World

A Honduran judge on Friday authorized the extradition to the United States of former national police chief Juan Carlos Bonilla who is accused of running drug trafficking operations for former president Juan Orlando Hernandez. 

A judge approved the extradition of Juan Carlos “Tiger” Bonilla in response to a request from US authorities, said Melvin Duarte, a spokesman for the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ).

Bonilla is alleged to have “participated in a conspiracy to import controlled substances into the United States (…) using or carrying weapons,” he added.

Duarte said the defense has until Monday to appeal the decision.

Bonilla was captured on March 9 north of the capital Tegucigalpa. 

Bonilla, who was chief of police from 2012 to 2013, had been named as a “co-conspirator” during the US drug trafficking trial of Tony Hernandez, the brother of former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez.

The ex-president’s brother, a former Honduran congressman, was given a life sentence in the United States last year.

US prosecutors say Bonilla abused his powers in the Honduran police and played a key role in a violent international drug trafficking conspiracy.

Bonilla’s extradition green light follows that of former president Hernandez, whose extradition was approved last month.

Hernandez’s defense filed an appeal to stop the extradition, but it was denied. 

Duarte said that 12 magistrates have signed the extradition act for Hernandez, but three other signatures are needed in order to send the former president to the United States. 

In the petition, the United States accused Hernandez of crimes, including “conspiracy (…) to import controlled substances” such as cocaine and “possessing firearms, including machine guns and destructive devices” with the goal of importing narcotics.

US prosecutors say the former president turned Honduras into a “narco-state” by involving the military, police and civilians in drug trafficking to the United States. 

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights published a resolution Friday urging Peru not to grant 83-year-old ex-president Alberto Fujimori, serving time for rights violations, a release on humanitarian grounds.

Fujimori, who was president from 1990 to 2000, has since 2009 been serving a 25-year sentence for two massacres committed by army death squads during his presidency.

Twenty-five people, including a child, were killed in the supposed anti-terrorist operations in 1991 and 1992.

Last month, Peru’s Constitutional Court ordered the disgraced former leader’s release, reinstating a presidential “humanitarian pardon” granted in December 2017. 

It was revoked in 2018. 

The IACHR resolution, dated Thursday and published Friday, said the Constitutional Court decision failed to give adequate weight to the right to justice of Fujimori’s victims.

“The State of Peru must refrain from implementing the sentence handed down by the Constitutional Court of Peru on March 17, 2022, which reinstates the effects of the pardon ‘for humanitarian reasons granted to Alberto Fujimori on 24 December 2017,” it said. 

Lima has said it would abide by any decision of the IACHR.

Upon leaving office, Fujimori fled into exile in Japan, where his parents were from. 

He was extradited back to Peru from Chile in 2007 and jailed, having been convicted in his absence.

Fujimori, who suffers ill health, is the only inmate at the small Barbadillo jail at the barracks of the special operations police in eastern Lima.

There he grows flowers, paints and receives family visits.

His family has submitted several petitions to have him released on health grounds but those were all rejected.

His daughter Keiko Fujimori, who has lost three presidential election runoffs, said last year she would pardon her father if elected.

She was defeated in June by leftist Pedro Castillo and now faces prosecution over accusations of illegal campaign funding in her failed 2011 and 2016 presidential bids. 

Cash-strapped Sri Lanka’s central bank hiked interest rates by a record 700 basis points Friday as police fired tear gas at hundreds of students protesting over the economic crisis.

Severe shortages of food and fuel, alongside lengthy electricity blackouts, have led to weeks of widespread anti-government demonstrations — with calls for President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign.

The latest protests saw students try to march Friday to the national parliament, and police used water cannons in efforts to disburse the angry crowds.

Monks, who had largely rallied the Sinhala-Buddhist majority to elect Rajapaksa at the November 2019 polls, were also seen joining demonstrations in the capital Colombo, where some defiantly stood opposite police wearing gas masks and holding riot shields.

Demonstrators nationwide carried placards saying “Gota go home”, demanding Rajapaksa and his administration step down over the country’s worst economic crisis since independence in 1948.

– Damage control –

The Central Bank of Sri Lanka said its benchmark lending rate had been raised to 14.5 percent to “stabilise the exchange rate” after the rupee tumbled over 35 percent in a month.

The rate for deposits was also increased by seven percentage points to 13.5 percent as reports said Sri Lanka’s rupee was the worst-performing currency in the world, edging out the Russian ruble.

The bank’s newly appointed governor, Nandalal Weerasinghe, said attempts to control foreign exchange markets and keep interest rates artificially low in the past year had contributed to the unprecedented economic chaos.

“We are now in damage control mode,” Weerasinghe said at his first press conference since replacing Ajith Cabraal, who was virtually forced out Monday with the country facing bankruptcy.

“We would not have had to make such a sharp increase if rates had been raised incrementally over a period of time,” Weerasinghe said, vowing to relax exchange controls introduced by his predecessor.

The bank said the shock-treatment rate hike was due to its belief that the embattled island’s inflation, already at record levels, could get worse.

The Colombo Consumer Price Index rose 18.7 percent in March while food inflation topped 25 percent, but private analysts placed inflation at over 50 percent in the month.

International rating agencies have downgraded Sri Lanka as fears grow it could default on its $51 billion external debt.

This week, Rajapaksa appointed a panel of experts to organise a restructuring of foreign debt.

His government is preparing for bailout negotiations with the International Monetary Fund, and finance ministry officials said the panel will prepare a programme for sovereign bond-holders and other creditors to take a haircut.

“What Sri Lanka is keen to do is avoid a hard default,” a source from the ministry who requested anonymity told AFP. 

“It will be a negotiated restructuring of the debt with the help of the IMF.”

Meetings with the IMF are set to begin by next week but finance minister Basil Rajapaksa, the president’s brother, resigned Sunday along with nearly the entire cabinet. 

The country is still without a replacement, with his successor Ali Sabry quitting after just one day in office. Sabry told parliament Friday he was still in the job because no one was willing to accept the finance portfolio.

– European push –

Colombo-based diplomats from European Union member states, which form a key export market for Sri Lanka, on Friday asked the government to immediately begin reforms to revive the economy.

“We stress the extreme urgency of the situation, which requires the authorities to start in-depth discussions with the International Monetary Fund,” the diplomats said in a joint statement.

Public anger is at fever pitch, and on Saturday thousands of people are expected to take part in what likely will be the biggest protest since the crisis began.

Opposition parties have rejected a presidential overture to form a unity administration and instead joined calls for Rajapaksa to step down.

The shortages of essentials have been caused by a wide-ranging import ban as Sri Lanka seeks to conserve its meagre foreign currency reserves to pay its debts.

In recent years the vital tourism sector has also been hit hard by Islamist bomb attacks in 2019 and the coronavirus pandemic, which dried up remittances from Sri Lankans abroad.

Economists say the crisis has been exacerbated by government mismanagement, years of accumulated borrowing and ill-advised tax cuts.

Ketanji Brown Jackson celebrated her rise “from segregation to the Supreme Court” at a White House event Friday marking her confirmation as the first Black woman appointed to the nation’s highest judicial bench.

In her first public remarks since the Senate endorsed her on Thursday, the 51-year-old judge shared the credit for a milestone that was 232 years in the making, telling her supporters: “We have made it — all of us.”

“In my family, it took just one generation to go from segregation to the Supreme Court of the United States,” she told around 150 guests invited to the South Lawn by President Joe Biden.

“And it is an honor, the honor of a lifetime, for me to have this chance to join the court.”

Jackson came out of the White House with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to cheers from the new justice’s family, current and former Supreme Court justices, administration officials and senators who voted for her. 

“It has taken 232 years and 115 prior appointments for a Black woman to appointed to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States, but we have made it — all of us,” she said.

“And our children are telling me that they see now more than ever that, here in America, anything is possible.”

Jackson was green-lit by the Senate in a 53-47 vote that capped a bruising confirmation battle, with just three Republicans joining Democrats in advancing Biden’s vision for a more diverse high court.

She was also with the president at the White House to watch the vote on Thursday, with the pair embracing as she was confirmed.

– ‘Moment of real change’ –

Introducing his first pick to the court, in front of a sun-drenched South Portico decked in US flags, Biden vowed future generations would be “proud of what we did” in choosing Jackson.

“This is going to let so much sunshine on so many young women, so many young Black men, so many minorities — it’s real,” the Democratic president said. 

“We’re going to look back and see this is a moment of real change in American history.”

Harris, who presided over the confirmation hearing, has broken down barriers of her own as the first woman and first Black and Asian American to be vice president.

“President George Washington once referred to America as a great experiment, a nation founded on the previously untested belief that the people — we, the people — could form a more perfect union,” Harris said.

“And that belief has pushed our nation forward for generations and it is that belief that we reaffirmed yesterday through the confirmation of the first Black woman to the United States Supreme Court.”

One Democrat-backed justice replacing another — the retiring Stephen Breyer — will not change the ideological balance of the court, which has a 6-3 conservative edge. 

But it will be the first time the bench has included four women, with Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan nominated by Barack Obama and Amy Coney Barrett picked by Donald Trump.

Jackson will be the sixth woman in total to be elevated to the Supreme Court. Her confirmation comes 55 years after Thurgood Marshall became the first Black justice. 

Clarence Thomas, who assumed office in 1991, is the only other African American to have served on the bench.

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett gave security agencies “full freedom” Friday to curb a surge in violence, after a Palestinian gunman killed three men in a popular nightlife district.

“There are not and will not be limits for this war,” Bennett said, speaking hours after Thursday night’s attack in the coastal city of Tel Aviv.

“We are granting full freedom of action to the army, the Shin Bet (the domestic security agency) and all security forces in order to defeat the terror,” he said.

The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, and the Islamic Jihad group praised the attack — drawing criticism from the UN — but did not claim responsibility.

After an all-night manhunt, Israeli police said they shot dead a Palestinian gunman who had opened fire on a street of crowded bars and restaurants, killing three people and wounding more than a dozen others.

About 1,000 heavily armed police and army troops had fanned out across Tel Aviv to track the assailant, as residents cowered in restaurant kitchens or their homes.

Defence Minister Benny Gantz said officers had made “around 200 arrests”, adding: “If necessary there will be thousands.”

– Engagement party becomes wake –

Israeli childhood friends Tomer Morad and Eytam Magini, both 27, were killed during the attack.

On Friday the third victim, Barak Lufan, died of his injuries, Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital said.

Magini was due to celebrate his engagement Friday, his fiancee’s mother, Lia Arad, told public television.

“They were supposed to celebrate their engagement party tonight, Eytam’s cousins organised it in this house where we are now sitting in mourning,” she said.

Morad was an avid fan of the Hapoel Tel Aviv Basketball Club, which said in a condolence note it sent “a warm and loving hug”. The two friends are to be buried Sunday.

Special forces confronted the attacker in the old city of Jaffa, the historic Arab district of Tel Aviv, “eliminating the terrorist by exchange of fire”, police commissioner Yaakov Shabtai said.

The Shin Bet named him as Raad Hazem, 28, from Jenin in the north of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where last week Israeli forces killed three people in a raid.

Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Aviv Kochavi ordered the military to step up its operations, particularly in the northern West Bank. Bennett ordered the closure of the Jalameh checkpoint between the Jenin area and Israel.

A total of 13 people have been killed in attacks in Israel since March 22, including some carried out by assailants linked to or inspired by the Islamic State group.

Over the same period, at least nine Palestinians have been killed, including assailants.

– ‘No glory in terror’ –

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas condemned the latest attack, saying “the killing of Palestinian and Israeli civilians only leads to a further deterioration of the situation,” the Palestinians’ official Wafa news agency reported.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States stood with Israel “in the face of senseless terrorism and violence”.

Fathi Hazem, the attacker’s father, struck a defiant tone speaking to hundreds of well-wishers at the family home in Jenin. He said the Palestinians people were looking for “freedom and independence”.

Hamas praised what it called a “heroic operation”, while Islamic Jihad, another Gaza-based militant group, called it a “natural response” to Israel’s crimes. Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah lauded a “victorious” attack.

The UN envoy for Middle East peace, Tor Wennesland, denounced a “heinous attack” and criticised Hamas in a tweet.

“Deplore the welcoming of the attack by Hamas. There is no glory in terrorism,” he said.

– ‘A nightmare’ –

On Friday, mourners lit candles and left flowers outside the bar where the attack took place, and residents recounted the fear they felt.

“People on the street ran about shouting ‘there is a terrorist’ so we rushed inside a restaurant and people tripped as they panicked,” said Dror Yeheskel, 39, who was having a drink with a friend when the shooting started.

Noa Roberts, 21, who works at a bar across the street from the attack, said she heard dozens of bullets as terrified customers and staff raced to shelter and hid for two hours.

“It was so scary… it was like a nightmare,” Roberts said.

The attack came on the eve of the first Friday prayers of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, and with Israeli security forces on alert. 

The prayers passed off peacefully at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, Islam’s third holiest site.

Police said 55,000 Palestinians took part, while several Palestinians said they were turned back by Israeli security forces at the Qalandia checkpoint outside Jerusalem.

Last year, nightly demonstrations in the Al-Aqsa compound and elsewhere in east Jerusalem escalated into 11 days of war between Israel and Hamas.