Chilean authorities on Tuesday extended the detention of a Pakistani man found with traces of explosives as he visited the US embassy to discuss a revoked visa.
“I am innocent and I do not know why this is happening. I think it is the fault of the United States, where I wanted to go for a month. That’s why I went to the embassy,” the man, who police identified as Mauhannas Saif Ur Rehnab Khan, told reporters.
“I have no idea what is happening here, but I imagine it has to do with what’s going on in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Rehnab, 28, said.
“I don’t know anything about bombs. I am a man who studies and works and I have nothing to do with that stuff,” he said.
Rehnab made the remarks as he was transferred in a police van to a hospital for a medical checkup ordered by Judge Ely Rothfield.
Under Chile’s anti-terror laws the suspect can be detained until Saturday, court sources said.
Experts found traces of a TNT explosive derivative on the young man’s hands, cellphone, bag and documentation after he went through a security checkpoint on Monday, prompting embassy staff to notify police.
Rehnab insisted he did not know where the traces came from, and said that he was at the embassy only to renew his visa.
But the State Department said in Washington that the embassy called Rehnab in after revoking his US visa.
It did not say why the visa had been revoked.
State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said Rehnab had been called in “to clarify the information that we have on this individual …And as he came into the embassy, our explosive detectors went off.”
The Pakistani foreign ministry said its mission in Chile had been in touch with Rehnab and was waiting further details to be passed onto Islamabad.
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
VIOLENCE: The teacher had depression and took a leave of absence, but returned to the school last year, South Korean media reported A teacher stabbed an eight-year-old student to death at an elementary school in South Korea on Monday, local media reported, citing authorities. The teacher, a woman in her 40s, confessed to the crime after police officers found her and the young girl with stab wounds at the elementary school in the central city of Daejeon on Monday evening, the Yonhap news agency reported. The girl was brought to hospital “in an unconscious state, but she later died,” the report read. The teacher had stab wounds on her neck and arm, which officials determined might have been self-inflicted, the news agency
ISSUE: Some foreigners seek women to give birth to their children in Cambodia, and the 13 women were charged with contravening a law banning commercial surrogacy Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday thanked Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni for granting a royal pardon last year to 13 Filipino women who were convicted of illegally serving as surrogate mothers in the Southeast Asian kingdom. Marcos expressed his gratitude in a meeting with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, who was visiting Manila for talks on expanding trade, agricultural, tourism, cultural and security relations. The Philippines and Cambodia belong to the 10-nation ASEAN, a regional bloc that promotes economic integration but is divided on other issues, including countries whose security alignments is with the US or China. Marcos has strengthened