ROME: Italy arrested on Friday a suspect accused of helping a Russian governor’s son flee to his home nation while facing US extradition over alleged illegal export of military technology, authorities said.
The US Justice Department said some of the equipment had been “discovered on the battlefields of Ukraine.”
The suspect allegedly arranged for Artyom Uss to leave Italy in March 2023, the day after an Italian court ordered his extradition to the United States.
Artyom Uss, son of Siberian region governor Alexander Uss, was detained at Milan Malpensa airport on a US warrant in October 2022.
Washington accuses Uss of being involved in illegal schemes to export US military technology to Russia.
Despite wearing an electronic tracking bracelet, Uss went missing from his residence and several days later announced he was back in Russia.
The suspect arrested Friday, also a Russian, is suspected of having followed the decisions of the Milan court which ordered Uss’s extradition and preparing a plan for his escape.
The suspect, a Swiss resident, is also accused of “contacting the members of the gang who subsequently carried out the escape,” according to a statement from the Milan public prosecutor’s office.
Prosecutors said the 54-year-old, whose name they have not made public, was in constant contact with Uss’s family “in order to control the organization and execution of the exfiltration.”
Italian media identified the suspect as entrepreneur Dmitry Chirakadze, co-founder of the Pravo.ru group, which provides assistance to Russian court websites.
While not naming the suspect, the prosecutor’s office described the man as an aristocrat descended from a grand duke of Georgia.
He is also a shareholder in “numerous Russian companies with the involvement of members of the Uss family,” it added.
The five men who carried out the escape by car across the Balkans have all already been arrested.
Italy arrests suspect over flight of Russian wanted in US
https://arab.news/gqw4x
Italy arrests suspect over flight of Russian wanted in US
- The US Justice Department said some of the equipment had been “discovered on the battlefields of Ukraine“
- The suspect allegedly arranged for Artyom Uss to leave Italy in March 2023, the day after an Italian court ordered his extradition to the US
Rubio says new governance bodies for Gaza will be in place soon
- Rubio said progress had been made recently in identifying Palestinians to join the technocratic group and that Washington aimed to get the governance bodies in place “very soon,” without offering a specific timeline.
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that a new governance structure for Gaza — made up of an international board and a group of Palestinian technocrats — would be in place soon, followed by the deployment of foreign troops, as the US hopes to cement a fragile ceasefire in Israel’s war in the Palestinian enclave.
Rubio, speaking at a year-end news conference, said the status quo was not sustainable in Gaza, where Israel has continued to strike Hamas targets while the group has reasserted its control since the October peace agreement brokered by the US.
“That’s why we have a sense of urgency about bringing phase one to its full completion, which is the establishment of the Board of Peace, and the establishment of the Palestinian technocratic authority or organization that’s going to be on the ground, and then the stabilization force comes closely thereafter,” Rubio said.
Rubio said progress had been made recently in identifying Palestinians to join the technocratic group and that Washington aimed to get the governance bodies in place “very soon,” without offering a specific timeline. Rubio was speaking after the US Central Command hosted a conference in Doha this week with partner nations to plan the International Stabilization Force for Gaza.
Two US officials said last week that international troops could be deployed in the strip as early as next month, following the UN Security Council’s November vote to authorize the force.
It remains unclear how Hamas will be disarmed, and countries considering contributing troops to the ISF are wary that Hamas will engage their soldiers in combat.
Rubio did not specify who would be responsible for disarming Hamas and conceded that countries contributing troops want to know the ISF’s specific mandate and how it will be funded.
“I think we owe them a few more answers before we can ask anybody to commit firmly, but I feel very confident that we have a number of nation states acceptable to all sides in this who are willing to step forward and be a part of that stabilization force,” Rubio said, noting that Pakistan was among the countries that had expressed interest.
Establishing security and governance was key to securing donor funding for reconstruction in Gaza, Rubio added.
“Who’s going to pledge billions of dollars to build things that are going to get blown up again because a war starts?” Rubio said, discussing the possibility of a donor conference to raise reconstruction funds.
“They want to know who’s in charge, and they want to know that there’s security so and that there’ll be long term stability.”
