‘Pragmatic’ Biden-Putin summit agrees to resume arms talks, return envoys
Putin called Biden, 78, a constructive, experienced partner, and said they spoke “the same language”
He added there had been no friendship, rather a pragmatic dialogue about their two countries’ interests
Updated 16 June 2021
Reuters
GENEVA: US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed at a “pragmatic” first summit on Wednesday to resume arms control talks and to return ambassadors to each other’s capitals after they were withdrawn earlier this year.
The discussions at the lakeside Villa La Grange in Geneva lasted less than four hours — far less than Biden’s advisers had said they expected.
Putin called Biden, 78, a constructive, experienced partner, and said they spoke “the same language,” but added that there had been no friendship, rather a pragmatic dialogue about their two countries’ interests.
He said it was “hard to say” if relations with the United States would improve, but that there was a “glimpse of hope” regarding mutual trust. There were no invitations to Washington or Moscow
The scheduling of separate news conferences meant there was none of the joviality that accompanied a 2018 meeting in Helsinki between Putin and Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, where Putin presented Trump with a soccer ball. There was also no shared meal.
Putin, 68, who was first to brief reporters, said the meeting had been constructive, without hostility, and had showed the leaders’ desire to understand each other.
He also said Russia and the United States shared a responsibility for nuclear stability, and would hold talks on possible changes to their recently extended New START arms limitation treaty.
But he showed little appetite for compromise on a range of other issues, dismissing Washington’s concerns about the arrest of opposition figurehead Alexei Navalny, about Russia’s increased military presence near Ukraine’s eastern border, and about US suggestions that unidentified Russians are responsible for a series of cyber-attacks in the United States.
Putin said Navalny had ignored the law and had known what would happen if he returned to Russia from Germany, where he had received treatment for an attempt inside Russia to kill him with poison. He also accused Kyiv of breaking the terms of a cease-fire agreement with pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.
The Kremlin leader said Washington and Moscow would start consultations on cybersecurity, adding that most cyber-attacks on Russia came from the United States.
He said Biden had raised human rights issues and also the fate of US citizens jailed in Russia. Putin said he believed some compromises could be found, although he gave no indication of any prisoner exchange deal.
ARMS CONTROL PROGRESS
Arms control is, however, one domain where progress has historically been possible despite wider disagreements.
In February, Russia and the United States extended for five years the New START treaty, which caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads they can deploy and limits the land- and submarine-based missiles and bombers to deliver them.
Both sides had said in advance of the summit that they hoped for more stable and predictable relations, even though they were at odds over everything from arms control and cyber-hacking to election interference and Ukraine.
Putin and Biden shook hands on arrival before going inside, and Biden flashed a ‘thumbs-up’ to reporters as he left the villa where the talks were held and got into his limousine.
The first round of talks — which included Biden, Putin, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov — lasted almost two hours, officials said.
Talks resumed after a break at around 4 p.m. (1400 GMT), with Moscow’s ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, who was recalled to Russia in March, among those present. That round ended at 5:05 p.m. (1505 GMT).
Relations between Moscow and Washington have been deteriorating for years, notably with Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, its 2015 intervention in Syria and US charges — denied by Moscow — of meddling in the 2016 election that brought Donald Trump to the White House.
They sank further in March when Biden said he thought Putin was a “killer,” prompting Russia to recall Antonov to Washington for consultations. The United States recalled its ambassador in April.
Putin said on Wednesday that he had been satisfied by Biden’s explanation of the remark.
Trump’s summit in 2018 with Putin in Helsinki had included a meeting accompanied only by interpreters, but Biden and Putin had no solo talks.
Standing beside Putin in Helsinki in 2018, Trump refused to blame him for meddling in the 2016 US election, casting doubt on the findings of his own intelligence agencies and sparking a storm of domestic criticism.
Scars of war and occupation run deep in Ukraine’s once bustling Izium
City in Kharkiv province fell to the Russians in March, only to be recaptured by Ukrainian forces in September
With 1,000 civilians dead and 80 percent of the infrastructure wrecked, the devastation visited on Izium speaks for itself
Updated 26 March 2023
Nadia Al-Faour
IZIUM: A once bustling city with a population of around 44,000, Izium sits on the Donets River in Ukraine’s Kharkiv province. It grew rapidly after the Second World War following its liberation from German forces, becoming known for its many churches and cathedrals and a meeting point called Lenin Square, which was renamed John Lennon Square in February 2016.
These days, however, the streets of Izium are eerily quiet except for the speakers blasting out news in its main square. For many residents, it is their only way of knowing what is happening around them.
The 10,000 residents who remain live among destroyed Russian tanks and chunks of shrapnel. The city’s main bridge lies reduced to ruins. With their owners displaced or killed in the conflict, homeless pets wander the streets in search of food.
Eighty years after being destroyed by one war, Izium struggles with the ravages of another: the invasion of Ukraine, which began on Feb. 24, 2022, and the subsequent occupation.
Within a fortnight, on March 4 to be precise, Russian forces had captured Izium, which became a strategic command point for them. But six months later, in a stunning reversal of military fortune, the flag of Ukraine was hoisted over the city after a fierce counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces.
The recapture of Izium deprived Russia of the opportunity to use the city as a key base and resupply route for its forces in eastern Ukraine. But with 1,000 civilians killed and 80 percent of the infrastructure wrecked, the damage and destruction visited on Izium in the space of just one year speaks for itself.
Today’s Izium is something akin to a minefield. Residents walk the streets carefully, but safety is never guaranteed. They say the occupying soldiers left behind several types of mines hidden all over the city — alongside the river, on the streets, in front of houses, and in the woods.
Banners with the word “MINES” painted in large red letters can be found on every other street. One stands outside the city’s main hospital.
A once bustling city with a population of around 44,000, Izium sits on the Donets River in Ukraine’s Kharkiv province. It grew rapidly after the Second World War following its liberation from German forces, becoming known for its many churches and cathedrals. (AN photo by Mykhaylo Palinchak)
The Ukrainian government claims that Russian forces carried out 476 missile attacks on Izium, an unprecedented number even by the standards of a war characterized by heavy shelling.
At one point, Dr. Yuriy Kuznetsov, a local trauma surgeon, was the only doctor left in Izium.
“The sight of the Russian tanks rolling in through the city’s bridge remains a vivid memory. I evacuated my wife and children to safety, but I had to remain behind to take care of my bedridden mother and my disabled brother,” he told Arab News from his office in the hospital.
During the occupation, he said, the hospital faced shortages of both medicine and staff. “We tried our best to operate successfully. Our X-ray machine broke down, so at times, I had to rely on my knowledge to treat the patients. We also ran low on anesthesia. Some patients couldn’t be saved,” Kuznetsov said.
Banners with the word ‘MINES’ painted in large red letters can be found on every other street. Today’s Izium is something akin to a minefield. Residents walk the streets carefully, but safety is never guaranteed. (AN photo by Mykhaylo Palinchak)
At the height of Russian control over Izium, Kuznetsov recalled, the hospital received up to 100 wounded civilians a day. The hospital building itself was partially demolished, forcing the few remaining staff to turn the basement corridors into operating rooms.
Medical workers had to rely largely on private medical donations and on the coronavirus medications they had stocked up on during the pandemic.
Electricity, though, was not a problem, according to Kuznetsov.
“We were treating those with previous ailments, wounded civilians, and mothers in labor, and we had a small generator that kept us afloat,” he told Arab News.
Dr. Yuriy Kuznetsov, a local trauma surgeon, in the destroyed main hospital in Izium. (AN photo by Mykhaylo Palinchak)
While the hospital is being rebuilt, Kuznetsov said, the medical workers, including himself, are forced to live in small rooms along a corridor, their homes having long been destroyed. They suffer from varying degrees of depression.
Kuznetsov said he has not seen his family for a year and now spends his days treating landmine victims.
Senior Russian officials and diplomats have repeatedly defended what they call “the special military operation” in Ukraine and rejected accusations of criminal violence against civilians.
“The special military operation takes place in accordance with the fundamental provisions of the UN Charter, which gives states the right for legitimate self-defense in the event of a threat of use of force, which we have exercised,” Sergei Kozlov, the Russian ambassador to Saudi Arabia, wrote in an Arab News op-ed in February.
“As you can see, Russia follows the true spirit of international law, not some kind of ‘rules-based order,’ arbitrarily introduced by the West and its henchmen.”
Five km away from the city center, in a silent pine forest, lies a grim reminder of Izium’s darkest days. More than 440 people, only a tiny percentage of whom were said to be soldiers, lie buried in makeshift graves with wooden crosses planted atop each one. Some crosses have names and times of death listed, while others have only numbers.
The mass graves were discovered on the return of Ukrainian forces to Izium in September 2022. Bodies that were exhumed showed signs of torture. Several had their hands tied, and one had a rope around his neck. Other victims’ skulls contain several bullets.
More than 440 people, only a tiny percentage of whom were said to be soldiers, lie buried in makeshift graves outside Izium. The mass graves were discovered on the return of Ukrainian forces to Izium in September 2022. (AN photo by Mykhaylo Palinchak)
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Pesko dismissed the allegations as a “lie” and said Russia “will, of course, defend the truth in this case.”
A team of both international and Ukrainian investigators now has the painstaking work of identifying the victims. Many families eagerly wait to find out the fate of their loved ones and give them a proper burial.
At Izium’s Auto Stop Cafe, Olga Alekseychuk makes food and serves coffee. The cafe belongs to her relatives, who offered her the job of looking after it.
“It’s a pity to have lost our homes,” she told Arab News. “The winter of the occupation was very difficult to deal with. We kept warm by wearing many layers of clothes and by boiling water and huddling near the pot.”
Olga Alekseychuk at Izium’s Auto Stop Cafe. (AN photo by Mykhaylo Palinchak)
From 5 to 11 p.m., Alekseychuk said, she and her family hid in their basement to keep safe; at times, they spent entire nights there.
“This war ruined countless lives, and it is not yet over. The Russians left, but we now face a mine problem. Just a few days ago, a friend’s wife stepped on one. Luckily, she survived, but she suffered very bad injuries,” she said.
Alekseychuk said the life the people of Izium knew is over. “We now lead primitive lives. It is almost a luxury to have a Wi-Fi connection. People are walking around like zombies — no money, no jobs, no homes.”
Her sentiment was echoed by a woman who runs a small food kiosk nearby. The woman, who did not want to give her name, told Arab News she practically lived in her basement and had taken to boiling water to keep warm with her son. They survived on canned food.
In addition to the physical damage on a colossal scale, life in Izium remains blighted by anguish and trauma months after the departure of the occupying troops.
While some small businesses have reopened, the economic revival of the city is still a long way off. (AN photo by Mykhaylo Palinchak)
“The memories they’ve created for us will never leave us. My mental health problems spiraled after the occupiers left. I was in survival mode while they were here,” Alekseychuk said.
“Now I don’t know how to readjust back to normal life, which isn’t normal at all anymore.”
On a recent day, a group of teenage girls sat near the food kiosk. They said that during the six months of occupation, they had spent their time playing cards and board games while being confined to their homes.
There was nothing else to do, they told Arab News. Nevertheless, they were happy simply to have their internet connection back.
The cost of Izium’s reconstruction is yet to be determined, with some experts saying it could run into hundreds of millions of dollars.
While some small businesses have reopened, the economic revival of the city is still a long way off.
Experts say the cost of reconstruction in Izium alone could run into hundreds of millions of dollars. (AN photo by Mykhaylo Palinchak)
Most citizens expect financial assistance from Ukraine’s government, but how the authorities intend to decide on the allocation of funds remains unclear, especially given that most of its budget is still earmarked for fighting off Russian forces.
As for the citizens of Izium, they are waiting not only for the reconstruction of their city, but of their lives too.
“Everybody needs mental health services now,” the food kiosk owner said.
Putin says Russia will station tactical nukes in Belarus
Putin said the move was triggered by Britain’s decision this past week to provide Ukraine with armor-piercing rounds containing depleted uranium
The Russian leader earlier made a false claim that the rounds have nuclear components
Updated 26 March 2023
AP
MOSCOW: Russian President Vladimir Putin announced plans on Saturday to station tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus, a warning to the West as it steps up military support for Ukraine.
Putin said the move was triggered by Britain’s decision this past week to provide Ukraine with armor-piercing rounds containing depleted uranium. The Russian leader earlier made a false claim that the rounds have nuclear components.
He subsequently toned down his language, but insisted in a state television interview broadcast Saturday night that the ammunition posed an additional danger to both troops and civilians in Ukraine.
Tactical nuclear weapons are intended for use on the battlefield, unlike more powerful, longer-range strategic nuclear weapons. Russia plans to maintain control over the ones it plans to Belarus, and construction of storage facilities for them will be completed by July 1, Putin said.
Putin didn’t say how many nuclear weapons Russia would keep in Belarus. The US government believes Russia has about 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons, which include bombs that can be carried by tactical aircraft, warheads for short-range missiles and artillery rounds.
In his interview, Putin argued that by deploying its tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, Russia was following the lead of the United States, noting that the US has nuclear weapons based in Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkiye.
“We are doing what they have been doing for decades, stationing them in certain allied countries, preparing the launch platforms and training their crews,” Putin said. “We are going to do the same thing.”
Russia has stored its tactical nuclear weapons at dedicated depots on its territory, and moving part of the arsenal to a storage facility in Belarus would up the ante in the Ukrainian conflict by placing them closer to the Russian aircraft and missiles already stationed there.
Some hawkish commentators in Russia long have urged the Kremlin to put the tactical nuclear weapons close to the weapons to send a signal to the West about the readiness to use them.
Putin said Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has long asked for the nuclear weapons as a counter to NATO. Belarus shares borders with three NATO members — Latvia, Lithuania and Poland — and Russia used its territory as a staging ground to send troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
Putin noted that Russia helped modernize Belarusian military aircraft last year to make them capable of carrying nuclear warheads. He said 10 such planes were ready to go. He said nuclear weapons also could be launched by the Iskander short-range missiles that Russia provided to Belarus last year.
Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who is living in exile, said the agreement to transfer the tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus “underlines the threat to regional security” from Lukashenko’s regime.
“Europe won’t be safe until Belarus dictator is removed & brought before tribunal to face justice for crimes against our country & Ukraine,” Tsikhanouskaya wrote in English on Twitter.
While discussing in his state TV interview the depleted uranium rounds that Britain promised to ship to Ukraine, Putin charged the ammunition would leave a radioactive trace and contaminate agricultural land.
“Those weapons are harmful not just for combatants, but also for the people living in those territories and for the environment,” he said.
Putin added that Russia has vast stockpiles of similar ammunition but so far has refrained from using them.
Depleted uranium is a byproduct of the uranium enrichment process needed to create nuclear weapons. The rounds can’t generate a nuclear reaction but they do emit low levels of radiation. The UN nuclear watchdog has warned of the possible dangers of exposure.
Such rounds were developed by the US during the Cold War to destroy Soviet tanks, including the same T-72 tanks that Ukraine now faces in its push to break through a stalemate in the east.
’Everything wiped away’: Tornado kills at least 26 in Mississippi
Tornado continued sweeping northeast at 70 mph without weakening
Tens of thousands of people in Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee remained without power
Updated 26 March 2023
AP
ROLLING FORK, Mississippi: Rescuers raced Saturday to search for survivors and help hundreds of people left homeless after a powerful tornado cut a devastating path through Mississippi, killing at least 25 people, injuring dozens, and flattening entire blocks as it carved a path of destruction for more than an hour. One person was killed in Alabama.
The tornado devastated a swath of the Mississippi Delta town of Rolling Fork, reducing homes to piles of rubble, flipping cars on their sides and toppling the town’s water tower. Residents hunkered down in bath tubs and hallways during Friday night’s storm and later broke into a John Deere store that they converted into a triage center for the wounded.
“There’s nothing left,” said Wonder Bolden, holding her granddaughter, Journey, while standing outside the remnants of her mother’s now-leveled mobile home in Rolling Fork. “There’s just the breeze that’s running, going through — just nothing.”
The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency announced late Saturday afternoon in a tweet that the death toll had risen to 25 and that dozens of people were injured. Four people previously reported missing had been found.
Other parts of the Deep South were digging out from damage caused by other suspected twisters. One man died in Morgan County, Alabama, the sheriff’s department there said in a tweet.
Throughout Saturday, survivors walked around dazed and in shock as they broke through debris and fallen trees with chain saws, searching for survivors. Power lines were pinned under decades-old oaks, their roots torn from the ground.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves issued a State of Emergency and vowed to help rebuild as he headed to view the damage in an area speckled with wide expanses of cotton, corn and soybean fields and catfish farming ponds. President Joe Biden also promised federal help, describing the damage as “heartbreaking.”
The damage in Rolling Fork was so widespread that several storm chasers — who follow severe weather and often put up livestreams showing dramatic funnel clouds — pleaded for search and rescue help. Others abandoned the chase to drive injured people to the hospital.
It didn’t help that the community hospital on the west side of town was damaged, forcing patients to be transferred. The tornado also mangled a cotton warehouse and ripped the steeple off a Baptist church.
Sheddrick Bell, his partner and two daughters crouched in a closet of their Rolling Fork home for 15 minutes as the tornado barreled through. Windows broke as his daughters cried and his partner prayed.
Perrilloux said preliminary findings are that the tornado began its path of destruction just southwest of Rolling Fork before continuing northeast toward the rural communities of Midnight and Silver City, then moving toward Tchula, Black Hawk and Winona.
The supercell that produced the deadly twister also appeared to produce tornadoes that caused damage in northwest and north-central Alabama, said Brian Squitieri, a severe storms forecaster with the weather service’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma.
In northern Alabama’s Morgan County, a 67-year-old man who became trapped beneath a trailer that flipped over during severe overnight storms was rescued by first responders, but he died later at a hospital, AL.com reported.
Even as survey teams work to assess how many tornadoes struck and their severity, the Storm Prediction Center warned of the potential for hail, wind and possibly a few tornadoes Sunday in parts of Mississippi and Louisiana.
Cornel Knight waited at a relative’s home in Rolling Fork for the tornado to strike with his wife and 3-year-old daughter. Despite the darkness, its path was visible.
“You could see the direction from every transformer that blew,” he said. Just a cornfield away from where he was, the twister struck another relative’s home, collapsing a wall and trapping several people.
Royce Steed, the emergency manager in Humphreys County where Silver City is located, likened the damage to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
“It is almost complete devastation,” he said after crews finished searching buildings and switched to damage assessments. “This little old town, I don’t know what the population is, it is more or less wiped off the map.”
In the town, the roof had torn off Noel Crook’s home.
“Yesterday was yesterday and that’s gone – there’s nothing I can do about it,” Crook said. “Tomorrow is not here yet. You don’t have any control over it, so here I am today.”
The tornado looked so powerful on radar as it neared the town of Amory, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of Tupelo, that one Mississippi meteorologist paused to say a prayer after new radar information came in.
“Oh man,” WTVA’s Matt Laubhan said on the live broadcast. “Dear Jesus, please help them. Amen.”
Now that town is boiling its water, and a curfew is in effect. Three shelters in the state are feeding the throngs of displaced people.
“It’s a priceless feeling to see the gratitude on people’s faces to know they’re getting a hot meal,” said William Trueblood, of the Salvation Army, as he headed to the area, picking up supplies along the way.
Despite the damage, there were signs of improvement. Power outages, which at one point were affecting more than 75,000 customers in Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama, had been cut by a third by midafternoon Saturday, according to poweroutage.us.
Meteorologists saw a big tornado risk coming for the general region as much as a week in advance, said Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Walker Ashley.
Tornado experts like Ashley have been warning about increased risk exposure in the region because of people building more.
“You mix a particularly socioeconomically vulnerable landscape with a fast-moving, long-track nocturnal tornado, and, disaster will happen,” Ashley said in an email.
Located in southeastern Lviv, the Lychakiv cemetery is one of the oldest graveyards in Europe
It is the resting place of prominent figures including the poet Ivan Franko and thousands of soldiers who perished during World War I and II
Updated 25 March 2023
AFP
LVIV, Ukraine: At a historic military cemetery in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, Valeriy Pushko lights up two cigarettes. One is for himself, the other for his son whose portrait is fixed to a cross planted in the ground.
“I smoke with my son,” said the grey-haired man.
“We used to take cigarette breaks together. It’s a bad habit but it makes things easier. I talk to him, think about him and that makes me feel better.”
Pushko said many others come here to smoke with their fallen husbands or sons.
Located in southeastern Lviv, the Lychakiv cemetery is one of the oldest graveyards in Europe and is often compared to the historic Père Lachaise in Paris, where dozens of celebrities are buried.
It is the resting place of prominent figures including the poet Ivan Franko and thousands of soldiers who perished during World War I and II.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine over a year ago, rows of new graves have appeared. A sea of blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flags and red-and-black nationalist banners mark them.
Some mourners leave stuffed animals, cigarettes, and cups of coffee at the graves of their loved ones.
More unusual symbols of love and sorrow included children’s drawings, vinyl records, a golf ball, and a bottle of beer.
Shortly after the Russian invasion in February 2022, authorities began burying soldiers killed in fighting at the Lychakiv cemetery.
But the area initially designated for military burials quickly filled up, said city official Oleg Pidpysetsky.
The authorities then began laying Ukrainian servicemen to rest at a new site bordering Lychakiv.
Funerals are held nearly every day in the new burial ground. Called the Field of Mars, it now contains about 350 graves.
“No one knew how critical the situation was,” Pidpysetsky told AFP.
“Someone thought it would end in a month, two, three, six months. But, unfortunately, the war has only gotten bigger.”
Oleg, one of the mourners who came to visit a friend’s grave, called the losses “irreparable.”
“We will have our victory of course, but this is the price we pay. And that is not the end,” said the 55-year-old.
“These people gave their lives for us.”
Oleg mourns the loss of his 45-year-old friend also called Oleg.
He said the father of two volunteered to go to the front.
“Unfortunately, nothing can be done now. Thousands of Russians will not replace my Oleg,” he said bitterly.
Kyiv does not reveal the number of its military casualties but Western officials say more than 100,000 Ukrainians have been killed or wounded.
Olga, who came to visit her brother-in-law’s grave, says the mementos people leave “is all that’s left, the only connection with their heroes.”
Her sister comes to the cemetery every day, she added.
“That’s her second home now,” said Olga.
Vyacheslav Sabelnikov, who served in the infantry before receiving a serious injury, says several men he fought with are now buried at the cemetery.
“I came to visit a friend whose birthday is today,” said Sabelnikov, placing a candle in front of his portrait.
Sabelnikov said he lights up candles to remember his friends, saying it was important to “honor” their memory.
Anna Mikheyeva, a 44-year-old social worker, came to visit her son Mykhailo’s grave. He served in the 80th Parachute Brigade and was killed last year at the age of 25.
Mikheyeva says she often brings her son things “he liked” including Coca-Cola, sweets, and cigarettes.
“If I come in the morning, I buy a coffee for myself and also for him,” added the dark-haired woman.
She said she felt calm at the Field of Mars.
“There are only young people here. They are like sons and brothers to me.
“When I come I always say ‘Hi guys’. And I always, always thank them.”
2 men plead guilty to robbing boxer Amir Khan at gunpoint
Khan and his wife were leaving a restaurant in Leyton in east London when suspect brandished gun
Khan: ‘I have been put in the toughest situations, but this is something different’
Updated 25 March 2023
Arab News
LONDON: Two men have pleaded guilty to robbing boxer Amir Khan at gunpoint of his £70,000 ($86,000) diamond watch, Metro newspaper reported.
London’s Snarebrook Crown Court convicted Dante Campbell, 20, and 25-year-old Ahmed Bana on Friday after the two pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to rob and possession of an imitation firearm, with sentencing to be set at a later date.
Stuart Ponder, Met Flying Squad detective constable, said: “This was carefully planned and executed by individuals who knew exactly who they were targeting and what for.
“Despite being on a busy street with other members of the public close by, they had no qualms about brandishing a firearm and threatening Mr. Khan with the most brazen and extreme level of violence.”
The robbery, caught on CCTV, took place just after 9 p.m. on April 18, 2022, when 36-year-old Khan and his wife, Faryal Makhdoom, left a restaurant in Leyton in east London.
Pointing a gun in the former light welterweight champion’s face as the couple crossed the road, Campbell yelled, “Take off the watch,” before fleeing the scene in a silver Mercedes driven by Bana, which had pulled in front of Khan’s car just moments before the attack.
A Flying Squad investigation used CCTV footage to identify the car as being insured by Bana and through him identified Campbell as the gunman, with the pair arrested on June 22.
Speaking at a previous hearing, Khan told the court: “I am a sportsman, a fighter. I have been put in the toughest situations, but this is something different. This is really, really scary. When he put the gun to my face, I couldn’t recognize him because he had a mask on. I looked away because I didn’t want him to pull the trigger.”
Ponder said that every robbery leaves a “significant” mark on the victim, praising Khan for speaking out about the impact it had on both him and his family.
“That is why we are doing everything we can to target individuals who think they can get away with this type of behavior, from extra patrols at known robbery hotspots and developing intelligence on those carrying out these crimes,” Ponder added.
“Anyone who is a victim of a robbery should report it as soon as possible. This helps us ascertain crucial forensic evidence to take these violent criminals off our streets.”
Two other men arrested on suspicion of acting as “spotters” by dining in the restaurant to keep track of Khan’s movements were acquitted by a jury at Snaresbrook on Friday, while another man, Hamza Kulane, remains wanted in connection with the robbery.
