NEW YORK – Mexican mobster Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman was convicted on Tuesday of crimes spanning a quarter-century in a trial that laid bare his lavish lifestyle and penchant for extreme violence as the head of one of the world’s most powerful gangs.
The 61-year-old former boss of the notorious Sinaloa cartel – famed for his brazen escapes from Mexican prisons – faces life in prison for smuggling tonnes of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana into the United States. He was also found guilty on money laundering and weapons possession charges during a three-month trial in which witnesses described the mob boss beating, shooting and even burying alive those who got in his way. Guzman is described as the world’s greatest drug lord of all time, surpassing Pablo Escobar.
Court to decide key homophobia cases
WASHINGTON – Brazil’s supreme court was expected to rule yesterday on a pair of cases that could determine whether homophobia and transphobia should be considered criminal offences. The cases, brought by Brazilian rights group ABGLT and the Popular Socialist Party, ask the supreme federal tribunal (STF) to acknowledge the ‘unconstitutional delay’ of Brazil’s congress in criminalising violence against LGBT+ people. The joint legal actions also call on the court to set a deadline for lawmakers to pass legislation that would specifically criminalise discrimination or violence on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. A draft law criminalising homophobic actions was first presented to Brazil’s congress in 2001, but despite having wide popular support, the bill was never approved by the country’s senate.
Mother of dead maid calls for justice
KUALA LUMPUR – A year after the death of an Indonesian maid who was forced to sleep outside next to a dog, her mother called for justice, as several other cases of abuse languish in Malaysia’s courts. Adelina Lisao’s death sparked public outrage. Her employers, a mother and her daughter, have been charged in court for murder and for hiring a foreigner without valid documents, but progress with the case has been slow. “I have been missing my child for a year,” Lisao’s mother, Yohana Banunaek, told reporters on Tuesday through Skype from Indonesia’s eastern city of Kupang. “She died not because of her sickness, but because she was tortured,” she added.
Trump mulls border wall deal
WASHINGTON – US lawmakers reached a preliminary deal to provide some funding for president Donald Trump’s Mexico border wall, but waited on Tuesday to see if he accepts the compromise and cancels a threatened government shutdown. At nearly US$1,4 billion for wall construction, the budget agreed by Republican and Democratic lawmakers was far less than the US$5,7 billion that Trump wanted. Trump has not given a definite answer, telling a crowd of supporters at a rally in the Texas frontier city of El Paso late Monday only that there was “probably some good news, but who knows?” The money, along with other border security measures, was presented as a workable deal to satisfy both sides, and allow Trump to shelve his threat to shut down swaths of government tomorrow. – Nampa-AFP-Reuters-BBC News
