Tag Archives: Massacre

San Bernardino massacre yields second immigration fraud conviction

Memorial for San Bernardino victims

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Russian-born wife of the California man accused of supplying guns used by another couple who killed 14 people in San Bernardino pleaded guilty on Thursday to federal immigration fraud charges, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Mariya Chernykh, 26, became the second person convicted in an immigration fraud scheme linked to the December 2015 massacre by Syed Rizwan Farook and his Pakistani-born wife, Tashfeen Malik, who authorities said were inspired by Islamic extremism.

The man she admitted paying to marry her, Enrique Marquez Jr., is charged with furnishing two assault rifles used in the shooting rampage by Farook, a U.S. native of Pakistani descent, and Malik, whom he married in 2014 in Saudi Arabia.

The couple were killed in a gunfight with police four hours after the massacre.

Marquez also is accused of having plotted with Farook to stage similar shooting attacks in the suburbs east of Los Angeles in 2011 and 2012 that were never carried out. He is scheduled to go on trial on Sept. 26.

Farook’s brother, Syed Raheel Farook, 31, pled guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit fraud earlier this month, admitting that he lied on immigration forms that paved the way for Chernykh, his wife’s sister, to engage in a fraudulent marriage to Marquez.

Chernykh, a Russian citizen, pled guilty to charges of conspiracy, perjury and making false statements, and now faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine when she is sentenced in November, according to a statement by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. Her would-be brother-in-law, Raheel Farook, could receive up to five years in prison.

His wife, Tatiana Farook, a third defendant in the immigration fraud case, is slated to go on trial in March.

The slaying of Rizwan’s Farook’s co-workers at a holiday office party on Dec. 2, 20015, ranks as one of the deadliest attacks by Islamist militants in the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington.

In addition to acknowledging in court on Thursday that she falsified immigration documents and paid Marquez to participate in the sham marriage, Chernykh admitted making false statements to federal investigators in the immediate aftermath of the San Bernardino attack, authorities said.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Battle of Aleppo ends after years of fighting as rebels agree to withdraw

People walk as they flee deeper into the remaining rebel-held areas of Aleppo, Syria

By Laila Bassam and Stephanie Nebehay

ALEPPO, Syria/GENEVA (Reuters) – Rebel resistance in Syria’s Aleppo ended on Tuesday after years of fighting and months of bitter siege and bombardment that culminated in a bloody collapse of their defenses this week, as insurgents agreed to withdraw in a ceasefire.

Rebel officials said fighting would end on Tuesday evening and insurgents and the civilians who have been trapped in the tiny pocket of territory they hold in Aleppo would leave the city for opposition-held areas of the countryside to the west.

News of the deal, confirmed by Russia’s U.N. envoy, came after the United Nations voiced deep concern about reports it had received of Syrian soldiers and allied Iraqi fighters summarily shooting dead 82 people in recaptured east Aleppo districts. It accused them of “slaughter”.

“My latest information is that they indeed have an arrangement achieved on the ground that the fighters are going to leave the city,” Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters. It could happen “within hours maybe”, he said.

A surrender or withdrawal of the rebels from Aleppo would mean the end of the rebellion in the city, Syria’s largest until the outbreak of war after mass protests in 2011.

By finally dousing the last embers of resistance burning in Aleppo, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s military coalition of the army, Russian air power and Iran-backed militias will have delivered him his biggest battlefield victory of the war.

However, while the rebels, including groups backed by the United States, Turkey and Gulf monarchies, as well as jihadist groups that the West does not support, will suffer a crushing defeat in Aleppo, the war will be far from over.

“The crushing of Aleppo, the immeasurably terrifying toll on its people, the bloodshed, the wanton slaughter of men, women and children, the destruction – and we are nowhere near the end of this cruel conflict,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said in a statement.

Govermental Syrian forces fire into sky as celebrating their victory against rebels in eastern Aleppo, Syria

Govermental Syrian forces fire into sky as celebrating their victory against rebels in eastern Aleppo, Syria December 12,2016. REUTERS/ Omar Sanadiki

“MELTDOWN OF HUMANITY”

The rout of rebels from their ever-shrinking territory in Aleppo has sparked a mass flight of civilians and insurgents in bitter weather, a crisis the United Nations said was a “complete meltdown of humanity”.

“The reports we had are of people being shot in the street trying to flee and shot in their homes,” said U.N. spokesman Rupert Colville. “There could be many more.”

The Syrian army has denied carrying out killings or torture among those captured, and its main ally Russia said on Tuesday rebels had “kept over 100,000 people as human shields”.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon briefed the 15-member U.N. Security Council at 12 p.m. (1700 GMT) at the request of Britain and France. France said it had called for a meeting to focus on possible war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Behind those fleeing was a wasteland of flattened buildings, concrete rubble and bullet-pocked walls, where tens of thousands had lived until recent days under intense bombardment even after medical and rescue services had collapsed.

Colville said the rebel-held area was “a hellish corner” of less than a square kilometer, adding its capture was imminent.

The Syrian army and its allies could declare victory at any moment, a Syrian military source had said, predicting the final fall of the rebel enclave on Tuesday or Wednesday, after insurgent defenses collapsed on Monday.

(Reporting By Laila Bassam in Aleppo, Orhan Coskun in Ankara, Lisa Barrington and Tom Perry in Beirut, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Angus McDowall in Beirut; Editing by Pravin Char and Peter Millership)

Aleppo rebels outgunned but confident as siege bites

Damage of Aleppo

By Tom Perry and Ellen Francis

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A senior rebel commander said on Friday that Syrian government forces would never be able to capture Aleppo’s opposition-held east, more than three weeks into a ferocious offensive, but a military source said the operation was going as planned.

Russian air strikes were proving of little help to government ground forces in urban warfare, the deputy commander of the Fastaqim rebel group in Aleppo said. While air strikes have pounded much of the city, they have avoided frontlines where the sides are fighting in close proximity, apparently out of fear they could hit the wrong side, he said.

The rebels were well prepared for a siege imposed this summer, and preparations for a counter attack were under way, Melhem Akidi told Reuters.

“Militarily there is no danger to the city of Aleppo,” he said, adding: “The more dangerous thing is the daily massacres by the regime that are targeting not just the people but the foundations of life in Aleppo.”

However, the Syrian military source and a second pro-government military source in the field said the campaign was on course, reiterating denials that civilians were being targeted.

“The accomplishments so far are moving according to the plan, and we are working according to gradual steps,” said the second source, a non-Syrian and part of a regional alliance fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

The assessments, on the eve of a meeting between U.S. and Russian foreign ministers in Switzerland to try to resume their failed efforts to find a diplomatic solution, point to a protracted battle for Aleppo.

Syria’s biggest city before the war has been divided into areas controlled by the government and rebels for several years. The rebel-held east is the last major urban stronghold of the nationalist rebels fighting Assad, and recapturing it would be a major strategic prize.

The Syrian army, supported by Iranian-backed militias and Russian air power, announced a major offensive to capture the rebel-held part of the city on Sept. 22, unleashing firepower not previously seen in the 5-1/2-year long war.

The onslaught has killed several hundred people and flattened many buildings. Hospitals have also been hit, leading the United States and France to accuse Russia and the Syrian government of war crimes.

Moscow and Damascus say they are only targeting militants.

ONSLAUGHT THREATENS BREAD SUPPLY

A member of Aleppo’s opposition city council told Reuters fuel reserves used to operate bakeries could run out in a month if the siege persists. A mill was bombed on Wednesday, another threat to the city’s bread supply, he said.

The air strikes have been accompanied by ground assaults by government forces, including Shi’ite militias from Iraq and Lebanon. Their clearest advance so far is the capture of ground to the north of Aleppo, including the Handarat camp.

The army has also reported gains in the city center itself. The rebels have consistently said these have been repelled. A Syrian military source said the army had gained control over several industrial facilities and an agricultural college located in northeastern Aleppo on Friday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based group monitoring the war, said the government advances so far did not match the intensity of the firepower unleashed.

The bombardment was expected to bring “much greater results”, Observatory Director Rami Abdulrahman said.

Syria’s civil war has killed 300,000 people and left millions homeless while dragging in regional and global powers and allowing for the expansion of jihadist groups including Islamic State, which controls wide areas of the east.

While Assad is backed by Russia, Iran and an array of Shi’ite militias from Arab neighbors, the Sunni rebels seeking to oust him are backed by Turkey, the United States and Gulf monarchies.

LITTLE HOPE FOR PEACE TALKS

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Saturday, possibly joined by ministers from Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

American officials have voiced little hope for success, however, and Lavrov said on Friday he had “no special expectations” for the talks.

Kerry broke off talks with Lavrov last week over the Aleppo offensive. The resumption of negotiations, despite the fighting, was a sign of the lack of options facing Western nations over the Syria conflict, where they worry increased arms supplies for the rebels could end up in the hands of jihadist groups.

The Syrian government and its allies have been steadily encircling the rebel-held east of Aleppo this year, first cutting the shortest route to nearby Turkey, before fully blockading the city this summer.

Assad said this week capturing Aleppo would be a springboard for pushing militants to neighboring Turkey, a major sponsor of the rebellion.

He has offered the Aleppo rebels an amnesty if they lay down their arms, though they have dismissed it as a trick.

ALEPPO “STEADFAST”, FUEL RUNNING OUT

Akidi, speaking from Aleppo, said he was “certain that nobody would be able to storm” the east, which he said could not be compared to other less populous and less well-armed areas that have been captured from rebels by the government.

“Everyone who stayed in Aleppo, which was under threat of siege for a long time, has prepared for steadfastness,” he said.

He also noted the proximity of nearby insurgent strongholds west of Aleppo and in Idlib province, and what he described as the government’s “fragile” hold over an important access point on the city’s southern periphery. “I do not rule out that the revolutionaries will be able to break the siege soon,” he said.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a report on Thursday that 406 people had been reported killed and 1,384 wounded in eastern Aleppo from Sept. 23 until Oct. 8. In government-held western Aleppo, which is frequently targeted by rebel shelling, 91 people including 18 children were killed over a similar period.

Muhammad Sandeh, of the opposition city council, said a fuel reserve controlled by the council could dry up in eastern Aleppo in a month or less if the siege persists.

“There are enough bakeries, but there isn’t enough flour or fuel,” Sandeh told Reuters from Aleppo. “The families get half of their bread needs,” he said. The air strike on a mill on Wednesday had severely reduced bread supply, he said.

Water supplies have also been affected by the violence.

OCHA said the situation had improved slightly after the parties reached an Oct. 10 agreement to protect water stations from the conflict.

Ibrahim Abu al-Laith of the Civil Defence rescue service that operates in rebel-held areas said that even after pumping stations were repaired and the water returned, it couldn’t reach residents due to a lack of fuel.

Fuel is the lifeline of the eastern districts, he said.

“Ours is running out.”

(Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Pravin Char)

Srebrenica buries 127 victims of massacre, Serbs absent over genocide denial

Muslim woman cries near coffins of her relatives, who are newly identified victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, which are lined up for a joint burial in Potocari

By Maja Zuvela

SREBRENICA, Bosnia (Reuters) – Thousands of Muslim Bosniaks paid respect to 127 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre buried in individual graves on Monday in a ceremony avoided by Serbs after survivors said they were not welcome because they denied genocide had occurred.

Nationalist Bosnian Serb forces led by General Ratko Mladic executed 8,000 Bosniak men and boys after overrunning Srebrenica near the end of Bosnia’s war 21 years ago and dumped their bodies in pits – Europe’s worst atrocity since World War Two.

Serb forces subsequently dug up the bodies and scattered them in a systematic effort to conceal the crime. U.N. war crimes investigators later excavated the mass graves, but over 1,000 bodies are still missing.

Most Serbs, both in Bosnia and Serbia whose 1990s leadership armed and funded Bosnian Serb forces, strongly deny that the massacre was genocide as judged by the U.N. war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia.

They dispute the death toll and the official account of what happened, reflecting conflicting narratives about how and why Yugoslavia broke up in bloodshed. That divide continues to hinder reconciliation and stifle Bosnia’s progress toward integration with Western Europe. The Balkan country today is split into autonomous Serb and Bosniak-Croat entities.

For Muslim Bosniaks, Srebrenica has become a symbol of collective suffering and July burials of victims an annual ritual. July 11, the start of the five-day massacre, was made a national day of mourning by Bosnia’s weak post-war central government comprised of Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats.

Some Serb officials attended previous burial ceremonies but this year was the first time none came after families said that those who deny genocide happened in Srebrenica were not welcome.

“How can anyone say this was not a genocide?” said Nura Suljic, 57, pointing at endless rows of white marble tombstones in the flower-shaped Potocari memorial cemetery near Srebrenica, where more than 6,300 victims are now interred.

Suljic buried her brother after his bones were found in three different mass graves.

Bakir Izetbegovic, the Bosniak chairman of Bosnia’s three-person inter-ethnic presidency and son of its late wartime president, urged Serbs to face up to historical facts.

“Acceptance and recognition of the truth is the first step toward genuine trust,” he said.

Last year’s 20th anniversary was marred when an angry crowd at the ceremony chased away Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, who had enlisted ally Russia to veto a U.N. resolution that would have condemned the denial of Srebrenica as genocide.

Survivors did not want a possible repeat of any such incidents that would distract attention away from the victims.

Serbian and Bosnian Serb officials bristled at the condition for attendance. “That was not genocide and Serbs will never accept that word,” Bosnian Serb President Milorad Dodik said.

Thousands of grieving families stood by green-draped coffins in sweltering mid-summer heat, some kneeling, crying and hugging the caskets before they were lowered into freshly-dug graves.

“All I have been left with are these three cold stones I can hug instead of my two sons and husband, and a grief I will carry in my heart until I die,” said 67-year-old Nezira Memic.

(Writing by Daria Sito-Sucic; editing by Mark Heinrich)

More funerals for Orlando nightclub massacre set for Friday

Ernesto Vergne kneels at a cross in honor of his friend Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado who was killed at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida,

By Bernie Woodall

ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) – Families of some of the 49 people killed in a massacre at a nightclub will bury their dead on Friday, as Orlando holds funerals over the next two weeks for victims of the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

Like many of the victims of Sunday’s attack on the Pulse club, Anthony Luis Laureano Disla, 25, was from Puerto Rico. He is to be buried on Friday, according to the Newcomer Funeral Home, a day after more than 150 friends and family mourned him at a wake.

The gunman, Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old U.S. citizen born in New York to Afghan immigrant parents, claimed allegiance to a conflicting list of Islamist militant groups, including Islamic State, in a series of phone calls and internet messages during his three-hour rampage, which ended when police shot him dead.

U.S. officials have said they do not believe he was assisted from abroad in the attack, which also wounded 53 people.

Members of 94 families who had relatives among the dead and wounded have visited a downtown football stadium where civil agencies are proving relief services, Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer told reporters on Friday.

Dyer said he would go to the funerals that families asked him to attend. “I will ask the community to do the same … These are private ceremonies, people are hurting,” he said.

Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer who helped administer compensation funds for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington and the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, is flying in to Orlando to advise the city’s Orlando United relief fund, Dyer said.

Separately, the National Compassion Fund, a unit of the nonprofit National Center for Victims of Crime, was tapped on Thursday by gay rights group Equality Florida, to distribute the roughly $5 million raised online for the victims. [L1N1971VU]

On Thursday, more than 300 people, including Florida Governor Rick Scott, attended the viewing for Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, who was born in Dorado, Puerto Rico. He was 36 when he was killed during a night of dancing to celebrate a friend’s new house. His husband had stayed home that night in the couple’s apartment.

“He was in a Snapchat video that’s out there, dancing away, so we know he had some fun before the madness,” said his cousin, Orlando Gonzalez.

President Barack Obama, who met survivors of the shooting and families of the dead in Orlando on Thursday, urged Congress to pass measures to make it harder to legally acquire high-powered weapons like the semi-automatic rifle used in the attack.

Mateen carried out the slaughter with the rifle and a handgun that had been legally purchased although he had twice been investigated by the FBI for possible connections with militant Islamist groups.

Congress is under pressure to respond and on Thursday the Senate inched toward votes on a series of gun control measures, although it is far from likely the measures will pass. The Senate is expected to vote on Monday on four proposals for gun restrictions.

(Additional reporting by Julia Harte and Peter Eisler in Orlando and Zachary Fagenson in West Palm Beach, Florida; Writing by Fiona Ortiz and Scott Malone; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Frances Kerry)

Germany sparks Turkish outcry with Armenian genocide resolution

Members of the Armenian community hold up signs during German parliamentary debate on resolution that labels 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces as genocide in Berlin

By Madeline Chambers and Tulay Karadeniz

BERLIN/ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey recalled its ambassador to Germany on Thursday in protest against a parliament resolution declaring the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces a “genocide” at a time when Europe is looking for Ankara’s help in the migrant crisis.

Turkey rejects the idea that the killings of Christian Armenians during World War One amounted to a genocide. Its Deputy Prime Minister said the vote was a “historic mistake”.

Even before Germany’s Bundestag lower house of parliament passed the symbolic resolution by an overwhelming majority, Turkey’s prime minister had condemned the motion as “irrational” and said it would test the friendship between the NATO partners.

Within two hours, Turkey had recalled its ambassador to Germany for consultations and summoned a top German diplomat to the foreign ministry in Ankara, according to officials.

Armed riot police were deployed outside the German consulate in Istanbul, near Taksim square, in case of protests.

President Tayyip Erdogan, in Nairobi, said the resolution would seriously affect relations with Germany and the government would discuss what steps Ankara would take.

“The way to close the dark pages in your own history is not by besmirching the history of other countries with irresponsible and groundless parliamentary decisions,” tweeted Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.

A spokesman for the ruling AK Party responded swiftly to the vote, saying it had “seriously damaged” relations.

The timing could not be worse for Merkel, who is relying on the success of an EU-Turkey deal she has championed to stem the flow of migrants to Europe in return for cash, visa-free travel rights and accelerated talks on EU membership.

In an indication of how sensitive the issue was, she did not take part in the vote due to “public engagements”. Later, however, she put the emphasis on the close ties between the two countries.

“Even if we have a difference of opinion on an individual matter, the breadth of our links, our friendship, our strategic ties, is great,” she told reporters when asked about it.

A poll for ARD television showed that 74 percent of Germans support the term ‘genocide’ to describe the killings. Some 57 percent think the resolution will hurt ties with Turkey.

Merkel is also keen to avoid raising tensions with Germany’s roughly 3.5 million-strong Turkish community

“I want to say to people with Turkish roots: you’re not only welcome here but you are part of this country,” said Merkel.

Over a thousand Turks demonstrated against the resolution on Saturday in front of the Reichstag building in Berlin.

“I don’t think this is the right step,” said Murat Kayman of Germany’s DITIB Turkish-Islamic group before the vote. He said a European “blind spot” could explain the vehemence of the Turkish reaction to the accusation of genocide.

The nature and scale of the killings remain highly contentious. Turkey accepts that many Armenians died in partisan fighting beginning in 1915, but denies that up to 1.5 million were killed and that this constituted an act of genocide, a term used by many Western historians and foreign parliaments.

MIGRANT DEAL THREAT?

Several German lawmakers said they did not want to point a finger at the current Turkish government but rather wanted to bolster reconciliation efforts between Turkey and Armenia.

“We know from our own experience how difficult and painful it is to work through the past … but only in this way can human trust and strength grow,” Social Democrat Rolf Muetzenich said in parliament before the vote.

Armenia welcomed the resolution. The foreign ministry said Turkish authorities continued “to obstinately reject the undeniable fact of genocide”.

Nearly a dozen other EU countries have passed similar resolutions. French lawmakers officially recognized the Armenian massacre as a genocide in 2001, infuriating Turkey.

Ankara also threatened a “total rupture” with France over a 2012 law outlawing denial of the genocide but France’s highest legal authority ruled that was an unconstitutional violation of freedom of speech, prompting a thaw in relations.

The German resolution says the Armenians’ fate exemplified “the history of mass exterminations, ethnic cleansing, deportations and yes, genocide, which marked the 20th century in such a terrible way.”

It also acknowledges that the German Empire, then a military ally of the Ottomans, did nothing to stop the killings.

(Additional reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley, Daren Butler, Orhan Coskun, Ece Toksabay in Turkey and Leigh Thomas in Paris and Hasmik Mkrtchyan in Yerevan bureau; Writing by Noah Barkin and Madeline Chambers; Editing by Gareth Jones and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Syrian Troops Massacre Family

Syrian government forces in northwest Syria have killed thirteen members of the same family, almost all women and children. Some reports from activists groups in the region say some of the victims were burned alive.

The massacre happened in Bayda near the seaport of Banias. The family was in a Sunni village where government supporters have been trying to rid the area of Sunnis. Continue reading →

60 People Massacred By Syrian Forces

Activists report that 60 bodies have been found just outside of Damascus burned beyond recognition with their hands bound behind their back. The bodies were discovered in a trash dump outside Qatana, a Damascus suburb.

The announcement of the massacre came as the United Nations announced an end to its observer mission. Continue reading →

Over 100 Killed In Syrian Massacre

Syrian government forces have killed over 100 in the latest massacre related to the civil war situation in the country. The attack in the central Homs province is still sketchy on information as the government has tried to quell reports of the mass killing.

The Observatory for Human Rights reports that sources have confirmed over 100 people killed but only 30 have been positively identified. Activists now say government forces have killed over 17,000 people since the start of the uprising against Syrian President Bashir Assad. Continue reading →