Tag Archives: human rights violations

US

Report: Man accused of kidnapping, torturing Oregon woman dies from self-inflicted gunshot wound following police standoff

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CNN
 — 

A week after authorities discovered a woman bound and beaten in a southwest Oregon home, the kidnapping suspect has died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, a CNN affiliate reports.

Benjamin Obadiah Foster, 36, died in a hospital after an hourslong standoff with law enforcement Tuesday evening in Grants Pass, Oregon, CNN affiliate KTVL reported, citing a police spokesperson.

The standoff concluded after authorities had surrounded the home – under which they believed Foster was hiding – and were trying to convince the suspect to surrender, KTVL reported.

In a statement Tuesday night, Grants Pass police said Foster was “in custody” after the standoff but provided no additional details. The department said it will hold a press conference Wednesday.

Foster was wanted on suspicion of attempted murder, kidnapping and assault after officers found a woman restrained and beaten until she was unconscious in a Grants Pass home on January 24, police said.

Prosecutors have accused Foster of torturing the woman with the intention of killing her, according to charging documents.

The victim was still hospitalized in critical condition as of Sunday, according to Grants Pass Police Chief Warren Hensman.

Foster knew his victim before the attack, Hensman told CNN, saying the two had a “prior relationship.” He did not elaborate but said, “This was not a random attack.”

The suspect had already fled by the time officers arrived at the scene last week, prompting a sweeping multi-day search for Foster which drew a flood of tips from the public and included federal, state and local agencies, police said.

As they searched for Foster, police warned he was “extremely dangerous” and potentially armed. Hensman said he was “definitely a threat to others,” particularly those who might try to befriend him.

Investigators said Foster likely received help fleeing law enforcement. They also warned he could be may have been using dating apps to find potential new victims or lure people into aiding his escape.

When officers responded to a 911 call from a friend of the victim, they were confronted with “an absolutely disgusting scene,” Hensman told CNN. The victim had been suffering the alleged abuses for a “protracted amount of time” before she was discovered, he said.

“This will stay stained in my memory for many years to come,” the police chief said, describing images of the scene as “horrific.”

At least two women who have had relationships with Foster have accused him of attacking and abusing them, according to Clark County court records from cases in Las Vegas.

In the first case, his ex-girlfriend testified that in 2017 Foster flew into a rage and strangled her after seeing that another man had texted her. Foster was charged with felony battery constituting domestic violence, the records show.

While that case was still pending, he was charged with felony assault, battery and kidnapping after his then-girlfriend told police that he had strangled her multiple times and kept her tied up for most of a two-week period, according to the documents.

The woman was finally able to escape by convincing Foster they needed to go shop for food and fleeing through a store, a Las Vegas police report said. When she reached a hospital, she had seven broken ribs, two black eyes and abrasions to her wrists and ankles from being tied up, the report said.

Foster accepted plea deals in both cases. In the first case, he was sentenced to a maximum of 30 months in prison but given credit for 729 days served.

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Entertainment

Ghislaine Maxwell claims Prince Andrew photo with Virginia Giuffre is ‘fake’

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CNN
 — 

Convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has said a decades-old photograph of Prince Andrew with his sexual abuse accuser Virginia Giuffre is “fake,” in a series of interviews from prison.

The disgraced British socialite is currently serving a 20-year sentence in US federal prison for carrying out a years-long scheme with her longtime confidante Jeffrey Epstein to groom and sexually abuse underage girls.

Speaking from a Florida jail to UK broadcaster TalkTV, which aired a special program on Monday night, the 61-year-old – who also appears in the photograph – said she doesn’t “believe it happened.”

“I don’t believe it is real for a second, in fact, I’m sure it’s not. There has never been an original. I don’t believe it happened and certainly, the way it’s described would have been impossible. I don’t have any memory of going to Tramp [nightclub],” Maxwell said.

Prince Andrew, who is one of King Charles III’s younger brothers, has strenuously denied Giuffre’s allegation that he was introduced to her at London’s Tramp nightclub in 2001 with Maxwell, before then-17-year-old Giuffre was allegedly forced to perform sex acts with the British royal.

Giuffre filed a civil lawsuit in a US court in 2021 against Andrew, who is also known as the Duke of York, alleging sexual abuses while she was a minor on multiple occasions. Andrew later settled out of court for an undisclosed figure without admitting any wrongdoing and the case was dismissed. Still, the allegations against the senior royal severely tarnished his reputation. He stepped back from royal duties in late 2019 and was stripped of his military titles and royal patronages last year.

Maxwell appeared to show little remorse to Epstein’s victims and offered no apology in the interviews broadcast Monday. Instead, she said the victims should “take their disappointment and upset out on the authorities who allowed” the billionaire pedophile to die in prison.

Maxwell also told TalkTV that she believes Epstein was murdered – a conspiracy theory for which she offered no evidence. Authorities ruled Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while he was awaiting trial on federal charges accusing him of sexually abusing underage girls.

Regarding the victims, Maxwell said, “I hope they have some closure via the judicial process that took place.”

Maxwell acknowledged during her sentencing hearing last year that she had been convicted in the sex trafficking scheme but stopped short of taking responsibility. She did not testify in her defense during the trial in late 2021, which ended with her conviction on five counts, including sex trafficking of a minor.

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World

Kharkiv police say bodies of more than 500 civilians found

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CNN
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The bodies of more than 500 civilians have been discovered in territory in northeast Ukraine recently retaken from Russian forces, Ukrainian police say.

And as Ukrainian forces liberate more land in the northeast, new burial sites are being discovered in Donetsk. Many appear to contain the remains of civilians who lost their lives during several months of shelling and rocket fire.

“We found the bodies of 534 civilians from the de-occupied territories” in Kharkiv region alone, said Serhii Bolnivov, head of the investigative department of the regional police.

The bodies included 226 women and 19 children, Bolvinov added.

Most of those recovered – 447 – were found at what he described as a “mass burial site” in the town of Izium, which Ukrainian forces liberated from Russian occupation in early September. Russian troops had been using Izium as a launchpad for attacks southward into the Donetsk region.

CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh visited the site in mid-September.

Bolvinov also alleged that more than twenty suspected Russian “torture chambers” have been found in the region.

“In almost all large cities and towns, where military units of the Russian army were based, they set up such places of detention of civilians and prisoners of war and tortured them,” he said, mentioning one in the town of Pisky-Radkivski.

“This is the 22nd torture chamber which we have found and inspected in the de-occupied territory of the Kharkiv region,” said Bolvinov.

He said the most common torture techniques were electric shocks and severe beatings with sticks and other objects. There were also cases of nails being pulled out and the use of gas masks to restrict breathing.

Bolvinov said there were also criminal proceedings underway regarding allegations of rape.

“We understand that it is very difficult for victims to testify about such facts. However, there are proceedings that we have registered, there are appeals from women who were raped. We have information about the alleged facts of rapes in torture chambers,” Bolvinov added.

The Ukrainian investigations in Kharkiv follow the discovery of grave human rights abuses by Russian forces north of Kyiv in March.

Russia was accused of a litany of war crimes during its unsuccessful campaign to capture Kyiv in the early months of the war. After retreating from Bucha, a suburb of the Ukrainian capital, reports of emerged of Russian forces carrying out summary executions indiscriminate shelling. Bodies were found shot, tied up and left to rot, some bearing signs of torture. In nearby Borodianka, dead civilians were found strewn along the streets. Homes were reportedly ransacked.

Moscow has consistently denied its soldiers are responsible for war crimes. In Bucha, the Kremlin claimed – without evidence – that the atrocities there were staged. However, witnesses who spoke to CNN said the carnage in the town began after its occupation.

A report published in July by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe found that found that the patterns of violent acts by Russian forces in Ukraine meet the qualification of crimes against humanity.

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World

Izium mass burial site: Signs of torture, mutilation on bodies

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CNN
 — 

Ukrainian officials say they have finished exhuming bodies from a mass burial site in Izium – and that of the 436 bodies found, 30 showed signs of torture.

In a gruesome reminder of the human cost of Russia’s invasion, most of the bodies showed signs of a violent death, said Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv region military administration.

“There are bodies with a rope around the neck, with hands tied, with broken limbs and with gunshot wounds. Several men had their genitals amputated,” Syniehubov said in a Telegram post on Friday.

“All this is evidence of the terrible torture to which the occupiers subjected the residents of Izium.”

Syniehubov added that most of the bodies were civilians and only 21 were military.

Izium, which sits near the border between the Kharkiv and Donetsk regions of Ukraine, was subject to intense Russian artillery attacks in April before it was occupied. It then became an important hub for the invading military during five months of occupation.

Ukrainian forces took back control of the city this month, delivering a strategic blow to Russia’s military assault in the east.

Russian forces were forced to flee the strategic eastern city after Ukrainian forces began a new offensive eastward through the Kharkiv region.

While Ukraine’s offensive successfully regained thousands of square miles of territory, it also uncovered evidence of the horrors suffered by civilians and soldiers at the hands of Russian troops.

Syniehubov said this wasn’t the only mass burial ground that had been discovered. There are at least three more in other liberated areas of the Kharkiv region, he said.

He added that each of the bodies recovered has a separate story, and he vowed to find out the circumstances of each of their deaths “so that their relatives and friends know the truth and the killers are punished.”

“All crimes of the occupiers will be documented, and the perpetrators will pay for what they have done,” Syniehubov said.

He thanked the 200 people – including forensic experts, police officers, and employees of the State Emergency Service – who had been working there everyday for their “morally difficult but necessary work.”

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