Tag Archives: smuggling

$54 million Jackson Pollock painting discovered during Bulgaria art smuggling probe – New York Post

  1. $54 million Jackson Pollock painting discovered during Bulgaria art smuggling probe New York Post
  2. Unknown Jackson Pollock painting found in raid, say Bulgarian officials The Guardian
  3. A Jackson Pollock Painting Discovered During a Police Raid in Bulgaria May Be Worth $54 Million Yahoo Life
  4. Previously Unknown Jackson Pollock Painting, Possibly Worth $54 M., Was Discovered During Raid, Report Bulgarian Authorities ARTnews
  5. Mysterious Jackson Pollock painting found in Bulgarian art smuggling raid, officials say Art Newspaper
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Mass. lab business subpoenaed in monkey smuggling investigation – Boston.com

  1. Mass. lab business subpoenaed in monkey smuggling investigation Boston.com
  2. CRL EQUITY ALERT: ROSEN, A TOP RANKED LAW FIRM, Encourages Charles River Laboratories International, Inc. Investors With Losses In Excess of $100K to Inquire About Securities Class Action Investigation – CRL Business Wire
  3. Charles River Laboratories part of federal monkey smuggling investigation CBS Boston
  4. Federal monkey smuggling investigation now involves Wilmington’s Charles River Labs CBS Boston
  5. Charles River suspends shipments of monkeys used in research amid federal probe STAT
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There’s beeen an increase in egg smuggling attempts across the border, says San Diego Customs



CNN
 — 

High prices are driving an increase in attempts to bring eggs into the US from Mexico, according to border officials.

Officers at the San Diego Customs and Border Protection Office have seen an increase in the number of attempts to move eggs across the US-Mexico border, according to a tweet from director of field operations Jennifer De La O.

“The San Diego Field Office has recently noticed an increase in the number of eggs intercepted at our ports of entry,” wrote De La O in the Tuesday tweet. “As a reminder, uncooked eggs are prohibited entry from Mexico into the U.S. Failure to declare agriculture items can result in penalties of up to $10,000.”

Bringing uncooked eggs from Mexico into the US is illegal because of the risk of bird flu and Newcastle disease, a contagious virus that affects birds, according to Customs and Border Protection.

In a statement emailed to CNN, Customs and Border Protection public affairs specialist Gerrelaine Alcordo attributed the rise in attempted egg smuggling to the spiking cost of eggs in the US. A massive outbreak of deadly avian flu among American chicken flocks has caused egg prices to skyrocket, climbing 11.1% from November to December and 59.9% annually, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The increase has been reported at the Tijuana-San Diego crossing as well as “other southwest border locations,” Alcordo said.

For the most part, travelers bringing eggs have declared the eggs while crossing the border. “When that happens the person can abandon the product without consequence,” said Alcordo. “CBP agriculture specialists will collect and then then destroy the eggs (and other prohibited food/ag products) as is the routine course of action.”

In a few incidents, travelers did not declare their eggs and the products were discovered during inspection. In those cases, the eggs were seized and the travelers received a $300 penalties, Alcordo explained.

“Penalties can be higher for repeat offenders or commercial size imports,” he added.

Alcordo emphasized the importance of declaring all food and agricultural products when traveling.

“While many items may be permissible, it’s best to declare them to avoid possible fines and penalties if they are deemed prohibited,” he said. “If they are declared and deemed prohibited, they can be abandoned without consequence. If they are undeclared and then discovered during an exam the traveler will be subject to penalties.”



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US Navy halts Iranian smuggling vessel, finds over 2,000 assault rifles

The U.S. Navy seized more than 2,000 assault rifles after halting a suspected smuggling vessel on its way from Iran to Yemen, the Navy announced Tuesday.

The USS Chinook deployed a boarding team to the vessel in the Gulf of Oman with support from the USS Monsoon and USS The Sullivans on Jan. 6, discovering a crew of Yemeni nationals. The U.S. confiscated 2,116 assault rifles and is in the process of repatriating the ship and its crew, according to a Navy statement.

“This shipment is part of a continued pattern of destabilizing activity from Iran,” said Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, U.S. 5th Fleet and Combined Maritime Forces. “These threats have our attention. We remain vigilant in detecting any maritime activity that impedes freedom of navigation or compromises regional security.”

The Yemeni-crewed ship was the third fishing vessel to be found smuggling lethal aid from Iran to Houthi rebels in Yemen since November. U.S. forces also seized more than 50 tons of ammunition rounds, fuses and propellants for rockets on Dec. 1. USS The Sullivans, USS Hurricane and USCG John Scheuerman also intercepted more than 70 tons of chemicals used to make rocket propellant and explosives on Nov. 8.

UN WATCHDOG: ACCESS TO KEY IRANIAN DATA LACKING SINCE FEB 23

An Iranian smuggling vessel halted by U.S. Navy forces.

The U.S. Navy confiscated 2,000 assault rifles being smuggled out of Iran to Yemen.
(NAVCENT Public Affairs)

The U.S. Navy routinely patrols common smuggling routes in the Gulf of Oman. Iranian vessels smuggling weapons to Yemen must travel east through the gulf before heading south to Yemen.

International law and the U.N. Security Council ban the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer of weapons to Houthi rebels in Yemen.

POMPEO SAYS BIDEN’S IRAN TALKS ‘SQUANDERED’ MIDDLE EAST STABILITY: ‘PUTTING US ALL AT RISK’

The U.S. Navy has a long history of interactions with Iranian vessels in the area as well. Three Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy vessels (IRGCN) confronted a U.S. convoy in the Strait of Hormuz in June 2022, with one of the vessels closing within 50 yards of the USS Sirocco.

“One of the IRGCN vessels approached Sirocco head-on at a dangerously high speed and only altered course after the U.S. patrol coastal ship issued audible warning signals to avoid collision. The Iranian vessel also came within 50 yards of the U.S. Navy ship during the interaction, and Sirocco responded by deploying a warning flare,” the U.S. Navy said of the incident.

U.S. Navy servicemen transfer 2,000 assault rifles confiscated from an Iranian smuggling vessel.
(NAVCENT Public Affairs)

2,000 assault rifles confiscated by the U.S. Navy from Iranian smugglers.
(NAVCENT Public Affairs)

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U.S. warships fired warning shots at Iranian boats during a similar encounter in May 2021.

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Spies, microchips, and night lights: The story of an alleged Russian smuggling ring in a N.H. town.

But Tuesday morning, that perfect American image was shattered as Alexey Brayman, 35, and six others were named in a sprawling federal indictment that accused them of running an international smuggling ring that illegally funneled sensitive technology to Russia. Brayman, an Israeli citizen who was born in Ukraine, was taken into custody shortly after and appeared Tuesday evening in federal court in Concord, dressed in jeans and a red, white, and blue track jacket. He was released on a $150,000 bond, ordered to turn over his passport, and is subjected to travel restrictions and a curfew.

Federal authorities also arrested two other alleged conspirators, including one in Estonia last week and a second in New Jersey on Tuesday.

Daria and Alexey Brayman of Merrimack, N.H.Facebook

Prosecutors allege the Braymans’ home has been a clearinghouse for expensive semiconductors, oscilloscopes, and other items bound for Russia, items that experts said are commonly used in weapons systems, including those used in the country’s ongoing war with Ukraine.

The federal charging documents, obtained by the Globe, outline a plot pulled straight from “The Americans” TV series, about KGB agents raising a family near Washington, D.C.

As the Braymans lived a seemingly quintessential American lifestyle — attending Celtics games, vacationing in Florida, visiting local arts festivals — Alexey Brayman allegedly received a steady stream of “advanced electronics and sophisticated testing equipment used in quantum computing, hypersonic and nuclear weapons development and other military and space-based military applications,” according to the indictment unsealed in the Eastern District of New York.

Those items, investigators alleged, “could make a significant contribution to the military potential or nuclear proliferation of other nations or that could be detrimental to the . . . national security of the United States.”

Alexey Brayman at a Celtics game at TD Garden. Facebook

To evade US export sanctions, prosecutors say, members of the ring shipped the equipment piecemeal to Alexey Brayman’s home in Merrimack using fictitious front companies headed by Russian businessmen and associates. Brayman, authorities allege, would then forward the equipment on to Germany and Estonia, “common transshipment points for items ultimately destined for Russia.”

The accused smugglers have been on the radar of federal investigators for some time, documents show. In early October, a federal magistrate judge approved an extensive FBI search of the Merrimack home, including computers and cellphones, according to a copy of the search warrant application obtained by the Globe. FBI agents specializing in espionage and counterintelligence activity later raided the home.

On Tuesday morning, federal authorities unsealed a 16-count indictment, naming Brayman, Yevgeniy Grinin, Aleksey Ippolitov, Boris Livshits, Svetlana Skvortsova, Vadim Konoshchenok, and Vadim Yermolenko. They allegedly played various roles in the scheme and are charged with conspiracy, money laundering, smuggling, and bank and wire fraud.

Konoshchenok was arrested and taken into custody in Estonia, while Yermolenko was arrested and taken into custody Tuesday morning in Upper Saddle River, N.J., authorities added.

“The Department of Justice and our international partners will not tolerate criminal schemes to bolster the Russian military’s war efforts,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement. “With three of the defendants now in custody, we have disrupted the procurement network allegedly used by the defendants and Russian intelligence services to smuggle sniper rifle ammunition and sensitive electronic components to Russia.”

The arrests come as the war in Ukraine nears its 10th month, outlasting Russia’s original projections and sapping the country’s stockpiles of weapons and microelectronics. The Kremlin’s ability to sustain the offensive now hinges in part on its access to Western electronics that are more difficult than ever to obtain under current US sanctions.

Meanwhile, the relationship between the United States and Russia remains fraught. Just last week, the countries executed a high-stakes prisoner swap: Viktor Bout, the notorious Russian arms dealer nicknamed the “Merchant of Death,” in exchange for WNBA star Brittney Griner, who had been arrested in Russia for allegedly carrying vape canisters with cannabis oil.


The house at 30 Ellie Drive in Merrimack, N.H.Jim Davis/Globe Staff

On a weekday afternoon in late November, delivery drivers piled packages of various sizes on the Braymans’ garland-wrapped front porch. A security camera pointed inconspicuously from its perch above the front door.

When the doorbell beckoned, Daria Brayman greeted a Globe reporter wearing bright blue socks that said “Fun City.” When she learned of the reason for the visit, she stepped out onto the front porch and quickly pulled the door closed behind her.

She initially invited a reporter to return later to speak with her husband, who she said was not at home, before later saying she would need to consult with her lawyer.

Asked about allegations that her husband was using their home to funnel sensitive materials to Russia, however, Brayman denied knowing about anything illegal.

“We do craft festivals and fairs,” she explained, an apparent reference to the family’s night light company.

The couple’s online profiles suggest they would be unlikely associates in the Russian war machine.

On his Facebook page, Alexey Brayman lists his hometown as Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and court records identify him as an Israeli citizen. He also once posted a clip of Ukrainian performers on “America’s Got Talent,” calling attention to the years-long conflict with Russia.

Last spring, while the components for warfare were allegedly being smuggled through their home, Daria Brayman used her Facebook page to tout her donations to a charity that provides “life-saving medical and humanitarian aid to Ukrainians affected by the Russian military invasion.”


For decades, experts said, Russia has relied on a discreet web of agents to illicitly procure materials the country struggles to produce itself, such as high-level electronics components used for combat and defense.

The battle to obtain such goods has taken on an added urgency in recent years, however, as tensions over Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Ukraine in February resulted in an extensive list of prohibited exports aimed at choking off Russia’s access to crucial Western-made products.

The materials at the heart of the Merrimack case — semiconductors — are known as “dual-use” technologies. Though ubiquitous in everyday items such as PlayStations and motor vehicles, the tiny chips are also vital to producing weapon systems such as the ballistic missile that struck a southern Ukraine maternity ward in November, killing a newborn child.

“You need these things to hit very specific targets, like a power station or a hospital,” said James Byrne, a director at the Royal United Services Institute, in an interview with the Globe. They’re “a very important part of how Russia fights a war.”

Despite the institution of widespread sanctions — as well as the insistence of US officials that they’ve had a crippling effect on Russia’s war efforts — there is little question that American-made materials have continued to flow into Russia.

Researchers have identified hundreds of electronics produced by US-based companies in Russian weapons systems recovered by Ukraine , according to a report released by Reuters and the Royal United Services Institute in August.

“Russia [has] a lot of expertise in obtaining those components — they’ve had a long experience of doing it, and it’s something they take very seriously,” said Nick Reynolds, a report coauthor and research analyst at the institute.

“People who do that are valuable assets.”


The Braymans arrived in this town of 26,000, perhaps best known for its long-running barbecue rib festival, in 2019, settling into a well-kept home at the end of a quiet street popular with joggers and dog-walkers.

Those acquainted with the couple described them as friendly, if private; few who spoke to the Globe in recent weeks acknowledged knowing the Braymans closely. But public records, as well as the couple’s social media activity, offer a glimpse into the lives they built after arriving in the United States more than a decade ago.

Posts from Alexey Brayman’s Facebook page from a decade ago teem with musings on sex, women, and gambling: in one photo, he poses behind the wheel of a convertible; in another, between a pair of scantily clad women, smiling slyly. He seemed to strike a more domestic tone following his 2015 marriage to Daria, however. He posted images of their dinner dates and family vacations to St. Augustine, Fla., and Israel, where the couple ate sushi and posed with giraffes in Haifa.

“Nice overtime win! Celtics #BleedGreen,” he wrote in a Facebook post in January, along with a photo taken near the court at TD Garden.

His wife also appears to have assimilated smoothly into American life.

Her LinkedIn profile suggests she spent her early career working for a pipe company in the Russian city of Kopeisk. Later, she earned a master’s degree in professional communication from Clark University in Worcester in 2012, according to her online resume. She then went to work as a project manager at inSegment, a digital marketing agency based in Newton, according to the resume. Daria Brayman has not been charged with a crime.

In 2016, state records show, Alexey Brayman launched a business, Cool Houz LLC, specializing in personalized night lights — adorned with dolphins, ballerinas, and the Boston Bruins — that Walmart would eventually carry online.


The scheme, as outlined in the indictment, was extensive. The Globe also obtained a search warrant application for the Merrimack home when the file was briefly available in the federal courts records system.

Beginning as early as 2017, the records allege, a team of Russian nationals — most operating from their home country — sought to obtain banned US items in a plot that would involve millions of dollars, a slew of front companies, and various international locations.

The group worked on behalf of Serniya, a global network of Russian agents and front companies with clients such as the Russian Ministry of Defense and the Federal Security Service, or FSB, according to the indictment. US officials have described Serniya as “instrumental” to Russia’s war machine.

Working at the behest of agents in Russia, Boris Livshits, a Russian national who once lived in Brooklyn, allegedly purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars in sanctioned items from American electronics companies, misleading sellers about the equipment’s ultimate destination.

Once purchased, authorities allege, Livshits, using the alias “David Wetzky” and a host of front companies, arranged for the items to be shipped to the Braymans’ Merrimack home. In March 2022, 18 days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Brayman and Livshits discussed sending items to Russia through Germany “by hook or by crook,” according to the indictment.

Brayman regularly sent shipments to Vadim Konoshchenok, a Russian national and suspected FSB agent in Estonia, who, authorities say, would then smuggle the goods across the border into Russia. On one such trip in late October, Konoshchenok was detained and found with 35 different types of semiconductors and electronic components, according to court documents. He has also been found with tens of thousands of rounds worth of American ammunition, including sniper bullets made in Nebraska. A search of his warehouse revealed some 375 pounds of ammunition.

As part of the conspiracy, prosecutors alleged, members of the network falsified financial and shipping documents and were careful to break up large shipments in an effort to avoid attention and suspicion. Payments, too, were intentionally muddied, authorities said, with large amounts shifted among accounts in the names of shell companies held at banks around the world.

How and when authorities first became aware of the alleged plot is unclear; court records offer few details about the case’s origins, and federal authorities declined requests for comment.

But by this fall, court records show, authorities had amassed a trove of evidence, including e-mail correspondence among the alleged conspirators, shipping records, and the assistance of at least one confidential source.

In July, a Nevada magistrate judge signed a warrant for a tracking device to be placed on a “signal generator” purchased by Livshits from an Illinois-based company. With the company’s cooperation, investigators traced the item from a shipping point in Nevada to Merrimack before intercepting it at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, where it had been repackaged and was bound for Germany.

Not long after, federal agents armed with a search warrant arrived at 30 Ellie Drive.


This all allegedly played out under the radar in the Meadowoods subdivision, a place where the last controversy of note involved a camper parked in a residential driveway, against neighborhood policy.

As Joe Camar, president of the Meadowoods neighborhood association, put it: “There’s very little that happens here.”

On Tuesday afternoon, not long after Alexey Brayman had been taken into custody, the family’s home sat quiet. Snow blanketed the front yard, and a collection of news vehicles had gathered out front. A woman who briefly appeared at the front door said little before disappearing back inside.

“This is crazy what’s happening in our little neighborhood,” said Amy Goodridge, who lives across the street from the Braymans.

“They did get a lot of packages,” said Goodridge. “Which I guess makes sense now.”


Dugan Arnett can be reached at dugan.arnett@globe.com. Hanna Krueger can be reached at hanna.krueger@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @hannaskrueger. Brendan McCarthy can be reached at brendan.mccarthy@globe.com.



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From protester to fighter: Fleeing Iran’s brutal crackdown to take up arms over the border


Iraqi Kurdistan
CNN
 — 

A teenage dissident trailed behind a group of smugglers in the borderlands of western Iran. For three days, Rezan trekked a rocky mountain range and walked through minefields along a winding path forged by seasoned smugglers to circumnavigate the country’s heavily armed Revolutionary Guards. It was a trip too dangerous for respite of much more than a few stolen moments at a time.

“I knew that if an officer spotted us, we would die immediately,” said the 19-year-old Iranian-Kurdish activist, whom CNN is identifying by her pseudonym Rezan for security purposes. She was traveling to the border with Iraq, one of Iran’s most militarized frontiers, where according to rights groups, many have been shot to death by Iranian security forces for crossing illegally, or for smuggling illicit goods.

She had fled her hometown of Sanandaj in western Iran where security forces were wreaking death and destruction on the protest sites. Demonstrators were arbitrarily detained, some were shot dead in front of her, she said. Many were beaten up on the streets. In the second week of the protests, security forces pulled Rezan by her uncovered hair, she said. As she was being dragged down the street, screaming in agony, she saw her friends forcefully detained and children getting beaten.

Alex Platt/CNN

“They pulled my hair. They beat me. They dragged me,” she said, recounting the brutal crackdown in the Kurdish-majority city. “At the same time, I could see the same thing happening to many other people, including children.”

Sanandaj has seen the some of the largest protests in Iran, the biggest outside of Tehran, since the uprising began in mid-September.

Rezan said she had no choice but to take the long and perilous journey with smugglers to Iraq. Leaving Iran through the nearest official border crossing – a mere three-hour car ride away — could have led to her arrest. Staying in Sanandaj could have resulted in her death at the hands of the security forces.

“(Here) I can get my rights to live as a woman. I want to fight for the rights of women. I want to fight for human rights,” she told CNN from northern Iraq. After she arrived here earlier this month, she decided to change tack. No longer a peaceful protester, Rezan decided to take up arms, enlisting with an Iranian-Kurdish militant group that has positions in the arid valleys of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Rezan is one of multiple Iranian dissidents who fled the country in the last month, escaping the regime’s violent bid to quash demonstrations that erupted after the death of 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa “Zhina” Amini during her detention by Iranian morality police for allegedly wearing a hijab improperly.

The number of dissidents who have left Iran since the protests started is unknown. In the Kurdish-administered region of northern Iraq (KRG) — which borders the predominantly Kurdish west of Iran — many of the exiled activists keep a low profile, hiding in safe houses. They said they fear reprisals against their families back home, where mass detentions have become commonplace in Kurdish-majority areas.

According to eyewitnesses and social media videos, the people in those regions have endured some of the most heavy-handed tactics used by Iran’s security forces in their brutal campaign to crush the protest movement.

In Kurdish-majority regions, evidence of security forces indiscriminately shooting at crowds of protesters is widespread. The Iranian government also appears to have deployed members of its elite fighting force, the Revolutionary Guards, to these areas to face off with demonstrators, according to eyewitnesses and video from the protest sites.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards typically fight the regime’s battles further afield, namely in Iraq and Syria, propping up brutal dictatorships as well as fighting extremist groups such as ISIS.

For the Kurds, the intensified crackdown in the country’s west underscores decades of well-documented ethnic marginalization by Iran’s central government. These are grievances that Iran’s other ethnic minorities share and that precede clerical rule in Iran.

The nearly 10-million strong Kurdish population is the third largest ethnic group in Iran. Governments in Tehran — including the regime of the pro-Western Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi who was overthrown in 1979 — have eyed the group with suspicion because of their long-standing aspirations to secede from the state and establish a republic alongside Kurdish communities in neighboring countries.

Crouched under the shade of a tree in a dusty valley alongside her sisters-in-arms in northern Iraq, Rezan clasps her AK-47 rifle, her faltering voice betraying a lingering fear of Iranian reprisals. After she fled Iran, the authorities there called her family and threatened to arrest her siblings, she said.

But her family supports her militancy, she said, with her mother vowing to bury every one of her children rather than hand them over to the authorities. “I carry a weapon because we want to show the Iranian Kurds that they have someone standing behind them,” Rezan said from one of the bases of her militant group, the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK). “I want to protect the Kurds there because the Kurds are protecting themselves with rocks.”

Protesters across Iran are largely unarmed. Yet Iran blames Kurdish-Iranian armed groups in Iraqi Kurdistan for instigating unrest in Kurdish-majority areas. It has repeatedly struck Iranian-Kurdish targets in Iraq with drones and missiles since the protests began, killing scores of people.

Last Saturday, Iran’s Armed Forces chief accused the Iraqi Kurdistan region – which has a semi-autonomous government – of harboring 3,000 Iranian-Kurdish militants, and vowed to continue to attack their bases unless the government disarms the fighters.

“Iran’s operations against terrorists will continue. No matter how long it takes, we will continue this operation and a bigger one,” said Maj. Gen. Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, the chief of staff of Iran’s Armed Forces.

PAK and other Iraq-based Kurdish-Iranian armed groups say they have not supported the protests in any concrete way. But they have called on the United States to intervene on behalf of the demonstrators, and have said they are prepared to help Kurds in Iran take up arms in case of a further escalation in Iran’s crisis.

“What’s happening on the streets with the protesters was not engineered at my base,” PAK’s leader, Gen. Hussein Yazdanpanah, told CNN. He was speaking from one of the group’s barracks that was blown up by Iranian missiles and drones on September 28, killing eight militants.

“(Iran) is using us as a scapegoat for the protests in Iran and to distract media attention from Iran,” said Yazdanpanah, who believes that he was the target of that attack.

“I won’t hide the fact that I am a military support for my people,” he said, standing amid the destruction at his base near the town of Altun Kupri. The stench of two militants slain in the attack, but whose bodies have not yet been recovered, rises up from the rubble.

“For a revolution to succeed there has to be military support for the people,” he added. “(Iran) wanted people to question this principle. (By bombing the base) they wanted to say to them that there is no military support to protect you.”

Across the country, protesters with a variety of grievances — namely related to the dire state of Iran’s economy and the marginalization of ethnic groups — have coalesced around an anti-regime movement that was ignited by Amini’s death. Women have been at the forefront of the protests, arguing that Amini’s demise at the hands of the notorious morality police highlights women’s plight under Islamic Republic laws that restrict their dress and behavior.

Kurds in Iran also saw their grievances reflected in Amini’s death. The young woman’s Kurdish name — Zhina — was banned by a clerical establishment that bars ethnic minority names, ostensibly to prevent sowing ethnic divisions in the country. Amini also was crying for help in her Kurdish mother tongue when morality police officers violently forced her into a van, according to activists.

The first large protests in Iran’s current uprising erupted in Amini’s Kurdish-majority hometown of Saqqez in western Iran, which has also been subjected to a violent crackdown. “When we were in Iran, I joined the protests with friends. Two days later, two of my friends got kidnapped and one of them got injured,” said one man who fled Saqqez to Iraqi Kurdistan, who CNN is not naming for security reasons.

Seated on carpet under a tree to avoid any identification of their safe house, the man and his family said they worry about the long arms of Iran’s regime. The family cover their faces with medical masks, the man wears long sleeves to cover identifying tattoos and a plastic tarp is hung up to obscure them from the ever-present fear of incoming Iranian drones.

He and his family decided to leave Iran when he saw security forces kill his friend near a mosque in the first days of the uprising, the man said. “How can they claim to be an Islamic Republic when I saw them murdering my friend outside a mosque?” he asked in disbelief.

He said the community could not retrieve his friend’s body until night fell, after which they secretly buried their dead. His testimony is similar to multiple accounts CNN has heard since the start of Iran’s uprising. Many in the Kurdish areas of Iran report opting not to receive medical care for injured protesters in hospitals, for fear of arrest by authorities. Eyewitnesses also say some have even avoided sending their dead to morgues, for fear of reprisals against family members.

Since they fled, dissidents in Iraqi Kurdistan say they remain in contact with the loved ones they left behind. Every phone call to their families comes with news of an intensified crackdown, as well as reports of people defying security forces and continuing to pour into the streets.

“From what I know, my family is part of the revolution and the revolution continues to this day,” said Rezan. “They are ready to die to get our rights.”

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Brittney Griner: Defense team appeals verdict sentencing her to 9 years on drug smuggling

The US State Department maintains Griner is wrongfully detained, and her case has raised concerns she is being used as a political pawn in Russia’s war against Ukraine. US officials have offered a potential prisoner swap with Russia to try to bring her home safely.
Griner, 31, was detained in February for carrying vape cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage. The two-time US Olympic basketball gold medalist pleaded guilty to drug charges and said she accidentally packed the drugs while in a hurry.
The nine-year sentence, along with a fine of about $16,400, was issued August 4 by Khimki city court Judge Anna Sotnikova, who said the court took into account Griner’s partial admission of guilt, remorse for the deed, state of health and charitable activities.
Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout’s name has been mentioned in bilateral talks between Moscow and Washington over a prisoner swap involving Griner and American Paul Whelan, Director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s North American Department Alexander Darchiev told Russian state media TASS on Saturday. Whelan has been held by Russia for alleged espionage since 2018.

“This quite sensitive issue of the swap of convicted Russian and US citizens is being discussed through the channels defined by our Presidents. These individuals are, indeed, being discussed. The Russian side has long been seeking the release of Viktor Bout. The details should be left to professionals, proceeding from the ‘do not harm’ principle,” Darchiev said to TASS.

Darchiev was responding to a request for comment on US news reports that US officials had sent a proposal to Moscow on swapping Bout for Griner and Whelan, TASS reported.

During months of internal discussions among US agencies, the Justice Department opposed trading Bout, people briefed on the matter say. However, Justice officials eventually accepted a Bout trade has the support of top officials at the State Department and White House, including President Joe Biden, sources say.
The Russian government has frequently floated Bout as the subject of a potential trade for a number of Americans. Bout’s attorney has said he is “confident” the exchange will happen.

CNN’s Kylie Atwood, Evan Perez, Jennifer Hansler and Chandelis Duster contributed to this report.

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Smuggling Migrants at the Border Now a Billion-Dollar Business

CARRIZO SPRINGS, Texas — From the street, the little brown house was unremarkable yet pleasant. A bright yellow toy school bus and red truck hung on the hog-wire fence, and the home’s facade featured a large Texas lone star. But in the backyard was a gutted mobile home that a prosecutor later described as a “house of horrors.”

It was discovered one day in 2014, when a man called from Maryland to report that his stepfather, Moises Ferrera, a migrant from Honduras, was being held there and tortured by the smugglers who had brought him into the United States. His captors wanted more money, the stepson said, and were pounding Mr. Ferrera’s hands repeatedly with a hammer, vowing to continue until his family sent it.

When federal agents and sheriff’s deputies descended on the house, they discovered that Mr. Ferrara was not the sole victim. Smugglers had held hundreds of migrants for ransom there, their investigation found. They had mutilated limbs and raped women.

“What transpired there is the subject of science fiction, of a horror movie — and something we simply don’t see in the United States,” the prosecutor, Matthew Watters, told a jury when the accused smugglers went on trial. Organized crime cartels, he said, had “brought this terror across the border.”

But if it was one of the first such cases, it was not the last. Migrant smuggling on the U.S. southern border has evolved over the past 10 years from a scattered network of freelance “coyotes” into a multi-billion-dollar international business controlled by organized crime, including some of Mexico’s most violent drug cartels.

The deaths of 53 migrants in San Antonio last month who were packed in the back of a suffocating tractor-trailer without air conditioning — the deadliest smuggling incident in the country to date — came as tightened U.S. border restrictions, exacerbated by a pandemic-related public health rule, have encouraged more migrants to turn to smugglers.

While migrants have long faced kidnappings and extortion in Mexican border cities, such incidents have been on the rise on the U.S. side, according to federal authorities.

More than 5,046 people were arrested and charged with human smuggling last year, up from 2,762 in 2014.

Over the past year, federal agents have raided stash houses holding dozens of migrants on nearly a daily basis.

Title 42, the public health order introduced by the Trump administration at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, has authorized the immediate expulsion of those caught crossing the border illegally, allowing migrants to cross repeatedly in the hope of eventually succeeding. This has led to a substantial escalation in the number of migrant encounters on the border — 1.7 million in fiscal 2021 — and brisk business for smugglers.

In March, agents near El Paso rescued 34 migrants from two cargo containers without ventilation on a single day. The following month, 24 people being held against their will were found in a stash house.

Law enforcement agents have engaged in so many high-speed chases of smugglers lately in Uvalde, Texas — there were nearly 50 such “bailouts” in the town between February and May — that some school employees said they failed to take a lockdown order seriously during a mass shooting in May because so many previous lockdowns had been ordered when smugglers raced through the streets.

Teófilo Valencia, whose 17- and 19-year-old sons perished in the San Antonio tragedy, said he had taken out a loan against the family home to pay the smugglers $10,000 for each son’s transport.

Fees typically range from $4,000, for migrants coming from Latin America, to $20,000, if they must be moved from Africa, Eastern Europe or Asia, according to Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, an expert on smuggling at George Mason University.

For years, independent coyotes paid cartels a tax to move migrants through territory they controlled along the border, and the criminal syndicates stuck to their traditional line of business, drug smuggling, which was far more profitable.

That began to change around 2019, Patrick Lechleitner, the acting deputy director at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told Congress last year. The sheer number of people seeking to cross made migrant smuggling an irresistible moneymaker for some cartels, he said.

The enterprises have teams specializing in logistics, transportation, surveillance, stash houses and accounting — all supporting an industry whose revenues have soared to an estimated $13 billion today from $500 million in 2018, according to Homeland Security Investigations, the federal agency that investigates such cases.

Migrants are moved by plane, bus and private vehicles. In some border regions, such as the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, smugglers affix color-coded bands to the wrists of migrants to designate that they belong to them and what services they are receiving.

“They are organizing the merchandise in ways you could never imagine five or 10 years ago,” said Ms. Correa-Cabrera.

Groups of Central American families who crossed the Rio Grande recently into La Joya, Texas, wore blue bracelets with the logo of the Gulf Cartel, a dolphin, and the word “entregas,” or “deliveries” — meaning they intended to surrender to U.S. authorities and seek asylum. Once they had crossed the river, they were no longer the cartel’s business.

Previously, migrants entering Laredo, Texas, waded across the river on their own and faded into the dense, urban landscape. Now, according to interviews with migrants and law enforcement officials, it is impossible to cross without paying a coyote connected to the Cartel del Noreste, a splinter of the Los Zetas syndicate.

Smugglers often enlist teenagers to transport arrivals to stash houses in working-class neighborhoods. After they gather several dozen people, they load the migrants onto trucks parked in Laredo’s vast warehouse district around Killam Industrial Boulevard.

“Drivers are recruited at bars, strip joints, truck stops,” said Timothy Tubbs, who was deputy special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations for Laredo until he retired in January.

Rigs hauling migrants blend with the 20,000 trucks that travel daily on the I-35 freeway to and from Laredo, the country’s busiest land port. Border Patrol agents posted at checkpoints inspect only a fraction of all the vehicles to ensure traffic keeps flowing.

The tractor-trailer discovered on June 27 with its tragic cargo had passed through a checkpoint about 30 miles north of Laredo without arousing suspicions. By the time it stopped three hours later on a remote road in San Antonio, most of the 64 people inside had already died.

The driver, Homero Zamorano Jr., one of two men indicted on Thursday in connection with the tragedy, said that he was unaware that the air-conditioning system had failed.

The 2014 incident at the stash house in Texas resulted in the arrest of the perpetrators and a subsequent trial, providing an unusually vivid look at the brutal tactics of smuggling operations. Though kidnapping and extortion happen with some frequency, such trials with cooperating witnesses are relatively rare, federal law enforcement officials say. Fearing deportation, undocumented relatives of kidnapped migrants seldom call the authorities.

That case began in the thick brush country eight miles from the Rio Grande, in Carrizo Springs, a popular transit point for people trying to elude detection. “You could hide a million elephants here, this brush is so thick,” said Jerry Martinez, a captain in the Dimmit County Sheriff’s Office.

Mr. Ferrera, 54, the torture victim, first migrated to the United States in 1993, heading to construction sites in Los Angeles and San Francisco, where he made more than 10 times what he earned back in Honduras. He returned home a few years later.

“In those days, you didn’t need a coyote,” he said in an interview from his home in Maryland. “I came and went a couple times.”

When he set out in early 2014, Mr. Ferrera knew that he would have to hire a smuggler to breach the border. In Piedras Negras, Mexico, a man promised to guide him all the way to Houston. Mr. Ferrera’s stepson, Mario Pena, said he wired $1,500 as payment.

After reaching Texas, Mr. Ferrera and several other migrants were delivered to the trailer in Carrizo Springs.

Before long, Mr. Ferrera’s stepson received a call demanding an additional $3,500. He said he did not have any more money.

The calls became frequent and menacing, Mr. Pena recalled in an interview; the smugglers let him hear the sound of his stepfather’s shrieks and groans as a hammer came down on his fingers.

Mr. Pena managed to wire $2,000 via Western Union, he said, but when the captors realized they could not collect the cash because it was a Sunday, they intensified their assaults.

Mr. Pena called 911.

Law enforcement agents found Mr. Ferrera in the trailer “severely, severely physically harmed, with lots of blood all over him, laying on a sofa” in the living room, according to testimony by one of the agents, Jonathan Bonds.

Another migrant, stripped down to his underwear, was squirming in pain, his bludgeoned hand held aloft, in the front bedroom. In the rear bedroom, agents encountered a nude woman, another migrant, who had just been raped by a smuggler who emerged naked from the bathroom.

The house’s owner, Eduardo Rocha Sr., who went by Lalo and was identified as the leader of the smuggling ring, was arrested along with several others, including his son, Eduardo Rocha Jr. The younger Mr. Rocha testified that their cell was affiliated with the Los Zetas cartel and that over two years it had funneled hundreds of migrants into the United States and collected hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The elder Mr. Rocha was sentenced to life in prison. His son and the man who had carried out most of the physical abuse received 15- and 20-year sentences.

Mr. Ferrera testified at their trial. As a victim of a crime who had assisted law enforcement, he was allowed to remain in the United States. But his new life had come with a cost, which he displayed when he held up his right arm for the jury, the fingers now lifeless. “This is how my hand ended up,” he said.

Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

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Texas men Homero Zamorano, Christian Martinez charged in deaths of 53 migrants found in truck

Two men were indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday on charges tied to the failed smuggling operation that disastrously led to the deaths of 53 migrants in San Antonio last month, officials said.

The driver of the truck, Homero Zamorano, and the alleged planner of the operation, Christian Martinez, both Texas natives, could each face life sentence or even the death penalty if convicted of counts of transporting and conspiring to transport migrants illegally resulting in death.

They were also indicted on transporting and conspiring to transport migrants illegally resulting in serious injury.

The dozens of deaths from the inhumane and sweltering conditions inside the packed 18-wheeler was the deadliest migrant smuggling operation crossing the US border from Mexico. 

Both Zamorano, 46, and Martinez, 28, remained in federal custody without bail pending a trial.

Christian Martinez was the alleged planner of the operation, as police discovered calls on Zamorano’s phone with him regarding the operation.

The migrants, many already dead or dying, were discovered in the truck on a remote San Antonio road.

Surveillance video shows the 18-wheeler passing through a Border Patrol checkpoint with the driver matching Zamorano’s description, according to the indictment.

A search of Zamorano’s cellphone revealed calls with Martinez over the smuggling operation, officials said.

Police are at the site where the tractor trailer carrying 53 dead migrants was discovered on June 27, 2022 in San Antonio.
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A woman lights candles during a vigil to honor the migrants who died in the San Antonio cargo truck on July 5, 2022 in El Paso.
REUTERS

Zamorano was found in a nearby field from where the truck was discovered and arrested last month.

If the men are convicted of the death counts that could lead to life sentences, but the Attorney General’s Office could instead allow prosecutors to seek death penalties.

With Post wires

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At least 6 migrants died and 10 others were found in 3 separate human smuggling cases in Texas over the last 24 hours

Four migrants were killed and three people critically injured Thursday during a highway chase and crash in Encinal, Texas, just days after 53 migrants died in and around a tractor-trailer abandoned in San Antonio in the deadliest human smuggling incident in US history.

Thursday’s crash was on Interstate 35 about 40 miles north of Laredo, according to Lt. Chris Olivarez, a spokesman for the South Texas region of the state Department of Public Safety (DPS).

Four men were pronounced dead on Interstate 35 in what’s being investigated as “a human smuggling attempt,” according to a statement from Texas Highway Patrol Sgt. Erick Estrada.

Estrada said “a white Jeep SUV was evading United States Border Patrol traveling north” on I-35. The Jeep took an exit at high speed, losing control and rear-ending a parked semitrailer.

The driver, a male who remains in critical condition, and two male passengers were injured and taken to a hospital, according to Estrada.

Two of the four men who died were from Guatemala, another from Mexico, and one has yet to be identified, the sergeant said. The injured were from Guatemala, Mexico and the driver is from the United States. The driver was airlifted to a hospital, according to Olivarez.

Early Wednesday, in Palmview near McAllen, a single-vehicle roller crash involved a driver who was evading US Border Patrol and lost control of the vehicle, Olivarez told CNN.

Four occupants were ejected, and two men were killed, according to Olivarez. A male and female were critically injured in the migrant smuggling case.

The US Border Patrol’s Del Rio Sector reported that Eagle Pass agents had foiled a smuggling attempt involving 10 people found locked in a tractor-trailer, according to a tweet Wednesday from Chief Patrol Agent Jason D. Owens.

Monday’s tragedy also occurred I-35 — a major north-south route in the central United States for traffic and commerce from the southern border. The route is often exploited by smugglers at a time when record numbers of migrants are being intercepted at the US-Mexico border.

On Monday in San Antonio, about 120 miles north on I-35 from Encinal, 53 migrants died in what a Homeland Security Investigations’ official called the deadliest human smuggling incident in US history.

A worker near the interstate called San Antonio police after finding a tractor-trailer abandoned under the hot sun on a back road, with dozens of dead migrants inside. Some victims could be younger than 18.

“The floor of the trailer … was completely covered in bodies. Completely covered in bodies,” Police Chief William McManus told CNN. “There were at least 10-plus bodies outside the trailer.”

Authorities in Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras have said they are collaborating with the US in trying to identify the people who died in San Antonio.

More than a dozen people were found alive inside the tractor-trailer and hospitalized for heat-related conditions, authorities said.

Four people have been arrested in connection with the human smuggling incident.

Homero Zamorano Jr., 45, who is originally from Brownsville but resides in Pasadena, Texas, was arrested Wednesday on criminal charges related to alleged involvement in human smuggling resulting in death, according to a US Department of Justice statement.

Zamorano has a lengthy criminal record dating back to the 1990s, public records show.

Laredo Sector Border Patrol surveillance footage showed the tractor-trailer passing an immigration checkpoint, according to the DOJ. The driver could be seen wearing a black shirt with stripes and a hat.

Zamorano matched the driver in the surveillance footage, the DOJ said.

CNN has been unable to determine whether he has an attorney.

Another suspect, Christian Martinez, 28, was arrested on Tuesday in Palestine, Texas, and charged with one count of conspiracy to transport undocumented migrants resulting in death, the DOJ said.

Two other men, Juan Claudio D’Luna-Mendez and Juan Francisco D’Luna-Bilbao, have been charged with “possession of a weapon by an alien illegally in the United States,” according to criminal complaints filed Monday.

Authorities located the men after responding to the semi-truck incident, according to the affidavit.

The attorney for D’Luna-Mendez declined comment. CNN has reached out to D’Luna-Bilbao’s attorney for comment.

CNN’s Rosa Flores contributed to this report.

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