International
Noboa insists on a new state of emergency in Ecuador after the previous two were invalidated
The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, again decreed on Tuesday for the third time a state of emergency in part of the country’s territory, after the previous two declarations were revoked by the Constitutional Court, considering that the measure was not sufficiently argued.
This new state of emergency for 60 days covers six provinces (Guayas, Los Ríos, Manabí, Orellana, Santa Elena and El Oro) and the municipality of Camilo Ponce Enríquez, a mining enclave in the southern Andean province of Azuay where the mayor was murdered in April and this week eight bodies with signs of torture were found in a mining concession.
In these territories the measure contemplates the suspension of the rights of inviolability of the domicile, inviolability of correspondence and freedom of assembly, according to the decree, which extends for more than 50 pages to support this declaration.
It also implies the mobilization of the Armed Forces and the National Police to carry out operations against organized crime gangs, to which Noboa has declared “war” since the beginning of the year by raising the fight against them to “internal armed conflict,” with which he has come to classify them as terrorist groups and non-state belligerent actors.
The Presidency of Ecuador stressed in a statement that on this occasion the decree of the state of emergency “has the support of the World Association of Jurists (WJA, for its acronym in English),” in view of the analysis of the legality of the measure that must be carried out again by the Constitutional Court.
On this occasion, the decree of the state of emergency establishes that the Constitutional Court may have access to secret reports from the Government authorities in case they need to review them to evaluate the relevance of the measure, without this implying the declassification and public access of them.
The Constitutional Court validated the first state of emergency decreed by Noboa at the beginning of the year and that was in force for 90 days throughout the country, broadcast as a result of a spiral of violence by criminal gangs that included simultaneous riots in several prisons in the country with about 200 hostages and the taking of the TC Television channel by a group of armed men during a live broadcast.
Subsequently, Noboa issued two focused states of emergency that covered several provinces, but in both cases the constitutunal court considered that “the facts mentioned in the decree do not specifically constitute the cause of internal armed conflict.”
The magistrates stressed that, for the most recent decree, the argument of the internal armed conflict “was the only (reason) invoked by the President of the Republic.”
“It should be remembered that, due to its important legal implications, both the reiterated jurisprudence of this Court and international law, have established that in order to configure the cause of internal armed conflict, two parameters must be considered that address the seriousness of the situation of violence,” the Court said.
Between those two parameters cited by the court is “the level of organization of the armed group and the intensity of hostilities.”
“However, in the decree and in the reports that support it, no indications related to these parameters are mentioned,” he concluded.
However, the Court clarified that “the finding that the declaration of a state of emergency does not meet the requirements provided for in the Constitution does not imply a lack of knowledge of the serious acts of violence and the complex circumstances that the country is going through.”
He also recalled that his decision does not affect the powers provided for in the ordinary legal system for the Executive to use the Armed Forces to fulfill its constitutional mission, since the Ecuadorians approved by a large majority in a referendum held in April that the military support the Police in operations against organized crime without the need to issue states of emergency.
Organized crime gangs, mainly dedicated to drug trafficking, are credited with the wave of violence that plagues Ecuador and that has led it to be the first country in Latin America in homicides per capita, with a rate of about 47.2 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023, according to the Ecuadorian Observatory of Organized Crime (OECO).
International
85% of Haiti’s capital has fallen into the power of gangs, according to UN reports
The power of criminal gangs in Haiti continues to grow and at the moment they control about 85% of the capital, Port-au-Prince, according to “certain estimates” that this Monday were cited in the UN Security Council by Miroslav Jenca, Undersecretary General for Europe, Asia and the Americas in the UN Political Affairs Department.
The gangs have begun to attack the places of “relative security” that remained in the capital, such as the Petionville neighborhood, where UN offices, embassies and foreign personnel are located. There, an attack recorded last Tuesday left “dozens dead,” he said.
In response, spontaneous groups of neighbors have begun to organize armed patrols, to set up unofficial road controls “and to take justice into their hands,” Jenca lamented.
The number of displaced people reaches 700,000
In the vast areas where gangs have control, the security and human rights of their inhabitants are in danger, and especially those of women, since gang members resort to all forms of violence, often sexual violence, to subjugate neighbors.
This situation has caused 700,000 Haitians to flee their homes and are now in a situation of “internally displaced people.”
Despite this, neighboring countries continue to deport Haitians (170,000 so far), mainly from the Dominican Republic, although Jenca did not cite this country.
What is the situation of the Multinational Mission to contain gangs in Haiti?
The Multinational Security Mission that was supposed to train the Haitian police has so far received only 400 agents of the 2,500 that it must gather, mainly due to lack of funds, and the prospects are so pessimistic that the Government of Haiti has already asked that the MMS be transformed into a classic mission of “blue helmets”.
However, this will not be easy because so far Russia and China oppose the deployment of a peace mission in Haiti arguing that the last mission of this type left the country among very serious accusations of sexual abuse and having caused and spread in 2010 a cholera epidemic that was fatal for the country, leaving thousands dead.
International
One-week preventive detention for Princess Mette-Marit’s son of Norway for rape
An Oslo court issued this Wednesday preventive detention of one week with a ban on visits for Marius Borg Høiby, son of Princess Mette-Marit of Norway, for two cases of rape of two different women.
Høiby, 27 years old and the result of a previous relationship with the princess, had been arrested on Monday night for the third time since August for an alleged rape, but the Prosecutor’s Office revealed today at the end of the hearing, held behind closed doors, that another case had been discovered during the investigation.
The young man, who is not part of the Royal House, is also being investigated for injuries and damages against three of his ex-girlfriends and for threats to a man.
Prison for two cases of rape in Norway
The hearing began at 14:00 local time (13:00 GMT) and ended two hours later, but Judge Anne-Lene Åvangen Hødnebø did not issue her opinion until after 22:00.
According to public television NRK, the police used as evidence recordings found on Høiby’s phone.
In both cases it is sexual intercourse without penetration, reported the Prosecutor’s Office, which had requested two weeks in prison.
“The reason we asked for two weeks is that we discovered another violation last night. It is a case of sexual relationship without intercourse with a woman unable to resist the act. We are investigating two rape cases,” prosecutor Andreas Kruszewski said at the end of the hearing.
HØiby’s lawyer, Øyvind Bratlien, stated that his defendant denies the accusations and described the allegations as a “catastrophic” error of judgment.
Three arrests since August
Høiby was arrested on Monday night when he was driving with his ex-girlfriend, the protagonist of the incident that led to the first arrest and which he is forbidden to contact.
His home in Skaugum, on the same property where Crown Princes Haakon and Mette-Marit reside, was searched by police officers.
According to Norwegian media, the first alleged rape occurred at the young woman’s home in March of this year; the other, in her residence in Skaugum a few weeks ago.
It is the third arrest of Høiby, who was arrested a few hours ago in early August after an incident in his ex-girlfriend’s apartment and was accused of injuries, damage and threats, in a case that was later expanded and that also includes two of his previous partners and another person.
Høiby admitted a few days after his arrest in August in a statement part of the accusations and admitted to having problems with alcohol and other drugs and suffering from mental problems.
The Royal House is reluctant to talk about the case
The Norwegian Royal House has been reluctant to comment on the case of the young Marius Borg Høiby, which has generated a lot of media attention in this Nordic country, and only Prince Haakon has made statements.
“I think Marius faces serious accusations. The judicial system must do its job,” Haakon said today from Jamaica, where he attended an event organized by the UN.
The heir to the Norwegian throne said that as “parents” they have tried to get the young man to receive “help.”
Høiby is the result of a previous relationship of Mette-Marit and has no official commitments to the Royal House, although he attends some celebrations such as the birthdays of his stepbrothers and has always maintained the relationship with both Haakon and Kings Harald V and Sonia.
International
The next attorney general Matt Gaetz manages to stop the report on his sex scandal
The Ethics Committee of the US House of Representatives did not make public this Wednesday due to lack of agreement the report of its investigation into Matt Gaetz, nominated by President-elect Donald Trump, to be the next attorney general and investigated for inappropriate sexual behavior and drug use.
The president of that commission, Republican Michael Guest, told the press at the end of the nearly two-hour meeting at the Capitol that there was no consensus among the members when making that document public.
That body was going to put its decision to a vote last Friday, but Gaetz’s resignation from his seat two days earlier, after being appointed by Trump, delayed that scrutiny and effectively ended the investigations into him.
Although with the departure of the Florida representative of Congress, the commission was left without jurisdiction to investigate him, the publication of the conclusions of his investigation opened in 2021 for alleged inappropriate sexual conduct, irregular use of campaign funds, acceptance of bribes and drug use was still in the air.
Committee interviews
The committee interviewed two women who testified that Gaetz, nominated for attorney general, paid them for having sex at a party in Florida, where prostitution is illegal.
According to the women’s lawyer to the NBC News channel, Joel Leppard, one of them also testified that she saw Gaetz having sex with a minor, although he said that he did not think he knew that he was 17 years old at the time.
Gaetz has denied those accusations and Trump’s transition team considers them unfounded and recalls that the Department of Justice closed a parallel investigation without charges.
Review of the report
Several senators, both Republicans and Democrats, had said that they wanted to review that report before the Judicial Committee of the Upper House examines Gaetz’s nomination next year and then the plenary of that hemicycle validates or stops it.
The authorization of the positions of the future cabinet depends on the Senate, but until then Gaetz has the support of Trump, who has stated that he does not question his own decision, and also of the future vice president, JD Vance, who accompanied him to Congress this Wednesday.
Report on Gaetz next attorney general has had leaks
However, although the House Committee on the House of Representatives stopped the dissemination of the report, there have already been leaks in the national press.
The lawyer of the two women indicated that they provided that committee with numerous photos related to the time they spent with the Republican, who according to that lawyer paid 6,000 dollars to one and 4,000 to another to sleep with them.
The leader of the House of Representatives, Republican Mike Johnson, had wanted to stay out of the committee’s decision, but at the same time he did not consider it appropriate for it to disseminate his investigation: “That would open Pandora’s box and I don’t think it’s something healthy for the institution,” he said.
85% of Haiti’s capital has fallen into the power of gangs, according to UN reports
One-week preventive detention for Princess Mette-Marit’s son of Norway for rape
The next attorney general Matt Gaetz manages to stop the report on his sex scandal
Tec de Monterrey honors one of its students for his contribution to nanotechnology in medicine
Defense Minister commends salvadoran soldier for Central American Cross Country victory
Ecuador prison riot leaves at least 43 dead
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