Ecuadorian police arrested three Colombians and one Ecuadorian in connection with alleged plans to kill Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, Attorney General Washington Pesantez said on Friday.
Initial reports said the Colombians had links to extreme-right paramilitary groups in their own country. However, Colombian authorities said they were drug traffickers with ties to the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The suspects had allegedly taken photographs from their hotel, very close to the Ecuadorian presidential palace in Quito, and had gathered information about the building’s security. The authorities did not say whether they were armed at the time of the arrest.
Ecuador and Colombia have no diplomatic ties since Colombian forces conducted a cross-border rain onto Ecuadorian territory on March 1 to attack a FARC camp.
The two countries recently agreed to restore ties at the level of charges d’affaires.
Colombia has accused Correa’s government of having given support to FARC rebels. Correa has denied this and has accused Colombia of violating international law.
The Colombian government has offered its help to investigate the alleged plot to kill Correa.
“We are at their disposal. Should Ecuadorian authorities require any kind of cooperation, we will provide it to the full,” Colombian Foreign Minister Fernando Araujo told Colombian radio station Caracol.
However, he said that “there are no more paramilitary groups in Colombia,” after the United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia demobilized over the past years.
A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza, but after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. The multibillion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan’s drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade. In the past few years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and laws targeting mafia are tightened. An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
Indonesia was to sign an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a grandmother languishing on death row for drug-related crimes, an Indonesian government source said yesterday. “The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said, identifying Lindsay Sandiford and 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi as the people being transferred. Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated US$2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner yesterday signed a coalition deal, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the nation’s first female prime minister. The 11th-hour agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) came just a day before the lower house was due to vote on Takaichi’s appointment as the fifth prime minister in as many years. If she wins, she will take office the same day. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you on efforts to make Japan’s economy stronger, and to reshape Japan as a country that can be responsible for future generations,”
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