Erich Honecker; Salvatore Riina; Benjamin Netanyahu; Robert Brown; Charles Robb
ERICH HONECKER, in 18 years as East Germany's leader, maintained a firm rule about the Berlin Wall: Anyone trying to scale it and escape to the West should be shot on sight. Many died, and Honecker, after his regime collapsed, was charged with manslaughter. But last week he got a break. His Berlin trial was halted after doctors reported that his liver cancer will probably kill him within six months. At 80, he was allowed to depart to Chile, where his wife lives. If he is really that ill, some Germans complained, he should be spending his final months in a prison hospital.
SALVATORE RIINA looked like the photo on the left in the 1960s, before he spent 20 of his 62 years evading arrest as the Sicilian Mafia's don of dons, the leader of the Corleone family--the same name as the family that won notoriety in the "Godfather" books and movies. Last week, his fugitive days ended when he was arrested unarmed in a car in Palermo. He can expect to spend the rest of his life in prison, given a 1987 in absentia conviction for heroin trafficking. He is also suspected of ordering dozens of murders, including the assassinations of Italy's two top anti-Mafia prosecutors.
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, a leading Israeli spokesman during the gulf war, stunned a TV audience with word that he had recently ended an extramarital affair--an admission he said he was making because rivals in his Likud Party were trying to blackmail him. Whether this hurts his bid to become Likud's nominee for prime minister remains to be seen. Israelis traditionally have shown little interest in politicians' sex lives. Says Nahum Barnea, an analyst for the newspaper Yediot Ahronot: "The bedroom was the last bastion of Israeli politics not conquered by America."
ROBERT BROWN's magazine, Soldier of Fortune, ran a "Gun for Hire" classified ad in 1985 in which a "mercenary" offered to do any job. A reader hired the mercenary to kill a business partner, and the victim's family later hit the magazine with a wrongful-death suit. Last week, the Supreme Court let stand a $4.3 million damage verdict. Brown's publication may go bankrupt. Others may be screening want ads.
CHARLES ROBB once seemed to be presidential material, like his father-in-law, Lyndon Johnson. But then came unproved accusations of marital infidelity and drug use plus a Justice Department probe of an eavesdropping scheme against Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder. Robb's legal woes ended when a grand jury refused last week to indict him. Still in peril are his chances of being re-elected as a senator from Virginia.
This story appears in the January 25, 1993 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
advertisement
