Luigi Mangione charged with murder as an act of terrorism in UnitedHealthcare CEO killing
The man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare’s CEO has been charged with murder as an act of terrorism, prosecutors said Tuesday as they worked to bring him to a New York court from a Pennsylvania jail.
Luigi Mangione already was charged with murder in the Dec. 4 killing of Brian Thompson, but the terror allegation is new.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Thompson’s death on a midtown Manhattan street “was a killing that was intended to evoke terror. And we’ve seen that reaction.”
“This was a frightening, well-planned, targeted murder that was intended to cause shock and attention and intimidation,” he said at a news conference Tuesday.
“It occurred in one of the most bustling parts of our city, threatened the safety of local residents and tourists alike, commuters and businesspeople just starting out on their day.”
Mangione’s New York lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, declined to comment.
Thompson, 50, was shot dead while walking to a hotel where Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare — the United States’ biggest medical insurer — was holding an investor conference.
The killing kindled a fiery outpouring of resentment toward U.S. health insurance companies, as Americans swapped stories online and elsewhere of being denied coverage, left in limbo as doctors and insurers disagreed, and stuck with sizeable bills.
The shooting has also rattled C-suites, as “wanted” posters with other health-care executives’ names and faces appeared on New York streets and some social media users extolled Mangione’s deed as payback.
New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Tuesday that “any attempt to rationalize this is vile, reckless and offensive to our deeply held principles of justice.”
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch called any attempt to rationalize Luigi Mangione’s alleged actions ‘vile’ and ‘reckless.’ Her comments came at a press conference on Tuesday announcing Mangione’s indictment for murder in the killing of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson.
Post-9/11 law
A New York law passed after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 allows prosecutors to charge crimes as acts of terrorism when they’re “intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policies of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion and affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder, assassination or kidnapping.”
Prosecutors have used the statute in a variety of contexts. Some related to international extremism, but the law was first used against a Bronx gang member after a hail of gunfire killed a 10-year-old girl and paralyzed a man outside a christening party in 2002. The state’s highest court later said the conduct didn’t amount to terrorism, and a retrial produced convictions on other charges.
Thompson’s killing, Bragg noted, happened early on a workday in an area frequented by commuters, businesspeople and tourists.
“This was a frightening, well-planned, targeted murder that was intended to cause shock and attention and intimidation,” the district attorney said.
Arrested at a McDonald’s
After days of intense police searches and publicity, Mangione was spotted Dec. 9 at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa., and arrested. New York police officials have said Mangione was carrying the gun used in Thompson’s killing, a passport and various fake IDs, including the one that the suspected shooter presented to check into a New York hostel.
The suspected killer of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, Luigi Mangione has been receiving a startling amount of online praise recently. David Gilbert, a reporter at Wired, discusses what he’s seen online and why some might be glorifying Mangione.
The 26-year-old was charged with Pennsylvania gun and forgery offences and locked up there without bail. His Pennsylvania lawyer has questioned the evidence for the forgery charge and the legal grounding for the gun charge. The lawyer also has said Mangione would fight extradition to New York.
Mangione has two court hearings scheduled for Thursday in Pennsylvania, including an extradition hearing, Bragg noted.
Hours after his arrest, the Manhattan district attorney’s office filed paperwork charging him with murder and other offences. The indictment builds on that paperwork.
Investigators’ working theory is that Mangione, an Ivy League computer science grad from a prominent Maryland family, was propelled by anger at the U.S. health-care system. A law enforcement bulletin obtained by The Associated Press week said that when arrested, he was carrying a handwritten letter that called health insurance companies “parasitic” and complained about corporate greed.
Mangione repeatedly posted on social media about how spinal surgery last year had eased his chronic back pain, encouraging people with similar conditions to speak up for themselves if told they just had to live with it.
In a Reddit post in late April, he advised someone with a back problem to seek additional opinions from surgeons and, if necessary, say the pain made it impossible to work.
“We live in a capitalist society,” Mangione wrote. “I’ve found that the medical industry responds to these key words far more urgently than you describing unbearable pain and how it’s impacting your quality of life.”
He was never a UnitedHealthcare client, according to the insurer.
Mangione apparently cut himself off from his family and close friends in recent months. His family reported him missing in San Francisco in November.
After San Francisco authorities got a tip to their New York counterparts, investigators spoke to Mangione’s mother in San Francisco late on Dec. 7. In that interview, “she said it might be something that she could see him doing,” New York Police Department Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said Tuesday.
Before the case detectives could follow up on that lead, Mangione was arrested, Kenny said.
Mangione’s relatives have said in a statement that they were “shocked and devastated” by his arrest.
Thompson, who grew up on a farm in small-town Iowa, was trained as an accountant. A married father of two high-schoolers, he had worked at the giant UnitedHealth Group for 20 years and became CEO of its insurance arm in 2021.
Published at Sun, 15 Dec 2024 09:00:00 +0000
Israeli troops will occupy buffer zone inside Syria for the foreseeable future, says Netanyahu
The Israeli military will remain inside Syrian territory — in what is supposed to be a demilitarized zone — indefinitely, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday, as part of what he described as an effort to shore up security amid the turmoil in Syria.
The troops will remain “until another arrangement is found that will ensure Israel’s security,” Netanyahu said atop Mount Hermon, which is divided between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Lebanon and Syria.
Israel entered the demilitarized buffer zone, to the east of the Golan Heights, earlier this month following the collapse of the Bashar al-Assad regime. Its capture of about 400 square kilometres of Syrian territory sparked accusations Israel was violating the 1974 UN-brokered ceasefire that established the zone, and that it was exploiting the chaos in its northeastern neighbour for a land grab.
Israel captured, and later annexed, the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Its claim on the region is only recognized by the U.S.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz, appearing with Netanyahu, said he instructed the military to quickly establish a presence including fortifications, in anticipation of what could be an extended stay in the area.
The mountain’s summit, the highest point in the area, will be “the eyes of the state of Israel to identify our enemies who are nearby and far away,” Katz said.
An Israeli military official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity in line with military regulations, said there is no plan to evacuate the Syrians living there from the zone.
This isn’t the first time Israel has entered the buffer zone this year.
An AP report last month examining satellite imagery found that Israel had been working on a construction project, possibly a new road, close to Syria from as early as July, and had in some cases entered the zone during construction.
UN forces later warned that the Israeli military has committed “severe violations” of its ceasefire deal with Syria.
Airstrikes across Syria
Israeli troops began moving into the buffer zone on Dec. 7, according to Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar; the same day unidentified armed men attacked UN forces in Syria.
“[The Israeli military] took targeted and temporary control of certain areas near the border to prevent an Oct. 7 scenario from Syria,” Saar said at the time, referring to Hamas’s surprise 2023 attack into Israel from the Gaza Strip.
That was followed by a wave of airstrikes inside Syria which hit more than 350 targets including anti-aircraft batteries, military airfields, weapons production sites, combat aircraft and missiles, the Israeli military said.
Israeli missiles also struck Syrian ports where 15 naval vessels were docked.
Israeli officials said the strikes across Syria were aimed at destroying strategic weapons and military infrastructure to prevent them being used by rebel groups that drove al-Assad from power, some of which grew from movements linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State.
Netanyahu earlier described entering the buffer zone as a necessary and “temporary defensive position.”
Regional condemnation
A UN spokesman said Tuesday that the advance of Israeli troops, however long it lasts, violates the deal that set up the buffer zone.
That agreement “needs to be respected, and occupation is occupation, whether it lasts a week, a month or a year, it remains occupation,” said Stephane Dujarric .
There was no immediate comment from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the insurgent group that led the ouster of al-Assad, or from Arab states.
Previously, Ahmad al-Sharaa — Syria’s de facto leader and the head of the HTS — said Israel is using false pretexts to justify its attacks, but he made it clear he’s not interested in engaging in new conflicts as the country focuses on rebuilding.
Others in the region condemned Israel’s move into Syrian territory earlier this month. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry accused Israel of “exploiting the power vacuum… to occupy more Syrian territories and create a fait accompli in violation of international law.”
Saudi Arabia separately criticized Israel for its “determination to undermine opportunities for Syria to restore its security, stability and territorial integrity.”
Published at Wed, 18 Dec 2024 00:15:17 +0000
