclave to elect next pope opens amid uncertainty

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Cardinals enter the Sistine Chapel on Tuesday to elect the next pope amid more upheaval and uncertainty than the Catholic Church has seen in decades: There's no front-runner, no indication how long voting will last and no sense that a single man has what it takes to fix the many problems.

On the eve of the vote, cardinals offered wildly different assessments of what they're looking for in the next pontiff and how close they are to a decision. It was evidence that Benedict XVI's surprise resignation has continued to destabilize the church leadership and that his final appeal for unity may go unheeded, at least in the early rounds of voting.

Cardinals held their final closed-door debate Monday over whether the church needs more of a manager to clean up the Vatican's bureaucratic mess or a pastor to inspire the 1.2 billion faithful in times of crisis. The fact that not everyone got a chance to speak was a clear sign that there's still unfinished business on the eve of the conclave.

"This time around, there are many different candidates, so it's normal that it's going to take longer than the last time," Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz of Chile told The Associated Press.

"There are no groups, no compromises, no alliances, just each one with his conscience voting for the person he thinks is best, which is why I don't think it will be over quickly."

None of that has prevented a storm of chatter over who's ahead.

The buzz in the papal stakes swirled around Cardinal Angelo Scola, an Italian seen as favored by cardinals hoping to shake up the powerful Vatican bureaucracy, and Brazilian Cardinal Odilo Scherer, a favorite of Vatican-based insiders intent on preserving the status quo.

Scola is affable and Italian, but not from the Italian-centric Vatican bureaucracy called the Curia. That gives him clout with those seeking to reform the nerve center of the church that has been discredited by revelations of leaks and complaints from cardinals in the field that Rome is inefficient and unresponsive to their needs.

Scherer seems to be favored by Latin Americans and the Curia. He has a solid handle on the Vatican's finances, sitting on the governing commission of the Vatican bank, as well as the Holy See's main budget committee.

As a non-Italian, the archbishop of Sao Paolo would be expected to name an Italian as secretary of state — the Vatican No. 2 who runs day-to-day affairs — another plus for Vatican-based cardinals who would want one of their own running the shop.

The pastoral camp seems to be focusing on two Americans, New York archbishop Timothy Dolan and Boston archbishop Sean O'Malley. Neither has Vatican experience. Dolan has acknowledged his Italian isn't strong — seen as a handicap for a job in which the lingua franca of day-to-day work is Italian.

Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet is well-respected, stemming from his job at the important Vatican office that vets bishop appointments. Less well known is that he has a lovely singing voice and can be heard belting out French folk songs on occasion.

If the leading names fail to reach the 77 votes required for victory in the first few rounds of balloting, any number of surprise candidates could come to the fore as alternatives.

It all starts Tuesday with the cardinals checking into the Santa Marta residence on the edge of the Vatican gardens. The rooms are simple and impersonal, but a step up from the cramped conditions the cardinals faced before the hotel was put to use in 2005, when long lines would form at the Apostolic Palace for using bathrooms.

At 10 a.m., the dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano, will lead the celebration of the "Pro eligendo Pontificie" Mass — the Mass for the election of a pope — inside St. Peter's Basilica, joined by the 115 cardinals who will vote.

This is followed at 4:30 p.m. with a procession into the Sistine Chapel, with the cardinals intoning the Litany of Saints, the hypnotic Gregorian chant imploring the saints to help guide their voting. After another chant calling on the Holy Spirit to intervene, the cardinals take the oath of secrecy, followed by a meditation delivered by elderly Maltese Cardinal Prosper Grech.

Then the master of papal liturgical ceremonies gives the order "Extra omnes" — "Everyone out" — and all but those taking part in the conclave leave the chapel's frescoed walls.

During the voting that ensues, each cardinal writes his choice on a rectangular piece of paper inscribed with the words "Eligo in summen pontificem" — Latin for "I elect as Supreme Pontiff."

Holding the folded ballot up in the air, each approaches the altar and places it on a saucer, before tipping it into an oval urn, as he intones these words: "I call as my witness, Christ the Lord, who will be my judge that my vote is given to the one who, before God, I think should be elected."

After the votes are counted, and the outcomes announced, the papers are bound together with a needle and thread, each ballot pierced through the word "Eligo." The ballots are then placed in a cast-iron stove and burned with a special chemical.

That's when all eyes will turn to the 6-foot-high copper chimney erected atop the Sistine Chapel to pipe out puffs of smoke to tell the world if there's a new pope.

Black smoke means "not yet" — the likely outcome after Round 1. White smoke means the 266th pope has been chosen.

The first puffs of smoke should emerge sometime around 8 p.m. Tuesday. If they are black, voting will continue, four rounds each day, until a pope is elected.

Whoever he is, the next pope will face a church in crisis: Benedict spent his eight-year pontificate trying to revive Catholicism amid the secular trends that have made it almost irrelevant in places like Europe, once a stronghold of Christianity. Clerical sex abuse scandals have soured many faithful on their church, and competition from rival evangelical churches in Latin America and Africa has drawn souls away.

Closer to home, the next pope has a major challenge awaiting him inside the Vatican walls, after the leaks of papal documents in 2012 exposed ugly turf battles, allegations of corruption and even a plot purportedly orchestrated by Benedict's aides to out a prominent Italian Catholic editor as gay.

Cardinals heard a briefing Monday from the Vatican No. 2 about another stain on the Holy See's reputation, the Vatican bank. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who heads the commission of cardinals overseeing the scandal-marred Institute for Religious Works, outlined the efforts to clean up the bank's image in international financial circles.

Massimo Franco, noted columnist for the leading daily Corriere della Sera, said the significance of the revelations about the bank and the Holy See's internal governance cannot be underestimated, since they were factors in Benedict's decision to resign and the major task faced by his successor.

Franco, whose new book "The Crisis of the Vatican Empire" describes the Vatican's utter dysfunction, said cardinals are still traumatized by Benedict's resignation, leading to uncertainty heading into the conclave.

"It's quite unpredictable. There isn't a majority, neither established nor in the making," he said — unlike in 2005, when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had tremendous front-runner status going into the conclave that elected him pope after just four ballots.

Dolan, a possible papal contender, seemed to think otherwise, though, and was bounding with optimism by the end of the pre-conclave meetings and the drama about to unfold.

"I'm kind of happy they're over because we came here to elect a pope and we'll start it tomorrow with the holy sacrifice of the Mass, then into the conclave and look for the white smoke!" Dolan enthused on his radio show on SiriusXM's "The Catholic Channel."

Errazuriz, the cardinal from Chile, said the key isn't so much where the next pope comes from, but what he brings to the papacy.

Cardinals, he told AP, are looking for a pope "who is close to God, has love for people, the poorest, the ability to preach the Gospel to the world and understand the young and bring them closer to God. These are the categories that count."

He argued that Latin America, counting 40 percent of the world's Catholics, is underrepresented in the college of cardinals. "It doesn't have 40 percent of the cardinals," he said.

Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, also a leading papal contender, said he was going into the conclave still rattled by the fact that his mentor, Benedict, had resigned.

"It made me cry. He was my teacher. We worked together for over 40 years," Schoenborn said during a Mass late Sunday. Nevertheless, Schoenborn said the cardinals had banded together to face the future.

"It makes us brothers, not contenders," he said. "Such a surprising act has already begun a true renewal."

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Reporters Jorge Pina and Daniela Petroff contributed.

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Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

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