LIMA, Peru (AFP) – Four people have been arrested in Peru on suspicion of killing some 60 people to sell their fat and other human tissue to Italian co-conspirators for cosmetic use in Europe, authorities said yesterday.

The suspects were arrested in central Peru this month and a search is underway for seven others – including two Italian citizens whose names were not revealed – lead prosecutor Jorge Sans Quiroz told AFP.

The fat was purchased “to be commercialised in European (cosmetology) laboratories”, he said.

The prosecutor’s indictment said the gang allegedly targeted farmers and indigenous people on remote Andean roads, tricking them by offering jobs before killing them.

One reported killing took place in mid-September to remove human tissue for trafficking.

The trafficking network could be linked to 60 individual disappearances in the central Andean region, although the ties could not be confirmed.

Police began arrests after discovering early this month a container with human fat that was being shipped to Lima from the Andean city of Huanuco, some 400 kilometres (250 miles) north-east of Lima.

Signs of “an international network trafficking human fat” first surfaced about two months ago, according to General Felix Burga, head of the police criminal division.

Peruvian press cited him as saying the fat can be sold for $15,000 per gallon (3.8 litres) in European countries.

The alleged plot revived the Andean legend of the “Pishtacos”, white foreigners who were said to suck the fat out of people travelling on lonely roads at night, making fine soaps, lubricants, healing salves and beauty creams out of the tissue.

Russia extends moratorium on death penalty

ST PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) – Russia’s Constitutional Court effectively outlawed the death penalty yesterday, saying that a moratorium on capital punishment should remain in force until the nation fully bans executions.

Constitutional Court chief Valery Zorkin said that Russia must extend the moratorium on executions until it ratifies a European convention banning the death penalty.

Russia announced a moratorium on capital punishment when it joined the Council of Europe in 1996 and pledged to abolish it, but has not done so.

The Kremlin-controlled parliament has been reluctant to fully outlaw executions, due to broad public support for the death penalty.

Persistent violence in the North Caucasus region has prompted some to demand the death penalty for those involved in terrorism, and there is also public pressure for convicted serial killers, murderers and child abusers to be executed.

But reviving capital punishment would harm relations with the EU and undermine Kremlin claims that Russia is no less modern than European countries. President Dmitry Medvedev has spoken out about the importance of the rule of law and basic human values.

“The State Duma hasn’t yet ratified the protocol banning capital punishment because many in Russia support the death penalty,” said Mikhail Krotov, Medvedev’s envoy to the Constitutional Court. “The society needs more time to ban the death penalty. But the government structures support a ban on capital punishment.”

State Duma speaker Boris Gryzlov refused to say yesterday when the lower house could move to ratify the protocol. “We mustn’t take up the ratification until we have a public consensus,” he told reporters.

But another senior lawmaker, Mikhail Margelov, the Kremlin-connected head of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of parliament, spoke strongly in support of a swift ratification.

“The country’s leadership, all branches of government, must be ready to show a political will,” Margelov said, according to RIA Novosti news agency. “Modernisation can’t be conducted without that.”

The court’s ruling came as an earlier moratorium on death penalty imposed in 1999 was to lose its legal foundation in January, when jury trials are to be introduced in Chechnya. The moratorium had specified that courts must not hand out death sentences until jury trials are available in all of Russia’s provinces. Chechnya is the only province where they have not been introduced.

Karzai sworn in for 2nd presidential term

KABUL, Afghanistan (AFP) – Hamid Karzai was sworn in for a second presidential term yesterday, winning Western praise with a promise to combat corruption and to put Afghan troops in charge of security within five years.

Karzai took the oath of office after an election mired in fraud, as the US-led war in Afghanistan stretches into a ninth year, leaving record numbers of soldiers and civilians dead and as the Taliban extends its control in the country.

In a wide-ranging speech, he promised action on the worst problems that preoccupy his Western backers, who are weary after pouring more than 100,000 troops and billions of dollars of aid into Afghanistan with little in return.

“We are determined that within the next five years the Afghan forces are capable of taking the lead in ensuring security and stability across the country,” he said.

“The role of international troops will be gradually reduced and limited to support and training of Afghan forces.”

Underscoring the virulence of the security challenge his new government faces, bombers killed two US soldiers and 10 Afghan civilians in separate attacks in the south of the country, part of Karzai’s ethnic Pashtun heartland.

Karzai vowed to call a meeting of political, tribal and community leaders from across the country’s social spectrum to bring peace – pledging action on corruption, drugs, unemployment and reconciliation.

“We will call Afghanistan’s traditional loya jirga and make every possible effort to ensure peace in our country,” he said, calling on Taliban “not directly linked to international terrorism to return to their homeland”.

Addressing endemic official graft in a speech delivered before an audience of visiting foreign ministers, including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he said: “Corruption is a dangerous problem.”

“We will soon organise a conference in Kabul to organise new and effective ways to combat this problem,” said the 51-year-old Karzai.

Washington has increasingly expressed concern about Karzai’s reliability as a US ally and effective head of state, urging his government to eradicate corruption to counter an intensifying Taliban-led insurgency.