Tag Archives: Detainee

World

Kosovo asks NATO to airlift a Serb detainee as tensions rise

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PRISTINA, Dec 22 (Reuters) – (This Dec. 22 story has been corrected to say that police officers were transported by NATO via ground routes, not by helicopter, in paragraph 7)

Kosovo has asked NATO troops to airlift a former Serb policeman who was detained two weeks ago but could not be transferred elsewhere because local Serbs demanding his release set up barricades to prevent him being moved.

Dejan Pantic was arrested on Dec. 10 on charges of assaulting serving police officers during a previous protest.

Tensions have been running high since then as thousands of Kosovo Serbs protest, demanding the country’s Albanian-majority government pulls its police force out of the north, where the Serb minority is concentrated.

Local Serbs, who number around 50,000 in northern Kosovo, reiterated at a protest on Thursday that they would not remove the roadblocks unless Pantic is released.

“He (Pantic) should be in a detention center and not in a police station and that’s why we have asked our international partners to transfer him in an adequate facility,” Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla told a news conference in Mitrovica, just a few kilometers away from the first barricade.

NATO’s mission in Kosovo, KFOR, is the only force that has helicopters. Kosovo has no helicopters and would need NATO’s permission to hire one.

KFOR has already transported via ground routes nine police officers in recent days who were ill but unable to get out of the area after the roads were blocked.

The NATO force, which has more than 3,000 troops on the ground, said the KFOR commander is the sole authority to decide over Kosovo’s airspace.

“Every request that has been refused was because, as in the current situation, there were not the needed security conditions,” KFOR said in a written statement to Reuters without saying what request has been refused.

Svecla said his police force could remove the barricades but that he wanted local Serbs or NATO troops to remove them.

“For the sake of stability we are waiting for them to be removed by those who set them up or KFOR, but even waiting has its end,” he said.

Kosovo’s government has previously said people at the barricades are armed and any police intervention could harm people from both sides.

Ethnic Serb mayors in northern municipalities, along with local judges and some 600 police officers, resigned last month in protest over a Kosovo government decision to replace Serbian-issued car license plates with ones issued by Pristina.

Reporting by Fatos Bytyci, editing by Deepa Babington and Grant McCool

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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World

Daughter of American released from Venezuela says Marco Rubio’s criticism of detainee swap is ‘unpatriotic and unhelpful’

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Washington
CNN
 — 

The relative of two Americans freed this weekend in a prisoner swap with Venezuela tore into GOP Sen. Marco Rubio on Monday over his criticism of the exchange, blasting his comments as “unpatriotic and unhelpful” and questioning his support for the seven wrongfully detained US citizens.

“I find that those comments were extremely unhelpful and misinformed. He is – I’m disappointed that a leader in our country is perpetuating this myth that getting our people home actually puts Americans at risk,” Alexandra Forseth, the daughter of Alirio Zambrano and the niece of Jose Luis Zambrano, two of the seven released Americans, told CNN’s Alex Marquardt on “New Day.”

“And, you know, what I would ask Sen. Rubio is you’ve supported getting them home, you have done absolutely nothing for me or my family or most of these men, and any of the families can tell you that,” she continued. “And he even had a constituent from his state that was released, and I would ask, what did you do for his family? How have you’ve been supporting them?”

“I find his comments unpatriotic and unhelpful,” Forseth said.

On Sunday, Rubio questioned the decision to swap the seven wrongfully detained Americans for two Venezuelans imprisoned in the US for conspiring to smuggle cocaine into the country, both nephews of Venezuelan first lady Cilia Flores. The Florida senator warned that the trade “puts Americans all over the world in danger.”

“I wanted those people released as much as anybody, but every time you do this, now, others know, ‘I can take Americans, I can hold them until I need something as a bargaining chip,’ ” Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee and a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

“I think seven innocent American hostages in exchange for two convicted drug dealers, who happened to be the nephews of (Venezuelan President Nicolas) Maduro, is a huge win for Maduro and, unfortunately, puts Americans all over the world now in danger,” Rubio said.

The Zambrano brothers, along with Jorge Toledo, Tomeu Vadell and Jose Pereira, are five of the six American oil executives known as the “CITGO 6” arrested in Venezuela more than four years ago. Two Americans who had been detained there, including one of the CITGO 6, were released in March following the visit of two top US government officials to Caracas. The other Americans freed on Saturday are Matthew Heath, a Marine veteran, who was detained in September 2020, and Osman Khan, who had been detained since January 2022. All seven individuals were classified by the US government as wrongfully detained.

In August, Alirio Zambrano issued a handwritten plea to President Joe Biden to act decisively to free him and his fellow wrongful detainees, telling Biden, “I am afraid I won’t see my family ever again.”

“I don’t know how much longer we can wait; but I do know people that have died here, and I fear the same fate could befall any of us at any time,” he wrote in the letter, which is dated August 28.

His daughter said on “New Day” that learning about her relatives’ return was the “biggest relief and feeling of euphoria that I could ever describe.”

“It’s been quite a trial and tribulation, but I’m so thankful that we were able to get them home finally,” Forseth said.

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World

Iran: Detainee with triple nationality who was released as part of deal with UK is sent back to jail 

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Morad Tahbaz, who is also a US citizen, spent 48 hours “under house arrest” with an ankle bracelet before being taken back to prison, according to his lawyer Hojjat Kermani.

Tahbaz, an environmentalist who was first detained in January 2018, was released from Evin prison “on furlough to his house in Tehran,” UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said in a statement on Wednesday.

Tahbaz’s lawyer told CNN that “security guards surrounded Morad’s home for 48 hours before taking him back to prison.” 

On Friday, a UK Foreign Office spokesperson said “the Iranians have told the UK government that Morad has been taken to Evin to fit an ankle tag that should have been fitted before his release. We hope to see him returned to his home in the coming hours. Morad Tahbaz is a tri-national and we are working closely with the United States to secure Morad’s permanent release.”

A spokesperson for the US State Department also told CNN that “Iran made a commitment to the UK to furlough Morad Tahbaz. As the UK government has said, the UK has been told that Morad has been returned to Evin prison solely to be fitted with an ankle tag, after which he will be allowed to go home.”

The spokesperson added that the US is not “a party to this arrangement, but would join the UK in considering anything short of Morad’s immediate furlough a violation of Iran’s commitment.”

As of Saturday morning, CNN cannot confirm whether Tahbaz has been rereleased from prison and back under house arrest. 

The US is “urgently consulting” with the UK on appropriate responses and said it continues “to work night and day to secure the release of our wrongfully detained citizens, including U.S.-UK citizen Morad Tahbaz.”

The State Dept. spokesperson added, “simply put, Iran is unjustly detaining innocent Americans and others and should release them immediately.”

Following the release of Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Ashoori earlier this week, Truss announced the UK had settled a decades-old £400 million ($524 million) debt owed to Iran, which Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian denied was linked to the prison release on Wednesday.

Ramin Mostaghim reported from Tehran, Celine Alkhaldi wrote from Abu Dhabi, Ruba Alhenawi and Maija Ehlinger wrote from Atlanta, Arnaud Siad wrote from London and Jennifer Hansler wrote from the State Department. CNN’s Jeevan Ravindran contributed to this report.

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