Tag Archives: Court

Erdogan says U.S. indictment of Turkish security guards a ‘scandal’

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan talks to media after prayers for the Muslim Eid al-Adha celebration in Istanbul, Turkey September 1, 2017. Murat Cetinmuhurdar/Presidential Palace/Handout via REUTERS

ANKARA (Reuters) – President Tayyip Erdogan described as scandalous a U.S. grand jury’s indictment of Turkish security officials involved in street fighting with protesters during his visit to Washington in May.

Eleven people were hurt in what Washington’s police chief described as a brutal attack on peaceful demonstrators outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence. Ankara blamed the violence on groups linked to Kurdish militants fighting an armed campaign in southeastern Turkey.

“This is a complete scandal,” Erdogan told reporters after prayers for the Muslim Eid al-Adha celebration. “It is a scandalous sign of how justice works in the United States.”

On Tuesday, a U.S. grand jury indicted 19 people, including 15 Turkish security officials, over the brawl between protesters and Erdogan’s security personnel.

Erdogan said the indictment against members of his security detail, who have since returned to Turkey, was not binding for Ankara.

The skirmish, caught on video, has further strained bilateral ties at a time when the NATO allies are in sharp disagreement over policy in Syria.

Erdogan said the United States had failed to provide him protection from members of the PKK during his visit.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a statement the charges sent a clear message that the United States “does not tolerate individuals who use intimidation and violence to stifle freedom of speech and legitimate political expression.”

Since a failed coup attempt last year, Turkey has sacked or suspended more than 150,000 officials in purges, while sending to jail pending trial some 50,000 people including soldiers, police, civil servants.

The crackdown has targeted people who authorities say are suspected of links to the network of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen. Ankara blames Gulen for the coup. He denies any involvement.

“These developments in the United States are not good at all,” Erdogan said. “The United States is still a country where the FETO gang (Gulen’s network) is being protected. The United States has literally become a country where the PKK terrorist organization is under protection.

“I am having trouble understanding what the United States is trying to do with all these developments.”

(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Editing by Ralph Boulton)

Moroccan teenager admits killing two in Finland knife rampage: lawyer

The initial remand hearing of Abderrahman Mechkah (lying in a hospital bed, attending the court session via video), 18 year-old Moroccan man suspected of killing two people and attempting to kill eight others with terrorist intent in Turku, on Friday, August 19, is held at Southwest Finland District Court in Turku, Finland, August 22, 2017. LEHTIKUVA /Martti Kainulainen via REUTERS

HELSINKI (Reuters) – A teenage Moroccan asylum seeker admitted on Tuesday killing two people and wounding eight in a knife attack in the Finnish city of Turku, his lawyer said.

In a closed-door court hearing, 18-year-old Abderrahman Mechkah confessed to carrying out Friday’s attack but did not admit to having terrorist motive, lawyer Kaarle Gummerus said.

“(My client) admits manslaughter and injuries… But what the investigator has brought up this far may not be enough to classify this as a terrorist crime,” Gummerus told Reuters.

Mechkah appeared in court via video link from hospital, where he is being treated after being shot in the leg by police following the stabbings.

The court ordered Mechkah, who has yet to be charged with any offense, to be detained in prison pending trial.

Three other Moroccan men detained over possible links to the attack are due in court later on Tuesday. A fifth Moroccan who had also been under arrest was released, the court said.

The investigation is the first into suspected terrorism-related crimes in Finland’s history.

Gummerus said it was “impossible to take a final stance at the moment” on the issue of whether the stabbings were terrorism-related.

Investigators have not made clear what role the three other Moroccans, who deny involvement in the attack, are suspected of playing.

Police said they had issued an international arrest warrant for a fifth Moroccan national.

(Reporting by Jussi Rosendahl; editing by John Stonestreet)

Texas man charged with trying to blow up Confederate statue

Texas man charged with trying to blow up Confederate statue

By Alex Dobuzinskis and Gina Cherelus

(Reuters) – Authorities in Houston charged a 25-year-old man on Monday with trying to blow up a Confederate statue, federal prosecutors said, following demonstrations and fierce debate in the United States about race and the legacy of America’s Civil War.

Word of the arrest of Andrew Schneck came just hours after the University of Texas at Austin said it moved statues tied to the Confederacy at its campus because they had become “symbols of modern white supremacy and neo-Nazism.”

White nationalists rallied earlier this month against proposals to take down a similar statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, and one woman was killed when a man crashed his car into a crowd of anti-racism counterprotesters.

The violence triggered the biggest domestic crisis yet for President Donald Trump, who provoked anger across the political spectrum for not immediately condemning white nationalists and for praising “very fine people” on both sides of the fight.

On Saturday night, a park ranger spotted Schneck kneeling in bushes in front of the General Dowling Monument in Houston’s Hermann Park, Federal prosecutors said in a statement.

In Schneck’s possession were a timer, wires, duct tape and two types of explosive including nitroglycerin, according to the prosecutors who described it as one of the world’s most powerful explosives. The items could have been used to make a viable explosive device, the prosecutors’ statement said.

If convicted of trying to maliciously damage or destroy property receiving federal financial assistance, Schneck faces up to 40 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

“It’s an evolving situation and the investigation is continuing,” Schneck’s attorney, Philip Hilder, said by phone. “So far I have not seen any evidence and it would be premature to comment at this time.”

A growing number of U.S. political leaders have called for the removal of statues honoring the Confederacy. Civil rights activists charge they promote racism while advocates of the statues contend they are a reminder of their heritage.

The city of West Palm Beach near Miami became the latest community on Monday to prepare to remove a Confederate symbol. The monument in a public cemetery belongs to the Daughters of the Confederacy, and it will be stored for the organization after its removal, Mayor Jeri Muoio told reporters.

Among the four statues removed overnight at the University at Austin was one of General Robert E. Lee, who led the pro-slavery Confederacy’s army during the Civil War.

Fenves said the statue of Lee and two others will be placed in the school’s Briscoe Center for American History and made available for scholarly study.

The school’s president, Greg Fenves, said in a statement that the monuments had to go following the “horrific displays of hatred” in Virginia that shocked and saddened the nation.

There are about 700 monuments to the Confederacy in public spaces across the United States, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, with the majority of them erected early in the 20th century amid a backlash among segregationists against the civil rights movement.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles and Gina Cherelus in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Andrea Ricci)

Mylan, U.S. finalize $465 million EpiPen settlement

EpiPen auto-injection epinephrine pens manufactured by Mylan NV pharmaceutical company for use by severe allergy sufferers are seen in Washington, U.S. August 24, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Bourg/File Photo

By Nate Raymond

BOSTON (Reuters) – Mylan NV <MYL.O> has finalized a $465 million settlement resolving U.S. Justice Department claims it overcharged the government for its EpiPen emergency allergy treatment, which became the center of a firestorm over price increases.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts on Thursday announced the accord, which was soon after criticized by some congressional members as being too easy on the drugmaker. It came 10 months after Mylan said it had reached a deal.

The settlement resolved claims that Mylan avoided higher rebates to state Medicaid programs by misclassifying EpiPen as a generic product, even though it was marketed and priced as a brand-name product.

“Taxpayers rightly expect companies like Mylan that receive payments from taxpayer-funded programs to scrupulously follow the rules,” Acting U.S. Attorney William Weinreb said in a statement.

Under the deal, Mylan did not admit wrongdoing. It will reclassify EpiPen and pay the rebate applicable to its new classification as of April 1, 2017.

“Bringing closure to this matter is the right course of action for Mylan and our stakeholders to allow us to move forward,” Mylan Chief Executive Heather Bresch said in a statement.

The deal followed a False Claims Act whistleblower lawsuit filed by French rival Sanofi SA <SASY.PA> in 2016, two years after it first raised the matter with authorities, Weinreb’s office said.

Sanofi, which formerly marketed a rival product called Auvi-Q, will receive nearly $38.8 million as a reward from the government.

Sanofi in a statement called pursuing the matter “the right thing to do.” It has a separate antitrust lawsuit pending alleging Mylan engaged in illegal conduct to squelch competition to EpiPen.

Mylan shares rose 2.10 percent to $31.11 on the Nasdaq.

The EpiPen, which Mylan acquired in 2007, is a handheld device that treats life-threatening allergic reactions by automatically injecting a dose of epinephrine.

Mylan came under fire last year after raising the price of a pair of EpiPens to $600, from $100 in 2008, enraging consumers and putting it in the center of the ongoing U.S. debate over the high cost of prescription medicines.

Mylan has since offered its own generic version for about $300. The company announced it had reached a Justice Department settlement in October.

Some congressional members previously criticized the $465-million settlement as too small. U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, renewed that position on Thursday, calling it “completely insufficient.”

A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General analysis released in May found the U.S. government may have overpaid for EpiPens by up to $1.27 billion between 2006 and 2016.

“Absolving Mylan from a finding of wrongdoing has cleared the way for the company to pocket the money it embezzled from an American public in desperate need of lifesaving and affordable medications,” Blumenthal said in a statement.

Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa in a statement called the accord a “disappointment,” saying it “looks like the settlement amount short-changes the taxpayers.”

Mylan shares were up 0.1 at $30.50 in late trading.

 

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

 

Truck driver formally indicted for 10 immigrant deaths in Texas

FILE PHOTO: Police officers work on a crime scene after eight people believed to be illegal immigrants being smuggled into the United States were found dead inside a sweltering 18-wheeler trailer parked behind a Walmart store in San Antonio, Texas, U.S. July 23, 2017. REUTERS/Ray Whitehouse/File Photo

By Jon Herskovitz

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) – A truck driver accused of smuggling immigrants inside a packed and sweltering tractor-trailer through Texas, 10 of whom died, was formally indicted by a federal grand jury on Wednesday on charges that can carry the death penalty, prosecutors said.

James Bradley Jr., 60, was given a five-count indictment that included charges of transportation of undocumented aliens resulting in death and conspiracy to transport aliens resulting in death. If convicted on these charges, he could face up to life in prison or death, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Texas said.

A lawyer for Bradley was not immediately available for comment.

The incident was one of the deadliest cases of immigrant smuggling in recent U.S. history and brought renewed attention to the dangers of human trafficking.

Law enforcement was called to investigate a suspicious tractor trailer in a Walmart parking lot in San Antonio on July 23 and found about 39 people in the trailer, eight of whom were dead. Others were in perilous health, and two died later, court documents showed.

Many of the immigrants in the trailer ran when Bradley opened the doors. Nearly 200 people may have been inside the truck, according to the documents.

Bradley told law enforcement officials that he did not know about he was carrying human cargo.

“Bradley said he went to open the doors and was surprised when he was run over by ‘Spanish’ people and knocked to the ground,” the criminal complaint said.

Seven men from Mexico and an 18-year-old man from Guatemala were among the dead. The other two fatalities included a juvenile whose name has not been made public and an adult who has not yet been identified, prosecutors said.

Of the survivors, 22 were in federal custody and charged as material witnesses, two remained in hospital and five were released from hospital and turned over to U.S. immigration authorities, prosecutors said.

Some survivors have sought to offer testimony in exchange for consideration of visas that would allow them to stay in the United States, their attorneys said.

In 2003, 19 people died after traveling in an 18-wheeler truck through Victoria, Texas.

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Toni Reinhold)

U.S. court rules Arkansas can block Planned Parenthood funding

U.S. court rules Arkansas can block Planned Parenthood funding

By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday reversed a ruling that prevented Arkansas from cutting off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood following the release of controversial videos secretly recorded by an anti-abortion group.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis reversed a ruling forbidding Arkansas from carrying through with Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson’s directive to suspend Medicaid reimbursements to a Planned Parenthood affiliate.

U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker in Little Rock had ruled in favor of three women who claimed Arkansas violated their rights under the federal Medicaid law to choose any qualified provider offering services they were seeking.

But by a 2-1 vote, a 8th Circuit said the provision of the Medicaid law the women relied on does not unambiguously create a federal right for individual patients that they could enforce in court.

U.S. Circuit Judge Steven Colloton wrote that the lack of such a right does not mean state officials have unlimited authority to terminate Medicaid providers.

“We conclude only that Congress did not unambiguously confer the particular right asserted by the patients in this case,” he wrote.

U.S. Circuit Judge Michael Melloy dissented, saying four other appeals courts have reached the opposite conclusion and found a private right of enforcement existed.

Raegan McDonald-Mosley, chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in a statement said the fight “is not over.”

“We will do everything in our power to protect our patients’ access to birth control cancer screenings, and other lifesaving care,” McDonald-Mosley said.

Arkansas cut off funds for Planned Parenthood after the anti-abortion activist group Center for Medical Progress released videos in 2015 it claimed showed the group’s officials negotiating the sale of fetal body parts for profit.

Planned Parenthood has denied the allegation and says 13 states that investigated those claims have cleared it of wrongdoing.

Hutchinson, who was among Republican governors nationally who targeted the organization following those videos, welcomed Wednesday’s ruling.

“This is a substantial legal victory for the right of the state to determine whether Medicaid providers are acting in accordance with best practices and affirms the prerogative of the state to make reasoned judgments on the Medicaid program,” he said in a statement.

Planned Parenthood does not perform surgical abortions in Arkansas, which forbids public funding of abortions except in cases of rape or incest. But it provides other gynecological services as well as birth control and breast examinations.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by David Gregorio)

New York congregation owns oldest U.S. synagogue, court rules

By Chris Kenning

(Reuters) – A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that a New York Jewish congregation is the rightful owner of the nation’s oldest synagogue, in Rhode Island, along with a set of bells worth millions.

The decision by the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston marks the latest turn in a long-running legal battle that began when members of the Touro Synagogue in Newport tried to sell a set of ritual bells, called rimonim, worth some $7.4 million.

New York’s Congregation Shearith Israel attempted to block the deal, citing an 18th century agreement that named it a trustee.

A lower court last year placed ownership of the synagogue with the Rhode Island congregation that worships there, Newport’s Congregation Jeshuat Israel. The appeals court reversed that decision citing previous agreements.

“We hold that the only reasonable conclusions to be drawn from them are that CSI (Congregation Shearith Israel) owns both the rimonim and the real property,” the ruling said.

Louis Solomon, an attorney for Shearith Israel, said in a statement he was gratified by the ruling.

“We will continue in our historic role and look forward to putting this unfortunate litigation behind us,” he said.

Gary Naftalis, a lawyer for the Rhode Island congregation, said he was disappointed by the ruling and was exploring legal options.

The historic building was consecrated in 1763, when the town had one of the largest Jewish populations in the American colonies, including many who had fled the Spanish Inquisition. It was vacated in 1776 when most of the city’s Jewish population fled at the start of the Revolutionary War.

Members of the synagogue at that time shipped a pair of valuable silver bells used in rituals to the New York synagogue, and asked its leaders to act as trustees for the vacant temple. Worshippers returned by the 1870s and the New York group’s influence waned.

Shearith sued Newport’s Congregation Jeshuat Israel when it learned the Rhode Island group had reached a deal to sell the bells to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. The Touro congregation had planned to use the funds to create a reserve to pay for maintenance of the building, after its finances were hard hit by the 2008 credit crisis.

The New York congregation also claimed ownership of the bells and charged that the Newport group was violating Jewish tradition by selling ritual objects.

(Reporting by Chris Kenning; Editing by Dan Whitcomb, Cynthia Osterman and Michael Perry)

Survivors of Texas truck where 10 immigrants died seek to trade testimony for visas

Police officers work on a crime scene after eight people believed to be illegal immigrants being smuggled into the United States were found dead inside a sweltering 18-wheeler trailer parked behind a Walmart store in San Antonio, Texas, U.S. July 23, 2017. REUTERS/Ray Whitehouse

By Jon Herskovitz and Mica Rosenberg

AUSTIN, Texas/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Some of the illegal immigrants who survived a deadly human-smuggling journey into Texas are seeking visas to stay in the United States in exchange for testimony against those responsible for an operation that killed 10 people on a sweltering truck, a lawyer said on Tuesday.

There is precedent for such visas and it could help U.S. authorities bring more people to justice, experts said. So far, only one person has been charged, the driver of the truck who said he was unaware of the human cargo aboard until he took a rest stop in San Antonio. He could face the death penalty if convicted.

The case could also provide a test for the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, which has promised to crack down on illegal immigration and the criminal syndicates responsible for human trafficking.

Silvia Mintz, an attorney representing the Guatemalan Consulate in Houston, said she has contacted the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to see if it would consider granting “U visas,” available to victims of crimes such as human trafficking who have pertinent information to provide law enforcement.

At least 100 illegal immigrants, mainly from Mexico and Guatemala, were crammed into the back of the truck after crossing the U.S. border.

“If we are able to establish the case, we will go ahead and seek the U visa,” Mintz said in a telephone interview.

Shane Folden, special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations in San Antonio, said most of the people found alive at the scene are still in local hospitals. He said it was too early to talk about possible visas.

“There are a number of paths toward immigration relief for situations such as this,” he said in a telephone interview, adding, “we are not at that point yet.”

Of the 39 people found at the scene, 10 have died, 22 were in hospitals and seven have been released and were being questioned, he said.

Most of those aboard the truck fled before authorities could capture them.

DEATH IN VICTORIA

U.S. law enforcement has granted temporary visas previously for immigrants who provided testimony in what is considered the worst illegal immigrant-smuggling case in U.S. history, when 19 people died after traveling in an 18-wheeler truck through Victoria, Texas, in 2003.

Temporary visas for about 40 people aboard that truck helped U.S. prosecutors charge more than a dozen people with conspiracy in the case, prosecutors said at the time.

Alonzo Pena, a former deputy director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said witnesses in the San Antonio case can be released into the community under strict conditions that could include wearing electronic monitoring devices.

Authorities would likely repatriate the others, said Pena, who runs a San Antonio consulting business, in a telephone interview.

A U-visa is valid for four years and offers a path to apply for permanent residency status. Congress limited the number to 10,000 a year, and the program is heavily oversubscribed.

Those on the truck may also try for a T-visa for victims of human trafficking.

Agent Folden said U.S. authorities want to topple the criminal groups responsible for human trafficking.

“Our primary goal is to disrupt and dismantle these organizations,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Jim Forysth in San Antonio and Reade Levinson in New York; Editing by Frank McGurty and Lisa Shumaker)

Man pleads guilty in failed plot to bomb Colorado police station

By Keith Coffman

DENVER (Reuters) – A man who prosecutors say planted a bomb outside a small-town Colorado police station to avenge a friend’s murder nearly a half-century ago pleaded guilty on Tuesday to federal charges that could send him to prison for the rest of his life.

David Michael Ansberry, 65, pleaded guilty in U.S District Court in Denver to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction in connection with the botched bombing of the Nederland, Colorado, police station, a spokesman for acting U.S. Attorney Robert Troyer said.

The improvised explosive device failed to go off despite multiple attempts by Ansberry to detonate it with a cellphone, according to an FBI arrest warrant affidavit.

According to a memorandum prosecutors filed before the hearing, Ansberry belonged to a nomadic group of hippies called “Serenity, Tranquility and Peace,” or STP.

The itinerant group had a presence in Nederland, a mountain community about 15 miles west of Boulder, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. One of STP’s members, Guy Goughnor, was slain there in the summer of 1971.

“The Nederland town marshal, Renner Forbes, eventually confessed to killing Goughnor and was convicted for that crime in 1998,” federal prosecutors wrote in court documents. Forbes has since died.

In October 2016, a Nederland police officer discovered the bomb in a backpack, prompting the evacuation of the police station and nearby buildings before explosives experts disarmed the device.

Goughnor went by the nickname “Deputy Dawg” and a message was scrawled at the attempted bombing scene which read, “RIP Deputy Dawg and the date 7-17-71,” prosecutors said.

Authorities said Ansberry had harbored a grudge for more than four decades and traveled from California to Idaho, where he purchased bomb making components before arriving in Colorado.

Detectives were led to Ansberry after tracing the purchase of cellphones to a Colorado grocery store where security cameras captured images of Ansberry. He was easily identified by his diminutive 3-foot, 6-inch stature.

Federal agents arrested Ansberry at Midway Airport in Chicago as he was preparing to catch a flight to Baltimore, and returned him to Colorado.

Ansberry’s public defenders did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment, but the Denver Post reported that during Tuesday’s hearing, Ansberry said he pleaded guilty to avoid additional charges.

He faces up to life in prison and a maximum $250,000 fine when he is sentenced in November.

(Reporting by Keith Coffman in Denver; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Jonathan Oatis)

U.S. attorney general says to hire 300 prosecutors to fight crime

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions delivers opening remarks at the Justice Department's 2017 Hate Crimes Summit in Washington, U.S., June 29, 2017. REUTERS/James Lawler Duggan

(Reuters) – U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Wednesday the Justice Department plans to hire 300 additional assistant U.S. attorneys to help fight a recent national increase in crime, including a focus on transnational gangs such as MS-13.

“As you all know, we have a multi-front battle in front of us right now: an increase in violent crime, vicious gangs, an opioid epidemic, threats from terrorism and human traffickers,” Sessions said in a speech in Las Vegas.

Referring to so-called sanctuary cities, Sessions said one problem is the refusal of 300 U.S. jurisdictions to hand over illegal immigrants who commit crimes to federal immigration authorities. “These jurisdictions are protecting criminals rather than their law-abiding residents,” he said.

Sessions noted the U.S. murder rate had risen 10 percent nationwide in just one year, marking the largest increase since 1968. The increase was from 2014 to 2015, the latest figures available. Murder and crime rates generally in the United States have fallen over the last several decades.

President Donald Trump had made the restoration of law and order one of the planks of his election campaign.

(Reporting by Eric Walsh; Editing by Bernadette Baum)