PRISTINA (Reuters) - Police in Kosovo have arrested Naser Kelmendi suspected by the United States of trafficking heroin and cocaine to Europe through the Balkans, a senior police source said on Monday.
"He was arrested last night in Pristina," the source, who asked not to be identified, said. A police spokesman was not immediately available to comment because of a public holiday in Kosovo.
(Reporting by Fatos Bytyci, writing by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
MOSCOW (AP) — Russian police and security agents have detained 140 people at a mosque in Moscow on suspicion of involvement with Islamic extremism.
A statement from the Federal Security Agency reported by Russian news agencies said among those detained in the Friday action were 30 citizens of unspecified foreign countries.
The detentions come a week after the two suspects in the fatal Boston Marathon bombing were identified as originating from the Russian region of Chechnya and sympathizing with Islamic extremists.
There were no immediate reports of charges being filed. The security agency referred The Associated Press to a district office, where the telephone was not answered.
The reports cited the agency as saying the mosque previously has been visited by people who had been involved in preparing or carrying out terrorist attacks.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel shot down a drone Thursday as it approached its northern coast from neighboring Lebanon, raising suspicions that the Hezbollah militant group was behind the infiltration attempt.
Hezbollah denied involvement, but the incident was likely to heighten Israeli concerns that the Shiite militant group is trying to take advantage of the unrest in neighboring Syria to strengthen its capabilities.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in a helicopter in northern Israel at the time of the incident, said he viewed it with "utmost gravity."
Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said the unmanned aircraft was detected as it was flying over Lebanon and tracked as it approached Israeli airspace.
He said the military waited for the aircraft to enter Israeli airspace, confirmed it was "enemy," and then an F-16 warplane shot it down, smashing its wreckage into the sea about five miles (eight kilometers) off the northern port of Haifa. Lerner said Israeli naval forces were searching for the remains of the aircraft.
He said it still was not clear who sent the drone, noting it flew over Lebanese airspace, but that it could have originated from somewhere else.
Other military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not permitted to talk to the media, said they believed it was an Iranian-manufactured aircraft sent by Hezbollah. The Lebanese group sent a drone into Israeli airspace last October that Israel also shot down.
Officials said Netanyahu was informed of the unfolding incident as he was flying north for a cultural event with members of the country's Druse minority. They said his helicopter briefly landed while the drone was intercepted then continued on its way.
"On my way here in the helicopter, I was told that there is an infiltration attempt of a drone inside the skies of Israel," Netanyahu said in the northern Arab-Israeli town of Daliyat al-Karmel. "We will continue to do everything necessary to safeguard the security of Israel's citizens."
Despite the denial, the incident was likely to raise already heightened tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, a bitter enemy that battled Israel to a stalemate during a monthlong war in 2006.
A senior Lebanese security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations, said Lebanon had no information on Thursday's incident.
When Israeli military shot down a Hezbollah drone on Oct. 6, it took days for Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah to confirm it. He warned in a speech that it wouldn't be the last operation by the group. He said the sophisticated aircraft was made in Iran and assembled by Hezbollah.
Netanyahu repeatedly has warned that Hezbollah might try to take advantage of the instability in neighboring Syria, a key Hezbollah ally, to obtain what he calls game-changing weapons.
Israel has all but confirmed that it carried out an airstrike in Syria earlier this year that destroyed a shipment of sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles bound for Hezbollah.
Israel's military has also stepped up its air surveillance over Lebanon. On Thursday morning, Israeli warplanes flew over the Christian town of Jezzine and the highlands of the Iqlim al-Tuffah province, a Hezbollah stronghold in southern Lebanon, the country's state-run National News Agency reported.
The Lebanese army also reported Israeli jets violated Lebanese airspace on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Some analysts said Hezbollah might be trying to divert attention from its involvement in the increasingly sectarian Syrian civil war. The Shiite militants have openly sided with the regime of Bashar Assad in its battle against mostly Sunni rebels.
Jonathan Spyer, senior research fellow at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center near Tel Aviv, said Hezbollah was facing discontent among its Shiite base in Lebanon, and more broadly among other Arabs for its participation in the Syrian conflict.
He said the group was likely trying to show that its real enemy was the Jewish state, in an effort to shore up support.
Spyer said sending a drone appeared to be a "fairly calibrated provocation," intended to be low key enough not to provoke an Israeli military response in Lebanon.
"I wouldn't be surprised if we see more of these kinds of incidents in the weeks and months ahead," he said.
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Associated Press writers Zeina Karam in Beirut and Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
PARIS, April 2 (Reuters) - Paris St Germain 2 Barcelona 2 - Champions League quarter-final, first leg result At Parc des Princes Scorers: Paris St Germain: Zlatan Ibrahimovic 79, Blaise Matuidi 90+4 Barcelona: Lionel Messi 38, Xavi 89 penalty Halftime: 0-1; Teams: Paris St Germain: 30-Salvatore Sirigu; 26-Christophe Jallet, 13-Alex, 2-Thiago Silva, 17-Maxwell; 29-Lucas, 32-David Beckham (24-Marco Verratti 70), 14-Blaise Matuidi, 27-Javier Pastore (19-Kevin Gameiro 76); 18-Zlatan Ibrahimovic, 11-Ezequiel Lavezzi (7-Jeremy Menez 66) Barcelona: 1-Victor Valdes; 2-Daniel Alves, 3-Gerard Pique, ...
GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations' top human rights body unanimously approved Thursday a formal probe into North Korea for possible crimes against humanity.
The 47-nation U.N. Human Rights Council signed off on the resolution backed by the U.S., Japan and the European Union that authorizes an investigation into what U.N. officials describe as suspected widespread and systematic violations of human rights in North Korea.
Japan's ambassador, Takashi Okada, denounced the abduction of foreign nationals and other disappearances in North Korea, and said the aim of the investigation is to "guide the international community in addressing this situation from an independent and impartial stand point."
The vote follows the recommendations of U.N. special rapporteur Marzuki Darusman, who told the Geneva-based council in a report last month that the secretive Asian nation displays nine patterns of human rights violations. Darusman said the "grave, widespread and systematic violations of human rights" include having prison camps, the enforced disappearances of citizens and using food to control people.
It paves the way for the creation of a "Commission of Inquiry" for one year with three members and calls on Pyongyang to cooperate with that team of independent experts, which will include Darusman.
However, North Korea's U.N. Ambassador in Geneva, So Se Pyong, fiercely denounced the move, calling the resolution "no more than an instrument that serves the political purposes of the hostile forces in their attempt to discredit the image of the DPRK and to change the socialist system chosen and developed by our people."
He was referring to North Korea by the initials of its formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The resolution itself was "political invectives with serious distortions, fabrications and accusations about the human rights situation of the DPRK," he added. "As we have stated time and again, those human rights abuses have totally nothing to do with the DPRK."
In 22 previous reports over the past nine years and 16 resolutions adopted by the U.N. General Assembly, the world body of 193 nations has again and again condemned North Korea's human rights record.
The U.N.'s top rights official, Navi Pillay, also has urged such an investigation — the Commission of Inquiry authorized by the United Nations, but performed by independent experts. She has said the U.N. has amassed evidence indicating that up to 200,000 people are being held in North Korean political prison camps rife with torture, rape and slave labor, and that some of the abuses may amount to crimes against humanity.
Julie de Rivero of Human Rights Watch in Geneva said the "long awaited inquiry will help expose decades of abuse by the North Korean government" and send a strong message to Pyongyang that the world is watching.
But North Korea maintains that U.S. hostility and the threat of American troops in South Korea lurk as factors in the push for an international investigation. The U.S. stations about 28,500 troops in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.
Darusman has told the U.N. that little has changed under the country's new leader, Kim Jong Un, who succeeded his father more than a year ago, and who has made it his top priority to strengthen the military while about 16 million of North Korea's 25 million people suffer from hunger and malnutrition.
"For too long the population of the country has been subjected to widespread and systematic human rights violations and abuses," said Ireland's ambassador, Gerard Corr, speaking on behalf of the European Union. "For too long, the government of the DPRK has persistently refused to cooperate with the Human Rights Council and the special rapporteur."
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Istanbul's police chief says a man suspected of killing a New York City woman in Istanbul was caught in Syria in a joint operation by Syrian rebels and Turkish officials.
Huseyin Capkin contradicted a statement by the interior minister who had said the suspect was detained at the border as he entered Turkey.
Istanbul Governor Avni Mutlu says the suspect has confessed to killing Sarai Sierra, whose body was found in Istanbul on Feb. 2, days after she was reported missing during a solo vacation. Authorities say she died of a blow to the head.
A video reportedly recorded in Syria, and posted on Hurriyet newspaper's website, shows the purported suspect saying he was under the influence of paint thinner during the incident.
Turkish news reports have described him as a homeless scrap paper collector.
PARIS (Reuters) - Three suspected Islamist militants arrested in southern France appeared to be planning an attack in the days ahead, the Paris prosecutor said on Monday, the anniversary of an al Qaeda-inspired shooting that rocked France.
Police found weapons and explosives at the home of one of the suspects in the town of Marignane, near Marseille, and intercepted communications between the men suggested they were close to going into action, prosecutor Francois Molins said.
The three men, who were taken in for questioning last week with a fourth man who was later released, were to be placed under formal investigation later on Monday.
"The investigation showed we were faced with a veritable laboratory for making improvised explosive devices and, even if we had no evidence of a precise plan, the messages exchanged by the participants suggested the timetable could be accelerated," Molins told reporters.
The timing of the arrests was poignant, coming exactly a year after 23-year-old gunman Mohamed Merah began a rampage that killed three Jewish children, a rabbi and three soldiers in the southern city of Toulouse. He was subsequently tracked down and killed in a shootout with police.
Speaking as Defence Minister Le Drian led a memorial ceremony in Toulouse for Merah's first victim and posthumously awarded him the prestigious "Legion d'Honneur" medal, Molins said the arrested men, in their 20s, wanted to emulate Merah.
"It was clear they were training themselves in making explosives based on a jihadist radicalization, a glorification of Mohamed Merah, and an affirmed desire to go into action."
France, which centralizes its terror investigations in Paris, is on high alert for any home-grown militant activity since its military intervention against Islamist fighters in Mali in January prompted threats of retaliatory action.
(Reporting by Catherine Bremer and Patrick Vignal; editing by Mark Heinrich)
MILAN (AP) -- Suspected soccer match-fixer Admir Suljic was taken into custody Thursday after landing at Milan's Malpensa airport on a flight from Singapore, Italian police said.
Suljic is wanted by judicial authorities in the city of Cremona investigating a massive match-fixing case that has already brought the arrests of more than 50 people, with more than 150 under investigation.
Police said Suljic had been on the run since December 2011 and was considered a "key element" in the Last Bet operation. Police added that he spent significant time in Singapore in close contact with the alleged fixing organization's chiefs.
Earlier Thursday, Interpol secretary general Ronald Noble said that Singaporean police had notified authorities in Italy that a suspected match-fixer was flying to Milan.
Speaking at a match-fixing conference in Malaysia, Noble said the man was wanted in Italy because he is allegedly working for Singaporean businessman Tan Seet Eng — known as Dan Tan — for whom Italian authorities have issued an arrest warrant.
Italian police said Suljic wanted to turn himself in to Italian authorities and that he faces charges of criminal association and sports fraud.
Noble earlier said that the arrest would be "important because the world believes that law enforcement can't do anything to take down this criminal organization, the world believes that (Tan) and his associates can't be touched, that they are above the law."
In November, Serbian soccer player Almir Gegic, who had also been wanted by Italian authorities, turned himself in at Malpensa.
Tan is accused of heading a crime syndicate that made millions of dollars betting on rigged Italian soccer matches. Italian officials have been unable to take Tan into custody because the arrest warrant cannot be served while he's in Asia.
"We will follow the rule of law," Noble said. "The hope is that (the suspect) will cooperate with law enforcement and tell us all he knows."
Acknowledging that Singapore has come under criticism for not detaining Tan, Noble said authorities there were restrained because they had to follow their own laws and could only take action when there was enough evidence.
However, Noble added that investigators worldwide have been slow to catch up with match-fixers because they were so far "not properly prepared to work together" and share enough information with their international counterparts.
FIFA head of security Ralf Mutschke said earlier at the Malaysian conference that he hopes Tan will be brought to face the courts with the help of Singaporean authorities.
Singapore's police have said they are reviewing information submitted by the Italian authorities in Tan's case before deciding what action to take.
The Singapore Police Force said Thursday that four senior officers from the SPF and Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) will be heading to the Interpol headquarters in Lyon, France, to join the Global Anti-Match-fixing Taskforce.
Tan's former associate, Wilson Raj Perumal, has told Italian investigators that Tan placed syndicate wagers on fixed games using Asia-based online betting sites via intermediaries in China.
A report by the European Union's police agency earlier this month said organized crime gangs, including ones in Asia, have fixed or tried to fix hundreds of soccer matches around the world.
Europol said its 18-month review found 380 suspicious matches in Europe and another 300 questionable games outside the continent, mainly in Africa, Asia and South America and Central America.
