Cable briefs

Press, 19 February 1983, Page 8

Cable briefs

Soldiers convicted An Israeli court martial has convicted four soldiers on charges of brutally mistreating Palestinians on the occupied West Bank last year and ruled that senior officers had issued illegal orders. But the court acquitted three other soldiers, including Major David Morfaz, who had been deputy military governor of the Arab West Bank town of Hebron when the incidents took place. The three-month trial has focused public attention on tactics used by the Army to crush an outbreak of violent unrest on the West Bank last (northern spring). Mini bundle of joy ... Seven people were crammed into Ibrahim Ameen's Mini Metro car as he drove his expectant wife to hospital — and suddenly there were eight. His wife, Fatima, aged 27, had given birth to a 2.5 kg daughter on the back seat. Her mother, Khadejah, was also in the car, and helped deliver the baby, who was born a few hundred metres from a Bristol hospital.—London. Watson dies Barbara Watson, the first woman and the first black to become an Assistant American Secretary of State, has died at the age of 64. Miss Watson, a lawyer, was appointed by President Lyndon Johnson as Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs, and served until 1974 when President Richard Nixon replaced her with a Republican. She served as Ambassador to Malaysia in the Carter Administration, retiring in 1981.—Washington. .