Israel confirms 4 hostages killed in Gaza, military investigating circumstances of deaths
The Israeli military on Monday confirmed the deaths of four more hostages held by Hamas — including three older men seen in a Hamas video begging for their release.
The three men were were identified as Chaim Peri, 80, Yoram Metzger, 80, and Amiram Cooper, 84. Looking weak and wary, they appeared in a video in December released by Hamas under the title, “Don’t let us grow old here.”
The fourth hostage was identified as 51-year-old Nadav Popplewell.
Israel’s military spokesperson, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said the four men died together in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis when Israel was operating there a “number of months” ago.
The military said Monday that the decision to pronounce the men dead was based on intelligence and confirmed by health officials and Israel’s chief rabbi.
The cause of their deaths was not immediately known, but Hagari acknowledged “there are a lot of questions.”
“We are thoroughly examining the circumstances of their deaths and checking all possibilities. We will present soon the findings, first to their families, and then to the public,” he said. “We will present them with transparency, as we have done until now.”
Israel carried out a major offensive in Khan Younis, a Hamas stronghold, early this year. Hamas claimed in May that Popplewell had died after being wounded in an Israeli airstrike, but provided no evidence.
Israel Defence Forces (IDF) spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari says four hostages were likely killed in Khan Younis several months ago, during a period the IDF were mobilized in the area. He offered condolences to the families of the hostages Haim Peri, Yoram Metzger, Amiram Cooper and Nadav Popplewell.
Men taken alive during attacks
Cooper, Metzger and Peri were featured in a Hamas propaganda video in which Peri, clearly under duress, said in the video that all three men had chronic illnesses and accused Israel of abandoning them.
Peri was at his house in Kibbutz Nir Oz during the Hamas attack. He tried to repel the gunmen while hiding his wife behind a sofa, his son later told Reuters. He eventually gave himself up to save his wife, who remained hidden, his son said.
Cooper and Metzger, also from Nir Oz, were captured along with their wives, both of whom were returned to Israel during a brief November truce.
Cooper was an economist and one of the founders of Kibbutz Nir Oz, according to the Hostages Forum, a grassroots group representing the families of the hostages. Metzger helped found the kibbutz winery, and Peri built the community’s art gallery and sculpture garden.
Nir Oz was among the hardest-hit towns near the border with Gaza during the Oct. 7 attack.
Popplewell, according to the Hostages Forum, was captured with his mother from her home in Kibbutz Nirim. His brother was killed during the attack. His mother was freed during the November truce.
On Oct. 7, Hamas-led militants took some 250 hostages back to Gaza. Roughly half were released during a brief ceasefire period in November, in an exchange for Israel releasing 240 Palestinians detained in its prisons.
There are some 130 hostages remaining in Gaza. About 85 are believed to still be alive, alongside the remains of 43 others.
The news late Monday came after an announcement earlier in the day that the body of a presumed hostage, Dolev Yehud, 35, was found in a community near the Gaza border that militants had attacked on Oct. 7.
Yehud was thought to be among scores of hostages held in Gaza until Monday, when the military announced the discovery of his body and said he had been killed in the initial attack.
According to Israel, around 1,200 people were killed during the Hamas-led attack. Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials.
Newly released video shows the capture of young female Israeli soldiers during the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks. Families of hostages desperate for their return pushed to have the video made public.
Hostages group demands ceasefire agreement
In the days since the Biden administration announced the ceasefire proposal Friday, Israel has seen some of its largest protests calling on its government to bring the hostages home.
Israeli leadership has appeared to brush aside U.S. President Joe Biden’s proposal, vowing to keep conducting military operations against Hamas until the militant group is destroyed.
The Hostages Forum said the killings of the four men are “a mark of disgrace and a sad reflection on the significance of delaying previous deals.”
“It is time to end this cycle of sacrifice and neglect,” the group wrote in a statement calling on the government to approve the new plan.
U.S. President Joe Biden is backing an apparent Israeli proposal that could end its war with Hamas. The three-phase plan also calls for the release of all hostages, and rebuilding Gaza.
Published at Mon, 03 Jun 2024 18:51:24 +0000
Epoch Times financial exec charged in $67M money laundering scheme
The financial head of the publisher of the Epoch Times is facing money laundering charges in an apparent $67-million US scheme to benefit himself and the company.
The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York alleges Weidong Guan, also known as Bill Guan, conspired with others in a “sprawling, transnational scheme” to “benefit himself, the media company and its affiliates.”
Financial records on the ProPublica website show that Guan is the chief financial officer of the New York-headquartered Epoch Times Media Group, which publishes the conservative newspaper and website of the same name.
The 61-year-old from New Jersey is charged with one count of conspiring to commit money laundering, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, and two counts of bank fraud, which each carry a maximum sentence of 30 years.
In an email to CBC News, a spokesperson for the Epoch Times said Guan is “innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” and that the company would co-operate with any investigation into the allegations against him, but that he has been suspended “until this matter is resolved.”
In a statement on Monday, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams accused Guan of “laundering tens of millions of dollars in fraudulently obtained unemployment insurance benefits and other crime proceeds.”
Williams alleges that members of the Epoch Times’ “Make Money Online” team, which Guan managed, used stolen personal identification information to launder illegally obtained funds through bank accounts set up in the media company’s name, as well through using prepaid debit card and cryptocurrency accounts.
“After the crime proceeds reached those bank accounts, they were often further laundered through other bank accounts held by the media entities, Guan’s personal bank accounts, and through Guan’s personal cryptocurrency accounts,” the district attorney’s statement says.
It also says the media company’s increased annual revenue jumped from approximately $15 million US to about $62 million US year over year, during a period “in or around the same time the money laundering scheme began.”
Guan allegedly oversaw the scheme from at least some time in 2020 through May of this year while working for the company, which is not named in the statement.
The news release clearly states that the charges against Guan “do not relate to the media company’s news-gathering activities.”
Controversies and conspiracy theories
The Epoch Times was founded by Chinese immigrants as a non-profit media organization in 2000 and is closely associated with followers of Falun Gong, a religious practice declared a cult by the Chinese government in 1999.
Falun Gong’s global headquarters are located in a 1.73-square-kilometre compound in upstate New York.
Once a free newspaper available in curbside boxes or handed out in major cities, promoting an anti-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) message, the Epoch Times has morphed into an online purveyor of right-wing political views aligned with former U.S. president Donald Trump. Critics have accused it of promoting misinformation and conspiracy theories.
According to its website, the Epoch Times has editions in 23 languages in 36 regions and countries — including Canada, with operations based in Toronto.
Its current and past columnists include Canadians like former newspaper publisher Conrad Black, former CRTC vice-chair Peter Menzies and National Post opinion writers Barbara Kay and the late Rex Murphy.
There was controversy surrounding the Epoch Times in Canada in 2020, when unsolicited copies of the newspaper were delivered to homes across the country.
The union representing Canada Post workers said the special-edition issue focused on the COVID-19 pandemic, and was headlined “How the Chinese Communist Party Endangered the World,” referring to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, as the “CCP virus.”
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers made a request for Canada Post to cease delivering the paper, citing fears of fuelling xenophobia and reprisals against Asian Canadians and postal workers, but the federal government denied it.
The Epoch Times has also run afoul of social media platforms — Facebook, in particular — over its advertisements promoting Trump and conspiracy theories under various different pages posing as news outlets.
According to NBC News, the Epoch Times spent $2 million US on pro-Trump advertising on Facebook over a one-year period spanning 2018 and 2019 — more than any other organization aside from the Trump campaign itself.
The New York Times reported that the Epoch Times then shifted to YouTube, which demonetized its channel in 2021.
The company has accused “Big Tech and the legacy media” of unfairly targeting the publication and costing it revenue as a result.
“We have been demonetized on YouTube, blocked from advertising on Facebook, and shadow-banned on several social media platforms, in some cases, due to pressure from advocacy journalists,” its website reads.
It also claims it lost contracts with companies in the United States and Canada after they received “phone calls or written communication from Chinese embassies or other front groups of the Chinese Communist Party.”
Published at Tue, 04 Jun 2024 01:42:08 +0000
