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eyes on the U.S.

Cleveland Kidnapper Ariel Castro To Appear In Court Today

AP, CNN, REUTERS, WASHINGTON POST (USA)

Worldcrunch

CLEVELAND - Ariel Castro, 52, the man charged with keeping three women captive for almost a decade will appear in court for the first time on Thursday.

Castro is accused of kidnapping Amanda Berry, 27, Gina DeJesus, 23, and Michelle Knight, 32, between 2002 and 2004. At the time, they were 14, 16 and 20 years old.

They were held captive until one of them escaped on Monday.

On Wednesday Castro was charged with four counts of kidnapping – covering the three women and a daughter born to Berry in captivity – as well as three counts of rape.

Reuters reports that he owns the house where the women were oppressively kept in dungeon-like squalid conditions, where they were raped, starved, beaten, and kept in chains.

The police had detained two of Castro’s brothers on Monday but they were later released, as they appeared to have no involvement with this crime, according to the AP.

The Washington Post notes that they both have outstanding warrants for separate misdemeanor cases and will also face a judge Thursday on those matters.

Castro, a school bus driver who lost his job last fall, had been thought to live alone in the house by neighbors. CNN writes that they describe him as “a very outgoing person, a nice man,” but in hindsight “he had been fooling us.”

The alarm was raised on Monday when Amanda Berry managed to get the attention of a neighbor and escape when Castro briefly left the premises.

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Geopolitics

Why The Latin American Far Left Can't Stop Cozying Up To Iran's Regime

Among the Islamic Republic of Iran's very few diplomatic friends are too many from Latin America's left, who are always happy to milk their cash-rich allies for all they are worth.

Image of Bolivia's ambassador in Tehran, Romina Pérez Ramos.

Bolivia's ambassador in Tehran, Romina Pérez Ramos.

Bolivia's embassy in Tehran/Facebook
Bahram Farrokhi

-OpEd-

The Latin American Left has an incurable anti-Yankee fever. It is a sickness seen in the baffling support given by the socialist regimes of Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela or Bolivia to the Islamic Republic of Iran, which to many exemplifies clerical fascism. And all for a single, crass reason: together they hate the United States.

The Islamic Republic has so many of the traits the Left used to hate and fight in the 20th century: a religious (Islamic) vocation, medieval obscurantism, misogyny... Its kleptocratic economy has turned bog-standard class divisions into chasmic inequalities reminiscent of colonial times.

This support is, of course, cynical and in line with the mandates of realpolitik. The regional master in this regard is communist Cuba, which has peddled its anti-imperialist discourse for 60 years, even as it awaits another chance at détente with its ever wealthy neighbor.

I reflected on this on the back of recent remarks by Bolivia's ambassador in Tehran, the 64-year-old Romina Pérez Ramos. She must be the busiest diplomat in Tehran right now, and not a day goes by without her going, appearing or speaking somewhere, with all the publicity she can expect from the regime's media.

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