Tag Archives: Accusations

Leader of Mexico-based church accused of rape, child porn

A man cleans a stained glass inside a La Luz del Mundo (The Light of the World) church after its leader Naason Joaquin Garcia was arrested in California, in Mexico City, Mexico June 5, 2019. REUTERS/Luis Cortes

By Rich McKay

(Reuters) – The head of a Mexican-based church estimated to have more than 1 million followers worldwide has been arrested in California and charged with crimes including human trafficking, child pornography production and rape of a minor.

“La Luz Del Mundo” (Light of the World) leader Naason Joaquin Garcia, 50, was charged on Tuesday after being arrested at Los Angeles International Airport the day before, prosecutors said.

The church called the accusations unfounded.

“The Apostle of Jesus Christ, Brother Naason Joaquin Garcia, has always behaved in accordance with the law and with full respect for the institutions and the dignity of the people,” it said in a statement on its website on Wednesday.

The prosecutors’ 19-page court filing indicates Garcia was known as “the Apostle” and children were told they were defying God if they were disobedient.

The complaint says three minors and one adult woman were abused, with one child and the woman raped. Others were forced to perform sex acts and “flirty” dances for Garcia wearing “as little clothing as possible”, the complaint added.

“Crimes like those alleged in this complaint have no place in our society. Period,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement Tuesday. “We must not turn a blind eye to sexual violence and trafficking in our state.”

CHURCH DENIES ACCUSATIONS

The filing did not refer to any response by Garcia.

But his church said it trusts the U.S. legal system and the principle of innocence unless proven otherwise, adding: “We categorically reject the false accusations that have been made against him.”

In their statement late on Tuesday, prosecutors said Garcia and co-defendants committed a total of 26 felonies in south California over a period of about four years.

The victims were not named.

He is being held in jail on $25 million bond on 14 charges related to sex crimes, the prosecutors said.

It was unclear if he had an attorney.

The other individuals named in the complaint are Alondra Ocampo, Azalea Rangel Melendez, and Susana Medina Oaxaca, all affiliated with La Luz Del Mundo, prosecutors said.

Ocampo and Oaxaca were also arrested and held on multi-million dollar bonds. A warrant has been issued for Melendez, officials said.

Internet sites say the church has between 1 and 5 million followers worldwide in more than 50 countries including many followers in the United States.

The church’s roots go back to the 1920s in Mexico and adheres to “nontrinitarianism”, rejecting a mainstream Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity. It says it adheres to the earliest doctrines of the Christian church teachings.

(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta, additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)

North Korea demands handover of suspects in assassination plot: Xinhua

FILE PHOTO: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves to people attending a military parade marking the 105th birth anniversary of country's founding father, Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, April 15, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj/File Photo

SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea demanded on Thursday the handover of “terror suspects” who plotted to kill leader Kim Jong Un with a biochemical substance, repeating accusations it made last week that U.S. and South Korean spies were behind the plan.

The North’s KCNA news agency last week accused the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and South Korea’s National Intelligence Service of a plot to assassinate its “supreme leadership” with a biochemical weapon.

Tension on the Korean peninsula has been high for weeks, driven by concern that North Korea might conduct its sixth nuclear test or test-launch another ballistic missile in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

“The Central Prosecutor’s Office will ask for the handover of those criminals and prosecute them under the relevant laws,” North Korean vice foreign minister Han Song Ryol told foreign diplomats and reporters in Pyongyang, China’s Xinhua news agency reported.

The CIA and the U.S. White House declined to comment on the statement from the North’s Ministry of State Security last week.

The South Korean intelligence service said the charge was “groundless”.

Han “declared the principled stand of the … government to find out all of the terrorist maniacs and mercilessly wipe them out”, the North’s KCNA news agency said in a report on the briefing.

There was no elaboration in either the Xinhua report or the KCNA report on how many suspects North Korea was seeking, or of who or where they were, but Xinhua said North Korea had vowed to “hunt down to the last one of the suspects in every corner of the earth”.

Separately, the CIA said on Wednesday it had established a Korea Mission Center to “harness the full resources, capabilities and authorities of the Agency in addressing the nuclear and ballistic missile threat posed by North Korea”.

The center would gather experienced officers from across the CIA in one entity “to bring their expertise and creativity to bear against the North Korea target”, it said.

(This version of the story adds dropped word “no” in paragraph eight.)

(Reporting by Jack Kim; Editing by Robert Birsel)