At least some American officials knew that Dahud Hanid Ortiz had been convicted of a triple murder when he was put on the plane to the United States.

The Trump administration said it was protecting Americans unjustly held abroad. One of the rescued men, Dahud Hanid Ortiz, killed three people, according to court documents.

© State Department

A Wells Fargo banker and a U.S. government employee were blocked from leaving, and a Japanese pharmaceutical executive was imprisoned, even as Beijing tries to court overseas investors.

© Gabby Jones for The New York Times

Over 260 people were released from prisons in El Salvador and Venezuela. Now they face the challenge of coming home.

© Federico Parra/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Ten Americans and permanent U.S. residents detained in Venezuela were traded for more than 250 Venezuelans expelled from the U.S. and imprisoned in El Salvador.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the U.S. envoy to Venezuela were both working on different deals and ended up at cross purposes.

© Fred Ramos for The New York Times

The June 23 airstrikes on Evin prison, including the hospital ward, have turned it from a hated symbol of oppression into a new rallying cry against Israel, even among the Iranian regime’s domestic critics.

© Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

The June 23 airstrikes on Evin prison, including the hospital ward, have turned it from a hated symbol of oppression into a new rallying cry against Israel, even among the Iranian regime’s domestic critics.

© Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times

Editor's note: The story is being updated.

Ukraine has brought home another group of prisoners of war released from Russian captivity, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on June 20, following another prisoner exchange a day earlier.

"Most of the warriors returning today from Russian captivity had been held for over two years. And now, at last, they are home," Zelensky said on X, without revealing how many captives were exchanged.

Russia's Defense Ministry also said that a group of Russian soldiers had been released by the Ukrainian side, without specifying the number of personnel involved.

This week's exchanges follow four similar swaps carried out last week in accordance with Ukraine-Russia agreements reached at peace talks in Istanbul on June 2.

The latest swap was another in a series focusing on seriously ill and wounded prisoners, Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of the Prisoners of War (POW) said.

"These are defenders of Mariupol, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Kharkiv, and Chernihiv regions. Warriors of the Armed Forces, the National Guard, and the Border Guard Service," Zelensky said.

The released POWs included privates and non-commissioned officers, some of whom were captured after the siege of Mariupol in 2022, according to the Coordination Headquarters. The oldest one is 60 years old, said Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets.

While no political breakthrough was achieved at the Istanbul negotiations, both sides agreed to a phased exchange of prisoners and the repatriation of fallen soldiers' bodies. As part of that agreement, Russia pledged to return the bodies of up to 6,000 Ukrainian service members and citizens.

Moscow has handed over 6,057 bodies to Ukraine in several stages over the past few days, though Kyiv later said that these remains also included fallen Russian soldiers.

The June 2 agreements came after the largest known POW swap in late May, when 1,000 prisoners were exchanged on each side.

Ukraine repeatedly called for a prisoner exchange in an all-for-all format, but Russia continues to reject the offer.

‘Unwanted by their homeland’ — Ukraine confirms Russia returned bodies of its soldiers disguised as Ukrainian

“This is yet another proof of how Russia treats its people with contempt,” Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.

The Kyiv IndependentTim Zadorozhnyy