Foreign News
Manhunt for gang boss who controlled luxury jail in Venezuela
Police across South America are searching for the leader of a Venezuelan gang who escaped from the luxurious prison which he controlled, shortly before it was raided.
When 11,000 soldiers and police entered the inmate-run Tocorón jail in Venezuela on Wednesday, Héctor Guerrero Flores was nowhere to be found.
Under Guerrero Flores’s rule, Tocoron came to resemble a luxury resort. The jail boasted a small zoo, a nightclub and a swimming pool.
The 39-year-old from Aragua state in Venezuela has been in and out of Tocorón prison for more than a decade.In 2012, the leader of the Tren de Aragua transnational crime gang managed to escape from the jail by bribing the guards.After his re-arrest in 2013, he was returned to the same prison, but it appears his power inside the jail – and over those tasked with guarding him – only grew.
Not only did he turn Tocorón into the nerve centre of the Tren de Aragua criminal enterprise, but under his rule, the jail was equipped with all the trappings of a luxury hotel. Families of inmates moved into the compound. Inmates had access to a makeshift bank, a betting shop, a restaurant and a baseball diamond, while their children could marvel at flamingos and ostriches in the animal enclosure.
Guerrero Flores reportedly could come and go as he pleased. Venezuelan author Ronna Rísquez, who has written a book about the Tren de Aragua, recounts how police came across him once at a party on a yacht in 2016.
According to Rísquez, the convict calmly showed officers a safe conduct issued by Venezuela’s prison service allowing him to travel freely through the country.
Humberto Prado, the director of the Venezuelan Prison Observatory NGO, told BBC Mundo that Guerrero Flores lived “like a king” inside the jail and probably returned to it because of the security it offered.
“He had an entire floor to himself, with all the luxuries… double beds, plasma screens, sound systems. He even had his own bodyguards and no one could enter the floor without his permission.”
According to Mr Prado and others familiar with the conditions inside the prison, Guerrero Flores had no rivals inside the prison and could therefore rule safely over his ever-expanding criminal network.
The Tren de Aragua has under his leadership expanded into Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile and diversified from extorting migrants into sex-trafficking, contract killing and kidnapping.
The gang’s reach is such that the Chilean President, Gabriel Boric, referred to it directly, saying that “we are going to hunt them down, jail them, and in cases where it is necessary, expel them”.
Pressure from Latin American leaders is thought to have led to the massive security operation launched by the Venezuelan authorities last week at the Tocorón prison.
Officials said 11,000 soldiers and police were deployed to regain control of the jail from the inmates.
It was during the raid that the absence of Héctor Guerrero Flores was first noted, but Venezuelan officials did not make his escape public at the time.
It was not until Saturday, three days after the security operation, that Venezuela’s interior ministry offered a reward for information leading to the capture of Guerrero Flores.
Despite the escape of its most powerful inmate, President Nicolás Maduro said the raid had been carried out “impeccably”. He did concede that “some inmates had escaped due to the corruption of officials, who had alerted the prisoners to the impending security operation”and added that those responsible would be “severely punished”.
Meanwhile, police in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile and Venezuela are searching for Héctor Guerrero Flores.
(BBC)
Three Americans convicted for their role in a failed coup in Democratic Republic of Congo last year have had their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment, the presidency has said.
They were among 37 people sentenced to death last September by a military court.
The three were accused of leading an attack on both the presidential palace and the home of an ally of President Félix Tshisekedi last May.
The overturning of the sentences comes ahead of a visit to DR Congo by the newly appointed US senior advisor for Africa, Massad Boulos.
Boulos, father-in-law to President Donald Trump’s daughter, Tiffany, is expected to arrive in Kinshasa on Thursday on a trip that will also take him to Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda.
The US has not declared the three Americans to be wrongfully jailed in DR Congo but the State Department said previously there have been talks between the countries over the matter.
The three were convicted of criminal conspiracy, terrorism and other charges, which they denied.
[BBC]
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has nominated a former Navy commander to head the country’s domestic security services, despite the courts having blocked his bid to fire the previous head of Shin Bet.
Netanyahu’s office announced on Monday that he had nominated Vice Admiral Eli Sharvit to lead the agency, which surveils attacks from abroad and at home, including by armed groups based in Palestine and Lebanon. However, a halt to the sacking of Ronen Bar as head of Shin Bet, ordered by the Supreme Court, remains in place.
[Aljazeera]
The Trump administration has deported 17 more alleged gang members to El Salvador, the US state department has said, despite legal battles over removing people to the Central American country’s supermax prison.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the group included members of the Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gangs.
Salvadoran government officials told the BBC they included a mix of Venezuelans and Salvadorans.
Earlier this month a court ordered a halt to deportations carried out under the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law previously used only in wartime. However, US media, citing administration sources, reported that the recent deportations were made under general immigration laws.
In a statement, Rubio said the group included “murderers and rapists”, but did not provide names or details of the alleged crimes or of any convictions.
In a post on X, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele shared a dramatically edited video showing shackled men being loaded off a plane and their heads being shaved before they were put into prison cells.
“All individuals are confirmed murderers and high-profile offenders, including six child rapists,” he wrote. “This operation is another step in the fight against terrorism and organized crime.”
President Trump reposted the message, blamed the administration of his predecessor Joe Biden for allowing the deportees into the US and thanked Bukele for “giving them such a wonderful place to live”.
El Salvador has agreed to take in deportees in exchange for $6m (£4.6m).
Family members of some of those who were previously sent to the maximum security prison have denied they have any gang ties.
After Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act to remove more than 100 Venezuelans from the US earlier this month, groups including the American Civil Liberties Union filed a legal challenge alleging the administration had illegally denied the immigrants due process.
In a hearing on 15 March, James Boasberg, the top federal judge in Washington DC, imposed a temporary restraining order on the use of the law and ordered deportation flights that were in the air to be turned around.
But the deportations proceeded. The next hearing in the case will be held on Thursday.
[BBC]
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