Category Archives: International

World News Legal developments from around the world. The following is a collection of the most recent posts from other blogs addressing topics of international law.

Blog, Criminal, Immigration, International, Legal News, Organized Crime, Supreme Court

Juan Orlando Hernández, Former President of Honduras, Indicted on Drug-Trafficking and Firearms Charges, Extradited to the United States from Honduras

Hernández Allegedly Partnered with Some of the Largest Cocaine Traffickers in the World to Transport Tons of Cocaine through Honduras to the United States

Juan Orlando Hernández, aka JOH, 53, the former President of Honduras, will make his initial appearance tomorrow, April 22, before Magistrate Judge Stewart D. Aaron in federal court in New York after being extradited today from Honduras. A federal court unsealed drug-trafficking and weapons charges today in a superseding indictment against Hernández.

The indictment charges that from at least in or about 2004, up to and including in or about 2022, Hernández, the former two-term President of Honduras, participated in a corrupt and violent drug-trafficking conspiracy to facilitate the importation of hundreds of thousands of kilograms of cocaine into the United States. Hernández allegedly received millions of dollars to use his public office, law enforcement, and the military to support drug-trafficking organizations in Honduras, Mexico, and elsewhere.

“The Justice Department is taking a comprehensive approach to protecting our communities and our country from violent crime,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “The Department is committed to disrupting the entire ecosystem of drug trafficking networks that harm the American people, no matter how far or how high we must go.”

“Juan Orlando Hernández, the recent former President of Honduras, allegedly partnered with some of the world’s most prolific narcotics traffickers to build a corrupt and brutally violent empire based on the illegal trafficking of tons of cocaine to the United States,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams for the Southern District of New York. “Hernández is alleged to have used his vast political powers to protect and assist drug traffickers and cartel leaders by alerting them to possible interdictions, and sanctioning heavily armed violence to support their drug trade. I commend the career prosecutors of the Southern District of New York for their tireless efforts to disrupt the entire illicit drug trafficking ecosystem, from street-level dealers to a former world leader, and everything in-between.”

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Criminal, International, Legal News, Organized Crime

For decades a ruthless mafia has ruled in southern Italy. Now the state is fighting back

From the windows of Vittoria Sicari’s top-floor apartment in Vibo Marina, a village on the southern Italian coast, you can see the blue expanse of the Tyrrhenian Sea stretching out to the horizon. It’s a view Vittoria hasn’t seen in 23 years. Back then, she claims, her apartment was stolen.

According to Vittoria, in the late 90s, as she was getting ready to sell the property, a man attended the open house inspection. When he put in an offer, all the other buyers suddenly lost interest. It was the first hint of trouble ahead. But sensing her chance to make a quick sale, she accepted a holding deposit and agreed to hand over a set of keys so he could go inside to measure up.

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Blog, Criminal, International, Legal News, Organized Crime

Criminal Record: Vladimir Putin’s relationship with the Russian mafia

While the criminal underworld is thriving in Europe nobody really paid much attention as the “Bratva” – various organised crime groups who originated in the former Soviet Union – rose to become the largest in the world.

When Vladimir Putin appeared on television surrounded by his silent stony-faced generals as he threatened to unleash terror on Ukraine I was reminded of a quote by Bill Browder – an anti-corruption campaigner and financier.

“Imagine that Russia is like The Sopranos. In The Sopranos you had the Philadelphia mafia, the New Jersey mafia, the Manhattan mafia and the Brooklyn mafia and then you had the head capo who is above all of them. Vladimir Putin is the head capo.”

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Blog, Celebrity, celebrity legal news, Criminal, International, Legal News, Organized Crime

El Chapo’s Wife Transferred to Minimum-Security Prison

It doesn’t seem like U.S. prison officials are too worried that El Chapo’s wife will follow in his footsteps… right out of custody. Emma Coronel Aispuro has been transferred to a minimum-security lockup in Texas to serve out the remainder of her three-year sentence for taking part in her husband’s drug trafficking operation. FMC Carswell is described by the Bureau of Prisons as a “federal administrative security medical center with an adjacent minimum security satellite camp.” El Chapo infamously escaped two high-security Mexican prisons before being captured and extradited to the U.S., where he was convicted and sentenced to life. Authorities are taking no chances with him; he’s at the Supermax prison in Colorado.

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Blog, Divorce, International, Legal News

CRIME HUNTER: Russia’s barbaric borscht of serial killers

A picture taken on December 13, 2017 shows serial killer Mikhail Popkov in Irkutsk. – A Siberian policeman who raped and killed women after offering them late-night rides was found guilty of dozens more murders on December 10, 2018, making him Russia’s most prolific serial killer of recent times. A court in the city of Irkutsk found Mikhail Popkov guilty of 56 murders between 1992 and 2007, sentencing him to a second life term. He was already in prison after being convicted of killing 22 women in 2015. PHOTO BY ANTON KLIMOV /AFP/Getty Images

In the vast wastelands of Siberia and elsewhere in Russia, they killed and killed in the most macabre ways imaginable.

The former Soviet Union was back in the news this week with its barbaric — and baseless —attack on Ukraine. In our corner over the years, there has been no shortage of Russian serial killers and other monsters.

Only arch-rival the United States compares to the bloodlust unleashed by homicidal maniacs in Russia.

Here are a few of them.

TAMARA SAMSONOVA — THE GRANNY RIPPER

Samsonova was a voracious journal writer.

In fact, when cops in St. Petersburg arrested her for the murder of a 79-year-old woman, they discovered a diary of death that detailed her stomach-churning crimes.

One entry read: “I killed my tenant Volodya, cut him to pieces in the bathroom with a knife and put the pieces of his body in plastic bags and threw them away in the different parts of Frunzensky District.”

MIKHAIL POPKOV — THE WEDNESDAY KILLER

Russia’s worst.

People described police officer Popkov as a “perfect husband and father,” but he was also leading a secret life as a bloodthirsty serial killer who murdered at least 80 women, usually full-figured, in Siberia. Many of the women bore a resemblance to the killer’s mother who abused him when he was a child.

Media nicknamed him The Werewolf and the Wednesday Murderer (the day many of his victims were found) and his reign of terror lasted from 1992 to 2000 when the murders suddenly stopped.

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