19 May 23
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When asked why he took government documents from the White House, Trump answered: “I was there and I took what I took. … I had every right to do it. I didn’t make a secret of it. You know, the boxes were stationed outside of the White House.”
With those fateful words, Trump admitted that he was involved in willfully removing the documents from the White House. It is a federal crime to “willfully and unlawfully … remove … any … document … in any public office … of the United States.” Indeed, the Justice Department has identified “improper removal,” or “unlawful” removal, as a key concern in court filings in the Mar-a-Lago litigation.
Before making that admission, Trump might have blamed the removal on his aides. Indeed, his lawyers had recently done just that. In a letter they sent to the chair of the House Intelligence Committee last month, they claimed the removal of the documents marked as classified was a result of staff error and inadvertence.
But that no longer holds. Trump’s own statement directly implicates him in the deliberate removal of the documents at issue.
It also discards another potential defense. If the documents were taken to Trump’s “southern White House” at Mar-a-Lago months before Trump’s presidency ended and were simply not returned, Trump could argue they were never unlawfully “removed” from a government office; they just “stayed there.” Trump appears to have tossed that argument overboard, too.
Suppose, however, that Trump was still president when the documents landed in Mar-a-Lago in the few hours remaining while that resort was still the “southern White House.” He might claim the documents simply remained in that “federal office” and were never “removed.”
Trump’s admission has undercut that line of argument as well. By affirming that he intentionally moved the official materials from the White House mere hours before his presidency terminated, he provided evidence of “constructive” removal. Trump knowingly and intentionally initiated the removal in D.C., with the full intent to keep the documents once power passed and he no longer had any right to possess them.
But why is this admission so pivotal to the potential outcome of a trial? The answer is location, location, location.
The Sixth Amendment requires that trials occur in the federal “district wherein the crime shall have been committed.” Trump’s admission of his personal role in removing the documents while he was in Washington means that Special Counsel Smith is now on surer footing than ever in bringing the documents case in D.C. rather than in Florida. Trump’s admission adds significantly to any other factors pointing to D.C. as the proper venue, such as the location of the National Archives from which Trump concealed the documents (listen to Mary McCord’s recent discussion with Andrew Weissmann). With this new and important admission, there goes the legal basis for Trump’s inevitable motion, if indicted, to move to his home turf the trial of an indictment count for unlawfully removing government documents .
That is a very big deal—for at least two reasons: the potential judges and the jurors.
First, in Florida, one judge who could be assigned the case is Aileen Cannon, the Trump appointee who, in a major favor to Trump and truly without any support in the law, granted his request to have a special master oversee the documents case. A conservative bench of the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit expeditiously and unanimously reversed that ruling. But there’s little reason to think that would deter her in the future, especially as she showed an extraordinary effort to wrestle the case away from a federal magistrate judge who was already handling it.
Second, one could expect that in Florida, populated as it is with strong Trump supporters, one or two might find their way onto the jury and refuse, whatever the evidence, to join a unanimous verdict to convict him. Just think of the members of the CNN town hall audience in New Hampshire, and what some of them might do in the face of evidence beyond reasonable doubt.
Another point as to venue is easily overlooked: an indictment for conspiracy. One potential charge Smith could bring is conspiracy to defraud the United States of its property or lawful functions—functions like maintaining national security documents in secure locations. That charge, of course, depends on Smith’s proof of an agreement between Trump and another person to remove the documents.
Conspiracy charges carry a potential five-year sentence, two years longer than the maximum prison term for unlawful removal of government property.
In addition, charging conspiracy permits introducing an array of evidence that a prosecutor might not otherwise be able to use at trial. Adding a conspiracy count based on conduct that began in D.C. would enable Smith to allege, and introduce evidence to prove, a range of illicit acts Trump committed in Florida.
Those acts include his 18 months of stonewalling government requests to return the documents and apparently refusing to allow the Justice Department to inspect boxes that contained classified material. Then there’s the June 2022 false affidavit from Trump lawyer Christina Bobb attesting that a diligent search of Mar-a-Lago had been conducted and revealed no further government material responsive to a May 2022 grand jury subpoena. Two months later, the court-approved FBI search of the country club turned up more than 100 documents with colored cover sheets and classified markings.
Because so much of that conduct is Florida-based, Smith could face challenges if he seeks to charge obstruction of a government investigation as a separate crime to be tried in D.C. That’s not to say that the challenges are necessarily insurmountable.
For example, letters from Evan Corcoran, Trump’s lawyer—letters that appear to have been part of the obstruction—went to D.C. Under the venue statute, “any offense involving the use of the mails … is a continuing offense and … may be inquired of and prosecuted in any district from, through, or into which such … mail matter … moves.”
What’s more, the obstruction might also be charged as a conspiracy—for example, if Trump tampered with the Mar-a-Lago video surveillance tapes, which would presumably require the assistance of his aides or staff. That’s important because a conspiracy to obstruct can also overcome venue questions and place the case firmly in D.C., as others have explained.
Finally, there’s the grave Espionage Act charge of failing to deliver unlawfully possessed defense-related materials to the government. Because the unlawful retention occurred in Florida, whether Smith can try that case in D.C. will also depend on what other evidence he has, including mailings to Washington. If such evidence is available, Trump’s admission can help Smith show that the unlawful acts in Florida were part of a continuing offense that began in D.C.
The central point is this: Whether Smith chooses to play it safe on venue by charging only unlawful removal of government documents and conspiracy to defraud the United States, or to take perhaps a bit more risk with charges under the Espionage Act or the obstruction statutes, Trump’s recent admissions have greatly strengthened the special counsel’s hand in bringing the case where it ultimately belongs: in the nation’s capital.
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A promotional photo from Killers of the Flower Moon shows actress Lily Gladstone with Leonardo DiCaprio. (photo: Apple)
When Osage Nation Principal Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear heard that David Grann's bestselling novel Killers of the Flower Moon was going to be made into a movie, he was concerned.
"We're used to Hollywood stereotypes and not being accurate to our language, our culture…and so that was always a concern," Standing Bear said.
Killers of the Flower Moon examines the story of the Osage murders in the 1920s after oil was discovered on Osage land.
Even when Standing Bear heard it was Martin Scorsese that was going to be directing it, he still had mixed feelings. Like a lot of other moviegoers, he is a fan of Scorsese's work.
Scorsese has directed some of the most iconic movies of our time — Goodfellas, Casino, The Departed, Age of Innocence, Gangs of New York — just to name a few.
Most of those films have scenes of violence, and Standing Bear was concerned how the murders of Osages would be depicted on the screen.
"How are you going to portray the Osage?" Standing Bear remembers asking him.
How will Osages be portrayed?
Standing Bear, who couldn't reveal more than that, said Scorsese was true to his word. The Principal Chief and other Osages who were involved or consulted on the movie are under a non-disclosure agreement and can't divulge details until the movie is more widely released this fall.
"I think Martin Scorsese said it best when I asked him, ‘how are you going to approach this story?’ And he said, ‘this is a story about trust and betrayal of that trust,’" Standing Bear told KOSU.
Scorsese met with people in the community of Grayhorse near Fairfax, where many of the murders took place. KOSU spoke with Osages who said they were impressed and that he listened to their concerns.
Standing Bear said he appointed people within his administration to work with Scorsese on the language, culture and customs depicted in the film, so it would be accurate. One of the people he appointed was the late John Williams, who was a special forces veteran who advised the director on accuracy. Williams consulted with Vann Bighorse, who works in the tribal nation's language and culture department.
"He had a chair right next to Scorsese," Standing Bear said.
He met with Scorsese before filming began and said the director talked about other films he directed that examined other cultures and racial violence — like 1997's Kundun, which is about the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government's violence on the people of Tibet. The movie was released but was never promoted due to pressure from the Chinese government. Despite this, it received critical acclaim and Academy Award nominations.
The history behind the movie
In the early 1900s, the Osage Nation bought their land in Oklahoma after leaving their Kansas reservation. This happened at a time when Osages were being forced to allot their land — give up communally owned land for 160 acre plots. Leftover land would then be sold to white settlers.
Many Osages resisted allotment but eventually, Chief James Bigheart reached a deal: the Osages would accept allotment but retain the ownership of the mineral rights underneath, which would be put into a trust managed by the federal government. The government was obligated to safeguard Osage interests. Each share was given to Osages on a roll and were known as headrights. In 1906, it became known as the Osage Mineral Estate and still exists today.
A decade later, when oil was discovered, those headrights were sought after, and put a target on the back of Osages who owned them. People from all over flocked to Osage County to try to get some of that money and wealth for themselves. Dozens of Osages were murdered in a plot to obtain wealth and headrights.
Media coverage at the time contained racist language and depicted Osages as having squandered or being incapable of handling wealth from oil.
A caption from The Daily Oklahoman newspaper published in 1929 read, "Epidemic of death revenge of Gods for reckless squandering of riches and departure of simple life from forefathers."
Eventually William Hale, a cattleman from Texas who rose to power through bribery, extortion and intimidation, was convicted in a scheme to murder Osages for their wealth. He ordered the murder of his nephew's wife's sister and mother.
Of the 2,229 headrights in the Osage Mineral Estate, more than 500 are now in non-Osage hands. A list published in The Bigheart Times in 2009 revealed some of those names. However, through records requests from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bloomberg reporter Rachel Adams Heard was able to obtain the amount owned by those non-Osages.
The movie is sure to bring a lot of attention to the Osage Nation and Oklahoma. That attention could put pressure to return Osage headrights.
In 2021, The Osage Minerals Council, which oversees the estate, asked for non-Osages to return their headright and is seeking federal legislation to make that process easier.
A bill, sponsored by Oklahoma Congressman Frank Lucas to do that, is slowly moving in Congress, but it's unclear if or when it would become law.
It’s been illegal to transfer a headright share to a non-Osage person or group since 1978, when the law was amended to prevent more shares from leaving Osage hands.
A history that ‘needed to be told’
Margaret Sisk, who had a small part in the movie, thinks it's time the story is told. She and other Osage citizens KOSU spoke with said they grew up hearing a little bit about it from relatives but knew that people were afraid to talk about it.
"Think about that…they lost their loved one," said Sisk.
But, she thinks people need to know about it and what happened to her people.
Sisk's mother, Mary Agnes Wagoshe Shannon had a guardian, an appointed person to manage her money. During the time of the oil boom, the federal government appointed guardians to Osage citizens because they were deemed 'incompetent' and unable to manage their own affairs. Osages had to apply for competency, and Sisk said there's still a highway named after her mother's guardian.
"It's part of history that needed to be told because it's not in Oklahoma history," she said, referring to the history Oklahoma students are taught. "It's Oklahoma's dirty little secret."
Killers of the Flower Moon will be in wide release this fall. It has a current run time of 3 hours and 26 minutes, and stars Lily Gladstone, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, among others.
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The internet could soon become a very different place. (photo: iStock)
The internet could soon become a very different place.
Government agencies, private companies, and academic researchers have spent years seeking a way to solve the thorny question of how to check internet users’ ages without the risk of revealing intimate information about their online lives. But after all that time, privacy and civil liberties advocates still aren’t convinced the government is ready for the challenge.
“When you have so many proposals floating around, it’s hard to ensure that everything is constitutionally sound and actually effective for kids,” Cody Venzke, a senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), tells The Verge. “Because it’s so difficult to identify who’s a kid online, it’s going to prevent adults from accessing content online as well.”
In the US and abroad, lawmakers want to limit children’s access to two things: social networks and porn sites. Louisiana, Arkansas, and Utah have all passed laws that set rules for underage users on social media. Meanwhile, multiple US federal bills are on the table, and so are laws in other countries, like the UK’s Online Safety Bill. Some of these laws demand specific features from age verification tools. Others simply punish sites for letting anyone underage use them — a more subtle request for verification.
Online age verification isn’t a new concept. In the US, laws like the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) already apply special rules to people under 13. And almost everyone who has used the internet — including major platforms like YouTube and Facebook — has checked a box to access adult content or entered a birth date to create an account. But there’s also almost nothing to stop them from faking it.
As a result, lawmakers are calling for more stringent verification methods. “From bullying and sex trafficking to addiction and explicit content, social media companies subject children and teens to a wide variety of content that can hurt them, emotionally and physically,” Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), the backer of the Protect Kids Online Act, said. “Just as parents safeguard their kids from threats in the real world, they need the opportunity to protect their children online.”
Age verification systems fall into a handful of categories. The most common option is to rely on a third party that knows your identity — by directly validating a credit card or government-issued ID, for instance, or by signing up for a digital intermediary like Allpasstrust, the service Louisianans must use for porn access.
More experimentally, there are solutions that estimate a user’s age without an ID. One potential option, which is already used by Facebook and Instagram, would use a camera and facial recognition to guess whether you’re 18. Another, which is highlighted as a potential age verification solution by France’s National Commission on Informatics and Liberty (CNIL), would “guess” your age based on your online activity.
As pointed out by CNIL’s report on various online age verification options, all these methods have serious flaws. CNIL notes that identifying someone’s age with a credit card would be relatively easy since the security infrastructure is already there for online payments. But some adult users — especially those with lower incomes — may not have a card, which would seriously limit their ability to access online services. The same goes for verification methods using government-issued IDs. Children can also snap up a card that’s lying around the house to verify their age.
Similarly, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) has expressed concerns about online age verification. In a report it updated in March, the US legislature’s in-house research institute found that many kids aged 16 to 19 might not have a government-issued ID, such as a driver’s license, that they can use to verify their age online. While it says kids could use their student ID instead, it notes that they may be easier to fake than a government-issued ID. The CRS isn’t totally on board with relying on a national digital ID system for online age verification either, as it could “raise privacy and security concerns.”
Face-based age detection might seem like a quick fix to these concerns. And unlike a credit card — or full-fledged facial identification tools — it doesn’t necessarily tell a site who you are, just whether it thinks you’re over 18.
But these systems may not accurately identify the age of a person. Yoti, the facial analysis service used by Facebook and Instagram, claims it can estimate the age of people 13 to 17 years old as under 25 with 99.93 percent accuracy while identifying kids that are six to 11 years old as under 13 with 98.35 percent accuracy. This study doesn’t include any data on distinguishing between young teens and older ones, however — a crucial element for many young people.
Although Yoti claims its system has no “discernible bias across gender or skin tone,” previous research indicates that facial recognition services are less reliable for people of color, gender-nonconforming people, and people with facial differences or asymmetry. This would, again, unfairly block certain people from accessing the internet.
It also poses a host of privacy risks, as the companies that capture facial recognition data would need to ensure that this biometric data doesn’t get stolen by bad actors. UK civil liberties group Big Brother Watch argues that “face prints’ are as sensitive as fingerprints” and that “collecting biometric data of this scale inherently puts people’s privacy at risk.” CNIL points out that you could mitigate some risks by performing facial recognition locally on a user’s device — but that doesn’t solve the broader problems.
Inferring ages based on browsing history raises even more problems. This kind of inferential system has been implemented on platforms like Facebook and TikTok, both of which use AI to detect whether a user is under the age of 13 based on their activity on the platform. That includes scanning a user’s activity for “happy birthday” messages or comments that indicate they’re too young to have an account. But the system hasn’t been explored on a larger scale — where it could involve having an AI scan your entire browsing history and estimate your age based on your searches and the sites you interact with. That would amount to large-scale digital surveillance, and CNIL outright calls the system “intrusive.” It’s not even clear how well it would work.
In France, where lawmakers are working to restrict access to porn sites, CNIL worked with Ecole Polytechnique professor Olivier Blazy to develop a solution that attempts to minimize the amount of user information sent to a website. The proposed method involves using an ephemeral “token” that sends your browser or phone a “challenge” when accessing an age-restricted website. That challenge would then get relayed to a third party that can authenticate your age, like your bank, internet provider, or a digital ID service, which would issue its approval, allowing you to access the website.
The system’s goal is to make sure a user is old enough to access a service without revealing any personal details, either to the website they’re using or the companies and governments providing the ID check. The third party “only knows you are doing an age check but not for what,” Blazy explains to The Verge, and the website would not know which service verified your age nor any of the details from that transaction.
Blazy hopes this system can prevent very young children from accessing explicit content. But even with this complex solution, he acknowledges that users in France will be able to get around the method by using a virtual private network (VPN) to conceal their location. This is a problem that plagues nearly any location-specific verification system: as long as another government lets people access a site more easily, users can route their traffic through it. The only surefire solution would be draconian crackdowns on privacy tools that would dramatically compromise freedom online.
Some governments are trying to offer a variety of options and let users pick between them. A report from the European Parliament Think Tank, an in-house department that helps shape legislation, highlights an EU “browser-based interoperable age verification method” called euCONSENT, which will allow users to verify their identity online by choosing from a network of approved third-party services. Since this would give users the ability to choose the verification they want to use, this means one service might ask a user to upload an official government document, while another might rely on facial recognition.
To privacy and civil liberties advocates, none of these solutions are ideal. Venzke tells The Verge that implementing age verification systems encourages a system that collects our data and could pave the way for more surveillance in the future. “Bills that are trying to establish inferences about how old you are or who you are based on that already existing capitalistic surveillance, are just threatening to legitimize that surveillance,” Venzke says. “As we think about kids’ online safety, we need to do so in a way that doesn’t enshrine and legitimize this very surveillance regime that we’re trying to push back on.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, similarly argues that all age verification solutions are “surveillance systems” that will “lead us further towards an internet where our private data is collected and sold by default.”
Even some strong supporters of child safety bills have expressed concerns about making age verification part of them. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), one of the backers of the Kids Online Safety Act, objected to the idea in a call with reporters earlier this month. In a statement, he tells The Verge that “age verification would require either a national database or a goldmine of private information on millions of kids in Big Tech’s hands” and that “the potential for exploitation and misuse would be huge.” (Despite this, the EFF believes that KOSA’s requirements would inevitably result in age verification mandates anyway.)
In the US, it’s unclear whether online age verification would stand up under legal scrutiny at all. The US court system has already struck down efforts to implement online age verification several times in the past. As far back as 1997, the Supreme Court ruled parts of the 1996 Communications Decency Act unconstitutional, as it imposed restrictions on “knowing transmission of obscene or indecent messages” and required age verification online. More recently, a federal court found in 2016 that a Louisiana law, which required websites that publish “material harmful to minors” verify users’ ages, “creates a chilling effect on free speech.”
Vera Eidelman, a staff attorney with ACLU, tells The Verge that existing age verification laws “are going to face a very tough battle in court.” “For the most part, requiring content providers online to verify the ages of their users is almost certainly unconstitutional, given the likelihood but it will make people uncomfortable to exercise their rights to access certain information if they have to unmask or identify themselves,” Eidelman says.
But concerns over surveillance still haven’t stopped governments around the globe, including here in the US, from pushing ahead with online age verification mandates. There are currently several bills in the pipeline in Congress that are aimed at protecting children online, including the Protecting Kids on Social Media Act, which calls for the test of a national age verification system that would block users under the age of 13 from signing up for social media. In the UK, where the heavily delayed Online Safety Bill will likely become law, porn sites would be required to verify users’ ages, while other websites would be forced to give users the option to do so as well.
Some proponents of online safety laws say they’re no different than having to hand over an ID to purchase alcohol. “We have agreed as a society not to let a 15-year-old go to a bar or a strip club,” said Laurie Schlegel, the legislator behind Louisiana’s age restriction law, after its passage. “The same protections should be in place online.” But the comparison misses vastly different implications for free speech and privacy. “When we think about bars or ordering alcohol at a restaurant, we just assume that you can hand an ID to a bouncer or a waiter, they’ll hand it back, and that’s the end of it,” Venzke adds. “Problem is, there’s no infrastructure on the internet right now to [implement age verification] in a safe, secure, private way that doesn’t chill people’s ability to get to constitutionally protected speech.”
Most people also spend a relatively small amount of their time in real-world adults-only spaces, while social media and online communications tools are ubiquitous ways of finding information and staying in touch with friends and family. Even sites with sexually explicit content — the target of Louisiana’s bill — could be construed to include sites offering information about sexual health and LGBTQ resources, despite claims by lawmakers that this won’t happen.
Even if many of these rules are shot down, the way we use the internet may never be the same again. With age checks awaiting us online, some people may find themselves locked out of increasingly large numbers of platforms — leaving the online world more closed-off than ever.
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Salvatore Mancuso, former commander of right-wing paramilitary groups, has offered four days of tribunal testimony. (photo: AFP)
Salvatore Mancuso, former commander of right-wing paramilitary groups, has offered four days of tribunal testimony.
Salvatore Mancuso, who used the nom de guerre “Triple Zero”, was one of the primary leaders of paramilitary forces in the country in the late ’90s and early 2000s.
Over four days of testimony, ending Tuesday, Mancuso offered insight into groups that Colombia’s Peace Commission has since described as “death squads”.
As the erstwhile commander of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a coalition of right-wing paramilitary groups, Mancuso described the murder and forced disappearances of political activists and other individuals seen as sympathetic to left-wing groups and causes.
“These were assassinations,” he said on the first day of testimony, May 10. “There is no other word for it.”
Mancuso has previously admitted to thousands of counts of various crimes before the JEP, in an attempt to earn leniency and avoid further legal proceedings in Colombia. He gave this week’s testimony by video from the United States, where he previously served 12 years on drug trafficking charges.
“We weren’t told just to kill. We were told to hide the bodies and ensure they were never found,” Mancuso said from a screen before the court.
To cover up their crimes, Mancuso explained his forces built crematoriums to burn the bodies of those killed. Other victims were disposed of in the Catatumbo River, which separates Colombia and Venezuela in the Catatumbo region.
His testimony also corroborated longstanding accusations that paramilitary groups planned their attacks in direct coordination with the Colombian government, as well as the private sector.
A child of state ‘parapolitics’
Mancuso has claimed he worked directly with the Colombian army and police, as well as with the Administrative Security Department (DAS), the country’s disgraced former intelligence agency.
The DAS was disbanded in 2011 amid accusations of human rights violations and the wiretapping of journalists and judges.
Together with the paramilitary forces, those agencies coordinated “kill lists” identifying individuals the government wanted silenced, Mancuso alleged.
“In my capacity as a hinge between public forces and self-defence groups, I ordered the assassination of hundreds of people. I’m a legitimate child of state ‘parapolitics’,” he said on Tuesday, using a term for the intersection of “paramilitary” and “politics”.
According to Mancuso, one of the targets that DAS ordered for assassination was Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s current president and a former rebel fighter who was, at the time, a congressman.
Mancuso also indicated that major private companies helped finance the paramilitary operations through a programme called “Convivir”, in part to protect their domestic infrastructure. The JEP tribunal, however, has yet to verify the claims made in Mancuso’s testimony.
Mancuso left his position as commander in 2005 as part of a controversial peace process with Colombia’s paramilitary forces.
Critics divided over testimony
Observers were split over the revelations from Mancuso’s testimony this week — and how much they would help advance JEP’s mission to investigate the crimes and abuses committed over Colombia’s nearly six-decade-long internal conflict.
Claudia Julieta Duque, a journalist who had been tortured by the DAS, was less than impressed by the four-day judicial hearing.
It was a “victimiser reaffirming what victims have been saying for more than 20 years”, she told Al Jazeera. “He said many things that were already known.”
Elizabeth Dickinson, a senior policy analyst in Colombia for the International Crisis Group, was nevertheless intrigued by some of the insight Mancuso offered.
“One of the most striking and new points of the testimony was Mancuso’s discussion of a period in the late ‘90s when Colombia was receiving increased scrutiny in over rising civilian casualties,” she said.
“And the order, in response, from security forces to the paramilitaries was: Keep doing what you’re doing with these scorched-earth tactics. But instead of leaving evidence of this violence, you need to start disappearing people.”
She said it was “shockingly nefarious” that the government’s response was to allegedly double down on state-sponsored violence rather than re-evaluate its actions.
What’s next for Colombia’s peace process?
When asked what Mancuso’s testimony means for the present day, Dickinson explained that the phenomenon of paying criminal groups for protection — whether willingly or through coercion — is an “ongoing” problem in Colombia.
“The JEP is looking specifically for more information about this. That’s why Mancuso is testifying,” she said. Colombia’s Peace Commission has repeatedly stated that impunity for crimes committed during the internal conflict is a barrier to contemporary peace-building.
Ginna Morelo, an investigative reporter, has written a book, The Voice of the Pencils, that describes an assault that paramilitary forces launched on Colombia’s University of Cordoba — an attack Mancuso addressed in his testimony this week.
She explained that his testimony “contributes to the reconstruction of the truth. Although it hurts so much time has passed without knowing the truth.”
She told Al Jazeera that several victims had told her afterwards that “they had never heard that the DAS was behind the crimes inflicted on them”.
She hoped new information could bring closure to those who suffered during the civil war. The victims, she said, “live in an endless transition in search of clarification and reconciliation that has so far been elusive”.
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Leaders of the world's advanced democracies were set to unleash new sanctions against Russia as they gathered for a Group of Seven (G7) summit in Japan's Hiroshima. (photo: Reuters)
Each of the G-7 countries has actions planned, said a U.S. official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity ahead of the announcements by leaders. The public statements are expected sometime during their summit in Hiroshima, Japan, this weekend.
"This is going to be a significant effort that will extensively restrict Russia's access to goods that matter for its battlefield capabilities," the official said.
The United States also will cut off about 300 individuals, entities, vessels and aircraft from the U.S. financial system for circumventing U.S. sanctions on Russia, the official said. This will include people and companies from Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
The G-7 has had sanctions in place since the war began more than a year ago. But Russia has found ways to get around the rules to buy products and access financing, adapting to the rules.
Take, for example, a surge in washing machine trade, said Max Bergmann, a former State Department official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
"We've seen a huge import of washing machines making their way into Russia where they're trying to take out the microchips and use them for missile production or other weapons," Bergmann told NPR.
Former Treasury Department official Kim Donovan, now at the Atlantic Council, said the Russia sanctions regime is having an impact — even though Russia has not pulled back from the war.
"This is a slow process," Donovan said. "Anything that occurs in this space is not going have an immediate impact that maybe we're accustomed to seeing on the battlefield where things go 'boom.' This is going to be a slow burn."
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Palestinians in Gaza join a march near the eastern borders, protesting the settler flag march in Jerusalem on Thursday. (photo: Abedelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera)
Protests were held along the Gaza-Israel border in protest at the Israeli far-rights provocative march in Jerusalem.
Hundreds of Palestinians joined the protest on Thursday, which was called for by Palestinian factions in response to the Israeli march. The Gaza demonstration condemned the ‘flag march’ in Jerusalem, and called for an end to Israeli attacks in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
Israeli authorities said their forces had fired after Palestinians threw explosive devices at the barrier between Israel and Gaza.
Osama Abu Qamar, a 50-year-old resident of Gaza’s Jabaliya camp, told Al Jazeera that he had ccome to participate in the march to protest against the “provocative” march in Jerusalem, where far-right Israelis forced the closure of several Palestinian throughfares in the city as they chanted abusive slogans and waved Israeli flags.
The event, which is held annually to mark the occupation and annexation of East Jerusalem, has led to violence in recent years, and with a truce between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad only coming into effect this week after four days of fighting that killed 33 Palestinians and one Israeli, there was fear of it sparking further violence.
“We will not surrender and we will continue to demand our rights and defend our occupied lands and our sanctities in Jerusalem,” Abu Qamar told Al Jazeera.
Huda al-Salibi attended the march with her family.
“A few days ago, the Gaza Strip was under an Israeli attack that lasted for days in an attempt by the Israeli government to implement racist policies by [far-right National Security Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir and other extremist ministers,” al-Salibi told Al Jazeera. “Today, the violations in Jerusalem continue with the launch of the provocative march.”
Israel deployed heavy security to prevent violence after past flag marches were marked by Israeli attacks on Palestinians and “death to Arabs” chants.
In 2021, the march was rerouted after violence erupted in the wake of the storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, Islam’s third holiest site, by Israeli forces and the evictions of Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, also in East Jerusalem.
Hamas, which governs Gaza, called on international and Arab governments to stop the provocative flag parade in Jerusalem, warning that it would lead to further escalation in the coastal enclave, which has been under an Israeli air, sea and land blockade since 2007.
‘Confront the occupation’
Abd Allatif al-Qanou’, a spokesman for Hamas, told Al Jazeera: “We will not allow Israeli occupation to pass a plan to extend its sovereignty or impose its control over Al-Aqsa Mosque through facilitating the march of the settler flags or the repeated incursions into it.”
“We call for all Palestinians to go to Al-Aqsa to participate in the defence of the compound in order to protect it and to confront the occupation,” he said.
Al-Qanou’ accused the Israeli government of using what has become known as Jerusalem Unification Day to encourage, facilitate and protect the frequent storming on Al-Aqsa Mosque by Israeli settlers. The latest occurred on Thursday morning in the run-up to the flag march and was led by Israeli ministers and Knesset members.
“This disgraceful behaviour represents a flagrant violation of our greatest religious symbols, our Islamic sanctities and our sacred capital,” he said.
The leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said in a statement that the Palestinian people and their resistance “will not be silent in the face of the so-called march of flags and the [Israeli] occupation’s repeated incursions of Al-Aqsa”.
“We call for urgent action to condemn these occupation policies and attacks against the Palestinian people, their rights and sanctities,” said the PFLP, which has presence in both the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
Reham Owda, a Gaza-based political analyst, told Al Jazeera that Palestinians consider the flag march a provocative attempt by settlers and the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to change the status quo in occupied East Jerusalem by “Judaising” it and exerting its control on the Old City.
Palestinians fear Israel has gradually been expanding its control over the Al-Aqsa compound, where Jews are not supposed to be allowed to pray.
The international community backs the so-called two-state solution to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but successive Israeli governments have approved settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, which is supposed to become the Palestinian state’s capital. Palestinians say the expanding settlements diminish the prospects for a viable, sovereign State of Palestine.
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Paratroopers from the 82nd airborne march to board a civilian aircraft bound from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in 2020. (photo: Hubert Delaney Iii/AFP)
Ballooning cost of cleaning up toxic PFAS contamination at military sites places service members and civilians at risk
The estimated total cost for remediating about 50 contaminated military sites has soared to $31bn, up by $3.7bn from 2016 to 2021, the last year the Department of Defense provided estimates. But its requested cleanup budget increased just $400m over the same period, according to the new report by Environmental Working Group (EWG), a non-profit that tracks the military’s PFAS pollution.
At this pace, many of the sites will remain tainted for at least 50 years.
“The DoD is facing a ticking cleanup time bomb as funding falls dramatically behind cleanup costs,” said Jared Hayes, a senior policy analyst at EWG. “The DoD has an obligation to its service members, the families living on bases, and the surrounding communities that have already been contaminated, so they need to clean up their mess.”
PFAS are a class of about 15,000 chemicals often used to make products resistant to water, stains and heat. The compounds are ubiquitous, and linked at low levels of exposure to cancer, thyroid disease, kidney dysfunction, birth defects, autoimmune disease and other serious health problems. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally degrade.
PFAS are thought to be contaminating drinking water for more than 200 million Americans, and military bases are a major source of pollution because the DoD has used firefighting foam that contains high levels of the chemicals during training and emergencies. The military previously “downplayed” the number of service members exposed to the chemicals, EWG found, which the group estimated in the millions over recent decades.
The level of contamination at the many polluted bases is staggering: as high as 20.7m parts per trillion (ppt) for one PFAS compound in England, Louisiana. The EPA has recommended drinking water limits of four ppt for some PFAS compounds.
The military’s cleanup cost estimate is also based on 50 sites it says are contaminated, but EWG identified over 700 sites that are probably polluted, and the true cost is probably tens of billions of dollars more than the $31bn figure.
In some cases, service members and their families have begun fighting back. Those who for decades drank contaminated water at New Hampshire’s Pease air force base are in the process of linking their exposure to extremely high cancer rates at the base, and demanding the military cover their healthcare costs.
The pollution also puts civilians around the bases at risk. Initial data from congressionally mandated analysis of water around 700 military installations showed “shockingly high” levels at each of 12 tested by mid-2022.
The costs continue growing as the DoD delays because PFAS plumes spread further into the groundwater, which pollutes more private wells and public drinking water systems, Hayes said. That could make the challenge nearly impossible to overcome.
“Our analysis clearly shows the DoD at current levels cannot possibly catch up with rising cleanup obligations,” he added.
The military last year missed a deadline to submit a cleanup plan to Congress, but new political leadership in the Pentagon and the Biden administration’s moves to rein in pollution have generated at least some optimism.
The DoD also recently suggested it may ask for $7bn for fiscal year 2024, but history is keeping hope in check: Congress previously tried to kickstart the remediation process by budgeting $2.5bn after the military requested $1.3bn, but the DoD is still asking for less for the next round of funding.
“The crisis is getting worse, not better and the federal efforts are not keeping pace,” said John Reeder, vice-president of federal affairs with EWG. “The problem demands urgency … but instead of urgency, the DoD has consistently requested less funds for cleanup than Congress provided.”
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