Milestones

DIED. CARDINAL IGNATIUS KUNG, 98, Bishop of Shanghai who refused to denounce the Roman Catholic Church; in Stamford, Connecticut. Kung, who was appointed a bishop in 1949, spent 30 years in prison for remaining loyal to the Pope and refusing to recognize China's state-sponsored patriotic church. Arrested in 1955 and later sentenced to life imprisonment, Kung was rewarded in 1979 for his fealty to the Vatican by being made the first Chinese cardinal. The secret appointment was announced only in 1991, when Kung was in exile in the U.S. SENTENCED. TAMIRAT LAYNE, 45, former Ethiopian Prime Minister, to 18 years in jail for corruption, embezzlement and abuse of office; in Addis Ababa. Tamirat was a guerrilla leader in the movement that toppled the military regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991 and served as Prime Minister from 1991 to '95. His long prison term sets a precedent in the battle against high-level corruption in Ethiopia. ARRESTED. RAL EDUARDO ITURRIAGA NEUMANN, 62, former senior officer in Chile's secret police, following an extradition request by Italian authorities; in Santiago. Iturriaga, who was chief of foreign operations of the now-dissolved DINA secret service, was sentenced in 1995 in absentia to 18 years in prison by an Italian judge for a 1975 assassination attempt on former Chilean Vice President Bernardo Leighton in Rome. CONVICTED. JAVED IQBAL, 42, self-confessed serial killer of 100 children, to public execution by strangulation; in Lahore, Pakistan. The judge specified that Iqbal's body should then be chopped into 100 pieces and dissolved in a vat of acid, matching the manner in which Iqbal claimed to have killed his victims. Iqbal, who turned himself in following a month-long manhunt, claimed during his trial that he was innocent, saying he had concocted a story to highlight police inefficiency. CONVICTED. ABDUL RAHIM NOOR, 57, former Malaysian police chief who admitted assaulting Anwar Ibrahim on the night the ex-Deputy Prime Minister was arrested in 1998; in Kuala Lumpur. Rahim pleaded guilty to a charge of causing harm to Anwar and received a two-month sentence. The assault provoked outrage when Anwar appeared in court with a black eye and other bruises. SUSPENDED. JEAN TIBERI, 65, mayor of Paris, as leader of the local branch of French President Jacques Chirac's Rally for the Republic (RPR) party; in Paris. An internal RPR inquiry fingered Tiberi for adding more than 1,400 fictitious names to party rolls, apparently to boost his chances of reselection as candidate in the 2001 mayoral elections. So strong is the whiff of scandal surrounding Tiberi that the RPR seems to have written him off as an electoral liability. The party has controlled Paris for 23 years, and the mayoral race is seen as a warm-up to legislative and presidential elections in 2002.