Italian village makes it illegal to die

[alexmst]

Associated Press

ROME—Since the start of the month it has been illegal to die in Falciano del Massico, a village of 3,700 people some 50 kilometres from Naples in southern Italy.

Mayor Giulio Cesare Fava issued the tongue-in-cheek decree because the village has no cemetery and it is feuding with a nearby town that has one — creating a logistical problem about what to do with the deceased.

The mayor told newspapers that villagers are content.

“The ordinance has brought happiness,” he was quoted Tuesday as saying. “Unfortunately, two elderly citizens disobeyed.”

 

[alexmst]

In a related matter...Guatemala sentences soldier to 6,060 years in jail

GUATEMALA CITY—A Guatemalan court sentenced a former special forces soldier to 6,060 years in prison on Monday for participating in a 1982 massacre that claimed 201 lives.

Pedro Pimentel, 55, was deported from Los Angeles, California to Guatemala last year to face charges of murder and crimes against humanity and is the fifth soldier to be sentenced in the Central American nation for his role in the Las Dos Erres massacre at the height of the country’s brutal civil war.

The length of the sentence is largely symbolic because Guatemala’s laws only allow inmates to serve a maximum of 50 years.

A former soldier who took part in the massacre testified that Pimentel was among a group of some 20 soldiers ordered to the village in December 1982 to search for missing weapons.

The soldiers then blindfolded, strangled and bludgeoned villagers and a newborn child to death with a sledgehammer before dumping them down a 15-meter-deep well.

Pimentel, a former member of the elite unit known as the Kaibiles, was given 30 years of prison for each victim killed in the attack and 30 years for crimes against humanity.

Now grey haired, Pimentel denied being present at the massacre, saying he left the area in November 1982 to prepare enrolment papers for the School of the Americas in Panama.

The ruling comes as Guatemala seeks to clean up atrocities from the bloody 1960-1996 internal conflict in which nearly a quarter of a million people died or went missing.

A judge sentenced four soldiers to 6,060 years in prison each last August for the Las Dos Erres Massacre.

 

[alexmst]

Hmmm...Canada could ease hospital wait-times by passing a law that makes it illegal to get sick...