SEPTEMBER 27, 1999 VOL. 154 NO. 12

Milestones

By HANNAH BEECH

KILLED. KERUBINO KWANYIN BOL, 51, indecisive Sudanese warlord who allegedly fired the first shot in the hunger-ravaged nation's 16-year civil war, in a factional gun battle; in Mankin, Sudan. Bol helped found the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army in 1983 to fight for religious freedom for the mainly Christian and animist southern part of the country. But the portly commander soon switched to the Islamic government's side and effectively declared the region of Bahr el Ghazal his own corrupt fief--unleashing a famine that killed 60,000 people--before returning to the insurgents' fold in January 1998.

COMMITTED SUICIDE. MARIO RUIZ MASSIEU, 48, embattled former Mexican official responsible for narcotics prosecutions who was charged with laundering $9.9 million by a Houston court last month; at his home in Palisades Park, New Jersey. Ruiz Massieu's lawyer speculated that the ex-assistant attorney general was worried that he could not afford an adequate defense against charges that he pocketed bribes from drug traffickers. Mexican prosecutors, who failed to gain Ruiz Massieu's extradition from the U.S., also allege that he covered up key evidence in the 1994 murder of his brother, ruling-party stalwart José Francisco Ruiz Massieu.

ARRESTED. HUMBERTO GORDON, 72, retired Chilean general who headed the country's secret police during the dark years of Augusto Pinochet Ugarte's dictatorship, for complicity in the 1982 murder of union boss Tucapel Jiménez; in Santiago. Jiménez, who organized the first mass rallies against Pinochet, was one of more than 3,000 people killed for their political activities during the 1973-90 regime. Gordon is the highest-ranking Chilean officer to be arrested for human-rights violations.

DIED. MOMCILO DJUJIC, 92, Serb warrior-priest who commanded the nationalist Chetnik guerrillas in Croatia during World War II; in San Diego, California. Djujic rallied his ragged forces against the Croat pro-Nazi puppet regime, and against communist-led partisans. After the Allied victory, Yugoslavian strongman Josip Broz Tito branded him a war criminal, alleging that Djujic's forces killed scores of local farmers suspected of being communist sympathizers, but the U.S. consistently rejected calls for his extradition.

DIED. YIANNOS KRANIDIOTIS, 51, Greece's deputy foreign minister and tireless Cyprus negotiator, after his airplane plummeted 5,800 m on its way to Bucharest; over Romania. Five others, including Kranidiotis' 23-year-old son, were also killed in the sudden swoop. A founding member of Cyprus' socialist party, the Cypriot-born lawyer consistently guarded the islanders' civil rights, even when his colleagues in government seemed less concerned with the war-scarred territory.

DIED. HENRI STORCK, 92, pioneering Belgian documentary filmmaker whose 1933 account of a coal miners' strike demonstrated the power of gritty black-and-white images to sway the public's imagination; in Brussels. Storck filled his films with harrowing scenes of the underclass, maintaining that his movie-making role was to be "an active witness of the century."