A former beat cop who brutalized a prisoner in New York in a grimy precinct bathroom has been sentenced to 30 years behind bars, a punishment his victim calls a clear message that no one is above the law. Justin Volpe fought back tears during the two-and-a-half-hour hearing yesterday in federal court. Reading from a handwritten statement, he apologized to his victim, Abner Louima. Volpe rammed a broomstick into Louima’s rectum in a police station bathroom in 1997 after arresting and handcuffing the 30-year-old security guard. Police said Volpe mistakenly thought Louima had punched him from behind during an earlier melee outside a Brooklyn nightclub. Louima, who addressed the court during the sentencing, did not ask the judge for any specific punishment, although prosecutors had pushed for a life sentence.

The Pentagon kept nuclear weapons on Japanese soil after World War II despite Tokyo’s opposition to the development or presence of such arms, this according to a report by a group of American scientists. Citing an unnamed Japanese source, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said the United States stored the weapons on Chichi-jima, some 500 miles southeast of the Japanese mainland, and Iwo Jima, 760 miles south-southeast of Tokyo. The article, posted on the publication’s website, said the two islands became nuclear bases in the 1950s and that Chichi-jima continued to house warheads with their nuclear material until 1965. Actual nuclear weapons were pulled from Iwo Jima at the end of 1959.

In this news from Spain, former Spanish government officials went on trial today in a politically explosive case in which they face charges of involvement in a dirty war against Basque separatists in the 1980s. The seven defendants, including an ex-security chief and a Civil Guard general who served under socialist Prime Minister Felipe González, are accused in connection with the murder and kidnapping of two suspected members of the separatist guerrilla group ETA. The case, the second trial stemming from the dirty war investigation, comes just months before general elections, when the Socialist Party is struggling to clean up its image after a series of corruption scandals which contributed to its 1996 defeat.

This news from California: A Cambodian immigrant is suing two Silicon Valley companies, claiming they fired him for refusing to do extra work at home for below the minimum wage. The lawsuit follows a state Labor Department decision in July to investigate whether Silicon Valley high-tech companies pay Asian immigrants low wages to assemble electronic parts at home. Kamsan Mao alleged that his former employer, Top Line Electronics in San Jose, forced him to work at home at night and on weekends after his daily eight-hour shifts. Mao says he was paid less than minimum wage, sometimes as little as $5 for three hours of labor, as he built and repaired power supplies that go into computers.

From Louisiana, negotiators worked today to persuade five armed Cubans frustrated with their incarceration to release two deputies and a warden from the St. Martin Parish Jail. The hostages were taken in the uprising that began shortly after 4:00 yesterday afternoon as the detainees left an exercise area. A fourth hostage, a deputy sheriff, was released after six hours of negotiations.

From Baltimore, a criminal investigation has begun to determine whether guards at three boot camps for juvenile delinquents committed child abuse. A team of child abuse investigators and state police detectives have questioned 108 juveniles and 87 staff members of the camps. It was common for camp guards to “push, shove, grab and generally manhandle” youths when they first arrived at the state-run camps in the mountains of Garrett County in western Maryland, this according to the chief of Maryland state police detectives, who said some instances of violence appear to be systematic. Maryland state law defines child abuse as any physical pain or injury sustained by a child as a result of “cruel or inhumane treatment or a malicious act by a caregiver, parent or guardian.”

Switzerland has frozen $550 million in bank accounts belonging to the late Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha, his family members and entourage in a money laundering investigation. Geneva’s chief cantonal prosecutor told Reuters the funds were frozen at a dozen banks, seven of them in Geneva, Switzerland’s secretive private banking club.

The U.N. War Crimes Tribunal today sentenced Goran Jelisić, a Bosnian Serb former camp guard, to 40 years in prison for the murder and torture of Muslims in the spring of 1992, the harshest sentence the court has handed down so far.