MOSCOW: Russell Bentley, an American who fought against Ukrainian forces, is missing in the Russian-controlled Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, police there said on Friday, adding that a search was under way.
Bentley went missing on April 8, they said. The online news outlet Mash said he had disappeared after a district in the city of Donetsk was shelled by Ukrainian forces.
Mash cited his wife as saying he had gone to see if anyone needed help but had not returned. She was quoted as saying she had found his car with his baseball cap in it along with his smashed mobile phone and a pair of glasses.
Bentley, 64, is a self-declared supporter of Russian-backed forces in Ukraine.
He joined pro-Russian fighters in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and used the military call-sign “Texas,” the Russian state news agency RIA reported.
It said Bentley had later swapped his gun for journalism and had worked with the Sputnik news agency, another state-owned entity, and obtained Russian citizenship.
In 2022, Rolling Stone magazine ran an interview with Bentley titled “The Bizarre Story of How a Hardcore Texas Leftist Became a Frontline Putin propagandist.”
American missing in Russian-controlled east Ukraine, say local police
https://arab.news/b4t2v
American missing in Russian-controlled east Ukraine, say local police
- Bentley went missing on April 8
- Mash cited his wife as saying he had gone to see if anyone needed help but had not returned
Tanzania opposition says 2,000 killed in election violence
- Opposition party Chadema’s deputy chairperson John Heche said Tanzania witnessed “mass killings of more than 2,000 people and over 5,000 injured in the space of just one week“
- The violence was carried out “with direct involvement of the state“
DAR ES SALAM: Tanzania’s main opposition party on Thursday said more than 2,000 people were killed in a week of election violence, calling for sanctions against officials it accused of crimes against humanity.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan was declared the winner of October 29 polls with 98 percent of the vote, but her government was accused of rigging the polls and overseeing a campaign of murders and abductions of her critics that sparked nationwide protests and riots.
Opposition party Chadema’s deputy chairperson John Heche told reporters that Tanzania witnessed “mass killings of more than 2,000 people and over 5,000 injured in the space of just one week.”
He said the violence was carried out “with direct involvement of the state” and that it amounted to “crimes against humanity.”
Previous opposition counts had put the deaths at more than 1,000. The government has not given a death toll.
Heche urged the international community to “impose sanctions on all individuals involved in planning and executing these acts of criminality and crimes against humanity.”
In a live online broadcast, he said those responsible should be subjected to travel bans, including restrictions on their families.
Heche also said the unrest triggered a surge of people fleeing the country, alongside “the abduction and enforced disappearance of hundreds of civilians.”
Chadema further accused security units of carrying out rapes, torture and “gruesome killings,” and of engaging in widespread looting and arbitrary arrests.
The party urged authorities to return the bodies of those killed so families could bury them.
Authorities have continued to stifle dissent, with planned protests earlier this week seeing empty streets and a significant security presence.
Hassan last week justified the killings, saying it was necessary to prevent the overthrow of the government.
“The force that was used corresponds to the situation at hand,” she said in a speech.
Hassan has formed an inquiry commission into the violence, which the opposition says includes only government loyalists, instead calling for an independent investigation.
