The Washington Post - 14.11.2019

A14 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14 , 2019

The World

TURKEY

‘Important’ ISIS figure

captured, Ankara says

Turkey’s interior minister said
Wednesday that his country’s
forces have captured an
“important” Islamic State figure
in Syria.
Suleyman Soylu said the
suspect is still being interrogated.
He did not identify the person or
provide further details.
Turkey has said in recent days
that it has captured and detained
several members of the family of
slain Islamic State leader Abu
Bakr al-Baghdadi, including one
of his wives, his sister and a
daughter.
Baghdadi blew himself up
during an Oct. 26 raid by U.S.

troops on his safe house in the

Syrian province of Idlib.

Meanwhile, a suspected Islamic

State member spent a third day in

a heavily militarized no man’s

land between Turkey and Greece

after Turkey tried to expel him to

Greece but Athens refused entry.

Turkish media have identified

him as 39-year-old Mohammad

Darwis B. and said he was an

American citizen of Jordanian

background. It was not clear why

Turkey tried to deport him to

Greece. Turkish officials have

declined to comment on his case.

Since it launched an October

offensive in northeastern Syria to

oust Syrian Kurdish fighters it

considers terrorists from a border

area, Turkey has engaged in a new

push to deport foreign-born

Islamic State members held in

Turkish prisons.

— Associated Press

GERMANY

Parliament committee

ousts far-right chair

The German parliament’s legal

affairs committee on Wednesday

ousted its chairman, a member of

the far-right Alternative for

Germany party, amid anger over

his inflammatory comments.

The committee voted 37 to 6 to

remove Stephan Brandner. It was

the first time in the parliament’s

70-year history that a committee

chairman had been voted out.

Brandner has repeatedly

angered lawmakers from other

parties over recent months with

broadsides against opponents and

his reaction to the killing of two

passersby in a botched attack by a

right-wing extremist on a

synagogue last month.

That was followed by a tweet

railing against an award for singer

Udo Lindenberg, who is critical of

Alternative for Germany, in which

Brandner used the term

“Judaslohn,” a biblical reference to

the “blood money” Judas Iscariot

received for betraying Jesus.

The general secretary of

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s

center-right Christian Democrats,

Paul Ziemiak, tweeted that

Brandner had been “unworthy” as

chairman and that “his anti-

Semitism is intolerable.”

Alternative for Germany, or

AfD, came third in the 2017

election and is the biggest

opposition party in parliament.

It has dire relations with other

parties.

— Associated Press

Swedes arrest Iranian in 1988

crimes against humanity: An

Iranian citizen has been jailed in

Sweden on suspicion of carrying

out crimes against humanity and

murder in the late 1980s in Iran, a

Swedish prosecutor said, the

period when Tehran carried out

mass executions. Karolina

Wieslander said the unidentified

man is suspected of committing

the crimes between July 28, 1988,

and Aug. 31, 1988, in Tehran. The

news agency TT said authorities

suspect he worked in a prison

where many inmates were

hanged. The alleged crimes

correspond with the end of Iran’s

long war with Iraq, which began

in 1980. A million people had

been killed by the time the war

ended.

2 arrested in Denmark over

churchyard vandalism: Two

men, ages 27 and 38, were

arrested on suspicion of “gross

vandalism” of gravestones in the

Jewish section of a churchyard in

Denmark. Danish broadcaster

DR, citing information from a

detention hearing that was briefly

open before continuing behind

closed doors, reported that the

38-year-old man was a member of

a neo-Nazi group. The men are

suspected of scrawling in green

paint on 84 gravestones and

knocking over several of them in

Randers, more than 100 miles

northwest of Copenhagen.

— From news services

DIGEST

BY CHICO HARLAN

AND STEFANO PITRELLI

rome — Much of the low-lying
Italian city of Venice was sub-
merged Wednesday after being hit
by the highest tidewaters in more
than 50 years, an event the mayor
said would leave “indelible marks”
and cause hundreds of millions in
damage.
Images from the city showed
waylaid boats that had been
tossed onto land as water spilled
into hotels and cafes and spread
knee high across an eerily empty
St. Mark’s Square, one of the city’s
tourism hubs.
The high waters, known as “ac-
qua alta,” flooded 85 percent of the
city, according to city officials.
Venice authorities said the water
level peaked at 1.87 meters, or just
over six feet, second only to a
record flood in 1966.
Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro
attributed the flooding to climate
change and called for a state of
emergency.
Venice has always lived with a
degree of risk, given its location in
a shallow lagoon. But it is increas-
ingly imperiled.
The sea level has been rising
even more rapidly in Venice than
in other parts of the world. At the
same time, the city is sinking, the
result of tectonic plates shifting
below the Italian coast.
Those factors together, along
with the more frequent extreme
weather events associated with
climate change, contribute to
floods. In its nine-century history,
the opulent St. Mark’s Basilica has
flooded six times — twice in the
past two years.
“The [increased flooding] is a
trend that jibes with the extrem-
ization of climate,” said Paolo
Canestrelli, founder and former
head of the municipality’s Tide
Monitoring and Forecast Centre.
“If we look at the course of history,
we have documents dating back to
1872, and we can see that these
phenomena didn’t used to exist.”
Climate scientists predict Ven-
ice will be entirely underwater by

the end of this century.

The direct cause of this week’s

flooding was the combination of

high astronomical tides and a

strong storm system in the Adriat-

ic Sea. A storm surge from the

low-pressure system swirling in

the Adriatic helped raise water

levels in Venice.

Forecasts indicated that the wa-

ter level would remain well above

normal in the coming days, while

ebbing and rising based on the

tide.

On Wednesday, Venice’s usual

throng of tourists had to contend

with being inundated by water.

Some tried to tiptoe out of their

hotels on makeshift planks. Tables

usually used for visitors drinking

their Aperol spritzes were instead

bobbing in water. Some hotels lost

electricity.

One city hall official, Claudio

Madricardo, speaking by tele-

phone, said he was stranded at

home and could not leave because

the water levels outside were high-

er than his boots.

“For months now, I have been

thinking I should sell my home

and leave, because the assets I’d

leave to my son one day won’t be

worth much of anything,” Madri-

cardo said. “Nobody will want a

house in Venice, because the situa-

tion will be a disaster.”

Italian news agency ANSA said

two people died on the small barri-

er island of Pellestrina, including a

78-year-old who was electrocuted

while performing repairs on his

flooded home. The news agency

said the other death could have

been related to natural causes.

Venice has been trying to miti-

gate flooding with a technological

solution: the installation of a mas-

sive underwater floodgate system.

The project, known as MOSE, is

designed to temporarily isolate

the lagoon from the Adriatic Sea

during times of “acqua alta” —

with the use of gates that rise from

the water and seal off inlets.

But corruption scandals have

paralyzed the project, and con-

struction has been plagued by de-

lays.

Brugnaro, the mayor, indicated

in an afternoon news conference

that the city’s future was at stake

in how it responded to the flood-

ing crisis.

“Venice is an emblem for the

whole country,” he said. “We are no

longer talking about a local prob-

lem, but a worldwide one.

“There were people who were

crying today because they’ve lost

everything, and we’re not talking

about the poor. The point is that

there is no longer certainty. You no

longer know how to live, and if we

want to repopulate, we want to

give certainty. It’s the life of the

city itself, the future of the city.”

Of course, what attracts tourists

is the treasure trove of churches,

medieval architecture and art-

work by the likes of Tintoretto and

Titian. A study released last year in

Nature, looking at the vulnerabili-

ty of UNESCO heritage sites along

the Mediterranean, called Venice

one of the spots most endangered

by coastal flooding.

Standing in St. Mark’s Square

on Wednesday, Paolo Chiaruttini,

a member of the basilica’s board,

said the piazza looked like a “lake.”

“I can only see water, dirty wa-

ter,” he said.

Chiaruttini said that the basili-

ca’s marble suffered water damage

even before this flooding and that

restoration is painstaking because

the church has 110 kinds of mar-

ble. He said tourism money from a

museum and nearby steeple —

“millions every year” — is fed back

into repairs and maintenance.

The maintenance of such histo-

ry, he said, is a “scary job, and it has

to be done in normal conditions —

not underwater. This [flooding] a

disaster for us. It’s a defeat.”

[email protected]

Andrew Freedman in Washington

contributed to this report.

Venice deluged by highest

tidewaters in half a century

PHOTOS BY MARCO BERTORELLO/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

TOP: Tidewaters flood the Gritti Palace in Venice, where the high waters peaked at just over six feet and flooded

85 percent of the city, officials said. ABOVE: A man walks Wednesday across the Riva degli Schiavoni promenade.