Couple jailed for fleeing with kids to face judge

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — The Florida parents charged with kidnapping their boys from their grandparents and sailing to Cuba on a boat called "Salty" to elude authorities were expected to face a judge Thursday for the first time since they were forcibly returned from the island nation.

Joshua and Sharyn Hakken face charges including kidnapping, child neglect, false imprisonment, burglary and interference with custody.

Four-year-old Cole and 2-year-old Chase are now with their grandparents, who planned to talk about the ordeal publicly Thursday morning.

The couple arrived with their sons in Florida early Wednesday morning, accompanied by federal, state and local authorities after being handed over by Cuban officials.

The couple seemed to have a charmed life, doting on their two young boys, buying a comfortable home and building successful careers as engineers. It all derailed last year when police in Louisiana found the family inside a hotel room with drugs, weapons and promises from the parents to take "a journey to the Armageddon." The parents lost custody of their sons who were cared for by their grandparents.

Friends of the couple said the family seemed happy and had no marital problems.

"This is a train that went completely off the tracks, and I don't have any explanation for how it can go off the track that badly basically in a year and a half. It's very bizarre," said Darrell Hanecki, who employed Sharyn Hakken for nearly a decade at Hanecki Consulting Engineers.

Hanecki said she was an easygoing and relaxed employee who worked from the home they owned in sunny Tampa, Fla., so she could spend more time with the kids. She brought the boys into the office a few times to show them off to her colleagues.

"The kids were really well-behaved. From everything I could tell, she was a great mom. Her kids were definitely her priority," Hanecki said.

He said Sharyn Hakken was pragmatic and responsible, graduating from the University of South Florida in 2008. She occasionally gave advice to Hanecki's daughter, an aspiring engineer, and encouraged her to stay in school and finish her degree.

She resigned in 2011, saying it was too difficult to juggle work with caring for an infant and toddler.

Sharyn Hakken's husband, Joshua, also seemed to show few signs of trouble. He attended the U.S. Air Force Academy from 1996 to 1998 but did not graduate, according to academy spokesman Sgt. Vann Miller, who declined to provide further details.

Joshua Hakken also worked as an engineer, employed at one point by Hahn Engineering, Inc. A woman who answered the company's phone Wednesday declined comment. Last year, the couple started their own company, listing Sharyn as president and Joshua as vice president, but it's unclear what type of business it was.

Then, last year, police in Louisiana came upon a disturbing scene in a hotel room: The Hakkens were inside with drugs and weapons, talking about "completing their ultimate journey" and saying they were traveling across the country to "take a journey to the Armageddon," Daniel Seuzeneau, a spokesman for Slidell Police, said in a news release. Their two children were in the room at the time.

After that arrest, the Hakkens lost custody of the boys, who were initially sent to a foster home. Authorities say Joshua Hakken tried and failed to kidnap them at gunpoint from the home.

Last week, the boys' maternal grandparents were granted custody. That's when police say Joshua Hakken broke into the home, tied up his mother-in-law, took the children and eventually set sail for Cuba. Federal, state and local authorities searched by air and sea for the sailboat Joshua Hakken had recently purchased. They were found in Cuba, thanks to a crucial tip from the person who sold the boat to Hakken.

The couple may have believed they could find refuge there, but experts said Cuba had little to gain politically by holding them. The communist island shares no extradition agreement with the U.S., and relations between the two have been icy for decades. But Cuban officials said Tuesday they would hand over the family.

The blinds at the Hakken household were drawn tight Wednesday. An "infowars.com" bumper sticker was pasted on their mailbox, a reference to conservative radio personality Alex Jones' Web site.

A white SUV was in the driveway where neighbors said they usually saw a small boat parked. The boat was such a common presence that it was noticeable when it disappeared last week, said neighbor Simon Castillo.

"I'm just surprised the little thing made it all the way to Cuba," Castillo said.

Other neighbors said they rarely saw the Hakkens in the neighborhood, which some described as not being particularly social.

Lindsay Fleming, who lives two doors down from the Hakkens, recalled last speaking to the Hakkens about a year ago outside their homes during an annual air show put on by nearby MacDill Air Force Base.

Fleming said Sharyn Hakken offered him marijuana in front of her kids.

"They were smoking pot and they offered me some, at least his wife did," Fleming said. "(Joshua) was like, 'Don't do that!'"

The Hakkens were jailed Wednesday at the Hillsborough County Jail on charges of kidnapping, child neglect, and interference with custody, according to the jail's website. Joshua Hakken also was charged with false imprisonment. His bond was set at $154,000. No bond information was listed for Sharyn Hakken.

The public defender's office declined to comment. The couple will not face federal charges, said David Couvertier, a spokesman for the FBI in Tampa.

The children were "happy and sleepy" on a flight back to the U.S., sheriff's spokeswoman Debbie Carter said in an email. They and the family dog, Nati, are with their grandparents until child welfare officials can again review the case in light of the abduction.

Their grandfather, Bob Hauser, said at a news conference late Tuesday that he had spoken with the boys before they left Cuba. He and his wife asked the media to leave them alone for 24 hours so they could spend time with their grandchildren.

Nancy Weining, who said she is an acquaintance of the Hausers, called them a "wonderful family." She said the Hausers had lost touch with their daughter and son-in-law after the Hakkens lost custody of their boys.

"I knew they had left them with them and nobody knew where they were," Weining said. "Everybody was looking for them, trying to figure out where they were."

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Kennedy reported from Miami. Associated Press writers Kevin McGill in New Orleans; Paul Haven and Peter Orsi in Havana; and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

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Suzette Laboy on Twitter: http://twitter.com/SuzetteLaboy

Kelli Kennedy on Twitter: http://twitter.com/kkennedyAP

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Thai man jailed for lese-majeste over Australian news footage

BANGKOK (Reuters) - A Thai court jailed a man for three years and four months on Thursday for selling video CDs showing sections of an Australian news series that contained content deemed offensive to Thailand's royal family.

Akachai Hongkawan, 37, was also fined 66,666 baht ($2,300) under Thailand's strict lese-majeste law after he was found guilty of distributing the segments from a 2010 Australian Broadcasting Corporation series, translated into Thai, that discussed the future of the monarchy.

"The defendant assembled and distributed the video CDs himself after downloading the documentary from the Internet and was fully aware of his actions," a judge at a Bangkok criminal court said in passing sentence.

Thailand's 85-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej is seen as semi-divine by many Thais but he told an audience in 2005 that he should not be above criticism.

Video CDs, or VCDs, predate DVDs and are still commonly used in Thailand.

Earlier this month, a state-owned television station was criticized by the army chief, a government minister and members of the public for airing a rare debate on the lese-majeste law.

In a case that was widely denounced by rights groups, a former magazine editor was jailed for 10 years in January after he was found guilty of publishing articles defaming King Bhumibol in 2010.

Critics say the lese-majese law is used as a political tool to discredit and silence opponents. Those found guilty of insulting the royal family can serve up to 15 years in jail for each offence. ($1 = 29 baht)

(Reporting by Aukkarapon Niyomyat; Writing by Amy Sawitta Lefevre; Editing by Alan Raybould and Nick Macfie)

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Reputed Australian Mossad agent jailed after botched spy plan: papers

CANBERRA (Reuters) - An Australian emigrant and reputed Israeli spy who died in a jail in Israel in 2010 had been arrested after a bungled and unauthorized bid to recruit a double agent with links to Lebanon's Hezbollah, Australian newspapers reported on Monday.

The man, Ben Zygier, was arrested in early 2010 and was held in secret under the name of Prisoner X on unspecified security charges. A judicial inquiry in Israel found Zygier, 34, hanged himself in a high-security jail cell.

Israel has refused to disclose details of the case, even refusing a request for information from Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and the case has been the subject of gag orders in Israel.

But Australia's Fairfax newspapers and Germany's Der Spiegel magazine said after a joint investigation that Zygier had unwittingly given away secret information about Lebanese informants, who were later arrested and jailed in Lebanon.

"Zygier wanted to achieve something that he didn't end up getting," the Sydney Morning Herald quoted an unidentified, highly placed Israeli official as saying.

"Then he ended up on a precipitous path. He crossed paths with someone who was much more professional than he was."

The newspaper said Zygier, who took Israeli citizenship in the mid-1990s, was recruited to Israel's spy agency Mossad in 2004 and worked in Europe.

He was assigned to infiltrate companies with links to countries hostile to Israel, including Iran and Syria. It said Zygier was eventually pulled back to Tel Aviv and assigned to a desk job within Mossad.

In an attempt to prove himself and return to a field assignment, Zygier then set about trying to recruit a European man known to be close to Hezbollah militants, setting up meetings in late 2008 with the hope of recruiting the man as a double agent.

But the plan went wrong when Zygier tried to prove his credentials by giving up the names of Israel's top two Lebanese informants, Ziad al-Homsi and Mustafa Ali Awadeh, who were both arrested in 2009 and jailed for 15 years, the paper said.

When he was arrested in early 2010, Zygier was carrying a compact disc loaded with more intelligence files that he might have planned to pass on to his Hezbollah contact, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

An Australian government inquiry earlier this month said it found no evidence any Australian passports had been misused by either Zygier, a dual Australian citizen, or by Mossad.

Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr has confirmed Zygier was working for the Israeli government but stopped short of confirming he worked for Mossad.

(Reporting by James Grubel; Editing by Paul Tait)

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Head of Mexico's powerful teachers' union jailed

MEXICO CITY (AP) — One of Mexico's biggest political kingfish sits in a women's prison in the capital, accused of embezzling millions in funds from her teachers' union to pay for property, private planes, plastic surgery and her Neiman Marcus bill.

Elba Esther Gordillo, 68, leader of the 1.5 million-member National Union of Education Workers, was arrested late Tuesday afternoon as she landed at the Toluca airport near Mexico City on a private flight from San Diego. Assistant Attorney General Alfredo Castillo told the Televisa network that she was taken off the plane and flown by authorities to Mexico City.

Upon arrival in Mexico's capital, she asked to see a doctor then was taken in a caravan of Federal Police and Marine vehicles to Santa Martha Acatitla prison, Televisa reported.

The fall of one of the country's most storied and divisive characters — unthinkable just months ago — comes with the return to power of Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party, which previously ruled for 71 years and once helped Gordillo consolidate her power. She was arrested one day after President Enrique Pena Nieto signed into law a comprehensive education reform designed to dismantle a system she controlled.

Union members had been marching in the streets against the reform in recent weeks, and the fiery Gordillo, who rose from school teacher to a maker of presidents, vowed to keep fighting.

"I want to die with the epitaph: Here lies a warrior. She died like a warrior," Gordillo said in a speech on her 68th birthday earlier this month.

She has not spoken or appeared publicly since her arrest.

In a press conference minutes after her detention, Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said Gordillo is accused of embezzling 2 billion pesos (about $160 million) from union funds. Prosecutors said they had detected nearly $3 million in purchases at Neiman Marcus using union funds, as well as $17,000 in U.S. plastic surgery bills and the purchase of a million-dollar home in San Diego.

"We are looking at a case in which the funds of education workers have been illegally misused, for the benefit of several people, among them Elba Esther Gordillo," Murillo said.

Gordillo displayed her opulence openly with designer clothes and bags, bodyguards, expensive cars and properties including a penthouse apartment in Mexico City's exclusive Polanco neighborhood. She has been widely lampooned for her many plastic surgeries and depicted in political cartoons as ghoulish. Meanwhile, Mexico's teachers are poorly paid and public education has long been considered sub-par.

Murillo said authorities were expecting her return for a union national congress starting Wednesday in Guadalajara. Union leaders already gathered there late Tuesday were meeting to decide how to respond, according to a union spokeswoman who was not authorized to speak by name.

The investigation started in December, just after Pena Nieto took office, after Santander Bank alerted authorities to bank transfers in billions of pesos, according to the attorney general.

At the news conference, Castillo displayed a series of charts that resembled battle plans, with dozens arrows detailing the alleged flow of illicit transfers from teachers' union accounts to the personal accounts of three union workers who were not authorized to deal with finances — Nora Guadalupe Ugarte Ramirez, Isaias Gallardo Chavez and Jose Manuel Diaz Flores, as well as a real estate company. Gallardo and Diaz were arrested with Gordillo, Castillo told Televisa.

Some funds eventually ended up in bank accounts in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Castillo said that in one case they transferred $1 million to a Swiss account for a company owned by Gordillo's mother. Those funds were then used to buy a million-dollar house in the island of Coronado in San Diego.

A television interview last week about education reform, the interviewer told Gordillo that she was the most hated woman in Mexico.

"There is no one more loved by their people than I," Gordillo answered. "I care about the teachers. This is a deep and serious dispute about public education."

The reform creates a system of uniform standards for teacher hiring and promotion based on merit instead of union connections. It also allows for the first census of Mexico's education system, which Gordillo's union has largely controlled for decades, allegedly padding the payroll with thousands of phantom teachers.

So great is the union's control that no one knows exactly how many schools, teachers or students exist in Mexico.

For years, she has beaten back attacks from union dissidents, political foes and journalists who have seen her as a symbol of Mexico's corrupt, old-style politics. Rivals have accused her of corruption, misuse of union funds and even a murder, but prosecutors who investigated never brought a charge against her.

She was expelled from Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party in 2006 for supporting other parties' candidates and the formation of her own New Alliance party. Her support was considered key in giving a razor-thin victory to former President Felipe Calderon.

Columnist and political analyst Raymundo Riva Palacio said Gordillo is an experienced political fighter who may have lost the keen sense of political calculation that kept her in power for so many years.

"She lost clarity," Riva Palacio said. "Having so much to lose on the issue on which they finally got her, the money, she calculated badly."

Gordillo's arrest recalled the 1989 arrest of another once-feared union boss, Joaquin Hernandez Galicia, known as "La Quina." The longtime head of Mexico's powerful oil workers union, Hernandez Galicia was arrested during the first months of the new administration of then-President Carlos Salinas.

In 1988, he criticized Salinas' presidential candidacy and threatened an oil workers' strike if Salinas privatized any part of the government oil monopoly, Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex. On Jan. 10, 1989, — about a month after Salinas took office — soldiers used a bazooka to blow down the door of Hernandez' home in the Gulf Coast city of Ciudad Madero.

Like Gordillo, Hernandez Galicia's power was believed to represent a challenge to the president, and his arrest was interpreted as an assertion of the president's authority. He was freed from prison after Salinas left office.

Murillo denied that Gordillo's arrest was politically motivated and said it could not be compared to Hernandez's case.

"This was a very clear investigation and we will have more of them," he said.

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Associated Press writers Mark Stevenson and Adriana Gomez Licon contributed to this report.

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