A Connecticut man whose stepmother allegedly held him captive for 20 years escaped by setting fire to the small room he was held in, officials said.

Authorities responded to the fire and rescued the emaciated 32-year-old man from a 72 sq-foot (6.7 sq metre) room. The alleged captive weighed 68 pounds (30 kilograms) upon his escape and was treated for smoke inhalation.

The man confessed to setting the fire after enduring years of “prolonged abuse, starvation, severe neglect, and inhumane treatment”, police in Waterbury, Connecticut, said.

His stepmother, who is accused of holding him captive and starving him, was charged with kidnapping and cruelty. She has denied the allegations.

When explaining his reasoning for setting the fire, the man told police: “I wanted my freedom.”

Prosecutors allege he was given a sandwich and two small water bottles a day for years. He was only let out of captivity for two hours a day to do chores while under the supervision of his stepmother.

Using hand sanitizer, paper and a lighter he set the fire knowing he could die, a prosecutor said in court on Wednesday.

His stepmother, Kimberly Sullivan, 56, was home at the time of the fire but did not speak to authorities when they arrived on the scene.

Ms Sullivan’s attorney said the accusations were false.

“He was not locked in a room,” the lawyer, Ioannis Kaloidis, told local media. “She did not restrain him in any way. She provided food; she provided shelter. She is blown away by these allegations.”

The fire was set on 17 February, and local police arrested Ms Sullivan on Wednesday.

Waterbury Police Chief Fernando Spagnolo called the details of the case “both heartbreaking and unimaginable”.

Police said the victim told them that he was held captive in his family home in Waterbury from approximately age 11.

“He had been locked in the room for 20 years, and for 20 years he’d been trying to get out of that room,” the prosecutor said.

Authorities were unclear when his father died, but they said his conditions worsened as a result.

When he was found, authorities said he had a body mass index (BMI) of 11. The National Health Service says a healthy range is between 18.5 and 24.9.

Police said that during his captivity, the unnamed man had not received medical or dental care.

Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is the latest to criticise a US influencer whose video of her taking a wild baby wombat away from its distressed mother has angered conservationists.

Albanese suggested that the woman, Sam Jones, tries doing so with animals that “can actually fight back”: “Take a baby crocodile from its mother and see how you go there.”

Ms Jones, who calls herself an “outdoor enthusiast and hunter”, was filmed picking up the joey by the road and running across it to a car, while its mother ran after them.

The man filming can be heard laughing: “Look at the mother, it’s chasing after her!” The video, which was filmed in Australia, has since been deleted

Immigration officials are reviewing Ms Jones’s visa, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke told the BBC, following calls for her to be deported.

An online petition supporting Ms Jones’s deportation has received 10,500 signatures so far.

“Given the level of scrutiny that will happen if she ever applies for a visa again, I’ll be surprised if she even bothers,” Burke said in a statement.

Ms Jones’s “appalling” behaviour could have caused severe harm to the wombats, conservationists say.

The Wombat Protection Society said it was shocked to see the “mishandling of a wombat joey in an apparent snatch for ‘social media likes'”.

“[She] then placed the vulnerable baby back onto a country road – potentially putting it at risk of becoming roadkill,” it noted in its statement, adding that it remains unclear if the joey reunited with its mother.

“I caught a baby wombat,” Ms Jones exclaimed in the video, while the joey could be heard hissing and struggling in her grip.

Her caption in the now-deleted post read: “My dream of holding a wombat has been realised! Baby and mom slowly waddled back off together into the bush.”

“The baby was carefully held for one minute in total and then released back to mom,” she wrote in the comments, responding to criticism.

“They wandered back off into the bush together completely unharmed. I don’t ever capture wildlife that will be harmed by my doing so.”

Following the backlash, Ms Jones, who has more than 92,000 followers on Instagram, made her account private. But several media outlets had already shared the video – as well as earlier posts, said to be taken in Australia, which show her holding an echidna and a “little shark”.

Wombats, which are native to Australia, are a legally protected species across the country. Baby wombats share a strong bond with their mothers, and any separation can be distressing and harmful, conservationists say.

“Wombats are not a photo prop or plaything,” said Suzanne Milthorpe, Head of Campaigns at World Animal Protection Australia, in a statement online.

“It’s just unacceptable, and we’re glad she’s being called to account. Snatching a screaming baby wombat from their mother is not just appalling, it’s very possibly illegal under state or national laws,” Ms Milthrope said.

Some experts believe Ms Jones broke the law because Australia prohibits people from harming or taking native wildlife.

It is only allowed if the joey is in need of help because its mother has died, wildlife veterinarian Tania Bishop told ABC News.

Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong also weighed in on the “dreadful” video.

“I think everyone who would have seen that would have thought, leave the baby wombat alone. Leave it with its mum,” she told 7News.

Additional reporting by Simon Atkinson

CNN — 

Indian authorities have arrested a Lithuanian man wanted by the US for allegedly running a $96 billion cryptocurrency exchange that allowed terrorist organizations, drug traffickers and cybercriminals to launder money.

The arrest caps an intense US-led manhunt for Aleksej Besciokov, that escalated last week with the seizure of the crypto exchange, the freezing of $26 million in assets and the unsealing of an indictment against Besciokov and an alleged accomplice.

The US is expected to pursue Besciokov’s extradition to the US Eastern District of Virginia in what would be a big win in the yearslong battle against money laundering services that allegedly fuel global crime and terrorism. The arrest shows that while the Trump administration has eased up pressure on Russia in some areas, such as offensive cyber operations, the Justice Department is still aggressively pursuing accused criminals with a connection to Russia.

Besciokov had been living in Russia, according to the Justice Department. It is unclear why Besciokov traveled to India.

Police in the southwest Indian state of Kerala arrested Besciokov this week, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation said in a statement that referred to Besciokov as a “fugitive.”

This screenshot shows the Garantex website which the US Justice Department, in coordination with Germany and Finland, disrupted and took down. The cryptocurrency exchange website allegedly facilitated money laundering by transnational criminal organizations — including terrorist organizations — and sanctions violations, according to the US Justice Department. From Garantex.org

“I can confirm Aleksej Besciokov, one of the administrators of Garantex, was arrested in India at the request of the United States,” US Justice Department spokesperson Nicole Navas Oxman told CNN in an email. She declined to comment further.

CNN has been unable to reach a lawyer representing Besciokov.

The arrest comes less than a week after the Justice Department unsealed an indictment against Besciokov and Aleksandr Mira Serda, a Russian man, for allegedly running Garantex. Besciokov was in charge of keeping Garantex online and running its infrastructure, while Mira Serda was the exchange’s co-founder and “chief commercial officer,” according to the Justice Department.

The Besciokov case is an example of how putting accused money launderers in handcuffs is the surest way to disrupt their activity. The US Treasury Department sanctioned Garantex in 2022. In response, Besciokov and others “redesigned Garantex’s operations” to evade sanctions and dupe US businesses into working with Garantex, according to the Justice Department. The exchange processed $96 billion in transactions between 2015 and 2019, according to the indictment.