Armoured & Luxury
Chauffeur Driven Cars

A US judge has sentenced Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán to life in prison plus 30 years.

Guzmán, 62, was found guilty of 10 charges, including drug trafficking and money laundering, by a federal court in New York in February. He escaped a Mexican jail through a tunnel in 2015, but was later arrested. He was extradited to the US in 2017. He is a former head of the Sinaloa cartel, which officials say was the biggest supplier of drugs to the US.

During the trial, witnesses said he had tortured his cartel’s enemies.

Speaking through an interpreter just before Wednesday’s sentencing, Guzmán said in the Brooklyn courtroom his confinement in the US had amounted to “psychological, emotional, mental torture 24 hours a day”. He also said he had received an unfair trial, accusing jurors of misconduct.

The life sentence was the minimum Guzmán faced. The additional 30 years were for unlawful uses of firearms.

Read More

The younger brother of Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi is to appear in court charged with murdering the 22 victims of the attack, police say.

Hashem Abedi, 22, was detained in Libya shortly after the May 2017 suicide bombing in which hundreds were injured. He was extradited earlier, and arrested by British officers upon his arrival in the UK, Greater Manchester Police said. Mr Abedi is expected to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court “in due course”, the force said.

Police said prosecutors had authorised them to bring charges against Mr Abedi in respect of:

Libyan authorities handed Mr Abedi over to British police officers, who escorted him on a flight which left Mitiga Airport, near Tripoli, at 10:30 BST.

The university engineering student, who was born in Manchester, was transferred to a police station in London upon his arrival in the UK.

Families of the victims and survivors were the first to be informed of the developments, police said.

Read More

Anti-terrorism police in northern Italy have seized an air-to-air missile and other sophisticated weapons during raids on far-right extremist groups.

Three people were arrested – two of them near Forli airport. Neo-Nazi propaganda was also seized, in raids in several cities.

Italian media say the raids were part of an investigation into Italian far-right help for Russian-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine.

The missile is reported to be Qatari. The Turin special police force, called Digos, led the operations, assisted by police in Milan, Varese, Forli and Novara.

Italian media named those arrested as Fabio Del Bergiolo, 50, an Italian ex-customs officer and far-right Forza Nuova party activist; Alessandro Monti, 42, a Swiss national; and Fabio Bernardi, 51, also Italian.

On 3 July a court in Genoa jailed three men who were found guilty of fighting alongside the Russian-backed separatists who control a large swathe of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Two of them – Italian Antonio Cataldo and Albanian-born Olsi Krutani – got terms of two years and eight months. The third, Moldovan citizen Vladimir Vrbitchii, got one year and four months.

More than 10,000 people have died in fighting since Russian-backed separatists launched an insurgency in eastern Ukraine in April 2014. Skirmishes with Ukrainian government troops continue, but the frontline has remained generally static for more than a year.

The UK has brought forward plans to send a second warship to the Gulf amid rising tensions with Iran.

HMS Duncan is currently in the Mediterranean and is expected to join HMS Montrose in the region next week. It comes after the UK government said Iranian boats tried to impede a British oil tanker in the Gulf on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Iran has reiterated calls for the UK to release an Iranian-owned oil tanker that was detained by Royal Marines in Gibraltar last week.

An Iranian official, speaking to state news agency IRNA, warned the UK not to get involved in “this dangerous game”.

The relationship between the UK and Iran has become increasingly strained in recent weeks.

On Tuesday, the UK raised the threat to British shipping in Iranian waters in the Gulf to the highest level – where the risk of attack is critical.

Read More

A man has been found guilty of trying to make a bomb to be used in a driverless car.

Farhad Salah was convicted at Sheffield Crown Court of preparing to commit acts of terrorism.

Jurors heard how Salah, 24, an Iraqi Kurd, posted on social media about using a driverless car in an attack. The jury failed to reach a verdict on his co-defendant, chip-shop owner Andy Star, who was charged with the same offence.

Prosecutors told the trial how Salah and Mr Star, 32, were in the early stages of testing small improvised explosive devices when they were arrested in raids on their homes in a Sheffield community centre and a Chesterfield fish and chip shop in December 2017

Mr Star has always insisted gunpowder and other items found in his flat above the chip shop were all connected to his long-standing interest in fireworks. The jury was discharged after 15 hours of deliberations. It was the second jury to try the pair, said Judge Paul Watson QC.

Read More