Among reports from East Timor, the Sydney Morning Herald led its front page Friday with the murder of at least 14 Roman Catholic priests and nuns and the stabbing of the bishop of Baucau by pro-Jakarta militia gangs.

The reports could not be confirmed because foreigners have been evacuated from most rural areas and roads are blocked by militia gangs.

As many as 7,000 refugees were hacked and clubbed to death by militia gangs, the indictment says, after the mother superior had driven the refugees from the convent grounds.

That evidence includes accounts from senior military officers that the Sudanese government "openly uses militia gangs, gives them weapons and salaries and tells them to kill and burn and it backs them up with planes and helicopters," Mr. Cassese said.

It was the first successful prosecution for the rampage in which the United Nations said hundreds of people were killed and thousands left homeless by marauding militia gangs and the Indonesian military.

He is also charged with joining militia gangs on their killing sprees.

The aim of the U.N. conference is to produce a modest set of global standards and tracing methods that could help curtail the illicit flow of weapons that magnify civil wars, arm child soldiers and militia gangs, and expand the power of organized crime.

In Belgium last year, two Rwandan nuns received long prison sentences after a local jury convicted them of crimes against humanity, finding them guilty of collaborating with murderous militia gangs.

In May 2009 he was arraigned in court for allegedly threatening to bring together various militia gangs in attempt to over throw the government.

You should be aware that there are reports of kidnapping of Syrian opposition figures by militia gangs.