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Gang killed two in estate rampage after drill rap video shoot

Gang killed two in estate rampage after drill rap video shoot

Times4 days ago
A leader of a gang fictionalised in Andrew O'Hagan's celebrated novel Caledonian Road has been convicted of two murders which were committed after the filming of a music video.
Lorik Lupqi and four other gang members were convicted at the Old Bailey on Wednesday of two murders and the attempted murder of another man when they went on the rampage on the Elthorne estate in Islington, north London, in June 2023.
Earlier that day the drill rapper Tight Road Baby had shot a drill music video on the estate and the men believed it had featured rival gang members. They fatally stabbed Leonardo Reid, 15, and Shekaj Klevi, 23, despite them having no connection to a rival gang.
Lupqi, now 21, and Jason Furtado, 28, were responsible for 'calling on' the violence. They organised a taxi to pick up Xavier Poponne, 22; Abel Chunda, 29; and Eden Clark, 30, to take them to the attack.
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Chilean investigators close in on the notorious Venezuelan gang targeted by Trump
Chilean investigators close in on the notorious Venezuelan gang targeted by Trump

The Independent

time39 minutes ago

  • The Independent

Chilean investigators close in on the notorious Venezuelan gang targeted by Trump

The Venezuelan gang members wrote out even their most minute purchases in blue pen: $15 for a drug trafficker's Uber; $9 for instant coffee during a lookout shift; $34 for supplies to clean what investigators learned were torture chambers. The meticulous spreadsheets seized during police raids in Chile's northern town of Arica, and shared with The Associated Press, suggest the accounting structure of a multinational. They amount to the most comprehensive documentation to date of the inner workings of Tren de Aragua, Latin America's notorious criminal organization designated by President Donald Trump as a foreign terrorist group. An investigation built over years by Chilean prosecutors in Arica, which resulted in hefty sentences for 34 people in March — and inspired other cases which, earlier this month, sent a dozen Tren de Aragua leaders to prison for a total of 300 years — contrasts with Trump's mass deportations of suspected gang members. While Trump's supporters cheer the expulsions, investigators see missed opportunities to gather evidence aimed at uprooting the criminal network that has gained momentum across the region as migration from Venezuela surges and global cocaine demand spreads. 'With the U.S. snatching guys off the streets, they're taking out the tip of the iceberg," said Daniel Brunner, president of Brunner Sierra Group security firm and a former FBI agent. 'They're not looking at how the group operates.' Transnational mafias have fueled an extraordinary crime wave in once-peaceful nations like Chile and consolidated power in countries like Honduras and Peru, infiltrating state bureaucracies, crippling the capacities of law enforcement and jeopardizing regional stability. The new developments are testing democracies across Latin America. 'This is not your typical corruption involving cash in envelopes,' said former Peruvian Interior Minister Ruben Vargas of the impunity in his country. 'It's having criminal operators wield power in the political system.' Chile, long considered one of Latin America's safest and wealthiest nations, is also among its least corrupt, according to watchdog Transparency International, giving authorities an edge in fending off this kind of organized crime. But with no experience, the country was caught unprepared as abductions, dismemberments and other grisly crimes reshaped society. Now, three years later, experts hold out Arica as a case study in wider efforts to combat the gang. While some see El Salvador President Nayib Bukele'scrackdown on criminal gangs as a model, critics see an authoritarian police state that has run roughshod over due process. 'Criminal prosecution, financial intelligence, witness protection and cooperation with other countries, that's what it takes to disrupt criminal networks,' said Pablo Zeballos, a Chilean security consultant and former intelligence officer. Using Tren de Aragua documents first recovered in 2022, Chilean prosecutor Bruno Hernández and his unit brought an unprecedented number of gang members to trial last year, dismantling the gang's northern Chile offshoot, known as Los Gallegos. 'It marked a milestone,' prosecutor Mario Carrera said last month from Arica's shantytown of Cerro Chuño, a Los Gallegos stronghold. 'Until then, they were acting with impunity." Following migrants to 'virgin territory' Tren de Aragua slipped into northern Chile in 2021, after the pandemic shut borders and encouraged Venezuelans to turn to smugglers as they fled their nations' crises and headed to Peru, Colombia and Chile. Héctor Guerrero Flores — a Tren de Aragua leader nicknamed 'Niño Guerrero' — dispatched managers to take over networks of 'coyotes' shepherding human cargo across Chile's desert borders. 'It was virgin territory from their perspective,' said Ronna Rísquez, the author of a book about the group. Tren de Aragua put down roots in Cerro Chuño, a former toxic waste dump outside Arica where Venezuelan migrants squeeze into boxlike homes. Residents said gangsters extracted 'protection' fees from shop owners and unleashed violence on those who wouldn't pay. 'We live in fear of them," said 38-year-old Saida Huanca, recalling how Los Gallegos extorted her minimarket colleague and sent a knife-wielding man to collect road tolls. "I didn't leave the house.' The gang terrorized competitors and turncoats. Court documents describe members tying up defectors and filming as they administered shocks and slashed fingers in clandestine torture chambers. Intercepted calls from March 2022, obtained by AP, show a rival panicking about Tren de Aragua's arrival. 'Where am I supposed to run, dude?' Chilean kingpin Marco Iguazo can be heard asking. Bodies were found, shot or dismembered and stuffed into suitcases. Many were buried alive under cement. 'It was total psychosis,' said Carrera, who reported Arica homicides surging 215% from 2019 to 2022. Cloud emojis and Christmas bonuses Last month at Arica's investigative police headquarters, AP observed Hernández attempt to persuade 23-year-old Wilmer López to talk. The alleged Los Gallegos hitman kept silent, eyes fixed on his Nikes. As a rule, members don't collaborate with investigations. Without testimony last year, Hernández's main recourse was bookkeeping records. They revealed a rigid bureaucracy with centralized leadership that granted local cells autonomy. 'We had to prove not only that they committed crimes, but that there was a structure and pattern," said paralegal Esperanza Amor, on Hernández's team. 'Otherwise they would've been tried as common criminals.' Documents showed migrant smuggling and sex trafficking as the gang's primary source of income. While the per-client price for sex varies by city — $60 in Arica, over $100 in the capital of Santiago — each cell replicated the same structure. The gang confiscated half of women's earnings, then deducted rent and food in a form of debt bondage. Salary spreadsheets showed regional coordinators earning up to $1,200 monthly. Hitmen could earn $1,000 per job, plus protection for relatives in Venezuela. Most operatives received $200 Christmas bonuses. Investigators cross-checked messages among gang members with drone surveillance to decrypt their use of emojis. Some were self-explanatory — a snake signifying a traitor. Others less so: A bone meant debt, a pineapple was a safehouse, a raincloud warned of a raid. Getting to trial With the defendants in custody, the bloodshed abated: Arica's homicide rate plunged from 17 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022 to 9.9 homicides per 100,000 last year. After the team secured 34 convictions on charges including aggravated homicide, human trafficking and sexual exploitation of minors, authorities paid more attention. Similar investigations proliferated nationwide. Carrera traveled to Washington to share intelligence with the FBI. 'The unit did something that had never been done in Chile, and achieved results,' said Ignacio Castillo, director of organized crime at Chile's public prosecutor's office. Other countries have largely struggled to prosecute Tren de Aragua. The Trump administration has used the gang to justify deporting migrants, with some arrested for little more than tattoos. Experts say the Justice Department is too distracted by mass expulsions to conduct thorough investigations. 'Those kind of yearslong investigations are not happening," said Brunner. 'I see the current deportation tactics as working in favor of organized crime." A country traumatized, and transformed The next challenge for Hernández's unit is tracking Los Gallegos as they regroup behind bars. Some Cerro Chuño businesses said they still receive extortion threats — from prison phones. 'Organized crime will always adapt,' Hernández said. 'We need to get ahead." Despite the national homicide rate declining, enthusiasm for a more ruthless approach is spreading as leftist President Gabriel Boric, a former student protest leader, battles for his legacy ahead of November presidential elections. Polls show security as voters' top concern. The current favorite is far-right candidate José Antonio Kast, who draws inspiration from Bukele and Trump. He vows to build a border barrier and deport undocumented migrants 'no matter the cost.' Watching her grandchildren play outside a church in Arica, Maria Peña Gonzalez, 70, said Kast had her vote. 'You can't walk at night like you could before,' she said. 'Chile has changed since different types of people started arriving.'

‘They're rowdy. They're vibing. I rip my shirt off': the exploding career of Hanumankind, India's hottest rapper
‘They're rowdy. They're vibing. I rip my shirt off': the exploding career of Hanumankind, India's hottest rapper

The Guardian

time40 minutes ago

  • The Guardian

‘They're rowdy. They're vibing. I rip my shirt off': the exploding career of Hanumankind, India's hottest rapper

Two weeks ago, halfway through his first ever UK show, Hanumankind instructed the crowd to mimic him by hopping to the right then to the left, back and forth, in unison. But the rapper from India slipped and fell, limping to the end of the gig in evident pain, kept upright by his DJ and inspired by the audience's singalong familiarity with his catalogue. 'We were ready to have a good time,' he sheepishly grins from an armchair at his record label's offices three days later. It turns out he has torn a ligament. 'It was a battle of internal turmoil. The show was like a fifth of what it was meant to be, but I gave it my all. London has a beautiful energy which gave me strength.' Even without the leg injury, the 32-year-old star, who was born Sooraj Cherukat, has reached a testing threshold in his short, explosive career. His tracks Big Dawgs and Run It Up, helped by action-movie music videos, have made him one of the most talked-about MCs in the world. A$AP Rocky and Fred Again are among his recent collaborators. Indian prime minister Narendra Modi even invited Cherukat to perform at an event in New York last September. But as a rare south Asian face in globally popular rap, he feels a certain responsibility. 'The past year has been hard,' he says. 'I'm trying to navigate through it.' What's more, although he expresses a deep pride about life in India, 'a lot of things are off. There is a mob mentality. There's a lot of divisiveness because of religion, background, caste. It doesn't sit well with me. I'm in a unique space to change the way people can think within my country.' Born in Malappuram, Kerala, which he remembers as a 'green, beautiful environment', Cherukat spent his childhood following his father's work abroad, from Nigeria to Saudi Arabia to Britain. 'We'd traverse different countries and I'd sing songs in whatever language I was picking up,' he says. 'Wherever I went, I had to get involved and be ready to leave. I learned to connect with people. That's why the power of the word is so important to me.' At the age of 10, he landed in Houston, Texas, and found a rare stability. It was the early 2000s and the city was an engine room for rap innovation. Cherukat's set his accent to a southern drawl. Already a fan of heavy metal – which makes sense given his grungy, rockstar leanings today – he became hooked on the local chopped-and-screwed subgenre pioneered by DJ Screw, Three 6 Mafia and Project Pat. In his teens he was 'burning CDs full of beats, riding around smoking blunts and hitting hard freestyles'. He returned to south India just before hitting 20. 'The only place I had roots,' he says. He completed a university degree in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, before working a corporate job in the tech hub of Bengaluru. Seeing rap as 'a party thing, a way to de-stress and stay connected to the art form', he performed at open-mic nights, softening his US accent and perfecting his stage show for an Indian audience. 'Friends would come to watch and be like, 'Dude, you're not bad. You should lock in.'' So he did. At the end of 2019, Cherukat played his first festival: NH7 Weekender in Pune, Maharashtra. The crowd went wild, quickly morphing from a small handful into a packed moshpit. 'They're rowdy and they're fucking vibing,' he says. 'I rip my shirt off. I'm like, 'OK, I can do this!'' He quit his job and began plotting his next move, filling notebooks with lyrics throughout the pandemic. These are a blend of cheek and grit delivered with a flow that keeps respawning at different speeds and scales. Soon, Cherukat was signed by Def Jam India. Part of a movement to reject the remnants of British colonialism in favour of local expression, the proud, rebellious patchwork of Indian hip-hop encompasses the vast country's 'hundreds of languages, each as deeply rooted as the next', Cherukat explains. 'Someone who speaks Hindi or another regional language will give you a vast amount of depth and detail in what they're doing.' His decision to rap mostly in English therefore came with risks of being perceived as inauthentic at home, but it has certainly helped his global crossover. Besides, he has found other ways to communicate a homegrown aesthetic. Run It Up marches to the beat of Keralan chenda drums, while its video features martial artists from disparate corners of India. Cherukat performed it with a band of drummers at Coachella festival, his debut US gig. 'Most people don't know what is going on in my country,' he says. 'Maybe I can open up some doors, open up some eyes, break out of these bubbles and stereotypes.' Although not religious, Cherukat has a divine figure woven into his performing name. Over recent years, Hanuman, the simian-headed Hindu god of strength and devotion, has been employed everywhere from the car stickers of hypermasculine Indian nationalism to the bloody, satirical critique of Dev Patel's 2024 thriller, Monkey Man. Where does Hanumankind fit into this: traditionalist or progressive? 'I need to make music for myself first,' he says simply. 'But when you have a platform, you can bring about change through your words and actions.' Some fans were disappointed that he accepted the New York invitation from Modi – whose Hindu nationalist government has been accused of democratic backsliding and Islamophobia. Cherukat has defended his appearance, describing it as 'nothing political … We were called to represent the nation and we did that.' But today he claims his 'political ideology is pretty clear' to anyone who has been following his career. In one of his earliest singles, 2020's Catharsis, he rails against systemic corruption, police brutality and armed suppression of protest. 'I'm not just trying to speak to people who already agree with me,' he says. 'I'm trying to give people who are otherwise not going to be listening a chance to be like, 'OK, there is some logic to what he's saying.'' Monsoon Season, his new mixtape, is just out. It features the mellow likes of Holiday – performed on the massively popular YouTube series Colors – as well as raucous collaborations with US rap luminaries Denzel Curry and Maxo Kream. It is less a narrative album, more a compilation, with songs gathered over the years before the spotlight shone on him. 'I have a lot of memories of coming into Kerala during the monsoon,' says Cherukat of the project's name. 'You can have days where things are absolutely reckless, flooded, out of control. There can be days where you get introspective and think about life. There are days where you love the rain: it feels good, there's that smell in the air when it hits the mud, the soil, the flowers. Your senses are heightened. You can fall in love with that. Or it can ruin all your plans and you hate it.' Cherukat's knee will take some time to recover before he embarks on a North American tour later this year. It's clear he needs a break: not just to heal, but to continue processing fame, adapt to its changes and return to the studio. 'I'm still adjusting,' he says. 'The attention, the conversation, the responsibility, the lifestyle, all this shit. Things have been a little haywire. So I just want to go back to the source – and make music.' Monsoon Season is out now on Capitol Records/Def Jam India

‘I shouldn't have to fight for answers': David Amess's daughter on the MP's murder and her fury at his friends and colleagues
‘I shouldn't have to fight for answers': David Amess's daughter on the MP's murder and her fury at his friends and colleagues

The Guardian

time40 minutes ago

  • The Guardian

‘I shouldn't have to fight for answers': David Amess's daughter on the MP's murder and her fury at his friends and colleagues

The last time Katie Amess saw her dad, the Conservative MP Sir David Amess, he was dropping her at Heathrow for her flight home to Los Angeles. Usually, she would cry when they said goodbye, but this time neither were sad – they were both excited. In six weeks, Katie would be back for her wedding. 'It was going to be in the House of Commons and my dad could not wait to walk me down the aisle,' she says. 'He'd been practising, taking my arm, walking me around. We joked about it – we were calling it the 'royal wedding'. At the airport, we hugged goodbye and he kissed me on both cheeks. I skipped off thinking the next time I saw him would be the best day of my life.' Instead, just four weeks later, her father was murdered at his surgery, stabbed 21 times by an Islamic State sympathiser. He was buried in the suit he was going to wear to the wedding. The music planned for walking Katie down the aisle – Pachelbel's Canon – was instead played as his coffin was carried into the church. The murder of David Amess in October 2021, while serving his constituency in a church hall in Leigh-on-Sea, sent shock waves across the country – and the details that have since emerged should have deepened the outrage and furthered the questions. Amess's killer, Ali Harbi Ali, was a once bright, motivated teenager planning to study medicine who had self-radicalised during Syria's civil war. The teachers at his Croydon school had noticed – one described it as a light going out and that his 'eyes were dead'. Ali's attendance fell, his grades plummeted and attempts to talk to him only raised more concerns, leading the school to contact Prevent, the government-led counter-terrorism strategy designed to identify and deradicalise extremists. One home visit was made, followed by one brief meeting between Ali and an 'intervention provider' in a McDonald's. Conversation was limited to two subjects: whether western music and student loans were unlawful in Islam. Ali was deemed a 'pleasant and informed young man'. (He later said: 'I just knew to nod my head and say yes and they would leave me alone afterwards and they did.') There was no follow-up, no further consultations or contact with his referring teachers. There was no monitoring. Despite the atrocity Ali went on to commit, Katie believes there has been little scrutiny of any of the above, no accountability or consequences for the anonymous officials involved and no requirement to give a public account of their actions and lessons learned. For almost four years, Katie, on behalf of the Amess family, has pushed for an inquiry. Partly as a result of this pressure, the Home Office commissioned Lord Anderson, the interim Prevent commissioner, to produce a rapid review of the case in order to identify whether questions remain unanswered. It was published last week and concluded: 'Though the information available on [Ali's] case is not complete and likely never will be,' the 'unhappy story' of his engagement with Prevent had been 'squeezed almost dry'. Katie doesn't agree. 'I'm not going to give up,' she says. 'All we want is for someone to say: 'We're sorry. This is what happened, these are the mistakes made and this is what we're doing to make sure it never happens again.' I shouldn't have to fight for answers.' Born in Basildon to an electrician father and a dressmaker mother, David Amess was a working-class, Catholic Conservative and had been an Essex MP for 38 years when he was murdered. He was approaching his 70th birthday – on that last airport trip with Katie, she had broached the subject of retirement. 'He didn't want to retire any time soon,' she says. 'He felt he had so much left to do.' Having an MP father was all Katie had ever known, but Amess was not an absent figure, away at Westminster. He was committed to his constituency with no ambitions for higher office. 'When I was young, I used to ask: 'Do you think you could be prime minister?' He'd say: 'Absolutely not!'' For Katie, the second of five children, all born within seven years, he was present and fun and always loomed large in her life. 'My dad was absolutely hilarious and completely inappropriate,' she says. 'He'd do the craziest things and sometimes they were a bit dangerous.' He would booby trap the house at Halloween. He would take all five children to water parks even though he couldn't swim and would have been unable to rescue any of them. At toll booths, on family road trips, all five children were instructed to blow raspberries while he paid the operator. 'He was obsessed with animals, so we had dogs, cats, chickens, bunny rabbits, hamsters, gerbils, a goat called Tinkerbell,' says Katie. 'He wanted a small pony at one point, but Mum vetoed that. He had fish and birds in his office even though no animals were allowed, but he didn't listen to rules. At Halloween, he'd go to Westminster in full goblin outfit. At Christmas, he'd put a tree on his balcony at Westminster, which was definitely not allowed, and his whole office was lit up with flashing lights.' From the age of four, Katie accompanied him to constituency events. 'My elder brother was out playing football and my mum had my three younger sisters to look after, so I was all dressed up and dragged to garden parties and village fetes.' Later, when she moved to London for drama school – she is now an actor – she stayed in her dad's London flat. 'I'm so glad I spent all that time with him so I could just be around him and soak up what he was about,' she says. 'I never knew I wouldn't be with him for another 30 years.' Amess was very well known in his Southend West and Leigh constituency. 'He spent so much time there,' says Katie. 'Everybody knew his name and face. I've received so many messages since he died saying: 'We didn't agree with him politically, but he helped my elderly parents'; 'He got support for my disabled child'; 'He visited my sick grandma in hospital.'' In some ways, his profile and accessibility made him vulnerable. He was the face of government and easy to locate. In fact, it later emerged that Ali had worked through a list of possible victims, including Michael Gove and Keir Starmer, both of who were deemed too complicated to find. Amess – targeted because he had voted in favour of airstrikes against Islamic State – was holding a surgery. (The pinned tweet on Amess's account gave the date, place and details of how to book.) 'I always worried about Dad's safety, but I thought if anything was going to happen, it would be a punch-up from a local yob,' says Katie. 'Never in your wildest dreams would you imagine that a terrorist would go through a list and then come and murder your dad. It's just so shocking. It's still unbelievable.' In the immediate aftermath, the family were too stunned to think about inquiries or even formulate questions. Katie remembers flying straight back to the UK, walking into the family home and seeing the runner beans Amess had picked from the garden before going to surgery. 'I washed up his breakfast plates – tea and toast – from the morning it happened as well as his dinner plates from the night before and could not believe it was the last time I'd ever be doing this,' she says. 'All those times I was annoyed that he'd left his plates for me to clean when I was in his London flat for drama school. Now, I just wanted to be able to clean them one more time.' When details about Ali's history with Prevent began surfacing, the family assumed an inquiry would be announced after his trial. (In April 2022, Ali was given a whole-life sentence.) Two home secretaries – Priti Patel and Suella Braverman – assured the family that they were working on it, but their successor James Cleverly refused to meet them. Instead, there has been only a Prevent learning review, completed in February 2022. This gives a glimpse of Prevent's failures in the case – the strange decision‑making (why focus on student loans and western music only?), the lack of record-keeping, the absence of communication, returned emails or follow-up. 'I was absolutely gobsmacked when I read it,' says Katie. 'I could run Prevent better with my friends. If these are the people entrusted to save us from terrorism, we've got a huge problem.' Equally striking is the sparsity of the review. No one involved is identified or even interviewed. It's a review of secondhand accounts and the records kept (and not kept). 'The main conclusion it seems to draw is that so much has changed with Prevent, it's all been fixed, so we don't need to look any harder,' says Katie. 'If that was true, why were three little girls murdered in Southport last year?' Axel Rudakubana, the Southport killer, was referred to and rejected by Prevent three times. One of the questions to be asked in the Southport inquiry is whether Prevent needs a complete overhaul. 'They could have asked that question years earlier after my dad was killed and perhaps Southport wouldn't have happened,' says Katie. Campaigning hasn't been easy. Katie is based in the US and her mother, Julia, is not well – she had a stroke shortly after Ali's trial, which the family attributes to trauma and grief. The change of government briefly gave them hope. Katie and Julia had a video meeting with Yvette Cooper, the new home secretary, who told them that Amess was a great friend, their Westminster offices were next door and they used to walk to the Commons chamber together. 'We thought: 'Perfect. Now we're getting somewhere,'' says Katie. Instead, months passed. Finally, in March, in another video call, Cooper admitted there wouldn't be an inquiry. 'My mum said: 'Look me in the eyes and tell me as his friend that you think you're doing the right thing.' Yvette Cooper could not answer.' In a formal letter, Cooper explained that it was 'hard to see' how an inquiry could go beyond what had already been established in the trial, the Prevent learning review and the coroner's report, as well as the forthcoming rapid review by Lord Anderson. 'When an elected official is killed in a church hall in broad daylight by somebody the government is monitoring, there should be an inquiry – it shouldn't even be a question,' says Amess. 'This isn't a witch-hunt, but there should be some accountability. The mistakes made cost me my father, my mother's husband, a grandfather, a brother, a son. 'I don't think we'll ever recover,' she continues. 'It's my 40th birthday this month and I know I'd have flown back to England like I did every summer and my dad would have thrown me a huge party. There'd have been 40 balloons and he'd have made my friends give me 40 bumps! I want to have children, but I think: 'What sort of mother would I be now when I'm in so much trauma and heartache?' I used to think he'd be such a funny grandpa. All that has been robbed from me.' For Katie, the lack of support from Westminster after her father's decades of service is deeply painful and nonsensical, too. 'I just cannot believe the way we've been treated by his friends and colleagues,' she says. 'It's in all their interests. They are meeting the public day in, day out, so why don't they want to investigate properly and establish what would make them safer? Dad's legacy needs to be that through what happened to him, he saves other people. Please, just show some human decency. Do the right thing.' Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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