Diego Fernando Soto Bohórquez, alias Ojo Picho, 25, was sentenced to 42 years and 2 months in prison, when he was found guilty of crimes of aggravated femicide in competition with the manufacture, trafficking and illegal possession of firearms for personal use for events that occurred in September 2020 in a neighborhood of IbagueTolima.
Soto Bohórquez, who had a romantic relationship with the 15-year-old teenager, fired his firearm at the woman in the middle of an act of intolerance, because it bothered him or he did not like the way he was dressed on his birthday.
Diego Fernando Soto Bohórquez the day of his capture in Villavicencio.
It all happened in her fifteen-year-old, where he shot her in the face. He was jealous of her, mistreated her and forbade her to wear tight, short and low-cut clothes.
“Everything happened in her fifteen-year-old, where he shot her in the face. He was jealous of her, mistreated her and forbade her to wear tight, short and low-cut clothes,” added a witness.
The events took place in a house in the Nueva Castilla neighborhood, an area of strata 1 and 2 of commune 8 of Ibagué, where the adolescent arrived in the company of a brother to celebrate her birthday with her boyfriend.
After the attack, the man sentenced today sent the victim with other people to a nearby health center, where he died minutes later, while he fled the city to evade the police siege.
Finally, Soto Bohórquez was arrested in December of the same year in Villavicencio by members of the Technical Investigation Corps (CTI) of the Tolima Branch supported by the Sijín of the Ibagué Metropolitan Police.
Given the strength of the evidence provided by a prosecutor from the Life Unit of the Tolima Sectional, the convicted person decided to accept an early sentence.
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Hundreds of Australians of Ukrainian descent joined those with Russian heritage to demonstrate against the Russian invasion of Ukraine in downtown Sydney on Friday.
It was an act of solidarity many thousands of kilometers away from the conflict in Ukraine.
Protesters held signs urging Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop the killing.
The Australian government has joined the international condemnation of the Russian attack.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison also condemned China for undermining Western sanctions against Russia.
In early February, China’s president, Xi Jinping, and Putin agreed to boost trade ties.
Australia insists the agreement was aimed at undermining the United States’ network of global alliances and any sanctions that it would impose on Russia.
Morrison urged China to act responsibly.
“You don’t go and throw a lifeline to Russia in the middle of a period when they are invading another country,” he said. “That is simply unacceptable from the reports that we have seen, and I would urge all nations to say this is not a time to be easing trade restrictions with Russia. We should all be doing the exact opposite.”
A Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson suggested Thursday the attack should not be called an “invasion” because Russia was only targeting Ukrainian military bases.
Morrison had previously described Russian invaders as “thugs” and “bullies.”
Australian Defense Minister Peter Dutton has said that China’s President Xi might be one of the few global leaders who could persuade his Russian counterpart to halt the invasion.
The Australian government will send medical supplies, financial support and military equipment, but not weapons, to Ukraine to help its fight against Russia.
The Russian embassy in the Australian capital, Canberra, has said sanctions imposed by Australia were “xenophobic.”
U.S. lawmakers condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine early Thursday, calling on the Biden administration to act swiftly to address the first full-scale war in Europe in more than 70 years.
“History will prove Vladimir Putin’s decision to sacrifice the lives of countless Ukrainians and Russians was made out of fear — fear of allowing a neighboring independent, sovereign nation to pursue democracy and freedom,” said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez in a statement early Thursday.
“This unprovoked attack has brought into sharp focus the need to expel the current Kremlin leadership from the international community. Today must mark a historical shift in how the world views and deals with the despot in Moscow,” he continued.
Flame and smoke rise from the debris of a private house in the aftermath of Russian shelling outside Kyiv, Ukraine, Feb. 24, 2022.
In a speech late Wednesday, Putin rationalized the unprovoked attack on the independent eastern European nation claiming, without evidence. that a genocide was occurring in Ukraine and calling for the “de-Nazification” of the country, which is led by an elected Jewish president.
The top-ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Jim Risch, said the Russian bombardment of cities in Ukraine was “a premeditated and flagrant act of war. Despite committed efforts to find a diplomatic solution, Putin has violated the border of a sovereign country.”
Earlier this year, both Menendez and Risch introduced legislation sanctioning Russia for a possible invasion of Ukraine.
FILE – This satellite images provided by Maxar Technologies shows troops gathered at a training ground in Pogonovo, Russia, on Jan. 26, 2022.
As Putin massed troops at the Ukraine border in recent weeks, U.S. lawmakers struggled to reach an agreement on sanctions legislation. Republicans favored triggering sanctions earlier to deter Putin while Democrats favored the Biden administration approach of working in concert with European allies to negotiate a diplomatic solution.
Now that a full-scale Russian invasion has begun, there are several options at the disposal of lawmakers, including $750 million in aid for Ukraine in the 2022 omnibus spending bill and as much as $1 billion in humanitarian aid.
The U.S. Congress is on recess this week and not set to return to Washington until Monday. But lawmakers will receive an unclassified phone briefing from administration officials later on Thursday.
Congressional Republicans have criticized the Biden administration for not acting forcefully enough to deter Putin from the invasion and warned about the consequences of the United States appearing weak on the international stage.
FILE – Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, center, speaks on the close of the war in Afghanistan, at the Capitol in Washington, Aug. 31, 2021.
However House Foreign Affairs Committee Lead Republican Michael McCaul, House Armed Services Committee Lead Republican Mike Rogers and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Lead Republican Mike Turner issued a statement putting the blame for the violence in Ukraine squarely on the Russian president.
“Every drop of Ukrainian and Russian blood spilled in this conflict is on Putin’s hands, and his alone,” they wrote. “In response, we are committed to enacting the strongest possible sanctions and export controls to cripple Russia’s ability to make war, punish its barbarity and relegate the Putin regime to the status of an international pariah. We cannot respond like we did in 2008 or 2014.”
Lawmakers called on Biden to impose the toughest possible sanctions on Putin ahead of an expected speech to the nation at midday U.S. time. Republican Senator Rob Portman, the co-chair of the Ukraine Caucus, said in a statement, “We can and we must cripple Russia’s military by starving it of financing. Next, we must impose export and import controls, especially of vital electronic goods like semiconductors. Doing so could restrict the tools Russia needs to manufacture and resupply its military.”
FILE – Ukrainian service members unpack Javelin anti-tank missiles, delivered by plane as part of the US military support package for Ukraine, at the Boryspil International Airport outside Kyiv, Ukraine, Feb. 10, 2022.
Portman also called for increased military support to Ukraine and other U.S. allies in the region, including supplying anti-tank, anti-ship and anti-aircraft weaponry.
While some wings of both the Republican and Democratic parties have expressed concern about the U.S. being drawn into a ground conflict in Ukraine, Biden has repeatedly stated the U.S. will not commit its own troops to the conflict.
U.S. lawmakers stepped up calls Tuesday for sanctions against Russia, urging the Biden administration to act swiftly to penalize Russian President Vladimir Putin for recognizing the occupied regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine as independent states.
Despite significant bipartisan unity for deterring Russian aggression in Ukraine, Democrats and Republicans have struggled to agree on how to sequence sanctions to discourage and penalize Putin for incursions into the independent eastern European nation.
But Putin’s televised national speech Monday characterizing Ukraine as historically part of Russia and “never a true nation” drew swift condemnation from top U.S. lawmakers.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, chairs a Security Council meeting in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Feb. 21, 2022.
“Vladimir Putin’s illegal recognition of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics is an act of unprovoked aggression and a brazen violation of international law,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez said in a statement.
“This illegal recognition is an attack on Ukraine’s sovereignty. To be clear, if any additional Russian troops or proxy forces cross into Donbas, the Biden administration and our European allies must not hesitate in imposing crushing sanctions,” Menendez continued.
An estimated 150,000 Russian troops have massed at the border with Ukraine in recent weeks. Putin’s claim that the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk are no longer a part of Ukraine opens the door for so-called Russian “peacekeeping” troops to go into those areas. The U.S. and its allies say this mission is a false flag operation to allow further incursion into Ukraine.
Many Republicans have criticized the White House’s approach to the crisis, calling the Russian leader’s move an invasion and accusing the Biden administration of waiting until it is too late to deter Putin.
“Setting the trigger for meaningful sanctions to Russian tanks rolling across Ukraine’s border was a dangerous mistake,” Rep. Mike McCaul and Mike Rogers, the ranking Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs and House Armed Services Committees, said in a statement Monday. “Secretary Blinken committed to a “swift and firm response’ by the United States and its allies if Putin recognized Russian-backed separatist Republics in Donbas. Now that the Kremlin has done so, we must immediately impose real costs for this blatant act of aggression.”
Donetsk and Luhansk regions
The United States has already announced an executive order prohibiting new American investment and trade in those regions. The White House said additional “swift and severe” actions would follow Tuesday.
But some Republicans said these actions had come too late to be effective.
“Biden-Harris officials are to an enormous extent directly responsible for this crisis. He and his administration instead settled for an endlessly deferred and wholly uncredible strategy of responding to Putin’s aggression after an invasion. They have pursued bizarre tactics like declassifying American intelligence and trying to shame Putin. That approach has failed,” Republican Senator Ted Cruz said Monday.
Congressional Democrats praised Biden for preparing for this moment and said it marked a turning point in triggering sanctions on the Kremlin.
“The time for taking action to impose significant costs on President Putin and the Kremlin starts now,” Senator Chris Coons, a top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement Monday.
“President Biden has ably led months of preparation for this moment with our allies in NATO and Europe, and I’m encouraged by clear condemnations of Putin’s actions as well as statements of unity from our partners and allies. We must swiftly join our NATO allies and partners in the European Union to impose forceful new sanctions on Russia,” Coons continued.
Both Menendez and Risch have introduced sanctions legislation in the U.S. Senate that would end Russian access to international banking transactions, provide hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine as well as cutting off funding for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
Both the Senate and the House of Representatives are in recess this week and not set to be back in session until the end of the month.
