A Filipino preacher accused of sexual abuse and human trafficking in the Philippines and similar charges in the US on Sunday surrendered to authorities in his religious complex in the south and was flown to Manila where he was put in police detention, officials said.
Apollo Quiboloy and four other coaccused surrendered in the vast religious headquarters of their group, called Kingdom of Jesus Christ, in Davao after police gave a 24-hour ultimatum for them to give up, police said.
Philippine Secretary of the Interior and Local Government Benhur Abalos earlier said that Quiboloy was caught by authorities.
Photo: AFP
Quiboloy and his coaccused were flown on a Philippine Air Force C-130 plane to the capital on Sunday night and locked up in a heavily guarded detention center at the national police headquarters, where their mugshots and fingerprints were taken, police spokesperson Colonel Jean Fajardo said at a news conference.
“The Philippine National Police gave an ultimatum for them to surrender, otherwise we would raid a particular building, where we’ve been barred from entering,” Fajardo said, adding that the warning led to their peaceful surrender.
Quiboloy went into hiding earlier this year after a Philippine court ordered his arrest and several others on allegations of child and sexual abuse, and human trafficking, Fajarto said.
The Philippine Senate separately ordered Quiboloy’s arrest for refusing to appear in public committee hearings that were looking into criminal allegations against him.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr had urged Quiboloy to surrender and assured him of fair treatment by authorities.
The preacher and his lawyer denied the allegations against him, saying they were fabricated by critics and former members who were removed from the religious group.
US federal prosecutors in 2021 announced the indictment of Quiboloy for allegedly having sex with women and underage girls who faced threats of abuse and “eternal damnation” unless they catered to the self-proclaimed “son of God.”
Quiboloy and two of his top administrators were among nine people named in a superseding indictment returned by a federal grand jury and unsealed in November 2021.
It contained a raft of charges, including conspiracy, sex trafficking of children, sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion, marriage fraud, money laundering, cash smuggling and visa fraud.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
RSS