Alberta chief demands action after death of Indigenous man in police custody

GREAT FALLS, Mont. (AP) — An 81-year-old Montana man was sentenced Monday to six months in federal prison for illegally using tissue and testicles from large sheep hunted in Central Asia and the U.S. to create hybrid sheep for captive trophy hunting in Texas and Minnesota.

U.S. District Court Judge Brian Morris said he struggled to come up with a sentence for Arthur “Jack” Schubarth of Vaughn, Montana. He said he weighed Schubarth’s age and lack of a criminal record with a sentence that would deter anyone else from trying to “change the genetic makeup of the creatures” on the earth.

Morris also fined Schubarth $20,000 and ordered him to make a $4,000 payment to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Schubarth will be allowed to self-report to a Bureau of Prisons medical facility.

“I will have to work the rest of my life to repair everything I’ve done,” Schubarth told the judge just before sentencing.

Schubarth’s attorney, Jason Holden, said cloning the giant Marco Polo sheep hunted in Kyrgyzstan in 2013 has ruined his client’s “life, reputation and family.”

“I think this has broken him,” Holden said.

Holden, in seeking a probationary sentence, argued that Schubarth was a hard-working man who has always cared for animals and did something that no one else could have done in cloning the giant sheep, which he named Montana Mountain King or MMK.

The animal has been confiscated by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services and is being held in an accredited facility until it can be transferred to a zoo, said Richard Bare, a special agent with the wildlife service.

Sarah Brown, an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, had asked that Schubarth be sentenced to prison, saying his illegal breeding operation was widespread, involved other states and endangered the health of other wildlife. The crime involved forethought, was complex and involved many illegal acts, she said.

Schubarth owns Sun River Enterprises LLC, a 215-acre (87-hectare) alternative livestock ranch, which buys, sells and breeds “alternative livestock” such as mountain sheep, mountain goats and ungulates, primarily for private hunting preserves, where people shoot captive trophy game animals for a fee, prosecutors said. He had been in the game farm business since 1987, Schubarth said.

Schubarth pleaded guilty in March to charges that he and five other people conspired to use tissue from a Marco Polo sheep illegally brought into the U.S. to clone that animal and then use the clone and its descendants to create a larger, hybrid species of sheep that would be more valuable for captive hunting operations.

Marco Polo sheep are the largest in the world, can weigh 300 pounds (136 kilograms) and have curled horns up to 5 feet (1.5 meters) long, court records said.

Schubarth sold semen from MMK along with hybrid sheep to three people in Texas, while a Minnesota resident brought 74 sheep to Schubarth’s ranch for them to be inseminated at various times during the conspiracy, court records said. Schubarth sold one direct offspring from MMK for $10,000 and other sheep with lesser MMK genetics for smaller amounts.

The total value of the animals involved was greater than $250,000 but less than $550,000, prosecutors said. Hybrid sheep were also sold to people in Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota and West Virginia, prosecutors said.

In October 2019, court records said, Schubarth paid a hunting guide $400 for the testicles of a trophy-sized Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep that had been harvested in Montana and then extracted and sold the semen, court records said.

Sheep breeds that are not allowed in Montana were brought into the state as part of the conspiracy, including 43 sheep from Texas, prosecutors said.

“You were so focused on getting around those rules you got off track,” Morris said.

Holden sought reduced restitution, saying Schubarth fed and cared for the hybrid sheep on his ranch until they could be slaughtered and the meat donated to a food bank. The remaining hybrid sheep with Marco Polo DNA on his ranch must be sent to slaughter by the end of the year with the meat also being donated, Morris said. Morris gave Schubarth until December 2025 to sell his Rocky Mountain bighorn hybrid sheep.

Schubarth will not be allowed to breed game stock during the three years he is on probation, Morris said.

The five co-conspirators were not named in court records, but Schubarth’s plea agreement requires him to cooperate fully with prosecutors and testify if called to do so. The case is still being investigated, Montana wildlife officials said.

Schubarth, in a letter attached to the sentencing memo, said he becomes extremely passionate about any project he takes on, including his “sheep project,” and is ashamed of his actions.

“I got my normal mindset clouded by my enthusiasm and looked for any grey area in the law to make the best sheep I could for this sheep industry,” he wrote. “My family has never been broke, but we are now.”

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams launched a legal attack on the federal corruption case against him Monday, with his attorney asking a judge to toss out bribery charges and then holding a combative news conference accusing prosecutors of ethical lapses.

Adams, a Democrat, pleaded not guilty Friday to charges that he accepted lavish travel benefits and illegal campaign contributions from a Turkish official and other foreign nationals, and in return performed favors including pushing through the opening of a Turkish consulate building.

The mayor’s attorneys said in a motion filed early Monday that the cheap flights to overseas destinations, seat upgrades, free meals and free hotel rooms he got were not bribes, as that crime has been defined by federal law.

“Congressmen get upgrades, they get corner suites, they get better tables at restaurants, they get free appetizers, they have their iced tea filled up,” his attorney, Alex Spiro, said at a subsequent news conference. “Courtesies to politicians are not federal crimes.”

While not disputing that Adams accepted flight upgrades and deeply-discounted or free travel, Spiro said his client had never promised to take action on behalf of the Turkish government in exchange for the perks, which prosecutors say were worth more than $100,000.

“There was no quid pro quo. There was no this for that,” Spiro said.

The mayor has vowed to continue serving while fighting the charges, which he has suggested — without providing evidence — are politically motivated.

On top of the case against Adams, federal prosecutors are believed to be leading separate ongoing investigations into several top city officials with deep ties to the mayor. The drumbeat of searches and subpoenas in recent weeks has prompted the resignation of the city’s police commissioner and schools chancellor, along with some calls for the mayor to resign.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, a fellow Democrat who has the power to remove Adams from office, told reporters Monday that she had spoken to the mayor about “what my expectations are” but also indicated she wasn’t ready to give up on his administration.

“I am giving the mayor an opportunity now to demonstrate to New Yorkers — and to me — that we are righting the ship, that we have the opportunity to instill the confidence that I think is wavering right now and to power forward with an effective government,” she said.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, whose office brought the case, has said that politics played no role. At a news conference on an unrelated topic Monday, Williams declined to comment on Spiro’s remarks, saying prosecutors would speak through its court filings going forward.

Prosecutors say Adams accepted at least seven free and steeply discounted flights, along with luxury hotel stays, high-end meals, entertainment and illegal foreign donations, from a Turkish official and others seeking to buy his influence.

In September 2021, the official sought to cash in on the favors by asking Adams to expedite the opening of the 36-story Manhattan consulate building, which fire safety inspectors said was not safe to occupy, ahead of an important state visit by the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, according to the indictment.

Adams then sent a series of text messages to the fire commissioner pushing for him to open the building — something that Spiro also did not dispute.

At the time, Adams was still serving as Brooklyn borough president, a largely ceremonial position, but had already won the mayoral primary and was widely expected to become mayor.

Prosecutors said Adams did not disclose most of the free or heavily discounted trips he took while borough president, as required by city conflict-of-interest laws.

At the news conference, Spiro initially said Adams was not legally obligated to disclose any of the trips or upgrades, but later acknowledged — after reporters noted city rules that required some types of gifts and travel perks to be reported — that he was not an expert in the city’s conflict-of-interest law.

Defense attorneys claim the additional charges against Adams — that he solicited and accepted foreign donations and manipulated the city’s matching funds program — would soon be revealed as “equally meritless.”

They said a former Adams staffer had lied to prosecutors to make it seem like the mayor had firsthand knowledge of the illegal donations.

“Eventually New Yorkers, being New Yorkers, are going to wise up to all this,” Spiro said.

Adams is due back in court Wednesday for a conference.

Ottawa must do more to help Canadian citizens leave Lebanon, says the son of a Canadian couple killed last week when an Israeli bomb hit their car in the country’s south.

Speaking from Bahrain in a phone interview, Kamal Tabaja said he’s having trouble sleeping knowing that more family members, including his Canadian brother, are struggling to find a safe route out of the country.

“With the Canadians remaining there, they should start evacuating, sending their own planes or boats,” Tabaja said.

The federal government has been working on plans for a possible military evacuation for months, but for now, Global Affairs Canada is urging people to leave on their own while there are still options to do so.

Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly has said some 45,000 Canadians could be in the country, though only about half that number have registered with the embassy in Beirut.

On Friday, the department began booking blocks of seats on commercial flights headed from Beirut to other countries. Canadian passengers are responsible for finding their way back to Canada from those locations.

It will be about two weeks before Tabaja’s brother, who lives in Beirut, can catch a flight, he said.

“You just need to try and hold strong,” Tabaja said he tells his brother. “You have to keep fighting. You have to survive until this is over.”

The Lebanese health ministry estimates that Israeli strikes have killed more than a thousand people over the past couple of weeks in a major escalation of hostilities between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group, which have been exchanging fire since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war last October.

With both Israel and Hezbollah vowing to continue their fight, other Western countries have started to ramp up exit plans for their citizens amid fears of an even broader regional conflict.

Some European countries began pulling diplomats and citizens out of Lebanon on Monday, with Germany using a military plane.

Tabaja said Ottawa should be doing much more — not just to evacuate citizens, but to condemn the ongoing violence and help prevent more civilians from getting hurt.

Global Affairs Canada did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Joly has said an immediate ceasefire is needed and “there must be no war” in Lebanon.

She said on social media last week that she spoke to Tabaja and his brother after the deaths of their parents, 75-year-old father Hussein Tabaja and 70-year-old mother Daad Tabaja.

“I condemn the killing of these two innocent people who were fleeing violence in an (Israel Defense Forces) strike,” Joly wrote. “We refuse to let civilians bear the cost of this conflict.”

Kamal Tabaja said he called his parents last Monday and encouraged them to flee their southern Lebanon village in the Nabatieh District.

“I said, ‘This is not normal, I think it’s time to leave,'” Tabaja recalled. “Everybody was stuck in traffic for about six to seven hours … it was like a bottleneck. Everybody was stuck there.”

He said he and his brother began to worry when, after last speaking with them sometime in the evening, midnight came with no update from their parents. They started contacting local hospitals and putting out calls for help on social media, he said.

That’s how they learned of an incinerated vehicle in the vicinity of Israeli bombings.

It fit the description of their parents’ vehicle. The licence plate was a match. His mother’s watch was found in the wreckage.

Tabaja said the bodies of his parents were officially identified at a hospital on Saturday through DNA testing, and they were buried later that day. No one could attend the burial because most of their family members in Lebanon were displaced because of the conflict, he said. That included his brother.

“I said, ‘I don’t want you to go. I don’t want to bury more people,'” he said.

The family immigrated to Canada in the late ’80s to flee the Lebanese civil war, he said. They were initially denied permanent residency and returned to Lebanon for a time, but came back later as refugees and were able to obtain citizenship.

They lived in Ottawa, he said. Eventually, they moved back to Lebanon to help his ailing maternal grandparents, he said, but they would frequently come back to visit.

Tabaja said he’s in “complete denial” about the death of his parents, and he wants them to be remembered as “loving and giving people.” They loved the outdoors, he said, and spending time with their family.

“I have a lot of memories of my father and my mother in parks, rivers, lakes, both in Lebanon and Canada,” he said. “I cherish all these images in my mind. They were happy people.”

For Tabaja, an end to the violence can’t come soon enough. He said he’s received an outpouring of support from around the world following the death of his parents.

“People loved them,” he said. “Everywhere they went, they left a mark.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 30, 2024.

— With files from The Associated Press.