AFP

A 19-year-old accused of shooting Lady Gaga’s dog walker to steal her French bulldogs last year has been recaptured after being mistakenly released, authorities in Los Angeles have said.

The news that James Howard Jackson, had been taken into custody once more came Wednesday as another of the three men charged in the robbery was sentenced to four years in prison. 

The gang shot Ryan Fischer as he exercised the three prize pets in Hollywood in February 2021. Fischer sustained chest injuries in the attack, and said on Instagram a month later he had suffered a collapsed lung.

Jackson, suspected of pulling the trigger, had been mistakenly released from custody earlier this year after what the US Marshals Service described as a “clerical error.”

They had offered a reward of up to $5,000 for information leading to his arrest, saying that he should be considered “armed and dangerous.”

The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office said he was finally “apprehended without incident” in the city of Palmdale. They did not give further details, and it was not clear if the reward was being collected. 

Also on Wednesday, a California court sentenced Jaylin Keyshawn White, who had admitted to being part of the gang, to four years in prison.

At a court hearing in Los Angeles on Wednesday, White, now 20, pleaded guilty to second-degree robbery, and received a four-year prison sentence.

White had been charged in April 2021 along with Jackson and Lafayette Shon Whaley, now 28.

Surveillance footage from the scene of the attack shows a car stopping near Fischer and two people jumping out.

One demands that Fischer “give it up” before a struggle, in which a gunshot is heard, and the dog walker falls to the ground, screaming.

The attackers each grab one dog — Koji and Gustav — and leave Fischer shouting for help.

The third dog — Miss Asia — ran back to the walker after the robbers drove away.

The robbery led the “Poker face” singer to offer a $500,000 reward for the return of the animals, whose theft highlighted a growing trend targeting the valuable breed.

The woman who police said handed in the dogs in response to the reward, has been charged with being an accessory after the fact and with receiving stolen goods.

Los Angeles police said at the time they did not believe the dogs were targeted because of their owner, but because of the breed’s appeal on the black market.

Small and friendly — and thus easy to grab — French bulldogs do not have large litters.

Their relative scarcity, and their association with stars such as Lady Gaga, Reese Witherspoon, Hugh Jackman, Chrissy Teigen, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Madonna gives them added cachet, and means they can change hands for thousands of dollars.

The Taliban said Thursday they have no knowledge of Ayman al-Zawahiri’s presence in Afghanistan, days after US President Joe Biden announced the Al-Qaeda chief had been killed by a drone strike in Kabul.

A carefully phrased Taliban statement neither confirmed Zawahiri’s presence in Afghanistan nor acknowledged his death, but carried the first official mention of his name since Sunday’s strike.

Zawahiri’s assassination is the biggest blow to Al-Qaeda since US special forces killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, and calls into question the Taliban’s promise not to harbour militant groups.

The United States led an invasion in 2001 that toppled the first Taliban government, after the hardline Islamist group refused to hand over bin Laden following the 9/11 attacks.

“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has no information about Ayman al-Zawahiri’s arrival and stay,” Thursday’s Taliban statement said.

“The leadership of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has instructed the intelligence agencies to hold a comprehensive and serious investigation.” 

Taliban officials had previously conceded that a US drone strike had taken place in an upmarket Kabul suburb, but gave no details of any casualties. 

Washington said earlier this week that Zawahiri’s presence was a clear violation of the Doha agreement signed in 2020 that paved the way for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan a year ago.

– Accord breached –

The Taliban, in turn, said Washington had breached the accord.

“The fact that America invaded our territory and violated all international principles, we strongly condemn the action once again,” the statement said.

“If such action is repeated, the responsibility of any consequences will be on the United States of America.”

The Taliban said in their statement that there was “no threat” to any country from Afghanistan’s soil.

In announcing Zawahiri’s death, Biden declared “justice had been delivered” to the families of victims of the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

US officials said Zawahiri was on the balcony of a three-storey house in the Afghan capital when targeted with two Hellfire missiles early on Sunday.

The drone attack was the first known over-the-horizon strike by the US on a target in Afghanistan since Washington withdrew its forces from the country on August 31 last year, days after the Taliban swept back to power.

The house targeted in the strike was in Sherpur, one of Kabul’s most affluent neighbourhoods, with several villas occupied by high-ranking Taliban officials and commanders.

Zawahiri took over Al-Qaeda after bin Laden was killed, and had a $25 million US bounty on his head.

News of his death comes a month before the first anniversary of the final withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and the return to power of the Taliban.

No country has yet recognised the new government, which has slowly reintroduced a harsh interpretation of Islamic law that characterised the Taliban’s first stint in power.

While the insurgency has ended, the country has been plunged into economic turmoil, with Afghanistan’s assets abroad frozen, aid curtailed, and sanctions on key Taliban leaders.

“Even if the Taliban face no new sanctions, lifting the existing ones will be harder after Zawahiri’s discovery and killing in downtown Kabul,” said Nishank Motwani, fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School.

“As a consequence of Zawahiri’s killing… it is likely that fragmentations within the Taliban will widen that could result in internal violence.”

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US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Japan on Thursday for the final stop on her Asian tour, following a visit to Taiwan that incensed China.

AFP reporters saw the politician disembark from her plane at Yokota Air Base in Tokyo, before greeting the US ambassador and other officials with hugs and handshakes.

Beijing has launched large-scale military drills in the waters around Taiwan after Pelosi this week became the highest-profile elected US official to set foot on the self-ruled island in 25 years.

The 82-year-old politician defied a series of stern threats from China to meet Taiwanese leaders on Wednesday, saying her trip made it “unequivocally clear” that the United States would not abandon a democratic ally.

It is Pelosi’s first trip to Japan since 2015, and she arrived from South Korea where her schedule included a visit to the border with nuclear-armed North Korea.

She will meet Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for breakfast on Friday, Japan’s foreign ministry said, to discuss the two countries’ alliance and issues of shared interest.

Pelosi is also scheduled to discuss international affairs with Japan’s House of Representatives speaker Hiroyuki Hosoda.

Japan, a key US ally, has lodged a diplomatic protest with China over its massive military exercises encircling Taiwan, which began on Thursday.

Just before Pelosi’s arrival, Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi said five ballistic missiles fired by China were believed to have landed in Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

Parts of Japan’s southernmost island region Okinawa are close to Taiwan, as are islets at the centre of a long-running dispute between Tokyo and Beijing.

US President Joe Biden also angered Beijing on a visit to Japan in May, when he said US forces would defend Taiwan militarily if China attempted to take control of the island by force — prompting Beijing to warn that the US was “playing with fire”.

Biden and his team insisted at the time that their decades-old approach to Taiwan remained in place, however.

This includes arming the democratic island for its own defence while acknowledging China’s legal sovereignty, and expressing “strategic ambiguity” on whether American troops would ever intervene if China invaded the territory.