Peace for the World

Peace for the World
First democratic leader of Justice the Godfather of the Sri Lankan Tamil Struggle: Honourable Samuel James Veluppillai Chelvanayakam

Friday, June 29, 2018

Israel extends detention of French human rights defender

Activists have mobilized strong support for Salah Hamouri, the Palestinian-French human rights defender jailed by Israel without charge or trial since last August. But the French government appears to be doing nothing to secure his release. (via Facebook)

Ali Abunimah- 29 June 2018
Ignoring the mild protestations of the French government, Israeli defense minister Avigdor Lieberman has extended the administrative detention of Palestinian-French human rights defender Salah Hamouri for an additional three months.
Like the 430 other administrative detainees held by Israel, Hamouri has been imprisoned without charge or trial since he was seized by Israeli occupation forces from his home in occupied East Jerusalem last August.
Hamouri works as a researcher with prisoners rights group Addameer.
On Thursday, the left-wing newspaper L’Humanité asked the French foreign ministry for its reaction to the extension and what France is doing to secure Hamouri’s freedom.
“We can only regret this decision, on which an Israeli court is expected to rule in coming days,” the ministry responded.
That presumably refers to a hearing scheduled for Sunday, in which, based on previous experience, an Israeli military judge will almost certainly confirm the defense minister’s decision.
The French foreign ministry added that since Hamouri’s arrest, “we have not ceased sending specific requests to the Israeli authorities, in order that his administrative detention be brought to an end.”
It noted that President Emmanuel Macron had personally raised Hamouri’s case during meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But as L’Humanité observes, neither Macron, nor France’s foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian have publicly mentioned Hamouri’s case.

France-Israel Season

And in its public statements, the French government has pointedly not demanded Hamouri’s immediate release – only saying that it “hopes” he will be freed soon.
Israel’s comfort with ignoring requests, even from Macron, is not surprising given his government’s policy of rewarding Israel unconditionally no matter what it does.
While Hamouri languishes in an Israeli cell, it is full steam ahead for the Saison France-Israël, or France-Israel Season, a months-long series of propaganda events backed by both countries to boost Israel’s image.
On 5 June, Macron rolled out the red carpet for Netanyahu for the gala launch event in Paris as Palestine solidarity activists shut down the Champs-Élysées, many carrying signs demanding Hamouri’s release.
Also this month, dozens of Israeli weapons companies displayed their deadly wares at the Eurosatory arms fair the French government organized in Paris, including the maker of rifles that have been used by Israeli snipers to massacre unarmed Palestinians protesting in Gaza.
Despite the government’s inaction, there has been an outpouring of support for Hamouri in France, as campaigners continue to mobilize for his release.
On 19 June, Fabien Gay, a senator from the Paris region, tweeted that Hamouri had been imprisoned by Israel for 300 days, “with no trial and no access to his file in order to defend himself.”
300 jours que notre compatriote @salah_hamouri est emprisonné dans les geôles israéliennes. Sans procès et sans pouvoir accéder à son dossier pour se défendre. @LiberezSalah ! On ne t’oublie pas et restons à tes côtés !
“We won’t forget you, we are by your side,” Gay added.

Honorary citizen

Prisoners solidarity group Samidoun notes that Hamouri has “received the official support of dozens of French cities and towns and over 1,700 elected officials.”
In some towns, according to Samidoun, “mayors who have hung banners for Hamouri’s freedom have faced orders and judicial complaints in an attempt to force their removal, despite the fact that urging Hamouri’s release is ostensibly the official position of the French government.”
Samidoun adds that the renewal of his detention comes just days before Hamouri is due to be declared an honorary citizen of the town of Montcel, in a ceremony expected to be attended by the mayor and the local member of parliament.
Hamouri’s parents, and his wife Elsa Lefort, who has coordinated the campaign for her partner’s release, are expected to address the ceremony by video link from Jerusalem.
This week, more than 200 organizations around the world signed a statement urging actions and protests to demand that Israel release Khalida Jarrar, the Palestinian lawmaker and feminist who has been imprisoned without charge or trial for almost a year.
On 14 June, according to Samidoun, Jarrar was told her administrative detention would be extended for another four months, an order that is expected to be confirmed by an Israeli military court on 2 July.

An Israeli-Palestinian Confederation Can Work

The two-state solution is dead. Most one-state solutions are unacceptable to the other side. There is, however, a viable peace plan that appeals to both.


No automatic alt text available.BY DAHLIA SCHEINDLIN-JUNE 29, 2018

Between mayhem at the Gaza border and U.S.-Israeli triumphalism, it is becoming impossible to imagine a serious peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, let alone an agreement anytime soon. But none of this will distract Palestinians from their quest for liberation. And for Israelis, that means the conflict will never truly be over.

Many commentators have declared the two-state solution dead, while others cling to the concept stubbornly. From Israel’s side, the possibility looks beyond remote. Israel’s long-serving leader Benjamin Netanyahu has steadfastly thwarted a two-state solution for years.

 Nearly a decade ago, he gave one speechexpressing hypothetical, circumscribed support for the concept. Since then, he has presided over halfhearted, failed negotiations. He has insisted that Jerusalem won’t be divided and that there will be no Palestinian state on his watch. One of his current coalition partners, the Jewish Home party, is dead-set against the idea.

Nor will the Israeli public lead the charge. In a December 2017 joint Israeli-Palestinian survey I conducted with the Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki, just over half of Israelis — 52 percent — supported the broad notion of a two-state solution, a steady decline from more than 70 percent in 2010. That figure includes Arab Israeli respondents who support two states by 83 percent; among Israeli Jews, just 46 percent supports this solution. If you show respondents the details of the traditional two-state plan developed in the 2000s, support sinks to a minority on both sides.

When it comes to the land where a Palestinian state might be located, the picture becomes even more complicated. Israel directly controls 60 percent of the West Bank, including a thick perimeter connected by a series of lines that dissect the middle. This is Area C, where the Israeli military is responsible for both the security and civil affairs of the approximately 400,000 Israeli settlers (not including East Jerusalem) and between 200,000 and 400,000 Palestinians, according to combined data from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, United Nations agencies, and Palestinian sources.

 The latter are ruled under martial law; the remaining areas A and B are governed by the Palestinian Authority, but the Israeli army has ultimate sovereignty over the entire West Bank.

The idea of annexing the West Bank once would have been considered extremist and impractical. Today, incremental annexation starting with Area C is rapidly being legitimized in Israel.

 Naftali Bennett, the head of the Jewish Home party, is calling for the complete annexation of Area C. In 2017, the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, passed a law to legalize settlements on land expropriated from private Palestinian owners. Netanyahu’s Likud party passed a nonbinding but influential party resolution calling to annex settlement areas of the West Bank. And, in late May, a prominent member of Israel’s erstwhile dovish Labor Party published a controversial article arguing for the annexation of mostly the same territory.

If Area C becomes part of Israel, only the hollowed-out patches in between would be left over for a future Palestine. The prospect of living in state under these terms is losing support among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, too: Like Israeli Jews, just 46 percent of those Palestinians supported the two-state concept in the same December survey.

Finally, two-state experts now say that, at a minimum, more than 160,000 Jewish settlers (there is no genuine consensus on the number) would have to move for a future Palestine to have basic territorial contiguity. Israel moved just 8,500 people from Gaza in 2005; from then on, the Israeli right has devoted itself to preventing another so-called expulsion.


Above: Israeli Border Police evict right-wing Jewish extremists on June 30, 2005, from the Gush Katif settlement in the southern Gaza Strip. (Yoray Liberman/Getty Images) Top: A Muslim man walks by the "separation barrier" in East Jerusalem on November 27, 2014. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Activists, scholars, and pundits — especially those who have observed the territorial realities closely — have been seeking a new vision from both sides of the political divide for some years. They have mapped out paths, like alternate routes on a GPS to a destination just over the horizon, whose contours are not yet visible.

In the quest for alternatives to the traditional two-state solution, many terms are being thrown around, generating mostly confusion. “One state” means little until one knows if it is a democratic state, with de jure equality of all citizens, or an apartheid state, in which one group is disenfranchised or lives under different laws. “Parallel states,” described in an intriguing 2014 book, actually means stacked-pancake states. The terms “confederation” and “federation” are used interchangeably, inaccurately, or both; they may refer to Israel and Palestine or to Israel and Jordan.

To clarify the options, it’s essential to examine the core principles guiding the Israeli right and left in the name of peace.

The shared goal of the right is Jewish Israeli control, for the sake of cultural dominance and religious fulfillment.

 There was once another reason, too. In 2003, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stated that “it is not in our interest to govern” the Palestinians and that “the disengagement plan is a security measure.” Today’s right has instead concluded the opposite: that Israel’s continued control is necessary for physical security as well.

By contrast, the primary shared goal of the left — including Jews and Palestinians — is ending the half-century military occupation through political independence for Palestinians. Whether this happens through one state or two is a point of internal disagreement; so is the question of Palestinian refugee claims going back to 1948. But all agree on the need to end military occupation and achieve political rights. With these distinctions in mind, it becomes easier to characterize the different plans proposing alternatives to two states.

A federation or confederation between Israel and Jordan implies Israeli control of all territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River; it is a right-wing vision for Jewish Israeli control of the land Palestinians claim as their state. The same is true of the one-state model for Israel and the West Bank, in which Palestinians would be unequal to Israelis. Plans or statements supporting annexation while denying Palestinians full citizenship and civil rights have been proposed in detail by a radical right-wing parliamentarian from the Jewish Home party, Bezalel Smotrich, who is also a deputy speaker of the Knesset. The Likud lawmaker Miki Zohar proposed similar ideas in a television interview. Even Labor’s Eitan Cabel, who advocated annexing the settlement blocs in May, proposed in an interview that Palestinians living in those areas would not have citizenship; he later retracted that statement when his party kicked up a storm. But the incident shows how this once extreme approach is creeping into the mainstream.

The idea of one state in which certain residents lack civil rights has troubled some mainstream Israeli political and security leaders

, such as former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the late Meir Dagan, the former head of the Mossad intelligence agency, both of whom characterized steps in this direction as “apartheid.” Even some figures on the right have warned of the A-word in those scenarios, such as Moti Ohana, the lone Likud member who voted against his party’s resolution promoting annexation. President Reuven Rivlin, from Netanyahu’s Likud party, worried that Israel would look like an apartheid state if the new law to recognize settlements were applied. (The law is currently being challenged in the Supreme Court.)

However, other than the little-read plans published by Bennett and his party member Smotrich, the right has been somewhat reticent about formal annexation programs, focusing more on political slogans. “Sovereignty!” is a popular poster seen all around West Bank settlements. For four years, an annual conference devoted to Israeli sovereignty led by settlers has attracted a range of right-wingers, including government ministers. A common theme in these circles is the assertion that “Jordan is the Palestinian state,” which is brandished as a justification for denying Palestinians national rights in the West Bank and Gaza. On my recent visit to the Jewish community of Hebron, two settlers displayed mild disagreement about whether Palestinians should have the right to vote if Israel became sovereign in the area: One preferred that they not have the right to vote, while another felt confident allowing it — convinced that most Palestinians would not exercise the right.

It’s not even clear if Netanyahu has a vision, as he has stayed mostly silent about what should happen with the Palestinians. Yet his policies have led to the creeping de facto annexation of Area C and the deepening fragmentation of Palestinian territory and society. His occasional references to a “state-minus” hint at his approach; it is not one that can ever satisfy Palestinians.

The left’s plans, motivated by the goal of Palestinian independence, include one equal state, parallel states, and a federation or confederation between Israel and the Palestinians. These ideas all acknowledge a complex reality in which developments on the ground have suffocated Palestinians’ physical space and fragmented their society but which have also created geographic and economic interdependence. Like puzzle pieces jutting into one another, the lines exist, but the pieces must come together for a coherent picture to emerge.

Jerusalem, the proverbial microcosm, makes this clear. By the municipality’s own assessment, up to half of the Palestinian workforce of East Jerusalem works in West Jerusalem, in settlements in the east, or in other parts of Israel. Dividing the city would be a massive economic blow. Palestinians in East Jerusalem have traditionally boycotted municipal elections since 1967 as a rejection of Israel’s authority there. But the Palestinian political stigma against voting in Jerusalem is fading among younger generations. Many younger Palestinians in Jerusalem like to hang out in the west’s bars and art spaces; some send their children to bilingual schools and Hebrew University; and as many as three Palestinians have announced that they will form lists to run in October’s municipal elections — whether they stay the course through the elections, or possibly merge, remains to be seen. Few on either side want to divide the city. Only around 25 percent of the public on both sides accepts the division of Jerusalem, as recorded in the December survey.

Accordingly, the newer left-leaning peace ideas still seek the right dosage of separation, in deference to national identities. But recognizing the economic and social dangers, or the impossibility, of ripping the sides apart, they are also testing dosages of togetherness. Some plans foster physical and political integration, while others retain a structure of separation.

Federation is a plan for integration. The United States and Germany are federations: unitary states with a central government, the only body that enters into foreign relations. An Israeli-Palestinian federation could have two national regions — like the bizonal/bicommunal federation concept in Cyprus — but the two peoples would sit in one legislature and share power an in executive. That’s hard to imagine for two nations that have been in a bitter struggle for 70 years. Indeed, the only government shared by Greek and Turkish Cypriots lasted just three years before it collapsed in 1963. Negotiations in Cyprus that began in 1968 have failed for 50 years. The inability to agree on a new formula for sharing power in a single government has stymied any resolution.

The idea of “parallel states” — proposed in Mathias Mossberg and Mark LeVine’s 2014 book, One Land, Two States — allows for complete geographic integration. Anyone could live anywhere, but an Israeli and a Palestinian living one floor apart in the same building would be subject to separate laws; “stacked states” seems more appropriate than “parallel,” implying two lines that never touch. This approach raises considerable legal, ethical, and practical problems, but beyond those, neither side truly wishes to blend people and cultures in a common physical space.


 
Israeli soldiers stand on bulldozed farm land as they watch as Palestinian, Israeli and foreign peace activists protest the building of the Israeli separation barrier in the West Bank village of Walajeh in August 2007. The barrier is supposed to follow the Green Line that marks Israel's borders before the 1967 Six Day War. MUSA AL-SHAER/AFP/Getty Images

An Israeli-Palestinian confederation, by contrast, would start with the building blocks of two separate and territorially defined independent states. Promoted largely by the civil society group A Land for All, among others, the idea is that there would be two governments, two heads of state, and a border on or near the pre-1967 division, known as the Green Line. Each state would be sovereign and free to define its national character. But a confederation would diverge from the traditional two-state model by creating an agreement to share certain aspects of their sovereignty. The border would be porous, designed to facilitate rather than limit crossings. Freedom of movement — to tour, work, or study — would be the default, restricted only for individuals who pose a specific security threat.

Today, the reverse is the norm. All people are restricted from crossing boundaries; everyone theoretically needs a permit to go somewhere. In practice, Palestinians are severely constrained in their daily life. West Bank residents need a permit to travel anywhere inside Israel, including the settlements and Jerusalem, or between Gaza and the West Bank; an airport permit is almost unobtainable. The permit allowances are byzantine by design and are commonly denied, and checkpoints and the security wall make short distances into lengthy, tortuous trips for all Palestinians. Gazans are almost entirely trapped inside Gaza. Porous borders would release Palestinians from this suffocating constraint on their physical movement.

Israeli Jews face few movement restrictions today. Theoretically, they need a permit to visit the small, Palestinian-run Area A, where most Jews have little desire to be. In fact, there is no real barrier other than a warning sign — and they can glide through settler-designated checkpoints on the return. But full freedom of movement offers Israeli Jews, especially religious ones, something they may not have in a traditional two-state plan: access to the many holy sites inside the West Bank, such as the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, Rachel’s Tomb near Bethlehem, and Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus — the last is almost inaccessible to Jews today. In a traditional two-state solution, these sites would be well inside Palestine, and the latter could close its border; this is one of numerous reasons Israelis, especially if they are religious, have little interest in reaching such a solution. The confederation model is predicated on open access.

Instead of carving up Jerusalem, the city would remain united under shared sovereignty as the capital of two states. Holy places would be governed by a special regime, possibly with international support, just like in earlier two-state plans. But the delicate urban fabric of Jerusalem would remain intact, with an added Palestinian capital in the east. The border between the two states could run widely around the city, rather than through it. An umbrella municipality of Israelis and Palestinians could run east and west boroughs.

Free movement and a united Jerusalem would require advanced security measures. Such measures could be grounded in the principle of strong security cooperation, based on the system set up by the Oslo Accords still in place today. At present, Israeli security figures commonly cite the ongoing cooperation with Palestinian Authority forces as the main reason there has not been more violence over the last decade. Living under occupation, Palestinians today deeply resent what they consider collaboration, or the “outsourcing” of Israel’s rule to their own security forces. But if Palestine were free under its own civilian government, coordinated security would protect the arrangement itself, serving people rather than controlling them.

The centerpiece of the confederation approach is allowing citizens of one side to live as permanent residents on the other while voting in national elections only in their country of citizenship.

 Israeli settlers who absolutely must live on holy ground could stay so long as they are law-abiding residents under Palestinian sovereignty; they could participate in local elections but would only vote for national representation in Israel. This will alienate settlers who insist on Jewish sovereignty — but it extends a hand to more moderate settlers who have long resented the left-wing expectation that they must all automatically uproot their homes.

The same provision is a creative concession to Palestinians, since it allows some refugees from 1948 back into Israel under the same terms: permanent residency, provided they are law-abiding and perhaps after Israeli security vetting. The numbers could be determined through mutual agreement. Those residents would vote in national elections only in Palestine and, like settlers, could vote in local Israeli elections. This concept responds to one of the most intractable problems in the conflict: Palestinians insist on recognition of their right to ancestral lands, while Israelis live in mortal fear of returning Palestinians demographically destroying the Jewish state by voting the Jewish government out of office.

In previous rounds of negotiations, the refugee issue has been among the greatest points of contention and remains so in public opinion surveys. Under the confederation proposal, neither side can dominate the national politics of the other, since they may only vote in the state of their national identity.

Other forms of infrastructural cooperation are less emotional but highly pragmatic. Today, the two sides already use the same currency and buy each other’s goods: In 2012, the Bank of Israel found that 81 percent of Palestinian exported goods were sold to Israel while the country sold about $4.5 billion worth of goods to the Palestinian Authority. These numbers have only grown since.
Israeli tech companies have begun hiring Palestinian programmers, quietly but successfully, providing an opportunity for Palestinians who are well-educated but unemployed. Deepening these ties through easier physical mobility and professional associations can only benefit both economies.

All this can continue — again, minus Israel’s Oslo-era controls over Palestinian economic life through tax collection and controls over imports and exports. A professional economic council could help manage the difficulties of integrating a weaker economy with a much stronger one. This is a serious challenge. But the alternative of a separated Palestinian state with a hard border, and little access and mobility to Israel, could also lead to economic isolation — which could exacerbate rather than de-escalate the conflict.

Similarly, it hardly seems possible to manage natural resources and infrastructure separately; already, Gaza’s waste floats onto Israel’s nearby beaches, pollutes aquifers, and has forced desalination plants to shut down at times — all while Israel is now reviving its water-saving campaigns due to shortages. The traditional two-state solution would require coordination on essential environmental issues too, but the confederation model favors it in spirit and structure, facilitating both civil society and government coordination instead of making such cooperation the exception.

The liaison is ultimately voluntary. In a federation, secession can lead to war. A confederation approach allows each side the legal right to leave

. Legal secession can be peaceful, such as the referendum-based separation of Serbia and Montenegro in 2006 or Brexit (if it is ever implemented).

The attempt to combine policies from the two-state solution, while drawing on one-state ideas both for pragmatic and symbolic needs, makes this approach appealing for a small but eclectic group from Israel’s left and right, as well as some Palestinians and Arab citizens of Israel. Yossi Beilin, a former stalwart supporter and negotiator for a two-state solution, openly favors it, and President Rivlin has endorsed the idea, albeit without elaborating just what he means.

Only the future will tell whether Israelis and Palestinians choose to live closer together or further apart. But they are unlikely to reach a peace agreement that is only one or the other.
 
Dahlia Scheindlin is a political analyst and a public opinion expert; she is a regular writer at +972 magazine and a policy fellow at Mitvim — The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies. Dahlia also co-hosts The Tel Aviv Review podcast, on TLV1 Radio. (@dahliasc)

Will an alleged war criminal become president of Myanmar? 

The International Criminal Court may try to put Senior General Min Aung Hlaing on trial, he may run for president or he may just stay where he is

Myanmar military chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing salutes during military exercises in the Ayeyarwaddy delta region in February 2018. Photo: AFP/Pool/STRMyanmar military chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing salutes during military exercises in the Ayeyarwaddy delta region in February 2018. Photo: AFP/Pool/STR

 JUNE 28, 2018

Capital Gazette shooting suspect held without bond on five counts of murder

The Annapolis community reacts to the loss of five people who were killed when a shooter opened fire at the Capital Gazette on June 28. 


The man accused of killing five Capital Gazette staff had threatened the newspaper in 2013 but then “went dark,” police said. Until Thursday.

Shortly before Jarrod Ramos blasted out the glass doors of the newsroom near Annapolis at about 3 p.m., he sent another threat on social media, police said, and then unleashed his rampage, shooting with a legally purchased 12-gauge pump-action shotgun until he finally laid it down and hid under a desk as police arrived.

Anne Arundel County State’s Attorney Wes Adams said Ramos’s actions, including barrricading a back door so people could not escape and his “tactical approach of hunting down and shooting the innocent victims,” was evidence of a “coordinated attack.”

On Friday, a judge ordered Ramos of Laurel to remain detained and ordered him held without bond on five counts of murder as Ramos appeared via a video feed from a detention center.

At the bond hearing, Adams called Ramos an “overwhelming threat and danger to our community.”

The Capital Gazette and its lawyer had reported the May 2013 threats and spoke with a detective who investigated. The newspaper decided not to pursue criminal charges because it might “exacerbate” the situation, Anne Arundel County Police Chief Timothy J. Altomare said Friday during a news conference.
The threats came amid a lawsuit Ramos filed accusing the paper of defaming him through a column describing his guilty plea to harassing a woman over social media. He lost the defamation case.

Adams said Ramos worked his way through the office, shooting victims along the way. “There was one victim that attempted to escape through the back door but was shot,” he told the judge. He also used smoke grenades, police said.

Four journalists and a sales associate for the Capital Gazette died and two people suffered what police called minor injuries. The shootings are believed to be the deadliest attack on journalists in the United States in decades.

Ramos appeared in the video feed in court in a blue, v-neck prison uniform. He said nothing and was expressionless. He stared at the camera.

Ramos is unemployed and lives alone, according to testimony presented at the hearing.

John Cusumano described his neighbor, who opened fire at the staff of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis June 28, as "quiet." 
Police said that after a search of his Laurel apartment Thursday, they found evidence, which they did not detail, showing he had planned the attack.

Ramos acted alone and drove a rental car to the newspaper office, police said. Within about a minute of entering the newsroom, police found Ramos beneath a desk, authorities said. No shots were exchanged, they said.

According to Anne Arundel County Executive Steve Schuh, the social media message Ramos allegedly posted shortly before the attack said “something like ‘leave me alone’ or ‘leave me the hell alone.’”

He said it was not clear if that message from Ramos was directed at the Capital Gazette or “at the world.”

On Friday, the opinion page of the Capital Gazette read, “Today we are speechless.”

It went on, “This page is intentionally left blank today to commemorate victims of Thursday’s shooting at our office.”

The victims were Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith and Wendi Winters. Fischman and Hiaasen were editors, McNamara was a reporter, Smith was a sales assistant and Winters worked for special publications, according to the newspaper’s website.

The two people injured were likely hit by broken glass, according to officials.

Schuh said in an interview Friday that Ramos had a “long-standing grievance” with the newspaper and had filed lawsuits against the paper and “lost them all.”

Ramos lost a defamation case against the paper in 2015 over a 2011 column he contended defamed him. The column provided an account of Ramos’s guilty plea to criminal harassment of a woman over social media.

Ramos had not been cooperative with investigators and “hasn’t said much the whole time,” Altomare said Friday. He had no wallet or other identification on him at the time, according to the charging documents filed against him.

Officials said Ramos was identified using a facial recognition system after he was in custody .
President Trump addressed the shooting Friday calling it a “horrific, horrible thing” that “shocked the conscience of our nation and filled our hearts with grief.”

“Journalists, like all Americans, should be free from the fear of being violently attacked while doing their job,” Trump said.

The president has previously called the news media “the enemy of the American people.”
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) commended the quick police response. On Friday, he ordered Maryland flags to be flown at half-staff.

“It’s a tragic situation, but there were some very brave people who came in and kept it from being worse, and the response time was incredible,” Hogan said. .

The Capital Gazette, Annapolis’s daily newspaper, is widely read in Maryland’s capital and in surrounding Anne Arundel County. The paper promotes itself as one of the oldest publishers in the country, with roots dating to the Maryland Gazette in 1727.

The paper has 31 people on its editorial staff and had a daily circulation of about 29,000 and a Sunday circulation of 34,000 as of 2014.

On Friday’s edition of ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Keith Cyphers — whose sales office is across the hall from the Gazette’s — recalled the shooting scene.

He said he was on the phone with a client and heard an “incredibly loud noise” and thought it was possibly an explosion.

When he leaned from his desk and looked out into the hallway and into the Gazette’s office and lobby, he saw that the newspaper office’s glass door was gone, he said.

“It was broken into a million pieces in the hallway,” Cyphers said. Then he saw the gunman “holding a black shotgun.”

“It was up against his chest,” Cyphers said. “He was moving through the lobby” of the Gazette. “He was moving while aiming deeper into the office.”

Ramos seemed to carry a grudge for years against the Gazette after he was the subject of a column describing how he harassed a former classmate from Arundel High School, first on Facebook and then through emails. Ramos pleaded guilty in July 2011 to harassment. In a column written by Eric Hartley several days later, the woman described how Ramos had stalked her online and perhaps caused her to lose her job.

Ramos then apparently created a website that detailed his complaints against Hartley and the newspaper. Hartley is no longer at the Gazette and now works as an editor at the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va.

The chief told reporters the decision not to pursue charges against Ramos at the time was not a misstep by the department.

“Every day we talk to people who don’t want to make charges,” Altomare said. “I don’t feel the department was negligent in any way.”

A spokesman for the Department of Labor said that Ramos worked as a contractor for an IT company hired by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and that he was terminated in 2014. The spokesman did not know if he was terminated by the contractor or the bureau, or how long Ramos had worked there. Ramos’s lawyer said in 2011 that he had been working at the bureau since 2005.

Ramos graduated in 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Capitol College, now Capitol Technology University, in Laurel.

Investigators are still piecing together exactly how Thursday’s shooting unfolded.

The shooting began about 3 p.m. in a brown five-story office building just outside downtown Annapolis. It sits about four miles west of Maryland’s statehouse.

The newsroom is on the first floor of the office building and is easily accessible from the main entrance, according to a local politician.

Shortly after the attack, Gazette reporter Phil Davis posted this message on Twitter: “There is nothing more terrifying than hearing multiple people get shot while you’re under your desk and then hear the gunman reload.”

Police carrying automatic weapons rushed about 170 office workers with their hands above their heads out of the building to a department store across the street.

Sgt. Amy Miguez, an Annapolis Police Department spokeswoman, said that early on Thursday she received a text message from Davis and that she referred the reporter to county police when he said he was working on a story jurisdictional lines between city and county police and needed help to get it straight.

At 2:41, Davis texted Miguez again and wrote: “Help. Shooting at office.”

Miguez initially thought it was a joke and again referred him to call county police, because they have jurisdiction at the Gazette offices.

Davis quickly responded that he couldn’t call and that he was trying to stay as quiet as possible.
Miguez said she immediately dialed 911 and gave the location of the paper to report the shooting.
Michael Brice-Saddler, Lynh Bui, Paul Farhi, Joe Heim, Peter Hermann, Arelis R. Hernández, Reis Thebault, Rachel Weiner and Clarence Williams contributed to this report.

Exclusive: Russian Foreign Minister accuses UK of ‘extermination of the evidence’ in Skripal case


-29 Jun 2018Presenter
In an exclusive interview with Channel 4 News, Russia’s top diplomat said he would not rule out the possibility that the UK was engaged in a cover-up. Sergey Lavrov also claimed that “all kinds of tricks” had been used to change the rules of the OPCW, the international chemical watchdog.

Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, has accused Britain of an “extermination of the evidence” in the Skripal poisoning case.

In an exclusive interview with Channel 4 News, Russia’s top diplomat said he would not rule out the possibility that the UK was engaged in a cover-up.

Speaking in Moscow this morning, he also claimed that “all kinds of tricks” had been used to change the rules of the OPCW, the international chemical watchdog.

Mr Lavrov claimed there had been a “violation” of the chemical weapons convention, and said that if the OPCW was not repaired then “the days of the OPCW would be counted, at least it would not remain as a universal organisation”.

Accusing the US, Britain and EU of always believing that Russia was guilty without the evidence, he said: “In my view, rule of law means that unless proven guilty, you cannot sentence people. And that’s what’s happening with Skripal.”

A senior Foreign Office source responded to Mr Lavrov’s claims about the Skripal case, saying: “This is so blatantly concocted, it’s on the verge of being stupid.”

Skripal case

Discussing the nerve agent attack in England on Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, earlier this year, Mr Lavrov said the situation was “looks very weird”.

“The inconsistencies in the situation with Skripals are very troubling,” he said. “We never managed to get consular access to our citizen – in violation of all international conventions, diplomatic and consular relations. We never got any credible explanation why the nephew – or aunt – of this Yulia Skripal is not given visa.

“It all looks like consistent physical extermination of the evidence. Like the benches in the park were removed immediately and of course the video images when the policeman or special forces in special attire go to take a look at this bench there’s people without any protection moving around.”

Asked whether he was accusing the British government of a cover-up, he said: “I don’t exclude this, as long as they don’t give us information.”

He added: “Certainly, the UK has benefited politically from what is going on and it’s an interesting situation whereby a country that is leaving the EU is determining the EU policy on Russia.”

Relations with America

Allegations that Russia interfered in the last US presidential elections were being “used to ruin the Russia-America relations,” Mr Lavrov said.

He said the way that Rex Tillerson, the former US Secretary of State, dealt with the situation was “not mature” and “very childish”, because he refused to share evidence apparently uncovered by investigators.

He also dismissed the idea that his country may hold compromising material on President Trump, saying that – without proof – the accusations were “shameful”.


“I don’t know what people can invent,” he said, adding that claims about Russia’s interference in the 2016 US elections were “a manifestation of deep domestic controversy because the losers don’t have the guts to accept that they lost the elections.”

Edward Snowden describes Russian government as corrupt

Whistleblower’s comments a risk given his sanctuary in the country since 2013
 Edward Snowden in 2018. Photograph: Lindsay Mills



National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden has delivered his most trenchant criticism yet of the Russian government, describing it unequivocally as “corrupt”.

His comments mean the proposed US-Russia summit in Helsinki on 16 July is potentially risky for him if Donald Trump was to request Vladimir Putin to hand him over.

Snowden is wanted in the US on three charges under the Espionage Act, carrying a minimum of 10 years each in jail. Putin could balance the propaganda value of having Snowden in Russia against providing Trump with an easy gift.

In an interview with the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung Snowden, who has lived in Russia since 2013, said: “The Russian government is corrupt in many ways, that’s something the Russian people realise. Russian people are warm. They are clever. It’s a beautiful country. Their government is the problem not the people.”

Snowden faced criticism in the first couple of years after he arrived in Russia of not criticising the Putin government but he has gradually become more outspoken, including in his defence of journalists.

Russia is the only safe haven in the world for Snowden. China would not allow him access to the mainland when he was in Hong Kong in 2013. Neither Germany, where there is strong public support for Snowden, nor any other European country appears willing to fall out with the US by offering him sanctuary. If he made it to Latin America or anywhere else in the world, the US could apply economic pressure or send in a CIA team to kidnap him.

He said: “I’ve already accepted that I am going to spend my life dealing with enormous consequences for my decision to tell the public what I know. But if not for me, by all means, Germany should pass the necessary laws to allow future whistleblowers to find a safe harbour.”

Snowden said if a Russian whistleblower was to turn up on chancellor Angela Merkel’s doorstep, she would protect them. “But if an American whistleblower shows up on Merkel’s doorstep? That question has not been answered,” Snowden said.

He expressed disappointment with Merkel’s public position on whistleblowers. “We’ve talked so much about Russia today and the disappointments and the challenges that the public is facing because of the problems of their government. What would it say to the world if the only place an American whistleblower can be safe is in Russia?”

Asked about WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, with whom he is often compared, Snowden said:
“I’m a reformist, he’s a revolutionary. I don’t want to burn the system down, if I believe it can still be saved.”

Although Assange helped organise Snowden’s escape from Hong Kong, the two hold many different views, including how much classified information should be published, with Snowden favouring a more selective approach.