(NEW YORK) — Seven people, including an Eastern European immigrant living in New Hampshire, have been charged with being part of an international smuggling ring that procured sensitive technology for Russia.

The charges, unsealed Tuesday in the Eastern District of New York, revealed the ring operated since at least 2017 and unlawfully purchased and shipped to Russia millions of dollars in sensitive military technology from vendors in Brooklyn and elsewhere.

According to the indictment, the intended recipients were Russian entities and individuals barred by U.S. sanctions from receiving the sophisticated testing, quantum computing and hypersonic and nuclear weapons equipment.

The seven defendants are charged with facilitating the activities of the Serniya procurement network, which operated under the direction of Russia’s intelligence services to acquire sensitive military and dual use technologies for the Russian military, the defense sector and research institutions.

According to the indictment, one of the Serniya Network’s primary operatives in the U.S. was Boris Livshits, a Russian national who formerly lived in Brooklyn, New York. He would interface directly with U.S. companies and purchase export-controlled items requested by the Serniya Network for Russian end users.

In doing so, Livshits would misrepresent and omit material information to companies, banks and government agencies, including information about how the items would be used, the various parties involved in the transaction, and the identity of the ultimate end user.

Livshits also utilized dozens of U.S.-based front companies and bank accounts that were used to obfuscate the role of Russian or sanctioned entities in transactions.

Alexey Brayman was arrested in New Hampshire and Vadim Yermolenko was arrested in New Jersey. Vadim Konoshchenok has also been taken into custody in Estonia and will undergo extradition proceedings to the United States.

The other defendants are believed to be in Russia.

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(LONDON) — Iran on Monday executed a second man, 22-year-old Majid Reza Rahnavard, who had been convicted on charges of “waging war against God” amid ongoing protests in the country.

Rahnavard, who was accused of killing two guards and creating an atmosphere of fear, was hung in his hometown of Mashhad, according to Iran’s Mizan news agency, which serves as the media center of the country’s judiciary. His family told activist groups they only found out by a phone call from security forces and got an address of where their son was buried.

Rahnavard is the second protestor executed by the Islamic Republic in less than a week on charges related to the ongoing protests that have gripped the country in recent months. On Thursday, Mohsen Shekari was executed for closing a street in Tehran and injuring a policeman with a knife.

Neither Rahnavard nor Shekari was allowed to appoint their own lawyers. Their execution sentences were carried out 23 and 73 days, respectively, after their arrests, a “surprisingly quick” trial for such cases even with the Islamic Republic’s norms, lawyers said.

A lawyer in Iran, who could not be identified due to security concerns, previously told ABC News the judicial process behind Shekari’s trial and execution “was not transparent and not normal at all.”

“Crimes that are punishable by death, such as ‘moharebeh,’ must have a lawyer in the case,” the lawyer said. “But Shekari was denied the right to appoint a lawyer.”

Crimes such as “moharebeh” are “open for interpretation” by judges, the Iranian lawyer told ABC News on Monday.

“Any action, be it setting a bin on fire or closing a street, can be decided to be a sample of waging war against God. Not being able to appoint a lawyer in such a court makes it a total sham trial,” the lawyer said.

According to the judiciary reports over the past few weeks, at least 20 more people are currently either on death row or charged with “waging war against God” and “corruption on Earth” for participating in the protests, which — according to Iran’s Sharia law — are punishable by execution.

“These prisoners and their families are facing tough days,” an Iranian activist, who did not want their name to be mentioned for security concerns, told ABC News. “They see these executions and can’t keep up hope for having a fair trial for their dear ones.”

“Every night I worry that they will bring me the news of my child’s execution,” Mashallah Karami, father of Mohammad Mehdi Karami, another protestor sentenced to execution, told Iran’s Etemad Daily on Monday.

His son was arrested after participating in the funeral of one of the victims of the protests in Karaj, a town north of Tehran, on Nov. 3.

Karami’s father told the Etemad Daily that his son, too, is not allowed to appoint his own lawyer, and instead, a public defender is assigned by the court to represent him.

The public defender, however, does not respond to his phone calls, Mashallah Karami said.

“The lawyer even refused to give me the address of his office,” Karami’s father told the newspaper, leaving the family in confusion about how to even appeal the court decision.

The Islamic Republic judiciary news website, Mizan, claimed that Rahnavard was executed in “public,” but many people on social media said the crowd shown in pictures of the execution consisted of guards and Basij militias, not ordinary people supporting the execution.

“This is another propaganda by the regime trying to buy itself credit by committing a murder and then staging fake spectators to the scene,” a journalist, who could not be identified due to security concerns, told ABC News. “How could anyone from the public be there to watch the execution when it was totally unannounced, that even Rahnavard’s own family did not know?”

Since the protest movement erupted in September, sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody following her arrest for breaching Iran’s strict dress code for women, the Iranian authorities have killed at least 458 including 63 children, according to the NGO Iran Human Rights, with at least 15,000 detained.

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(SEOUL, South Korea) — Jin, the eldest member of K-pop sensation BTS, was dispatched Tuesday to a front-line military training division north of Seoul.

Jin, 30, is heading to the military after delaying conscription two years beyond the maximum age limit. This was possible due to a change of law designed to buy time for pop artists to carry on with their careers.

Since Jin himself and his entertainment agency had asked fans not to come to see him off at the training division for safety concerns, only a handful of BTS fans were present at the scene. Instead, an ad balloon from fans flew in the air, wishing Jin safe military training.

All seven BTS members will take part in the military, and the billboard-ranking K-pop boy band will be out of the public sphere at least until 2025, according to BTS’ management BigHit Entertainment.

Mandatory conscription has always been a challenge for male Korean national K-pop stars, as the responsibility usually falls upon them at the height of their sometimes sweeping careers. Widely famous K-pop groups like EXO and SuperM already had to send some of their members to the military, which ended up in an inevitable halt to those groups’ performances.

South Korea is one of the few countries in the world — along with Israel and Taiwan — that conscripts men in the military. It is mandatory for all South Korean able-bodied men between the ages 18 to 28 to serve in the military for at least a year-and-a-half.

While conscription duty remains unavoidable, entertainment companies have looked for creative ways to maintain the popularity despite the absence of key members in a group.

“We are proud of completing military service, but it was tough because we couldn’t be there for our fans as one, wholesome team,” Super Junior’s Siwon Choi, who has became a leading actor starring in shows like Netflix’s Revolutionary Love and dozens of other hit shows, told ABC News. “We tried different ways to interact with our fans, like performing in units and solos.”

A second-generation K-pop boy band, Super Junior made a rare successful comeback as a whole team, and is now on a world tour. It took nearly 10 years for all members to finish military duties because of the members’ age differences. In the meantime, the members nurtured talent in MC, solo performance and acting to stay in touch with the public.

“Before serving the military, members from the Super Junior might have worried that they might lose their popularity,” Lee Gyu-Tag, a culture professor in Seoul at George Mason University, told ABC News. “But fans are also growing old, which means that they may need something different, more mature from their favorite bands.”

There are exceptions to mandatory military service in South Korea, as distinguished fine arts performers and athletes are pardoned from serving full time in the military. Those who won the grand prize in the major international contests, or athletes who earned medals in Olympics or other prestigious international competitions, are given an opportunity to replace their service with just five weeks of essential military training. This is to secure them time to raise the prestige of the nation by spending key years of high performance in their own field.

There has been a widely divided public debate whether pop artists like BTS should also be given the same military exception.

“To be fair, I believe pop artists should also be considered to be given an exemption from the military considering their social influence,” Lawmaker Kim Young bae, told ABC News.

Kim, as a lawmaker from the liberal party, proposed a bill last September that will allow top boy band members to avoid mandatory military service.

“I believe this bill will create new paths for young men of Korea to tremendously contribute in advancing the global cultural industry. This is an opportunity for Korea as a nation and a new chance for our youth’s future,” Kim said.

Conservative lawmaker Han Kiho expressed his opinion that military exemption rules should be scrapped altogether, with no exceptions.

“South Korea is already short of soldiers to defend this country While North Korea is constantly threatening with missiles, nuclear tests, and artillery,” Han told ABC News.

In addition to safety, arguments also center around the ideas of fairness and justice among the public.

“People feel like it’s not fair for one to have this great loss and trauma in my life if others don’t go through it,” Sean Lim, who runs Seoulite TV on YouTube, a channel that features reactions from K-pop fans, told ABC News. “But I don’t think that’s how you should build a military.”

Members of the public have expressed mixed feelings, but many seemed to agree on the importance of reaching a consensus about mandatory service.

“As long as there is a straightforward standard that everyone could accept when giving military exceptions, I think people will agree with pop artists being given a military exception,” Park Ji-hye, a college student who has long been a K-pop fan, told ABC News.

Both the minister of culture and the minister of defense have stated that the issue of exemptions is under review, and public opinion surveys will be taken into consideration. One of the ideas is to allow flexible dates of service so that all members could finish their duties around the same time.

“Rather than giving a certain group of people the chance to skip military service, I believe it is better to give pop artists special day-offs to perform in groups when it comes to an important performance while fulfilling military duty,” Han said.

The final policy decision is due by the end of the year.

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