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    Israel and Ukraine Show How Drone Smuggling Is Powerful New War Technique

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    Launching weapons from within their territory forces adversaries to look not only outward but also inside for threats, one expert said.Small, difficult to detect and able to pack a powerful punch, attack drones have become a formidable weapon in modern warfare. But when launched from deep inside enemy territory — as in Iran and in Russia this month — their impact is all the more devastating.The surprise factor of having to fend off drones attacking from within combines a classic military strategy with modern technology. Spy craft and covert operations have long been a part of combat, but using them to build or deploy deadly drones behind enemy lines is a new tactic in the ever-evolving art of war, officials and weapons experts said.That was the case two weeks ago, when more than 40 Russian war planes were hit by a swarm of 117 drones that Ukraine had secretly planted near military bases in Russia months earlier. Some were thousands of miles from Ukraine.It was also the case in Iran, which lost missiles, interceptors and air defense systems that were destroyed on Friday by drones and other weapons that Israeli intelligence operatives had smuggled in earlier.Many of the details about the secretive operations, and how they were carried out, remain murky to protect methods of intelligence collection and sources of covert information.But Israel’s approach gave it an edge in its wide-ranging attack against Iran “because it’s coming from left flank,” said Assaf Orion, a retired Israeli brigadier general and defense strategist at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Public Defender Is Charged With Smuggling THC-Laced Paper Into Rikers

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      Bernardo Caceres was at New York City’s jail complex to meet with a client when an envelope he had drew the attention of a Correction Department dog, officials said.A public defender has been charged with trying to smuggle contraband into the Rikers Island jail complex after, officials said, he brought papers to a client meeting that were laced with THC, the main psychoactive chemical compound in marijuana.The public defender, Bernardo Caceres of Queens Defenders, was arrested about 3 p.m. Wednesday at the complex’s Otis Bantum Correctional Center, a Correction Department spokeswoman and the correction officers’ union said on Friday.Mr. Caceres and a second lawyer were there to meet with a client being held on a burglary charge, a union spokesman said. The second lawyer was not affiliated with Queens Defenders.A yellow envelope Mr. Caceres had with him caught the attention of a Correction Department dog, the agency’s spokeswoman said. When an officer retrieved the envelope from the client and opened it, he found a stack of discolored legal-size paperwork, the spokeswoman said.Jail officials have said that such discoloration can indicate the presence of drugs, and the spokeswoman said testing had determined that over 130 sheets of the paper contained traces of THC. Mr. Caceres was arrested and charged with promoting prison contraband, officials said. The second lawyer was released after officers determined he did not know that the papers might contain drugs.A spokeswoman for the Bronx district attorney’s office said that Mr. Caceres had been issued a desk appearance ticket and that further testing was needed to confirm the Correction Department’s finding that the papers contained THC.It was unclear whether Mr. Caceres had a lawyer. The Queens Defenders, one of several organizations in the city that represent indigent clients under government contracts, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The officers’ union has long argued that all mail coming into the city’s jails should be digitized and made available to detainees via electronic tablets to prevent paper from being used as a vehicle for smuggling. The Board of Correction, which has oversight of the city’s jails, considered such a change in 2023 but ultimately did not approve it.Benny Boscio Jr., the union’s president, said the episode on Wednesday underscored why a move to paperless mail was necessary. “Allowing paper documents to continue to enter our facility only compromises the safety of everyone in our jails,” Mr. Boscio said.The smuggling of contraband into the Rikers complex is a longstanding problem that has sometimes involved those who work there. Last year, for instance, several correction officers were charged with sneaking cellphones, oxycodone, marijuana, fentanyl and sheets of paper soaked in drugs into the complex.The arrest of Mr. Caceres, 30, came the same day that a founder of Queens Defenders, Lori Zeno, and her husband, Rashad Ruhani, were charged with wire fraud, money laundering conspiracy and theft of funds.The couple, prosecutors said, spent tens of thousands of dollars in organization funds on personal expenses, including a vacation in Bali, rent for a luxury apartment and teeth-whitening procedures. More

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      Two Are Charged With Stalking an Artist Who Criticized Xi Jinping

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      The two men also unsuccessfully tried to illegally export sensitive U.S. military technology to China, prosecutors said.Two men have been charged with plotting to silence a Los Angeles artist critical of the Chinese government and trying to illegally export sensitive U.S. military technology to China, according to federal prosecutors.The defendants, Cui Guanghai, 43, of China, and John Miller, 63, a British national who is a permanent U.S. resident, orchestrated a harassment campaign against a U.S.-based dissident artist whom the authorities did not name, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California. The two men also tried to smuggle restricted technology into China, the office said.The target of the harassment plot, the authorities say, was a Los Angeles-based artist who had publicly criticized President Xi Jinping of China. The artist planned to protest against President Xi during the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November 2023 in San Francisco. The artist had also created sculptures of President Xi and his wife that, according to a federal complaint, depicted them kneeling, bare-chested, with their hands tied behind their backs.Mr. Cui and Mr. Miller, who unknowingly hired two F.B.I. agents working undercover, arranged to place a tracking device on the artist’s car and have its tires slashed, prosecutors said in court documents. The two also planned to destroy the artist’s sculptures, though they were unsuccessful, the authorities said.Mr. Cui and Mr. Miller are currently in custody in Serbia, according to federal prosecutors. It is unclear whether either man has legal representation.“The United States will seek extradition of Cui and Miller and looks forward to working in partnership with the Republic of Serbia’s Prosecutor’s Office and the Ministry of Justice,” prosecutors said in a statement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Leader of Smuggling Ring Gets 10 Years After Indian Family Froze to Death

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      The family of four that used the network got disoriented and lost their way in 2022 while trying to reach the United States from Canada on foot in blizzard conditions.More than three years after a young Indian family froze to death trying to cross into the United States from Canada during a blizzard, a federal judge on Wednesday sentenced the convicted architect of the human smuggling network that they used to a decade in prison.Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, a 29-year-old Indian national who lived in Florida, was sentenced to 10 years and one month in prison for his role in the operation that ferried Indians into the United States via Canada. He will be deported after serving time, the Justice Department said.His convicted co-conspirator, Steve Anthony Shand, 50, a U.S. citizen from Florida, was sentenced to six years and six months in prison followed by two years of supervised release.Prosecutors said during the trial that the men were part of a large-scale criminal operation that arranged for dozens of Indians to enter Canada on fake student visas, and then smuggled them into the United States over land.Mr. Patel orchestrated the logistics with other co-conspirators. Mr. Shand was the driver who met the immigrants south of the Canadian border and transported them to Chicago, according to the Justice Department. It said in a news release that the smugglers had charged $100,000 for passage from India to the United States.Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, left, and Steve Anthony Shand were sentenced on Wednesday.Sherburne County Sheriff’s Office and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, via Associated PressFor Jagdish Patel, 39, his wife, Vaishali, 37, and their 11-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son, the journey in January 2022 ended in tragedy. Royal Canadian Mounted Police found their ice-encased bodies in the desolate borderland between Manitoba and Minnesota.The Patels were part of a group of 11 Indians who had set out from the tiny Canadian town of Emerson with instructions on how to cross the border on foot.They expected to meet on the American side a person who would deliver them to their destination, most likely Illinois, where they had family or friends. But the family was separated from the rest of the group and most likely struggled to stay on course in the dark, buffeted by winds that whipped up blinding snow.The wind chill temperature was minus 36 degrees and lower, and wind gusts were as high as 50 miles per hour during their trek, the Justice Department said. An autopsy determined that the family had died from exposure to the cold. The seven other passengers survived.The investigation was conducted by Homeland Security Investigations, a specialized unit of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.“The callous disregard for life that led to the tragic deaths of an entire family will not be forgotten,” Jamie Holt, the special agent in charge in St. Paul, Minn., said in a statement on Wednesday.The sentencing took place in the northwestern Minnesota town of Fergus Falls, where a jury convicted the two men last fall of four counts each related to human smuggling, including causing serious bodily injury and placing lives in jeopardy. More

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      4 Men Charged With Trying to Smuggle Thousands of Ants From Kenya

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      The men, including two Belgian teenagers, pleaded guilty to smuggling thousands of live queen ants, which the Kenyan authorities said were destined for markets in Europe and Asia.Four men, including two Belgian teenagers, pleaded guilty in a Kenyan court this week on charges of trafficking thousands of live ants, which the Kenyan authorities said they had intended to sell as pets. The Belgians, David Lornoy and Seppe Lodewijckx, both 19, were found with the insects this month at a guesthouse near Lake Naivasha, one of several popular nature areas in Kenya. They had thousands of live queen ants, packed in syringes and test tubes designed to keep the insects alive for months, according to the Kenya Wildlife Service.The court said the ants were worth the equivalent of around $7,000 and, citing intelligence reports, said they had been destined for exotic pet markets in Europe and Asia. The unusual case underscores what Kenyan officials say is a trend in wildlife smuggling, which has often been associated with high-value species and animal products: There is money to be made in smuggling smaller, lesser-known species, too. Live beetles have been found hidden in snack packs from Japan; live bits of coral are more and more often being secreted through U.S. ports. “This case highlights a growing global threat: the biopiracy of native species,” the Kenya Wildlife Service said in a statement. It said that the unauthorized collection of the ants “not only undermines Kenya’s sovereign rights over its biodiversity but also deprives local communities and research institutions of potential ecological and economical benefits.”The queen ants the men pleaded guilty to smuggling are highly valued by rare insect collectors, who often keep colonies of the ants in formicariums, or artificial ant farms, where they can be observed building complex colonies and tunnel systems. The species they were collecting, the Messor cephalotes native to Kenya, is the largest harvester ant in the world. Two other men, Dennis N’gang’a of Kenya, and Duh Hung Nguyen, a Vietnamese citizen, were also charged in a separate case with illegally collecting ants and dealing in live wildlife species. They were found with hundreds of live garden ants, worth around $1,500, the wildlife service said.In announcing the arrests, the Kenya Wildlife Service released photos of a living room littered with test tubes, cotton swabs and packing materials. The delicately packed tubes — some containing multiple live ants in separate compartments — were designed to sustain the animals for around two months, the wildlife service said. In a court appearance on Tuesday, Mr. Lornoy and Mr. Lodewijckx appeared distraught and said they had been collecting the ants for fun, The Associated Press reported. They pleaded guilty and were awaiting sentencing. Edwin Okoth contributed reporting. More

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      Man Hiding Tarantulas, Centipedes and Ants Is Stopped From Boarding Flight

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      Officials in Lima, Peru, said the endangered spiders had been taken from the Amazon basin. The man was flying to South Korea.Something about a man who was trying to board a plane last week in Lima, Peru, caused customs officers at the international airport outside the capital to do a double take: He had an extraordinarily swollen belly.They asked him to lift his shirt.When he did, they found he was carrying 320 tarantulas, 110 centipedes and nine bullet ants. Each of the bugs was crawling around inside its own small plastic bag, where they were obscured by filter paper, according to the National Forest and Wildlife Service of Peru. The bags were reinforced with strong adhesive tape and attached to two girdles that were wrapped around the man’s body.In all, the man was carrying 35 adult tarantulas, each about the size of an average hand, and 285 juvenile tarantulas, the wildlife service said.All of the critters found were native to the Amazon region of Peru, said Walter Silva, a wildlife specialist for the government. The tarantulas are on the country’s list of endangered species, he added.“All were extracted illegally and are part of the illegal wildlife trafficking that moves millions of dollars in the world,” Mr. Silva said in a news release from the forest and wildlife service.The Peruvian authorities arrested the man, a 28-year-old citizen of South Korea who was traveling back to his country last Friday, with a planned stopover in France, they said. The National Forest and Wildlife Service said it had opened an investigation but did not specify any charges and did not release the name of the man they had detained.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ex-Green Beret Goudreau, Who Planned Failed Venezuela Coup, Is Arrested

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      Jordan Goudreau, 48, had taken credit for a failed coup attempt against Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela. He faces federal charges of illegal arms smuggling.A former U.S. Green Beret who orchestrated a disastrous failed coup attempt against the authoritarian president Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela in 2020 was arrested Tuesday in New York on federal arms smuggling charges.The federal authorities accused Jordan G. Goudreau, 48, and a co-conspirator, Yacsy Alexandra Alvarez, of exporting military-style rifles, night vision devices, lasers, silencers and other military equipment without a license to Colombia beginning in November 2019 for use in carrying out “activities in Venezuela,” the Justice Department said in a news release on Wednesday.The charges appear to refer to the botched cross-border raid carried out in May 2020 by dozens of armed, self-declared freedom fighters, including former Venezuelan soldiers and former American Special Forces operators, who aimed to topple Mr. Maduro.Mr. Goudreau, of Melbourne, Fla., who did not participate in the raid, publicly took credit for the failed incursion known as Operation Gideon, which he said he had planned with disaffected Venezuelan officials. The audacious rebellion left observers around the world wondering why a decorated former U.S. Special Forces soldier who had served several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan was leading a foreign insurrection.A group of only about 60 men had planned to land on Venezuelan soil near the capital, Caracas, from speedboats and ultimately capture Mr. Maduro. But they were repelled by the Venezuelan security forces. Six men were killed and 13 others were detained, including two former Green Berets who were said to have been recruited by Mr. Goudreau, according to The Associated Press. The Americans were sentenced to 20 years in prison by the Venezuelan authorities in August 2020 but were released in a prisoner exchange deal with the United States late last year.Mr. Goudreau and Ms. Alvarez, a Venezuelan national who lives in Tampa, Fla., face charges of conspiracy to violate export laws, smuggling goods from the United States and violating federal firearm export control acts, prosecutors said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      5 Charged With Smuggling Contraband Into Brooklyn Juvenile Detention Center

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      Court papers said the “youth development specialists” took more than $50,000 in bribes to allow in items like razor blades, marijuana, alcohol and prescription pills.Five current and former employees at a city-run juvenile detention center in Brooklyn were arrested by federal officials on Wednesday on charges that they had accepted bribes to smuggle in a tidal wave of illicit substances, razor blades and scalpels.All five were “youth development specialists” employed by the Administration for Children’s Services at Crossroads Juvenile Center in Brownsville, and were released on bail after an initial appearance before a judge in Brooklyn federal court on Wednesday afternoon.The employees were Da’Vante Bolton, 31, of Queens; Roger Francis, 58, of Brooklyn; Christopher Craig, 37, of Brooklyn; and Nigel King, 45, of Queens. One former employee, Octavia Napier, 26, of Brooklyn, had already been fired after it appeared that she had been involved in smuggling, according to a criminal complaint.None entered pleas at their court appearance on Wednesday. Mr. Francis declined to comment after the hearing, as did lawyers for Mr. Bolton, Mr. Craig and Mr. King. A lawyer for Ms. Napier did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The defendants “violated their duty to the city and the residents at Crossroads” and placed the center’s residents and staff members “at an alarming risk of serious harm,” Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.The facility, in Brownsville, houses about 120 young people ages 14 to 20. Prosecutors said that the authorities had found more than 340 scalpels or blades in the possession of residents in the past two years. They also found at least 75 banned cellphones, pills, alcohol and cigarettes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ex-Haitian Gang Leader Is Sentenced to 35 Years in Prison in Gunrunning Scheme

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      Prosecutors said Joly Germine, 31, who had led the 400 Mawozo gang, was involved in a conspiracy that used ransom money that had been paid for the release of American hostages to buy and smuggle guns into Haiti.The former leader of a Haitian street gang was sentenced on Monday to 35 years in prison for his role in directing a gunrunning scheme that smuggled guns to Haiti using ransom money that had been paid for the release of American hostages, prosecutors said.Judge John D. Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia sentenced the former gang leader, Joly Germine, 31, of Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti, in a Washington courtroom.Mr. Germine, who was known as Yonyon as the leader of the 400 Mawozo gang in Haiti, pleaded guilty on Jan. 31 to a 48-count indictment that charged him with several crimes, including money laundering, smuggling and conspiracy to defraud the United States, the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia said in a statement on Monday. The 35-year sentence does not address other charges of conspiracy to commit hostage taking that Mr. Germine also faces after the 400 Mawozo gang claimed responsibility in 2021 for taking 16 American hostages and one Canadian. The hostage-taking case, which Judge Bates is also overseeing, is to go to trial next year, court records show. After the 400 Mawozo gang took the 17 hostages in the fall of 2021, the gang sought a ransom of $1 million for each hostage, prosecutors said. (The hostages, who were part of a missionary group visiting an orphanage in Port-au-Prince, were all released or managed to escape by December.) The gang had also taken three Americans hostage in the summer of 2021, prosecutors said. It used some of the ransom money obtained in that scheme to buy at least 24 guns, including AR-15s and AK-47s, which were smuggled from the United States into Haiti, prosecutors said.Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement on Monday that the money used in the gunrunning scheme had been “extorted from kidnapping American citizens.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More