World
Brazil authorities seek to punish pro-Bolsonaro rioters
Brazilian authorities were picking up pieces and investigating Monday after thousands of ex-President Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed Congress, the Supreme Court and presidential palace then trashed the nation’s highest seats of power.
The protesters were seeking military intervention to either restore the far-right Bolsonaro to power or oust the newly inaugurated leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in scenes of chaos and destruction reminiscent of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Rioters donning the green and yellow of the national flag on Sunday broke windows, toppled furniture, hurled computers and printers to the ground. They punctured a massive Emiliano Di Cavalcanti painting in five places, overturned the U-shaped table at which Supreme Court justices convene, ripped a door off one justice’s office and vandalized an iconic statue outside the court. The monumental buildings’ interiors were left in states of ruin.
In a news conference late Sunday, Brazil’s minister of institutional relations said the buildings would be inspected for evidence including fingerprints and images to hold people to account, and that the rioters apparently intended to spark similar such actions nationwide. Justice Minister Flávio Dino said the acts amounted to terrorism and coup-mongering and that authorities have begun tracking those who paid for the buses that transported protesters to the capital.
“They will not succeed in destroying Brazilian democracy. We need to say that fully, with all firmness and conviction,” Dino said. “We will not accept the path of criminality to carry out political fights in Brazil. A criminal is treated like a criminal.”
So far, 300 people have been arrested, the federal district’s civil police said on Twitter.
In the months that followed Bolsonaro’s Oct. 30 electoral defeat, Brazil was on edge – leery of any avenue he might pursue to cling to power. Bolsonaro had been stoking belief among his hardcore supporters that the electronic voting system was prone to fraud — though he never presented any evidence. And his lawmaker son Eduardo Bolsonaro held several meetings with Trump, Trump’s longtime ally Steve Bannon and his senior campaign adviser, Jason Miller.
Results from Brazil’s election — the closest in over three decades — were quickly recognized by politicians across the spectrum, including some Bolsonaro allies, as well as dozens of governments. And Bolsonaro surprised nearly everyone by promptly fading from view. He neither conceded defeat nor emphatically cried fraud, though he and his party submitted a request to nullify millions of votes that was swiftly dismissed.
Brazilians have used electronic voting since 1996. Election security experts consider such systems less secure than hand-marked paper ballots because they leave no auditable paper trail. Brazil’s system is, however, closely scrutinized and domestic authorities and international observers have never found evidence of it being exploited to commit fraud.
Read more: Pro-Bolsonaro rioters storm Brazil’s top government offices
Still, Bolsonaro’s supporters refused to accept results. They blocked roads and camped outside military buildings, urging the armed forces to intervene. Protests were overwhelmingly peaceful, but isolated threats of terrorism — including a bomb found on a fuel truck headed to Brasilia’s airport — had prompted security concerns.
Two days before Lula’s Jan. 1 inauguration, Bolsonaro flew to the U.S. and took up temporary residence in Orlando. Many Brazilians expressed relief that, while he declined to participate in the transition of power, his absence allowed it to occur without incident.
“Bolsonarism mimics the same strategies as Trumpism. Our Jan. 8 — an unprecedented manifestation in Brazilian politics — is clearly copied from Jan. 6 in the Capitol,” said Paulo Calmon, a political science professor at the University of Brasilia. “Today’s sad episodes represent yet another attempt to destabilize democracy and demonstrate that the authoritarian, populist radicalism of Brazil’s extreme right remains active under the command of former President Bolsonaro, the ‘Trump of Latin America.’”
U.S. President Joe Biden tweeted that the riots were an “assault on democracy and on the peaceful transfer of power in Brazil,” and that he looked forward to continue working with Lula.
In a news conference from Sao Paulo state, Lula read a freshly signed decree for the federal government to assume control of security in the federal district. He said that the so-called “fascist fanatics,” as well as those who financed their activities, must be punished, and also accused Bolsonaro of encouraging their uprising.
Bolsonaro repudiated the president’s accusation late Sunday. Writing on Twitter, he said peaceful protest is part of democracy, but vandalism and invasion of public buildings are “exceptions to the rule.” He made no specific mention of the protesters’ actions in Brasilia.
Read more: Brazil's Lula sworn in, vows accountability and rebuilding
“He is evidently the intellectual mentor of what is happening, so he cannot dissociate from it,” said Mario Sérgio Lima, political analyst at Medley Advisors. “These groups were created by him, by the radicalism he imposed on politics. There is no way to undo that. ... It seems his group has already crossed the Rubicon.”
Unlike the 2021 attack in the U.S., few officials would have been working in the top government buildings on a Sunday. And videos showed limited presence of the capital’s military police. That led many in Brazil to question whether the police had ignored abundant warnings, underestimated their abilities or had been somehow complicit.
One video showed a group of protesters pushing through a police barricade with limited struggle, and only a few officers deploying pepper spray. Another showed officers standing by as protestors stormed Congress, including one recording images on his phone.
“This was a gross error by the federal district’s government. It was a tragedy foretold,” said Thiago de Aragão, director of strategy at Brasilia-based politican consultancy Arko Advice. “Everyone knew they (the protesters) were coming to Brasilia. The expectation was that the federal district’s government was going to mount a response to protect the capital. They didn’t do any of that.”
Lula said at his news conference there was “incompetence or bad faith” on the part of police, and he promised some would be punished.
Federal District Gov. Ibaneis Rocha confirmed on Twitter he had fired the capital city’s head of public security, Anderson Torres. Local media reported that Torres is in Orlando for vacation, and that he denied having met with Bolsonaro there.
“Two years since Jan. 6, Trump’s legacy continues to poison our hemisphere,” U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, who chairs the Senate’s foreign relations committee, tweeted, adding that he blamed Bolsonaro for inciting the acts. “Protecting democracy & holding malign actors to account is essential.”
China holds large-scale joint strike drills aimed at Taiwan
The Chinese military held large-scale joint combat strike drills starting Sunday, sending war planes and navy vessels toward Taiwan, both the Chinese and Taiwanese defense ministries said.
The exercises coincided with the visit of a group of German lawmakers who landed in Taiwan on Monday morning. Leading the delegation is the Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, who leads the German Parliament’s Defense Committee.
Read more: China sends 71 warplanes, 7 ships toward Taiwan in 24 hours
The German lawmakers will meet with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, as well as Taiwan’s National Security Council head and the Mainland Affairs Council, which handles issues related to China.
China has stepped up its pressure on Taiwan’s military in recent years by sending warplanes or navy vessels on an almost-daily basis toward the self-ruled island. China claims sovereignty over the island, which split from the mainland in 1949 after a civil war.
Sunday's exercises have continued into Monday, Taiwan’s defense ministry said, monitoring Chinese warplanes and navy vessels on its missile systems.
China’s actions “have severely disrupted the peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits and surrounding waters,” the ministry said.
Over the course of 24 hours between 6 a.m. Sunday to 6 a.m. Monday morning, China's People's Liberation Army flew 57 warplanes and four ships toward Taiwan, Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense said in a statement Monday morning. Twenty-eight of those planes crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait, an unofficial boundary that both sides had previously stood by.
Read more: 'Taiwan question must be resolved by the Chinese': Xi says at 20th CPC Congress
China announced the drills around 11 p.m. Sunday, saying their “primary target was to practice land-strikes and sea assaults,” according to a statement from Shi Yi, a spokesperson for the PLA's Eastern Theater Command.
At the end of December, China sent a record 71 planes and 7 ships toward Taiwan, the largest such scale exercise in 2022.
Taiwan will hold its annual two-day military drills starting Wednesday. The exercise ahead of Lunar New Year holidays is aimed at showcasing its defense capabilities.
Pro-Bolsonaro rioters storm Brazil’s top government offices
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 99 (AP/UNB) — Supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro who refuse to accept his election defeat stormed Congress, the Supreme Court and presidential palace Sunday, a week after the inauguration of his leftist rival, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Thousands of demonstrators bypassed security barricades, climbed on roofs, smashed windows and invaded all three buildings, which were believed to be largely vacant on the weekend. Some of the demonstrators called for a military intervention to either restore the far-right Bolsonaro to power or oust Lula from the presidency.
Read more: Brazil's Lula sworn in, vows accountability and rebuilding
Hours went by before control of the buildings on Brasilia’s vast Three Powers Square was reestablished, with hundreds of the participants arrested.
In a news conference from Sao Paulo state, Lula accused Bolsonaro of encouraging the uprising by those he termed “fascist fanatics,” and he read a freshly signed decree for the federal government to take control of security in the federal district.
“There is no precedent for what they did and these people need to be punished,” Lula said.
TV channel Globo News showed protesters wearing the green and yellow colors of the national flag that also have come to symbolize the nation’s conservative movement and were adopted by Bolsonaro’s supporters.
The former president has repeatedly sparred with Supreme Court justices, and the room where they convene was trashed by the rioters. They sprayed fire hoses inside the Congress building and ransacked offices at the presidential palace. Windows were broken in all of the buildings.
Bolsonaro, who flew to Florida ahead of Lula’s inauguration, repudiated the president’s accusation late Sunday. He wrote on Twitter that peaceful protest is part of democracy but vandalism and invasion of public buildings are “exceptions to the rule.”
Police fired tear gas in their efforts to recover the buildings, and were shown on television in the late afternoon marching protesters down a ramp from the presidential palace with their hands secured behind their backs. By early evening, with authorities’ control of the buildings restored, Justice Minister Flavio Dino said in a news conference that roughly 200 people had been arrested and officers were firing more tear gas to drive away lingering protesters.
But with the damage already done, many in Brazil were questioning how the police had ignored abundant warnings, were unprepared or were somehow complicit.
Lula said at his news conference there was “incompetence or bad faith″ on the part of police, and that they had been likewise complacent when Bolsonaro supporters rioted in the capital weeks ago. He promised those officers would be punished and expelled from the corps.
The incident recalled the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump. Political analysts have warned for months that a similar storming was a possibility in Brazil, given that Bolsonaro has sown doubt about the reliability of the nation’s electronic voting system — without any evidence. The results were recognized as legitimate by politicians from across the spectrum, including some Bolsonaro allies, as well as dozens of foreign governments.
Unlike the 2021 attack in the U.S., few officials were likely to have been working in the Brazilian Congress and Supreme Court on a Sunday.
U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters that the riots in Brazil were “outrageous.” His national security adviser Jake Sullivan went a step further on Twitter and said the U.S. “condemns any effort to undermine democracy in Brazil.”
Biden later tweeted that he looked forward to continuing to work with Lula, calling the riots an “assault on democracy and on the peaceful transfer of power in Brazil.”
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly tweeted: “The violent attempts to undermine democracy in Brazil are unjustifiable. President @LulaOficial and the government of Brazil have the full support of the UK.”
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also said on Twitter that he condemned the assault on Brazil’s democratic institutions but he was confident “the will of the Brazilian people and the country’s institutions” would be respected.
Earlier videos on social media showed a limited presence of the capital’s military police; one showed officers standing by as people flooded into Congress, with one using his phone to record images. The capital’s security secretariat didn’t respond to a request from The Associated Press for comment about the relative absence of the police.
“Brazilian authorities had two years to learn the lessons from the Capitol invasion and to prepare themselves for something similar in Brazil,” said Maurício Santoro, political science professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. “Local security forces in Brasilia failed in a systematic way to prevent and to respond to extremist actions in the city. And the new federal authorities, such as the ministers of justice and of defense, were not able to act in a decisive way.”
Federal District Gov. Ibaneis Rocha confirmed on Twitter he had fired the capital city’s head of public security, Anderson Torres. Local media reported that Torres is currently in the U.S.
The office of Lula’s attorney general asked the Supreme Court to order Torres’ imprisonment.
Bolsonaro supporters have been protesting Lula’s electoral win since Oct. 30, blocking roads, setting vehicles on fire and gathering outside military buildings, urging the armed forces to intervene. The head of Brazil’s electoral authority rejected the request from Bolsonaro and his political party to nullify ballots cast on most electronic voting machines.
“Two years since Jan. 6, Trump’s legacy continues to poison our hemisphere,” U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, who chairs the Senate’s foreign relations committee, tweeted, adding that he blamed Bolsonaro for inciting the acts. “Protecting democracy & holding malign actors to account is essential.”
Prince Harry says book an attempt to “own my story” after 38 years of “spin and distortion” by others
Prince Harry defended his decision to publish a memoir that lays bare rifts inside Britain’s royal family, saying it’s an attempt to “own my story” after 38 years of “spin and distortion” by others.
Harry spoke to Britain’s ITV and CBS’s “60 Minutes” to promote his book, “Spare,” which has generated incendiary headlines with its details of private emotional turmoil and bitter family resentments.
In interviews broadcast Sunday, Harry accused members of the royal family of getting “into bed with the devil” to gain favorable tabloid coverage, claimed his stepmother Camilla, the queen consort, had leaked private conversations to the media and said his family was “complicit” in his wife Meghan’s “pain and suffering.”
Read more: Prince Harry’s claim he killed 25 in Afghanistan draws anger, worry
Harry said Camilla had to rehabilitate her image with the British people after her longtime affair with his father and that he was one of the victims of her efforts for better coverage in the tabloids.
“That made her dangerous because of the connections that she was forging within the British press,” he told CBS. “There was open willingness on both sides to trade information. And with a family built on hierarchy, and with her, on the way to being queen consort, there was gonna be people or bodies left in the street.”
He repeated his claim on ITV that there was “concern” in the royal family about his unborn child’s skin color after he married biracial American actress Meghan Markle, and said the British monarchy should address its attitudes to race.
Harry and Meghan first mentioned the incident during an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021. They have not identified the family member who expressed concern.
Read more: Prince Harry says William called Meghan “difficult, rude and abrasive” before physical attack
Harry said the episode was an example of unconscious bias rather than racism, adding that the royal family needed to “learn and grow” in order to be “part of the solution rather than part of the problem.”
“Otherwise unconscious bias then moves into the category of racism,” Harry said. He said that “especially when you are the monarchy – you have a responsibility, and quite rightly people hold you to a higher standard than others.”
He said a recent incident in which a former lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth II asked a Black British woman where she was “really” from was “a very good example of the environment within the institution.”
“Spare” explores Harry’s grief at the death of his mother in 1997, and his long-simmering resentment at the role of royal “spare,” overshadowed by the “heir” — older brother Prince William. He recounts arguments and a physical altercation with William, reveals how he lost his virginity (in a field) and describes using cocaine and cannabis.
He also says he killed 25 Taliban fighters while serving as an Apache helicopter pilot in Afghanistan — a claim criticized by both the Taliban and British military veterans.
Harry told ITV that he cried only once after his mother’s death — at her burial. He said he feels guilt about not showing emotion when he and William greeted crowds of mourners outside Kensington Palace, Diana’s London home.
In the book Harry blames his family’s stiff-upper-lip ethos, saying he had “learned too well … the family maxim that crying is not an option.” The Associated Press purchased a Spanish-language copy of the book in advance of its publication around the world on Tuesday.
“There were 50,000 bouquets of flowers to our mother and there we were shaking people’s hands, smiling,” Harry told ITV journalist Tom Bradby. “I’ve seen the videos, right, I looked back over it all. And the wet hands that we were shaking, we couldn’t understand why their hands were wet, but it was all the tears that they were wiping away.
“Everyone thought and felt like they knew our mum, and the two closest people to her, the two most loved people by her, were unable to show any emotion in that moment.”
Harry told “60 Minutes” that it took him over a decade to accept that his mother was dead. He and his brother often discussed the notion that she had gone into hiding and would reappear later.
“I had huge amounts of hope,” he said.
It was only after reading the police report of his mother’s death, seeing photos from the scene and later — at the age of 23 — following the same route into the Paris tunnel where his mother died when her driver crashed while evading paparazzi that her death became a reality, he said.
“Spare” is the latest in a string of public pronouncements by Harry and Meghan since they quit royal life and moved to California in 2020, citing what they saw as the media’s racist treatment of Meghan and a lack of support from the palace. It follows the Winfrey interview and a six-part Netflix documentary released last month.
In the ghostwritten memoir, Harry, 38, describes the couple’s acrimonious split from the royal family in early 2020, after their request for a part-time royal role was rejected.
Harry contrasts the withdrawal of the couple’s taxpayer-funded security with the case of his uncle, Prince Andrew, who was removed as a working royal over his friendship with the U.S. sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Last year, Andrew settled a lawsuit from a woman who accused him of sexually abusing her while she traveled with financier Epstein when she was 17. Andrew paid an undisclosed sum as part of the settlement, but didn’t admit wrongdoing.
Harry alleges that no one considered removing Andrew’s security despite the “shameful scandal.”
The TV interviews are just two of several given by Harry that are set to heap more pressure on the royal family. He is also appearing on “Good Morning America” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
Royal officials haven’t commented on any of the allegations, though allies have pushed back on the claims, largely anonymously.
Veteran British journalist Jonathan Dimbleby, a biographer and friend of King Charles III, said Saturday that Harry’s revelations were the type “that you’d expect … from a sort of B-list celebrity,” and that the king would be pained and frustrated by them.
In the “60 Minutes” interview, Harry denied that his description of his brother’s “alarming baldness” and fading resemblance to their mother as he aged was harsh and said his book was not intended to hurt his family.
While he said that he hadn’t spoken with his father or brother in a while, he hopes to find peace with them. Harry told ITV that he wants reconciliation with the royal family, but “the ball is in their court.”
“They’ve shown absolutely no willingness to reconcile,” he said.
Travelers rush to take advantage of China reopening
After years of separation from his wife in mainland China, Hong Kong resident Cheung Seng-bun made sure to be among the first in line following the reopening Sunday of border crossing points.
The ability of residents of the semi-autonomous southern Chinese city to cross over is one of the most visible signs of China’s easing of border restrictions imposed almost three years ago, with travelers arriving from abroad no longer required to undergo expensive and time-consuming quarantines.
That comes even as the virus continues to spread in China amid what critics say is a lack of transparency from Beijing.
“I’m hurrying to get back to her,” Cheung, lugging a heavy suitcase, told The Associated Press as he prepared to cross at Lok Ma Chau station, which was steadily filling with eager travelers.
Those crossing between Hong Kong and mainland China, however, are still required to show a negative COVID-19 test taken within the last 48 hours — a measure China has protested when imposed by other countries.
Hong Kong has been hit hard by the virus, and its land and sea border checkpoints with the mainland have been largely closed for almost three years. Despite the risk of new infections, the reopening that will allow tens of thousands of people who have made prior online bookings to cross each day is expected to provide a much-needed boost to Hong Kong’s tourism and retail sectors.
On a visit to the station Sunday morning, Hong Kong’s Chief Executive John Lee said the sides would continue to expand the number of crossing points from the current seven to the full 14.
Read more: Travelers from China will need to undergo COVID-19 testing in the US
“The goal is to get back as quickly as possible to the pre-epidemic normal life,” Lee told reporters. “We want to get cooperation between the two sides back on track.”
Communist Party newspaper Global Times quoted Tan Luming, a port official in Shenzhen on the border with Hong Kong, saying about 200 passengers were expected to take the ferry to Hong Kong, while another 700 were due to travel in the other direction, on the first day of reopening. Tan said a steady increase in passenger numbers is expected over coming days.
“I stayed up all night and got up at 4 a.m. as I’m so excited to return to the mainland to see my 80-year-old mother,” a Hong Kong woman identified only by her surname, Cheung, said on arrival at Shenzhen, where she was presented with “roses and health kits,” the paper said.
Hong Kong media reports said around 300,000 travel bookings from the city to mainland China have already been made, with a daily quota of 60,000.
Limited ferry service also was restored from China’s Fujian province to the Taiwanese-controlled island of Kinmen just off the Chinese coast.
The border crossing with Russia at Suifenhe in the far northern province of Heilongjiang also resumed normal operations, just in time for the opening of the ice festival in the capital of Harbin, a major tourism draw.
And at Ruili, on the border with Myanmar, normal operations were resumed after 1,012 days of full or partial closure in response to repeated outbreaks blamed partly on visitors from China’s neighbor.
So far, only a fraction of the previous number of international flights are arriving at major Chinese airports.
Beijing’s main Capital International Airport was expecting eight flights from overseas on Sunday. Shanghai, China’s largest city, received its first international flight under the new policy at 6:30 a.m. with only a trickle of others to follow.
Since March 2020, all international passenger flights bound for Beijing have been diverted to designated first points of entry into China. Passengers were required to quarantine up to three weeks.
“I’ve been under isolated quarantine for six times in different cities (in mainland China),” said Ivan Tang, a Hong Kong business traveler. “They were not easy experiences.”
Ming Guanghe, a Chinese living in Singapore, said it had been difficult both to book a ticket and find somewhere to take a PCR test. Quarantine measures and uncertainty about outbreaks had kept him away from home, Ming said.
Shanghai announced it would again start issuing regular passports to Chinese for foreign travel and family visits, as well as renewing and extending visas for foreigners. Those restrictions have had a particularly devastating effect on foreign businesspeople and students in the key Asian financial center.
China is now facing a surge in cases and hospitalizations in major cities and is bracing for a further spread into less developed areas with the start of its most important holiday, the Lunar New Year, in coming days.
Authorities say they expect domestic rail and air journeys will double over the same period last year, bringing overall numbers close to those of the 2019 holiday period before the pandemic hit.
Meanwhile, more foreign governments are imposing testing requirements on travelers from China — most recently Germany, Sweden and Portugal. On Saturday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock urged citizens to avoid “unnecessary” travel to China, noting the rise in coronavirus cases and China’s “overburdened” health system.
The German regulation also allows for spot checks on arrival. Germany, like other European nations, will test wastewater from aircrafts for possible new virus variants. The measures come into force at midnight Monday and are due to last until April 7.
Apparently concerned about its reputation, China says the testing requirements aren’t science-based and has threatened unspecified countermeasures.
Chinese health authorities publish a daily count of new infections, severe cases and fatalities, but those numbers include only officially confirmed cases and use a very narrow definition of COVID-19-related deaths.
The National Health Commission on Sunday reported 7,072 new confirmed cases of local transmission and two new deaths — even as individual provinces were reporting as many as 1 million cases per day.
Authorities say that since the government ended compulsory testing and permitted people with mild symptoms to test themselves and convalesce at home, it can no longer provide a full picture of the outbreak. China’s vulnerabilities are increased by the population’s general lack of exposure to the virus and a relatively low vaccination rate among the elderly.
Government spokespeople insist the situation is under control and reject accusations from the World Health Organization and others that they’re not being transparent about the outbreak that could lead to the emergence of new variants.
The Health Commission on Saturday rolled out regulations for strengthened monitoring of viral mutations, including testing of urban wastewater. The rules called for increased data gathering from hospitals and local government health departments and stepped-up checks on “pneumonia of unknown causes.”
Criticism has largely focused on heavy-handed enforcement of regulations, including open-ended travel restrictions that saw people confined to their homes for weeks, sometimes sealed inside without adequate food or medical care.
Anger was also vented over the requirement that anyone who potentially tested positive or had been in contact with such a person be confined for observation in a field hospital, where overcrowding, poor food and hygiene were commonly cited.
The social and economic costs eventually prompted rare street protests in Beijing and other cities, possibly influencing the Communist Party’s decision to swiftly ease the strictest measures.
Alabama woman who joined IS hopes to return from Syria camp
A woman who ran away from home in Alabama at the age of 20, joined the Islamic State group and had a child with one of its fighters says she still hopes to return to the United States, serve prison time if necessary, and advocate against the extremists.
In a rare interview from the Roj detention camp in Syria where she is being held by U.S.-allied Kurdish forces, Hoda Muthana said she was brainwashed by online traffickers into joining the group in 2014 and regrets everything except her young son, now of pre-school age.
“If I need to sit in prison, and do my time, I will do it. ... I won’t fight against it,” the 28-year-old told The News Movement. “I’m hoping my government looks at me as someone young at the time and naive.”
It’s a line she’s repeated in various media interviews since fleeing from one of the extremist group’s last enclaves in Syria in early 2019.
Read more: Islamic State group claims attack on hotel in Afghan capital
But four years earlier, at the height of the extremists’ power, she had voiced enthusiastic support for them on social media and in an interview with BuzzFeed News. IS then ruled a self-declared Islamic caliphate stretching across roughly a third of both Syria and Iraq. In posts sent from her Twitter account in 2015 she called on Americans to join the group and carry out attacks in the U.S., suggesting drive-by shootings or vehicle rammings targeting gatherings for national holidays.
In her interview with TNM, Muthana now says her phone was taken from her and that the tweets were sent by IS supporters.
Muthana was born in New Jersey to Yemeni immigrants and once had a U.S. passport. She was raised in a conservative Muslim household in Hoover, Alabama, just outside Birmingham. In 2014, she told her family she was going on a school trip but flew to Turkey and crossed into Syria instead, funding the travel with tuition checks that she had secretly cashed.
The Obama administration cancelled her citizenship in 2016, saying her father was an accredited Yemeni diplomat at the time she was born — a rare revocation of birthright citizenship. Her lawyers have disputed that move, arguing that the father’s diplomatic accreditation ended before she was born.
The Trump administration maintained that she was not a citizen and barred her from returning, even as it pressed European allies to repatriate their own detained nationals to reduce pressure on the detention camps.
U.S. courts have sided with the government on the question of Muthana’s citizenship, and last January the Supreme Court declined to consider her lawsuit seeking re-entry.
Read more: Taliban arrest 4 Islamic State militants north of Kabul
That has left her and her son languishing in a detention camp in northern Syria housing thousands of widows of Islamic State fighters and their children.
Some 65,600 suspected Islamic State members and their families — both Syrians and foreign citizens — are held in camps and prisons in northeastern Syria run by U.S.-allied Kurdish groups, according to a Human Rights Watch report released last month.
Women accused of affiliation with IS and their minor children are largely housed in the al-Hol and Roj camps, under what the rights group described as “life threatening conditions.” The camp inmates include more than 37,400 foreigners, among them Europeans and North Americans.
Human Rights Watch and other monitors have cited dire living conditions in the camps, including inadequate food, water and medical care, as well as the physical and sexual abuse of inmates by guards and fellow detainees.
Kurdish-led authorities and activists have blamed IS sleeper cells for surging violence within the facilities, including the beheading of two Egyptian girls, aged 11 and 13, in al-Hol camp in November. Turkish airstrikes targeting the Kurdish groups launched that month also hit close to al-Hol. Camp officials alleged that the Turkish strikes were targeting security forces guarding the camp.
“None of the foreigners have been brought before a judicial authority … to determine the necessity and legality of their detention, making their captivity arbitrary and unlawful,” Human Rights Watch wrote. “Detention based solely on family ties amounts to collective punishment, a war crime.”
Calls to repatriate the detainees were largely ignored in the immediate aftermath of IS’ bloody reign, which was marked by massacres, beheadings and other atrocities, many of which were broadcast to the world in graphic films circulated on social media.
But with the passage of time, the pace of repatriations has started to pick up. Human Rights Watch said some 3,100 foreigners — mostly women and children — have been sent home over the past year. Most were Iraqis, who comprise the majority of detainees, but citizens were also repatriated to Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia and the United Kingdom.
The U.S. has repatriated a total of 39 American nationals. It’s unclear how many other Americans remain in the camps.
These days, Muthana portrays herself as a victim of the Islamic State.
Speaking with TNM, she describes how, after arriving in Syria in 2014, she was detained in a guest house reserved for unmarried women and children. “I’ve never seen that kind of filthiness in my life, like there was 100 women and twice as much kids, running around, too much noise, filthy beds,” she said.
The only way to escape was to marry a fighter. She eventually married and remarried three times. Her first two husbands, including the father of her son, were killed in battle. She reportedly divorced her third husband.
The extremist group, which is also known as ISIS, no longer controls any territory in Syria or Iraq but continues to carry out sporadic attacks and has supporters in the camps themselves. Muthana says she still has to be careful about what she says because of fear of reprisal.
“Even here, right now, I can’t fully say everything I want to say. But once I do leave, I will. I will be an advocate against this,” she said. “I wish I can help the victims of ISIS in the West understand that someone like me is not part of it, that I as well am a victim of ISIS.”
Hassan Shibly, an attorney who has assisted Muthana’s family, said it is “absolutely clear that she was brainwashed and taken advantage of.”
He said her family wishes she could come back, pay her debt to society and then help others from “falling into the dark path that she was led down.”
“She was absolutely misguided, and no one is denying that. But again, she was a teenager who was the victim of a very sophisticated recruitment operation that focuses on taking advantage of the young, the vulnerable, the disenfranchised,” he said.
Amid unrest, Iran’s hardliners turn their anger to France
Iranian hardliners on Sunday burned French flags outside the French embassy in Tehran, protesting cartoons published by the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that lampoon Iran’s ruling clerics.
The caricatures were published at a time of persistent anti-government protests in Iran, now in their fourth month. Demonstrators are calling for the downfall of its Islamic Republic and are challenging its hardline establishment.
The demonstrations outside of the French embassy follow previous attempts by Iran’s rulers to mobilize their supporters in counter-demonstrations.
Hundreds of protesters, including students from seminary schools, shouted “Death to France” and accused French President Emmanuel Macron of insulting Iran while urging Paris to stop “animosity” toward Tehran. Police officers, some of whom appeared to be holding images of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, kept the demonstrators at a distance from the embassy building.
Read more: Iran executes 2 more men detained amid nationwide protests
State television said some clerics held similar protests in the shrine city of Qom, the center of religious learning in Iran.
Iranian parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf on Sunday linked the French magazine’s cartoons with what officials have repeatedly alleged is the West’s plot to spread purported riots in Iran.
Later in the day, President Ebrahim Raisi offered his first reaction to the French cartoons and echoed similar claims. “Resorting to insults on the pretext of freedom is a clear indication of their frustration in concluding plot for chaos and insecurity” in Iran, he said.
Charlie Hebdo has a long history of publishing vulgar cartoons mocking Islamists, which critics say are deeply insulting to Muslims. Two French-born al-Qaida extremists attacked the newspaper’s office in 2015, killing 12 cartoonists, and it has been the target of other attacks over the years.
Its latest issue features the winners of a recent cartoon contest in which entrants were asked to draw the most offensive caricatures of Supreme Leader Khamenei.
One of the finalists depicts a turbaned cleric reaching for a hangman’s noose as he drowns in blood, while another shows Khamenei clinging to a giant throne above the raised fists of protesters. Others depict more vulgar and sexually explicit scenes.
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Anti-government protests erupted across Iran in September after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who had been detained by the country’s morality police for allegedly violating its strict Islamic dress code.
The unrest has grown into one of the severest challenges to the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution that brought it to power. Human rights groups say that at least 517 protesters have been killed and over 19,200 people have been arrested amid a violent crackdown by security forces. Iranian authorities have not provided an official count of those killed or detained.
On Saturday, authorities executed two men convicted of allegedly killing a paramilitary volunteer in the demonstrations.
The Saturday hangings brought to four the number of people known to have been executed since the unrest began in September over the death of Amini. All of the sentences were handed out in rapid, closed-door trials that have been met with international criticism.
Sunday was also the third anniversary of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s downing of an Ukrainian passenger plane with two surface-to-air missiles, killing all 176 people on board — a tragedy that ignited an outburst of anger across Iran. Tehran initially denied responsibility for downing the plane before admitting to having mistakenly done so amid high tensions with the U.S.
An Iranian court has yet to issue a verdict three years into the trial of 10 military personnel who have not been publicly identified but are allegedly implicated in the plane’s downing.
Families of the victims met on Sunday at the site of the crash to hold a memorial ceremony separately from an official commemoration organized at Tehran’s international airport, which had been the point of departure for the flight.
In a separate development on Sunday, a court sentenced Faezeh Hashemi, daughter of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, to a five-year prison term for “propaganda against the system,” Iranian media reported.
The outspoken and pro-reform Hashemi has been in prison since late September after she was arrested by security forces for supporting protests that have been led by women opposing the mandatory headscarf or hijab under the Islamic Republic.
In 2011, Hashemi was convicted and served five years in prison over similar security charges.
Iranian officials have continued to claim the months-long protests are being driven by foreign agents but have offered no proof.
Following Charlie Hebdo’s publishing of cartoons mocking Iranian clerical figures, authorities in Tehran shut down on Thursday a decades-old French research institute and called the closure a “first step” in their response.
40 killed, dozens injured in Senegal road crash
At least 40 people were killed and dozens injured in a bus crash in central Senegal, the country’s president said Sunday.
President Macky Sall tweeted that the collision happened in Gnivy village, in the Kaffrine region, at about 3:30 a.m.
Read: 17 dead in China crash as holiday travel rush gets underway
“I am deeply saddened by the tragic road accident today in Gniby causing 40 deaths and many serious injuries. I extend my heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims and wish a speedy recovery to the injured,” said Sall.
He declared three days of mourning starting Monday and said he will hold an inter-ministerial council to discuss road safety measures.
Public prosecutor Cheikh Dieng said the crash happened on National Road No. 1 when a public bus punctured a tire and veered across the road, colliding with another bus coming from the opposite direction. At least 78 people are injured, some of them seriously, he said.
Images of the crash on social media show the damaged buses rammed into each other and a trail of debris along the road.
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Traffic crashes happen regularly in the West African nation because of poor roads, bad cars and drivers not adhering to the rules, locals say.
In 2017, at least 25 people were killed when two buses also crashed. Many of those people were heading toward the central town of Touba for the annual Muslim pilgrimage.
Jack Ma will give up control of leading Chinese financial tech provider Ant Group
E-commerce billionaire Jack Ma will give up control of Ant Group, the leading Chinese financial technology provider he founded.
In a statement posted Friday, Ant Group said that after an ownership restructuring, “no shareholder, alone or with other parties” will have “control over Ant Group.” The company is an affiliate of e-commerce giant Alibaba, which Ma also founded.
The move follows other efforts over the years by the Chinese government to rein in Ma and the country’s tech sector more broadly. Two years ago, the once high-profile Ma largely disappeared from view for 2 1/2 months after criticizing China’s regulators.
The government at the same time also forced Ant Group to call off a highly-anticipated IPO that would have raised over $3 billion, just days before it was to launch.
Also read: Where is Alibaba founder Jack Ma? In Tokyo, according to Financial Times
Yet Ma’s surrender of control comes after other signs the government was easing up on Chinese online firms. Late last year Beijing signaled at an economic work conference that it would support technology firms to boost economic growth and create more jobs.
And last month, the government said it would allow Ant Group to raise $1.5 billion in capital for its consumer finance unit.
17 dead in China crash as holiday travel rush gets underway
A traffic accident in southern China killed 17 people and injured 22 others early Sunday as the annual Lunar New Year holiday travel rush got underway, authorities said.
The accident occurred outside the city of Nanchang in Jiangxi province, according to the local traffic management brigade. It wasn't clear how many vehicles or what types were involved and the cause was under investigation, the brigade said.
Read more: Chinese travelers rush to take advantage of reopening
Website Jimu News quoted a local resident as saying the victims were mourners from the village of Taoling who had set up a funeral tent on the side of the road, as is common in rural China, and were hit by a passing truck as they were preparing to travel to the local crematorium in the morning.
Several of the victims were her neighbors, the woman — identified only by her surname, Deng — told the site, which is published by the Hubei Daily newspaper based in a neighboring province.
Jimu quoted another unidentified villager as confirming that version of events, adding that the scene had already been cleaned up. The condition of the injured was not known.
Read more: China suspends social media accounts of over 1,000 critics of govt’s Covid-19 policies
Major traffic accidents, often caused by fatigued drivers and poorly maintained or overloaded vehicles, used to be common, but tighter regulations have reduced their frequency in recent years.
Enforcement efforts on the condition of vehicles and drivers and passenger numbers are redoubled around the time of the holiday, China’s most important for family gatherings when tens of millions of migrant workers return to their hometowns.
With the end of most COVID-19 restrictions, the number of such trips is expected to double this year to more than 2 billion on and around the weeklong festival season that starts this year on Jan. 22.