SAN DIEGO: An investigation into Marines accused of helping smuggle migrants into the United States led to the arrest Thursday of 16 of their fellow Marines at California’s Camp Pendleton, just north of the US-Mexico border.
In a dramatic move aimed at sending a message, authorities made the arrests as the Marines gathered in formation with their battalion.
None of the 16 Marines were involved in helping enforce border security, the Marine Corps said in a news release. They are accused of crimes ranging from migrant smuggling to drug-related offenses.
Officials could not immediately be reached for additional details.
The arrests came weeks after two Marines were arrested by a Border Patrol agent on suspicion of transporting three Mexicans on the promise of money after they crossed illegally into the United States.
The military said the investigation helped authorities identify the 16 Marines arrested at the largest Marine Corps’ base on the West Coast, about 55 miles (90 kilometers) from San Diego’s border with Mexico.
Retired Marine Lt. Col. Gary Barthel called it a “kind of black eye for the Marine Corps” and said it was important the military show criminal behavior will not be tolerated.
“Obviously I think it looks bad whenever you have the military that is helping protect the border and then you’ve got military people smuggling,” said Barthel, an attorney at the Military Law Center in Carlsbad, north of San Diego.
Marines and other US troops were brought in last year to help reinforce the border by installing razor wire on top of existing barriers, among other things. Troops are barred from arresting migrants.
All 16 were junior enlisted Marines. Barthel said smugglers may have targeted young troops who could be vulnerable to being enticed by fast money.
Border Patrol agents over the years have routinely caught migrants in the country illegally walking onto Camp Pendleton or floating in skiffs off the coast nearby. Authorities said the base, cut by Interstate 5 leading to Los Angeles, sits along a well-traversed route used by migrant smugglers.
Officials from 1st Marine Division worked alongside the Naval Criminal Investigative Service in the investigation that started after the July 3 arrests of two Marines, who were charged in federal court with migrant smuggling. Both pleaded not guilty to the charges.
A US Border Patrol agent stopped Lance Cpl. Byron Darnell Law II and Lance Cpl. David Javier Salazar-Quintero about 7 miles (11 kilometers) north of the border after being alerted by other agents that a vehicle similar to theirs was suspected of picking up migrants who came into the country illegally, according to the federal complaint.
Three migrants were found in the backseat of a black BMW driven by Law, investigators say. Both Marines are riflemen assigned to 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division at Camp Pendleton.
Law told the agent that Salazar asked if he was interested in earning $1,000 picking up an “illegal alien.”
Salazar told authorities that Law introduced him to a man who “recruited” him to help smuggle in migrants, according to court documents. Salazar said he had gone out to pick up migrants on four separate occasions but was never paid.
Law and Salazar, who speaks Spanish, went to the border the night of July 2 and received instructions from a Mexican cellphone, court documents say. Law told the agent they picked up a man and dropped him off at a McDonald’s in Del Mar, a beach community north of San Diego, and then returned to the base. They were not paid.
Law said Salazar told him they would be paid if they picked up three migrants on July 3 near the border, according to court documents.
The three migrants told authorities they were from Mexico and agreed to pay $8,000 to be smuggled into the United States.
Marine Corps officials gave no details about how or why the investigation expanded to result in the arrest of 16 others. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service also declined to comment.
An additional eight Marines were being questioned about their involvement in drug offenses as part of a separate investigation.
16 Marines arrested in migrant smuggling investigation
16 Marines arrested in migrant smuggling investigation
- The investigation helped authorities identify the 16 Marines arrested at the largest Marine Corps’ base on the West Coast
- Marines and other US troops were brought in last year to help reinforce the border by installing razor wire on top of existing barriers
France asks Indonesia to transfer national on death row
- Indonesia has in recent weeks released half a dozen high-profile detainees
- French diplomats have acknowledged that talks were underway for the transfer of Serge Atlaoui
Indonesia has in recent weeks released half a dozen high-profile detainees, including a Filipino mum on death row and the last five members of the so-called “Bali Nine” drug ring.
French diplomats have acknowledged that talks were underway for the transfer of Serge Atlaoui, a 61-year-old Frenchman arrested in 2005 at a drugs factory outside the capital Jakarta.
The Indonesian government has now confirmed it received the official transfer request, which will be discussed in early January.
“We have received a formal letter requesting the transfer of Serge Atlaoui,” senior law and human rights minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra said.
The French embassy in Jakarta declined AFP’s request for comment.
Father-of-four Atlaoui has maintained his innocence, claiming that he was installing machinery in what he thought was an acrylics plant.
He was initially sentenced to life in prison, but the Supreme Court in 2007 increased the sentence to death on appeal.
Atlaoui was held on the island of Nusakambangan in Central Java, known as Indonesia’s “Alcatraz,” following the death sentence, but he was transferred to the city of Tangerang, west of Jakarta, in 2015 ahead of his appeal.
That year, he was due to be executed alongside eight other drug offenders but won a temporary reprieve after Paris stepped up pressure, with Indonesian authorities agreeing to let an outstanding appeal run its course.
In the appeal, Atlaoui’s lawyers argued that then-president Joko Widodo did not properly consider his case as he rejected Atlaoui’s plea for clemency — typically a death row convict’s last chance to avoid the firing squad.
The court, however, upheld its previous decision that it did not have the jurisdiction to hear a challenge over the clemency plea.
Atlaoui’s lawyer, Richard Sedillot, said last month that there was still “considerable hope” for a transfer.
Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM) said the official request is the “penultimate step in a long fight” for those at the Paris-based organization who have campaigned for years to prevent Atlaoui’s execution.
“We are now waiting for this transfer to become a reality,” ECPM director Raphael Chenuil-Hazan said.
Earlier this month, Filipino inmate Mary Jane Veloso tearfully reunited with her family after nearly 15 years on Indonesia’s death row. She was transferred to a women’s prison in Manila where she awaits a hoped-for pardon for her drugs conviction.
Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest drug laws and has executed foreigners in the past.
At least 530 people were on death row in the Southeast Asian nation, mostly for drug-related crimes, according to data from rights group KontraS, citing official figures.
According to Indonesia’s Immigration and Corrections Ministry, more than 90 foreigners were on death row, all on drug charges, as of early November.
Despite ongoing negotiations for prisoner transfers, the Indonesian government recently signaled that it would resume executions — on hiatus since 2016 — of drug convicts on death row.
India’s former PM Manmohan Singh cremated with state honors
- Singh’s body, draped in Indian flag, was carried through the capital on a flower-decked carriage pulled by a ceremonial army truck
- Modi, who called Singh one of the nation’s ‘most distinguished leaders,’ attended the funeral, along with President Droupadi Murmu
NEW DELHI: The body of Manmohan Singh, the former Indian prime minister whose death has spark outpourings of grief at home and accolades from abroad, was cremated on Sunday on the banks of the Yamuna River in New Delhi with full state honors.
The funeral was conducted in the Sikh tradition as priests chanted hymns, after Singh’s body, draped in the Indian flag, was carried through the capital on a flower-decked carriage pulled by a ceremonial army truck.
The flag was removed and the body covered with a saffron cloth before it was placed on the pyre.
Since Singh died on Thursday at 92, many have taken up his comment near the end of his 10-year rule that “history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media.”
He was referring to a perception of weak leadership as he headed a coalition government facing numerous charges of corruption, which was thrown out of office in the 2014 election won by his successor Narendra Modi.
Modi, who called Singh one of the nation’s “most distinguished leaders” after his death, attended the funeral, along with President Droupadi Murmu and representatives of various countries. Modi’s government has decided to allocate land for Singh’s memorial.
Singh, considered the architect of India’s economic liberalization, had criticized Modi’s economic policies such as demonetization and introducing a goods and services tax.
Singh is survived by his wife and three daughters.
Congress Leader Rahul Gandhi accompanied Singh’s family on the truck to the Nigambodh Ghat cremation site after the procession from party headquarters in New Delhi, where people joined Congress party leaders and members to pay their last respects.
The leaders of the US, Canada, France, Sri Lanka, China and Pakistan were among those expressing grief at Singh’s death and highlighting his international contributions.
Regular flights between Ashgabat and Moscow suspended for a month from Dec. 30, says TASS
MOSCOW: Regular flights between Ashgabat and Moscow are to be suspended for a month from Dec. 30 after an Azerbaijan Airlines jet crashed in Kazakhstan, the state-run TASS news agency reported on Saturday citing Turkmenistan's national air carrier.
A passenger jet operated by Azerbaijan Airlines crashed near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, after diverting from an area of southern Russia where Moscow has repeatedly used air defence systems against Ukrainian attack drones.
Turkiye’s pro-Kurd party to meet jailed PKK leader Saturday
ISTANBUL: A delegation from Turkiye’s main pro-Kurdish DEM party is due on Saturday to visit jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, who is serving life on a prison island off Istanbul, a party source said.
“The delegation left in the morning,” the source told AFP, without elaborating how they would travel to the island for security reasons.
The visit would be the party’s first in almost 10 years.
DEM’s predecessor, the HDP party, last met Ocalan in April 2015.
On Friday, the government approved DEM’s request to visit Ocalan, who founded the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) nearly half a century ago and has languished in solitary confinement since 1999.
The PKK is regarded as a “terror” organization by Turkiye and most of its Western allies, including the United States and European Union.
Detained 25 years ago in a Hollywood-style operation by Turkish security forces in Kenya after years on the run, Ocalan was sentenced to death.
He escaped the gallows when Turkiye abolished capital punishment in 2004 and is spending his remaining years in an isolation cell on the Imrali prison island south of Istanbul.
Saturday’s rare visit became possible after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s nationalist ally, MHP party leader Devlet Bahceli, invited Ocalan to come to parliament to renounce “terror,” and to disband the militant group.
Erdogan backed the appeal as a “historic window of opportunity.”
Afghan Taliban forces target ‘several points’ in Pakistan in retaliation for airstrikes – Afghan defense ministry
KABUL: Afghan Taliban forces targeted “several points” in neighboring Pakistan, Afghanistan’s defense ministry said on Saturday, days after Pakistani aircraft carried out aerial bombardment inside Afghanistan.
The statement from the Defense Ministry did not specify Pakistan but said the strikes were conducted “beyond the ‘hypothetical line’” – an expression used by Afghan authorities to refer to a border with Pakistan that they have long disputed.
“Several points beyond the hypothetical line, serving as centers and hideouts for malicious elements and their supporters who organized and coordinated attacks in Afghanistan, were targeted in retaliation from the southeastern direction of the country,” the ministry said.
Asked whether the statement referred to Pakistan, ministry spokesman Enayatullah Khowarazmi said: “We do not consider it to be the territory of Pakistan, therefore, we cannot confirm the territory, but it was on the other side of the hypothetical line.”
Afghanistan has for decades rejected the border, known as the Durand Line, drawn by British colonial authorities in the 19th century through the mountainous and often lawless tribal belt between what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan.
No details of casualties or specific areas targeted were provided. The Pakistani military’s public relations wing and a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Afghan authorities warned on Wednesday they would retaliate after the Pakistani bombardment, which they said had killed civilians. Islamabad said it had targeted hideouts of Islamist militants along the border.
The neighbors have a strained relationship, with Pakistan saying that several militant attacks that have occurred in its country have been launched from Afghan soil – a charge the Afghan Taliban denies.
