VATICAN CITY: The mystery of the 1983 disappearance of the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican employee took yet another twist Saturday following excavations this week at a Vatican City cemetery. The Vatican said it had discovered two sets of bones under a stone slab that will be formally opened next week.
The new discovery came after Vatican on Thursday pried open the tombs of two 19th-century German princesses in the cemetery of the Pontifical Teutonic College in hopes of finding the remains of Emanuela Orlandi.
Orlandi’s family had received a tip that she might be buried there. But the tombs turned out to be empty, creating yet another mystery about where the dead princesses were.
The Vatican vowed to keep investigating and noted that any bones in the tombs might have been displaced during structural work carried out on both the college building and a cemetery near St. Peter’s Basilica in the 1800s and in more recent decades.
On Saturday, Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti said further searches had centered on the areas adjoining the princesses’ tombs. He said investigators had located two ossuaries, or sets of bones, under a stone slab manhole covering inside the Teutonic college itself.
He said the area was immediately sealed off and would be opened in the presence of forensic experts on July 20.
Gisotti added that the bones were found in two holes carved out of a large stone that was covered by an old pavement stone a few meters (yards) behind the princesses’ tombs. That area is now technically inside a building of the Teutonic College, after expansion work on the building encroached onto the cemetery field.
The last recorded structural work done on the building and the cemetery was in the 1960s and 1970s. Orlandi disappeared in 1983.
She vanished after leaving her family’s Vatican City apartment to go to a music lesson in Rome. Her father was a lay employee of the Holy See.
Her case has been one of the enduring mysteries of the Vatican, kept alive by the Italian media and a quest by her brother to find answers. Over the years, her disappearance has been linked to everything from the plot to kill St. John Paul II to the financial scandal of the Vatican bank and Rome’s criminal underworld.
The last major twist in the case came in 2012, when Italian forensic police exhumed the body of a reputed mobster from the crypt of a Roman basilica in hopes of finding Orlandi’s remains as well. The search turned up no link.
Last year, bones were found underneath the Vatican’s embassy to Italy in Rome. Italian media immediately speculated the remains could belong to Orlandi or another girl who went missing at around the same time. But forensic tests showed the bones long predated their disappearances.
Pietro Orlandi, the missing girl’s brother, has long demanded the Vatican give the family full access to all information it has about his sister’s disappearance.
The family’s lawyer, Laura Sgro, said Saturday she had been informed of the discovery of the bones and that the family was pleased that the investigation was continuing.
“Our interest is to actively cooperate with Vatican prosecutors to understand better how those two tombs could have been empty,” she said in a statement. “If we understand together, it’s better.”
In 2017, an Italian investigative journalist caused a sensation when he published a five-page document that had been stolen from a locked Vatican cabinet that suggested the Holy See had been involved in Orlandi’s disappearance. The Vatican immediately branded the document a fake, though it never explained what it was doing in the Vatican cabinet.
The document was purportedly written by a cardinal and listed supposed expenses used for Orlandi’s upkeep after she disappeared.
Gisotti said this week that the Holy See “has always shown attention and closeness to the suffering of the Orlandi family and in particular Emanuela’s mother” and that its decision to excavate the Teutonic cemetery at the family’s request was evidence of that attention.
Vatican mystery over missing girl deepens as bones are found
Vatican mystery over missing girl deepens as bones are found
- Pietro Orlandi, the missing girl’s brother, has long demanded the Vatican give the family full access to all information it has about his sister’s disappearance
US will send Ukraine at least $275m in new weapons in push to bolster Kyiv before Trump
The US officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the aid package has not yet been made public
WASHINGTON: The Pentagon will send Ukraine at least $275 million in new weapons, US officials said Tuesday, as the Biden administration rushes to do as much as it can to help Kyiv fight back against Russia in the remaining two months before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
The latest tranche of weapons comes as worries grow about an escalation in the conflict, with both sides pushing to gain any advantage that they can exploit if Trump demands a quick end to the war — as he has vowed to do.
In rapid succession this week, President Joe Biden gave Ukraine the authority to fire longer-range missiles deeper into Russia and then Russian President Vladimir Putin formally lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons.
US officials contend that Russia’s change in nuclear doctrine was expected, but Moscow is warning that Ukraine’s new use of the Army Tactical Missile System, known as ATACMS, inside Russia on Tuesday could trigger a strong response.
One American official said the US is seeing no indications that Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine. The US officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the aid package has not yet been made public.
Asked Tuesday if a Ukrainian attack with longer-range US missiles could potentially trigger use of nuclear weapons, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov answered affirmatively. He pointed to the doctrine’s provision that holds the door open for it after a conventional strike that raises critical threats for the “sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Russia and its ally Belarus.
A US official said Ukraine fired about eight ATACM missiles into Russia on Tuesday, and just two were intercepted. The official said the US is still assessing the damage but that the missiles struck an ammunition supply location in Karachev, in the Bryansk region.
The weapons in the new package of aid for Ukraine include an infusion of air defense, including High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), as well as 155mm and 105mm artillery rounds, Javelin anti-armor munitions and other equipment and spare parts, US officials say.
The weapons will be provided through presidential drawdown authority, which allows the Pentagon quickly to pull supplies from its shelves to speed them to Ukraine’s front line.
Trump’s upcoming move to the White House has triggered a scramble by the Biden administration to ensure all the congressionally approved funding for Ukraine gets delivered and that Kyiv is in a strong position going into the winter.
The Biden administration would have to rush $7.1 billion in weapons from the Pentagon’s stockpiles to spend all of those funds before Trump is sworn in. That includes $4.3 billion from a foreign aid bill passed by Congress earlier this year and $2.8 billion still on the books in savings due to the Pentagon recalculating the value of systems sent.
As part of the wider effort, the administration also is on track to disperse its portion of a $50 billion loan to Ukraine, backed by frozen Russian assets, before Biden leaves the White House, according to two senior administration officials.
The officials, who were not authorized to comment publicly, said the US and Ukraine are now in “advanced stages” in discussing terms of the loan and are looking to complete the process for the $20 billion portion of the mammoth loan that the US is backing.
The goal is to get it done before the end of the year, one official said.
Trump has criticized US support for Ukraine and derided Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “salesman” while also having praised Putin and touting his good relationship with him. The president-elect has claimed — without explaining how — that he will end the war in in Ukraine before his inauguration on Jan. 20, saying he will “get it resolved very quickly.”
Last week, when he addressed supporters from a golden ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump returned to that pledge but again offered little information before changing the subject.
“We’re going to work very hard on Russia and Ukraine. It’s got to stop. Russia and Ukraine’s gotta stop,” he said.
He has suggested that Ukraine give up at least some of its Russian-occupied territory to settle the war, saying at a rally in late September that “if they made a bad deal, it would’ve been much better. They would’ve given up a little bit and everybody would be living and every building would be built and every tower would be aging for another 2,000 years.”
Earlier this year, the leaders of the Group of Seven wealthy democracies agreed to engineer the mammoth loan to help Ukraine. Interest earned on profits from Russia’s frozen central bank assets would be used as collateral.
Once terms are finalized, the US will send the $20 billion to the World Bank, which will in turn disperse the money to Ukraine. The remaining $30 billion will come from the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada and Japan, among others.
The Pentagon will send Ukraine at least $275m in new weapons, US officials said Tuesday, as the Biden administration rushes to do as much as it can to help Kyiv fight back against Russia in the remaining two months before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. (Reuters/File)
Pakistan PM approves military operation against separatists following surge in violence in southwest
Pakistan PM approves military operation against separatists following surge in violence in southwest
- Announcement by Shehbaz Sharif to launch the operation ‘against terrorist organizations’ operating in Balochistan came after a meeting of the government’s security committee
- BLA wants a halt to all Chinese-funded projects and for Chinese workers to leave Pakistan to avoid further attacks
The announcement by Shehbaz Sharif to launch the operation “against terrorist organizations” operating in Balochistan came after a meeting of the government’s security committee in Islamabad, the capital. On Nov. 9, a suicide bomber with the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army group blew himself up at a train station in Quetta, killing 26 people, most of them soldiers.
In a statement, Sharif’s office said the BLA and other groups will be targeted buit didn’t say when the operation would begin. The office blamed the groups for “targeting innocent civilians and foreign nationals to scuttle Pakistan’s economic progress by creating insecurity at the behest of hostile external powers.”
In recent months, Balochistan and northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province have witnessed a surge in militant violence, most blamed on the outlawed BLA and TTP groups. The train station attack in Quetta was the deadliest since August, when separatists killed more than 50 people in multiple coordinated attacks on passengers buses, police and security forces across Balochistan.
Oil- and mineral-rich Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest but also least populated province. It is a hub for the country’s ethnic Baloch minority whose members say they face discrimination and exploitation by the central government.
The BLA mostly targets security forces and foreigners, especially Chinese nationals who are in Pakistan as part of Beijing’s multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative. The BLA wants a halt to all Chinese-funded projects and for Chinese workers to leave Pakistan to avoid further attacks.
Also Tuesday, a suicide car bomber targeted a security post in Bannu, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, according to Irfan Kahn, a local police official. Kahn said gunshots were heard and and ambulances had arrived at the scene of the attack. He provided no further details, and it was not immediately clear how many people were killed or wounded in the attack.
The attack came a day after Pakistani security forces raided a militant hideout in the northwestern district of Tirah, sparking a shootout in which at least 10 insurgents were killed and several others were wounded.
Woman faces hate crime charges after confronting Palestinian man wearing `Palestine’ shirt
- Waseem Zahran told the Chicago Sun-Times it was not the first time he has been harassed for wearing the sweatshirt, and he expects it won’t be the last time
DOWNERS GROVE, Illinois: A suburban Chicago woman faces hate crime charges for allegedly confronting a Palestinian man wearing a sweatshirt with “Palestine” written on it and trying to knock a cellphone out of his pregnant wife’s hands as she recorded the encounter, authorities and the man said.
Alexandra Szustakiewicz, 64, appeared in court Monday for her arraignment on two felony hate crime counts and a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge. A DuPage County judge ordered the Darien, Illinois, woman to have no contact with the victims and to stay away from the restaurant where police said the confrontation occurred Saturday. Szustakiewicz’s next court hearing is set for Dec. 16.
A message left Tuesday for her public defender, Kendall Pietrzak, seeking comment on the charges was not immediately returned.
Szustakiewicz was at a Panera Bread restaurant in the Chicago suburb of Downers Grove on Saturday “when she confronted and yelled expletives at a man regarding a sweatshirt he was wearing with the word Palestine written on it,” according to a news release sent Monday by the DuPage County State’s Attorney’s Office and Downers Grove police.
She also allegedly “attempted to hit a cell phone out of the hands of a woman who was with the man when the woman began videotaping the incident,” it adds.
A complaint filed against Szustakiewicz, who was arrested Sunday, alleges that she “committed a hate crime by reason of perceived national origin” of the two victims.
DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert Berlin said in a statement that “this type of behavior and the accompanying prejudice have no place in a civilized society.”
The Palestinian man Szustakiewicz is accused of confronting said he was wearing a hoodie with the word “Palestine” on it when she approached him and yelled expletives at him while trying to hit his pregnant wife, whom he shielded as she filmed Szustakiewicz with her cellphone.
Waseem Zahran told the Chicago Sun-Times it was not the first time he has been harassed for wearing the sweatshirt, and he expects it won’t be the last time. He said his family has long faced harassment and threats for being Palestinian.
“Since I was a child, I’ve seen my mom threatened, parents screamed at, cousins yelled at. But it was a first for me to be attacked,” Zahran told the newspaper.
He said he tried to deescalate the situation multiple times, even after Szustakiewicz allegedly hit him in the face and attempted to throw hot coffee on his wife before and after swinging at her multiple times.
Zahran said Szustakiewicz continued swinging at his wife even after he told her she was pregnant.
“I don’t care,” he said she replied.
He said in a statement sent Monday by the Chicago Office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations that he is “a born and raised American who took his wife out for lunch. I was not able to do that simply because I was Palestinian.”
CAIR-Chicago Executive Director Ahmed Rehab condemned the attack in the statement.
“We have long seen how European migrants like this woman feel a bizarre sense of entitlement to regularly harass and accost native Palestinians in their ancestral homeland, knowing they enjoy full impunity and knowing their victims have no recourse,” Rehab said.
“Now, shockingly but not surprisingly, that same anti-Palestinian hatred has followed them into their new homeland, here in America, where they were born and raised.”
Afghan woman teacher, jailed Tajik lawyer share top rights prize
- Zholia Parsi, a teacher from Kabul, shared the prize with lawyer Manuchehr Kholiqnazarov, who is serving a 16-year prison sentence in connection with his human rights work
- The chairman of the prize jury, Hans Thoolen, said the pair were “exceptional laureates“
GENEVA: An Afghan teacher and a jailed lawyer from Tajikistan on Tuesday won the Martin Ennals Award, one of the world’s most prestigious rights prizes, with the jury hailing their “exceptional courage.”
Zholia Parsi, a teacher from Kabul who began protesting for women’s rights after the Taliban returned to power three years ago, shared the prize with lawyer Manuchehr Kholiqnazarov, who is serving a 16-year prison sentence in connection with his human rights work.
The chairman of the prize jury, Hans Thoolen, said the pair were “exceptional laureates” who had “paid too big a price for justice and equality to be respected in Afghanistan and Tajikistan, and the international community must support their efforts instead of battling geostrategic interests in the region.”
Parsi began her activism after losing her career and seeing her daughters deprived of their education in the wake of the Taliban takeover in August 2021.
She founded the Spontaneous Movement of Afghan Women (SMAW), which has mobilized communities in various provinces to resist the Taliban’s policies and practices, the jury said.
Parsi had “displayed remarkable leadership and resilience in organizing numerous public protests despite the risks involved,” it added.
She was arrested in the street by armed Taliban in September 2023 and detained along with her son, it said, adding that she was only released “after three months of torture and ill-treatment... which further strengthened her resolve to resist Taliban oppression and repression.”
Kholiqnazarov is a human rights lawyer belonging to the Pamiri ethnic group from the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO) region in eastern Tadjikistan.
He headed the Lawyers Association of Pamir, and lobbied among other things for minority rights and the incorporation of international human rights standards into domestic law and practice.
He played a key role in investigating the November 2021 death of youth leader Gulbiddin Ziyobekov.
That investigation turned up critical evidence indicating the young man may have been the victim of an extrajudicial execution, the jury’s statement said.
It also pointed to unlawful use of force in the violent repression of the mass protest in the regional capital Khorog that followed Ziyobekov’s death, resulting in two deaths, 17 people injured and hundreds detained, it added.
Kholiqnazarov himself was arrested on May 28, 2022 “amid a widespread crackdown on local informal leadership and residents of the GBAO,” the prize jury said.
The Martin Ennals Award, named after the first secretary general of Amnesty International, was first given in 1994.
The jury comprises representatives from 10 leading human rights organizations, including Amnesty and Human Rights Watch.
The award ceremony will take place in Geneva on Thursday.
Trump’s hush money case should be paused, prosecutors say
- The prosecutors had asked for more time to consider next steps in the case
- Trump pleaded not guilty in the case, which he has long portrayed as a politically motivated attempt by Bragg, a Democrat, to interfere with his campaign
NEW YORK: The case in which Donald Trump was convicted on criminal charges stemming from hush money paid to a porn star should be paused in light of his election victory to allow Trump to seek dismissal, New York prosecutors said on Tuesday.
Trump, 78, is hoping to enter office for a second term unencumbered by any of the four criminal cases he has faced and which some said would derail his 2024 candidacy to return to the White House.
The Republican Trump was convicted in May of falsifying business records to cover up a $130,000 payment his former lawyer Michael Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels for her silence before the 2016 election about a sexual encounter she says she had with Trump, who denies it.
The case marked the first time a US president — former or sitting — had been convicted of or charged with a criminal offense.
Trump had been scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 26, but Merchan last week put all proceedings in the case on pause at the request of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office.
The prosecutors had asked for more time to consider next steps in the case, citing the need to balance the “competing interests” between having the criminal case go forward and protecting the office of the president.
Trump pleaded not guilty in the case, which he has long portrayed as a politically motivated attempt by Bragg, a Democrat, to interfere with his campaign.
His defense lawyers urged Merchan to dismiss the case, arguing that having it loom over him while he was president would cause “unconstitutional impediments” to his ability to govern.
Trump’s lawyers also argued his conviction should be vacated and the charges dismissed because of the US Supreme Court’s ruling in July that presidents cannot be prosecuted over their official acts, and that evidence of their official acts cannot be used in trials over personal behavior.
Bragg’s office said that its case dealt with purely personal conduct.
Falsification of business records is punishable by up to four years in prison. Before he was elected, experts said it was unlikely — but not impossible — that Trump would face time behind bars, with punishments such as a fine or probation seen as more likely.
Trump’s victory over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 election made the prospect of imposing a sentence of jail or probation even more politically fraught and impractical, given that a sentence could have impeded his ability to conduct the duties of the presidency.
Trump was indicted on three separate slates of state and federal charges in 2023, one involving classified documents he kept after leaving office and two others involving his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
A Florida-based federal judge in July dismissed the documents case. The Justice Department is now evaluating how to wind down the federal election-related case. Trump also faces state criminal charges in Georgia over his bid to reverse his 2020 loss in that state, but the case remains in limbo.
