Tag Archives: security risk

Exclusive-U.S. urges Mexico to clear migrant camps near border -sources

By Dave Graham

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – The United States has urged Mexico to clear ad-hoc camps housing thousands of migrants in border cities due to concerns they pose a security risk and attract criminal gangs, officials familiar with the matter said.

Facing domestic criticism over a jump in illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border, the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has pressed Mexico to curb the flow of migrants to help ease pressure on the nearly 2,000 mile (3,200 km) frontier.

Two of the biggest camps to have sprung up in northern Mexico are in the city of Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas, and in Tijuana, opposite San Diego, California.

Government officials and migrant advocates say the Reynosa camp is home to at least 2,500 people, is unsanitary and has drawn drug gang members looking to recruit desperate migrants. The Tijuana camp is of a similar size, rights groups say.

For weeks, the U.S. government has been asking Mexico to clear the camps, in part because the sheer volume of people in them could jeopardize security if they made a sudden rush for the border, two officials familiar with the matter said.

The State Department and the White House declined to comment. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.

Mexico’s Foreign Ministry did not reply to requests for comment. The National Migration Institute declined to comment.

The officials emphasized the importance of eradicating conditions that encouraged cartel members to try to extort migrants, or to pressure them into joining their ranks.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered Biden to comply with a Texas-based federal judge’s ruling to revive a Trump administration immigration policy that forced thousands of asylum seekers to stay in Mexico to await U.S. hearings.

That has alarmed Mexican officials, who are concerned the country will struggle to cope with more people after the number of apprehensions or expulsions by U.S. agents of migrants crossing the border more than doubled this year.

Mexican authorities have stepped up efforts to expel migrants in the country illegally, many from Central America. In the past few weeks it has sent thousands of them to southern Mexico by plane in order to speed up the process.

(Reporting by Dave Graham; Additional reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)

Exclusive: Lebanon’s leaders were warned in July about explosives at port – documents

By Samia Nakhoul and Laila Bassam

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanese security officials warned the prime minister and president last month that 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored in Beirut’s port posed a security risk and could destroy the capital if it exploded, according to documents seen by Reuters and senior security sources.

Just over two weeks later, the industrial chemicals went up in a massive blast that obliterated most of the port and swathes of the capital, killed at least 163 people, injured 6,000 and destroyed 6,000 buildings, according to municipal authorities.

A report by the General Directorate of State Security on events leading up to the explosion included a reference to a private letter sent to President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister Hassan Diab on July 20.

While the content of the letter was not in the report seen by Reuters, a senior security official said it summed up the findings of a judicial investigation launched in January which concluded the chemicals needed to be secured immediately.

The state security report, which confirmed the correspondence to the president and the prime minister, has not previously been reported.

“There was a danger that this material, if stolen, could be used in a terrorist attack,” the official told Reuters.

“At the end of the investigation, Prosecutor General (Ghassan) Oweidat prepared a final report which was sent to the authorities,” he said, referring to the letter sent to the prime minister and president by the General Directorate of State Security, which oversees port security.

“I warned them that this could destroy Beirut if it exploded,” said the official, who was involved in writing the letter and declined to be named.

Reuters could not independently confirm his description of the letter.

The presidency did not respond to requests for comment about the July 20 letter.

A representative for Diab, whose government resigned on Monday following the blast, said the PM received the letter on July 20 and it was sent to the Supreme Defense Council for advice within 48 hours. “The current cabinet received the file 14 days prior to the explosion and acted on it in a matter of days. Previous administrations had over six years and did nothing.”

The prosecutor general did not respond to requests for comment.

‘DO WHAT IS NECESSARY’

The correspondence could fuel further criticism and public fury that the explosion is just the latest, if not most dramatic, example of the government negligence and corruption that have already pushed Lebanon to economic collapse.

As protests over the blast raged in Lebanon on Monday, Diab’s government resigned, though it will remain as a caretaker administration until a new cabinet is formed.

The rebuilding of Beirut alone is expected to cost up to $15 billion, in a country already effectively bankrupt with total banking system losses exceeding $100 billion.

Aoun confirmed last week that he had been informed about the material. He told reporters he had directed the secretary general of the Supreme Defense Council, an umbrella group of security and military agencies chaired by the president, to “do what is necessary”.

“(The state security service) said it is dangerous. I am not responsible! I don’t know where it was put and I didn’t know how dangerous it was. I have no authority to deal with the port directly. There is a hierarchy and all those who knew should have known their duties to do the necessary,” Aoun said.

Many questions remain over why the shipment of ammonium nitrate docked in Beirut in late 2013. Even more baffling is why such a huge stash of dangerous material, used in bombs and fertilizers, was allowed to remain there for so long.

The letter sent to Lebanon’s president and prime minister followed a string of memos and letters sent to the country’s courts over the previous six years by port, customs and security officials, repeatedly urging judges to order the removal of the ammonium nitrate from its position so close to the city center.

The General Directorate of State Security’s report seen by Reuters said many requests had been submitted, without giving an exact number. It said the port’s manifest department sent several written requests to the customs directorate up until 2016 asking them to call on a judge to order the material be re-exported immediately.

“But until now, no decision has been issued over this matter. After consulting one of our chemical specialists, the expert confirmed that this material is dangerous and is used to produce explosives,” the General Directorate of State Security report said.

HAZARDOUS MATERIAL

The road to last week’s tragedy began seven years ago, when the Rhosus, a Russian-chartered, Moldovan-flagged vessel carrying ammonium nitrate from Georgia to Mozambique, docked in Beirut to try to take on extra cargo to cover the fees for passage through the Suez Canal, according to the ship’s captain.

Port authorities impounded the Rhosus in December 2013 by judicial order 2013/1031 due to outstanding debts owed to two companies that filed claims in Beirut courts, the state security report showed.

In May 2014, the ship was deemed un-seaworthy and its cargo was unloaded in October 2014 and warehoused in what was known as Hangar 12. The ship sank near the port’s breakwater on Feb. 18, 2018, the security report showed.

Moldova lists the owner of the ship as Panama-based Briarwood Corp.  Briarwood could not immediately be reached for comment.

In February 2015, Nadim Zwain, a judge from the Summary Affairs Court, which deals with urgent issues, appointed an expert to inspect the cargo, according to the security report.

The report said the expert concluded that the material was hazardous and, through the port authorities, requested it be transferred to the army. Reuters could not independently confirm the expert’s account.

Lebanese army command rejected the request and recommended the chemicals be transferred or sold to the privately owned Lebanese Explosives Company, the state security report said.

The report did not say why the army had refused to accept the cargo. A security official told Reuters it was because they didn’t need it. The army declined to comment.

The explosives company’s management told Reuters it had not been interested in purchasing confiscated material and the firm had its own suppliers and government import licences.

From then on, customs and security officials wrote to judges roughly every six months asking for the removal of the material, according to the requests seen by Reuters.

Judges and customs officials contacted by Reuters declined to comment.

A number of customs and port officials have since been detained as part of the investigation into the blast.

‘BAD STORAGE AND BAD JUDGMENT’

In January 2020, a judge launched an official investigation after it was discovered that Hangar 12 was unguarded, had a hole in its southern wall and one of its doors dislodged, meaning the hazardous material was at risk of being stolen.

In his final report following the investigation, Prosecutor General Oweidat “gave orders immediately” to ensure hangar doors and holes were repaired and security provided, a second high-ranking security official who also requested anonymity said.

On June 4, based on those orders, state security instructed port authorities to provide guards at Hangar 12, appoint a director for the warehouse and secure all the doors and repair the hole in the southern wall, according to the state security report and security officials.

The port authorities did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“The maintenance started and (port authorities) sent a team of Syrian workers (but) there was no one supervising them when they entered to fix the holes,” the security official said.

During the work, sparks from welding took hold and fire started to spread, the official said.

“Given that there were fireworks stored in the same hangar, after an hour a big fire was set off by the fireworks and that spread to the material that exploded when the temperature exceeded 210 degrees,” the high-ranking security official said.

The official blamed port authorities for not supervising the repair crew and for storing fireworks alongside a vast deposit of high explosives.

Reuters could not determine what happened to the workers repairing the hangar.

“Only because the hangar faces the sea, the impact of the explosion was reduced. Otherwise all of Beirut would have been destroyed,” he said. “The issue is all about negligence, irresponsibility, bad storage and bad judgment.”

(Additional reporting by Nadia El Gowely and Ghaida Ghantous; Editing by David Clarke and Giles Elgood)

Patriot games: Slovenian paramilitaries face down migrant ‘threat’ on border

Patriot games: Slovenian paramilitaries face down migrant ‘threat’ on border
KOSTEL OB KOLPI, Slovenia (Reuters) – Dressed in camouflage and armed with air rifles, Slovenian paramilitaries moves in formation through woods a stone’s throw from Croatia, patrolling a border zone where the group’s leader says illegal migration is rife.

The more than 50-strong group, some of whom mask their faces with balaclavas and which includes a handful of women, is led by Andrej Sisko, who also heads Gibanje Zedinjena Slovenija, a fringe nationalist party that has so far failed to win seats in parliament.

He believes authorities are failing in their duty to protect Slovenia against what he views as the migrant threat, and founded Stajerska and Krajnska Varda (Stajerska and Krajnska Guard) to fill that gap.

Members of both organistions were participating in the patrol when Reuters TV met them.

“It is a duty of all of us to ensure security in our own country,” he said. “If state bodies who are paid for that cannot or do not want to ensure security we can help ensure it, that is what we do.”

Anti-migrant sentiment in Slovenia and other ex-Communist states has risen sharply since 2015, when eastern Europe bore the initial brunt of a refugee crisis.

Much of the region has since then resisted attempts by EU authorities in Brussels to enforce a continent-wide quota system for new arrivals, which Slovenia has however signed up for.

According to Slovenian police, numbers of migrants crossing illegally from Croatia to Slovenia – where a razor-wire fence has been erected along stretches of the border since 2015 – rose to 11,786 in the first nine months of this year from 6,911 a year earlier.

Sisko this year served time in jail for forming Stajerska Varda and urging the overthrow of state institutions.

He says the group, which generally meets in the border zone at weekends, does not intercept migrants – which he emphasises would be against the law – but advertises their presence to security forces.

Police told Reuters they were monitoring the group’s behaviour and had not detected any recent illegal activities.

(Reporting by Boris Kavic and Marja Novak; editing by John Stonestreet)