City councilors met in closed session to discuss a settlement in the lawsuit over the death of Jeffrey Melvin on Tuesday and voted 6-2 to approve it during a brief public portion of their meeting. Deputy City Council Administrator Michael Montgomery confirmed the amount of the settlement, which was announced by lawyers for Melvin’s family.

Melvin’s death was part of a 2024 Associated Press investigation that looked at cases over a decade where hundreds of people died even though police had used force that was only meant to stop them, not kill them. Most violations involved pinning people face down in ways that could restrict their breathing or stunning them repeatedly with Tasers.

One of two Colorado Springs officers who fired their Tasers at Melvin a combined eight times testified in the lawsuit that he was not trained about the danger of shocking someone more than three times.

The deputy chief of the Colorado Springs Police Department at the time testified that its policy allowed officers to keep delivering electricity until the person’s behavior changed. The department determined the officers did nothing wrong.

The settlement came as the lawsuit was about to go to a trial next month.

In a statement, the police department said the decision to settle was made by the city’s insurance provider and was not an admission that its training standards were inadequate or that it had failed to properly train its officers.

“While CSPD respects the contractual authority of our insurance carrier to force a settlement in this case, which they did, we do not agree with that decision and were prepared to proceed with a trial,” it said.

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Jurors have heard from some of Angela Craig’s relatives and also women James Craig had been having affairs with, all called by prosecutors. James Craig didn’t testify and his lawyers didn’t present any witnesses, which they’re not required to.

Who was Angela Craig?

Angela Craig, 43, was a mother of six children who friends and family say was devoted to her family. She was the youngest of 10 siblings herself and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Described as organized and dependable, she had taken over her mother’s role as the genealogist for her birth family, an important role in their faith. Her older brother Mark Pray said she had been “happy and positive” since she was a child. But her sister Toni Kofoed testified that her sister had confided in her about struggles she was having in her marriage. However, pushing back against defense suggestions that her sister may have killed herself, Kofoed said her sister had a “broken heart” but not a “broken mind.”

What killed Angela Craig and how?

Angela Craig died in 2023 during her third trip to the hospital in a little over a week. Toxicology tests later determined she died of poisoning from cyanide and tetrahydrozoline, an ingredient found in over-the-counter eye drops. Early on, James Craig had purchased a variety of poisons before his wife’s death and had put some in the protein shakes he made for her, according to police. During the trial, prosecutors alleged that he also gave her a dose of cyanide as she lay in her hospital bed on March 15, 2023, as doctors tried to figure out what was ailing her. She was declared brain dead soon afterward and never recovered.

What does James Craig say?

In a notes file later found on James Craig’s phone by police, he said Angela Craig had asked him to help kill her with poison when he asked for a divorce after having affairs. In the document, which was labeled “timeline,” Craig said that he had eventually agreed to purchase and prepare poisons for her to take, but not administer them. Craig said that he had put cyanide in some of the antibiotic capsules she had been taking and also prepared a syringe containing cyanide.

According to his timeline, Craig wrote that just before she had to go to the hospital on March 15, 2023, she must have ingested a mixture containing the tetrahydrozoline, the eye drop ingredient, because she became lethargic and weak, before then taking the antibiotic laced with cyanide that he said he prepared for her. Mark Pray, who was visiting to help the Craig family because of his sister’s mysterious illness, testified that he gave Angela Craig the capsules after being instructed to do so by James Craig, who was not at home. Pray said his sister bent over and couldn’t hold herself up after taking the medicine. He and his wife then took her to the hospital.

What do investigators and the defense say?

The lead investigator, Detective Bobbi Olson, testified that James Craig’s timeline account differed from statements he had made to others about what had happened, including accusing Angela Craig of setting him up to make it look like he had killed her.

Craig is also charged with trying to hire a fellow jail inmate to kill Olson.

The defense argues that the evidence doesn’t show that James Craig poisoned and killed his wife and have seemed to suggest that Angela Craig may have taken her own life. They introduced into evidence Angela Craig’s journal in which she talks about the struggles in their marriage in previous years and her husband’s infidelity. In one entry she wrote, “He doesn’t love me and I don’t blame him.” The journal ended in 2018 and did not include any mentions of suicide, Olson said.

In opening statements, one of Craig’s attorneys, Ashley Whitham, repeatedly described Angela Craig as “broken,” partly by Craig’s infidelity and her desire to stay married, since they were part of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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The lawsuit blames them, local government officials and Southern Health Partners for failing to stop the death of Daniel Foard in 2023 by taking him to the hospital. Foard, 32, was a cook at a brewpub and user of fentanyl who was arrested for failing to appear in court. After being segregated and monitored for withdrawal from the synthetic opioid, he began vomiting and complained of stomach pain after being put in a regular jail cell, it said.

The lawsuit alleges Southern Health Partners — the Tennessee-based company they contracted with to provide health care at the La Plata County jail in Durango — has tried to maximize its profits at the jail by only having one nurse on duty at a time, leaving it to medically untrained deputies to monitor sick inmates. The company holds hundred of contracts at jails around the country and the lawsuit alleges that is has been involved in lawsuits related to the deaths of at least five other jail inmates nationally.

The company’s lawyer, Shira Crittendon, said she had not seen the lawsuit and declined to comment on it.

The sheriff’s office referred questions about the lawsuit to a county spokesperson. In a statement, the county said it had not analyzed the allegations in the lawsuit and does not comment publicly on active litigation.

Autopsy found Foard died because of an ulcer

Foard was found dead in the jail on Aug. 17, 2023, six days after he was arrested.

An autopsy found Foard died as a result of a hole created by an ulcer in his small intestine, which caused inflammation of the tissue lining his abdomen. Such ulcers can let food and digestive juices leak out of the body’s digestive tract.

Fentanyl was found in Foard’s blood but the autopsy report did not name that as a cause of his death. Dr. Michael Arnall ruled Foard’s death was due to natural causes.

On Aug. 15, 2023, even though Foard had collapsed several times and had trouble standing, he was moved out of an area where he could be more easily observed for problems with his withdrawal and put into a regular jail cell, staggering as we went, the lawsuit said. The day nurse ignored a deputy’s concern that he was very unstable, according to the lawsuit brought by lawyers Dan Weiss, Anna Holland Edwards, John Holland and Erica Grossman.

After a deputy delivering breakfast on Aug. 16, 2023, saw that Foard repeatedly fell while trying to get his tray, the jail’s day nurse came to check on him, it said. She recorded that Foard reported he had sharp, shooting pain that was a “10” on a scale of one to 10, but she did not call for a doctor or send him to the hospital, it said.

The nurse moved Foard to an empty cell where he could be monitored but didn’t tell deputies what he was being monitored for and didn’t order any follow up care or check on him, it said. He vomited all day and was moved to another cell and then a third because they had all become so messy with vomit, it said. Surveillance video showed him crawling to the final cell, where it said he continuously called out for help and yelled that he needed to go to a hospital, saying he was vomiting blood. The lawsuit claims that no one responded to his pleas but one deputy could be heard on surveillance video telling him to “try to hit that drain” with his vomit to keep the cell from becoming dirty.

Another nurse, working the evening shift, only walked by his cell and glanced inside, but did not assess him or provide care as he was pleading for help, the lawsuit said. When she did enter his cell around 10 p.m., Foard was dead, it said. She told state investigators that vomiting was normal for people withdrawing from fentanyl.

State authorities investigated Foard’s death

The day shift nurse later told a state investigator that it was not unusual that Foard would not have had his vital signs checked for 12 hours because of the number of inmates the jail’s nurses need to provide care, according to a report from an investigation by the Colorado Bureau of Investigations. She also said she didn’t think there was anything different she could have done based on Foard’s symptoms.

The bureau’s findings were forwarded to the 6th District Attorney’s Office, which would decide whether any criminal charges were warranted in connection with Foard’s death. It’s not known whether the office decided to pursue any charges. A telephone message and email sent to District Attorney Sean Murray were not immediately returned.

In a statement, Jim Foard and Susan Gizinski said they want everyone to know about their son’s ordeal, both to hold those they say are responsible for his death accountable and to change how inmates are treated at the jail.

“Just basic training in having compassion for others would be a great start. But adding more staff is critical too,” they said.

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A federal judge in Texas on Wednesday ended an order blocking the deportation of the family of the man charged in the fatal firebomb attack in Boulder, noting government lawyers say the man’s relatives are not being rushed out of the country as the White House originally stated.

Hayam El Gamal and her five children were detained by immigration agents on June 3, two days after her husband Mohamed Sabry Soliman was accused of throwing two Molotov cocktails at people on Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall who were demonstrating for the awareness of Israeli hostages in Gaza.

Prosecutors announced Monday that an 82-year-old woman who was injured in the attack had died.

U.S. District Judge Orlando L. Garica dismissed the family’s lawsuit challenging their detention by immigration authorities. The ruling noted that El Gamal and her children, ages 4 to 18, are not eligible for expedited deportations because they have been in the country for over two years, which he said lawyers for the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have acknowledged.

Soliman is an Egyptian national who federal authorities say was living in the U.S. illegally. He is being prosecuted in both state and federal court for the attack, which prosecutors say injured a total of 13 people.

Investigators say he planned the attack for a year and was driven by a desire “to kill all Zionist people.” He has pleaded not guilty to federal hate crimes charges but hasn’t been asked to enter a plea in the state case, which now includes a murder charge.

On the day El Gamal and her children were arrested, the White House said in social media posts that they “COULD BE DEPORTED AS EARLY AS TONIGHT” and that six one-way tickets had been purchased for them, with their “final boarding call coming soon.” Those statements led a federal judge in Colorado to issue an emergency order temporarily blocking the family’s deportation, Garcia said.

The case was later transferred to Texas, where the family is being held in an immigration detention center for families. Garcia is based in San Antonio.

Because the family is in regular deportation proceedings, there is no longer any reason to block their deportation, Garcia said. Regular proceedings can take months or even years if decisions are appealed. He also turned down the family’s request to be released from the detention center in the meantime, saying they can pursue release through the normal bond process in the immigration system.

Lawyers for the family had challenged their detention as unconstitutional because they said it was intended to punish them for Soliman’s actions. According to a court filing by El Gamal’s lawyers, one of the immigration agents who arrested them told her, “You have to pay for the consequences of what you did.”

Garcia said immigration authorities have discretion in deciding who to detain and he did not have authority to review their decision to detain El Gamal and her children. Lawyers for the government said they are being lawfully held because they are accused of overstaying their visas.

One of the family’s attorneys, Niels Frenzen, said they hoped to get the family released from the detention center while the deportation proceedings continue.

An email seeking comment from the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement was not immediately returned.

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But Brockbank, who faces up to five years in prison when he is sentenced Thursday for making online threats, is asking for leniency. He says he made those posts when he was drinking heavily and socially isolated, spending his evenings consuming conspiracy theories online.

Brockbank pleaded guilty in October to one count of transmitting interstate threats between September 2021 and August 2022 against Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and former Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, now the state’s governor, as well as against a Colorado state judge and federal law enforcement agents.

Under a plea deal, prosecutors agreed not to pursue charges against him for having firearms he was barred from possessing because of a previous conviction or for online threats he made later. One such threat was against Griswold last year for her role in helping the prosecution of former Colorado clerk, Tina Peters. They also say he threatened judges on the Colorado Supreme Court after they removed Donald Trump from the state’s ballot. The U.S. Supreme Court later restored Trump’s name to the ballot.

Brockbank, who was has been behind bars since he was arrested in August 2024, is asking to be sentenced to the time he has already served plus three years of supervised release and possibly six months in home detention or in a halfway house. That’s less than is recommended by federal sentencing guidelines but Brockbank’s lawyer, Tom Ward, said that sentence would allow him to get unspecified treatment.

In a court filing in support of the request, Ward said Brockbank was a “keyboard warrior” with no intent of carrying out his threats. Brockbank spent time on social media sites like Gab and Rumble, the alternative video-sharing platform that has been criticized for allowing and sometimes promoting far-right extremism.

Ward said Rumble and Gab repeatedly delivered “the message that the country was under attack and that patriotic Americans had a duty to rise up and act,” he said.

“His engagement with extremist content online was driven not by a malicious character, but by a misplaced desire for belonging and a tendency to not question others’ underlying motives,” Ward wrote.

The filing did not specify which ideas Brockbank was drawn to but it noted that Michael Flynn and Roger Stone were prominent on Rumble.

Prosecutors want U.S. District Judge S. Kato Crews to sentence Brockbank to three years in prison, in part to deter others from threatening election officials.

“Threats to elections workers across the country are an ongoing and very serious problem,” wrote Jonathan Jacobsen, a Washington-based trial attorney for the Justice Department’s public integrity section.

Under the Biden administration, the department launched a task force in 2021 to combat the rise of threats targeting election officials. Brockbank’s conviction in the fall was one of over a dozen convictions won by the unit.

At the time, the longest sentences handed down was 3.5 years in prison in two separate cases involving election officials in Arizona. In one case, a man who advocated for “a mass shooting of poll workers,” posted threatening statements in November 2022 about two Maricopa County officials and their children, prosecutors said.

In the other, a Massachusetts man pleaded guilty to sending a bomb threat in February 2021 to an election official in the Arizona Secretary of State’s office.

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In the run-up to the 2023 mayoral election in Colorado Springs, a racial slur was scrawled across a Black candidate’s sign and a cross set on fire in front of it.

It was a stunt to generate sympathy and support for the Black candidate, Yemi Mobolade, prosecutors have said, and on Monday the two people accused of staging it went on trial in U.S. District Court in Denver, charged with making a threat against him.

Mobolade, the city’s first Black mayor, took the stand as a victim.

“It felt very targeted against me, that symbol of hate, that history of the Ku Klux — KKK — was now directed toward me,” said Mobolade, who appeared to get emotional in the courtroom when seeing the defaced campaign sign.

One of the defendant’s attorneys argued their alleged actions were political theater — free speech protected by the Constitution and not meant to cause harm.

“The cross burning was not a true threat; it was a stunt to draw attention to racism in Colorado Springs and mobilize voters for Mr. Mobolade,” said Britt Cobb, who’s representing defendant Ashley Blackcloud.

Blackcloud has claimed Mobolade himself was a participant in the plan, telling The Associated Press “this was a hoax in every sense of the word.” She said Mobolade knew in advance about their plans to burn the cross, but Blackcloud would not comment further, citing a court order that bars discussing information in the case before the trial. Blackcloud, who is indigenous and Black, said the stunt was not intended to hurt anyone.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Candyce Cline argued Monday that, “to the rest of the world, and to the man whose name is on that sign, this is exactly what it appears to be, a threat, a true threat, a threat that violence is to come.”

Mobolade has denied any knowledge of the defendants’ plans and testified Monday that he learned about the cross burning after it happened. He’s expected to face questions from defense attorneys on Tuesday.

The second defendant — Blackcloud’s husband, Derrick Bernard, who jail records identify as Black — is serving a life sentence after being convicted last year of ordering the killing of a rapper in Colorado Springs. The man charged with carrying out the killing was recently acquitted, and Bernard is appealing his conviction.

“Derrick Bernard was not present at the cross burning, he did not plan it, and he did not direct it,” said his attorney, Tyrone Glover, in opening statements.

Cobb in court pointed out that the cross was set on fire in the middle of the night, which no one other than the defendants apparently saw. They are, however, accused of spreading word about it in emails to the media and others that include images of the scene.

They are each charged with using interstate commerce — the internet and email — to make a threat and convey false information about an attempt to intimidate Mobolade with a fire. They are also both charged with being part of a conspiracy to do that. They have pleaded not guilty.

For Bernard and Blackcloud to be found guilty, prosecutors must prove they intended Mobolade to fear that violence would result from their actions, according to jury instructions in the case.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Regina M. Rodriguez ruled that the alleged actions are not clearly protected by the First Amendment, which would have required her to dismiss the case.

“It is up to the jury to determine whether the cross burning was a true threat or merely political speech,” she wrote.

A third person indicted in the alleged scheme, Deanna West, pleaded guilty in March to one count of being part of a conspiracy to set the fire and then spread false information about it, under a plea agreement with prosecutors. According to that agreement, West’s lawyer and government prosecutors agreed that the conspiracy’s goal was to interfere in the campaign of Mobolade’s opponent and create the belief that Mobolade was being discouraged from running because of his race.

West is also scheduled to testify for the government.

According to the indictment, Bernard communicated with Mobolade before the cross burning on April 23, 2023, and after Mobolade won the election in a May 6, 2023, runoff.

About a week before the cross burning, Bernard told the then-candidate in a Facebook message that he was “mobilizing my squadron in defense and for the final push. Black ops style big brother. The klan cannot be allowed to run this city again.”

They spoke for about five minutes on the telephone three days after the incident.

In a video statement posted on social media in December, Mobolade said he had fully cooperated with the investigation and had been truthful with law enforcement.

“I fully and truthfully cooperated throughout this investigation. I had no knowledge, warning or involvement in this crime,” he said.

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In the run-up to the 2023 mayoral election in Colorado Springs, a racial slur was scrawled across a Black candidate’s sign and a cross set on fire in front of it.

It was a stunt to generate sympathy and support for the Black candidate, Yemi Mobolade, prosecutors have said, but two people accused of staging it are set to go on trial Monday, charged with making a threat against him.

Mobolade, the city’s first Black mayor, is scheduled to testify in the case as a victim, according to court documents.

But one of the defendants claims Mobolade himself was a participant in the plan to help him win. And the defendant’s attorneys say their alleged actions were political theater — free speech that is constitutionally protected and wasn’t meant to cause harm.

“This was a hoax in every sense of the word,” defendant Ashley Blackcloud told The Associated Press. She said Mobolade knew in advance about their plans to burn the cross, but she would not comment further, citing a court order that bars discussing information gathered in the case before the trial. Blackcloud, who is indigenous and Black, said the stunt was not intended to hurt anyone.

Mobolade has previously denied any involvement emphatically. A city spokesperson, Vanessa Zink, said the mayor did not want to want to make any additional comment.

The second defendant — Blackcloud’s husband, Derrick Bernard — is serving a life sentence after being convicted last year of ordering the killing of a rapper in Colorado Springs. The man charged with carrying out the killing was recently acquitted, and Bernard is appealing his conviction.

Messages left for Blackcloud’s lawyer and Bernard’s lawyer were not returned.

However, in motions to dismiss the case they pointed out that the cross was set on fire in the middle of the night, which no one other than the defendants apparently saw.

They are, however, accused of spreading word about it in emails to the media and others that include images of the scene.

They are each charged with using a means of interstate commerce — the internet and email — to make a threat and conveying false information about an attempt to intimidate Mobolade with a fire. They are also both charged with being part of a conspiracy to do that. They have pleaded not guilty.

According to jury instructions in the case, prosecutors must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Bernard and Blackcloud intended Mobolade to fear that violence would result in order for them to be found guilty.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Regina M. Rodriguez ruled that the alleged actions are not ones that are clearly protected by the First Amendment, which would have required her to dismiss the case.

“It is up to the jury to determine whether the cross burning was a true threat or merely political speech,” she wrote.

A third person indicted in the alleged scheme, Deanna West, pleaded guilty in March to one count of being part of a conspiracy to set the fire and then spread false information about it, under a plea agreement with prosecutors. According to that agreement, West’s lawyer and government prosecutors agreed that the conspiracy’s goal was to interfere in the campaign of Mobolade’s opponent and create the belief that Mobolade was being discouraged from running because of his race.

West is also scheduled to testify for the government.

According to the indictment, Bernard communicated with Mobolade before the cross burning on April 23, 2023, and after Mobolade won election in a May 6, 2023, runoff.

About a week before the cross burning, Bernard told the then-candidate in a Facebook message that he was “mobilizing my squadron in defense and for the final push. Black ops style big brother. The klan cannot be allowed to run this city again.”

They spoke for about five minutes on the telephone three days after the incident.

In a video statement posted on social media in December, Mobolade said he had fully cooperated with the investigation and had been truthful with law enforcement.

“I fully and truthfully cooperated throughout this investigation. I had no knowledge, warning or involvement in this crime,” he said.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Colorado, which is prosecuting the case, declined to comment on whether it had questioned or investigated Mobolade about whether he was involved in the cross burning.

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BROOMFIELD, Colo. (AP) — A Colorado man was convicted Thursday of killing his wife after stalking her while posing as her ex-boyfriend.

Jurors reached the verdict against Daniel Krug, 44, a day after beginning deliberations. They found him guilty of all four charges he faced — first-degree murder as well as two counts of stalking and one count of criminal impersonation.

As soon as the verdict was read, a police officer put handcuffs on Krug, who was wearing a gray suit and sitting with his lawyers. Krug is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday. He faces a mandatory sentence of life without parole.

Krug’s parents sat behind him as the verdict was read in the quiet courtroom. The family of his wife, Kristil Krug, sat on the other side of the courtroom.

With his marriage to Kristil Krug falling apart, prosecutors said Krug decided to play “puppet master” by scaring his wife and then trying to win her back by protecting her from the fake stalking, uniting them against a common threat.

Kristil Krug, a biochemical engineer, kept a log tracking the increasingly threatening texts and emails that suggested she was being watched. As police investigated the messages, prosecutors said Daniel Krug began to realize that he could face criminal charges and started plotting how to kill his wife to silence her and because she didn’t want to be with him anymore.

Prosecutors said he waited for her to return to their suburban Denver home on Dec. 14, 2023, after taking two of their children to school and then knocked her unconscious and stabbed her in the heart.

“He didn’t love her. He hated her. Think about what he did to her,” Senior Deputy District Attorney Kate Armstrong said during closing arguments Wednesday.

At the time of the killing, the ex-boyfriend was an eight-hour drive away in Utah, where he was living, according to investigators.

The defense stressed there was no physical evidence linking Daniel Krug to the violent killing, noting that there was no blood found in his car or his clothes, which his daughter said were the same he was wearing when he drove her to the bus stop that morning. None of Daniel Krug’s DNA was found at the scene, though partial DNA from an unknown person was found on her neck, the defense said.

Daniel Krug’s lawyers alleged that sloppy police work had failed to keep Kristil Krug safe before she was killed and then bungled the investigation into her death. The detective who investigated the stalking that Kristil Krug had first reported in October 2023 was lazy and incompetent, they said. The defense also stressed that police failed to test Kristil Krug’s phone for fingerprints even though they alleged Daniel Krug sent texts from it after killing her.

Shortly after the time when authorities said Krug killed his wife, he was at his usual coffee shop buying his morning latte. He complained that he had been given an iced drink instead of a hot one and waited for a replacement. During closing arguments, defense attorney Phillip Geigle questioned whether that is something a “cold-blooded killer” would bother to do.

Prosecutors said that he wanted to be seen as “cool as a cucumber” getting his regular morning coffee before heading to work and also likely planned to wear gloves so he would not leave any DNA linking him to the killing.

According to investigators, the email account that was used to send messages to Kristil Krug was created on the computer network at Daniel Krug’s workplace. A burner phone used to send some of the texts, purchased with a gift card registered to Daniel Krug, was often found to have been in the same general location as his phone, Armstrong said.

Three of the home’s surveillance cameras, which Kristil Krug’s mother said she installed because of the recent stalking, were not recording when she was found, according to Daniel Krug’s arrest affidavit. The one in the garage was covered with tape. The defense said the tape also had DNA from an unknown source.

Prosecutors say Daniel Krug told police that he thought the ex-boyfriend was to blame for her killing. But after police confirmed that man was at home in Utah when his wife was killed, he said maybe Kristil Krug was having affairs, they said.

“It’s always the husband,” Armstrong quoted Daniel Krug as telling detectives as she said he rolled his eyes.

Michael Sang Correa was charged with torturing five men believed to be opponents of Yahya Jammeh following an unsuccessful plot to remove him from power in 2006.

A jury that heard the case in U.S. District Court in Denver found Correa guilty of torturing people. He also was charged with conspiring with others to commit torture while serving in a military unit known as the “Junglers,” which reported directly to Jammeh, in the latest international trial tied to his regime.

Correa came to the U.S. in 2016 to work as a bodyguard for Jammeh, eventually settling in Denver, where prosecutors said he worked as a day laborer. Correa, who prosecutors say overstayed his visa after Jammeh’s ouster in 2017, was indicted in 2020 under a rarely used law that allows people to be tried in the U.S. judicial system for torture allegedly committed abroad.

Survivors traveled from Gambia, Europe and elsewhere in the U.S. to testify, telling the jury they were tortured by methods such as being electrocuted and hung upside down while being beaten. Some had plastic bags put over their heads.

Prosecutors showed the jury photos of victims with scars left by objects including a bayonet, a burning cigarette and ropes. The men were asked to circle scars on photos and explain how they received them.

The defense had argued Correa was a low-ranking private who risked torture and death himself if he disobeyed superiors and that he did not have a choice about whether to participate, let alone a decision to make about whether to join a conspiracy.

But while the U.S. government agreed that there’s evidence that the Junglers lived in “constant fear,” prosecutors said some Junglers refused to participate in the torture.

In 2021, a truth commission in Gambia urged that the perpetrators of crimes committed under Jammeh’s regime be prosecuted by the government. Other countries have also tried people connected with his rule.

Last year, Jammeh’s former interior minister was sentenced to 20 years behind bars by a Swiss court for crimes against humanity. In 2023, a German court convicted a Gambian man who was also a member of the Junglers of murder and crimes against humanity for involvement in the killing of government critics in Gambia.

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Particles from the sandy ground of a courtyard in the West African nation where the military officer fell during one of the 2006 beatings lodged in his eyes, causing damage requiring several surgeries, he testified.

Sanyang, a former military officer in Gambia, took the stand in U.S. District Court in Denver against one of the former soldiers he said beat him — Michael Sang Correa.

Correa is on trial in after being indicted in 2020 under a rarely used law that allows people to be prosecuted in the U.S. judicial system for torture allegedly committed abroad.

He is charged with torturing Sanyang and four others and being part of a conspiracy to torture alleged coup plotters while serving with the Junglers, a military unit that reported directly to former Gambian president Yahya Jammeh.

Sanyang told jurors he eventually agreed to sign a false confession but wiped blood from his head onto the paper to show he had been tortured. Then, after refusing to confess on television, he was shocked with wires plugged into a wall socket and beaten again, he said.

Bleeding, he read his confession for the television camera, but only the audio was recorded to conceal the torture, he told the court.

“I had to save my body,” Sanyang said of why he agreed to confess, adding he did not join the failed insurrection against Jammeh, who ousted the previous president of Gambia in a coup of his own in 1994.

Sanyang spent nearly a decade in prison after being convicted of treason and fled to nearby Senegal after his release.

Correa came to the U.S. to serve as a bodyguard for Jammeh in December 2016 and overstayed his visa after Jammeh was ousted in 2017, according to prosecutors. Since sometime after arriving, Correa had been living in Denver and working as a day laborer, they said.

Sanyang and other alleged victims traveled from Gambia, Europe and elsewhere in the U.S. to testify this week about their torture. Prosecutors showed the jury photos of victims with scars left by things including a bayonet, a burning cigarette and ropes. The men were asked to circle scars on photos and explain how they received them.

Correa’s lawyers have not disputed that the defendant was involved in Sanyang’s torture even though Sanyang said Correa, like the other Junglers, was wearing a face mask. Sanyang said he knew Correa from working with him at the president’s official home and recognized his “walking gait.”

But his lawyers argue Correa was a low-ranking private who risked being tortured himself or even killed if he refused Jammeh’s orders.

Demba Dem testified Wednesday that his torturers put a black plastic shopping bag over his head and beat him as he was handcuffed.

Another time, they put a heavy bag of sand on his back and then held a piece of hot metal close to his nose. Then they hung him upside down, his wrists and ankles tied, beating him again.

The former teacher who became a member of the Gambian parliament as part of Jammeh’s political party said Correa used a stick to beat him.

Dem, who said he was not part of the planned coup, later moved to the Netherlands with his family after seeking asylum and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He was reluctant to talk on the witness stand about the impact the torture had on his life other than saying it was “very bad” and asking a prosecutor to move on.

Still, Dem said he was “happy” to be in court to try to hold one of his abusers accountable.

“I have to do it but I feel satisfied,” he said.

The trial is scheduled to continue into next week.

In 2021, a truth commission in Gambia urged that the perpetrators of crimes committed under Jammeh’s regime be prosecuted by the government. Other countries have also tried people connected with his rule.

Last year, Jammeh’s former interior minister was sentenced to 20 years behind bars by a Swiss court for crimes against humanity. In 2023, a German court convicted a Gambian man who was also a member of the Junglers of murder and crimes against humanity for involvement in the killing of government critics in Gambia.

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