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Sources

'Gringo' Who Ran Costa Rican Sex Slave Operation Still At Large

LA NACIÓN (Costa Rica)

SAN JOSE - An American man accused of running a sex slave operation in Costa Rica is on the lam while his associates – a Colombian, a Costa Rican and an Egyptian man – are now behind bars following a series of raids this past week.

Police in San Jose, the Costa Rican capital, had been investigating the operation since 2008. The case "was later put on hold because the victims were able to leave the country, but it was relaunched in 2010," Jorge Rojas, head of the country's national detective agency, told La Nación.

Rojas said the prostitutes, who hailed from Colombia, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Russia, came to Costa Rica on the assumption they would work as dancers in a San Jose night club. Upon arriving, though, the club operators took away their passports and forced them into prostitution.

Police believe the owner of the club, an American man identified as "Scott," was also the ringleader of the operation. They suspect he may be hiding out somewhere in the United States.

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Geopolitics

Journalist Spy, Subversive 13-Year-Old: Law And Order In Totalitarian Russia

Even beyond the bloodshed of its war in Ukraine, lesser acts of aggression by the state are a clear expression of the intentions of Vladimir Putin's Russia.

Photo of an anti-war drawing by a 13-year-old girl

Incriminated drawing by Maria, 13

Pierre Haski

-Analysis-

They are "minor” incidents compared to the bloody frontline near Bakhmut, or the missiles raining down on Ukrainian cities. But these same incidents say a lot about what is going on in Russian society, behind the relatively normal facade that has been preserved for a year.

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Two arrests occurred Thursday, one of a Russian citizen whose story is one of aberrant cruelty; the other of an American journalist turned hostage in the proxy confrontation between Moscow and Washington.

Aleksei Moskalyov is a single father of a 13-year-old girl, Maria, a status which is in itself considered abnormal in Russian society. But above all, Maria was taken away from her father and placed in an orphanage for having drawn an anti-war picture at school. Her own teacher reported her to the authorities.

The father was sentenced to two years in prison for having criticized the Russian army. He fled, but was arrested in Minsk, the Belarusian capital, probably betrayed by the activation of his cell phone. He risks an even harsher sentence, and likely will not see his daughter again for years.

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