ReportWire

Tag: Rebellions and uprisings

  • 15 UN peacekeepers in a convoy withdrawing from northern Mali were injured by 2 explosive devices

    15 UN peacekeepers in a convoy withdrawing from northern Mali were injured by 2 explosive devices

    [ad_1]

    UNITED NATIONS — Fifteen U.N. peacekeepers in a convoy withdrawing from a rebel stronghold in northern Mali were injured when vehicles hit improvised explosive devices on two occasions this week, the United Nations said Friday.

    U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said eight peacekeepers injured Wednesday were evacuated by air and “are now reported to be in stable condition.”

    He said seven peacekeepers injured by an IED early Friday also were evacuated by air. He did not give their conditions.

    Dujarric said the peacekeepers, who were withdrawing weeks earlier than planned because of growing insecurity, suffered two other IED attacks after leaving their base in Kidal on Oct. 31.

    JNIM, an extremist group with links to al-Qaida, claimed responsibility for the earlier attacks, in which at least two peacekeepers were injured.

    Dujarric said the U.N. doesn’t know if the IEDs that hit the convoy had been there for a long time or whether the peacekeepers were deliberately targeted. The convoy is heading to Gao on the east bank of the Niger River, and “it’s clear what road they will use,” he said.

    He said the U.N. hoped the convoy would complete the estimated 350-kilometer (220-mile) journey to Gao, a staging point for peacekeeping departures, by the end of the weekend.

    In June, Mali’s military junta, which overthrew the democratically elected president in 2021, ordered the nearly 15,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force known as MINUSMA to leave after a decade of working on stemming a jihadi insurgency.

    The U.N. Security Council terminated the mission’s mandate June 30 and the U.N. is in the throes of what Secretary-General António Guterres calls an “unprecedented” six-month exit from Mali by Dec. 31.

    MINUSMA was one of the most dangerous U.N. peacekeeping operations in the world, with more than 300 members killed since operations began in 2013.

    About 850 U.N. peacekeepers had been based in Kidal along with 150 other mission personnel. An employee with MINUSMA earlier told The Associated Press that the peacekeepers left Kidal in convoys after Mali’s junta refused to authorize flights to repatriate U.N. equipment and civilian personnel.

    Although noting the junta allowed the medical evacuation flights, Dujarric said, “We’re not operating as many flights as we should be able to operate in order to up the safety of our peacekeepers who are moving on the ground.”

    After the convoy left Kidal the town was taken over by ethnic Tuareg rebels, who have been clashing with Mali’s military. The spike in those clashes prompted the U.N. to move up its departure from Kidal, once planned for mid-November.

    Analysts say the violence signals the breakdown of a 2015 peace agreement between the government and the rebels. That deal was signed after Tuareg rebels drove security forces out of northern Mali in 2012 as they sought to create an independent state they call Azawad.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Does Jan. 6 constitutionally block Trump from 2024 ballot? Lawyers to make case on day 2 of hearing

    Does Jan. 6 constitutionally block Trump from 2024 ballot? Lawyers to make case on day 2 of hearing

    [ad_1]

    DENVER — The videos playing in a Colorado courtroom were both chilling and, by now, familiar — a violent mob, with some wearing tactical gear, smashing through the U.S. Capitol, attacking police officers and chanting “Hang Mike Pence!”

    Now, lawyers on day two of the weeklong hearing are arguing whether the infamous events of Jan. 6, 2021 constituted an insurrection under a rarely used clause of the U.S. Constitution that they are trying to use to disqualify former President Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot. The hearing in Colorado is one of two this week — with the second before the Minnesota Supreme Court on Thursday — that could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, which has never before ruled on the Civil War-era provision in the 14th Amendment.

    Tuesday’s witnesses are expected to include an expert in right-wing violence and an expert on Section Three of the 14th Amendment, which has only been used a handful of times since it was adopted in 1868. The testimony will get to the heart of the thorny legal issues the case raises — what constitutes an “insurrection” and how can the extreme political penalty of being barred from office be applied?

    The plaintiff’s lawyers contend the provision is straightforward and that Trump is clearly disqualified from the presidency, just as if he were under the Constitution’s minimum age for the office of 35.

    Trump’s lawyers argue that there remains a host of questions — did the authors even mean for the provision to apply to the presidency, which is not mentioned in the amendment although “presidential and vice presidential electors” are, along with senators and members of the House of Representatives? Did it target those who simply exercised free speech to support unpopular causes or only those who took up arms?

    Scott Gessler, Trump’s lead Colorado attorney and a former Republican secretary of state there, dismissed the lawsuit as “anti-democratic” and noted that one other presidential candidate — socialist labor organizer Eugene Debs — even ran for the office from prison without people trying to use Section Three to disqualify him.

    “If they don’t like President Trump, they need to get involved in an election,” Gessler said after the first day. “But what they’re trying to do is short-circuit an election.”

    On Monday, the Colorado testimony began with details about the Jan. 6 assault that was intended to stop Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s election win.

    Lawyers representing six Republican and unaffiliated Colorado voters argued that Trump’s violent rhetoric preceding the attack makes him culpable, and barred from the presidency again under that clause prohibiting anyone who swore an oath to the constitution and then “engaged in insurrection” against it from holding office.

    “We are here because Trump claims, after all that, that he has the right to be president again,” attorney Eric Olson said. “But our Constitution, the shared charter of our nation, says he cannot do so.”

    Trump’s legal team and presidential campaign assailed the lawsuit as little more than an attempt by Democrats to derail his attempt to reclaim his old job. Trump is so far dominating the Republican presidential primary, and the lawsuits to block him were organized by two separate liberal groups.

    Seeking to underscore that point, Trump’s campaign said before the hearing that it had filed a motion for District Court Judge Sarah B. Wallace to recuse herself because she had made a $100 donation in October 2022 to the Colorado Turnout Project, a group whose website says it was formed to “prevent violent insurrections” such as the Jan. 6 attack. Wallace declined to do so.

    She was appointed to the bench in August of that year by Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat. Wallace said she didn’t recall the donation until the motion was filed and has no preconceptions about the legal issues in the case.

    “I will not allow this legal proceeding to turn into a circus,” she said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Court arguments begin in effort to bar Trump from presidential ballot under ‘insurrection’ clause

    Court arguments begin in effort to bar Trump from presidential ballot under ‘insurrection’ clause

    [ad_1]

    DENVER — The campaign to use the U.S. Constitution’s “insurrection” clause to bar former President Donald Trump from running for the White House again enters a new phase this week as hearings begin in two states on lawsuits that might end up reaching the U.S. Supreme Court.

    A weeklong hearing on one lawsuit to bar Trump from the ballot in Colorado begins Monday, while on Thursday oral arguments are scheduled before the Minnesota Supreme Court on an effort to kick the former president off the ballot in that state.

    Whether the judges keep Trump on the ballot or boot him, their rulings are likely to be swiftly appealed, eventually to the U.S. Supreme Court. The nation’s highest court has never ruled on the Civil War-era provision in the 14th Amendment that prohibits those who swore an oath to uphold the constitution and then “engaged in insurrection” against it from holding higher office.

    “We’ve had hearings with presidential candidates debating their eligibility before — Barack Obama, Ted Cruz, John McCain,” said Derek T. Muller, a Notre Dame law professor, listing candidates challenged on whether they met the constitutional requirement of being a “natural born citizen.” But these cases, Muller added, are different, using an obscure clause of the Constitution with the “incendiary” bar against insurrection.

    Even if they’re longshots, Muller said, they have a plausible legal path to success and raise important issues.

    “Those legal questions are very heavy ones,” Muller said.

    Dozens of cases citing Section Three of the 14th Amendment have been filed in recent months, but the ones in Colorado and Minnesota seem the most important, according to legal experts. That’s because they were filed by two liberal groups with significant legal resources. They also targeted states with a clear, swift process for challenges to candidates’ ballot qualifications.

    That means the Colorado and Minnesota cases are taking a more legally sound route to get courts to force election officials to disqualify Trump, as opposed to other lawsuits that seek a sweeping ruling from federal judges that Trump is no longer eligible for the presidency.

    The plaintiffs in the cases argue the issue is simple: Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, leading to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, mean he’s disqualified from the presidency just as clearly as if he were not a natural-born citizen, another constitutional prerequisite for the office.

    “Four years after taking an oath to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ the Constitution as President of the United States … Trump tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 election, leading to a violent insurrection at the United States Capitol to stop the lawful transfer of power to his successor,” alleges the Colorado lawsuit, filed on behalf of Republican and unaffiliated voters by the liberal group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

    “By instigating this unprecedented assault on the American constitutional order, Trump violated his oath and disqualified himself under the Fourteenth Amendment from holding public office, including the Office of the President.”

    Trump has castigated the lawsuits as “election interference.” His lawyers contend that none of the issues are simple in a provision of the Constitution that hasn’t been used in 150 years.

    The clause has only been used a handful of times since immediately after the Civil War. Trump’s lawyers contend that it was never meant to apply to the office of president, which is not mentioned in the text, unlike “Senator or Representative in Congress” and “elector of President and Vice President.”

    The provision allows Congress to grant amnesty — as was done in 1872 to allow former confederates back into government — which has led some to argue that it has no power without an enabling act of Congress.

    Finally, Trump’s lawyers contend the former president never “engaged in insurrection” and was simply exercising his free speech rights to warn about election results he did not believe were legitimate.

    “Trump’s comments did not come close to ‘incitement,’ let alone ‘engagement’ in an insurrection,” his attorneys wrote in a filing in the Colorado case, adding examples of cases where the congressional authors of Section Three declined to use it against people who only rhetorically backed the confederacy.

    The arguments in Colorado could feature testimony from witnesses to the Jan. 6 attack or other important events during Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. The identities of witnesses have been shielded until they take the stand, part of the court’s effort to limit the heated rhetoric and threats that have become an issue in Trump’s criminal trials.

    The lawyers are expected to delve deeply into the history of the drafting of the provision in the 14th Amendment and its use between its adoption in 1868 and the amnesty law in 1872. There is scant legal precedent on the issue — so little that the attorneys have had to argue about the meaning of an 1869 case written by Salmon Chase, who was then chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court but wrote only as an appeals judge.

    After the amnesty act in 1872, legal scholars could only find one other time the provision was cited, when Congress refused to seat a socialist member of the House of Representatives because he opposed entry into World Wat I.

    Then last year, it was used by CREW to bar the head of “Cowboys for Trump” from a county commission seat in rural New Mexico. A second liberal group, Free Speech For People, filed lawsuits seeking to prevent Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Madison Cawthorn from running for reelection.

    The judge overseeing Greene’s case ruled in her favor, while Cawthorn’s case became moot after he was defeated in his primary. Free Speech For People filed the case in Minnesota, where challenges to ballot appearances go straight to the state supreme court.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Adel Omran, Associated Press video producer in Libya, dies at 46

    Adel Omran, Associated Press video producer in Libya, dies at 46

    [ad_1]

    CAIRO — Adel Omran, a video producer in chaos-stricken Libya for The Associated Press, has died. He was 46.

    Omran died at his family home in the Egyptian Mediterranean city of Port Said early Friday after suffering a heart attack, his family said.

    Before joining the AP more than a decade ago, Omran worked as a hotel manager in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh. He decided to return to his native Libya to work as a journalist in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.

    He became a pillar of AP coverage of the NATO-backed uprising that toppled longtime Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011 and led to his killing. Omran was a mentor to many of the country’s younger journalists.

    “During a difficult period in the country’s history, Adel was able to network and establish contacts and stringers across Libya,” said Derl McCrudden, AP’s vice president and head of global news production. “He also had a competitive desire to get the story out and this was a great combination.”

    Omran led AP’s video coverage of the civil war in Libya and abuses of migrants across the North African country, which have become a major transit point for people fleeing conflicts and poverty in Africa and the Middle East. He was also a video journalist himself, who could shoot and produce compelling stories.

    He had a strong judgement for when events would likely turn into big news. Most recently, Omran’s fast reaction to reports of devastating flooding in the city of Derna, Libya, helped the agency be among the first to break the news of the growing death toll.

    Omran is remembered for his resounding laugh and his constant willingness to help others, often stepping outside the scope of his own job to help a colleague out. In the unpredictable and often dangerous landscape of Libya, he navigated his way among the country’s many powerbrokers with ease.

    Rob Celliers, former South Africa senior producer for the AP, covered the 2011 uprising in Libya and first approached Omran about working for the news agency. He says he was immediately impressed by Omran’s instinctive understanding of the fast-paced tempo of the work.

    “Not only did I find a great colleague I also found a great, great friend who always gave me a warm greeting,” he said. “So very sad and unexpected you’re leaving us so soon, rest now my friend.”

    In recent years, Adel worked in the Libyan capital of Tripoli, where he covered the country’s faltering steps towards political stability. He hoped, like many, to see calmer days in his home country. The loss of another colleague, AP contributor Mohamed Ben Khalifa, who died covering clashes between militias in Tripoli in 2019, affected him greatly.

    “Adel’s work brought him in daily contact with human suffering and frustrated hopes, but despite that, he remained a person whose positive outlook was contagious,” said Maggie Hyde, AP news director for Egypt, Libya, Sudan and Yemen. “He brought that with him to every aspect of the job.”

    Omran’s body was transferred to Libya for burial in his home city of Benghazi. He is survived by his 8-year-old son and wife, who live in Port Said, Egypt.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • NYC protesters demand Israeli cease-fire, at least 200 detained after filling Grand Central station

    NYC protesters demand Israeli cease-fire, at least 200 detained after filling Grand Central station

    [ad_1]

    Hundreds of protesters have filled the main concourse of New York City’s famed Grand Central Terminal to demand a cease-fire as Israel intensifies its bombardment of the Gaza Strip

    ByThe Associated Press

    October 28, 2023, 1:03 AM

    Protesters gather outside Grand Central Terminal during a rally calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas on Friday, Oct. 27, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/Jeenah Moon)

    The Associated Press

    NEW YORK — A sea of hundreds of protesters filled the main concourse of New York City’s famed Grand Central Terminal during the evening rush hour Friday, chanting slogans and unfurling banners demanding a cease-fire as Israel intensified its bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

    Wearing black T-shirts saying “Jews say cease-fire now” and “Not in our name,” at least 200 of the demonstrators were detained by New York Police Department officers and led out of the train station, their hands zip-tied behind their backs. The NYPD said the protesters were taken briefly into custody, issued summonses and released, and that a more exact number of detentions would be available Saturday morning.

    Some protesters hoisted banners as they scaled the stone ledges in front of leaderboards listing departure times. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority asked commuters to use Penn Station as an alternative. After the sit-in was broken up by police, the remaining protesters spilled into the streets outside.

    “Hundreds of Jews and friends are taking over Grand Central Station in a historic sit-in calling for a ceasefire,” advocacy group Jewish Voice for Peace said on social media.

    The scene echoed last week’s sit-in on Capitol Hill in Washington, where Jewish advocacy groups, including Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now, poured into a congressional office building. More than 300 people were arrested for illegally demonstrating.

    Israel stepped up airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on Friday, knocking out internet and largely cutting off communication with the 2.3 million people inside the besieged Palestinian enclave. Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry says more than 7,300 people have been killed, more than 60% of them minors and women.

    The Israeli military’s announcement it was “expanding” ground operations in the territory signaled it was moving closer to an all-out invasion of Gaza, where it has vowed to crush the ruling Hamas militant group after its bloody incursion in southern Israel three weeks ago. More than 1,400 people were slain in Israel during the attack, according to the Israeli government, and at least 229 hostages were taken into Gaza.

    The U.N. General Assembly approved a nonbinding resolution calling for a “humanitarian truce” in Gaza leading to a cessation of hostilities. It was the first U.N. response to Hamas’ surprise Oct. 7 attacks and Israel’s ongoing military response.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Myanmar military accused of bombing a displacement camp in a northern state, killing about 30

    Myanmar military accused of bombing a displacement camp in a northern state, killing about 30

    [ad_1]

    BANGKOK — Myanmar’s military was accused of launching an airstrike on a camp for displaced persons in the northern state of Kachin late Monday that killed about 30 people, including about a dozen children, Kachin militants and activists and local media said.

    Col. Naw Bu, a spokesperson for the Kachin Independence Army, said 29 people including 11 children under the age of 16 were killed and 57 others injured in the attacks carried out by air and artillery. The casualties occurred at the Mung Lai Hkyet displacement camp in the northern part of Laiza, a town where the headquarters of the rebel KIA is based.

    A spokesperson for Kachin Human Rights Watch gave slightly different figures, saying 19 adults and 13 children were killed in the attack, which occurred shortly before midnight.

    Laiza is about 324 kilometers (200 miles) northeast of Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-biggest city.

    Myanmar’s National Unity Government, the main nationwide opposition group that considers itself the country’s legitimate administrative body, said a kindergarten, school, church and many civilian houses were destroyed at the camp.

    “This deliberate and targeted attack by the terrorist military council on civilians fleeing conflict constitutes a blatant crime against humanity and war crime,” it said.

    Myanmar’s military government “has taken advantage of the moment of the international community’s attention on the recent developments of the Israel-Hamas conflict to commit yet another crime against humanity and war crime,” it added.

    Naw Bu said it was unclear how the attack was carried out because people did not hear a jet fighter on a bombing run. The absence of such a sound, familiar in many parts of the countryside, could indicate that the camp was hit by air-to-ground missiles fired from a distance or by an armed drone.

    He said the army used artillery to shell an area including the camp and nearby villages where about 400 people live.

    In a statement over the phone to state television MRTV, military government spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun denied responsibility for the attack but said the military is capable of attacking the headquarters of all of Myanmar’s insurgent groups.

    Zaw Min Tun said the area where the explosions occurred may have been used to store bombs for drones and unmanned aircraft for the Kachin fighting forces.

    It was impossible to independently confirm details of the incident, though media sympathetic to the Kachin posted videos showing what they said was the attack’s aftermath, with images of dead bodies and flattened wooden structures.

    Myanmar Witness, a non-governmental organization that collects and analyzes evidence related to human rights incidents, said it confirmed the camp was damaged but that it was still investigating the cause.

    Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military overthrew the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021, triggering widespread popular opposition. After peaceful demonstrations were put down with lethal force, many opponents of military rule took up arms, and large parts of the country are now embroiled in conflict.

    The military government in the past year has stepped up the use of airstrikes in combat against two enemies: the armed pro-democracy Peoples Defense Forces, which formed after the 2021 takeover, and ethnic minority guerrilla groups such as the Kachin that have been fighting for greater autonomy for decades.

    The military claims it targets only armed guerrilla forces and facilities, but there is considerable evidence that churches and schools have also been hit and many civilians killed and wounded. Artillery is frequently used.

    The Kachin are one of the stronger ethnic rebel groups and are capable of manufacturing some of their own armaments. They also have a loose alliance with the armed militias of the pro-democracy forces that were formed to fight army rule.

    In October last year, the military carried out airstrikes that hit a celebration of the anniversary of the founding of the Kachin Independence Organization, the political wing of the Kachin Independence Army, near a village in Hpakant township, a remote mountainous area 167 kilometers (103 miles) northwest of Laiza. The attack killed as many as 80 people, including Kachin officers and soldiers, along with singers and musicians, jade mining entrepreneurs and other civilians.

    “Killing us en masse like this is a criminal act. The international community needs to know and take action. I would also like to ask the U.N. organizations to take action,” KIA spokesperson Naw Bu said Tuesday.

    Monday night’s incident came a few days before the military government is scheduled to host an event in the capital, Naypyitaw, to mark the eighth anniversary of the signing of a ceasefire agreement between the previous military-backed government and eight ethnic rebel armies.

    The larger ethnic rebel armies, including the Kachin and the Wa, refused to sign the ceasefire agreement.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Putin orders former Wagner commander to take charge of ‘volunteer units’ in Ukraine

    Putin orders former Wagner commander to take charge of ‘volunteer units’ in Ukraine

    [ad_1]

    Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered one of the top commanders of the Wagner military contractor to take charge of “volunteer units” fighting in Ukraine

    ByThe Associated Press

    September 29, 2023, 7:00 AM

    Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, meets with Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, second right, and Chairman of the St. Petersburg regional public organization “League for the Protection of the Interests of Veterans of Local Wars and Military Conflicts” retired Col. Andrey Troshev in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Sept. 28, 2023. (Mikhail Metzel, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

    The Associated Press

    Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered one of the top commanders of the Wagner military contractor to take charge of “volunteer units” fighting in Ukraine, signaling the Kremlin’s effort to keep using the mercenaries after the death of their chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

    In remarks released by the Kremlin on Friday, Putin told Andrei Troshev that his task is to “deal with forming volunteer units that could perform various combat tasks, primarily in the zone of the special military operation” — a term the Kremlin uses for its war in Ukraine.

    Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was also present at the meeting late Thursday, a sign that Wagner mercenaries will likely serve under the Defense Ministry’s command. Speaking in a conference call with reporters on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Troshev now works for the Defense Ministry and referred questions about Wagner’s possible return to Ukraine to the military.

    Wagner fighters have had no significant role on the battlefield since they withdrew after capturing the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in the war’s longest and bloodiest battle.

    The meeting appeared to reflect the Kremlin’s plan to redeploy some Wagner mercenaries to the front line in Ukraine following their brief mutiny in June and Prigozhin’s suspicious death in a plane crash Aug. 23. The private army that once counted tens of thousands of troops is a precious asset the Kremlin wants to exploit.

    The June 23-24 rebellion aimed to oust the Russian Defense Ministry’s leadership that Prigozhin blamed for mishandling the war in Ukraine and trying to place Wagner under its control. His mercenaries took over Russia’s southern military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don and then rolled toward Moscow before abruptly halting the mutiny.

    Putin denounced them as “traitors,” but the Kremlin quickly negotiated a deal ending the uprising in exchange for amnesty from prosecution. The mercenaries were offered a choice to retire from the service, move to Belarus or sign new contracts with the Defense Ministry.

    Putin said in July that five days after the mutiny he had a meeting with 35 Wagner commanders, including Prigozhin, and suggested they keep serving under Troshev, who goes by the call sign “Gray Hair,” but Prigozhin refused the offer then.

    Troshev, is a retired military officer who has played a leading role in Wagner since its creation in 2014 and faced European Union sanctions over his role in Syria as the group’s executive director.

    Wagner mercenaries have played a key role in Moscow’s war in Ukraine, spearheading the capture of Bakhmut in May after months of fierce fighting. Kyiv’s troops are now seeking to reclaim it as part of their summer counteroffensive that has slowly recaptured some of its lands but now faces the prospect of wet and cold weather that could further delay progress.

    ___

    Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • New book alleges Trump’s ex-chief of staff’s suits smelled ‘like a bonfire’ from burning papers

    New book alleges Trump’s ex-chief of staff’s suits smelled ‘like a bonfire’ from burning papers

    [ad_1]

    NEW YORK — A former aide in Donald Trump’s White House says chief of staff Mark Meadows burned papers so often after the 2020 election that it left his office smoky and even prompted his wife to complain that his suits smelled “like a bonfire.”

    Cassidy Hutchinson, who was a prominent congressional witness against former President Trump before the House Jan. 6 committee, described the burning papers in a new book set to be released Tuesday. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the book, “Enough.”

    Hutchinson was a White House staffer in her 20s who worked for Meadows and testified for two hours on national television about the White House’s inner workings leading up to and including the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

    Trump and Meadows tried to challenge the former president’s election loss in several states. Both are under indictment in Georgia for what prosecutors have called an illegal conspiracy to overturn the results.

    In her book, Hutchinson writes that starting in mid-December, Meadows wanted a fire burning in his office every morning. She says that when she would enter his office to bring him lunch or a package, she “would sometimes find him leaning over the fire, feeding papers into it, watching to make sure they burned.”

    Hutchinson had previously testified to the House Jan. 6 committee that she had seen Meadows burning documents in his office about a dozen times.

    Hutchinson said she did not know what papers he was burning but said it raised alarms because federal law regarding presidential records requires staff to keep original documents and send them to the National Archives.

    She said one day when Republican Rep. Devin Nunes of California came to meet with Meadows, the congressman asked Hutchinson to open the windows in Meadows’ office because it was smoky. She said she warned Meadows he would set off a smoke alarm.

    Later, in the days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, when Trump’s staffers began packing to move out of the White House, Hutchinson said Meadows’ wife arrived to help and asked the aide to stop lighting the fireplace for Meadows because “all of his suits smell like a bonfire” and she could not keep up with the dry cleaning.

    A message seeking comment from Meadows’ attorney was not returned Monday.

    Hutchinson in her book also described a moment on the morning of Jan. 6, when she said former New York City Mayor and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani groped her backstage as Trump addressed his supporters in Washington.

    She said Giuliani slid his hand under her blazer and her skirt and ran his hand on her thigh after showing her a stack of documents related to his efforts to overturn the election.

    Giuliani denied the allegation in an interview on Newsmax last week, calling it “absolutely false, totally absurd.”

    “First, I’m not going to grope somebody at all. And number two, in front of like 100 people?” he said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Speaker McCarthy is giving hard-right Republicans what they want. But it never seems to be enough.

    Speaker McCarthy is giving hard-right Republicans what they want. But it never seems to be enough.

    [ad_1]

    WASHINGTON — Staring down a fast-approaching government shutdown that threatens to disrupt life for millions of Americans, Speaker Kevin McCarthy has turned to a strategy that so far has preserved his tenuous hold on House leadership but also marked it by chaos: giving hard-right lawmakers what they want.

    In his eight months running the House, McCarthy has lived by the upbeat personal mantra of “never give up” as he dodges threats to his speakership and tries to portray Republicans as capable stewards of the U.S. government. He has long chided Washington for underestimating him.

    But with the House GOP majority in turmoil, all but certain to hurl the country into a shutdown, McCarthy has set aside the more traditional tools of the gavel to keep rebels in line. Instead, he has acceded to a small band led by those instigating his ouster, even if that means closing federal offices.

    It’s an untested strategy that has left McCarthy deeply frustrated, his allies rushing to his side and his grip on power ever more uncertain with the Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government a week away.

    “We still have a number of days,” McCarthy said Saturday as he arrived at the Capitol.

    “I think when it gets crunch time people will finally, that have been holding off all this time blaming everybody else, will finally hopefully move off,” the California Republican said. “Because shutting down — and having border agents not be paid, your Coast Guard not get paid — I don’t see how that’s good.”

    Governing with a narrow House majority, the speaker is facing a more virulent strain of the hard-right tactics that chased the two most recent Republican speakers before him, Reps. John Boehner of Ohio and Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, into early retirement. Like them, McCarthy has tried various tactics to restore order. But more than ever, McCarthy finds himself swept along as far-right lawmakers, determined to bend Washington to their will, take control in the House.

    McCarthy tried to win conservatives’ support by agreeing to their demand for impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden and then by meeting their calls for spending cuts, only to be turned back whenever a few of them hold out for more concessions.

    All the while, McCarthy has retreated from his budget deal with Biden months ago that established the spending threshold for the year. Instead, he is trying to reduce spending more in line with the level he promised the right flank during his tumultuous fight to become the House speaker.

    Yet all the concessions seem to never be enough.

    Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who is leading the fight, crowed to reporters Thursday that, “if you look at the events of the last two weeks, things seem to be kind of coming my way.”

    Gaetz said he was delivering a eulogy for short-term funding legislation known as a continuing resolution — a mechanism traditionally used to keep the government functioning during spending debates.

    Democrats have been eager to lay blame for the impending shutdown on McCarthy and the dysfunction in the House. Biden has called on McCarthy to stick to the annual spending numbers they negotiated to raise the nation’s borrowing limit.

    “He handed over the gavel to the most extreme in his party,” said Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern, a senior Democrat.

    With the House at a standstill and lawmakers at home for the weekend, McCarthy has turned to the plan advanced by Gaetz to start processing some of the nearly dozen annual spending bills needed to fund the various government departments and shelving for now the idea of stopgap approach while the work continues.

    It’s a nearly impossible task as Congress runs out of time to find a short-term spending plan.

    “We can in no way pass 11 bills in eight days,” said Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat appropriator, referring to the number of bills the House would have to approve before Sept. 30.

    DeLauro, a veteran lawmaker, estimated it would take at least six weeks to pass the bills in both chambers of Congress, then negotiate them between the House and Senate. She urged Republicans to embrace a continuing resolution to allow government agencies to stay open.

    Republican Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, one of McCarthy’s closest allies, has pointed out that the Senate has advanced legislation at spending levels above those in the deal reached with Biden. He argues that House Republicans need to pass their own bills at the lower numbers to strengthen their hand in negotiations.

    For Congress to solve the current impasse, many expect that it will take a bipartisan coalition that leaves McCarthy’s right flank behind. That would be certain to spark a challenge to his leadership.

    In the Senate, Democratic and Republican leaders are working on a package that would fund the government at levels far higher than the House Republicans are demanding and include emergency disaster aid and money for Ukraine, which some GOP House members oppose.

    “Eventually, we’re going to get something back from the U.S. Senate and it’s not going to be to our liking,” said Arkansas Rep. Steve Womack, a leading Republican on the House Appropriations Committee. “Then the speaker will have a very difficult decision.”

    ___

    Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Rebels kill 3 Indian soldiers and police officer in separate gunfights in Indian-controlled Kashmir

    Rebels kill 3 Indian soldiers and police officer in separate gunfights in Indian-controlled Kashmir

    [ad_1]

    Indian officials say three soldiers and a police officer were killed in separate gunfights with rebels over the past two days in the mountainous Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir

    ByThe Associated Press

    September 13, 2023, 12:10 PM

    Relatives cry at the funeral of the Indian police officer Humayun Bhat at his home on the outskirts of Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, Wednesday, Sept 13, 2023. Three Indian soldiers and a police officer were killed in separate gunfights with rebels over the past two days in the mountainous Indian-controlled Kashmir, officials said Wednesday. (AP Photo/Mukhtar Khan)

    The Associated Press

    SRINAGAR, India — Three Indian soldiers and a police officer were killed in separate gunfights with rebels over the past two days in the mountainous Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir, officials said Wednesday.

    Indian government forces launched a joint operation against the militants late on Tuesday in the Kokernag area of Kashmir’s Anantnag district.

    After a lull overnight, fighting resumed there on Wednesday, an army statement said. Two soldiers — a colonel and a major — and the police officer were killed, police said. Officials did not comment on any militant casualties in Kokernag.

    The second gunfight erupted in the district of Rajouri, a highly militarized area close to the Line of Control that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan. It left a soldier and two militants dead, the army said in a statement Wednesday.

    Nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan each administer a part of Kashmir, but both claim the territory in its entirety.

    Rebel groups have been fighting since 1989 for Kashmir’s independence or merger with neighboring Pakistan. Most Muslim Kashmiris support the rebel goal of uniting the territory, either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.

    New Delhi insists the Kashmir militancy is sponsored by Pakistan, which Islamabad denies. Most Kashmiris consider it a legitimate freedom struggle.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Child victims are the forgotten voices of Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship from 1973 to 1990

    Child victims are the forgotten voices of Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship from 1973 to 1990

    [ad_1]

    SANTIAGO, Chile — Yelena Monroy was 3 years old when she was imprisoned for more than a year along with her younger sister and her mother, a socialist activist targeted by the regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet after he came to power in Chile in a military coup in September 1973.

    “We were scared, we were crying,” recalled Monroy, now a 53-year-old commercial engineer and one of more than 1,000 children and adolescents who were detained in the name of fighting communism and leftist guerrillas during Chile’s military dictatorship from 1973 to 1990.

    When Pinochet installed himself as leader, the age of majority in Chile was set at 21 years. But being a minor was no protection from the dictatorship’s crackdown. Children were detained, tortured, killed, and even used as decoys to apprehend their parents.

    The trauma of that period has made many of the young victims of the military regime reluctant to speak out, and the process of prosecuting that era’s crimes and making reparations generally has made no distinction among victims based on age. So, the child victims of the Pinochet era have not had much visibility, though minors represent nearly 10% of the deaths attributed to the regime.

    “We don’t classify them by age, because they all suffered,” Gaby Rivera, president of Chile’s Association of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared, told The Associated Press.

    However, the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture figures show that the Pinochet regime detained 1,132 minors under the age of 18. Of these 88 were under 13 and 102 were arrested along with their parents — or were born in prison.

    Some 307 children under the age of 18 were killed during that period, according to human rights groups’ reviews of documentation from the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission. About 3,200 people overall were killed during the dictatorship, or went missing and are believed dead.

    Chile’s National Stadium, in the country’s capital, became the largest detention center of the military government. That is where they arrested — and beat — Roberto Vásquez Llantén, when he was 17, for being an active militant of the Revolutionary Left Movement.

    He had been in hiding since the start of the coup, but was arrested on Jan. 15, 1974. Vásquez Llantén, who is 67 today, spent a year in the Chacabuco Prison Camp in the Atacama desert along with 16 other minors. There was no electricity or hot water, he recalled. There were antipersonnel mines outside the barbed-wire to keep prisoners in line, while guards kept watch from towers.

    If minors had political significance, they were detained just like adults. But they also were used as lures to trap and detain their parents.

    The Fernández Montenegro sisters were imprisoned in February 1974 when they were teenagers.

    Viviana, 14, and Morelia, 17, were accused of being guerrillas in the Chilean port of Valparaíso where they lived, some 120 kilometers (75 miles) northwest of the capital. Their mother was arrested and released after 24 hours. The whole family, with the exception of the father, were active communists.

    The sisters were first held together in the Silva Palma Navy Barracks, on one of the many inhabited hills of Valparaíso.

    “I was in a cell, wearing a hoodie, while some guys put electricity cables on my fingers, yelling and screaming profanities and threats,” demanding to know where the weapons were, Viviana Fernández recounted.

    “The only thing I did was cry and cry … I felt very afraid, very afraid,” she said.

    Fernández, who is 64 today, and Yelena Monroy are members of the Association of Former Minors Victims of Political Imprisonment and Torture, created nine years ago in part to raise awareness about the fate of children and adolescents under the dictatorship.

    Fernández, who is the spokesperson, says the organization has about 100 members, but she thinks there are many more, and that many are still afraid to talk about what happened to them during those years.

    Many other minors of that time did not survive to tell their story.

    José Gregorio Saavedra González, a militant of the Revolutionary Left Movement, was executed at the age of 18 by soldiers in Calama, in the north of the country, together with 25 other political prisoners on Oct. 19, 1973. He was one of the disappeared who years later were located — and identified.

    “They gave us a little bit of a finger in a small box, and a little bit of what I imagine was a small tooth,” recalls his sister, Ángela Saavedra, who is 81.

    Monroy and Fernández fault the Chilean government for not fully acknowledging past violations of children’s human rights.

    “We have been totally forgotten by the state, it is very much in debt,” Fernández said.

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • A suicide bomber has attacked a security convoy in NW Pakistan, killing 9 soldiers, says military

    A suicide bomber has attacked a security convoy in NW Pakistan, killing 9 soldiers, says military

    [ad_1]

    Pakistan’s military and officials say a suicide bomber has targeted a security convoy in northwest Pakistan, killing nine soldiers and wounding 20 others

    ByRIAZ KHAN Associated Press

    August 31, 2023, 12:18 PM

    PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A suicide bomber riding on a motorcycle targeted a security convoy in northwest Pakistan on Thursday, killing at least nine soldiers and wounding 20 others, the military and three security officials said, a sign of increasing militant violence.

    The attack happened in Bannu, a district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, the military said in a statement. It said five soldiers were wounded in the attack.

    However, security officials put the number of wounded persons at 20. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media on the record.

    There was no immediate claim from any group, but the suspicion is likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban, who have stepped up attacks on security forces since 2022. Authorities say the insurgents have found sanctuaries and have even been living openly in Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover, which also emboldened them,

    Bannu is located near the former militant stronghold of North Waziristan, which served as a base for insurgents until the army years ago announced that it had cleared the region of local and foreign militants. Occasional attacks have continued, however, raising concerns that the local Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, are regrouping in the area.

    The Pakistani Taliban are a separate group but allies of the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in Afghanistan in 2021 as the U.S. and NATO troops were in the final stages of their pullout.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Putin is not planning to attend the funeral for Wagner chief Prigozhin, the Kremlin says

    Putin is not planning to attend the funeral for Wagner chief Prigozhin, the Kremlin says

    [ad_1]

    ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — President Vladimir Putin is not planning to attend the funeral for Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Kremlin said, following reports that the mercenary chief who challenged the Russian leader’s authority would be buried Tuesday.

    Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov wouldn’t say where or when the chief of the Wagner Group military company would be buried, adding that he couldn’t comment on a private family ceremony.

    St. Petersburg’s Fontanka news outlet and some other media said the 62-year-old Prigozhin could be laid to rest as early as Tuesday at the city’s Serafimovskoye cemetery, which has been used for high-profile military burials. Heavy police cordons encircled the cemetery, where Putin’s parents are also buried, but no service was immediately held and increased police patrols also were seen at some other city cemeteries.

    Later in the day, a funeral was held at St. Petersburg’s Northern Cemetery for Wagner’s logistics chief Valery Chekalov, who died in the Aug. 23 crash alongside Prigozin. Several hearses were seen driving from a central hall used for memorial ceremonies to Beloostrovskoye cemetery on the city’s outskirts, but they later drove away.

    The tight secrecy and confusion surrounding the funeral of Prigozhin and his top lieutenants reflected a dilemma faced by the Kremlin amid swirling speculation that the crash was likely a vendetta for his mutiny.

    While it tried to avoid any pomp-filled ceremony for the man branded by Putin as a traitor for his rebellion, the Kremlin couldn’t afford to denigrate Prigozhin, who was given Russia’s highest award for leading Wagner forces in Ukraine and was idolized by many of the country’s hawks.

    Putin’s comments on Prigozhin’s death reflected that careful stand. He noted last week that Wagner leaders “made a significant contribution” to the fighting in Ukraine and described Prigozhin as a ”talented businessman” and “a man of difficult fate” who had “made serious mistakes in life” but “achieved the results he needed — both for himself and, when I asked him about it, for the common cause, as in these last months.”

    Although both were from St. Petersburg, Prigozhin and the Russian leader were not known to be particularly close.

    Prigozhin, an ex-convict who earned millions and his nickname “Putin’s chef” from lucrative government catering contracts, served Kremlin political interests and helped expand Russia’s clout by sending his mercenaries to Syria, Libya, the Central African Republic and other countries. Wagner, one of the most capable elements of Moscow’s forces, played a key role in Ukraine where it captured the Ukrainian eastern stronghold of Bakhmut in late May.

    Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst, noted that Prigozhin has become a legendary figure for his supporters who are increasingly critical of the authorities.

    “Prigozhin’s funeral raises an issue of communication between the bureaucratic Russian government system that doesn’t have much political potential and politically active patriotic segment of the Russian public,” Markov said.

    The country’s top criminal investigation agency, the Investigative Committee, officially confirmed Prigozhin’s death on Sunday.

    The committee didn’t say what might have caused Prigozhin’s business jet to plummet from the sky minutes after taking off from Moscow for St. Petersburg. Just before the crash, Prigozhin had returned from a trip to Africa, where he sought to expand Wagner Group’s activities.

    Prigozhin’s second-in-command, Dmitry Utkin, a retired military intelligence officer who gave the mercenary group its name based on his own nom de guerre, was also among the 10 people who died in the crash.

    A preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment concluded that an intentional explosion caused the plane to crash, and Western officials have pointed to a long list of Putin’s foes who have been assassinated. The Kremlin rejected Western allegations the president was behind the crash as an “absolute lie.”

    The crash came exactly two months after Prigozhin launched a rebellion against the Russian military leadership. The brutal and profane leader ordered his mercenaries to take over the military headquarters in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don and then began a march on Moscow. They downed several military aircraft, killing more than a dozen pilots.

    Putin denounced the revolt as “treason” and vowed to punish its perpetrators but hours later struck a deal that saw Prigozhin ending the mutiny in exchange for amnesty and permission for him and his troops to move to Belarus.

    The fate of Wagner, which until recently played a prominent role in Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine and was involved in a number of African and Middle Eastern countries, is uncertain.

    Putin said Wagner fighters could sign a contract with the Russian military, move to Belarus or retire from service. Several thousand have deployed to Belarus, where they are in a camp southeast of the capital, Minsk.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin challenged the Kremlin in a brief mutiny

    Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin challenged the Kremlin in a brief mutiny

    [ad_1]

    Yevgeny Prigozhin made his name as the profane and brutal mercenary boss who in June mounted an armed rebellion that was the most severe and shocking challenge to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rule.

    Prigozhin was aboard a plane that crashed north of Moscow on Wednesday, killing all 10 people on board, according to Russia’s civil aviation agency. On Sunday, Russia’s Investigative Committee said forensic and genetic testing identified all 10 bodies recovered from the crash, and the identities “conform with the manifest.”

    The 62-year-old’s extraordinary journey took him from prisoner and hot dog vendor to elegant St. Petersburg restaurateur, and then from propaganda wars to the grisly battlefields in Ukraine.

    As an instrument to project Russian power globally, his soldiers-for-hire were deployed to Africa to provide security for warlords and fought in Syria to shore up the regime of President Bashar Assad.

    In May, they seized the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut in a rare victory for Russia in the war, but Prigozhin complained bitterly about the Defense Ministry’s conduct of the fight, saying it had denied ammunition to his forces.

    As the war slogged on, Prigozhin dropped his public reticence and began releasing social media videos in which he lauded his troops and increasingly denounced Russia’s defense establishment for alleged mismanagement of the war and denying weapons and ammunition to his forces.

    He abruptly escalated his scathing criticism in June by calling for an armed uprising to oust Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

    On June 23, his forces left Ukraine and seized the military headquarters in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. He ordered them to roll toward Moscow, saying it was “not a military coup, but a march of justice” to unseat Shoigu.

    He called off the action less than 24 hours later in a deal struck by Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko.

    In a televised address, Putin had vowed to punish those behind the armed uprising led by his onetime protege. He called the rebellion a “betrayal” and “treason.”

    But under the deal allowing Prigozhin and his forces to go free, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later said Putin’s “highest goal” in the deal with the Wagner chief was “to avoid bloodshed and internal confrontation with unpredictable results.”

    Prigozhin lived most of his life in the shadows. The owner of a high-end restaurant, he won Kremlin catering ventures that earned him the nickname of “Putin’s chef,” but he was mostly known only in the rarefied circles of the elite.

    As the head of the Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” that focused on interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, he was barely visible.

    But he barged into world view when mercenaries from his Wagner Group entered the war in Ukraine in 2022, becoming infamous both for their bloodthirsty fighting and their miserable treatment as cannon fodder in the eastern city of Bakhmut.

    As part of the deal to defuse the crisis, an investigation into his mutiny was dropped, and he agreed to move to Belarus. He later appeared in videos, saying his soldiers would be deployed to Africa.

    A recruitment video released earlier this week showed him at an undisclosed desert site in military fatigues and holding an assault rifle as he said his company was seeking “real warriors” and “continuing to fulfill the tasks” it had promised to carry out.

    Prigozhin and Putin had long ties. Both were born in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg.

    During the final years of the Soviet Union, Prigozhin was in prison — a decade by his own admission — although he never said for what crimes.

    Afterward, he owned a hot dog stand and then fancy restaurants that drew interest from Putin. In his first term, the Russian leader took then-French President Jacques Chirac to dine at one of them.

    “Vladimir Putin saw how I built a business out of a kiosk. He saw that I don’t mind serving to the esteemed guests because they were my guests,” Prigozhin recalled in an interview published in 2011.

    His catering businesses expanded significantly, and in 2010, Putin helped open Prigozhin’s factory, which was built on generous loans from a state bank. In Moscow alone, his company Concord won millions of dollars in contracts to provide meals to public schools.

    He also organized catering for Kremlin events and provided meals and utility services to the Russian military.

    In 2014, Prigozhin co-founded the Wagner Group, even though private military companies are technically illegal in Russia. It came to play a central role in Putin’s projection of Russian influence in global trouble spots, first in Africa and then in Syria.

    Wagner fighters reportedly provided security for African leaders or warlords in exchange for lucrative payments, often including a share of gold mines or other natural resources. U.S. officials say Russia may have used Wagner’s work in Africa to support the war in Ukraine.

    In 2017, opposition figure and corruption fighter Alexei Navalny accused Prigozhin’s companies of violating antitrust laws by bidding for $387 million in Defense Ministry contracts.

    In December 2021, the European Union accused Wagner of “serious human rights abuses, including torture and extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and killings,” and of carrying out “destabilizing activities” in the Central African Republic, Libya, Syria and Ukraine.

    An online video surfaced in November 2022 that showed a former Wagner contractor, who allegedly had gone over to the Ukrainian side but was later recaptured by Russia, beaten to death with a sledgehammer. The Kremlin turned a blind eye to it, despite public outrage and demands for an investigation.

    His troops captured Bakhmut in what was likely the bloodiest and longest battle of the war. Prigozhin has said that 20,000 of his men died there, about half of them inmates recruited from Russia’s prisons.

    As his forces fought and died en masse in Ukraine, Prigozhin repeatedly raged against Russia’s military brass.

    In a May 2023 video, Prigozhin stood next to rows of bodies that he said were those of Wagner fighters. He accused Shoigu, the defense minister, and the chief of the general staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, of incompetence and of starving his troops of the weapons and ammunition they needed.

    “These are someone’s fathers and someone’s sons,” Prigozhin said. “The scum that doesn’t give us ammunition will eat their guts in hell.”

    His remarks were unprecedented for Russia’s tightly controlled political system, in which only Putin could air such criticism.

    Asked about a media comparison of him to Grigory Rasputin, a mystic who gained influence over Russia’s last czar by claiming to have the power to cure his son’s hemophilia, Prigozhin once snapped: “I don’t stop blood, but I spill blood of the enemies of our Motherland.”

    After Prigozhin’s rebellion fizzled and he decamped to Belarus, Putin said the Kremlin “fully funds” Wagner. He added that authorities would investigate whether Prigozhin might have diverted any of the 80 billion rubles ($936 million) in state funds he allegedly received in 2023 for delivering food to the Russian army.

    Prigozhin first gained attention in the U.S., when he and a dozen other Russian nationals and three Russian companies were charged with operating a covert social media campaign aimed at fomenting discord ahead of Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory.

    They were indicted as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference. The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Prigozhin and his associates repeatedly in connection with both his election interference and his leadership of the Wagner Group.

    He responded to the 2018 indictment with sarcasm, which was typical for the outspoken mercenary leader.

    “Americans are very impressionable people; they see what they want to see. I treat them with great respect. I’m not at all upset that I’m on this list,” the RIA Novosti news agency quoted him as saying. “If they want to see the devil, let them see him.”

    ___

    Associated Press writer Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Russia’s Wagner mercenaries face uncertainty after the presumed death of its leader in a plane crash

    Russia’s Wagner mercenaries face uncertainty after the presumed death of its leader in a plane crash

    [ad_1]

    The Wagner Group’s presence extends from the ancient battlegrounds of Syria to the deserts of sub-Saharan Africa, projecting the Kremlin’s global influence with mercenaries accused of using brutal force and profiting on mineral riches they seized.

    But that was under Yevgeny Prigozhin, who in what could have been his final video released earlier this week appeared in military fatigues and held an assault rifle from an unidentified dry and dusty plain as he boasted that Wagner is “making Russia even greater on all continents and Africa even more free.”

    On Wednesday, a private jet carrying Prigozhin and his top lieutenants of the mercenary group crashed northwest of Moscow, two months after he led an armed rebellion that challenged the authority of President Vladimir Putin. There is wide speculation that Prigozhin, who is presumed dead, was targeted for his uprising, although the Kremlin has denied involvement.

    That crash has raised questions about the future of the Wagner Group.

    In African countries where Wagner provided security against groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State, officials and commentators predict Russia will likely maintain its presence, placing the forces under new leadership.

    Others, however, say Prigozhin built deep, personal connections that Moscow could find challenging to replace quickly.

    Africa is vitally important to Russia — economically and politically.

    This summer, Wagner helped secure a national referendum in the Central African Republic that cemented presidential power; it is a key partner for Mali’s army in battling armed rebels; and it contacted the military junta in Niger that wants its services following a coup.

    Expanding ties and undercutting Western influence in Africa is a top priority as the Kremlin seeks new allies amid its war in Ukraine, where Wagner forces also helped win a key battle. Africa’s 54 nations are the largest voting bloc at the U.N., and Moscow has actively worked to rally their support for its invasion.

    Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said Friday that Wagner’s forces “are destabilizing, and we’ve encouraged countries in Africa to condemn their presence as well as their actions.”

    On Thursday, the Republican Front in the Central African Republic, allied with the ruling party, reiterated its support for Russia and Wagner, saying they were “determined to fight alongside the African people as they struggle for self-determination.”

    Wagner forces have served as personal bodyguards for President Faustin Archange Touadera, protecting the capital of Bangui from rebel threats and helping secure a July 30 constitutional referendum that could extend his power indefinitely.

    Central African activist and blogger Christian Aime Ndotah said the country’s cooperation with Russia would be unaffected by new leadership with Wagner, which has been “well-established” there for years.

    But some in the Central African Republic denounce the mercenaries, and the U.N. peacekeeping mission there criticized them in 2021 for human rights abuses.

    “A state’s security is its sovereignty. You can’t entrust the security of a state to a group of mercenaries,” said Jean Serge Bokassa, former public security minister.

    Nathalia Dukhan, senior investigator at The Sentry, predicted the Kremlin will try to bring Africa closer into its orbit.

    “Wagner has been a successful tool for Russia to expand its influence efficiently and brutally,” she said. “In the midst of all the turmoil between Putin and Prigozhin, the Wagner operation in Central Africa only deepened, with increased direct involvement by the Russian government.”

    High-ranking Wagner operatives have built relationships in Mali and the Central African Republic and understand the terrain, said Lou Osborn of All Eyes on Wagner, a project focusing on the group.

    “They have a good reputation, which they can sell to another Russian contender. It wouldn’t be surprising if a new organization took them over,” Osborn said, noting that Russian military contractors in Ukraine, such as Redut and Convoy, have recently expressed a desire to do business in Africa.

    Redut was created by the Russian Defense Ministry, which has sought to put Wagner under its control. Following the June mutiny, Putin said the mercenaries could sign contracts with the ministry and keep serving under one of the group’s top commanders, Andrei Troshev. It wasn’t clear how many troops accepted, but media reports put the number at a few thousand.

    The Kremlin still could face challenges in keeping the strong presence in Africa that Prigozhin helped establish.

    Former Putin speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov argued Prigozhin may have been allowed to continue his post-activities because Russian authorities had to find people who would take over his work.

    “Time was needed to create the new channels, new mechanisms of control over those projects,” he said. “And it’s not a fact that they have been successful in that. It’s possible that they have failed and the Kremlin may lose some of those projects.”

    Britain’s Defense Ministry said Prigozhin’s demise “would almost certainly have a deeply destabilizing effect on the Wagner Group.”

    “His personal attributes of hyper-activity, exceptional audacity, a drive for results and extreme brutality permeated Wagner and are unlikely to be matched by any successor,” it said.

    On Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment on Wagner’s future.

    For Prigozhin, who created Wagner in 2014, its missions weren’t simply about advancing Russia’s global clout. His contractors in Syria, Libya, Sudan and elsewhere tapped the mineral and energy wealth of those countries to enrich himself.

    Central African Republic lawmaker and opposition leader Martin Ziguélé said Wagner was active in gold mining, timber and other industries — without paying taxes.

    “We can only conclude that it’s plundering,” he said.

    Prigozhin reached a deal with Putin after the rebellion that saw Wagner mercenaries move to Belarus in exchange for amnesty, and the mercenary boss spoke repeatedly since then about expanding his activities in Africa. He was seen courting African officials at a recent summit in St. Petersburg.

    He quickly welcomed last month’s military coup that toppled Niger President Mohamed Bazoum. The junta reached out to Wagner, but the group’s response was unclear and there’s no visible presence of Russian mercenaries there — other than crowds waving Russian and Wagner flags at protests.

    While U.S. officials didn’t confirm that Russia or Wagner had any role in the coup, there are fears the Kremlin could exploit it to weaken Western positions in West Africa, where the mercenaries already have a presence in Mali and Burkina Faso.

    Niger’s residents say Prigozhin’s presumed death won’t stop Russia from trying to expand its influence.

    “Our belief is that Russia wants to get a base here and to be popular. It’s obvious they want to be here,” Niamey tailor Baraou Souleimanin told The Associated Press. Since the coup, he said he’s sewn more than 150 Russian flags in a month.

    “We pray that Allah strengthens the relationship with (Wagner) to continue the deal. If the relationship is good and strong, it’s possible they’ll continue with the deal even after his death,” he said Thursday.

    In neighboring Mali, a military junta that seized power in 2020 expelled French troops, diplomats, and media, and ordered an end to a decade-long U.N. peacekeeping mission.

    Though not officially recognized by Malian authorities, Wagner forces have been known to operate in the rural north, where rebel and extremist groups have eroded state power and tormented communities.

    Human Rights Watch says Mali’s army, together with suspected Wagner mercenaries, committed summary executions, looting, forced disappearances and other abuses.

    “What we have experienced through Wagner is the massacre of our people,” said Ali Nouhoum Diallo, former president of the national assembly.

    Timbuktu resident Youba Khalifa said Wagner’s presence in Mali wouldn’t change after Prigozhin because “they’re going to replace him with another leader.”

    Although Prigozhin had told his troops in Belarus their new mission would be in Africa, several thousand of them trained the Belarusian army near the Polish border, prompting Warsaw to bolster forces there. There were signs, however, the mercenaries were preparing to pull back to Russia.

    Belarusian Hajun, a group monitoring Russian troops in Belarus, said Thursday that satellite images showed more than a third of the tents at a Wagner camp had been dismantled, a sign of a possible exodus. Still, President Alexander Lukashenko insists his country will host about 10,000 troops.

    That draws strong objections from the Belarusian opposition, which demands their withdrawal.

    “Prigozhin’s death should put an end to Wagner’s presence in Belarus, which will reduce the threat for our country and its neighbors,” exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya told AP.

    ___

    Sam Mednick in Niamey, Niger; Zane Irwin in Dakar, Senegal; Jean Fernand Koena in Bangui, Central African Republic; Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations; Baba Ahmed in Bamako, Mali; and Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • A decade after vigilante uprising, extortion and threats against lime growers return to west Mexico

    A decade after vigilante uprising, extortion and threats against lime growers return to west Mexico

    [ad_1]

    MEXICO CITY — The kind of mass threats and extortion of lime growers in the western Mexico that sparked a civilian vigilante uprising a decade ago have returned, and growers say they can’t get their crops to market.

    One lime grower who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons said Thursday that the local drug cartel had increased the price of protection payments five-fold in the space of weeks.

    The government of Michoacan state said Wednesday that it had launched a criminal investigation into the shake-downs. The situation threatens a mainstay of Mexican cuisine, and recalls the darkest days of the country’s 2006-2012 drug war.

    The grower said that in the last week to 10 days, the cartel has increased its demands from just over a penny per kilogram (2.2 pounds) of limes to about 6 cents. It may not sound like much, but that could be a quarter of the prices farmers are paid.

    On Tuesday, Carlos Torres, the Michoacan state interior secretary, said the government was launching a formal criminal investigation.

    “We are going to continue supporting growers so they can carry out their activities as normal. There will be no impunity,” Torres said.

    But the response seemed belated, at best.

    Photos had circulated on social media for the last week of leaflets passed around in the so-called “hot lands” of Michoacan, which read, “Nobody gets out of paying the quota, don’t try to look for a padrino,” a protective godfather.

    “Those of you who have packing houses in Buenavista, you know how to make the payment, and what happens to those who don’t pay,” according to the leaflet. Authorities have confirmed there have been threats, but have not confirmed the authenticity of the leaflet.

    The threats appeared to reference what happened in 2010-2012, when the the Familia Michoacana and later the Knights Templar cartels burned down packing houses. imposed crop prices, demanded protection money and even told growers on which days they could harvest their crop.

    That sparked an armed uprising in 2013 and 2014 by angry farmers. That vigilante movement largely kicked out the old cartels, only to see them replaced by others.

    By then, most of the vigilantes were either disarmed or infiltrated by drug gangs.

    The government moved in after the vigilantes were disarmed in 2014, and in the nine years since attacks on growers and packers had declined to the point that some new packing houses were built to replace those that had been left in charred ruins by the gangs.

    However, in recent months, there appears to have been a split in the United Cartels, an umbrella drug federation that included the violent Viagras cartel, which had largely taken over the region, and remnants of the old Knights Templar cartel.

    That split apparently set the gangs against one another and increased their desire to make enough money to carry out turf battles and fight incursions by the Jalisco cartel.

    By late June, it became clear that gang warfare had returned to the agricultural region. The last remaining untainted leader of the uprising, Hipolito Mora, was shot to death along with three of his followers in a drug gang ambush.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • What we know — and don’t know — about the crash of a Russian mercenary’s plane

    What we know — and don’t know — about the crash of a Russian mercenary’s plane

    [ad_1]

    The head of a Russian mercenary group who launched a rebellion against Moscow’s military leadership in June is presumed dead after a mysterious plane crash.

    But much remains uncertain. Here’s what we know and don’t know.

    What happened to the plane?

    Authorities said the private jet that took off from Moscow and was headed for St. Petersburg was carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin and some of his top lieutenants from the Wagner private military company. It went down northwest of the capital — after what appeared to be an explosion — minutes after takeoff. Everyone on board was killed.

    Is Prigozhin dead?

    Presumably. There’s been no official confirmation, but Russian authorities investigating the crash found 10 bodies and will use DNA to confirm their identities. President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences about it.

    Is it possible he was targeted?

    No one knows — but many are speculating that he was. After Prigozhin staged his short-lived rebellion and Wagner forces made a dash toward Moscow, several U.S. officials had predicted that something like this would happen. Numerous opponents and critics of Putin have been killed or gravely sickened over the years in apparent assassination attempts. Last month, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Russia under Putin had an “open windows policy,” implying the Wagner chief might get thrown out of one.

    Is anybody trying to get to the bottom of what really happened?

    The Russian government says it is conducting an investigation, though it remains to be seen how much information will be released. Keir Giles, an analyst at Chatham House, warned that the “crash is so politically significant that there is no chance of any investigation that will be either transparent or reliable.”

    Who else is thought to have been on the plane?

    The passenger manifest is essentially a who’s who of Wagner mercenaries, including its second-in-command, who baptized the group with his nom de guerre, as well as the logistics chief, a fighter wounded by U.S. airstrikes in Syria and at least one possible bodyguard.

    What happens now to the Wagner mercenary army?

    After Prigozhin’s failed rebellion against Russian military leaders, Putin gave the thousands of Wagner troops in Ukraine three options: join the Russian army, return home, or move to Belarus. The rest of Wagner’s troops are deployed in African countries, and in Syria, where they ruthlessly protect rulers at the expense of the masses — and, in exchange, Russia gets access to ports, natural resources and markets for weapons sales. It’s unclear if that will change.

    Is this good or bad for the U.S.?

    U.S. officials have been tight-lipped about the crash and what impact it may have on American interests in Ukraine, the Middle East and Africa, citing uncertainty over how Wagner will continue to operate.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • US state secretary says 1943 Bialystok ghetto uprising in Poland was an act of bravery and dignity

    US state secretary says 1943 Bialystok ghetto uprising in Poland was an act of bravery and dignity

    [ad_1]

    WARSAW, Poland — U.S. State Secretary Antony Blinken sent a message Wednesday marking the anniversary in Poland of the 1943 Bialystok ghetto uprising, saying it was an act of “bravery” that reaffirmed the dignity of Jews during the Holocaust.

    Blinken’s mother, Judith Pisar, the widow of one of the ghetto survivors, Samuel Pisar, the state secretary’s late stepfather, took part in the observances in Poland’s eastern city of Bialystok. U.S. Ambassador to Poland Mark Brzezinski also attended.

    “I see it as one of countless acts of resistance by Jews in ghettos and Nazi German concentration camps across Europe to reject their dehumanization, to reaffirm their dignity,” Blinken said in a prerecorded message.

    It was an act “not of futility but of bravery,” he said, even though “survival was not on the cards” when the uprising began on the night of Aug. 16, 1943.

    For its leaders, the revolt was to “determine how, not whether they would die,” Blinken said.

    The participants, who included city authorities and residents, honored the fighters and victims of the revolt, which was the second biggest single act of Jewish resistance against the Nazi Germans, after the April 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

    Both revolts were brutally crushed and the survivors were sent to death camps.

    Before the war, Jews constituted some 43% of Bialystok’s population of 100,000. An estimated 60,000 Jews had gone through the ghetto that occupying Nazi Germany had built in the city, until the uprising.

    Historians estimate that no more than 200 Jews fled the ghetto, among them Samuel Pisar, who was 13 at the time. His entire family perished in the Holocaust. Pisar died in 2015 in New York.

    “As we lose more and more survivors, the responsibility to relay and grapple with the history passes to all of us,” Blinken said, stressing that for Pisar, the words “never again” were not enough of a protection against war and violence.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Wagner mercenaries in Belarus move closer to the Polish border, Poland’s prime minister says

    Wagner mercenaries in Belarus move closer to the Polish border, Poland’s prime minister says

    [ad_1]

    The Polish prime minister says that over 100 mercenaries belonging to the Russian-linked Wagner group in Belarus have moved close to the border with Poland

    FILE – In this grab taken from video released by Belarus’ Defense Ministry on Thursday, July 20, 2023, Belarusian soldiers of the Special Operations Forces (SOF) and mercenary fighters from Wagner private military company attend the weeklong maneuvers conducted at a firing range near the border city of Brest, Belarus. The Polish prime minister says that over 100 mercenaries belonging to the Russian-linked Wagner group in Belarus have moved close to the border with Poland. Mateusz Morawiecki said at a news conference Saturday, July 29, 2023 that the mercenaries had moved close to the Suwalki Gap, a strategic stretch of Polish territory situated between Belarus and Kaliningrad, a Russian territory separated from the mainland. (Belarus’ Defense Ministry via AP, File)

    The Associated Press

    WARSAW, Poland — Over 100 mercenaries belonging to the Russian-linked Wagner group in Belarus have moved close to the border with Poland, the Polish prime minister said Saturday.

    Mateusz Morawiecki said at a news conference that the mercenaries had moved close to the Suwalki Gap, a strategic stretch of Polish territory situated between Belarus and Kaliningrad, a Russian territory separated from the mainland.

    Poland is a member of both the European Union and NATO, and it has worried about its security with Russian ally Belarus and Ukraine on its eastern border.

    Those fears have grown since Wagner group mercenaries arrived in Belarus since the group’s short-lived rebellion earlier this summer.

    The Poland-Belarus border has already been a tense place for a couple of years, ever since large numbers of immigrants from the Middle East and Africa began arriving, seeking to enter the EU by crossing into Poland, as well as Lithuania.

    Poland’s government accuses Russia and Belarus of using the migrants to destabilize Poland and other EU countries. It calls the migration a form of hybrid warfare, and has responded by building a high wall along part of its border with Belarus.

    “Now the situation becomes even more dangerous,” Morawiecki told reporters.

    He added that “this is certainly a step towards a further hybrid attack on Polish territory.”

    Morawiecki spoke during a visit to an arms factory in Gliwice, in southern Poland, where Leopard tanks used by the Ukrainian army are being repaired.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Senate rebukes Wisconsin congressman who yelled vulgarities at high school-age pages

    Senate rebukes Wisconsin congressman who yelled vulgarities at high school-age pages

    [ad_1]

    WASHINGTON — A freshman Republican congressman from Wisconsin yelled and cursed at high school-aged Senate pages during a late night tour of the Capitol this week, eliciting a bipartisan rebuke from Senate leaders Thursday evening.

    Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who represents western Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, used a profanity to describe them as lazy and and another to order them off the floor of the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday night, according to a report in the online political newsletter PunchBowl News. The pages were laying down to take photos in the Rotunda, according to the publication

    In a statement responding to the report, Van Orden did not deny it — and he doubled down on the sentiment.

    “I have long said our nation’s Capitol is a symbol of the sacrifice our servicemen and women have made for this country and should never be treated like a frat house common room,” Van Orden said. “Threatening a congressman with bad press to excuse poor behavior is a reminder of everything that’s wrong with Washington. Luckily, bad press has never bothered me and if it’s the price I pay to stand up for what’s right, then so be it.”

    Van Orden, a former Navy SEAL who was outside of the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, also appeared to embrace the presence of alcohol in his office that same evening after images were posted on social media showing bottles of liquor and beer cans on a desk in his office. Van Orden said on X, the platform previously known as Twitter, that the alcohol was from constituents.

    And his spokeswoman Anna Kelly posted: “As the Congressman says, once you cross the threshold to our office, you are in Wisconsin!” She followed that with a beer mug emoji.

    On Thursday evening, just before the Senate left for its August recess, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., rebuked Van Orden’s behavior and thanked the pages, high school-age students who serve as helpers and messengers around the Senate. Several of the pages were sitting on the Senate floor at the time, smiling and nodding as dozens of senators stood and gave them a standing ovation.

    Without mentioning Van Orden by name, Schumer said he was “shocked” to hear about the behavior of a member of the House Republican majority and “further shocked at his refusal to apologize to these young people.” He noted that Thursday was the final day for this class of pages.

    “They’re here when we need them,” Schumer said. “And they have served this institution with grace.”

    McConnell said he associated himself with Schumer’s words. “Everybody on this side of the aisle feels exactly the same way,” he said.

    Van Orden was elected to Congress in 2022 after a losing bid in 2020. He has insisted that he did not enter the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but that didn’t stop fellow Wisconsin Rep. Mark Pocan, a Democrat, from invoking the Jan. 6 attack in criticizing Van Orden. Pocan said the Capitol should be respected.

    “Wonder if he told that to his fellow insurrectionists, who were beating police officers on the same ground?” Pocan said on X.

    Rebecca Cooke, a Democrat who is running to challenge Van Orden in 2024, called him an embarrassment and a hypocrite.

    “We should be encouraging youth engagement in our democratic process, not using vulgar language towards them,” Cooke said.

    Cooke called Van Orden a “serial harasser” and referenced an incident in June 2021 when Van Orden was upset about a display of LGBTQ+ books at a southwestern Wisconsin library and yelled at a teenager who was working there.

    “For someone to perhaps drunkenly, and definitely belligerently, yell at these kids for enjoying our nation’s Capitol is just stupid,” Pocan said Friday. “He would be best to say it was stupid and just move on.”

    ___

    Bauer reported from Madison, Wisconsin.

    [ad_2]

    Source link