Travis King, Army soldier who ran into North Korea, to plead guilty to desertion: Attorney
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(FORT BLISS, Texas) — Travis King, the U.S. Army soldier who ran across the border from South Korea to North Korea last year will plead guilty, to desertion and assault charges as part of a plea deal, according to his attorney.
At a court hearing on Sept. 20 at Fort Bliss, Texas, King is expected to plead guilty to five of the 14 charges he is facing. The five charges include one for desertion, three for disobeying a lawful order, and one for assault on a non-commissioned officer.
King’s attorney, Franklin Rosenblatt, disclosed the plea deal in a statement provided today to ABC News. The possibility of a plea deal for King’s case first came to light in mid-July.
“US Army Private Travis King will take responsibility for his conduct and enter a guilty plea,” Rosenblatt’s statement read. “He was charged by the Army with fourteen offenses under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. He will plead guilty to five of those, including desertion.”
“He will plead not guilty to the remaining offenses, which the Army will withdraw and dismiss,” he adds.
“Travis’s guilty plea will be entered at a general court-martial. There he will explain what he did, answer a military judge’s questions about why he is pleading guilty, and be sentenced,” said Rosenblatt. “Travis is grateful to his friends and family who have supported him, and to all outside of his circle who did not pre-judge his case based on the initial allegations.”
At the Sept. 20 hearing a military judge will determine whether to accept the deal and how much time King should serve in a military prison.
In July, 2023 King crossed into North Korea triggering an international incident when he was held by North Korean authorities for more than two months after he dashed into North Korea at the Joint Security Area at the DMZ. Prior to joining the tour group that brought him to the DMZ King had escaped from his Army escort at the airport where he was to have boarded a flight to take him back to the United States.
(LONDON) — Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, Sudan’s army chief, was the target of a drone attack that killed five people, officials said Wednesday.
Al-Burhan had been attending a ceremony for military graduates in Jebeit, a small town in eastern Sudan, when the strike took place.
In April 2023, a civil conflict broke out between the Sudanese Army and the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group following months of tensions linked to a planned transition to civilian rule. The conflict has led to at least 16,000 deaths, according to the United Nations. Local groups, however, warn the true toll is likely much higher.
“Today, our ground anti-aircraft missiles responded to two hostile marches that targeted the site of the celebration of the graduation of batches from the Military, Air and Naval Colleges after its conclusion in Jebeit,” the Sudanese Army said in a statement.
At least five people were killed in Wednesday’s drone attack, the Sudanese Army announced.
Army officials also said the incident led to “minor injuries.”
The United States has invited warring parties to begin cease-fire talks in Switzerland next month.
“A few things have changed: One is the acuteness of the horrors, and two is the greater alignment across the region among our African and Gulf counterparts that this is an unacceptable situation, and that nobody wins from the continued destabilization,” a senior U.S. official told ABC News last week.
In a statement, RSF chief Mohammed Daglo — commonly known as Hemedti — welcomed the talks, saying the RSF is “ready to deal with these talks constructively.”
Al-Burhan said he is open to talks “only on the condition” that RSF and allied militias vacate civilian homes.
“We appreciate the initiatives from the United States, Saudi Arabia, and other countries. However, these efforts must be coordinated with the Sudanese government, and Sudan should be involved in every detail of the discussions, including the participants and the negotiation agenda,” he said.
The RSF has yet to publicly comment on the drone attack.
A view of the Sverdlovsk Regional Court building prior to a hearing in the trial of US journalist Evan Gershkovich, accused of espionage, in Yekaterinburg on July 18, 2024. — Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images
(LONDON) — Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been sentenced to16 years in a Russian penal colony on charges of espionageafter a guilty verdict was announced in the American journalist’s trial on Friday.
The State Prosecutors Office in Russia were looking for a sentence of 18 years but was given 16 instead.
The trial of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich moved to closing arguments early Friday morning after only two days of hearings in a case his newspaper and the United States have denounced as a sham.
Gershkovich has already been in detention for 15 months.
The exceptional speed of the trial has prompted speculation that Russia may be hurrying to convict Gershkovich in order to conduct a prison exchange that may have been agreed. In the past, Russia has preferred to only trade people once they have been convicted. However, the State Department on Thursday said it doesn’t have any assessment of why the trial was moved up so quickly.
Gershkovich, a 32-year-old American, has spent more than a year in Russia detention since he was arrested on espionage charges that the Wall Street Journal and the United States say are fabricated. Gershkovich’s trial began in June with a one-day hearing behind closed doors in the Sverdlovsk Regional Court in Yekaterinburg, a city about 900 miles from Moscow.
After just a second day of hearings on Thursday, the court announced it had already completed considering all the evidence in the case and that closing arguments would now be heard on Friday.
After that, Gershkovich will be asked for his “final statement” and the court will consider its verdict, a spokesman for the court said, without giving a time frame for when those might happen.
The process is moving exceptionally fast for an espionage trial, which normally take months or even years. The second hearing was also moved up abruptly by a month, after originally being scheduled for mid-August.
If convicted Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison.
Gershkovich was arrested by Russia’s FSB intelligence agency while on a reporting trip in Yekaterinburg in March last year. The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. and dozens of international media organisations have vehemently denied the charges against him.
The U.S. has accused Russia of seizing Gershkovich and a number of other Americans as hostages using sham charges with the goal of exploiting them as a political bargaining chips. In recent years Russia has arrested several U.S. citizens including WNBA star Brittney Griner and later traded them for Russians imprisoned in western countries on serious charges.
Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have publicly signalled Russia wants to trade Gershkovich. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov earlier this week again confirmed negotiations for an exchange have continued with the Biden administration.
“The intelligence services of the two countries, by agreement between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden back in June 2021, have been in contact to see if someone can be exchanged for someone else,” he said.
Gershkovich’s trial is being held in secret and Russian authorities have never presented any evidence publicly to support the charges against him. Russian prosecutors have charged him with gathering secrets on the “production and repair of military equipment” for the CIA, a claim his newspaper has denied as a “transparent lies,” saying Gershkovich was doing his job as a reporter.
“Evan’s wrongful detention has been an outrage since his unjust arrest 477 days ago, and it must end now,” the Journal said in a statement. “Even as Russia orchestrates its shameful sham trial, we continue to do everything we can to push for Evan’s immediate release and to state unequivocally: Evan was doing his job as a journalist, and journalism is not a crime. Bring him home now.”
Thursday’s hearing lasted for more than five hours, with a few short breaks, according to reporters sitting outside the courtroom. A local news outlet It’s My City reported that only one witness appeared in court Thursday, Vyacheslav Vegner, a lawmaker from Putin’s ruling United Russia party in Sverdlovsk’s regional parliament, who has previously said he gave an interview to Gershkovich before his arrest.
Vegner told the local website 66.ru that Gershkovich at the time had asked him about public support for Russia’s war in Ukraine, the activities of the Wagner mercenary group and how the Sverdlovsk region’s industrial enterprises were being repurposed.
Vegner on Thursday told Interfax that he had been questioned in court by the prosecution and defense for about a half-hour.
The Biden administration has said it is negotiating with Russia to try to free Gershkovich and another American, former Marine Paul Whelan, who has spent more than five years imprisoned by Russia on espionage charges the U.S. also says are fabricated. Russia freed Brittney Griner in exchange for the arms trafficker Viktor Bout, and another former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed was traded for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a pilot convicted in the U.S. on drug smuggling charges.
Another American journalist, Alsu Kurmasheva, a reporter for the U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, has also spent 9 months in detention in Russia on charges relating to her coverage of the war in Ukraine.
Roger Carstens, the U.S. State Department’s special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, this week said that both Gershkovich and Whelan would make it back to U.S. soil one day, but he couldn’t say when.
“The U.S. government is going to bring both of them home,” he said, speaking at the annual Aspen Security Forum. “And when we go into negotiation with the Russians, we are intent on something that brings both people home.”
ABC News’ Joe Simonetti and Mike Levine contributed to this report.
(LONDON) — A man wrapped in a red-and-white English flag raised his hand in a Nazi salute in the town center of Leicester, England, as a line of police officers looked on and a crowd of counterprotesters shouted out their collective disapproval.
“Off our streets, Nazi scum,” the counterprotesters chanted, according to a video of the incident posted on social media and verified by ABC News. The man saluting during the Aug. 3 rally appeared to hold his hand high throughout the duration of the 23-second clip.
Similarly racist, combative and at-times-violent scenes have played out on streets throughout the United Kingdom for more than a week. London’s Metropolitan Police has described the ongoing far-right rallies as a “national critical incident.”
“We will not tolerate this on our streets,” the Met said in a statement. “We will use every power, tactic and tool available to prevent further scenes of disorder.”
Dozens of additional rallies led by far-right groups were expected to be held Wednesday evening in London and elsewhere, the police said. Counterprotests were expected at many of them. Patrols were being increased in London in advance of the rallies, police said in a statement late Tuesday.
“We arrested more than 100 people in central London disorder last week and we will not hesitate to arrest hundreds more if they take to the streets intent on fueling violence,” the Met said.
The unrest follows the deaths of three girls, who were stabbed in a “ferocious” attack during a July 19 dance event in Southport, a seaside town, according to police.
A 17-year-old was arrested and charged with murder, police said. The suspect was from Banks, a coastal village in Lancashire, and was born in Cardiff, Wales, police said.
The Crown Court released the suspect’s name after a judge ruled it could be released despite his age. Although the suspect was born in the United Kingdom, online rumors spread calling into question his immigration status, police said.
“This recent activity is a clear lesson in how important it is to counter any misinformation posted online or on social media,” Shane O’Neill, Leicester Police’s chief superintendent, said in a statement.
Some of those who’ve attended the rallies have voiced concerns over immigration policies in the wake of a the stabbing deaths. Keir Starmer, the newly elected prime minister, described their actions as “far-right thuggery.”
“We will ensure those responsible will feel the full force of the law,” Downing Street said in a statement. “We will not tolerate attacks on mosques or our Muslim communities. The full force of the law will be visited on all those who are identified as having taken part in these activities.”
Starmer said Downing Street had called for “swift action” against violent protesters, and the Crown Prosecution Service already charged and brought several rioters into court.
One 37-year-old pleaded guilty Tuesday to violent disorder after he “hurled missiles at police officers … following widespread unrest in Hull,” prosecutors said in a press release. Another 18-year-old from Bolton was sentenced Tuesday to two months in jail after pleading guilty to damaging two police cruisers during the unrest, prosecutors said.
Several arrests were also made in Leicester, where two protests were held in the city center on Aug. 3, including one 35-year-old woman who was later charged with racially or religiously aggravated intentional harassment and assault for allegedly beating an emergency worker, the Leicester Police said in a statement.
Along with the hundreds who’ve been arrested at rallies, others were arrested for “online offenses,” Starmer’s office said Tuesday.
“If you provoke violent disorder on our streets or online, you will face the full force of the law,” Starmer said.
ABC News’ Camilla Alcini contributed to this report.
