How two Colombians wound up in a Russian prison after fighting in Ukraine

Otilia Ante (L) and Arbey, mother and brother of retired Colombian military officer Alexander Ante, pose with a picture of Alexander at their home in Popayan, Cauca department, Colombia, on September 12, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 20 September 2024
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How two Colombians wound up in a Russian prison after fighting in Ukraine

  • Jose and Alexander were going home to Colombia after fighting with the Ukrainian army against invading Russian forces
  • They were in Venezuela on the last leg of their journey home when they vanished, leading to speculation Venezuela authorities handed them over to Russia

POPAYAN, Colombia: “Mom, I’m on my way. Save me some sancocho!“
The last time Otilia Ante, 78, heard from her son Alexander, he was telling her to put aside some of the hearty meat and corn stew on which he was raised in southwestern Colombia.
Alexander, 47, was in neighboring Venezuela at the time, on a circuitous route home from Ukraine where he had fought invading Russian forces with the army there.
But he and his Colombian brother-in-arms Jose Medina, 36, never made it onto the last leg of their long journey back from the battlefield.
The pair vanished on July 18 in Venezuela, a staunch ally of Russia, just before their connecting flight to the Colombian capital Bogota.
The next time their families saw the men was in a video released by Russia’s FSB security service on August 30, showing them being led down a corridor in prison garb with their hands cuffed behind their backs before being interrogated.
Moscow accuses the pair of acting as mercenaries, a crime punishable in Russia by up to 15 years in prison.
Jose’s wife Cielo Paz said seeing the images left her “heartbroken.”
Describing the anxious wait for news about his fate, she said she and the couple’s seven-year-old daughter “feel as if we’re also imprisoned.”

Jose and Alexander hail from Colombia’s southwestern Cauca department, the epicenter of a decades-old conflict involving the Colombian army, right-wing paramilitaries, left-wing guerrillas and drug gangs.
The pair met on the frontlines in eastern Ukraine, 11,000 kilometers (some 6,800 miles) from home, in a battalion counting many foreigners, which suffered heavy losses.
After fighting through the grueling Ukrainian winter into spring, they asked to be discharged.
The men’s families deny they were guns-for-hire, insisting they were recruited by the Ukrainian government and not a private contractor.
Colombia has one of Latin America’s largest armies and a growing pool of ex-soldiers acting as mercenaries.
About 50 Colombians have been killed in Ukraine since the start of the war in February 2022, according to Colombian government figures.




Relatives of retired Colombian military officer Jose Medina are pictured during an interview with AFP at their home in Popayan, Cauca department, Colombia, on September 13, 2024. (AFP)

Jose and Alexander were paid $3,000 a month to fight alongside Ukrainian forces — almost ten times the basic salary of a Colombian soldier.
After 14 years in the army, Alexander, who is married with a daughter, went to work as a cash-in-transit driver. He was laid off after failing an eye test.
After for months of unemployment, he decided to enlist again, this time in Ukraine.
“His plan was to go there and (earn enough money to) get his mother out of this neighborhood,” Alexander’s brother Arbey told AFP, describing the district of Popayan as “very dangerous.”
He said recruiters had assured the Colombians they would not be deployed on the frontlines.
“I think they were deceived,” he said.

“My love, here we are in Caracas,,” Jose wrote in his last WhatsApp message to Cielo from Caracas international airport.
“He was on his way home,” she told AFP at their Popayan home, which Jose was planning to finish building with his earnings.
Arbey said Alexander and Jose chose to fly through Venezuela because “the tickets were cheaper” and the pair were unaware of developments in the increasingly isolated Latin American state.
Venezuela was then in the midst of a high-stakes presidential campaign.
Incumbent strongman Nicolas Maduro claimed victory despite polling station results published by the opposition appearing to show a clear victory for their man.
Russia is one of just a handful of countries to have recognized Maduro’s victory, leading to speculation the Venezuelan strongman handed over the Colombians as thanks.
Bogota last week issued its first statement on the matter, saying merely it had requested information from Moscow about their “legal status, location and health status.”
It added a third Colombian, Miguel Angel Cardenas was also being held, without giving details.
The men have been assigned a lawyer but their families say they have been unable to communicate with their state-appointed defender.
Holding up a picture of Jose in uniform, his daughter Alison told AFP he meant “nearly everything” to her.
“Give him back to me,” she appealed.


Swedish woman faces trial for war crimes, accused of abusing Yazidis in Syria

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Swedish woman faces trial for war crimes, accused of abusing Yazidis in Syria

COPENHAGEN: A 52-year-old woman associated with the Daesh group went on trial on Monday in Sweden on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes against Yazidi women and children in Syria.
Lina Laina Ishaq, who is a Swedish citizen, is accused of committing the crimes during the period from August 2014 to December 2016 in the Syrian city of Raqqa, which at the time was the seat of the militant group’s self-proclaimed caliphate and home to about 300,000 people.
The trial marks the first time that Deash attacks against the Yazidis, one of Iraq’s oldest religious minorities, have been tried in Sweden. The hearings are expected to last about two months, most of them behind closed doors.
The crimes took place under Daesh rule in Raqqa, where Ishaq was living at the time.
Under Daesh rule, Yazidi women and children were “regarded as property and subjected to being traded as slaves, sexual slavery, forced labor, deprivation of liberty and extrajudicial executions,” prosecutor Reena Devgun said when the charges were made public last month.
The prosecution says that at her home in Raqqa, Ishaq abused Yazidis with the aim to ”completely or partially annihilate the Yazidi ethnic group,” Devgun said as the trial opened at the Stockholm District Court, the Swedish TT news agency said.
The charge sheet, obtained by The Associated Press, says Ishaq is suspected of holding nine people, including children, for up to seven months, treated them as slaves and also abused several of those she held captive.
Ishaq, who denies wrongdoing, is also accused of having molested a baby, said to have been 1 month old at the time, by holding a hand over the child’s mouth when he screamed to silence him. She is also suspected of having sold people to Daesh, knowing they risked being killed or subjected to serious sexual abuse.
The Daesh group abducted Yazidi women and children and brought them to Syria in 2014, when Daesh militants stormed Yazidi towns and villages in Iraq’s Sinjar region. Women were forced into sexual slavery, and boys were taken to be indoctrinated in jihadi ideology.
Three years later, when Daesh’s reign began to collapse, Ishaq fled from Raqqa and was captured by Syrian Kurdish troops.
She managed to escape to Turkiye where she was arrested with her son and two other children she had given birth to in the meantime with a Daesh foreign fighter from Tunisia. She was later extradited to Sweden.
Ishaq was earlier convicted in Sweden and sentenced to three years in prison for taking her 2-year-old son to Syria in 2014, to an area then controlled by Daesh. She had claimed that at the time, she had told the child’s father that she and the boy were only going on a holiday to Turkiye. However, once in Turkiye, the two crossed into Syria and into Daesh-run territory.
Ishaq who already is in prison, was identified through information from a UN team investigating atrocities in Iraq, known as UNITAD.

New blast near Israeli embassy in Denmark

Updated 07 October 2024
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New blast near Israeli embassy in Denmark

  • The blast occurred some 500 meters (yards) from the embassy in Copenhagen

COPENHAGEN: A new blast went off near the Israeli embassy in Denmark, police said on Monday as the world marked the one-year anniversary of the Hamas October 7 attack on Israel.
The blast occurred some 500 meters (yards) from the embassy in Copenhagen and came five days after two explosions near the building for which two Swedish nationals have been remanded in custody.
“We are of course looking into whether there could be a connection to the (earlier) incident at the Israeli embassy,” Copenhagen police inspector Trine Moller told reporters.
“There is no indication that this is the case,” she added, adding that the explosion was probably caused by gunfire.
Images on local media showed traces of a blast in front of a residential building some 500 meters away from the Israeli embassy.
The incident occurred on the one-year anniversary of the October 7 attacks, which were followed by Israel’s assaults on Gaza and Lebanon and protests against the wars across the world.
Sweden’s intelligence agency Sapo said that Iran may have been involved in the October 2 explosions in Denmark, as well as a shooting near Israel’s embassy in Stockholm the day earlier.
In May, Sapo said that Iran was recruiting members of Swedish criminal gangs to commit “acts of violence” against Israeli and other interests in Sweden — a claim Iran denied.
Denmark detained three Swedish nationals last week over the explosions and a Danish court on Thursday remanded two of them — aged 16 and 19 — in custody for 27 days.
Copenhagen police said the third Swede, arrested near the crime scene, had been released.


Floods in Bangladesh leave five dead

Updated 07 October 2024
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Floods in Bangladesh leave five dead

  • Over 100,000 remain stranded as floods continue to ravage northern Bangladesh 
  • Collapsed bridges, submerged roads make it difficult for authorities to reach affected areas

DHAKA: At least five people have died and more than 100,000 remain stranded as devastating floods, triggered by heavy rains and upstream torrents, continue to ravage northern Bangladesh, officials said on Sunday.
In Sherpur, one of the hardest-hit northern districts, the water levels of major rivers have surged, submerging new areas and displacing thousands of families.
Local authorities fear widespread damage to agriculture, with crops and farmlands, particularly rice fields, facing potential devastation. Many homes and roads are under several feet of water, cutting off villages and leaving residents in desperate need of rescue.
“I have never seen such flooding in my life,” said Abu Taher, a resident of the district.
Army personnel, using boats and helicopters, have joined rescue efforts, delivering emergency supplies and evacuating those trapped by the floods.
Bridges have collapsed, and roads have been submerged, making it difficult for local authorities to reach affected areas.
“Our priority is to evacuate people to safe shelters and provide them with essential supplies,” said Sherpur district administrator Torofdar Mahmudur Rahman.
He said another decomposed body, suspected to have floated from India, had been found.
The low-lying nation of 170 million has experienced multiple floods this year, underscoring its vulnerability to climate change. A 2015 World Bank Institute analysis estimated that 3.5 million people in Bangladesh are at risk of annual river flooding, a risk scientists say is worsening due to global climate change.
As water levels continue to rise, concerns grow about the long-term impact on the region’s agriculture, particularly rice crops. If the floodwaters do not recede soon, the economic toll on farmers could be severe.
Adding to the worries, the weather office has predicted more rain in the coming days, raising fears of further inundation.


Ukraine says hit oil facility on occupied Crimea

Updated 07 October 2024
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Ukraine says hit oil facility on occupied Crimea

  • Around 300 people are being evacuated from the Crimean city of Feodosia after a fire at a local oil depot

KYIV: Ukraine said Monday its forces had struck an oil terminal overnight on the Crimean peninsula — controlled by Moscow since 2014 — in Kyiv’s latest attack on Russian-controlled energy facilities.

Around 300 people are being evacuated from the Crimean city of Feodosia after a fire at a local oil depot, Russian state news agency TASS reported, citing local authorities.
Kyiv has ramped up strikes targeting Russia’s energy sector in recent months aiming to dent revenues used by Moscow to fund its invasion, now grinding through its third year.
“At night, a successful strike was carried out on the enemy’s offshore oil terminal in temporarily occupied Feodosia, Crimea,” the Ukrainian military said in a post on social media.
Russian-installed authorities in Crimea said a fire had broken out at an oil depot in the Black Sea port town of some 70,000 people and that there were no casualties.

The Russian defense ministry meanwhile said that 12 Ukrainian attack drones had been downed over the peninsula overnight, of a total of 21 deployed by Kyiv against Russia.
“The Feodosia terminal is the largest in Crimea in terms of transshipment of oil products, which were used, among other things, to meet the needs of the Russian occupation army,” the Ukrainian military said, vowing to continue such attacks.
Ukraine says the strikes are fair retaliation for Russian attacks on its own energy infrastructure that have plunged millions into darkness.
Separately, Russian forces targeted Kyiv with three missiles, city authorities said, adding that debris from one sparked a fire that was extinguished by emergency services.


Blast kills two Chinese workers in Pakistan’s biggest city

Updated 07 October 2024
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Blast kills two Chinese workers in Pakistan’s biggest city

KARACHI: A massive blast that targeted a convoy of Chinese workers in Pakistan’s largest city killed two nationals, Beijing’s embassy said Monday, in an attack claimed by a separatist group.
Beijing is a crucial ally for cash-strapped Pakistan but Chinese-funded infrastructure projects have sparked resentment and its nationals are routinely targeted by militant groups.
A “tanker” exploded on the airport motorway in the port city of Karachi around 11:00 p.m. (1800 GMT) Sunday, the regional government of southern Sindh province said on X.
Separatist militant group the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) said in a statement that it had “targeted a high-level convoy of Chinese engineers and investors” coming from Karachi’s international airport.
Karachi borders Balochistan province, the largest but poorest region of the country, where billions of dollars have been funnelled into transport, energy and infrastructure projects as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
The BLA is waging a war of independence against the state, which it accuses of permitting unfair exploitation of resources by outsiders in the mineral-rich region.
In August, it carried out coordinated attacks across Balochistan that killed dozens of mostly Punjabis, the largest ethnic group in Pakistan, who were working in the region.
Beijing’s embassy to Pakistan said in a statement on Monday that two Chinese citizens had been killed in a “terror attack” on a convoy of personnel from the Chinese-funded Port Qasim power project.
The attack also left one Chinese and several Pakistani citizens wounded, the embassy said.
The embassy urged authorities to “conduct a thorough investigation of the attack and severely punish the killers, while at the same time taking practical measures to fully ensure the safety of Chinese citizens, institutions and projects.”
Beijing has repeatedly asked Islamabad to ensure the safety and security of Chinese nationals and its interests.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Monday that it “reaffirms its unwavering commitment to the safety and security of Chinese nationals.”
Sunday night’s attack comes a week before Pakistan hosts several heads of governments for a Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, a bloc established by Russia and China to deepen ties with Central Asian states.
Beijing is Islamabad’s closest regional ally, readily providing financial assistance to bail out its often struggling neighbor.
The CPEC has seen tens of billions of dollars funnelled into massive transport, energy and infrastructure projects — part of Beijing’s transnational “Belt and Road” scheme.
A suicide bomber killed five Chinese engineers working on the construction of a dam in northwestern Pakistan in March, temporarily pausing the project.
The attack was not claimed, but it came days after militants attempted to storm offices of the Gwadar deepwater port at the other end of the country, considered a cornerstone of Chinese investment in Pakistan.
In June 2020, Baloch insurgents targeted the Pakistan Stock Exchange, which is partly owned by Chinese companies, in the commercial capital of Karachi.
In 2019, gunmen stormed a luxury hotel in Balochistan province overlooking the flagship Chinese-backed deepwater seaport in Gwadar that gives strategic access to the Arabian Sea — killing at least eight people.