LA police trial

Three police officers have been found guilty of conspiracy in the first trial to come out of a major corruption scandal in Los Angeles.

A fourth officer was acquitted.

Sentences will be announced later, and many more trials are expected arising out of the scandal.

The three accused were part of a special anti-gang police unit whose members were said to have shot, beaten or framed hundreds of innocent people, mostly immigrants from Mexico and central America.

The trial stemmed from the admissions of a disgraced former member of the Los Angeles squad, who turned informant after being caught stealing a-million dollars worth of cocaine from a police evidence locker. As a result of his revelations, more than a hundred criminal cases were thrown out and convictions quashed.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service