To hear the Trump administration tell it, Kilmar Abrego Garcia smuggled thousands of people across the country who were living in the U.S. illegally, including members of the violent MS-13 gang, long before his mistaken deportation to El Salvador. In allegations made public nearly three months after his removal, U.S. officials say Abrego Garcia abused the women he transported, while a co-conspirator alleged he participated in a gang-related killing in his native El Salvador.

Abrego Garcia’s wife and lawyers offer a much different story. They say the now 29-year-old had as a teenager fled local gangs that terrorized his family in El Salvador for a life in Maryland. He found work in construction, got married and was raising three children with disabilities before he was mistakenly deported in March.

The fight became a political flashpoint in the administration’s stepped-up immigration enforcement. Now it returns to the U.S. court system, where Abrego Garcia appeared Friday after being returned from El Salvador. He faces new charges related to a large human smuggling operation and is in federal custody in Tennessee.

In announcing Abrego Garcia’s return Attorney General Pam Bondi called him “a smuggler of humans and children and women” in announcing the unsealing of a grand jury indictment. His lawyers say a jury won’t believe the “preposterous” allegations.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who visited Abrego Garcia in El Salvador, said his return to the U.S. was long overdue.

“As I have repeatedly said, this is not about the man, it’s about his constitutional rights — and the rights of all,” the Maryland Democrat said in a statement. “The Administration will now have to make its case in the court of law, as it should have all along.”

Russian attacks on Kharkiv kill 4

Russian attacks targeting the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv killed at least four people and wounded more than two dozen others on Saturday, officials said, as hopes for peace dimmed further.

The first wave on Ukraine’s second-largest city was a large Russian drone-and-missile attack in the early hours. It killed at least three people and wounded 21 others, according to local officials. In the afternoon, Russia dropped aerial bombs on the city center, killing at least one person and wounding five more, Kharkiv’s mayor said.

The warring sides also accused each other of trying to sabotage a planned prisoner exchange, nearly a week after Kyiv embarrassed the Kremlin with a surprising drone attack on military airfields deep inside Russia.

Fires force more Manitoba evacuations

Wildfires forced a further 1,000 people to flee their homes in Manitoba, one of two Canadian provinces under a state of emergency that has led to thousands of evacuations.

The town of Snow Lake, Manitoba, issued a mandatory evacuation order for its residents Friday as a large wildfire threatens the area.

That fire, which has now grown to more than 1,058 square miles, has already forced out all 5,000 residents of the nearby city of Flin Flon and a thousand more in surrounding cottages and homes.

There are 27 total fires in the province of Manitoba, eight of them out of control.

Taliban leader condemns U.S. travel ban

The top Taliban leader slammed President Donald Trump’s travel ban on Afghans, calling the United States an oppressor, as Afghanistan’s rulers seek greater engagement with the international community.

The comments from Hibatullah Akhundzada marked the first public reaction from the Taliban since the Trump administration this week moved to bar citizens from 12 countries, including Afghanistan, from entering the U.S.

Trump’s executive order largely applies to Afghans hoping to resettle in the U.S. permanently, as well as those hoping to go to America temporarily, including for university studies.

Colombian senator shot at Bogota campaign rally

Colombian Sen. Miguel Uribe Turbay, a possible candidate in the country’s presidential election next year, was shot and wounded at a campaign rally in Bogota on Saturday, authorities said.

His conservative Democratic Center party released a statement calling it “an unacceptable act of violence.”

The attack took place in a park in the Fontibon neighborhood when armed assailants shot him from behind, said the right-wing Democratic Center, which was the party of former President Alvaro Uribe. The men are not related.

Images circulating on social media showed Uribe Turbay, 39, covered in blood, apparently with a head wound, being held by several people. So far, no official report has been released on the senator’s condition.

A suspected shooter has been captured, Bogotá Mayor Carlos Galán said on the social platform X.

Uribe Turbay is a senator and the son of a journalist who was kidnapped and killed in 1991 during one of the country’s most violent periods.

Tens of thousands march for Gaza in Rome

Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched through the streets of Rome on Saturday against the war in Gaza in a protest called by Italy’s main opposition parties, who accuse the right-wing government of being too silent.

Protesters held a banner reading “Stop the massacre, stop complicity!” at the start of the march, which moved peacefully through the center of Rome amid a massive display of rainbow, Palestinian and political party flags.

The protest attracted a diverse crowd from across the country, including many families with children. According to organizers, up to 300,000 people participated in the rally organized by the leftist opposition to ask the government for a clear position on the conflict in Gaza.

Bodies of prisoners uncovered in Greek park

Another series of unmarked graves — this one containing 14 individuals from Greece’s civil war era — have been dug up in a park in a suburb near the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki, local officials said Saturday.

As in the previous tight cluster of unmarked burial pits excavated earlier this year in Neapolis-Sykies, the bodies belong to prisoners who were held in a nearby Byzantine fortress. The prisoners, alleged communists and sympathizers, were executed between 1946 and 1953, according to historians.

The Yedi Kule castle, also known by its Greek name Eptapyrgio (“seven towers”) was a prison where communist sympathizers were tortured and executed during Greece’s 1946-49 Civil War and immediately afterward.

The burial pits were uncovered on the site of a park undergoing renovation.

UK judge warns of risk to justice from AI

Lawyers have cited fake cases generated by artificial intelligence in court proceedings in England, a judge has said — warning that attorneys could be prosecuted if they don’t check the accuracy of their research.

High Court justice Victoria Sharp said the misuse of AI has “serious implications for the administration of justice and public confidence in the justice system.”

Sharp and fellow judge Jeremy Johnson chastised lawyers in two recent cases in a ruling on Friday.

In a ruling written by Sharp, the judges said that in a 90 million pound ($120 million) lawsuit over an alleged breach of a financing agreement involving the Qatar National Bank, a lawyer cited 18 cases that did not exist.

The client in the case, Hamad Al-Haroun, apologized for unintentionally misleading the court with false information produced by publicly available AI tools, and said he was responsible, rather than his solicitor Abid Hussain.

— From news services