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Three brothers arrested in stunning US kidnap

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CLEVELAND, Ohio, (AFP) – US police searched an ordinary home in a working class neighborhood of Cleveland on Tuesday after three women who had been missing for around a decade were rescued from an alleged kidnapping.

Three brothers have been arrested in the midwestern city after one of the women managed to alert a neighbor who broke down the door to lead her and her six-year-old daughter to freedom.

Police responding to a desperate 911 emergency call found two more women in the unremarkable two-storey home with an American flag on the porch. All had been reported missing in separate incidents around 10 years ago.

Journalists and local residents descended on Seymour Avenue, where officers had sealed off the property with barriers and crime scene tape, astonished that anyone could have kept such a crime quiet for so long.

The women — Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michele Knight — were freed on Monday night and examined at a local hospital before being released to their families. The FBI was due to interview them.

Police confirmed that Berry, now 27, has a six-year-old daughter, apparently born while she was in captivity.

The three Ohio women were abducted separately in 2002, 2003 and 2004 but were found together in the home of 52-year-old Ariel Castro, not far from where each disappeared.

Castro and his brothers — Pedro, 54, and Onil, 50 — have been detained. Police mugshots revealed them to be thick-set men with gray beards.

Amanda Berry, right, reunited with her sister

Georgina "Gina" DeJesus: also kidnapped

Georgina “Gina” DeJesus: also kidnapped

“For Amanda’s family, for Gina’s family, for Michele’s family, prayers have finally been answered,” FBI special agent Steve Anthony told reporters.

“The nightmare is over. These three young ladies have provided us with the ultimate definition of survival and perseverance. The healing can now begin.”

Cleveland Director of Public Safety Martin Flask said police had not been alerted to anything untoward happening at the house on Seymour Avenue.

Deputy police chief Ed Tomba said it would not be clear exactly what had happened in the house over the past decade until officers had completed the delicate task of interviewing the women.

“Obviously, there was a long period of time where nobody saw them. So we have to wait until we interview them and hopefully they are going to tell us exactly what went on in there,” he said.

“They were the only ones there along with the suspects,” he added.

Tomba said he has seen the women and they seemed to be in fairly good health, although he said “they needed a good meal.”

The nightmare ended when Berry — kidnapped 10 years ago just before her 17th birthday — reached through a crack in the front door and called for help.

“I heard screaming … and I see this girl going nuts trying to get outside of the house,” neighbor Charles Ramsey told a local ABC news affiliate. “I go on the porch, and she said, ‘Help me get out. I’ve been here a long time’.”

House of Captivity in Cleveland, Ohio. AFP

House of Captivity in Cleveland, Ohio. AFP

Ramsey said he could not pull the door open, so he kicked out a lower section and she crawled through carrying a little girl.

Berry went to a neighboring home and called police, begging them to come as soon as they could — “before he gets back” — according to a recording of her 911 call to emergency services.

When police arrived, she said two other women were being held captive.

Berry was last seen on April 21, 2003, when she left work at a fast food restaurant just a few blocks from her home.

DeJesus was 14 when she vanished while walking home from school on April 2, 2004. Knight, who was 20 at the time of her disappearance, was last seen at a cousin’s house on August 23, 2002, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Details about Ariel Castro started to emerge.

Jannette Gomez, 50, who often visited family and friends on the street, said Castro would park his motorcycle and red pickup behind the house, lock the gate and enter the house through a back door, local newspaper the Plain Dealer said.

At least one window at the house was boarded up, AFP saw at the scene, but nothing seemed particularly out of the ordinary.

Residents at the scene told AFP that they were shocked, and had no idea that the neighbor who would sometimes share food grilled in his yard could have had such a grim secret locked away.

Joe Torres, a stocky and heavily tattooed 32-year-old who works as a cook, stood by his parents’ home on the street, the front lawn full of the toys used by his nieces and nephews.

“It’s like having a snake in the street,” he told AFP. “It’s just like a regular house. No one heard anything, anything. I don’t know where he had those girls. Maybe he kept them quiet?”

He expressed concern for his nieces and nephews. “If something had happened to them, it’s the last place we would have looked,” he said.

And Rachel Williamson, 30, a mother of three children aged between seven and 10, expressed horror and a measure of relief.

“It’s great that they’re home with their families,” she told AFP. “I’ve passed by a lot of times. It’s sad to know they were in there all the time.”

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Posted in Nigeria News. A DisNaija.Com network.

Source: PM News

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Kano Transfers Over 1,000 Almajiris To Different States Amidst COVID-19 Pandemic

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The Kano State Government on Saturday said it has transferred 1,098 ‘almajiris’ to different states of the country.

The commissioner for local government, Murtala Garo, disclosed this while presenting a report before the state’s task force on COVID-19 at the government house, Kano.

Almajiris are children who are supposed to be learning Islamic studies while living with their Islamic teachers. Majority of them, however, end up begging on the streets of Northern Nigeria. They constitute a large number of Nigeria’s over 10 million out-of-school children.

Mr Garo said the Kano government transported 419 almajiris to Katsina, 524 to Jigawa and 155 to Kaduna. He said all of them tested negative for coronavirus before leaving the Kano State.

Despite the coronavirus test done in Kano for the almajiris, the Jigawa government earlier said it would quarantine for two weeks all the almajiris that recently arrived from Kano.

Mr Garo said another 100 almajiris scheduled to be taken to Bauchi State also tested negative to COVID-19.

In a remark, Governor Abdullahi Ganduje said the COVID-19 situation in Kano was getting worse. He appealed for a collaborative effort to curtail the spread of the virus in the state.

Mr Ganduje, who commended residents for complying with the lockdown imposed in the state, said the decision was taken to halt the spread of the virus.

Kano State, as of Saturday night, has 77 coronavirus cases, according to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.

The decision to transfer the Kano almajiris is part of the agreement reached between Northern governors that almajiris in each state be transferred to their states of origin.

However, even before the latest agreement by the governors, the Kano government had been transferring almajiris to other states and neighbouring countries after it banned street begging in the state, most populous in Northern Nigeria.

Despite the transfers, however, no concrete step has been taken to ensure such children do not return to Kano streets as there is freedom of movement across Nigeria although interstate travel was recently banned to check the spread of the coronavirus.

 

Sourced From: Premium Times Nigeria

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COVID-19: ‘Bakassi Boys’ Foil Attempt To Smuggle 24 Women Into Abia In Container

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By Ugochukwu Alaribe

Operatives of the Abia State Vigilante Service, AVS, popularly known as ‘Bakassi Boys’ have arrested 24 market women hidden in a container truck, at Ekwereazu Ngwa, the boundary community between Abia and Akwa Ibom states.

The market women, said to be  from Akwa Ibom State, were on their way to Aba, when they were arrested with the truck driver and two of his conductors for violating the lockdown order by the state government.

Driver of the truck, Moses Asuquo, claimed he was going to Aba to purchase stock fish, but decided to assist the market women, because they were stranded.

A vigilante source told Sunday Vanguard that the vehicle was impounded while the market women were sent back to Akwa Ibom State.

Commissioner for Home Land Security, Prince Dan Okoli, who confirmed the incident, said that  smuggling of people into the state poses great threat to the state government’s efforts to contain the spread of COVID- 19.

 

Sourced From: Vanguard News

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Woman Kills Her Maid Over Salary Request

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Operatives of the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (SCIID), Yaba of the Lagos State police command have arrested one Mrs Nene Steve for allegedly killing her maid, Joy Adole

The maid was allegedly beaten to death by Nene for requesting for her salary at their residence located at 18, Ogundola Street, Bariga area in Lagos.

Narrating the incident, Philips Ejeh, an elder brother to the deceased said that he was sad when they informed him that his sister was beaten to death.

He explained that the deceased was an indigene of Benue State brought to Lagos through an agent and started working with her as a maid  in January 2020.

‘’She reported that her boss refused to pay her and anytime she asked for her salary she will start beating her.

She was making an attempt to leave the place but due to the total lockdown she remained there until Sunday when her boss said she caught her stealing noodles and this led to her serious beating and death,’’ Ejeh said.

He called on Lagos State Government and well- meaning people in the country to help them in getting justice for the victim.

The police spokesman, Bala Elkana, stated that the woman and her husband came to Bariga Police  Station to a report that their house girl had committed suicide.

Detectives were said to have visited the house and suspected foul play with the position of the rope and bruises all over the body which confirmed that the girl had been tortured to death and the boss decided to hang up the girl to make it look like suicide.

He said: “The police moved on with their investigation and found a lot of sign of violence on her body that she has been tortured before a rope was put on her neck.’’

He added that the police removed the corpse and deposited it in the mortuary for autopsy to further ascertain the cause of the death.

Elkana said the matter has been transferred from Bariga police station to Panti for further investigation while the couple have been arrested and will be charged to court.

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Boko Haram Attacks: Buhari Summons Urgent Meeting Of Service Chiefs

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President Buhari and the Service Chiefs in a meeting. (File photo)

Ostensibly alarmed by the latest killings of dozens of soldiers by Boko Haram insurgents, President Muhammadu Buhari has summoned an urgent meeting of Service Chiefs to find ways to stop the trend. 

He has also dispatched the Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan Ali, to the neighbouring Republic of Chad for an urgent meeting with President Idris Deby and his defence counterpart. 

Knowledgeable sources said in Abuja on Friday that the president is worried by on the deterioration of security situation on the Nigeria – Chad Border that has led to the recently increased Boko Haram terrorism in the area.

The sources which did not want to be named in Abuja said: “Nigeria has a Chad  problem in the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF) put together to secure the Lake Chad basin areas and repeal the Boko Haram terrorist attacks against all the countries neighbouring the Lake.”

The sources noted that Chad is believed to be having their own internal security challenges and this has reportedly led to their pulling away their own troops manning their own border around Lake Chad,  saying: “That lacuna is being exploited by the Boko Haram terrorists, who go in and out of Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon to launch terrorist acts.  This is a clear illustration of the fact that terrorism is beyond national borders.”

When contacted, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, confirmed that the Defence Minister is going to Chad but said he is unaware of the purpose. 

Meanwhile, the military authorities are said to be in the process of identifying the families of the latest victims with a view to making contact with them. 

Credible sources revealed that it is the reason the president is yet to make any pronouncement on the matter. 

“The President has called an urgent meeting with the Service Chiefs, as well as the fact that families of the latest victims of the Boko Haram are being identified and contacts made before a government pronouncement on the tragic attacks. This, it is understood, is the reason for the silence of the government over the incident,” the source said. 

 

Sourced From: Tribune

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