Murder
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FILE PHOTO: Packaging for a counterfeit bottle of perfume that was recovered from Charlie Rowley’s home after he and his partner Dawn Sturgess were poisoned by the same nerve agent which was used to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, is seen in an image handed out by the Metropolitan Police in London, Britain September 5, 2018. Metroplitan Police handout via REUTERS
April 7, 2019
LONDON (Reuters) – A British man whose partner died after being exposed to nerve agent Novichok was told by Russia’s ambassador that Moscow could not have been behind the attacks because they would have “killed everyone”, he told the Sunday Mirror newspaper.
Charlie Rowley, who was also exposed to Novichok after coming across a perfume bottle contaminated with the nerve agent last year, met Russian Ambassador Alexander Yakovenko on Saturday to ask him why Moscow had killed his girlfriend.
“But I didn’t really get any answers. I just got Russian propaganda,” Rowley told the Mirror. “The ambassador kept saying the substance definitely wasn’t the Novichok they had made because if it was, it would have killed everyone.”
The embassy said in a statement Moscow still wanted a transparent investigation into the March 4, 2018 attacks in the English city of Salisbury but accused the British authorities of “hiding the circumstances of the incident”.
Last year, British prosecutors identified two Russians they said were operating under aliases – Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov – whom they accused of trying to murder former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter with a military-grade nerve agent. Dawn Sturgess, Rowley’s partner, died in July.
Britain charged the two men in absentia with attempted murder and said the suspects were military intelligence officers almost certainly acting on orders from high up in the Russian state. Russia has denied any involvement in the poisonings.
(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper and Andrew Osborn in Moscow; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) looks on prior to an address by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to a joint meeting of Congress in the House Chamber on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., April 3, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
April 6, 2019
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A 55-year-old New York man has been arrested and charged with threatening to murder Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar, a freshman U.S. Congress member from Minnesota who is a Muslim, federal prosecutors said.
Patrick Carlineo Jr. of Addison, New York, faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Friday in a statement.
According to prosecutors, Carlineo spoke by telephone with one of Omar’s staff members on March 21 and asked the employee: “Do you work for the Muslim Brotherhood? Why are you working for her, she’s a (expletive) terrorist. I’ll put a bullet in her (expletive) skull.”
The threat was referred to the U.S. Capitol Police who launched a probe in coordination with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Justice Department said.
Carlineo made an initial court appearance on Friday and is being held pending a detention hearing on April 10.
Spokespeople for Omar, one of the two first Muslim women elected to Congress, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
(Reporting by Daniel Wallis; Editing by David Gregorio)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: Laura Codruta Kovesi, Romania’s former chief anti-corruption prosecutor, arrives to attend a hearing at the Section for the Investigation of Criminal Offences in the judiciary in Bucharest, Romania, February 15, 2019. Inquam Photos/Octav Ganea via REUTERS
April 5, 2019
BRATISLAVA (Reuters) – The families of murdered Slovak and Maltese journalists on Friday backed Romania’s former chief anti-graft prosecutor’s bid to become the EU’s first fraud prosecutor – against the wishes of her country’s government.
The EU wants to set up the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) next year to tackle graft, VAT fraud and other crimes involving the bloc’s multi-billion-euro joint budget, and Laura Codruta Kovesi is a frontrunner for the job.
During Kovesi’s five-year tenure as head of Romania’s DNA anti-corruption office, conviction rates for political graft jumped, drawing praise from the European Union, civil society groups and investors. But her EPPO bid is opposed by Romania’s ruling Social Democrats, who forced her out of the DNA last year.
Kovesi is backed by the European Parliament, while France’s candidate Jean-Francois Bohnert has already been named the preferred candidate of the Council of EU member states.
In an open letter to the EU Council on Friday, the families of murdered journalists Jan Kuciak, from Slovakia, and Malta’s Daphne Caruana Galizia urged member states to choose the Romanian.
They called her “the bravest and most distinguished candidate … who has shown herself willing to bring charges forward when all other institutions within a member state have failed to act.
“…A collapse in the rule of law in our countries (…) led to the murders of our family members (…). De facto immunity from prosecution emboldened their murderers, who operated complex cross-border rackets that should fall under the EPPO’s mandate.”
Caruana Galizia, who penned an anti-corruption blog, was killed by a car bomb near the Maltese capital Valletta in October 2017 – a murder that raised questions about the rule of law on the Mediterranean island.
Three men suspected of having been commissioned to carry out the killing have been arrested. They have pleaded not guilty.
Kuciak reported on fraud cases involving politically connected businessmen before he was found shot dead at home with his fiancée in February 2018. The murders, for which five people have been charged, stoked public anger over perceived corruption in Slovakia.
(Reporting By Tatiana Jancarikova; editing by John Stonestreet)
Source: OANN
Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney attend a news conference on media freedom as part of the G7 Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Dinard, France, April 5, 2019. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe
April 5, 2019
By Richard Lough
DINARD, France (Reuters) – International human rights lawyer Amal Clooney will help lead a British-Canadian push to defend journalists from attacks and restrictions around the world, ministers said on Friday.
She was named co-chair of a legal panel that will draw up proposals to counter laws that hinder reporters.
“Those with a pen in their hand should not feel a noose around their neck,” the British-Lebanese barrister told an event on the issue at a G7 meeting of foreign ministers in France.
More than 60 journalists were killed in 2018 according to Reporters Without Borders, more than half of them targeted deliberately, with the murder of Saudi columnist Jamal Khashoggi in particular drawing international condemnation.
Britain’s foreign minister, Jeremy Hunt, told the event that democratic states needed to make it “an international taboo of the highest order” to murder, arrest or detain journalists for doing their jobs.
Hunt, who appeared alongside his Canadian counterpart Chrystia Freeland, also named Clooney as his special envoy on media freedom.
“When journalists are not able to question those in authority, hold them to account, freely and with impunity then you start a slippery slope to the closed societies that none of us want to see growing in influence,” he said.
Last year, Clooney joined the legal team representing two Reuters journalists who were convicted under Myanmar’s official secrets act and sentenced to seven years in prison.
On Friday, she said only one in ten countries enjoyed a free press.
The legal panel, she added, could propose reforms of national laws that run counter to international standards, such as blasphemy legislation, and encourage governments to give journalists more consular protection abroad. The proposals will not be legally binding.
While Khashoggi’s death sparked global outrage, human rights groups criticized the meek response of many Western capitals, many of which cited the importance of trade relations for not adopting a tougher stance with Saudi Arabia.
(Additional reporting by John Irish and by Rachel Cordery in London; Editing by John Irish and Andrew Heavens)
Source: OANN
Marie Garcia and Mariana Sepulveda from trans organization Panambi, talk to Reuters, in Asuncion, Paraguay March 22, 2019. Picture taken March 22, 2019. REUTERS/Jorge Adorno
April 5, 2019
By Daniela Desantis
ASUNCIÓN (Reuters) – Paraguay’s LGBT communities are feeling increasingly isolated amid a conservative shift in the Latin American country, even after they celebrated the global success of local lesbian drama film “Las Herederas” last year.
Led by right-wing President Mario Abdo, the government recently banned sex education guides for teachers, while the Senate declared itself “pro-life and pro-family” after opening an annual session with a prayer in the usually secular state.
The chill comes amid what local LGBT organizations told Reuters was a wider shift in the region, exemplified by conservative leaders such as Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who has openly made offensive comments about sexual minorities.
“The rights of LGBTI people are facing a kind of setback right now,” Carolina Robledo, president of Paraguayan lesbian rights group Aireana, told Reuters, referring to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex communities.
She added that these groups were suffering “many attacks from people, because with a right-wing, conservative government, people feel comfortable and protected to say whatever they want and to mistreat you however they want.”
One of the most vulnerable groups is the transgender community, with trans organization Panambí documenting hundreds of cases of violence and 61 murders in the last three decades.
“We are forgotten by the State in life since they have denied us the rights completely. And once again after people die, because murder cases remain unpunished,” said Mariana Sepulveda, Panambí general secretary.
‘Party of Lesbians’
The Paraguayan Congress did pay tribute to Las Herederas, the most awarded film in the history of local cinema. But in doing so, one senator accused its protagonists of being a “party of lesbians” that violates the rights of the family.
The film, which follows a couple of women going through a crisis, won awards at international festivals – including the Silver Bear for best actress in Berlin.
Paraguay, unlike some of its neighboring counties, does not have a law against many kinds of gender-based discrimination and does not recognize unions between people of the same sex.
“The context and the logic of the State toward the LGBT population is the same they had during the dictatorship,” said Simón Cazal, executive director of the SomosGay organization, referring to the 35-year rule of Alfredo Stroessner until 1989.
“Gays don’t exist in Paraguay: that is the phrase that summarizes the vision that the Paraguayan State has about the population that is not heterosexual,” added Cazal, using the derogatory Spanish term “putos.”
SomosGay says it has evidence of the existence of two secret “rehabilitation centers” to “cure” homosexuality, one in the arid Chaco region and the other near the capital, Asunción.
Reuters could not independently verify the existence of the centers but opposition senator Maria Eugenia Bajac said she would be “delighted” to have such establishments in the country.
“These are human beings damaged in their identity,” she told Reuters. “We must treat that deviation, or that inclination or that tendency, or that style, sexual choice, so that people could… be cured.”
In 1959 under Stroessner, authorities arrested 108 people “of dubious moral conduct” who were subjected to public derision. Since then the number 108 has been seen as pejorative and removed from vehicle plates, telephone numbers and houses.
Abdo’s Colorado Party, the dominant political force in the country, also ruled during Stroessner’s administration and the president is the son of the private secretary of the general.
The human rights directorate of Paraguay’s justice ministry admitted issues remain regarding LGBT communities, but said there had been advances, with projects to protect minorities and make them more visible.
“There are not only documents, but specific protection initiatives,” its director, María José Méndez, told Reuters. “There’s an idea of integration that didn’t exist 10 years ago, so really for me there have been significant advances.”
(Reporting by Daniela Desantis; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Dan Grebler)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: A funeral procession for prominent Serbian opposition journalist Slavko Curuvija, owner of the daily Dnevni Telegraf, who was killed in Belgrade on April 11. Belgrade, Serbia, April 14, 1999. REUTERS//File Photo
April 5, 2019
BELGRADE (Reuters) – Four people were sentenced to up to 30 years in prison by a Serbian court on Friday over the killing in 1999 of opposition journalist and newspaper publisher Slavko Curuvija, during the rule of late strongman Slobodan Milosevic.
Curuvija was gunned down on Orthodox Easter, days after a pro-Milosevic newspaper published an opinion piece saying he supported NATO air strikes against Serbia over its military crackdown on independence-seeking Albanians in its then-province of Kosovo.
“The accused are guilty of … the intentional killing of Slavko Curuvija, following instructions from an unidentified person,” Judge Snezana Jovanovic said.
Radomir Markovic, the former head of Milosevic’s feared Department of State Security, was sentenced to 30 years in jail for inciting murder.
Milan Radonjic, the-then chief of State Security’s Belgrade department was also sentenced to 30 years, while operatives Ratko Romic and Milan Kurak, who is at large and sentenced in absentia, were given 20 years for an aggravated murder.
The indictment, launched in 2017, said Curuvija was killed because of his criticism of Milosevic’s rule.
“(Curuvija) was murdered because of … criticizing authorities and potential influence on public and actions of opposition forces,” the indictment, launched in 2017, said. “He died a martyr.”
All of the accused have the right to appeal. Lawyers for Markovic, Romic and Radonjic were not available for comment. The three men have denied any wrongdoing.
Markovic is already serving a 40-year jail term over his roles in the 2000 killing of former Serbia’s President Ivan Stambolic and 1999 attempted assassination of Vuk Draskovic, an opposition politician, in which four other people died.
Milosevic was extradited in 2001 to the International war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia in The Hague, where he died in 2006 before a trial verdict was reached.
(Reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic; Editing by Alison Williams)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: Rapper Nipsey Hussle performs before a boxing match between Andre Ward and Paul Smith at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, California, on 20/6/15. Action Images via Reuters / Andrew Couldridge
April 4, 2019
By Dan Whitcomb
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A 33-year-old Los Angeles man accused of killing Grammy-nominated rapper Nipsey Hussle was formally charged with murder and attempted murder on Thursday, prosecutors said.
Eric Ronald Holder, who was arrested earlier this week in connection with the fatal shooting, was expected to make his first court appearance in the case later on Thursday, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said in a written statement.
Hussle, 33, whose real name was Ermias Asghedom, was shot multiple times on March 31 outside his Marathon Clothing store, in south Los Angeles. Two other people were wounded in the gunfire, according to police.
Holder, 29, was taken into custody on Tuesday in the Los Angeles suburb of Bellflower after a tipster called to report seeing the man police had named as a suspect. Investigators have said that the killing was motivated by a personal dispute between the two men.
Holder faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted at trial. It was not immediately clear if he had retained a criminal defense attorney.
Holder is accused of walking up to Hussle and two other men outside the store and opening fire, before fleeing in a Chevy Cruze driven by a woman, police have said. The woman has not been identified publicly or arrested.
On Monday, a crowd gathered for a vigil outside Hussle’s clothing store. A disturbance set off a stampede and at least two people were critically injured, officials and media reports said.
Hussle’s debut studio album, “Victory Lap,” was nominated for Best Rap Album at this year’s Grammy Awards. His death rattled the entertainment and hip-hop world, with celebrities posting memories of him on social media.
The rapper, who was of Eritrean descent and grew up in south Los Angeles, has said that he once belonged to a street gang, but more recently had become a community organizer and activist.
The day he died, Hussle wrote on his Twitter page, “Having strong enemies is a blessing.”
(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Dan Grebler)
Source: OANN
People visit a memorial site for victims of the shooting, in front of Christchurch Botanic Gardens in Christchurch, New Zealand March 19, 2019. REUTERS/Jorge Silva
April 4, 2019
By Praveen Menon
CHRISTCHURCH (Reuters) – Australian Brenton Tarrant will appear in court in New Zealand on Friday, where the suspected white supremacist faces more charges after his arrest for mass shootings at two mosques last month that killed 50 worshippers and wounded dozens.
In an attack broadcast live on Facebook, a lone gunman armed with semi-automatic weapons targeted Muslims attending Friday prayers in Christchurch on March 15.
Tarrant has been moved to New Zealand’s only maximum security prison in Auckland and will appear at the Christchurch High Court through a video link at 1000 a.m. (2100 GMT).
Tarrant, 28, was charged with one murder the day after the attack and remanded without a plea. Police said they would bring 49 more murder charges and 39 attempted murder charges against Tarrant when he appears in court.
Prison officials say Tarrant is under 24-hour surveillance with no access to media, according to news reports.
Friday’s appearance will largely be procedural and Tarrant will not be required to enter a plea, a High Court judge said in court minutes this week.
Tarrant declined a court appointed lawyer and media said he wants to represent himself.
Legal experts have said Tarrant may try to use the hearings as a platform to present his ideology and beliefs.
Although journalists may attend and take notes, media coverage will be restricted. Judge Cameron Mander said media could only publish pixellated images of Tarrant that obscure his face.
‘ALL HUMANS’
The massacre, which Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern labeled terrorism, was New Zealand’s worst peacetime mass killing.
Dozens of representatives from around the world joined a national memorial service last week attended by Ardern and tens of thousands of New Zealanders.
Muslims worldwide have praised New Zealand’s response to the massacre, with many singling out Ardern’s gesture of wearing a headscarf to meet victim’s families and urging the country to unite with the call, “We are one.”
Thousands of visitors to the reopened Al Noor mosque, where 42 people were killed, have offered condolences and sought to learn more about Islam, said Israfil Hossain, who recites the daily call to prayer there.
“They are coming from far just to say sorry…although they never did anything to us,” said Hossain, 26.
On Thursday, a group of Carmelite nuns stood for the first time inside a mosque, holding back tears as they talked with worshippers about the two faiths.
“Everybody has their own problems and they have their own ideas about religions, and that’s fine, and we should all have that, we’re all different,” said one nun, Sister Dorothea.
“But we’re all humans and that’s the most important thing, our humanity.”
(Reporting by Praveen Menon; editing by Darren Schuettler)
Source: OANN
Germany has extended its current ban on arms exports to Saudi Arabia for six more months, ending on September 30, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Thursday.
During that period, no new contracts will be approved, Seibert said. The decision came after Merkel met with members of her cabinet to review the policy.
The German government had placed a temporary ban on weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in October 2018, following the controversial killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
At the time, Merkel said that no new exports to the country would be allowed until the circumstances of Khashoggi’s death had been established. But more recently, the chancellor indicated that Germany needed to be more flexible.
Criticism From the UK and France
The ban has divided Merkel’s governing coalition, but it has also drawn criticism from France and Britain. Both countries have decried the fact that the Saudi weapons freeze also bars sales of arms manufactured in different countries that happen to have German components in them.
France’s Ambassador to Germany, Anne-Marie Descotes, said this week that Germany’s arms export policy and cumbersome licensing rules threatened future bilateral defense projects.
Descotes warned that this debate would leave companies preferring “German-free arms products” — in other words, weapons systems that did not include German components.
She also admonished Germans for treating the debate as if weapons exports were a domestic policy matter, when in fact “it has serious consequences for our bilateral cooperation in the field of defense, and for the strengthening of European sovereignty.”
Mohammed bin Salman was behind the Yemen War that has claimed the lives of over 13,000 including 3,000 children. Will the gruesome beating, murder & dismemberment of a journalist — reportedly captured by his Apple Watch — cause even establishment neocons to stop supporting the brutal Saudi regime?
Effective Measures?
In an attempt to quell these concerns, the German government agreed to extend export licenses that have already been granted for nine months, in an effort to spare these companies the costly and time-consuming process of applying for a new license.
Germany also called on France and Britain to ensure that its weapons systems deliveries to Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates would not be used in the Yemen conflict.
There is also evidence that Germany’s arms export controls are ineffectual, despite France’s insistence: in February investigations by DW and others revealed that German weapons are being used in Yemen, despite Germany’s export controls.
“The re-start of arms exports to Saudi Arabia would be a fatal foreign policy signal and would contribute to the continued destabilization of the Middle East,” Green party spokesman Omid Nouripour told DW. “We need a common European arms export policy that excludes exports into war zones.”
Global Trade
According to a report released this month by the Sweden-based Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), arms sales to the Middle East almost doubled in the 2014-2018 period compared with 2009-2013.
Saudi Arabia received nearly 1 in 4 US weapons that were sold in the most recent period. It also imported more weapons than any other country, raking in 12 percent of global imports.
Germany increased its international arms sales by 13 percent, with German-built submarines enjoying particularly strong demand abroad.
Alex Jones gives his personal view on how the United States should intervene in South America.
Source: InfoWars
Germany has extended its current ban on arms exports to Saudi Arabia for six more months, ending on September 30, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Thursday.
During that period, no new contracts will be approved, Seibert said. The decision came after Merkel met with members of her cabinet to review the policy.
The German government had placed a temporary ban on weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in October 2018, following the controversial killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
At the time, Merkel said that no new exports to the country would be allowed until the circumstances of Khashoggi’s death had been established. But more recently, the chancellor indicated that Germany needed to be more flexible.
Criticism From the UK and France
The ban has divided Merkel’s governing coalition, but it has also drawn criticism from France and Britain. Both countries have decried the fact that the Saudi weapons freeze also bars sales of arms manufactured in different countries that happen to have German components in them.
France’s Ambassador to Germany, Anne-Marie Descotes, said this week that Germany’s arms export policy and cumbersome licensing rules threatened future bilateral defense projects.
Descotes warned that this debate would leave companies preferring “German-free arms products” — in other words, weapons systems that did not include German components.
She also admonished Germans for treating the debate as if weapons exports were a domestic policy matter, when in fact “it has serious consequences for our bilateral cooperation in the field of defense, and for the strengthening of European sovereignty.”
Mohammed bin Salman was behind the Yemen War that has claimed the lives of over 13,000 including 3,000 children. Will the gruesome beating, murder & dismemberment of a journalist — reportedly captured by his Apple Watch — cause even establishment neocons to stop supporting the brutal Saudi regime?
Effective Measures?
In an attempt to quell these concerns, the German government agreed to extend export licenses that have already been granted for nine months, in an effort to spare these companies the costly and time-consuming process of applying for a new license.
Germany also called on France and Britain to ensure that its weapons systems deliveries to Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates would not be used in the Yemen conflict.
There is also evidence that Germany’s arms export controls are ineffectual, despite France’s insistence: in February investigations by DW and others revealed that German weapons are being used in Yemen, despite Germany’s export controls.
“The re-start of arms exports to Saudi Arabia would be a fatal foreign policy signal and would contribute to the continued destabilization of the Middle East,” Green party spokesman Omid Nouripour told DW. “We need a common European arms export policy that excludes exports into war zones.”
Global Trade
According to a report released this month by the Sweden-based Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), arms sales to the Middle East almost doubled in the 2014-2018 period compared with 2009-2013.
Saudi Arabia received nearly 1 in 4 US weapons that were sold in the most recent period. It also imported more weapons than any other country, raking in 12 percent of global imports.
Germany increased its international arms sales by 13 percent, with German-built submarines enjoying particularly strong demand abroad.
Alex Jones gives his personal view on how the United States should intervene in South America.
Source: InfoWars
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