Russia has placed a US legislator and 12 other people connected with the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq on its list of those barred from entering the country.
In a statement on Saturday, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said US congressman Jim Moran, a Democrat from Virginia, was banned in response to the July 2 US ban on Russian parliament member Adam Delimkhanov. He said Moran had been repeatedly accused of financial misdeeds, but didn’t elaborate.
The other 12, including Joint Task Force-Guantanamo Commander Navy Rear Admiral Richard Butler and Lynndie England, a former US soldier convicted of abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib, were banned in response to the US’ adding 12 names in May to the so-called “Magnitsky List” of Russians sanctioned for human rights abuses.
Retired US Army Brigadier General Ricardo Sanchez, who commanded US ground forces in Iraq from 2003 to 2004; retired US Army Colonel Janis Karpinsky, whose command included the Abu Ghraib prison, and Gladys Kessler, a US federal judge who rejected a Guantanamo inmate’s complaint of being force-fed while on hunger strike, were also included.
Moran said he suspects the ban was due to his sponsoring an amendment to a defense appropriations bill approved by the House that bars the US purchase of helicopters from Rosoboronexport, the Russian state arms dealer which he accused of being “the principal supplier to the [Syrian President Bashar] al-Assad regime in Syria.”
“While this does clarify my overseas travel plans, it seems that the [Russian President Vladimir] Putin regime would be better served by addressing the consequences of encouraging and enabling Donetsk separatists to perform such a heinous act of cold-blooded cruelty or utter incompetence that resulted in the mass murder of nearly 300 innocent civilians,” Moran said in a statement released on Saturday.
Moran added that he has no plans to travel to Russia.
A Malaysian airliner was shot down Thursday over rebel-held eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian government and pro-Russian separatist rebels accuse each other of shooting down the Boeing 777 with a surface-to-air missile. Many see the hand of Russia, either for its alleged support of the insurgents or perhaps firing the missile itself. The crash site is near the Russian border.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
RSS