Germany jails two Afghans in suspected Sweden attack plot

FLORIDA: A travel ban was lifted on influencer brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate, who are both charged with human trafficking in Romania, and they are headed to the United States, officials said Thursday.
The brothers are avid supporters of President Donald Trump and have millions of online followers. It wasn’t clear under what conditions the Tates were allowed to leave Romania, or where in the United States they were headed.
Andrew Tate, 38, and Tristan Tate, 36 are dual US-British citizens.
Andrew Tate is a former professional kickboxer and self-described misogynist who has amassed more than 10 million followers on X. He also runs an online academy where he says he teaches young men how to get rich and attract women. Tristan Tate is also a former kickboxer.
The Tates are avid supporters of President Donald Trump.
What are they charged with in Romania?
The Tate brothers and two Romanian women were arrested in Bucharest in late 2022.
The Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism alleged the four defendants formed a criminal group in 2021 “in order to commit the crime of human trafficking” in Romania as well as the United States and Britain.
They were initially formally indicted last year. In April, the Bucharest Tribunal ruled that a trial could start but didn’t set a date.
In December, a court in Bucharest ruled that the case against the Tates and the two Romanian women couldn’t go to trial because of multiple legal and procedural irregularities on the part of the prosecutors.
The case hasn’t been closed, and there is also a separate legal case against the brothers in Romania.
Andrew Tate has repeatedly claimed that prosecutors in Romania have no evidence against him and that there is a political conspiracy to silence him. But they were charged with forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women, among other charges.
What led to the travel ban being lifted?
DIICOT, Romania’s anti-organized crime agency, said in a statement Thursday that prosecutors approved a “request to modify the obligation preventing the defendants from leaving Romania,” but that judicial control measures remained in place. The agency didn’t say who had made the request.
The control measures include the requirement to “appear before judicial authorities whenever summoned,” the statement read.
The agency said the Tates were “warned that deliberately violating these obligations may result in judicial control being replaced with a stricter deprivation of liberty measure.”
Their departure came after Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu said this month that a US official in the current Trump administration had expressed interest in the brothers’ legal case in Romania at the Munich Security Conference. The minister insisted it didn’t amount to pressure.

LONDON: Leaked audio conversations involving Greek rescue officials have cast new doubt on the country’s claims surrounding one of the Mediterranean’s worst maritime disasters, when a migrant boat sank with up to 650 people onboard in 2023.

After leaving Libya days earlier, the Adriana capsized on June 14, 2023, in international waters that are part of Greece’s rescue zone, the BBC reported on Thursday.

Authorities recovered 82 bodies but the UN has estimated that about 500 other people, including 100 women and children, died in the disaster.

Survivors later told the BBC that Greek coast guards had caused the overcrowded fishing vessel to capsize after attempting to tow it.

Greek authorities also forced witnesses to stay silent, and framed nine Egyptian men who were accused of causing the disaster, survivors said.

The Greek coast guard has denied these claims and insisted that the Adriana was not in danger, and that those onboard wanted to reach Italy, not Greece.

The leaked phone call, however, shows that rescue coordinators coached the migrant boat’s captain and the crew of a nearby vessel on the version of events that was later highlighted officially by Greece.

Greek website News247.gr obtained the audio, which involves calls between the Joint Rescue Coordination Center in Athens and the Adriana, as well as the Lucky Sailor.

The first call sees an officer from the center telling the Adriana’s captain that a “big red ship” will soon approach the migrant boat to hand over supplies.

The officer says: “The boat proceeding to you in order to give you fuel, water and food. And in one hour we send you a second boat, OK? Tell captain to big red ship ‘We don’t want to go Greece.’ OK?” No reply is heard from the Adriana’s captain.

A second call involves a different rescue officer speaking to the captain of the Lucky Sailor, the “big red ship” mentioned in the first call.

The officer says: “OK, captain, sorry, before I couldn’t hear you. I couldn’t understand what did you say to me. You told me you gave them food, water and they told you that they don’t want to stay in Greece and they want to go to Italy, they don’t want anything else?”

The captain replies: “Yes because I asked them by megaphone ‘Greece or Italia?’ and everybody there screaming ‘Italia.’”

He was then instructed by the Greek rescue official to record the Adriana’s request in a logbook.

The Greek coast guard did not comment on the leaked recordings, but told the BBC that all relevant materials had been transferred to the Maritime Court Prosecutor’s Office, which is investigating the disaster.

Previous BBC analysis of the capsizing suggested that the Adriana had not moved for at least seven hours before it sank.

The Greek coast guard has maintained that the boat was on course to Italy and did not require assistance.

A Greek court last year threw out charges against nine Egyptian men accused of causing the disaster, who survivors say were framed by authorities.

Dimitris Choulis, a human rights lawyer who represented some of the accused Egyptians, said: “We know about the coast guard’s tactics of either pushing back or not rescuing people.”

There has been “an attempted cover-up from day one,” he added. “They (Greek authorities) told the story ‘they did not want to be rescued’ and so have insulted the memory of so many dead people.”

Leading human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have cast doubt on Greece’s official version of events and have called for an international investigation into the disaster.

As well as the Greek Naval Court, the Greek Ombudsman is also investigating the allegations of a cover-up.