NEW YORK – A prominent Egyptian businessman admitted Friday to kissing and groping a hotel housekeeper who didn’t welcome his advances, pleading guilty as the woman sued him for $5 million.

Mahmoud Abdel Salam Omar pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor sexual abuse charge, acknowledging he kissed the woman on the lips and neck and touched her breasts after she brought tissues to his room at the posh Pierre hotel. The 74-year-old chairman of state-run salt production firm El-Mex Salines Co. already has completed five days of community service in a soup kitchen, and his case will be closed without jail time or probation if he stays out of trouble for a year.

After softly answering “yes” in English to questions from a judge and prosecutor, Omar declined to comment as he left a Manhattan courthouse. Arrested while in New York to pick up a salt-industry award for El-Mex Salines, he spent about four days behind bars before being released on bail earlier this month.

His lawyer, Lori Cohen, called the case the result of a “big miscommunication” between the 44-year-old maid and Omar. While he acknowledged in court that he knew he didn’t have the woman’s consent for his advances, Cohen said he thought the housekeeper was receptive.

“I believe he thought something was happening that wasn’t,” she said. “I think his lack of a great understanding of English, and her desire to file a multimillion-dollar lawsuit, led to these accusations.”

The woman’s lawyer bristled at the suggestion that she embellished the encounter to try to reap money from the former bank chairman.

“That’s just not true,” said the attorney, John P. Grill. “She didn’t know who he was.”

Omar initially faced a felony sexual abuse charge that carried up to seven years in prison. After interviewing numerous witnesses and reviewing surveillance video and forensic evidence, prosecutors concluded the incident “did not rise to the level of forcible compulsion,” which would have to be proven for the felony charge, Manhattan assistant district attorney Nicole Blumberg said.

Whatever his plea deal, the woman’s lawyer said, “it doesn’t change what happened.”

The woman’s federal assault and false-imprisonment lawsuit says Omar also rubbed his groin against her legs and groped her buttocks. It was filed Friday so Omar could officially be served with a copy before he left the country, Grill said.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly had said the case could be complicated to prosecute. Although the maid told a superior immediately that she had been attacked, the supervisor waited until the next morning to alert the hotel’s security director, who then told police. The hotel suspended the supervisor and promised to buy “panic buttons” for maids to alert managers if they are attacked.

A spokeswoman for the hotel’s owner, Mumbai-based Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces, didn’t immediately return a telephone call Friday.

Omar’s lawyer said he might well have chosen to go to trial but was eager to get home to his wife, who has recently had surgery.

“This was the most expeditious way for him to return home,” she said.

Besides chairing the salt company, Omar has served as chairman of Egypt’s Bank of Alexandria, the Egyptian American Bank and the Federation of Egyptian Banks, according to a biography on his company’s website. He has led El-Mex Salines since 2009.

Omar’s arrest came little more than two weeks after then-International Monetary Fund leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested on charges of attempting to rape a maid at a different hotel, charges Strauss-Kahn denies. Together, the cases drew attention to the potential dangers of hotel maids’ jobs.

The New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council plans to call for panic buttons as part of its contract negotiations with 150 hotels next year, and a state legislator has proposed to require the devices statewide.

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Associated Press writer Tom Hays contributed to this report.

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Jennifer Peltz can be reached at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz

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Sudan: Set for divorce

South Kordofan: 'Bombings, blood and terror'

Acrimonious split?

Abyei: Trigger for war?

Nuba Mountains: Next conflict?

A train carrying South Sudanese back home from the north has been attacked by a northern Arab group, leaving one person dead, the UN says.

A UN spokeswoman said the train was attacked by Misseriya gunmen in South Kordofan state on Sunday, although this was denied by a Misseriya leader.

At least 70,000 people have fled recent fighting in South Kordofan, which borders South Sudan.

Tension has been rising ahead of the south's independence next month.

Another 100,000 people have been forced from their homes after fighting in the disputed town of Abyei, near South Kordofan.

Since the end of the 21-year north-south war, some two million southerners have returned home and more are going ahead of the formal declaration of independence due on 9 July.

“A train transport of southern Sudanese returnees going from Kosti to Wau was attacked by Misseriya militia,” said UN spokeswoman Hua Jiang.

However, Misseriya leader Mohamed Omer al-Ansary said the attack had been carried out by rebels in the neighbouring region of Darfur, where a separate conflict broke out in 2003.

Northern forces have been accused of bombing parts of South Kordofan inhabited by ethnic Nubans, who largely supported the south during the civil war.

The fighting broke out after pro-southern groups were ordered to disarm after Ahmed Haroun was declared the winner of recent governorship elections.

Mr Haroun is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity committed in Darfur.

Over the weekend, Mr Haroun said the situation was now safe and people have started to return to their homes.

However, human rights group Amnesty International accused the authorities of forcing the displaced to go home despite continuing violence.

The Sudanese air force is accused of carrying out more bombing raids on Saturday.

Sudan: A country divided

Geography

Ethnic groups

Infant mortality

Water & sanitation

Education

Food insecurity

Oil fields

Show regions

The great divide across Sudan is visible even from space, as this Nasa satellite image shows. The northern states are a blanket of desert, broken only by the fertile Nile corridor. Southern Sudan is covered by green swathes of grassland, swamps and tropical forest.

Sudan’s arid northern regions are home mainly to Arabic-speaking Muslims. But in Southern Sudan there is no dominant culture. The Dinkas and the Nuers are the largest of more than 200 ethnic groups, each with its own traditional beliefs and languages.

The health inequalities in Sudan are illustrated by infant mortality rates. In Southern Sudan, one in 10 children die before their first birthday. Whereas in the more developed northern states, such as Gezira and White Nile, half of those children would be expected to survive.

The gulf in water resources between north and south is stark. In Khartoum, River Nile, and Gezira states, two-thirds of people have access to piped drinking water and pit latrines. In the south, boreholes and unprotected wells are the main drinking sources. More than 80% of southerners have no toilet facilities whatsoever.

Throughout Sudan, access to primary school education is strongly linked to household earnings. In the poorest parts of the south, less than 1% of children finish primary school. Whereas in the wealthier north, up to 50% of children complete primary level education.

Conflict and poverty are the main causes of food insecurity in Sudan. The residents of war-affected Darfur and Southern Sudan are still greatly dependent on food aid. Far more than in northern states, which tend to be wealthier, more urbanised and less reliant on agriculture.

Sudan exports billions of dollars of oil per year. Southern states produce more than 80% of it, but receive only 50% of the revenue, exacerbating tensions with the north. The oil-producing region of Abyei was due to hold a separate vote on whether to join the north or the south, but it has been postponed indefinitely.

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GENEVA – The U.N.’s top human rights official criticized China on Thursday for failing to arrest Sudan’s president so that he can be brought to trial on war crimes charges.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay told reporters in Geneva she was “disappointed” that China welcomed Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir during a visit this week, rather than arrest him to ensure he stands trial.

Pillay said that “the whole world favors trial” for al-Bashir for his role in the civil war in Sudan that killed more than 2 million people.

China has a duty to enforce warrants by the International Criminal Court, she said, despite the fact that it’s not a member of The Hague, Netherlands-based tribunal.

“There is a duty and a responsibility on the part of every government including China to assist the court in bringing to justice individuals who have been indicted by the court,” Pillay said. “It’s disappointing when states do not deliver on this responsibility.”

Al-Bashir, who left Beijing on Wednesday for the eastern Chinese port city of Qingdao, was expected to leave China later Thursday to return to Sudan.

Pillay said she could assure everyone, based on her experience as a judge for the ICC, that it would conduct a fair trial.

“It’s not like we’re calling for an execution of someone, we’re calling for an arrest of someone,” she said.

The International Criminal Court has twice issued warrants for his arrest on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur. China is not a court member and says it’s reserving opinion.

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KANO, Nigeria (AFP) – Suspected members of the radical Boko Haram Islamist sect on Monday staged simultaneous bomb and gun attacks on a police station and a bank killing seven people, witnesses and local journalists said.

The dead included five policemen, witnesses said, in an attack coming just four days after the sect bombed the country's police headquarters in the capital Abuja killing at least two.

A gang of 10 gunmen launched the two attacks on a police station and a bank in Kankara town, 130 kilometres (80 miles) south of the northern city of Katsina.

“The attackers were 10 in all, divided themselves in two groups and attacked the bank and the police station at the same time with guns and bombs,” Kankara resident Salmanu Jabir said.

“One group attacked the divisional police station, killing three policemen … and setting free suspects from cells before bombing the police station,” another Kankara resident Danjuma Nakande told AFP on the phone from the town.

He said the attackers fled carrying guns and ammunition, suspected to have been seized from the police station.

“While the attack on the police station was on, another group was robbing the bank,” Nakande said.

The group used a bomb to destroy an electronic door of a bank situated along the same road as the police station and made off with cash. They shot dead two policemen and a bank security guard during the robbery, said another resident, Salmanu Male.

A local reporter who was in the town said he counted six bodies including five policemen and a security guard attached to the robbed bank.

“The police station has been reduced to rubble from the bombing and three bodies of uniformed policemen lay among the debris,” said the reporter.

Another person died in hospital after he was shot by the fleeing gunmen when he attempted to pick up some of the stolen cash falling out of one of their bags, resident Jabir said.

Police were not immediately available to comment. Repeated calls put through to the police commissioner and his spokesman in the state went unanswered.

Male said the attackers carrying AK-47 rifles wore beards and were clad in long robes and “chanted Allahu Akbar (God is greatest) throughout the operation, suggesting they are Boko Haram”.

This would be the first attack Boko Haram staged in Katsina state, suggesting that the sect was carrying out its threat of widening its attacks to other parts of the north.

It has since last year waged a low-level insurgency focusing mainly on the northeastern Maiduguri city, although it has also been active in northern Bauchi city.

An attack which police said was carried out by a suicide bomber shook the core of Nigerian security services last Thursday hitting the national police headquarters. At least two people – a policemen and the suspected bomber – were killed in the attack.

Boko Haram, which means “Western education is sin”, launched in 2009 an uprising which was put down by a brutal military assault that left hundreds dead, mostly sect members.

It has pushed for the creation of an Islamic state and been blamed for the shootings of police and community leaders, bomb blasts and raids on churches, police stations and a prison.

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