Black Mafia member gets 20 years. One of the key players in the notorious street drug gang known as the Black Mafia Family has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for cocaine conspiracy. Fleming Daniels of Roswell, Ga., was also fined $10,000 for his role in the gang, the focus of federal prosecution in Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles, Louisville, Ky., Orlando, Fla., and elsewhere. The 35-year-old Daniels is the first of 16 defendants indicted in Atlanta to go to trial. Eleven entered guilty pleas. Three others are in custody and one is a fugitive. Prosecutors painted a picture of the Black Family Mafia as a societal nuisance. They said that Roswell and his cohorts moved hundreds of kilos of coke into Atlanta, Detroit, and other cities between 2002 and 2003. Daniels alone was responsible for at least 50 kilos, worth more than $1 million, they said.

China will send ships to African waters to fight pirates. China will send ships to the waters near the Horn of Africa to monitor an area that has been prone to many pirate attacks, reports CNN. China hasn’t sent ships that far away from the country in centuries, but the recent surge of pirate attacks on China’s ships has pushed them into action. No word yet on how many ships the country plans to deploy, but officials did reveal that the operation would last three months. The waters have gone unmonitored, but the United Nation’s Security Council recently passed a resolution that would let an international coalition to go after pirates onto land (although China, a member of the council, hasn’t committed any forces yet). Just this year, almost 100 ships have been attacked by pirates in the waters near Somalia, with 40 of them being hijacked successfully, reports the news service. Pirates battled with crew members of a Chinese ship for four hours Wednesday before coalition helicopters and ships kept the attackers at bay.
Rwandan genocide mastermind is sentenced. The man behind the mass genocide in Rwanda during the ’90s has been given a life sentence by a United Nations tribunal, reports the BBC. Theoneste Bagosora and two co-defendants were found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Bagosora and former military commanders Anatole Nsegiyumya and Alloys Ntbakuze were found to have led a committee that planned the killing of ethnic Tutsis. More than 800,000 people were killed during in the nation’s genocide. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the sentences, a result of the first convictions of anyone involved with the genocide, a “major step in the fight against impunity.” The court rejected the argument from the defense that the mass killings were not organized and, therefore, could not be considered genocide, reports the BBC. Bagosora will appeal the verdict, according to his lawyer.  The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) is based in Tanzania.

Seven Russians sentenced for hate-murders. As investigators probe last week’s stabbing of an African-American exchange student in Russia, authorities sentenced seven young men who murdered 19 people in a series of hate crimes. Their prison terms were handed down Monday amid a dramatic rise in racist assaults, xenophobia and neo-Nazism in Russia, The Associated Press reports. The hate group’s leaders, Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky, got 10 years – the maximum possible term since they were minors at the time of the attacks in 2006 and 2007 – and another man was sentenced to 20 years; four others got between six to 12 years, Moscow City Court spokeswoman Anna Usachyova said. The racist attacks appeared to peak earlier this month with the gruesome beheading of a Tajik migrant worker near Moscow, AP reported. Prosecutors say that the murderers preyed upon Central Asians, Caucasians and other non-Slavs with distinctly dark skin or Asian features. The group would attacked their victims on the streets and in pedestrian tunnels with hammers and other weapons, and they often videotaped their attacks and posted the clips online, AP reports. Meanwhile, the mother of 18-year-old Stanley Robinson, the Black student stabbed in the southern Russian city of Volgograd dismissed the notion that his attack was an act of random violence. She said she believes racism was the motivating factor. Stanley Robinson is in grave but stable condition in a Russian hospital, according to AP.

Former football star O.J. Simpson was sentenced by a Nevada judge to at least 15 years in prison today for his role in a botched attempt to retrieve sports memorabilia. Simpson, along with his co-defendant and friend Clarence “CJ” Stewart (who received the same sentence), were convicted back in October on 12 charges, including kidnapping and armed robbery. During his sentencing, Simpson, dressed in a blue prison uniform, addressed the court, defending his actions. “I did not mean to hurt anyone, I did not mean to steal anything, just my own stuff,” he said holding back tears. “I just wanted my personal things back.” Prosecutors had argued, though, that Simpson spearheaded the robbery and got the guns. He will not be eligible for parole for at least eight years and he can’t be freed on bail during his appeal, Judge Jackie Glass of Clark County District Court also ruled.

Leaders of Black Mafia are sentenced.

Leaders of the Black Mafia Family, whose drug-trafficking operations spidered out across the United States over the past decade and a half, raking in tens of millions of dollars, will spend the next 30 years in prison, a federal judge in Detroit has ruled. Between 1990 and 2005, the drug-dealing brothers – 38-year-old Terry Flenory and 40-year-old Demetrius Flenory – cashed it in big-time. They left Detroit in the early 1990s and Terry, who relocated in Los Angeles, and Demetrius, who moved to Atlanta, broadened their empire through Missouri, Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, California and Texas. Read more about thier lavish ballin’ lifestyle at BET.com/News.

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Alvin Henry pleads guilty to New York attack

Former Trinidad and Tobago sprinter Alvin Henry has begun a 21-year rape sentence at a time when some of his former contemporaries are attending the Beijing Olympics. Henry, who competed in the 400-meter relay at the 2000 Games, pleaded guilty to raping a New York woman in a park last year. Though he was charged with several similar attacks, Henry was also called the “lover’s lane rapist” after he allegedly recorded a woman having sex in a park with her boyfriend. He reportedly threatened to release the video unless the woman had sex with him.