FALLUJAH – Their backs lacerated from a harsh flogging, four “sinners” accused of selling alcohol joined their masked Islamic captors in chanting “God is Great” as they were paraded through the Iraqi city of Fallujah. Policemen joined the fundamentalists in pickup trucks. Masked fighters are seeking to impose a ban on sales of “indecent” compact discs, alcohol, and narcotics in the city. US COMMANDER IN IRAQ ‘OBSERVED ABUSE’

WASHINGTON – A US military lawyer defending a soldier accused of abuse in Iraq, testified in a military hearing that a captain at the Abu Ghraib prison said Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez – the US military commander in Iraq – was present during some “interrogations and/or allegations of the prisoner abuse,” according to The Washington Post . The allegation has prompted speculation that higher-ranking officials will face courts-martial in the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal. IRAQI SCIENTIST DIED AT US BASE

LONDON – Faik Amin Baker, head of the autopsy service at Baghdad hospital, said this week that an Iraqi scientist reputedly close to Saddam Hussein, Professor Muhammad Al Izmerly, died from a sudden blow to the back of the head while being held at a US base in Baghdad. According to Britain’s Guardian news-paper, US military doctors had said the scientist, who died in February, died of “brainstem compression.” Izmerly was held for almost nine months before his family was able to visit him. PAGES ‘MISSING’ FROM ABUSE REPORT

WASHINGTON – Two US senators have expressed concern over allegations that at least 2,000 pages were missing from the Senate armed services committee copy of a report on prisoner abuse in Iraq. Time magazine reported on Sunday that committee aides had discovered the pages were missing from their copy of the 6,000-page report on abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, written by US Army General Antonio Taguba. King Abdullah TO ATTEND G8

AMMAN – Jordan’s King Abdullah II will attend the Group of Eight summit in the United States on June 9, “to ensure that the Jordanian and Arab voices are present at international events,” the state news agency said. The king will tell the summit in Sea Island, Georgia, that “the persistence of the Arab-Israeli conflict has contributed to blocking progress and development in the region,” the agency said. King Abdullah is one of several leaders from the Middle East invited to attend the summit – a number of whom have declined. JORDAN TO HOST INTERNATIONAL WATER CONFERENCE

AMMAN – Jordan will host a five-day International Water Demand Management Conference beginning on Sunday. Around 1,500 experts from some 30 countries will attend the conference, organized in cooperation with the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which has poured tens of millions of dollars into water schemes in Jordan. The conference will gather on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea – the lowest body of water on Earth. BRITISH POLICE TO PROBE ISRAELI TROOP KILLINGS

LONDON – British detectives are to investigate the deaths of two Britons – filmmaker James Miller and peace activist Tom Hurndall – killed by Israeli soldiers in separate incidents in the Gaza Strip last year. Death in Gaza, the film being made by 34-year-old Miller when he was shot in the neck in Rafah, looks at the lives of three Palestinian children. Hurndall, 22, was shot in the head as he led Palestinian children to safety, also in Rafah. Earlier this month an Israeli soldier went on trial charged with his manslaughter. CULT GROWS AROUND ‘MARTYR’ RUSSIAN SOLDIER  

MOSCOW – Orthodox faithful are demanding that a 19-year-old soldier killed by rebels in Chechnya last year be canonized. Yevgeny Rodionov is said to have been killed by Chechen rebels after refusing to renounce his Orthodox faith and remove a cross he was wearing around his neck. Rodionov’s mother mortgaged her apartment to pay a group who revealed her son’s burial site. The established church has refused calls to canonize her son, although Rodionov said “the people” already had. DATE SET FOR APPEAL AGAINST ‘LENIENT’ LOCKERBIE SENTENCE

LONDON – British judges will hear an appeal next month to increase the 27-year jail sentence imposed on a Libyan national convicted of the 1988 bombing of a US airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in which 270 people died. The appeal in Glasgow will be based on an argument that the 27-year minimum term placed on Abdel Basset Ali Al Megrahi last November was unduly lenient. 8.8MN EXPATRIATES IN SAUDI ARABIA

RIYADH – A total of 8.8 million expatriates live in Saudi Arabia – nearly 50 percent of the total population, labor minister Ghazi Al Qussaibi said on Monday. Over the next eight years Saudi Arabia aims to reduce the proportion of foreigners to 20 percent of the population. The figures exceed earlier unofficial estimates that expatriates accounted for some 7 million out of a total population of 23 million, with an unemployment rate of 20 percent.