US ambassador says Trump would have vetoed resolution in 2016 that called settlement building a 'flagrant violation' of international law
Nikki Haley: The US will not make the same mistake again (screengrab)
Monday 18 December 2017
The United States has said it will not "make the same mistake again" by allowing the UN to pass resolutions critical of Israel, and would exercise its veto on any future condemnation of Israel's illegal settlement building.
In a meeting of the UN security council on Monday, ambassador Nikki Haley said the new administration of Donald Trump would have voted against resolution 2334, passed in December 2016.
The resolution stated that Israel's settlement building constituted a "flagrant violation" of international law and had "no legal validity".
It is a new administration. Given the chance to vote again we would exercise a veto power.
- Nikki Haley, US ambassador to the UN
John Kerry, the US secretary of state under Barack Obama, abstained from using its veto rights in the original vote, overturning a history of US support for Israel and allowing the resolution to pass.
Haley said on Monday: "In truth, 2334 was an impediment to peace. The security council put negotiations further out of reach by injecting itself in the process."
"In December 2016, the US elected to abstain. Now it is a new administration. Given the chance to vote again we would exercise a veto power.
"The US will not make that mistake again."
Haley was speaking before the UNSC was due to vote on a draft resolution that called for the condemnation of Trump's move to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
Haley said the US had "every right to do so", but said she would not comment on that decision in the meeting.
She said the UN had imperilled the peace process by "consistently singling Israel out for condemnation".
Nikolay Mladenov, the UN's special co-ordinator for the Middle East peace process, had earlier told the meeting that the UN maintains the view that Jerusalem was a "final status issue" to be decided by both sides of the conflict.
The final status issue of Jerusalem has long been the target of the US veto.
The United States is one of five permanent members of the Security Council, the others being Russia, China, the UK and France, with vetoing powers and has used them 42 times in support of Israel in the past.
Veiled Muslim women hold placards during a protest, organised by various religious organisations, against the U.S. decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in New Delhi, India, December 17, 2017. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi Sanjeev Miglani-DECEMBER 18, 2017
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - A dozen Arab ambassadors have asked India to clarify its position on the U.S recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, diplomatic sources said, after New Delhi’s muted response suggested a shift in support for the Palestinian cause.
U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly reversed decades of U.S. policy this month when he recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, generating outrage from Palestinians. Trump also plans to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.
Countries around the world, including U.S. allies Britain and France, criticised Trump’s decision, but India did not take sides.
Instead, the Indian foreign ministry in a brief statement, said India’s position was consistent and independent of any third party.
The bland statement made no reference to Jerusalem and prompted criticism at home that it was insufficient, vague and anti-Palestinian.
Israel maintains that all of Jerusalem is its capital. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state and say Trump’s move has left them marginalised and jeopardised any hopes of a two-state solution.
Last week, envoys from Arab states including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Kuwait based in New Delhi met Indian junior foreign minister M.J. Akbar to brief the government about an Arab League meeting on Dec. 9 condemning the U.S. decision, a diplomatic and an Indian government source said.
The envoys also sought a more forthright Indian response, the sources said.
But Akbar gave no assurance and the Indian source said the government had no plans for a further articulation on Jerusalem, which is at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Protestors shout slogans during a protest, organised by various religious organisations, against the U.S. decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in New Delhi, India, December 17, 2017. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi
“Akbar did not promise anything,” the diplomatic source briefed on the meeting said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities.
India was one of the earliest and vocal champions of the Palestinian cause during the days it was leading the Non-Aligned Movement while it quietly pursued ties with Israel.
But under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, New Delhi has moved to a more open relationship with Israel, lifting the curtain on thriving military ties and also homeland security cooperation.
Modi’s Hindu nationalist ruling group views Israel and India as bound together in a common fight against Islamist militancy and long called for a public embrace of Israel.
Modi in July made a first trip to Israel by an Indian prime minister and did not go to Ramallah, the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority and a customary stop for leaders trying to maintain a balance in political ties.
P.R. Kumaraswamy, a leading Indian expert on ties with Israel at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, said a “major shift” on India’s policy had been evident since early this year when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visited New Delhi.
“With the Palestinian president standing by his side, Prime Minister Modi reiterated India’s support for Palestinian statehood but carefully avoided any direct reference to East Jerusalem,” he said.
For decades, India’s support for a Palestinian state was accompanied by an explicit reference to East Jerusalem being the Palestinian capital. But Delhi has moved to a more balanced position, refusing to take sides in an explosive dispute, he said.
During the meeting last week, the ambassadors of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Somalia and the Palestinian Authority spoke, the diplomatic source said. Besides the dozen envoys there were charges d‘affaires from several other countries in the region.
“They were expecting more from India, perhaps to denounce Israel and the U.S.” said former Indian ambassador to Jordan and Anil Trigunayat. “But would it really make a difference, adding one more voice?”
Dr. A.R.M. Imtiyaz, a professor of political science at Temple University, talks with Hill School students after a presentation on ISIS. Evan Brandt — DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA
POTTSTOWN >> As with so many things in the Middle East, questions about who the Islamic State group ISIS represents and where it came from have complicated answers.
Speaking Wednesday night in the library Memorial Room at The Hill School, A.R.M. Imtiyaz, a political science professor at Temple University specializing in Asian studies, tried to unravel some of the confusion.
He was there at the invitation of The Hill’s Middle East and North Africa Club and Imtiyaz was welcomed and thanked for his comments by the group’s leader, Soaad Elbahwati, a former Pottstown student with an Egyptian background.
“It’s so important to me that The Hill community learns more about ISIS and that it does not represent Islam,” she said.
Imtiyaz took the audience of about 25 through a quick history of Islamic conflicts in the Middle East and repeatedly made the point that not only is the Islamic State group “a child of modern politics,” but that its mission is in the Middle East — not the United States.
The primary conflict with which the Islamic State is concerned, Imtiyaz said, is an ancient one — the rivalry between the Sunni and Shia branches of Islam.
He reminded the audience that Iraq and Syria were nations created by Britain in the 1920s and that Islamic State “considers these to be artificial states.”
Autocrats installed first by the British and later by the Americans protected western interests in those countries and suppressed Islamic movements, Imtiyaz said.
He noted, for example, that Sadam Hussein and his Ba’ath party were primarily Sunni in a nation where the majority of Muslims were Shiite.
“When Saddam Hussein was in power, he crushed al-Qaida. He did not tolerate any kind of insurgency,” Imtiyaz said.
The same was true of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, he said.
“After Hussein, Iraq became uncontrollable,” said Imityaz. “The Shia began to exact their revenge on the Sunni and the U.S. did nothing.”
When Hussein was overthrown in the 2003 United States invasion, and his army with primarily Sunni officers was dissolved, those professional soldiers found themselves with no job in a country now run by unsympathetic Shiites, Imtiyaz said.
They began to fight — first for al-Qaida, and later for ISIS.
Similarly, when the “Arab Spring” blossomed in 2011, the instability it caused in Libya, Syria and Egypt allowed groups like ISIS and the Muslim Brotherhood to fill the “power vacuum,” Imtiyaz said.
One way groups like that have secured power is by providing “social services” to the general population, said Imtiyaz.
“The Middle East is a region with millions of people and 71 percent of them live on less than $3 a day,” he said. “So when someone says they can take care of you, they can take care of your family, it means something.”
But even with that kind of support, it is a political organization, not a religious one, he stressed.
“Last month, the Pew Forum released a survey that shows that more than 90 percent of Muslims hate and disapprove of ISIS,” Imtiyaz said.
“ISIS does not represent Islam and it is actually hurting Muslims,” he said.
Like many other political groups, ISIS is “using violence, and using it very effectively, to achieve a political gain.”
That gain, said Imtiyaz, is unlikely to result in an Islamic caliphate in territory now part of Syria and Iraq, as ISIS proclaims.
Rather its primary purpose “is to kill Shia,” Imtiyaz said.
When the U.S. invaded Iraq, “suddenly, overnight” Iraq’s Sunnis “lost their power.”
So people like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi pledged their allegiance to Osama Bin Laden.
They used the unintended affects of the U.S. invasion to recruit displaced Sunnis to fight for them.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, was a U.S. detainee and was tortured in prison, said Imtiyaz.
While there, he “made a good network” with other detainees and, after escaping, was carrying out attacks in Iraq by 2013.
ISIS has become successful at recruiting from other countries by using sophisticated social media appeals to disaffected Muslims who have had difficulty assimilating into western countries.
“But they mostly convince them to come back. They find people who don’t have a job and say ‘why not come home to die and help your people?’ People who have jobs don’t want to go to Iraq to die,” Imtiyaz said.
“Their main focus is at home. Their main enemy is the Shia,” said Imtiyaz.
“We don’t have solid evidence that ISIS poses a serious threat to the U.S.,” said Imtiyaz, adding “bombing them will not solve the problem. That will just lead to a new era of terrorism, and create further hatred.”
“People in the Middle East do not like the policies of Washington, D.C., but they love the United States, they want to come here,” he said.
“By contrast, China is not bombing them, but building bridges and providing food,” Imtiyaz explained. “They like the policies of China, but they don’t want to go there.”
President Trump spoke to reporters on Dec. 17 after special counsel Robert S. Mueller III obtained emails from President Trump’s transition team.(The Washington Post) By Anne Gearan and Philip RuckerDecember 17 at 6:03 PM
President Trump appeared to back the claims of a lawyer for his presidential transition team that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III improperly obtained Trump associates’ emails, saying Sunday that “a lot of lawyers thought that was pretty sad.”
Trump also said he has no plan to fire Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the presidential election, including the possibility of coordination with the Trump campaign. Mueller’s investigation has resulted in charges against two people and guilty pleas by two others, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
“Not looking good. It’s not looking good,” Trump said when asked whether Mueller had received the transition documents improperly.
A lawyer for Trump’s transition team contends that Mueller should not have been able to obtain a trove of emails from the period between Trump’s 2016 election victory and his Jan. 20 inauguration without the consent of transition officials.
The batch of emails totaling thousands of pages of communications was provided to Mueller by the federal General Services Administration, the lawyer representing the organization known as Trump for America said in a letter delivered to congressional investigators Saturday.
(Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)
“This morning we sent a letter to Congress concerning the unauthorized sharing of private and transition emails with the Mueller team,” lawyer Kory Langhofer said in an interview Saturday.
A spokesman for Mueller’s team rejected the allegations of impropriety.
“When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owner’s consent or appropriate criminal process,” said Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller’s office.
The letter from Langhofer is the latest in a series of legal and public relations moves by Trump’s allies to attempt to undermine Mueller’s investigation and portray it as politically motivated.
“It’s quite sad to see that. My people were very upset,” Trump told reporters at the White House about the transition emails upon his return from a weekend trip to Camp David.
“I can’t imagine there’s anything on them, because as we said there’s no collusion,” Trump said. “There was no collusion whatsoever.”
Some of the president’s supporters have urged him to fire Mueller, but the White House has consistently said there is no discussion about getting rid of the special counsel.
Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III departs after a meeting with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 17. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
“No, I’m not,” Trump responded Sunday when asked if he intended to fire Mueller.
The letter from Langhofer, who was counsel to Trump for America, alleged that career employees of the GSA improperly provided privileged communications to investigators working for Mueller.
Transition documents are private property, not government records, the transition team contends. The letter invokes federal law and what Langhofer calls decades of precedent to argue that Mueller overstepped.
The transfer of transition documents is “unlawful conduct that undermines the Presidential Transition Act of 1963,” the letter said, “and will impair the ability of future presidential transition teams to candidly discuss policy and internal matters that benefit the country as a whole.”
The letter was sent to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee as well as the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
The Trump transition alleges that the handover was done by “career staff at the General Services Administration” and suggested that those employees may have had political motives.
But some legal experts challenged Langhofer’s charge that anything improper occurred.
Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor who teaches white collar crime at George Washington University Law School, said it was not at all surprising that Mueller’s team sought Trump transition emails. “It would be almost prosecutorial misconduct for them not to,” he said. He said it was also not surprising that Mueller would ask GSA for emails sent using government accounts.
“It’s not your personal email. If it ends in .gov, you don’t have any expectation of privacy,” he said.
But he said if Trump’s team had a valid legal claim, there is a standard avenue to pursue — they would file a sealed motion to the judge supervising the grand jury and ask the judge to rule the emails were improperly seized and provide a remedy, like requiring Mueller’s team to return the emails or excluding their use in the investigation.
“You go to the judge and complain,” he said. “You don’t issue a press release or go to Congress. It appears from the outside that this is part of a pattern of trying to undermine Mueller’s investigation.”
Eliason said he could think of “no apparent privilege” that would apply to emails sent between private citizens who have not yet joined the government, as Trump’s team suggested.
Trump’s lawyers were given a courtesy notice that the transition team lawyer planned to register a complaint, according to a person familiar with the discussion. The transition team lawyer learned of the records being provided to Mueller by GSA on Tuesday when a member of the transition was being interviewed by investigators and was shown a copy of their own email using transition account.
One White House adviser disputed pundits’ and lawyers’ claims that the only way the transition could object was to file a motion before the chief judge overseeing the grand jury.
“This wasn’t a subpoena pursuant to a grand jury. GSA just turned them over,” the adviser said.
The president’s lawyers are scheduled to meet with Muller’s team later this week for a status conference. His lawyers are expected to ask the special counsel if there are any other outstanding questions or materials that the team needs before it brings its probe to conclusion.
Democrats were quick to challenge the charge that either GSA or Mueller’s team acted improperly.
Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the senior Democrat on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said the 1963 Presidential Transition Act “simply does not support withholding transition team emails from criminal investigators.”
“The President’s lawyers have said they want to fully comply with Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation, so it is odd that they now suggest they would have withheld key documents from federal investigators,” Cummings said in a statement.
On Sunday, a Republican aide to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said the specific issues raised in Langhofer’s letter should be dealt with by the legal system — not Congress.
“To the extent the letter raises issues on how to improve subsequent transitions, the Committee takes the letter under advisement,” the aide said in an email.
The GSA provided facilities to the Trump transition team in the weeks before Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration. Langhofer claims that GSA had assured Trump for America that while it retained copies of transition records, it would not release them without consulting the organization.
GSA Deputy Counsel Lenny Loewentritt disputed Langhofer’s claim in an interview with BuzzFeed News Saturday. He told the news site that members of the transition team were informed that by using devices provided by GSA, materials “would not be held back in any law enforcement” requests.
GSA did not respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post.
Mueller’s team, Langhofer’s letter said, “has extensively used the materials in question, including portions that are susceptible to claims of privilege, and without notifying TFA or taking customary precautions to protect TFA’s rights and privileges.”
This story has been updated to include analysis of Langhofer’s letter from a legal expert, a response from a key Democratic congressman and additional context.
Mike DeBonis, Rosalind S. Helderman and Carol Leonnig contributed to this report.
A key official involved in House investigations faces a federal lawsuit alleging misconduct.
Omar Ashmawy, staff director at the Office of Congressional Ethics. (Chris Maddaloni/CQ Roll Call)
BYJANA WINTER-
A top congressional ethics official who oversees investigations into misconduct by lawmakers is accused in a federal lawsuit of verbally abusing and physically assaulting women and using his federal position to influence local law enforcement, according to a complaint filed in a federal court in Pennsylvania last month.
The ongoing lawsuit against Omar Ashmawy, staff director and chief counsel of the Office of Congressional Ethics, stems from his involvement in a late-night brawl in 2015 in Milford, Pennsylvania, and includes a range of allegations relating to his behavior that evening and in the following two-and-half years.
Ashmawy’s office conducts the preliminary investigations into allegations of misconduct in the House of Representatives, deciding which cases to pursue or refer to the Committee on Ethics. He is named in congressional documents as the official who presented one of the investigations into John Conyers, the Democratic lawmaker from Michigan accused of sexual harassment, to the ethics committee for further action.
Among other allegations, Ashmawy is accused in the lawsuit of “threatening to use his position as staff director and chief counsel of the Office of Congressional Ethics to induce a criminal proceeding to be brought against Plaintiff and/or others,” according to the federal lawsuit filed against him.
In court filings and in statements to Foreign Policy, Ashmawy denied the allegations laid out in the lawsuit.
“To be clear, I did not harass anyone that evening, physically or verbally,” he wrote in a statement to FP. “To the contrary, I was the victim of a wholly unprovoked assault for which those responsible were investigated, arrested and charged. Any allegation to the contrary is unequivocally false.”
The lawsuit, previously unreported, stems from Feb. 14, 2015 — Valentine’s Day. The evening appeared to start off well for Ashmawy: a nearly $400 dinner with his girlfriend at an upscale restaurant in Milford, followed by late-night drinks at a local bar.
It ended, however, with him bruised and bloody in the back of a police car.
Two months later, three men were arrested for assaulting Ashmawy. One of those men, Greg Martucci, is now suing Ashmawy in federal court in Pennsylvania in connection to the events of that night.
What exactly led to the physical altercation is in dispute, but in police statements reviewed by FP, three women at the bar that night, including the bartender, accuse Ashmawy of harassing and physically assaulting them.
A former Air Force officer who prosecuted two of the early post-9/11 military tribunal cases, Ashmawy has been a rising star on Capitol Hill in recent years. He was profiled in the Washington Post, which described his job overseeing “the first independent office in history charged with overseeing the ethics of the House of Representatives.” He was also featuredearlier this year in Politico’s “birthday of the day,” where he describes his job as helping the “House of Representatives uphold ethical standards by investigating allegations of misconduct by members, staff or officers of the House.”
Ashmawy’s office sits at the center of multiple ongoing, high-profile congressional investigations. Its recent work includes a probe into California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes’s midnight trip to the White House in March. The investigation led to Nunes stepping down from the committee investigating Russian influence on the 2016 presidential election, according to Office of Congressional Ethics website and news reports. (Earlier this month, the full ethics committee cleared Nunes of misconduct.)
According to the website of the Office of Congressional Ethics, it has pursued investigations into Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) and Del. Madeleine Bordallo (D-Guam), whose cases, like that of Conyers, began under Ashmawy and were referred to the ethics committee for further investigation. The New York Times this week reported that Republicans are citing a 2015 decision by the Office of Congressional Ethics clearing Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas), who has also been accused of sexual harassment.
Ashmawy has also, according to travel disclosures, visited Ukraine, Kosovo, and Georgia to assist governments there in setting up their own ethics and government oversight bodies. He gives talks overseas and in the United States on investigating lawmaker misconduct and on the importance of ethical behavior in and after government service.
Yet the complaint filed in the Middle District of Pennsylvania against Ashmawy, as well as documents related to the case and police and witness statements, raise questions about Ashmawy’s conduct.
According to the complaint, Martucci on the night of Feb. 14, 2015, witnessed “an extremely violent and belligerent” Ashmawy become verbally abusive toward two women at Milford’s Dimmick Inn, Dawn Jorgenson — the wife of John Jorgenson, the owner of the bar — and Joey Lynn Smith, a bartender there.
Martucci also said he saw Ashmawy physically assaulting Dawn Jorgenson and Christina Floyd, another woman at the bar, a claim echoed in police statements given by the women and reviewed by FP.
According to a three-page statement dated March 12, 2015, Dawn Jorgenson said she witnessed Ashmawy “clearly sexually harassing” the bartender throughout the course of the evening and saw his behavior spiral toward physical violence. “You’ll give me drinks, but you won’t fuck me,”
Ashmawy allegedly said to the bartender, according to Dawn Jorgenson’s written statement.
She said she then saw Ashmawy block the bartender with his body and curse at her, and grab her by the wrists. Dawn Jorgenson said when she tried to intervene, Ashmawy turned against her. “He’s holding my wrist so tightly that he falls down to the ground landing to the left of me,” she wrote in her statement.
She said her husband, John Jorgenson, came over to help and pulled Ashmawy away, taking him outside.
In statements given to police, the third woman, Christina Floyd, provided a similar account. “I watched each time Omar would come down and verbally sexually harass the bartender as he ordered drinks,” Floyd wrote in her statement, describing an increasingly angry Ashmawy confronting the bartender.
“I am a 5 foot 3 woman who never knew this man. I was very scared of him and was afraid he’d come back around for weeks after,” Floyd wrote of Ashmawy in her statement to police dated March 14, 2015. “I have never had a man physically harm me or scare me in that matter. He was sexually harassing, abusing and I feared for my life.”
According to Floyd, Ashmawy was “sexually harassing and verbally abusive” to the bartender. She also said Ashmawy was “very intoxicated,” an allegation that is backed up by the police report.
The two other women described abuse at the hands of Ashmawy that same night, providing similar details. Ashmawy did not respond to FP’s follow-up email with additional questions, including if he was intoxicated that evening.
Two other people at the bar that night, however, said they saw only the men drag out Ashmawy—and did not witness his alleged attacks on the women.
One of those witnesses is referenced in Ashmawy’s Dec. 6 brief in support of his motion to dismiss. The brief says the witness “called 911 after witnessing Defendant Ashmawy be attacked by three men and then one of the men involved in the attack dragging him outside” and it “seemed like the men set up Defendant Ashmawy ‘to get jumped.’” (A police report reviewed by FP confirms that the witness who called police was concerned “it wasn’t a fair fight.”)
What all sides appeared to agree on is that, at the end of the evening, Ashmawy was injured.
Months after the incident, three men were charged with assaulting Ashmawy, including Martucci. Ashmawy was never arrested or charged with a crime (a police report from the evening says Ashmawy was the only one at the scene with visible injuries).
Martucci is now suing Ashmawy in a Pennsylvania federal court, accusing him of a range of unethical and possibly criminal conduct tied to the 2015 bar fight and subsequent legal proceedings. Also named in the suit is Milford’s police chief and the borough of Milford.
In his lawsuit, Martucci accuses Ashmawy of using his political power and position with the Office of Congressional Ethics to pressure the police and the district attorney into not arresting him for assaulting the women. Martucci also alleges that Ashmawy threatened federal investigation of local government and police if they did not press charges against those accusing him of assault.
An email reviewed by FP from Ashmawy, using his congressional affiliation, to the police chief and officials at the district attorney’s office accuses them of not handling the case properly.
“As of today it has been over five weeks since I was assaulted. To date, the police department’s investigation is not complete and charges have not been filed. I am deeply concerned,” he wrote in the email, which is signed with his congressional title and work mail address.
Ashmawy cites his injuries, which he said included a facial fracture and a “bruised and bloodied” eye.
In the same email, Ashmawy references his own work conducting investigations, and indicates that if charges aren’t filed the case might attract high-level attention in the capital.
“There is no hiding what happened to me from the people I interact with on a day to day basis,” he wrote. “As result, there are a growing number of individuals in the Washington, DC community who have taken an interest in this matter and are concerned that one of the reasons this matter has languished is because I’m not a resident of Milford, PA. I’ve assured them that isn’t true. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that my ethnicity, as an Arab-American and Muslim, might also be a factor in the delayed investigation and the charging of the individuals responsible. I’ve explained that is unlikely.”
An attorney representing the town and police chief in the lawsuit declined to comment on why charges weren’t filed against Ashmawy in light of the women’s statements to police.
“Please be advised that the official response on behalf of Milford Borough and Chief DaSilva is ‘No comment during the course of pending litigation,’” Sheryl L. Brown, an attorney with the firm Siana Bellwoar, wrote FP in response to queries.
She noted that a motion to dismiss the case was pending with the court, and then threatened legal action against FP. “We reserve the right to subpoena unprivileged portions of your files considering you assert you are in possession of ‘police statements from witnesses…,’” she wrote.
Ashmawy’s version of events from that evening is markedly different. In his statement to police that night, Ashmawy wrote there was a conflict with women at the bar, but it stemmed from “a previous altercation” between his girlfriend and the bartender.
The bartender “spoke fighting words to me,” he wrote, adding that the two other women “abruptly came up to me.”
At that point, Ashmawy said, three men assaulted him, choked him, and threw him to the ground. “My handwriting is affected by the fact that I have only the sight of one eye and I’m bleeding from multiple wounds to include my eye and my lip,” he wrote in his statement to police.
“This matter was fully investigated. I was the victim, and the men responsible were arrested and charged,” he wrote in a statement to FP. “The three assailants attacked me without any provocation whatsoever, and any suggestion to contrary is nothing but an exercise in slander.”
The three men eventually charged in the assault were John Jorgenson, the bar owner, Tim Reilly, and Martucci. Each was charged with three counts relating to the alleged assault. The first two pled guilty to one misdemeanor charge, but the prosecutors eventually dropped the charges against Martucci, a federal air marshal, and the case against him was expunged in October 2016.
While the case proceeded, however, Martucci was suspended from his federal air marshal job without pay and then later fired. In response to a request for comment about Martucci, the Transportation Security Administration, which oversees the Federal Air Marshal Service, said that Martucci was no longer employed with the agency and refused to answer questions about the incident or internal investigation.
Martucci filed the lawsuit against Ashmawy in September.
On Dec. 6, Ashmawy filed a brief in support of his earlier motion to dismiss, saying he was acting as an “individual who was a victim of an assault and pursued his legal remedies to their established conclusion.”
The police chief and borough of Milford have filed similar motions to dismiss. A case management conference with all parties’ attorneys before the presiding judge is scheduled for Jan. 5, 2018.
“These criminal charges, which Mr. Martucci successfully had dismissed, derailed my client’s career and affected his livelihood,” Martucci’s lawyer, Ryan Lockman, told FP. “Mr. Martucci eagerly awaits the opportunity to proceed with his claims.”
Villages were still being damaged as late as 2 December, contradicting government assurances, says Human Rights Watch The remains of villages near Maungdaw in northern Rakhine state on 10 October. Photograph: Marion Thibaut/AFP/Getty Images
Michael Safi in Delhi-Monday 18 December 2017 14.00 GMT
Satellite images show that dozens of Rohingya villages were burned the week Myanmar signed an agreement with Bangladesh to repatriate hundreds of thousands of refugees, Human Rights Watch has claimed.
The evidence that villages were still being damaged as late as 2 December contradicted assurances by the Burmese government that violence had ceased and that the Rohingya could safely return to Myanmar, the watchdog said.
Bangladesh and Myanmar signed an agreement on 23 November to begin the process of repatriating some of the estimated 655,000 refugees who fled Myanmar in the past four months.
Burmese soldiers, police and militias have been accused of razing hundreds of villages, gang-raping women and children and killing indiscriminately, in what the US has labelled a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Burmese officials claim the reports of violence are exaggerated and it was largely perpetrated by Rohingya insurgents.
The first repatriations under the agreement are due in January, a timetable that human rights groups say is unrealistic and could expose the Muslim minority group to continued persecution, internment or possible forced resettlement.
HRW said satellite images showing signs of fires and building destruction in 40 villages in October and November were proof that the Rohingya could not yet safely return.
Satellite images show destruction in Maungdaw township between 6 November and 2 December. Use the slider above to see the difference
“The Burmese army’s destruction of Rohingya villages within days of signing a refugee repatriation agreement with Bangladesh shows that commitments to safe returns were just a public relations stunt,” said Brad Adams, the organisation’s Asia director.
“The satellite imagery shows what the Burmese army denies: that Rohingya villages continue to be destroyed. Burmese government pledges to ensure the safety of returning Rohingya cannot be taken seriously.”
HRW said its analysis showed that about 354 villages had been partially or completely destroyed since army “clearance operations” commenced in Rakhine state in August after a series of deadly attacks by Rohingya militants.
It said at least 118 of those villages were damaged after 5 September, which Aung Sang Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto leader, has identified as the official end of army operations in the state.
The Burmese government’s own investigation found 376 Rohingya “terrorists” died in the fighting and found “no deaths of innocent people” – a claim contradicted by hundreds of accounts of brutality shared by refugees in Bangladesh.
On Monday, the UN high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, said he could not “rule out that possibility that acts of genocide have been committed” in Rakhine state in recent months.
“It’s very hard to establish because the thresholds are high,” Hussein told the BBC. “But it wouldn’t surprise me in the future if the court were to make such a finding on the basis of what we see.”
He said UN investigators had heard testimony of a “consistent, methodical pattern of killings, torture, rape and arson”.
Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace laureate, has been strongly criticised for her response to the crisis, though it is unclear how much control she has over the military, which ceded control of some ministries to her civilian government in 2015 after decades of army rule.
The best solution would be for Nepal to absorb the remaining 5000 refugees and close the Beldangi and Sanichare camps permanently.
by Dr. S. Chandrasekharan-
( December 18, 2017, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) It is believed that the third country resettlement scheme is closing down when the last batch of refugees would be leaving by end December this year.
In this massive resettlement, the USA has taken the bulk of the refugees with 94179, followed by Canada with 6826 and Australia with 6695 refugees. The latest figures indicate that in all 110926 refugees have been finally resettled.
That leaves behind over 8500 refugees still in camps and mainly at Beldangi. Of these 2000 are still eager to apply for resettlement though they could have but did not do so earlier. Another 400 refugees who were rejected earlier are appealing for a review of their cases.
Ultimately, there is a likelihood of 5000 refugees still remaining in the camps and the question would be – what is to be done with them?
There are also many unregistered refugees outside the camps who perhaps by marriage or other political and criminal links have found it easy to stay on. Their number may not exceed a thousand. One should not forget that over the last two decades, a large number of refugees estimated to be over 20000 ( twenty thousand) have also moved and settled down in India.
The best solution would be for Nepal to absorb the remaining 5000 refugees and close the Beldangi and Sanichare camps permanently. But so far, as a matter of principle, the Nepal Government is unwilling to absorb any of the refugees and is sticking onto the stand that these refugees should go back to Bhutan.
Nepal knows very well that Bhutan is not going to accept these refugees at any cost. When Bhutan dragged its feet and on some excuse or other and did not take back even those refugees who were found to be genuine Bhutanese citizens by the joint verification teams of both countries, it is doubtful whether it would take any of the residual refugees now. And why should they when there is no pressure on them?
It is sad and unfortunate that in the whole episode of the refugee problem, Bhutan managed to get away without taking even a single citizen back to Bhutan and the international community could do nothing about it. It is not too late for the international community even now as a matter of principle to pressurise Bhutan government that has a responsibility towards its own citizens to make at least a token gesture by taking back a few of the remaining refugees.
Similarly, the residual refugee population that will be 5000 or less could be easily absorbed by the Nepal Government. Perhaps the government that is being formed under the new constitution after the elections may review the stand and take a benign view of the refugees.
I have in my visits abroad have seen that most of those except the elderly people are happily settled and have tried to adjust themselves in the new environment. They are found to be hardworking, law abiding and sincere- a contrast to some of the arrivals from the middle east.
All praise should go to USA that absorbed the bulk of the refugees as also the UNHCR which enabled a seamless transfer from the camps to various countries. A word of praise and appreciation is also due to Mr. D.N.S.Dhakal but for whose untiring efforts at the cost of his own personal life, the refugees may still be languishing in the camps. The museum, the cultural centre and the temple he has built in Jhapa in memory of the refugees is worth a visit by everyone interested and involved in the refugee crisis.
18 DEC 2017
Hundreds of thousands of people in Britain face Christmas on the streets or in temporary accommodation.
In our new series, Out In The Cold, Channel 4 News explores what life is like for those without a home.
128,000 children in the UK are living in temporary accommodation and without a permanent home, according to the housing charity Shelter.
Struggling to settle in unfamiliar surroundings, some families have been recording video diaries about how they are forced to live.
As Britain freezes, so too do the thousands sleeping rough in towns and cities across the country.
Whilst most of us worry about staying warm, for those on the streets the priority is staying alive in sub-zero temperatures. And the problem is getting worse.
More than 4,000 people sleep rough every night in England – a figure which has more than doubled since 2010.
Britain’s second city, Birmingham, is facing a twin crisis: high levels of homelessness and drug use.
The city’s mayor aims ti get people back into housing before tackling their drug problem, while outreach workers are trying to create safe areas where users can inject, which have already proved a huge success in Europe.
The Pentagon is seen in an aerial view. (Charles Dharapak/AP) By Joby WarrickDecember 16
Just before leaving his Defense Department job two months ago, intelligence officer Luis Elizondo quietly arranged to secure the release of three of the most unusual videos in the Pentagon’s secret vaults: raw footage from encounters between fighter jets and “anomalous aerial vehicles” — military jargon for UFOs.
The videos, all taken from cockpit cameras, show pilots struggling to lock their radars on oval-shaped vessels that, on screen, look vaguely like giant flying Tic Tacs. The strange aircraft — no claims are made about their possible origins or makeup — appear to hover briefly before sprinting away at speeds that elicit gasps and shouts from the pilots.
Elizondo, in an internal Pentagon memo requesting that the videos be cleared for public viewing, argued that the images could help educate pilots and improve aviation safety. But in interviews, he said his ultimate intention was to shed light on a little-known program Elizondo himself ran for seven years: a low-key Defense Department operation to collect and analyze reported UFO sightings.
The Department of Defense released footage showing encounters between U.S. fighter jets and “anomalous aerial vehicles.”(Department of Defense/To The Stars Academy of Arts and Science)
The existence of the program, known as the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, was confirmed officially for the first time Saturday by a Pentagon spokesman. The acknowledgment came in response to media inquiries, which were generated in part by a start-up company Elizondo has joined since retirement. The private company specializes in promoting UFO research for scientific and entertainment purposes.
Current and former Pentagon officials confirm that the Pentagon program has been in existence since 2007 and was formed for the purpose of collecting and analyzing a wide range of “anomalous aerospace threats” ranging from advanced aircraft fielded by traditional U.S. adversaries to commercial drones to possible alien encounters. It is a rare instance of ongoing government investigations into a UFO phenomenon that was the subject of multiple official inquiries in the 1950s and 1960s.
Spending for the program totaled at least $22 million, according to former Pentagon officials and documents seen by The Washington Post, but the funding officially ended in 2012. “It was determined that there were other, higher priority issues that merited funding and it was in the best interest of the DOD to make a change,” Pentagon spokesman Tom Crosson explained in a statement.
But officials familiar with the initiative say the collection effort continued as recently as last month. The program operated jointly out of the Pentagon and, at least for a time, an underground complex in Las Vegas managed by Bigelow Aerospace, a defense contractor that builds modules for space stations. It generated at least one report, a 490-page volume that describes alleged UFO sightings in the United States and numerous foreign countries over multiple decades.
Neither the Pentagon nor any of the program’s managers have claimed conclusive proof of extraterrestrial visitors, but Elizondo, citing accounts and data collected by his office over a decade, argues that the videos and other evidence failed to generate the kind of high-level attention he believes is warranted. As part of his decision to leave the Pentagon, he not only sought the release of videos but also penned a letter to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis complaining that a potential security threat was being ignored.
“Despite overwhelming evidence at both the classified and unclassified levels, certain individuals in the [Defense] Department remain staunchly opposed to further research on what could be a tactical threat to our pilots, sailors and soldiers, and perhaps even an existential threat to our national security,” Elizondo said in the letter, a copy of which was provided to The Post.
The first public revelations of the program came in a video conference aired in October by To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences, the firm Elizondo joined as a consultant after retiring from his Pentagon job. The New York Times and Politico reported the existence of the program on their websites Saturday. The Washington Post conducted several confidential interviews over two months with Elizondo and Christopher Mellon, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence who also is an officer of the private firm.
Documents provided by the former officials included letters of support by former Senate majority leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), a key backer of the initiative who helped secure funding for the program and sought to ensure a high degree of secrecy. Elizondo said knowledge of the program was limited, even within the Pentagon itself. He said the program had multiple enemies at senior levels of the department, from officials who were either skeptical or ideologically opposed to AATIP’s mission.
“I was honored to serve at the DOD and took my mission of exploring unexplained aerial phenomena quite seriously,” Elizondo said. “In the end, however, I couldn’t carry out that mission, because the department — which was understandably overstretched — couldn’t give it the resources that the mounting evidence deserved.”
It is difficult to draw conclusions about the nature of the unidentified vessels from the videos alone. Experts generally urged caution, explaining that reported UFO sightings often turn out of have innocuous explanations.
A retired Navy pilot contacted by The Post who was involved in a 2004 encounter depicted in one of the videos confirmed that the images accurately reflected his recollection of the events. The pilot would only speak on the condition of anonymity.
Elizondo, a 22-year veteran of the department who has held top security clearance and worked on secret counterintelligence missions, said he chose to join the private venture because he believed it was the best way to continue the work he was unable to complete as a government employee.
“I left to find an environment where investigating these phenomena is priority number one,” he said.
Omar Ashmawy, staff director at the Office of Congressional Ethics. (Chris Maddaloni/CQ Roll Call) 
