Month: September 2017

Germans go to the polls Sunday in an election that will most likely result in a fourth term for Chancellor Angela Merkel, but could also see the first time a far-right party has become part of the Bundestag since the end of World War II.

Support for Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrat party was at 34 percent, while her challenger, Martin Schulz, and his center-left Social Democrats were projected to receive 21 percent of the vote.

But the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, appeared to have more support than the 5 percent of the vote required to get a seat in Germany’s multiparty Bundestag. In fact, the latest polls showed AfD could get as much as 13 percent of the vote, making it the third-largest party in parliament.

Campaign stops

Schulz addressed the trend at a campaign rally in the western city of Aachen on Saturday, urging his supporters to turn out at the polls to prevent the AfD from gaining more power.

“Young people, think about Brexit,” he said, referencing Britain’s recent vote to withdraw from the European Union. “Think about [U.S. President Donald] Trump. Go vote.”

Merkel was heckled Friday evening at her final stump speech in Munich but used the cacophony to punctuate her message. Emphasizing stability and prosperity in her speech, Merkel said, “The future of Germany will definitely not be built with whistles and hollers.”

Germany is not the only European nation experiencing a rise in support for nationalist parties. France, Austria and Poland have seen similar trends.

But Germany is still recovering from the rule of the far-right Nazi Party last century, whose hold on power in the 1930s and early 1940s led an ethnic cleansing campaign against millions of Jews, Poles and others deemed unwanted.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, a member of the Social Democrats, has warned that “for the first time since the Second World War, real Nazis will sit in the German parliament.”

Schulz has called the party “a shame for our nation.”

Limited by history

AfD co-leader Alexander Gauland, who helped found the party in 2013, told The Washington Post on Saturday that his party’s support had been limited by Germany’s history.

“What is National Socialist in Germany is [considered] out of order and you can’t discuss it correctly. It is very difficult for so-called right-wing parties to gain votes in Germany,” Gauland said.

A former member of Merkel’s party, Gauland said he left because the party changed.

“Angela Merkel changed the CDU from a party that had convictions to a party that’s an empty balloon,” he told the Post. “A lot of decisions of Angela Merkel — transitioning to renewable energy, refugees, changing of the military from conscription to volunteer — ran opposite to what we called in former times ‘the soul of the CDU.’ ”

Berlin-based journalist Thomas Habicht said AfD’s rise in influence was rooted in Germany’s participation in pan-European issues.

“AfD gained support as some voters got the impression [that] the euro crisis caused by Greece, Italy and France cost us too much money,” Habicht told VOA in an email. “Germany contributes 27 percent to the EU budget and some Germans don’t want to finance economical mismanagement in southern Europe.”

Cost of refugee crisis

In addition, the refugee crisis, to which Merkel has pledged German support, is seen by AfD supporters as a burden.

“Since September 2015, we had an influx of 1.25 million asylum-seekers,” Habicht said, noting that caring for them had cost the government $25 billion.

Adding to the complication, he said, is crime. “Last year we had a terror attack at a Berlin Christmas market. It was committed by an asylum-seeker from Tunisia and 12 persons died,” he said.

Yet, Habicht noted, all parties in the Bundestag at the time supported Merkel on the refugee situation. “They were seen as a big chance for us, while the problems of integration were not fully discussed,” he said.

While the presence of a far-right party in parliament may be startling in Germany, where the rule of the Nazis last century orchestrated millions of civilian deaths, Habicht said the AfD influence would be far more subtle.

“I do believe the AfD will be quite isolated in our next Bundestag,” he said. “But indirectly, they will influence government policies.”
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Turkey’s main opposition united with the government Saturday to overwhelmingly pass a motion giving its military a mandate to carry out operations in neighboring Iraq and Syria.

The parliament met in an emergency session two days ahead of an independence referendum by Iraqi Kurds. Addressing parliament, Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli warned that the Kurdish referendum would bring very dangerous consequences, perhaps even clashes even in global terms.

“Pulling out just a brick from a structure based on very sensitive and fragile balances will sow the seeds for new hatred, enmity and clashes,” Canikli said.

He added that all options and methods were on the table regarding the independence vote and that Turkey would not hesitate to use them.

Ankara strongly opposes the referendum, fearing it could fuel secessionist demands within its own large restive Kurdish minority.

On Saturday, the head of the Iraqi armed forces met with his Turkish counterpart in Turkey’s capital, Ankara, for talks on the forthcoming referendum. Baghdad shares Ankara’s opposition to the vote.

Turkish armed forces carrying out drills on the Iraqi Kurdish border received new reinforcements. The army has been holding military exercises there for the past six days.

Turkish forces were also being beefed up on the Syrian border, with Ankara again warning it would not allow Syrian Kurds to create their own independent state.
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Spanish media report that several hundred students have spent the night inside a Barcelona university to protest the government’s efforts to stop a referendum over Catalonia’s secession from the country.

The protesters have said on social media that pro-independence politicians are expected to give talks at Barcelona University on Saturday.

Jordi Vives, a spokesman for the students, told Catalan public television: “We are showing that as students we have a part to play and that for now we are staying put.”

The remaining students were hold-outs from a group of about 2,000 that gathered in and around the university Friday. Several hundred occupied a central cloister near the offices of the dean and other university managers.

Spain’s Constitutional Court has suspended the Oct. 1 vote while judges assess its legality.
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While Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs dominated headlines, countering terrorism and extremism took center stage at the U.N. General Assembly this week. Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and top officials from 24 countries highlighted progress made in the fight to defeat the Islamic State militant group in Iraq. VOA Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more from Washington.
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The United States sees value in the New START arms control treaty with Russia, despite Washington’s concerns about Moscow’s track record on arms control and other issues, senior U.S. officials said Friday.

The remarks by the Trump administration officials, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity, suggest the treaty will remain in force and the door remains open to pursuing an extension of the accord, which is set to expire in 2021.

The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty gives both countries until February 2018 to reduce their deployed strategic nuclear warheads to no more than 1,550, the lowest level in decades. It also limits deployed land- and submarine-based missiles and nuclear-capable bombers.

Moscow seen as unreliable

Reuters has reported that President Donald Trump, in his first call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, criticized the New START treaty, saying it favored Moscow.

But one of the Trump administration officials said on Friday the United States was not looking to discard New START.

Senior U.S. officials, including U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, have questioned Russia’s reliability on arms control, citing longstanding U.S. allegations that Russia has violated the Cold War-era Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Russia denies treaty violations and accuses the United States of them.

Working to improve relations

The accusations come amid a nosedive in U.S.-Russian relations.

U.S. intelligence agencies accuse Russia of meddling in the U.S. presidential election, which Moscow denies, and recent tit-for-tat exchanges between Washington and Moscow include moves to slash each others’ diplomatic presence.

The tensions have reached Syria, where the United States and Russia are backing different forces that are scrambling to claim what is left of Islamic State-held territory.

Russia warned the United States on Thursday it would target U.S.-backed militias in Syria if Russian troops again came under fire.

Still, a second senior Trump administration official said Friday the United States was seeking ways to improve communication with Moscow and build some degree of trust, which the official described as nonexistent.

Trump took office saying he wanted to improve ties strained since Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine, which led Washington to impose sanctions on Russia.

Ukraine’s Petro Poroshenko met Trump on Thursday and said afterward that they had a shared vision of a “new level” of defense cooperation.

But the second senior Trump administration official said there had been no decision on whether to provide defensive arms to Ukraine, something Kiev has long wanted.
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Britain’s PM says sides share “a profound sense of responsibility” to ensure Brexit goes ‘smoothly and sensibly’
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Transport officials in London say they will not renew Uber’s license to operate in the city due to “a lack of corporate responsibility” in dealing with the ride hailing app’s safety issues.

The regulatory body Transport for London said in a statement Friday Uber London “is not fit and proper” to operate in the city.

TfL considers that “Uber’s approach and conduct demonstrate a lack of corporate responsibility in relation to a number of issues which have potential public safety and security implications,” the agency said.

Among the issues cited by TfL are Uber’s approach to reporting serious criminal offenses and its use of “greyball” technology, which can be used to block regulators from fully accessing the app.

Uber said the city’s decision to end the app would show the world that “London is closed to innovative companies.”

“By wanting to ban our app from the capital, Transport for London and the mayor have caved in to a small number of people who want to restrict consumer choice,” the company said in a statement.

Uber has said it will appeal the decision.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan and the city’s taxi drivers union both said they supported the decision not to renew Uber’s license.  

“The mayor has made the right call not to relicense Uber,” Steve McNamara, general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association, said.

“We expect Uber will again embark on a spurious legal challenge against the Mayor and TfL, and we will urge the court to uphold this decision. This immoral company has no place on London’s streets.”

 
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Organizers have stripped Miss Turkey 2017 of her crown over a social media posting that was deemed insulting to the memory of the 250 people killed while opposing last year’s failed military coup.

Miss Turkey organizers said the 18-year-old Itir Esen was dethroned Friday — a day after she won the contest and the right to represent Turkey at the Miss World contest in China — over a tweet they described as “unacceptable.”

Media reports said a flippant remark that the model and university student had posted on Twitter as the country held memorials for the victims on the anniversary of the July 15, 2016, coup attempt, had caused uproar on social media. Esen reportedly denied the account was hers.

Runner-up Asli Sumen will now represent Turkey in China.
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The Catalan regional leader on Thursday said he would press on with an Oct. 1 referendum on a split from Spain, flouting a court ban, as tens of thousands gathered for a second day on the streets of Barcelona demanding the right to vote.

Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont said he had contingency plans in place to ensure the vote would go ahead, directly defying Madrid and pushing the country closer to political crisis.

Spain’s Constitutional Court banned the vote earlier this month after Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said it violated Spain’s 1978 constitution, which states the country is indivisible. Most opposition parties are also against the vote.

“All the power of the Spanish state is set up to prevent Catalans voting,” Puigdemont said in a televised address.

“We will do it because we have contingency plans in place to ensure it happens, but above all because it has the support of the immense majority of the population, who are sick of the arrogance and abuse of the People’s Party government.”

‘Step back for democracy’

On Thursday, tens of thousands gathered outside the seat of Catalonia’s top court in Barcelona, singing and banging drums, to protest the arrests of senior officials in police raids on regional government offices on Wednesday.

“This is a step back for democracy,” said one of them, 62-year-old pensioner Enric Farro. “This is the kind of thing that happened years ago — it shouldn’t be happening now.”

State police arrested Catalonia’s junior economy minister, Josep Maria Jove, on Wednesday in an unprecedented raid of regional government offices.

Spontaneous protest

Acting on court orders, police have also raided printers, newspaper offices and private delivery companies in a search for campaign literature, instruction manuals for manning voting stations and ballot boxes.

Polls show about 40 percent of Catalans support independence for the wealthy northeastern region and a majority want a referendum on the issue. Puigdemont has said there is no minimum turnout for the vote and he will declare independence within 48 hours of a “yes” result.

A central government’s spokesman said protests in Catalonia were organized by a small group and did not represent the general feeling of the people.

“In those demonstrations, you see the people who go, but you don’t see the people who don’t go, who are way more and are at home because they don’t like what’s happening,” Inigo Mendez de Vigo said.

Mendez de Vigo also said an offer for dialogue from Madrid remained on the table. Repeated attempts to open negotiations between the two camps over issues such as taxes and infrastructure investment have failed over the past five years.

Rajoy said on Wednesday the government’s actions in Catalonia were the result of legal rulings and were to ensure the rule of law. The prime minister called on Catalan leaders to cancel the vote.

Hundreds of National Police and Guardia Civil reinforcements have been brought into Barcelona and are being billeted in two ferries rented by the Spanish government and moored in the harbor. But the central government must tread a fine line in enforcing the law in the region without seeming heavy-handed.

Hardline tactics a concern

The stand-off between Catalonia and the central government resonates beyond Spain. The country’s EU partners publicly support Rajoy but worry that his hardline tactics might backfire.

In Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, who heads the pro-independence devolved government, said she hoped the Catalan and Spanish governments could hold talks to resolve the situation.

In a referendum in 2014, Scots voted to remain within the United Kingdom.

 
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Two people arrested in connection with the bombing on a London Underground train last week have been released without charges, the Scotland Yard announced Thursday.

A 21-year-old man arrested in Hounslow, west London, on Saturday and a 48-year-old man arrested in Newport, south Wales, on Wednesday were both released. Four other men, aged 17 to 30, remain in police custody.

None of the suspects has been charged, and their names haven’t been released.

Thirty people were injured when a homemade bomb, placed inside a bucket wrapped in a shopping bag, partly detonated on a train stopped at London’s Parsons Green station during rush hour September 15.

The attack sparked a manhunt for the perpetrators and prompted officials to briefly raise the national terrorism threat to the highest level.

Police said they are continuing their investigations and are searching several properties across the country.
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U.S. President Donald Trump praised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a friend who gets “high marks” for “running a very difficult part of the world.”

Trump’s effusive praise for the Turkish leader came on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday despite tensions between the two countries over the conduct of Turkish security officials toward American protesters.

Hours before Trump met Erdogan for talks, Erdogan supporters punched and kicked three protesters who interrupted his speech at a New York hotel.

Erdogan was addressing several hundred people at an event organized by a business group, the Turkish-American National Steering Committee, when one man stood and began shouting, “Terrorist! Terrorist!”

Voice of America TV footage shows audience members pummeling him as U.S. security officers tried to hustle him to safety. Soon after he was gone, a second man followed suit and also was repeatedly punched and hit over the head with Turkish flags as he was led outside by U.S. security.

Erdogan tried to calm the crowd, saying: “Let’s not sacrifice the whole meeting for a couple of terrorists.”

Then a third protester started heckling the president from a different part of the crowd. Although that incident occurred off-camera, a VOA reporter who was nearby said he, too, was beaten.

This was the second time this year that protesters in America have been assaulted by Erdogan supporters.

In past months, 21 people — many of whom were members of the Turkish ambassador’s security detail — were indicted for allegedly attacking protesters outside the Turkish embassy in Washington in May. All were charged with conspiracy to commit a crime of violence, a felony punishable by a maximum of 15 years in prison. Several face additional charges of assault with a deadly weapon.

WATCH: Erdogan Watched Violent Clash Near Embassy in May

The brawl erupted outside the residence of Turkey’s ambassador to Washington shortly after Trump met with Erdogan at the White House. Video of the protest recorded by VOA’s Turkish service, showing what appear to be security guards and some Erdogan supporters attacking a small group of demonstrators, went viral.

Erdogan said in a PBS interview that he was “very sorry” for the violence in May. Erdogan also claimed U.S. President Donald Trump called him a week ago about what happened in May to say he, too, was sorry, and that “he was going to follow up about this issue when [Erdogan and his people] come to the United States within the framework of an official visit.”

The White House has since strongly denied Erdogan’s account of the phone conversation with Trump.

On Thursday, during his appearance with Erdogan, Trump was asked about the conversation with the Turkish leader regarding the violence against peaceful protesters. Trump did not respond.

VOA’s Peter Heinlein and Paul Alexander contributed to this report.
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The lack of a unified approach by world governments to paying kidnap ransoms is putting the lives of citizens of all nationalities at greater risk and is providing terror groups with a big source of finance, warns a new report by a prominent British defense policy institute. Henry Ridgwell has more from London.
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The lack of a unified approach by world governments to paying kidnap ransoms is putting the lives of citizens of all nationalities at greater risk and providing terror groups with a big source of finance, warns a new report from British analyst group the Royal United Services Institute.

The authors call for a global, rigorously applied and scrupulously monitored commitment to prevent any concessions to terrorist organizations.

A series of high profile kidnappings by Islamic State in Syria highlighted the lack of a unified global response. Among them was American filmmaker James Foley, held for nearly two years alongside other hostages, until he was murdered in August 2014.

WATCH: Governments Paying Terror Kidnap Ransoms Put All Citizens At Risk, Warns Report

“There are cases where a number of individuals are taken hostage, so in the James Foley case, tragically, and other cases in West Africa, where you have mixed nationalities.  And those that pay ransoms are freed earlier, multimillion-dollar ransoms that allow the terrorist groups to perpetuate their work.  And those that do not pay ransoms are kept for extended periods of time until it becomes politically expedient to murder them,” explains report author Tom Keatinge of RUSI.

He adds that terrorists often will abuse hostages whose governments refuse to negotiate, in order to raise the pressure on countries that do.

France is among the countries accused of paying ransoms.  In December 2014, then President Francois Hollande waited on the tarmac of a military airport outside Paris to welcome home hostage Serge Lazarevic, who had been kidnapped in Mali by al-Qaida militants.  He is one of several French hostages to have been released.

Choosing ‘right to life’

While Hollande consistently denied his government paid ransoms, the evidence suggests otherwise, says Keatinge.

“There are a number of countries, Italy is another one, where hostages have come home.  And the country has chosen the immediate right to life of their citizen over adhering to an internationally-agreed ban not to finance terrorist organizations.”

Ransoms are a major source of criminal financing in Colombia.  Guerrilla fighters belonging to the rebel National Liberation Army, known as the ELN, have kidnapped dozens of people.  In a rare interview this month, the group’s commander “Yernson” spoke about the key role that kidnapping plays.

“It’s a difficult economic situation; that’s why we have hostages.  We could say, ‘No, we won’t kidnap anyone else,’ but how would we finance our struggle? How would we finance our work?  We live off of the ‘ransom tax’ and kidnappings,” he told a Reuters journalist.

Specialist private sector companies, usually backed by insurance policies, are brought in to negotiate in such cases.  They often secure a release for a fraction of the ransom demand, says Keatinge.

“In places like Mexico, South America, where kidnapping is almost an industry for money raising for criminal groups, that’s where these private sector companies have proven to be very effective.  In the [Niger] delta in Nigeria, releasing people who have been taken hostage from oil companies, that’s another place they have been very effective.”

Currently, the ban on terrorist financing precludes the use of private sector resolutions in terrorist hostage situations.  Keatinge argues reversing this policy would lower kidnappers’ ransom expectations and potentially throttle a major source of terrorist financing.
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World leaders meeting at the United Nations on Wednesday launched a half-billion-dollar effort to end violence against women and girls, a crime suffered by 1 in 3 in their lifetimes.

The effort will fund anti-violence programs that promote prevention, bolster government policies and provide women and girls with improved access to services, organizers said.

It will take particular aim at human trafficking, femicide and family violence, they said.

A third of all women experience violence at some point in their lives, and that figure is twice as high in some countries, according to the United Nations.

“Gender-based violence is the most dehumanizing form of gender oppression. It exists in every society, in every country rich and poor, in every religion and in every culture,” Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, head of U.N. Women, said as the United Nations held its annual General Assembly.

“If there was anything that was ever universal, it is gender inequality and the violence that it breeds against women,” she said.

In other forms of violence, more than 700 million women worldwide were married before they were 18, and at least 200 million women and girls have undergone female genital mutilation in 30 countries, according to U.N. figures.

The initiative of 500 million euros (US$595 million) was launched by the U.N. and the European Union, which is its main contributor, organizers said.

“The initiative has great power,” said Ashley Judd, a Hollywood actress and goodwill ambassador for the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) who participated in Wednesday’s announcement.

“There are already so many effective, research-based, data-driven programs,” Judd told the Thomson Reuters Foundation ahead of the announcement. “Financing for existing programs is a beautiful thing.

“It also makes an incredibly powerful statement to show that the world is increasingly cohesive around stopping gender-based violence,” she said.
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British police arrested two more suspects Wednesday in connection with last week’s bombing on a London train that injured more than 30 people.

Authorities said officers arrested a 48-year-old man and a 30-year-old man in Newport, Wales. Police had arrested another man there Tuesday night, and searches at the addresses of both arrest sites were ongoing Wednesday.

A Metropolitan Police statement did not say how the men might be linked to the bombing.

“This continues to be a fast-moving investigation,” said Commander Dean Haydon, head of the Met Counter Terrorism Command. “Detectives are carrying out extensive inquiries to determine the full facts behind the attack.”

A total of five men have been arrested since Friday’s attack.

An 18-year-old refugee from Iraq was nabbed in the port area of Dover, a major ferry terminal for travel between Britain and France, and a 21-year-old from Syria was arrested in the west London suburb of Hounslow, which is home to London’s Heathrow Airport. They remain in police custody, but neither has yet been formally charged.

A homemade bomb partially exploded at the Parsons Green station during rush hour.

Images of the bomb posted on social media appear to show a bucket on fire that had been placed inside a plastic bag close to a rail car door.

Islamic State militants claimed responsibility for the attack, but Home Secretary Rudd discounted it.

“It is inevitable that so-called Islamic State or Daesh will try to claim responsibility, but we have no evidence to suggest that yet,” she told the BBC. Rudd said authorities will try to determine how the suspects may have been radicalized.

Prime Minister Theresa May said the British public may see more armed police on the streets and the transport network. The prime minister also said members of the military will begin aiding police, providing security at some sites not accessible to the public.

The blast was the fifth major terrorist attack in Britain this year.
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Ukraine could have a new Supreme Court installed by next month as part of judicial reforms aimed at rooting out corruption, Ukraine’s Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko said Tuesday.

“I think from October the new Supreme Court will start working,” Petrenko told Reuters in an interview at the Concordia Annual Summit in New York. “The next challenge for us is to establish new appeal courts throughout the country, and to take in new judges in the regional courts.”

Petrenko added that reforms within appeal and regional courts could be in place within the next four years. Other government reforms began in 2014, after a popular uprising driven partly by public anger over endemic corruption.

Ukraine is still dealing with nagging allegations of graft, and Transparency International ranked it a poor 131st out of 176 countries in the World Ranking of Corruption Perception in a report this year.

The selection process for new Supreme Court judges has been questioned by figures including British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who cited concerns in July that Ukrainian government reforms were faltering.

Not ideal, but ‘very good’

Petrenko addressed criticism surrounding the selection, saying that while there are no ideal processes, “this one is very good.”

“We have a democratic society, and all the time there are people who will criticize the process,” he said.

Ukraine currently is the recipient of an aid-for-reforms program from the International Monetary Fund.

So far, the IMF has given the country $8.4 billion, helping it recover from a two-year recession following the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 and the outbreak of a Russian-backed insurgency in its industrial east.

Under the $17.5 billion program, the IMF wants Ukraine to set up a special court to focus on tackling corruption.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Friday said he hoped an anti-corruption chamber would be created next month, but expressed doubt that an independent court as envisaged by the IMF could be set up before 2019.
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Russia will abide by a European Court of Human Rights ruling requiring it to pay nearly 3 million euros ($3.6 million) in damages for the 2004 Beslan school siege, the Interfax news agency reported Tuesday, citing the Russian justice ministry.

Russia used excessive force to storm a school in the small southern Russian town seized by Islamist militants in 2004, causing a high number of hostages to be killed, the court ruled in April.

The three-day drama began when Islamist militants took more than 1,000 people hostages on the first day of the school year and called for independence for the majority-Muslim region of Chechnya.

More than 330 hostages died, including at least 180 children, when the siege ended in a gunbattle. It was the bloodiest incident of its kind in modern Russian history.

The case for damages was brought by 409 Russian nationals who either were taken hostage or injured in the incident, or were family members of those taken hostage, killed or injured, the European Court of Human Rights statement said in April.

On Tuesday, the court said in a press release that its Grand Chamber Panel had rejected a Russian government request to refer the case and said its ruling was final.

“No other actions are being contemplated by the participants in this process,” the Russian justice ministry said in comments carried by Interfax.

In its April ruling, the court said the heavy-handed way Russian forces stormed the school had “contributed to the casualties among the hostages.”

It also ruled that authorities had failed to take reasonable preventive measures, despite knowing militants were planning to attack an educational institution.
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The remains of at least 65 victims have been retrieved from a mass grave recently found in central Bosnia, forensic experts said Tuesday about the site of one of the most gruesome crimes of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war.

Lejla Cengic from Bosnia’s Missing Persons Institute said the remains, which included 65 skulls, were found in a grave at the Koricanske Stijene cliff near Mount Vlasic. The remains are believed to belong to some of over 220 non-Serb civilians executed in the area by Bosnian Serb forces on August 21, 1992.

The grave was discovered in August. Experts have been there since Sept. 7 and the exhumation work is continuing.

Most of those killed were taken from notorious Serb-run detention camps near the northwestern town of Prijedor and told they were going for a prisoner exchange.

The victims are believed to have been forced out of a convoy of several hundred civilians whom Serbs were deporting from Prijedor. They were ordered to line up atop the 300-meter (990-foot) cliff and executed. Once the victims fell into the abyss, Serb policemen threw bombs at them to make sure nobody would survive.

Only a dozen men survived by falling or jumping down the ravine when the shooting started.

After the killings, the Bosnian Serbs removed the bodies from the bottom of the cliff and buried them under rocks in several locations in the wider area of Koricanske Stijene. The Missing Persons Institute and the victims’ relatives have been searching the area for the remains since the end of the war.

Exhumations at previously discovered mass graves, not far from the site located in August, have uncovered the remains of 117 victims.

So far, 11 former Bosnian Serb policemen from Prijedor have been sentenced for the slayings at Koricanske Stijene.

Since the end of the war, the remains of 25,500 people have been found by forensic experts in mass graves across Bosnia. Another 7,000 people are still listed as missing and their remains are believed to be hidden at clandestine mass burial sites around the country.
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Stanislav Petrov, a former Soviet military officer known in the West as “the man who saved the world” for his role in averting a nuclear war over a false missile warning at the height of the Cold War, has died at 77.

Petrov’s German friend, Karl Schumacher, said Tuesday that he died on May 19. Schumacher called Petrov earlier this month to wish him a happy birthday, but was told by Petrov’s son Dmitry that his father had died. The Russian state Zvezda TV station only reported the death on Tuesday.

Petrov was on night duty at the Soviet military’s early warning facility outside Moscow on Sept. 26, 1983, when an alarm went off, signaling the launch of several U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles. The 44-year-old lieutenant colonel had to quickly determine whether the attack was real. He chose to consider it a false alarm, which it was.

The incident was particularly harrowing as it happened at one of the tensest periods of the Cold War when the Soviet Union appeared to genuinely fear a surprise U.S. nuclear attack.

A few weeks earlier, the Soviets had shot down a passenger plane flying to South Korea from the U.S., suspecting it of spying, killing all 269 people aboard. The United States, after a series of provocative military maneuvers, was preparing for a major NATO exercise that simulated preparations for a nuclear attack.

In a 2015 interview with The Associated Press, Petrov recalled the excruciating moments at the secret Serpukhov-15 control center when the fate of the world was in his hands.

“I realized that I had to make some kind of decision, and I was only 50/50,” Petrov told the AP.

The responsibility was enormous.

If he had judged it a real launch, the top Soviet military brass and the Kremlin would have had no time for extra analysis in a few minutes left before the incoming nuclear-tipped missiles hit Soviet territory. They would have likely ordered a retaliatory strike, triggering a nuclear war.

“It was this quiet situation and suddenly the roar of the siren breaks in and the command post lights up with the word ‘LAUNCH,'” Petrov told the AP. “This hit the nerves. I was really taken aback. Holy cow!”

Within minutes of the first alarm, the siren sounded again, warning of a second U.S. missile launch. Soon, the system was reporting that five missiles had been launched.

Petrov recalled standing up as the alarm siren blared and seeing that the others were all looking at him in confusion.

“My team was close to panic and it hit me that if panic sets in then it’s all over,” he said.

Petrov told his commander that the system was giving false information. He was not at all certain, but he was driven by the fact that Soviet ground radar could not confirm a launch. The radar system picked up incoming missiles only well after any launch, but he knew it to be more reliable than the satellites.

The false alarm was later determined to have been caused by a malfunction of the satellite, which mistook the reflection of the sun off high clouds for a missile launch.

Petrov was not rewarded for his actions. In fact, he received a reprimand for failing to correctly fill the duty log and retired from the military the following year.

Although his commanding officer did not support Petrov at the time, he was the one who revealed the incident after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. If Col. Gen. Yury Votintsev had not spoken out, Petrov said he himself “would have forgotten about it like a bad dream.”

After his story was told, Petrov has received accolades, international awards and became known as “the man who saved the world.”

But his role won him little fame in his homeland. He continued to live in a small, unkempt apartment in the Moscow suburb of Fryazino. There have been no official reports or statements about his death from any Russian government agency.

Schumacher said it was important for him to let the world know about Petrov’s passing because “we owe this man a lot.”
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Two Iraqi men have been arrested in the German capital on suspicion of membership in a terrorist organization and war crimes as part of the Islamic State group, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

A 31-year-old, identified only as Raad Riyadh A. A. in line with privacy laws, and 19-year-old Abbas R. were both arrested Monday in Berlin, prosecutors’ spokeswoman Frauke Koehler said. They’re both alleged to have joined IS in Mosul in June 2014 and participated in the killing of two Shiite Muslims.

Four months later, prosecutors said, they were involved in the execution of a captured Iraqi military officer.

While in Iraq, Raad Riyadh A.A. is also accused of extorting money from businesses to support IS and procuring weapons from the Iraqi army and police forces for the group.

After arriving in Germany in July 2015, Raad Riyadh A.A. tried to recruit two other Iraqis and convince a third to carry out a suicide attack, Koehler said.

In a separate case, a 24-year-old Syrian was arrested in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein on allegations he was a member of multiple foreign terrorist organizations, including IS. Majed A. was arrested Sept. 13 and is also accused of weapons violations.

In 2013, he joined a militia affiliated with the Nusra Front group in Syria to fight against the Assad regime, Koehler said. He ended up with IS in 2014 and fought against Kurdish forces in northern Syria before entering in Germany in August 2015.

 
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Thirty journalists and newspaper executives from a Turkish newspaper which was shut down last year went on trial Monday, facing life sentences over charges that they had links to a failed coup attempt.

The former employees of the Zaman newspaper are charged with “membership of an armed terror organization” and “attempting to overthrow” the government, parliament and the constitutional order through their links to cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Zaman was affiliated with Gulen, the U.S.-based cleric and former ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Gulen is blamed by Ankara for instigating the failed July 2016 coup, but denies any involvement.

Zaman was first seized by the Turkish government in March 2016, months before the coup attempt, and then closed down by a government decree.

Twenty-two of the suspects have been in pre-trial detention for months, including 73-year-old columnist Sahin Alpay.

“If it had ever crossed my mind that the Gulenist movement would take a role in a coup attempt, I would never have written a column in the Zaman newspaper,” Dogan news agency quoted Alpay as saying.

The indictment calls for three consecutive life sentences for the Zaman staff on charges of attempting to overthrow the constitutional order, the Turkish parliament and the Turkish government, and says the newspaper had exceeded the limits of press freedom and freedom of expression.

“I accept that this is an armed terrorist organization, but I was never a member of it,” columnist Ali Bulac told the court in Silivri, the site of a large prison about 60 km (40 miles) west of the city. He had not paid close attention to the Gulenist movement’s activities, he said.

“I missed the hole in the ground when I was watching the stars. But who did see it?” Bulac said, adding the group’s operations were perceived to be legal during the time he worked for Zaman.

Turkey’s Justice Ministry announced in July that more than 50,000 people had been arrested and 169,013 have been the subject of legal proceedings since the coup attempt.

The scale of the crackdown has drawn criticism from Turkey’s Western allies and led German Chancellor Angela Merkel to call for Ankara’s European Union accession talks to be called off.

Turkey says the sweeping response to the coup reflects the deep security challenges the country has faced.

Rights groups say more than 160 journalists are detained in Turkey, making it the world’s biggest jailer of journalists. The hearing will continue this week.
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The British government’s attempt to appear strong and united over Brexit wobbled Monday as a top official was shifted from his post days before a new round of divorce negotiations with the European Union. Opposition lawmakers said the move reflected the Conservatives’ “chaotic” approach to handling the biggest challenge facing the country.

Prime Minister Theresa May, meanwhile, faced calls to discipline fellow Conservative Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson for undermining her leadership by publishing his own manifesto for Brexit.

A week before negotiations between Britain and the bloc are due to resume in Brussels, the U.K. government announced Monday that the top civil servant on its negotiating team had left the Department for Exiting the European Union. The department said Oliver Robbins was moving to become May’s EU adviser.

Reports of friction

The move follows reports of friction between Robbins and Brexit Secretary David Davis, the U.K.’s top negotiator.

Opposition Labour Party Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer said the shuffle “adds a whole new dimension to government’s chaotic approach to Brexit.”

In March, Britain triggered a two-year countdown to departure from the 28-nation EU. Since then, negotiations have made little progress on key issues including the status of the Ireland-Northern Ireland border and the amount Britain must pay to settle its financial commitments to the bloc.

EU officials say talks can’t move on to future relations with Britain until key divorce terms have been agreed upon. May is making a major speech Friday in Florence, Italy, that is intended to help break the logjam.

But before she could speak, Johnson laid out his own vision of Britain’s future outside the EU in a 4,000-word article for the Sunday Telegraph newspaper. It called for the U.K. to adopt a low-tax, low-regulation economy outside the EU’s single market and customs union.

Sparks speculation

The article drew rebukes from May’s Cabinet allies — and sparked immediate speculation that Johnson wants replace May as leader of the Conservative Party.

Unlike May, who campaigned to stay in the EU before last year’s referendum, Johnson was an enthusiastic supporter of the “leave” side. He has the support of some Brexit-backing Conservative lawmakers, who worry that May will settle for a compromise “soft Brexit” that somehow keeps Britain inside the EU’s single market.

Some lawmakers called on May to fire Johnson — whose bumbling, jokey persona masks intense political ambition — but she is likely in too weak a position to do so. Her authority was severely undermined when she called an early June 8 election in a bid to increase her majority — only to see the Conservatives reduced to a minority administration.

‘Boris is Boris’

May said Monday that “Boris is Boris,” but insisted she was firmly in charge.

“The U.K. government is driven from the front, and we all have the same destination in our sights, and that is getting a good deal for Brexit with the European Union,” she said during a news conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Ottawa.

Johnson’s article also was criticized by Britain’s statistics regulator, which accused him of misleadingly claiming that leaving the EU will give Britain control of an extra 350 million pounds ($475 million) a week.

‘Misuse of official statistics’

U.K. Statistics Authority chief David Norgrove called the figure “a gross misuse of official statistics.” He said the 350 million pounds was a gross rather than net figure. It doesn’t take into account a substantial rebate that Britain receives before the money is sent, or money the EU sends to Britain, which reduces the figure to about half the amount cited.

Also Monday, the British government called for a wide-ranging security treaty with the EU to ensure that intelligence-sharing and law-enforcement cooperation continue after Brexit. Such a deal would allow Britain to remain a member of the EU police body Europol and keep use of the European Arrest Warrant, which allows for the quick extradition of suspects.

But it is unclear what legal framework would underpin such a treaty, because Britain says it will leave the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.

 
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The four American college students attacked with acid at a Marseille train station have forgiven their assailant, who reportedly suffers from a mental illness, a university spokesman said Monday.

The four women, on a study-abroad year, have all said they intend to remain in Europe to continue their studies, the spokesman for Boston College, the private Jesuit school they attend, told The Associated Press.

The women “have stated their intention to remain in Europe for their studies and have offered forgiveness to the woman who attacked them, an individual who police say suffers from mental illness,” said Boston College spokesman Jack Dunn.

The four were attacked Sunday morning at the Saint Charles train station in the southern French city. A 41-year-old woman has been taken into custody by police in the case.

Two of the students had asked for prayers for their assailant in Facebook posts late Sunday.

One of the women, Michelle Krug, said she was one of two who got hit in the eye with “a weak solution of hydrochloric acid.” She asked friends to “please consider thinking about/praying for our attacker” so she can receive help.

“Mental illness is not a choice and should not be villainized,” Krug wrote, adding she planned to continue her “incredible opportunity” to study in France.
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A four-ship fleet from China has performed formation drills in the Sea of Japan, near North Korea, before heading to the Russian port of Vladivostok for joint land and sea military exercises with Russia. Moscow is already conducting the largest military exercise since the Cold War in areas close to its northwestern borders. That operation, code-named Zapad 2017, includes joint drills with Belarus. NATO is closely watching the exercises and says they include as many as 100,000 servicemen, not 12,700 as Moscow claims, and involve firing nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.
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At least eight people were killed and dozens more injured when a violent storm hit western Romania on Sunday.  

The storm, bearing winds of 100 kilometers an hour, also caused property destruction in neighboring Serbia, and in Croatia.

Road and rail traffic in parts of Romania was halted by fallen trees and dozens of towns and villages were left without power.

“We can’t fight the weather,” Romanian Prime Minister Mihai Tudose told Antena3 TV. “The entire medical sector is focused on the injured.”

He said the government would help support the communities hit by the storm.

Romania’s national weather agency issued warnings of strong winds and rainstorms for western areas of the country.

Emergency responders urged people to take shelter indoors, unplug household appliances and park in areas not close to trees or power lines.

The storm followed several days of high temperatures.  Temperatures were above 30 degrees Celsius on Sunday.
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Ana Brnabic, Serbia’s first openly gay prime minister, joined several hundred activists at a gay-pride march in Belgrade on Sunday.

Brnabic, who is also the first woman in top-level job, said she is working “one step at a time” toward building a more tolerant society.

Serbian riot police cordoned off the city center with metal fences early Sunday to prevent possible clashes with extremist groups opposed to the gathering. Similar events have been marred by violent clashes in the conservative country.

 “The government is here for all citizens and will secure the respect of rights for all citizens,” Brnabic told reporters. “We want to send a signal that diversity makes our society stronger, that together we can do more.”

Members of Serbia’s embattled LGBT community face widespread harassment and violence from extremists. Violence marred the country’s first gay pride march in 2001, and more than 100 people were injured during a similar event in 2010 when police clashed with right-wing groups and soccer hooligans. Several pride events were banned before marches resumed in 2014.

Brnabic, who was elected in June, has tried to shift the focus away from her sexual orientation, asking “Why does it matter?”

Serbia is on track to join the European Union, but the EU has asked the country to improve minority rights, including for the LGBT community.

The marchers Sunday said they hoped Brnabic will bring about legislative changes for same-sex couples.
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The Russian Defense Ministry on Sunday denied it had bombed U.S.-backed militias in Syria, saying its planes only targeted Islamic State militants and that it had warned the United States well in advance of its operational plans.

U.S.-backed militias said they came under attack on Saturday from Russian jets and Syrian government forces in Deir al-Zor province, a flashpoint in an increasingly complex battlefield.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias fighting with the U.S.-led coalition, said six of its fighters had been wounded in the strike.

But Major-General Igor Konashenkov, a spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, dismissed the allegations in a statement on Sunday.

Konashenkov said Russian planes had only carried out carefully targeted strikes in the area based upon information that had been confirmed from multiple sources.

The strikes had only hit targets in areas under the control of Islamic State, he said.

 
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The investigation into Russian influence on the US elections has renewed attention to the Russian ban on US adoptions, a response to American sanctions about five years ago. Donald Trump Jr. said that was the topic when he met with a Russian lawyer during his father’s election campaign. As Svetlana Prudovskaya of VOA’s Russian service reports, the adoption ban has affected families and children in both countries.
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