TIME International

June 3, 1996 Volume 147, No. 23

MILESTONES

DEFECTED. LEE CHOL SU, 29, nervy North Korean air force captain and the first fighter pilot to take permanent flight from his country in 13 years; over the Yellow Sea in his aging MiG-19; to South Korea. The six South Korean jets that scrambled to intercept the fighter as it crossed the border turned into an instant escort when Lee rocked his wings, thereby signaling his friendly intentions. Joining 14 high-level defectors who have fled the hungry nation this year, the pilot said he could no longer tolerate North Korea's government. He left his wife and two kids behind. Though he may receive a reported $320,000 reward, Lee requested simply a shot of whiskey.

EXTRADITED. YASIR CHRAIDI, 37, suspected Palestinian terrorist charged with organizing the 1986 bombing of a West Berlin disco packed with U.S. soldiers; from Lebanon to Germany; on condition that he cannot be sent to a third country if acquitted. Chraidi was a chauffeur at Libya's embassy in East Berlin at the time of the nightclub's explosion, which killed three and prompted President Ronald Reagan, informed by U.S. intelligence that Libya sponsored the attack, to order air raids on the northern African nation.

SENTENCED. SAMIR GEAGEA, 44, once Lebanon's most feared Christian warlord and its only militia leader to face trial for crimes committed during the 16-year civil war; to life imprisonment for the 1990 murder of a rival in the now disbanded Lebanese Forces militia; in Beirut. Geagea was also jailed last year for engineering the assassination of a different Christian leader in 1990. Geagea did not qualify then or now for the amnesty granted to civil-war crimes, because the slayings were "personal."

MURDER ANNOUNCED. Of CHRISTIAN DE CHERGE, 59, senior French monk, and six fellow members of his Trappist order, who were abducted last March from their monastery near Medea, Algeria; by the Armed Islamic Group (G.I.A.); in Tangiers. The guerrillas had threatened to execute the clerics unless G.I.A. members jailed in France and Algeria were released. Last Thursday the G.I.A. reported it had killed the hostages by cutting their throats. In requiem, the Archbishop of Paris himself extinguished the seven candles burning since April for the kidnapped monks.

DIED. WILLI DAUME, 82, visionary sports official who, as head of the Olympic Committee for West Germany from 1961 to 1990 and for unified Germany through 1992, worked for the Olympic ideal of peaceful, nonpolitical competition; in Munich. A lifelong devotee of the Olympics--as a visitor to the Amsterdam Games in 1928, a basketball player in Berlin eight years later and an influential leader for three decades--Daume longed to eradicate the stigma of Hitler's bellicose 1936 Olympic extravaganza. Presiding over the fruition of his efforts--the 1972 Munich Olympics--Daume nurtured an image of brotherhood that was shattered when Palestinian terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes. Divisive politicking continued to thwart him--forcing Germany to boycott the Soviet Olympics in 1980--but he remained committed to his belief that "sport is a living Utopia."