Category: Regulations & Security

Such attacks, once common in the Iraqi capital, have become rarer in recent years as U.S.-backed Iraqi forces have largely defeated the Islamic State.

 

— NYT: Top Stories

The white supremacist rally in 2017 prefigured the rise of right-wing violence in President Trump’s name. Now, as President Biden calls for national unity, residents say it requires accountability first.

 

— NYT: Top Stories

 

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — New satellite images of a refugee camp in Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region show more than 400 structures have been badly damaged in what a research group believes is the latest “intentional attack” by fighters.

The report by the U.K.-based DX Open Network nonprofit, shared with The Associated Press, says “it is likely that the fire events of 16 January are yet another episode in a series of military incursions on the camp as reported by (the United Nations refugee agency).”

The Shimelba camp is one of four that hosted 96,000 refugees from nearby Eritrea when fighting erupted in early November between Ethiopian forces and those of the defiant Tigray region. The fighting has swept through the camps and two of them, including Shimelba, remain inaccessible to aid workers. Many refugees have fled.

On Thursday, U.N. refugee chief Filippo Grandi cited recent satellite imagery of fires and other destruction at the two inaccessible camps as “concrete indications of major violations of international law.”

On Sunday the U.N. refugee agency urged that it be given access to the camps.

“Until November, 8,700 refugees were registered in Shimelba. We have no information on how many refugees were still in the camp last week,” U.N. refugee agency spokesman Chris Melzer said in an email. “We still have no access to the two northern camps, Shimelba and Hitsats (25,248 refugees registered in November). We demand access since the refugees are without supplies for two and a half months now and we are extremely concerned. We also saw satellite pictures and heard frightening reports. But since we don’t have access we cannot confirm them.”

The new report says the satellite images show “smoldering ruins, blackening of structures and collapsed roofs.” The structures, it said, “match the profile of mud-brick dwellings constructed by the refugees themselves. The attackers likely split into multiple groups going door to door to set fires inside buildings,” consistent with previous attacks on the Hitsats camp, which also is inaccessible.

Neither the U.N. nor DX Open Network has blamed anyone for the attacks, but the presence of troops from Eritrea, a bitter enemy of the Tigray region’s now-fugitive leaders, has caused alarm. Grandi noted “many reliable reports and firsthand accounts” of abuses including the forced return of refugees to Eritrea.

The day after Grandi’s statement, Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel tweeted that “UNHCR seems to indulge, yet again, in another bout of gratuitous & irresponsible smear campaigns against Eritrea.” He said Eritrea rejects the “forced repatriation of ‘refugees.'”

Eritrea has been described by human rights groups as one of the world’s most repressive countries. Thousands of people have fled the country over the years to avoid a system of military conscription.

Fighting continues in parts of the Tigray region. Thousands of people have been killed and more than 2 million displaced.

 

— Associated Press

Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos Zepeda returned to Mexico last year after the Department of Justice abruptly dropped drug-trafficking and corruption charges.

 

— NYT: Top Stories

 

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — As rioters laid siege to the U.S. Capitol, the seat of American democracy became a melting pot of extremist groups: militia members, white supremacists, paramilitary organizations, anti-maskers and fanatical supporters of President Donald Trump, standing shoulder to shoulder in rage.

Experts say it was the culmination of years of increasing radicalization and partisanship, combined with a growing fascination with paramilitary groups and a global pandemic. And they warn that the armed insurrection that left five people dead and shook the country could be just the beginning.

“We look at it like a conveyor belt of radicalization,” said Devin Burghart, executive director of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights. “Once they step on that conveyor belt, they’re inundated with propaganda that moves them along that path until they’re willing to take up arms.”

Photographs and video of the Capitol siege showed people wearing attire with symbols associated with the anti-government Three Percenters movement and the Oath Keepers, a loosely organized group of right-wing extremists.

Many of those who stormed the Capitol were wearing clothes or holding signs adorned with symbols of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which centers on the baseless belief that Trump is waging a secret campaign against the “deep state” and a cabal of sex-trafficking cannibals. One of the intruders was wearing a “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt, a reference to the Nazi death camp.

Those who monitor online chatter say the threat of more violence by far-right fringe groups hasn’t abated, though it has been tougher to track since the social media platform Parler, a haven for right-wing extremists, was booted off the internet.

“We’re certainly not out of the woods yet. I’m afraid that we’re going to have to be prepared for some worst-case scenarios for a while,” said Amy Cooter, a senior lecturer in sociology at Vanderbilt University who studies U.S. militia groups.

The FBI is warning of plans for armed protests at all 50 state capitals and in Washington in the days leading up to President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration next Wednesday. Cooter believes smaller gatherings at state capitals are a greater threat than a large, centrally organized event in Washington, given the heightened security there.

How many extremists are out there is unclear. Individual fringe groups tend to be small, with the largest claiming hundreds of members, but countless others have been swept up in the fury of late.

To understand the mix of extremists in the Capitol melee, it helps to look at history.

Much of the modern militia movement was a reaction to the push for tougher gun control laws in the 1990s. An 11-day standoff that left three people dead on Idaho’s Ruby Ridge in 1992 galvanized the movement, as did the disaster in Waco, Texas, the following year, when 76 people died in a fire after a 51-day standoff at the Branch Davidian cult compound.

A decade later, Cliven Bundy and his sons Ryan and Ammon Bundy engaged in armed standoffs with the federal government, first in a fight over grazing rights on federal land in Nevada in 2014, then in a 40-day occupation of a national wildlife refuge in Oregon in 2016. Those standoffs drew the sympathies of some Western ranchers and farmers who feared they were losing the ability to prosper financially.

Meanwhile, America’s white supremacy movement — as old as the country itself and energized by the civil rights movement of the 1960s — used every opportunity to stoke racism and increase recruitment. Within the last two decades, nationalists and white supremacists were especially successful in leveraging anti-immigration sentiment and the backlash over Barack Obama’s election as the nation’s first black president in 2008.

Some who follow such movements say the coronavirus pandemic provided the perfect recruitment opportunity.

Militias helped distribute surplus farm produce to the unemployed. Neo-Nazis pushed conspiracy claims that the government was trying to limit “herd immunity.” An anti-government group launched by Ammon Bundy last spring called People’s Rights held an Easter church service in defiance of a lockdown order in Idaho.

“That was the moment that sent a message nationwide that it was OK to take an insurrectionist posture toward COVID guidelines — and from that moment you saw this take hold across the country,” said Burghart, whose organization published an October report on the People’s Rights network.

While previously those upset about COVID-19 rules would complain online, suddenly individuals were defying authorities by opening their gyms or refusing to wear masks in very confrontational ways. For these individuals, social media accelerated a radicalization process that normally takes years into just a few months, fueled by the powerlessness many felt amid COVID-19 shutdowns.

“You had all of these kind of small interventions to try to fight against any kind of common-sense health restrictions,” Burghart said. “And in that moment you saw, simultaneously, militia activists getting involved in the COVID struggle and COVID insurrectionists taking up the militia posture and wanting to get involved with militia groups.”

The danger could intensify. The Capitol insurrection both further normalized the idea of violent government overthrow and allowed extremist groups to network with a broader population, said Lindsay Schubiner, an expert in extremism with the Western States Center.

As those groups continue to train and expand — many already offer instruction in weapons, first aid, food storage and ham radios — the risk of “lone wolf” actions also increases, she said, with members taking matters into their own hands when they feel their group has not gone far enough.

Stewart Rhodes, an Army veteran who founded the Oath Keepers in 2009, had been saying for weeks around the election that his group was preparing for a civil war and was ready to take orders from Trump. The group recruits current and former law enforcement officers and military personnel.

During a Nov. 10 appearance on far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars show, Rhodes said he had “good men on the ground already” in the Washington area who were “armed, prepared to go in if the president calls us up.”

“In case they attempt to remove the president illegally, we will step in and stop it,” he said.

Users on militia forums cheered on the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol and hailed them as patriots, according to a review of social media posts by the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. Many saw the attack as a call to arms.

Authorities have arrested more than 100 people on charges linked to the Capitol siege, but court documents don’t publicly identify any of them as members of a militia-style group, according to an Associated Press review of records.

Less than a week after the riot, several armed men in tactical gear with “Texas Militia” labels on their combat fatigues greeted Trump as he arrived in Texas on Tuesday. Texas GOP chairman Allen West, a former Florida congressman, posed with the group for a photo.

Stopping extremist groups may be impossible, but pushing those groups further to the political margins is possible, Schubiner said.

“Everyone who believes in inclusive democracy and does not believe in political violence needs to come out and say so strongly, and then back that up with actions,” she said.

___

Flaccus reported from Portland, Oregon and Kunzelman reported from College Park, Maryland. Associated Press writer Paul Weber in Austin, Texas contributed to this report.

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— Associated Press

 

LAMEZIA TERME, Italy (AP) — A trial with more than 320 defendants began Wednesday in southern Italy against the ‘ndrangheta crime syndicate, arguably the world’s richest criminal organization that quietly amassed power as the Sicilian Mafia lost influence.

Expected to take at least a year, the trial is taking place in a specially constructed high-security bunker on the sprawling grounds of an industrial park in Calabria, the “toe” of the Italian peninsula.

Prosecutors hope the trial will deliver a harsh blow to the ‘ndrangheta, the Calabria-based mob organization that has exploited tens of billions of dollars in cocaine revenues over decades to extend its criminal reach across Europe and into several continents.

Anti-mafia Prosecutor Nicola Gratteri told reporters as he arrived at the bunker that the trial, targeting alleged members of a dozen crime clans as well as local officials, businessmen and politicians who were allegedly in cahoots with mobsters, marked a turning point.

“Decades ago, people would tremble when talking about Cosa Nostra or when using the word ’ndrangheta, something they would say only in a hidden room, around the fireplace, whispering,” said Gratteri, who was born in Calabria and who has recalled how he played and attended school with boys who later grew up to become ‘ndranghetisti, as the syndicate’s ranks are known. “Today we are beginning to speak out in the open sunlight.”

Heartening to him and others in Italy who are tackling the ‘ndrangheta as well as other Italian crime syndicates are the growing departures from the past, when few dared to provoke mobsters’ retaliation by reporting attempts to demand “protection” money from businesses large and small and other forms of intimidation.

“We have been seeing a spike in complaints by businessmen, bullied citizens, victims of usury, people who for years have been under the pall of the ’ndrangheta,” Gratteri said.

Investigators say the ’ndrangheta has established bases in much of western, northern and central Europe, Australia, North and South America and is active as well in Africa.

The first three hours of the trial’s opening day were consumed by the court’s formal rollcall of the defendants and their lawyers. Defendants who are jailed, due to convictions in other cases, could follow the proceedings by a video conference.

The trial grew out of an investigation of 12 clans linked to a convicted ‘ndrangheta boss. That figure is Luigi Mancuso, who served 19 years in Italian prison for his role in leading what investigators allege is one of the ‘ndrangheta’s most powerful crime families, based in the town of Vibo Valentia.

The prosecution has indicated it hopes to call more than 900 witnesses.

Among the accusations being considered by the court are drug and arms trafficking, extortion and Mafia association, a term used in Italy’s penal code for members of organized crime groups. Others are charged with complicity with the ’ndrangheta without actually being a member.

Some 325 defendants were ordered to be tried in the court at Lamezia Terme, while some 90 more defendants in the investigation chose to have a fast-track trial, which begins later this month in Calabria. In yet another outgrowth of the same probe, a trial involving five murders begins in February elsewhere in Calabria.

The Lamezia Terme bunker is so vast that a score of video screens has been anchored to the ceiling so participants view the proceedings. There is a sea of tables for 600 lawyers to work on, with microphones and chairs safely distanced to respect COVID-19 health rules.

While the numbers are impressive, this week’s trial isn’t Italy’s largest one against mobsters.

In 1986, in Palermo, in a similarly specially constructed bunker, 475 alleged members of Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian Mafia, went on trial, resulting in more than 300 convictions and 19 life sentences. That trial helped reveal much of the brutal methods and murderous strategies of the top mob bosses on the island, including sensational killings that bloodied the Palermo area during years of power struggles.

In contrast, this trial against the ‘ndrangheta aims to get convictions for alleged connivance among mobsters and local politicians, public officials, businessmen and members of secret lodges in an indication of how deeply rooted the syndicate is in the territory.

Based almost entirely on blood ties, the ‘ndrangheta for decades was practically immune to turncoats. But their ranks are starting to become more substantial. Among those turning state’s evidence in the Lamezia Terme trial is a relative of Mancuso. Several dozen informants in the case come from the ‘ndrangheta, but others are from the former ranks of Cosa Nostra in Sicily and could be called to testify.

Awash in cocaine trafficking revenues, the ‘ndrangheta has gobbled up hotels, restaurants, pharmacies, car dealerships and other businesses throughout Italy, especially in Rome and the affluent north, criminal investigations have revealed.

The buying spree in past years spread heavily across Europe, as the ’ndrangheta sought to launder illicit revenues but also to make ’’clean” money by running legitimate businesses, including in the tourism and hospitality sectors, according to investigators.

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Frances D’Emilio reported from Rome.

— Associated Press

The mob that rampaged the halls of Congress included infamous white supremacists and conspiracy theorists.

— NYT: Top Stories

Global leaders watched live as a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, and many saw it as a warning to global democracies, placing the blame squarely on President Trump.

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U.S. officials want the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, to face charges of violating the Espionage Act. But a judge in London ruled that he was at extreme risk of suicide.

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