Eleven Ecuadorean soldiers have been sentenced to 34 years in prison each after being found guilty of the forced disappearance of four boys last year.
The discovery of the beaten and burned remains of the four boys, aged between 11 and 15, shocked the violence-wracked nation.
The court found a military patrol had picked up the boys as they returned from playing football in the city of Guayaquil, forced them to strip off their clothes, beat them and left them naked in a desolate, dangerous and abandoned location.
One of the boys called his father but, by the time he arrived, they were no longer there. Their burned bodies were found days later close to a military base near Guayaquil.
In total, 17 soldiers were on trial over the disappearance of 15-year-old Nehemías Arboleda, 11-year-old Steven Medina, and brothers Ismael, 15, and Josué Arroyo, 14.
Eleven of the soldiers were sentenced to 34 years and eight months in prison and five were given reduced sentences of two and a half years for co-operating with the prosecution.
A lieutenant-colonel who had not been on patrol with the rest of the group was declared not guilty.
The soldiers had been sent on patrol as part of the government’s crackdown on criminal gangs in the country, which has seen its crime rate skyrocket as the gangs’ power has expanded.
Defence officials had originally said that the four children, who became known as The Malvinas Four after the neighbourhood the were from, had been stopped by the patrol because they were suspects in a robbery.
But the judge ruled that they had been “innocent victims of a state crime” and ordered that their families be issued with an official apology and that the four victims be commemorated with a plaque.
He also ordered that military personnel undergo human rights training.
The judge said that evidence provided by the five soldiers who had co-operated with the prosecution had revealed the cruelty with which the 16 soldiers on patrol had acted.
He said that they had deliberately taken the four boys to a desolate area, where they subjected them to racist insults, beatings and even a simulated execution.
Defence lawyers had argued that because the boys were alive when the soldiers left, the accused were not responsible for their death.
But the judge concluded that leaving them in such a dangerous and desolate location “was the cause of the victims’ death”. It is not known who burned the bodies.
MSF said it would be “a disaster for Palestinians” if international NGOs are forced to stop operations in Gaza
The UN and other aid agencies fear new Israeli registration rules for dozens of international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) risk the collapse of the humanitarian response in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
INGOs not registered by 31 December face closure of their operations in Israel within 60 days, which the agencies say could severely disrupt healthcare and other life-saving services in Gaza.
Save the Children said its application had not been approved and it was “pursuing all available avenues to have this decision reconsidered”.
Israel’s ministry of diaspora affairs and combating antisemitism said the departure of “rogue organisations” would not affect the delivery of aid.
Fourteen out of the approximately 100 applications have so far been rejected, 21 have been approved, and those remaining are still undergoing review, according to the ministry.
“The system relies on vague, arbitrary, and highly politicised criteria and imposes requirements that humanitarian organisations cannot meet without violating international legal obligations or compromising core humanitarian principles,” it said.
It added: “While some INGOs have been registered under the new system, these INGOs represent only a fraction of the response in Gaza and are nowhere near the number required just to meet immediate and basic needs.”
According to the Humanitarian Country Team, INGOs currently run or support the majority of Gaza’s field hospitals and primary healthcare centres, emergency shelter responses, water and sanitation services, nutrition stabilisation centres for children with acute malnutrition, and critical mine action activities.
If they were forced to stop operations, it said, one in three health facilities in Gaza would close.
“Pressing ahead with this policy will have far-reaching consequences on the future of the OPT, in addition to threatening a fragile ceasefire and putting Palestinian lives at imminent risk, particularly during winter,” the Humanitarian Country Team warned.
“The UN will not be able to compensate for the collapse of INGOs’ operations if they are de-registered, and the humanitarian response cannot be replaced by alternative actors operating outside established humanitarian principles.”
It also stressed that Israel had an obligation under international humanitarian law to ensure that Gaza’s population was adequately supplied.
Reuters
An Israeli official said international NGOs, which support many hospitals in Gaza, had been given “more than sufficient time” to obtain registration
Save the Children – which has supported families in Gaza with clean water and cash assistance, as well as healthcare clinics and mother and baby areas – confirmed on Monday that it was informed several weeks ago that its registration application had not been approved.
“We are pursuing all available avenues to have this decision reconsidered, including filing a petition with the Israeli courts,” a spokesperson told the BBC.
“While we call for this decision to be reconsidered, we remain committed to delivering vital and life-saving support to children and families in the Occupied Palestinian Territory through our team of over 300 dedicated Palestinian staff together with trusted partners.”
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) – which supports six public hospitals and runs two field hospitals in Gaza, and has treated hundreds of thousands of patients over the past year – meanwhile said it was among the INGOs still waiting to obtain registration.
“With Gaza’s health system already destroyed, independent and experienced humanitarian organisations losing access to respond would be a disaster for Palestinians,” a statement said.
“MSF calls on the Israeli authorities to ensure that INGOs can maintain and continue their impartial and independent response in Gaza. The already restricted humanitarian response cannot be further dismantled.”
A spokesman for the Israeli diaspora affairs ministry told the BBC that it had already extended the registration deadline from 9 September to 31 December “as an extraordinary measure and well beyond what was required”.
“There has been more than sufficient time to act, and any organisation that has failed to do so by now has demonstrated a clear lack of good faith,” he said.
He also stressed that the process had been carried out by a team that included all relevant Israeli security and government bodies, and that “claims of a sweeping or mass rejection are false and misleading”.
He added: “Humanitarian aid will continue uninterrupted. The departure of rogue organisations whose real objective is to undermine the State of Israel under a humanitarian guise will not affect the ongoing delivery of aid.”
Donald Trump appointed on Sunday a new special envoy to Greenland, the vast Arctic island he has said he would like to annex, sparking a fresh diplomatic row with Denmark.
Jeff Landry, the newly appointed envoy and Republican governor of Louisiana, has said on X that it was an honour to serve in a “volunteer position to make Greenland a part of the US”.
Greenland’s prime minister said the island must “decide our own future” and its “territorial integrity must be respected”.
The dispute over his appointment comes as strategic competition in the Arctic grows, with melting ice opening new shipping routes and increasing access to valuable mineral resources.
