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Monday, September 17, 2007

OJ Simpson faces break-in charges


Ex-American football star OJ Simpson has been arrested by Las Vegas police investigating an alleged armed robbery.


He is accused of taking part in a raid on a sports memorabilia dealer at a hotel room in the Palace Station Casino on Thursday.
He faces charges including robbery with a deadly weapon, which carries a maximum sentence of 35 years in prison.
Mr Simpson says he was trying to retrieve stolen items belonging to him, and denies any guns were involved.
At least one other man is in custody, and police said two guns were confiscated during a raid on a house in the Las Vegas area.
Mr Simpson gained international notoriety in 1995 when he was tried and acquitted of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.
'Facing time'
During a press conference, Clark County District Attorney David Roger said prosecutors were preparing several charges against Mr Simpson.
They included robbery using a deadly weapon - the most serious charge - as well as conspiracy to commit robbery, burglary with a deadly weapon, two counts of assault with a deadly weapon and coercion, Mr Roger said.
The lawyer said Mr Simpson, who is being held at a detention centre, was "facing a lot of time".
The police, since my trouble, have not worked out for me
OJ Simpson
The 60-year-old Mr Simpson said he and other people were trying to get back mementos that were stolen from him.
But he said his past had prevented him from seeking help from the authorities in retrieving the items.
"The police, since my trouble, have not worked out for me," he told the Associated Press.
He claimed that whenever he had called the police in recent years, "it just becomes a story about OJ".
Although Mr Simpson was cleared of murder in a criminal court in 1995, he was later found liable for the deaths at a civil trial.
He was ordered to pay $33.5m (£17m) in damages - money that has never been collected.
In July this year the rights to Mr Simpson's book, If I Did It, were awarded to Mr Goldman's family to help recoup some of those damages.
The book, in which Mr Simpson describes how he would have killed his ex-wife and her friend, was published in the US last Thursday by Beaufort Books.
The publication followed months of legal wrangling after Rupert Murdoch's companies cancelled plans to publish the book following a public outcry in 2006.

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