ANKARA (AP) – Turkey’s prime minister yesterday strongly condemned the murder of an Italian artist and activist who went missing while hitchhiking in Turkey dressed in a wedding gown to appeal for peace. Police found the body of Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo, 33, and a court charged a man suspected of killing the artist with murder Saturday. The woman was last seen on March 31 in the industrial city of Gebze while hitchhiking to Israel in the wedding dress as part of her “Brides on Tour” project aimed at pleading for peace in conflict areas. “I can’t find the right word to describe this violent murder,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. “We have been deeply saddened with the killing of such a peace envoy.” Erdogan expressed his condolences to the victim’s family and the entire Italian nation. “Justice will make the best decision,” Erdogan said. Several Turkish newspapers also condemned the murder. “Our grief is great,” the daily Milliyet headlined in Italian with letters printed in the colors of the Italian flag against a black background. Police found her naked body hidden in bushes in a forested area near Gebze, northwest Turkey, after questioning the suspect late Friday, the governor’s office said.

ZAGREB (AFP) – Thousands of Croatians gathered in the capital Zagreb on Saturday to demand higher wages and better social rights in a protest organized by the country’s main trade unions. “Today we have two Croatias, deeply divided not by border lines but between two castes – the one of the rich that we could never enter and our own,” Kresimir Sever, head of the Independent Trade Unions, told the protesters who gathered at the capital’s main square. Sever warned of an “impoverished Croatia, Croatia of growing misery in which are living workers, pensioners, the unemployed, students.” Some 20,000 people, according to organizers, marched around noon (1000 GMT) through Zagreb’s main Ilica Street to the Trg Bana Josipa Jelacica square for the largest labor demonstration in the country during the past decade. Roughly 40,000 people gathered at the square, national radio reported.

After a delay of a month with legal wrangling back and forth about his health, former Serbian intelligence chief Jovica Stanisic will go on trial before the UN war crimes court today. Last week judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) gave the green light for the case to go ahead despite concerns over Stanisic’s mental health. Stanisic, 57, spent seven years being one of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s closest allies as the head of the Serbian intelligence services. He is being tried together with his deputy, Franko Simatovic, 58. (AFP)