Argentina on Wednesday criticized Washington for failing to answer repeated inquiries about the whereabouts of a fugitive former spymaster who Argentine President Cristina Fernandez’s government suspects is seeking refuge in the US.
Antonio Stiuso, who was operations chief of the now-disbanded Intelligence Secretariat, disappeared following the murky death in January of Argentine state prosecutor Alberto Nisman, which plunged Fernandez’s government into political turmoil.
Nisman was found with a single bullet to the head days after accusing Fernandez of trying to cover up Iran’s alleged role in a deadly 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.
Fernandez and her ministers say Stiuso duped Nisman into fabricating unfounded allegations to destabilize the government and then needed him dead, and have previously questioned whether the spy chief was working for the US.
Argentine Cabinet Chief Anibal Fernandez on Wednesday said the US government had failed to respond to any of the government’s eight formal requests for details on Stiuso’s whereabouts.
“We ask ourselves sometimes, ‘Is the United States ready to allow the bilateral relations between it and Argentina to worsen for a man they all say has no importance, no strategic value for the United States,’” Fernandez said at a daily news briefing.
A spokesman for the US embassy in Buenos Aires said: “We don’t comment on requests for assistance in criminal matters and we respond to these requests through established judicial channels.”
Interpol on Wednesday issued a “blue notice” seeking Stiuso’s location so that he could testify about the investigation into the truck-bomb attack on the Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) Jewish center, local media reported. Interpol declined to comment.
The attack killed 85 people, the deadliest in Argentine history. Argentine courts have accused a group of Iranians of orchestrating the bombing.
Nisman saaid that Fernandez opened a back-channel to Iran to cover up Tehran’s alleged involvement.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion