KMAX: News of the West

News briefs from San Diego County

SAN DIEGO (AP) An American gay rights activist who was imprisoned in Mexico has been cleared of criminal charges and deported to the United States.

Sam Warren was deported on Thursday after immigration authorities ruled he had lived in Mexico illegally.

Warren, a writer who operated a bed-and-breakfast in Tijuana, Mexico, was cleared by a federal appellate court of charges that he had contributed to the corruption of a minor, his lawyer, Francisco Bazan, said. He had spent more than three years in Mexican prisons.

``I've lost everything I owned. I have to start all over again,'' Warren said as he headed for San Diego.

Warren, who has written a guide to the gay community of Baja California, said he was the victim of homophobia and corrupt police. Police raided his bed-and-breakfast in April 2000 and arrested Warren and seven others.

An American man who was detained, Richard Wilson, was convicted of corrupting a minor and remains in the La Mesa State Penitentiary in Tijuana. Wilson and Warren were sentenced to six-year terms; Wilson did not appeal his conviction to the federal court, Bazan said.

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CARLSBAD, Calif. (AP) Employees of a Carlsbad dietary supplement manufacturer which closed this week under a federal court order have been laid off.

Seasilver Inc. was the subject of a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit that contends the company's literature and labeling claim curative powers for the product that do not exist. The company closed Monday as the result of an order from a U.S. District Court in Las Vegas.

Workers who arrived to pick up pay checks on Thursday were informed of the layoffs. The number of workers was unclear. The North County Times reported that 200 customer service representatives had been sent by one Vista employment agency, and at least 13 temporary staffing agencies also had sent workers.

Seasilver executives did not comment

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SAN DIEGO (AP) The owner of a Tijuana, Mexico, restaurant who helped Middle Eastern immigrants sneak into the United States has been sentenced to a prison term of one year and one day.

Salim Boughader Mucharrafille also will spend three years under supervised release and pay a $5,000 fine, a U.S. District Court judge ruled Thursday.

Boughader pleaded guilty in March to running a ring that helped smuggle more than 100 immigrants into San Diego. Most of the immigrants were Lebanese, including one man who died from heat exhaustion.

Until his arrest in December, Boughader ran a Lebanese cafe near the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana.

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