Germany
Court rules that suspect in Madeleine McCann disappearance can leave Germany
BERLIN (AP) — A man under investigation in the 2007 disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann is allowed to leave Germany, a court said Monday, overturning one of the conditions under which he was released after serving a sentence in an unrelated case.
The German national, who has been identified by media as Christian Brückner, was released in mid-September after serving a sentence that stemmed from his 2019 conviction for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman in Portugal.
A court in Hildesheim at the time imposed conditions for a five-year period, including that he wear an electronic ankle monitor and report regularly to probation services and remain resident in Germany.
On Monday, a higher state court in Celle said that it upheld most of those conditions imposed in the Oct. 28 ruling, but overturned the stipulation that he must reside in Germany. It said that interfered with European Union citizens’ freedom of movement within the 27-nation bloc.
It added that it would in principle be possible to issue a temporary ban on the man leaving Germany, for example to “arrange technical matters,” or to ban him from going to specific regions, but that the lower court in Hildesheim would have to decide exactly what arrangements to make.
In June 2020, German prosecutors said the man was being investigated on suspicion of murder in connection with McCann’s disappearance from an apartment complex in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz. They said they assumed the girl was dead.
Police have since carried out more searches in Portugal, where the man spent many years. But the suspect, who has denied any involvement in the three-year-old’s disappearance, has not been charged in the case. The investigation wasn’t affected by his release.
Friedrich Fülscher, the man’s lawyer, has said charges would have been filed against his client long ago if there had been sufficient evidence.
New York
Trump pardons ex-NYPD officer who was convicted of helping China stalk an expat
NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump granted a pardon Friday to a former New York police sergeant who was convicted of helping China try to scare an ex-official into going back to his homeland, a prominent case in U.S. authorities’ efforts to combat what they claim are Beijing’s far-flung efforts to repress critics.
Michael McMahon was sentenced this spring to 18 months in prison for his role in what a federal judge called “a campaign of transnational repression.” He insisted he was innocent, saying he was “unwittingly used” when he took what he thought was a straightforward private-investigator gig. McMahon said he was told he was working for a Chinese construction company, not the nation’s government.
A White House official, speaking Friday on condition of anonymity to discuss a pardon that hasn’t been publicly announced, pointed to McMahon’s explanation that he’d been misled. The official also noted that McMahon earned dozens of commendations before a 2001 injury ended his 14-year NYPD career.
McMahon’s lawyer, Lawrence Lustberg, said the pardon “corrects a horrible injustice.”
“I will always believe that it was the Chinese government that victimized Mike, a true hero cop, whom our government should have celebrated and honored, rather than indicted,” Lustberg said by email.
The Brooklyn-based federal prosecutors’ office that brought the case declined to comment.
A jury had convicted McMahon, 58, of charges that included acting as an illegal foreign agent and stalking. He was released from prison to a halfway house earlier this year and was back at his New Jersey home Friday, his attorney said.
McMahon had gotten support from U.S. Reps. Mike Lawler, R-N.J., and Pete Sessions, R-Texas. They wrote to the court last year to back McMahon’s assertions of innocence and urge the judge to spare him prison.
Lawler cheered the pardon Friday, writing on X that the former officer “never should have been prosecuted to begin with.” A message seeking comment was sent to Sessions’ office.
McMahon was one of three men convicted at the first trial stemming from U.S. claims about China’s decade-old “Operation Fox Hunt” initiative. His co-defendants, both Chinese citizens, also were sentenced to prison, where they remain. Messages seeking comment were sent Friday to attorneys for the men, who denied the charges.
Three other people pleaded guilty in the case, and another five defendants remain at large, believed to be in China.
U.S. authorities have viewed “Operation Fox Hunt,” in at least some instances, as a tool of “transnational repression” — a term for sending government operatives to harass, threaten and silence dissidents living abroad.
Beijing says it’s just trying to repatriate fugitives, including corrupt officials, and denies making threats to secure their return.
The case involving McMahon centered on a former Chinese city official named Xu Jin, who moved with his family to suburban New Jersey in 2010. The Chinese government has accused him and his wife of bribery. The couple denied the allegation and said he was unjustly targeted because of internal politics within China’s Communist government.
China has no extradition treaty with the U.S. so it couldn’t legally compel Xu’s return. Instead, U.S. prosecutors said, Beijing engineered years of creepy outreach and innuendo to try to induce him to come back.
Hired by co-defendants to locate Xu, McMahon searched law enforcement and government databases and conducted surveillance. He and Lustberg acknowledged that McMahon missed “red flags” about the $11,000 job, but they said he was duped by his clients and didn’t foresee that the information would be used to hound Xu.
“I never thought for one minute I was working for China, stalking anyone,” McMahon said at his sentencing.
Prosecutors and trial witnesses said Xu was subjected to a pressure campaign that included disparaging Facebook messages to friends of his adult daughter, a slew of letters to a relative in New Jersey and a startling visit from his octogenarian father, who was flown in from China to press his son to return.
Finally, Xu’s wife found a note on their front door that read, in translation: “If you are willing to go back to the mainland and spend 10 years in prison, your wife and children will be all right. That’s the end of this matter!”
Xu said at the trial that before seeing the note, he thought the Chinese Communist Party’s overtures were “only a mental threat to me.”
“However, when I saw that note, I realized that it had become a physical threat,” Xu testified, through a court interpreter.
Thailand
Court orders extradition to China of alleged gambling kingpin
BANGKOK (AP) — An appeals court in Thailand on Monday approved the extradition to China of She Zhijiang, an alleged transnational crime kingpin accused by Beijing of having run over 200 illegal online gambling operations.
The Chinese national is perhaps the most prominent figure among Asia’s alleged cybercrime operators to be arrested, though China has arrested and sentenced to death other major scam organizers.
She was arrested in Bangkok in August 2022 on a 2014 arrest warrant from China’s police. He is currently in the Thai capital’s Klong Prem Central Prison.
She’s legal team had challenged the constitutionality of Thailand extradition law, but that was rejected last month. Monday’s ruling calls for him to be sent to China within 90 days.
Cybercrime has flourished in Southeast Asia where law enforcement is weak, especially in Cambodia and Myanmar. Casinos especially have been havens for criminal activity, and became notorious as centers for online scamming activity when the COVID-19 pandemic hampered in-person gambling.
According to a statement by Thailand’s office of the attorney general, Chinese authorities accused She of establishing 239 illegal online gambling websites, and he was also linked to illegal online gambling networks and casinos in Myanmar.
She became prominent in the region when he developed the Yatai New City project in Myanmar’s Shwe Kokko city, a complex near the Thai border that is notorious for cyberscam activities and human trafficking.
A 2024 report by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said She “is known to have a robust business and investment portfolio across Southeast Asia, and particularly Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand and t he Philippines, spanning across industries including real estate, construction, entertainment and blockchain technology.”
The U.S. and British governments had imposed sanctions on She for alleged criminal activities.
Nevada
Department of Corrections is sued over man’s death days before his release date
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A Las Vegas man’s family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit Friday against the Nevada Department of Corrections after he was killed just days before his scheduled release from prison.
The lawsuit alleges the department defied protective custody rights and housed Jacob Herman, 35, with another man who had repeatedly threatened Herman’s life at High Desert State Prison, 40 miles (64 kilometers) northwest of Las Vegas.
This is not the only lawsuit the department has been hit with in recent years. In September, Nevada agreed to pay $4.6 million to settle a lawsuit that accused prison guards of beating up a man and leaving him to die in 2023.
Herman’s family contends that “systemic overcrowding, understaffing and disregard for protective-custody safeguards” led to Herman’s death, according to the complaint filed in Clark County District Court.
“Through this action, Mr. Herman’s family seeks accountability in the hope that no other family endures such a loss within Nevada’s correctional system,” the complaint states.
The Department of Corrections declined to comment, citing the active litigation. A staff shortage has been a well-known problem in the department, which pointed to the issue as a reason for delay in completing changes recommended by a state audit finished in March 2022.
Herman pleaded guilty in 2023 to larceny and was sentenced to a maximum term of 36 months, according to court records.
Herman was supposed to be housed in protective custody but was instead housed with a cellmate the lawsuit referred to as “King,” an alias. The cellmate was serving a life sentence for homicides, robbery, kidnapping and sexual assault, according to the lawsuit.
The family believes King told corrections officers he would kill Herman if Herman was put in his cell, and on July 16, the cellmate informed corrections officers that he killed Herman, the lawsuit said.
The family argues that the warden, who also was named as a defendant in the lawsuit, and other corrections officers violated Herman’s civil rights by understaffing the unit Herman was in and failing to find and remove contraband that was used to kill him.
Herman’s family is asking for at least $15,000 in damages.
Court rules that suspect in Madeleine McCann disappearance can leave Germany
BERLIN (AP) — A man under investigation in the 2007 disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann is allowed to leave Germany, a court said Monday, overturning one of the conditions under which he was released after serving a sentence in an unrelated case.
The German national, who has been identified by media as Christian Brückner, was released in mid-September after serving a sentence that stemmed from his 2019 conviction for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman in Portugal.
A court in Hildesheim at the time imposed conditions for a five-year period, including that he wear an electronic ankle monitor and report regularly to probation services and remain resident in Germany.
On Monday, a higher state court in Celle said that it upheld most of those conditions imposed in the Oct. 28 ruling, but overturned the stipulation that he must reside in Germany. It said that interfered with European Union citizens’ freedom of movement within the 27-nation bloc.
It added that it would in principle be possible to issue a temporary ban on the man leaving Germany, for example to “arrange technical matters,” or to ban him from going to specific regions, but that the lower court in Hildesheim would have to decide exactly what arrangements to make.
In June 2020, German prosecutors said the man was being investigated on suspicion of murder in connection with McCann’s disappearance from an apartment complex in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz. They said they assumed the girl was dead.
Police have since carried out more searches in Portugal, where the man spent many years. But the suspect, who has denied any involvement in the three-year-old’s disappearance, has not been charged in the case. The investigation wasn’t affected by his release.
Friedrich Fülscher, the man’s lawyer, has said charges would have been filed against his client long ago if there had been sufficient evidence.
New York
Trump pardons ex-NYPD officer who was convicted of helping China stalk an expat
NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump granted a pardon Friday to a former New York police sergeant who was convicted of helping China try to scare an ex-official into going back to his homeland, a prominent case in U.S. authorities’ efforts to combat what they claim are Beijing’s far-flung efforts to repress critics.
Michael McMahon was sentenced this spring to 18 months in prison for his role in what a federal judge called “a campaign of transnational repression.” He insisted he was innocent, saying he was “unwittingly used” when he took what he thought was a straightforward private-investigator gig. McMahon said he was told he was working for a Chinese construction company, not the nation’s government.
A White House official, speaking Friday on condition of anonymity to discuss a pardon that hasn’t been publicly announced, pointed to McMahon’s explanation that he’d been misled. The official also noted that McMahon earned dozens of commendations before a 2001 injury ended his 14-year NYPD career.
McMahon’s lawyer, Lawrence Lustberg, said the pardon “corrects a horrible injustice.”
“I will always believe that it was the Chinese government that victimized Mike, a true hero cop, whom our government should have celebrated and honored, rather than indicted,” Lustberg said by email.
The Brooklyn-based federal prosecutors’ office that brought the case declined to comment.
A jury had convicted McMahon, 58, of charges that included acting as an illegal foreign agent and stalking. He was released from prison to a halfway house earlier this year and was back at his New Jersey home Friday, his attorney said.
McMahon had gotten support from U.S. Reps. Mike Lawler, R-N.J., and Pete Sessions, R-Texas. They wrote to the court last year to back McMahon’s assertions of innocence and urge the judge to spare him prison.
Lawler cheered the pardon Friday, writing on X that the former officer “never should have been prosecuted to begin with.” A message seeking comment was sent to Sessions’ office.
McMahon was one of three men convicted at the first trial stemming from U.S. claims about China’s decade-old “Operation Fox Hunt” initiative. His co-defendants, both Chinese citizens, also were sentenced to prison, where they remain. Messages seeking comment were sent Friday to attorneys for the men, who denied the charges.
Three other people pleaded guilty in the case, and another five defendants remain at large, believed to be in China.
U.S. authorities have viewed “Operation Fox Hunt,” in at least some instances, as a tool of “transnational repression” — a term for sending government operatives to harass, threaten and silence dissidents living abroad.
Beijing says it’s just trying to repatriate fugitives, including corrupt officials, and denies making threats to secure their return.
The case involving McMahon centered on a former Chinese city official named Xu Jin, who moved with his family to suburban New Jersey in 2010. The Chinese government has accused him and his wife of bribery. The couple denied the allegation and said he was unjustly targeted because of internal politics within China’s Communist government.
China has no extradition treaty with the U.S. so it couldn’t legally compel Xu’s return. Instead, U.S. prosecutors said, Beijing engineered years of creepy outreach and innuendo to try to induce him to come back.
Hired by co-defendants to locate Xu, McMahon searched law enforcement and government databases and conducted surveillance. He and Lustberg acknowledged that McMahon missed “red flags” about the $11,000 job, but they said he was duped by his clients and didn’t foresee that the information would be used to hound Xu.
“I never thought for one minute I was working for China, stalking anyone,” McMahon said at his sentencing.
Prosecutors and trial witnesses said Xu was subjected to a pressure campaign that included disparaging Facebook messages to friends of his adult daughter, a slew of letters to a relative in New Jersey and a startling visit from his octogenarian father, who was flown in from China to press his son to return.
Finally, Xu’s wife found a note on their front door that read, in translation: “If you are willing to go back to the mainland and spend 10 years in prison, your wife and children will be all right. That’s the end of this matter!”
Xu said at the trial that before seeing the note, he thought the Chinese Communist Party’s overtures were “only a mental threat to me.”
“However, when I saw that note, I realized that it had become a physical threat,” Xu testified, through a court interpreter.
Thailand
Court orders extradition to China of alleged gambling kingpin
BANGKOK (AP) — An appeals court in Thailand on Monday approved the extradition to China of She Zhijiang, an alleged transnational crime kingpin accused by Beijing of having run over 200 illegal online gambling operations.
The Chinese national is perhaps the most prominent figure among Asia’s alleged cybercrime operators to be arrested, though China has arrested and sentenced to death other major scam organizers.
She was arrested in Bangkok in August 2022 on a 2014 arrest warrant from China’s police. He is currently in the Thai capital’s Klong Prem Central Prison.
She’s legal team had challenged the constitutionality of Thailand extradition law, but that was rejected last month. Monday’s ruling calls for him to be sent to China within 90 days.
Cybercrime has flourished in Southeast Asia where law enforcement is weak, especially in Cambodia and Myanmar. Casinos especially have been havens for criminal activity, and became notorious as centers for online scamming activity when the COVID-19 pandemic hampered in-person gambling.
According to a statement by Thailand’s office of the attorney general, Chinese authorities accused She of establishing 239 illegal online gambling websites, and he was also linked to illegal online gambling networks and casinos in Myanmar.
She became prominent in the region when he developed the Yatai New City project in Myanmar’s Shwe Kokko city, a complex near the Thai border that is notorious for cyberscam activities and human trafficking.
A 2024 report by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said She “is known to have a robust business and investment portfolio across Southeast Asia, and particularly Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand and t he Philippines, spanning across industries including real estate, construction, entertainment and blockchain technology.”
The U.S. and British governments had imposed sanctions on She for alleged criminal activities.
Nevada
Department of Corrections is sued over man’s death days before his release date
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A Las Vegas man’s family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit Friday against the Nevada Department of Corrections after he was killed just days before his scheduled release from prison.
The lawsuit alleges the department defied protective custody rights and housed Jacob Herman, 35, with another man who had repeatedly threatened Herman’s life at High Desert State Prison, 40 miles (64 kilometers) northwest of Las Vegas.
This is not the only lawsuit the department has been hit with in recent years. In September, Nevada agreed to pay $4.6 million to settle a lawsuit that accused prison guards of beating up a man and leaving him to die in 2023.
Herman’s family contends that “systemic overcrowding, understaffing and disregard for protective-custody safeguards” led to Herman’s death, according to the complaint filed in Clark County District Court.
“Through this action, Mr. Herman’s family seeks accountability in the hope that no other family endures such a loss within Nevada’s correctional system,” the complaint states.
The Department of Corrections declined to comment, citing the active litigation. A staff shortage has been a well-known problem in the department, which pointed to the issue as a reason for delay in completing changes recommended by a state audit finished in March 2022.
Herman pleaded guilty in 2023 to larceny and was sentenced to a maximum term of 36 months, according to court records.
Herman was supposed to be housed in protective custody but was instead housed with a cellmate the lawsuit referred to as “King,” an alias. The cellmate was serving a life sentence for homicides, robbery, kidnapping and sexual assault, according to the lawsuit.
The family believes King told corrections officers he would kill Herman if Herman was put in his cell, and on July 16, the cellmate informed corrections officers that he killed Herman, the lawsuit said.
The family argues that the warden, who also was named as a defendant in the lawsuit, and other corrections officers violated Herman’s civil rights by understaffing the unit Herman was in and failing to find and remove contraband that was used to kill him.
Herman’s family is asking for at least $15,000 in damages.
