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Two former Uruguayan military officers convicted for crimes during dictatorship

Two former Uruguayan military officers convicted for crimes during dictatorship
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June 2 |

The Uruguayan justice system sentenced two retired military officers linked to the country’s last dictatorship to 12 years and six months in prison on Thursday for crimes against humanity against young communists.

The Uruguayan criminal judge, María Elbia Merlo, applied the sentence to Rubens Francia and Francisco Macaluso after considering them co-perpetrators of several crimes of deprivation of liberty and torture.

According to the ruling, Francia and Macaluso will serve their respective sentences with a discount in the time of preventive detention due to the fact that both have been under house arrest since last year.

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A group of former political prisoners, who were imprisoned between 1975 and 1978 in the headquarters of the Mechanized Infantry Battalion N°6, denounced the convicts before the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for Crimes against Humanity.

In this regard, the basis of the case was the “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” against more than 20 members of the Union of Communist Youth (UJC) in the military installation located some 95 kilometers west of the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo.

During an oral trial held early last May, eight victims presented testimonies of various tortures, including beatings, so-called “waterboarding” (sinking the prisoner in a tank of water), electric shocks and sexual abuse, among others.

Based on this, the magistrate issued her ruling in which she concluded that the two accused, who in 1975 performed duties in the aforementioned battalion, were involved in the practice of various methods of torture.

The civil-military dictatorship began in 1973 after the June 27 coup d’état and lasted until March 1985, when democracy returned. During this period, about 170 political prisoners disappeared while about a hundred died.

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International

Trump, portrayed by his former lawyer: Fixation for silencing porn actress and reluctant to pay

The testimony of Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, during this Monday’s session in the criminal trial faced by the former president in New York portrayed him as someone with such a fixation for silencing the ‘affair’ with porn actress Stormy Daniels as a will to try to dodge payments.

Emails, invoices and even a recording of an audio of Trump himself were provided today by the Prosecutor’s Office during Cohen’s statement, which assured that the former president, accused of forging accounting documents to silence Daniels and thus protect his 2016 campaign, prioritized his political career over his marriage.

“I want it to be hidden until the elections are passed (2016). If I win, it will have no relevance because I will already be president; if I lose, I won’t even care,” Cohen paraphrased Trump to add that Trump’s obsession with silencing the adult film performer “was for the campaign, not for Melania (his wife).”

Melania – who has not accompanied the former president on any day of this trial – and Trump met in 1998, when he was 52 years old and she was 28, and the couple arrived at the altar in 2005, just a year before the alleged slip with Daniels; an adventure that, if proven, would have happened when she was pregnant.

Despite Cohen’s quiet face, these harsh statements provoked some of Trump’s most agitated-headed denial movements today. Meanwhile, a hundred journalists and ordinary citizens scrutinized their gestures with maximum expectation from the court or a surrounding room to follow the process.

Cohen, sentenced to three years in prison in 2018 for illicit financing of the Republican presidential campaign two years earlier, defined as “catastrophic” the possibility that the alleged sexual relationship between him and Daniels would come to light.

“Women are going to hate me… Men may think it’s cool, but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign,” the former head of the U.S. Executive allegedly said according to Cohen’s account.

Trump agreed to seal an agreement in 2016 with Daniels’ former lawyer, Keith Davidson, to send the story to limbo for $130,000, but the transfer was postponed again and again, and the porn actress’s legal team began to become impatient to the point of threating with publishing the story in the Daily Mail media, according to the lawyer, who is now disabled.

He then detailed multiple meetings with Allen Weisselberg, former financial director of the Trump Organization, to solve the problem.

Among the proposals that were considered were, according to Cohen, creating an event of the institution whose entries were aimed at paying for it or presenting it as a “business opportunity” to the related tabloid The National Enquirer to buy the story and apply the ‘catch and kill’ technique, for which history would never see the light.

The former president, who even boasted with his condition of “billionaire”, avoided the payment and this then fell to Cohen, according to his version, who agreed to advance the money and then receive it through a screen company and under the false concept of legal services provided to the Trump Organization.

Finally, the premium that was paid to advance the money was “disappointing” for Cohen, who said that he was very angry with this undisclosed amount and that he let Weisselberg know: “I expressed how angry he was in a very clear language (…) I was even surprised how irritated I was,” he said as Trump sketched a half-smile.

Cohen also corroborated today the scheme set out by the Prosecutor’s Office in which, as a former lawyer for the former president, he allegedly worked hand in hand with the former editor of The National Enquirer, David Pecker, to acquire the exclusive rights of other extramarital Trump scandals and exercise ‘catch and kill’, as well as favoring the publication of positive news towards the future Republican candidate, along with other negative news about his political rivals.

 

 

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International

A Mexican-American artist denounces the deportations with a mural on the border

The Mexican-American artist Lizbeth de la Cruz Santana painted a mural on the border between the Mexican Ciudad Juárez and the American El Paso with images of 13 mothers, veterans and ‘dreamers’ who already had a life in the United States but were deported from that country.

His work, installed on pillars and foundations of the Santa Fe international bridge, on the Mexican side of the border, shows the human side of deportation, asylum and what happens with American families disarmed by the immigration system of the United States.

“There are 13 people, different profiles, different nationalities, it is very important to take into account that people from different parts of the world arrive at this point of the border,” the muralist said on Monday in an interview with EFE.

De la Cruz Santana is a professor of Chicanos Studies at Baruch College of the University of the City of New York, researcher of the project ‘Humanizing Deportation’, and coordinator of this project ‘Santa Fe’ in Ciudad Juárez, in addition to director of other murals, such as ‘Playas de Tijuana’, another border city.

He said that the project in Juárez includes the documentation of the stories of these 13 people, so the mural has QR codes so that people who visit this point know the stories on the artist’s website.

De la Cruz Santana commented that Mexico must have more humane policies to receive the deportees so that they can integrate more easily into society because they suffer a lot of discrimination.

He said that the main audience of the work are the deportees themselves, whose photos have been captured, so that they do not feel that their stories have been forgotten, in addition to being a message for governments, so that they are more human.

“For me, it is very important not to forget the people who have suffered deportation. People or relatives who are left behind or who have to take their children born in the United States to another country like Mexico, remind people that this issue has not been solved,” he remarked.

An example is Any García, who was born in Jalisco, a state in western Mexico, from where her family took her to the United States when she was 4 years old, but the authorities deported her 30 years later.

“My whole family is in the United States, my mom, my sisters, the father of the children, even if we are together, because we are missing those on the other side. In a perfect world, we want the way to return, even if it is not to live, but to be able to be with our loved ones,” Any said.

The woman commented that the border separates thousands of families, so the idea of participating in this project is to make visible what migrants deported by a “very inhuman” system are experiencing.

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International

The UN confirms that a worker died in Gaza from a projectile that hit his vehicle

The UN confirmed on Monday that one of its employees died and another was injured in Gaza when the vehicle they were in was hit by a projectile, allegedly Israeli, while they were heading to the European Hospital this morning.

The two victims, whose nationality has not been confirmed, worked for the Department of Security and Protection (DSS), according to a statement from the organization.

The UN spokesman, Farhan Haq, said that he could not even relevate his nationality although “they are international personnel,” and said that the first thing will be to inform their families and governments.

“As part of their daily work, they go to different places to verify the safety conditions,” and in this case it was the European Hospital of Rafah, stressed Haq, who added that the vehicle in which he was traveling was duly identified as belonging to the United Nations fleet.

The secretary general called for “a full investigation” into what happened, and said that he “condemns all attacks” against UN personnel.

The spokesman added that “about 190” UN employees, mostly members of the Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA), have died victims of the bombing of Gaza, but today’s victims are apparently the first of foreign origin.

The attack on the vehicle, part of a humanitarian convoy, had previously been reported by the Government of Hamas in Gaza.

The Israeli media Haaretz, which cites a preliminary investigation by the Army, said that at least one person died and another was injured after shooting at a UN vehicle near the Rafah crossing, but that the origin of the attack is not clear.

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