Guillaume Horcajuelo / EPA

Jean Claude Mas, former head of Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), smokes a cigarette Wednesday during a break on the first day of his trial in Marseille, southern France.

MARSEILLE, France -- Five French executives faced jeers from victims Wednesday as they went on trial accused of  supplying women with hundreds of thousands of substandard breast implants and triggering a global health scare.

More than 300,000 women around the world were fitted over a decade with implants from the French company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), and the trial includes 5,000 civil plaintiffs and 300 lawyers.

PIP's founder and chief executive, 73-year-old Jean-Claude Mas, has admitted filling the implants with an unapproved homemade recipe made of industrial-grade silicone gel.

Mas and four PIP executives, including the chief financial officer, are charged with aggravated fraud and risk maximum prison terms of five years each, plus fines, for selling the implants around the world from 2001 to 2010, when they were ordered off the market.

A vast exhibition building close to PIP's former premises has been set up as a makeshift courtroom to accommodate the huge crowds expected for the trial, due to last until May 14.

Mas arrived at court under police escort and faced a crush of cameras as the trial began in the southern city of Marseille.

"Bastard!" shouted someone in the audience of some 300 victims as Mas appeared live on a giant video screen.

Of the more than 5,000 individual lawsuits filed against PIP -- once the world's third-largest supplier of breast implants -- and its executives, 220 have come from women outside France.

A French woman who alleges that one of her PIP implants began to leak four years after their insertion said outside the courtroom that victims were both scared and angry.

"We had foreign bodies put inside us that were flawed ... we could have maybe died from it. The anger is because we were tricked," said Tomassine Catalano. "It's frightening."

Rush for removal
The scandal -- revealed after inspectors pursuing a tip-off discovered vats of industrial-grade silicone outside the PIP factory in 2010 -- sparked worldwide panic when the government recommended removal of the implants due to an abnormally high rupture rate.

Health experts say no link has been established between PIP implants and breast cancer, but in the months after the scandal broke, plastic surgeons around the world reported a flood of removal requests from worried patients.

Half the French women with PIP implants, or nearly 15,000, have already opted for removal, whether because of rupture or as a precaution, according to the government.

Mas was released in October from eight months in detention following a failure to post bail. He told police that 75 percent of PIP's implants had contained the homemade gel, which was never been approved by regulators, although he denies it was unsafe. He and the other executives deny the charges.

Investigators estimate that Mas's formula allowed PIP to save nearly $1.6 million in one year alone.

On Wednesday, hoots erupted in court when Mas said he lived on a modest monthly retirement income of $2,350, prompting the judge to warn that the next person to disrupt proceedings would be thrown out.

Minutes before the trial began, a court in Paris rejected a defense request to have the case thrown out.

Mas and CFO Claude Couty are separately implicated in a civil case over fiscal fraud that has yet to reach trial. Mas is also under investigation for manslaughter following a complaint from the mother of a French woman with PIP implants who died of cancer in 2010.

Related:

France arrests breast implant boss amid scare

ROME -- Italy's highest court was set to decide Tuesday whether to overturn the acquittal of American student Amanda Knox in the murder of her roommate.

Knox and her then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were both convicted and then acquitted of Meredith Kercher's 2007 murder in Perugia, Italy, where they were students.

Knox spent four years in prison after being found guilty.

Small-time drug dealer Rudy Hermann Guede, an acquaintance of Knox's, was also convicted and was jailed for 16 years.

Prosecutors argued that Knox and Sollecito killed Kercher after a drug-fueled sexual assault.

Slideshow: A murder in Italy

Oli Scarff / Getty Images

The long legal saga of Amanda Knox, an American student accused of the violent death of her roommate, British student Meredith Kercher, has made headlines around the world since it began in Perugia, Italy, in late 2007.

Launch slideshow

If judges reject the prosecutors' argument that the acquittal should be thrown out and a new trial ordered, Knox's acquittal will be final.

"The only way the evidence could be characterized was absent, non-existent, inconclusive and unreliable," said Theodore Simon, Knox's defense attorney.

The scant DNA evidence initially linking Knox and Sollecito the murder was later found to have likely been contaminated. Defense attorneys argued that Guede was the sole killer and that the acquittal was justified.

Since her release from prison in 2011, Knox has resumed her studies in Seattle.

Knox and Sollecito did not appear in court Monday.

Italy's supreme court, which originally was expected to make a decision on Monday, later postponed its ruling until Tuesday.

Related:

Amanda Knox leaves prison after murder conviction overturned

Knox heads home from Italy; prosecutor to appeal verdict

This story was originally published on Mon Mar 25, 2013 8:41 AM EDT

PORTLAND, Ore. -- A jury on Friday ordered an American military contractor to pay $85 million after finding it guilty of negligence for illnesses suffered by a dozen Oregon soldiers who guarded an oilfield water plant during the Iraq War.

After a three-week trial, the jury deliberated for just two days before reaching a decision against the contractor, Kellogg Brown and Root.

Each Army National Guardsman was awarded $850,000 in non-economic damages and another $6.25 million in punitive damages for "reckless and outrageous indifference" to their health in the trial in U.S. District Court in Portland. 

Guardsman Rocky Bixby, the soldier whose name appeared on the suit, said the verdict should reflect a punishment for the company's neglect of U.S. soldiers.

"Justice was definitely served for the 12 of us," Bixby said, adding that two of his children were about to enter the military. "It wasn't about the money, it was about them never doing this again to another soldier."  

The suit was the first concerning soldiers' exposure to a toxin at a water plant in southern Iraq. The soldiers said they suffer from respiratory ailments after their exposure to sodium dichromate, and they fear that a carcinogen the toxin contains, hexavalent chromium, could cause cancer later in life.

Another suit from Oregon Guardsmen is on hold while the Portland trial plays out. There are also suits pending in Texas involving soldiers from Texas, Indiana and West Virginia.

Pre-existing conditions?
KBR was found guilty of negligence but not a secondary claim of fraud. U.S. District Court Judge Paul Papak acknowledged before the trial began that, whatever the verdict, the losing side was likely to appeal it.

Any appeal must first wait for Papak to formally enter the judgment.

The company will appeal the verdict, said KBR attorney Geoffrey Harrison in a statement issued late Friday afternoon. Harrison said the verdict "bears no rational relationship to the evidence."

"KBR did safe, professional, and exceptional work in Iraq under difficult circumstances," Harrison said in the statement, and multiple U.S. Army officers testified under oath that KBR communicated openly and honestly about the potential health risks.

"We believe the facts and law ultimately will provide vindication."

KBR witnesses testified that the soldiers' maladies were a result of the desert air and pre-existing conditions. Even if they were exposed to sodium dichromate, KBR witnesses argued, the soldiers weren't around enough of it, for long enough, to cause serious health problems.

The contractor's defense ultimately rested on the fact that they informed the U.S. Army of the risks of exposure to sodium dichromate.

KBR was tasked with reconstructing the decrepit, scavenged plant just after the March 2003 invasion while National Guardsmen defended the area. Bags of unguarded sodium dichromate — a corrosive substance used to keep pipes at the water plant free of rust — were ripped open, allowing the substance to spread across the plant an into the air.

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Attorneys for the 12 Oregon National Guardsmen focused on the months of April, May and June 2003, alleging KBR knew about the presence of sodium dichromate and took no action.

One of the soldiers' key witnesses, a doctor, testified that hexavalent chromium caused a change to soldiers' genes, leaving them more susceptible to cancer. KBR's attorneys challenged that diagnosis, saying the soldiers' witness was the only physician in the U.S. prepared to make such a diagnosis.

Concern over role of contractors
Plaintiff Jason Arnold said he understands that contractors are a necessity for often-specialized tasks, but he hopes the verdict forces the U.S. military to reexamine its relationship with the private defense industry.

"For a corporation to come in and have this much disregard for the health and well-being of men that are shedding blood, sweat and tears for this country," Arnold said, "for them to come in and to say that we mean less than their profit, is wrong."

During the Iraq war, KBR was the engineering and construction arm of Halliburton, the biggest U.S. contractor during the conflict. KBR split from Halliburton in April 2007.

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KBR has faced lawsuits before related to its work in Iraq. One of the more prominent cases, involving a soldier who was electrocuted in his barracks shower at an Army base, was dismissed.

A second case is still in Maryland federal court, in which former KBR employees and others who worked on Army bases in Iraq and Afghanistan allege KBR allowed them to be exposed to toxic smoke from garbage disposal "burn pits."

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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SILIVRI, Turkey -- A Turkish court sentenced more than 300 military officers to jail on Friday for plotting to overthrow Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan almost a decade ago, ending a trial that underscored civilian dominance over the once all-powerful military.

The court in Silivri, just west of Istanbul, handed prison terms to 322 serving and retired army officers and acquitted 34, according to court documents seen by Reuters.

Two retired generals and a retired admiral considered the ringleaders of the so-called "Sledgehammer" plot to topple Erdogan in 2003 were given life terms. Their relatives collapsed in tears in the courtroom as the sentences were handed down.

The military has long been the guardian of Turkey's secular establishment, launching three coups between 1960 and 1980 and pressuring an Islamist-led government to quit in 1997.

But Erdogan's Islamist-rooted AK Party, which came to power a decade ago, has tamed military influence over policy-making and ministerial appointments as part of efforts to strengthen democracy, while prosecutors have pursued suspected coup-makers through the courts.

"To comment without seeing the reasons for the verdict would be inappropriate. There is an appeals process. What is important for us is that the right decision emerges," Erdogan told reporters in Ankara, as the sentences were being announced.

The ruling has the potential to undermine morale in the military as it battles Kurdish militants in the southeast and faces a growing challenge maintaining security along its southern border with war-torn Syria.

Turkey sends military convoys toward Syrian border

"Turkish soldiers are not just being struck down in Diyarbakir, Sirnak and Bingol, it is actually here where they have been hit," said Colonel Mustafa Onsel, one of the defendants, referring to three southeastern provinces which have seen clashes with Kurdish militants in recent months.

The court said the three sentenced to life would in fact only serve 20 years because they were unsuccessful in their bid to topple the government.

Motivated by revenge?
The "Sledgehammer" conspiracy is alleged to have included plans to bomb historic mosques in Istanbul and trigger conflict with Greece to pave the way for an army takeover.

Prosecutors had demanded 15 to 20-year jail sentences for the 365 defendants, 364 of whom were serving or retired officers.

Those sentenced to life included retired generals Cetin Dogan and Halil Ibrahim Firtina, and retired admiral Ozden Ornek, considered the ringleaders of the plot.

Those sentenced to 18-year terms included Engin Alan, a retired general elected to parliament as a member of the National Movement Party last year, and Bilgin Baranli, who had been in line to become Air Force commander before his arrest last year.

Sledgehammer is one of a series of trials that has sparked criticism that the government is using the courts to silence political opponents.

Others include the "Ergenekon" case, which involves a web of alleged plots against Turkey's government.

Thousands of people, including journalists, lawyers and politicians, are in jail pending verdicts in trials that human rights groups say raise questions about Turkey's commitment to democratic rights.

Dogan's daughter Pinar Dogan, a lecturer at Harvard University, said her family believed the case was aimed at settling old scores and pointed to reports by experts who said computer documents submitted as evidence appeared doctored.

"Going after those perceived as opposed to this government because of its Islamist leaning is motivated in part by revenge. My father was a retired man with no political clout left," she said.

Turkey: Syria shot down our warplane

"He had no sympathy for this government, but he would never have bombed mosques or shot down planes, never."

The Turkish military is NATO's second-biggest standing force after the United States. Its main domestic challenge has been militants from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), considered a terrorist group by Ankara, the United States and European Union.

The past few months have seen some of the heaviest fighting since the PKK took up arms in 1984 with the aim of carving out a Kurdish state. Turkish troops are also serving in Afghanistan, Northern Cyprus and Lebanon as well as at small observation posts set up in the 1990s in Iraq.

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