The Washington Post - 12.11.2019

A10 eZ re the washington post.tuesday, november 12 , 2019

Mesurier said the accusations

had taken a heavy toll on the

rescue workers whom his organi-

zation supported.

“What you need to understand

is that these guys are the ones still

fighting to save lives. They didn’t

get into this job because they

were political. They were bakers,

engineers and just normal peo-

ple,” he said. “But when it was a

choice between fleeing or saving

lives, this is what they chose: to

stay, and to make a difference.”

[email protected]

sarah dadouch in Beirut contributed

to this report.

prime target for attacks by the

Syrian and Russian governments

and media, which placed them at

the center of conspiracy theories

and claimed they had terrorist

links.

Although the White Helmets

have been forced into a smaller

and smaller swath of territory,

increasingly controlled by mili-

tants, the organization says it

remains a neutral civil defense

force, focusing rescue efforts on

the 3 million civilians caught be-

tween hard-liners and a govern-

ment pushing to retake territory.

In a n interview with The Wash-

ington Post earlier this year, Le

Order of the British Empire by

Queen Elizabeth II in 2016 for his

work in Syria.

When bombs strike residential

neighborhoods that lie outside

Syrian President Bashar al-As-

sad’s control, it is the White Hel-

mets who respond, pulling fami-

lies from the rubble and rushing

casualties to the hospital. The

group has been credited with

saving thousands of lives and has

documented chemical weapons

attacks that spurred U.S. military

action against targets linked to

the Syrian army.

That w ork had made the White

Helmets, and Le Mesurier, a

barrel bombs and airstrikes. The

organization that he founded,

Mayday Rescue, has trained a

civilian rescue team in Syria

known as the White Helmets and

overseen international govern-

ment funding to it.

“It is with very heavy hearts

that Mayday Rescue must con-

firm the death of James Le Mesu-

rier,” the organization said in a

statement. “James dedicated his

life to helping civilians respond to

emergencies in conflicts and nat-

ural disasters. Nowhere was the

impact of his important work felt

so strongly as in Syria.”

Le Mesurier was awarded an

The World

UNiteD NAtiONs

IAEA: Iran increasingly

violating nuclear deal

The United Nations’ nuclear
watchdog reported Monday that
its inspectors have discovered
uranium particles of a man-made
origin “at a location in Iran not
declared to the agency.”
The revelation from the
International Atomic Energy
Agency is the first time it has
acknowledged in a report that
allegations made earlier by the
United States and Israel against
Iran are true.
The IAEA did not identify the
site in the confidential quarterly
report, which was distributed t o
member states and seen by the
Associated Press.
The IAEA also confirmed that
Iran has begun enriching uranium
at a heavily fortified installation
inside a mountain, is increasing
its stockpile of processed uranium
and is exceeding the allowable
enrichment levels.
All such steps are prohibited
under a 2015 agreement between
Iran and world powers to prevent
it from building a nuclear bomb.
But since President Trump
pulled the United States out of the
pact last year and imposed new
sanctions, Iran has been openly
stepping up violations of the deal
in an attempt to pressure the
other major signatories to help it
economically.
The IAEA report came as
European Union members met to

decide how to keep the deal alive.

“ We n ow need to make it clear

to Iran that it can’t c ontinue like

this,” German Foreign Minister

Heiko Maas told reporters.

— Associated Press

Genocide case filed

against Myanmar

Myanmar was accused Monday

of genocide at t he United Nations’

highest court for its campaign

against the country’s Rohingya

Muslim minority, a s lawyers asked

the International Court of Justice

to urgently order measures “to

stop Myanmar’s g enocidal

conduct immediately.”

Gambia filed the case on behalf

of the Organization of Islamic

Cooperation.

Gambia’s justice minister and

attorney general, Abubacarr

Marie Ta mbadou, said he wanted

to “send a clear message to

Myanmar and to the rest of the

international community that the

world must not stand by and do

nothing in the face of terrible

atrocities.”

Myanmar’s m ilitary began a

harsh counterinsurgency

campaign against the Rohingya in

August 2017 i n response to an

insurgent attack. More than

700,000 Rohingya fled to

neighboring Bangladesh to escape

what has been called an ethnic

cleansing campaign involving

mass rapes, killings and the

torching of homes.

A U.N. f act-finding mission on

Myanmar said in September that

the government should be held

responsible in international legal

forums for “genocidal acts”

against the Rohingya.

The case filed at t he

International Court of Justice

alleges that Myanmar’s a ctions

were “genocidal in character”

because they were intended to

“destroy the Rohingya group in

whole or in part.”

— Associated Press

Denmark to temporarily restore

border controls with Sweden:

Denmark will temporarily

reinstate border controls with

Sweden and step up police work

along the border after several

violent crimes and explosions

around Copenhagen that Danish

authorities say were carried out by

perpetrators from Sweden. Since

February, t here have been 13

blasts in Copenhagen. The border

checks will start Tuesday and last

six months. Authorities also plan

more CCTV s urveillance, more

surveillance of gang members,

more drones and more bomb-

sniffing dogs as part of the effort.

Ukraine, rebels say pullback in

east is completed: The Ukrainian

military and Russia-backed

separatists have completed a

pullback of troops and weapons

from an area in eastern Ukraine

embroiled in a conflict that has

killed more than 13,000 people,

officials said. The disengagement

near Petrivske that began

Saturday followed a recent similar

withdrawal in another section of

the front line, where separatists

and Ukrainian forces have been

fighting since 2014. The

disengagement of forces in

eastern Ukraine was seen as a key

step toward a summit involving

Russia, Ukraine, France and

Germany on ending the conflict.

Australian state declares

emergency over wildfires:

Australia’s m ost populous s tate

has d eclared a state of emergency

because of unprecedented

wildfire d anger as calls grew f or

the n ation to take more action to

counter c limate change. Fires in

New South Wales’s northeast

have claimed t hree lives,

destroyed m ore than 150 homes

and r azed more than 3,

square miles of forest and

farmland since Friday. T he w eek-

long declaration o f a state of

emergency gives the Rural Fire

Service broad powers to control

resources a nd direct other

government agencies.

— F rom news services

Digest

Baderkhan ahmad/associated Press

Three car bombs exploded Monday in the Syrian town of Qamishli, near the border with Turkey. The

incident came more than a week after a similar attack in Ta l Abyad, another Syrian border town. Turkey

Turkish media reports, which

said he had suffered fractures to

his head and legs after apparently

falling from a balcony. Circum-

stances surrounding his death

were unclear, and the Istanbul

governor’s office said an investi-

gation had been launched.

Le Mesurier had been a tower-

ing figure in an against-the-odds

effort to save civilians from the

Syrian and Russian governments’

BY LOUISA LOVELUCK

BAGHDAD — The British founder
of a group that supported rescue
efforts to save thousands of Syri-
an civilians was found dead in
Istanbul on Monday.
The body of James Le M esurier,
48, a former British army officer,
was found near his apartment in
central Istanbul in the early hours
of the morning, according to

Syrian rescue group’s founder

is discovered dead in Istanbul

again weeks later, have grown

into a generational clash between

young Iraqis raised in the shadow

of the U.S.-led invasion and the

political elites who profited from

an electoral system the United

States helped mold. Addressing a

youth population experiencing

widespread unemployment in an

oil-rich state, Prime Minister Adel

Abdul Mahdi and President Bar-

ham Salih have promised fresh

jobs and legislative amendments.

On the streets, their words

have been met with disbelief.

“They promise changes every

time we protest, but it’s not a new

law or a concession that we want.

It’s our rights. It’s a fundamental

change in how we’re governed,”

said Ali Saleh, a student protester

in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square.

“They didn’t know what to do

with us at first, but now they are

making it very clear.”

The unrest has unsettled Iraq’s

power brokers, initially convinc-

ing the prime minister to prepare

a resignation speech before back-

ers in Baghdad and Te hran con-

vinced him not to deliver it, ac-

cording to three officials close to

him who spoke on the condition

of anonymity because of the sensi-

tivity of the issues. In the weeks

that followed, groups from across

Iraq’s political spectrum have

closed ranks with an agreement

to protect the system.

“Everyone is behind the prime

minister. If he leaves, there will be

chaos, and no one wants that,”

said Izaat al-Shahbander, an in-

formal adviser to Abdul Mahdi.

Long-standing observers of-

fered a different interpretation.

“No longer able to rely on empty

promises, Baghdad’s elite are re-

turning to a familiar strategy to

smother the existential threat

that this popular mobilization

represents: violence,” Omar Sirri

and Renad Mansour, both ana-

lysts focused on Iraq, wrote in

Mada Masr, an Egyptian news

platform.

Caught in the middle is the

country’s leading Shiite Muslim

cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sis-

tani. After a meeting with him

Monday, Iraq’s top U.N. official,

Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, said

the cleric was concerned the

country’s political parties were

not serious enough about enact-

ing real reforms.

Sistani “made it clear [he] sup-

ports the conduct of serious re-

forms in a reasonable period of

time,” Hennis-Plasschaert told a

news conference after the meet-

ing in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.

In Tahrir Square on Monday

night, the protesters’ signs re-

flected his words. “Protesters

can’t go home until the govern-

ment fulfills our demands,” read

one.

In a statement a day earlier, the

White House said it was “serious-

ly concerned” about the ongoing

violence and attacks appearing to

target leading activists.

The extent of the bloodshed

remains unclear. Medics and hu-

man rights officials said the prime

minister’s o ffice has barred hospi-

tals from sharing full casualty

figures with official entities docu-

menting the violence. Represen-

tatives from local morgues also

said they were banned from shar-

ing information about the num-

ber of bodies they had received.

Photographs of the dead are

plastered across corners of Ta hrir

Square. Nearby streets and bridg-

es, where clashes have raged in

recent days, are littered with

40mm canisters that contained

tear gas and toxic smoke. Mark-

ings on the canisters, as well as

their packaging and crates, iden-

tified the weapons as Iranian-

BY LOUISA LOVELUCK

AND MUSTAFA SALIM

BAGHDAD — For more than a
month, Iraq’s protesters have
withstood bullets and stun gre-
nades, tear gas and water can-
nons, as they chanted, danced
and called for the ouster of the
entire political system.
The political class scrambled,
then it closed ranks, and with
crowds now shrinking and state
violence undimmed, tendrils of
fear are creeping through the pro-
test movement. Strange men ap-
pear in the demonstrators’ tents,
take photographs and then leave.
Police tell the activists they man-
age to arrest that it is in their best
interests to inform on friends.
More than 319 people have
been killed and 15,000 wounded
since anti-government demon-
strations began in Baghdad and
southern cities on Oct. 1, accord-
ing to the country’s human rights
commission.
As crowds start to thin, a
broader crackdown is starting.
Hundreds of protesters have been
arrested. Volunteer medics have
disappeared on their way to Bagh-
dad’s Tahrir Square, not heard
from since.
In dozens of interviews, pro-
testers and medics described in-
telligence officers and unknown
individuals appearing in tents full
of friends, taking photographs on
cellphones and leaving. Activists
showed messages on their phones
advising them to go home or
making blunter threats.
“Everyone is scared now, but
we have to stay,” said Ghaith Mo-
hamed, 28, sitting in a tent of
fellow protesters and surrounded
by pictures eulogizing a close
friend, Safaa al-Saray, who was
killed on Oct. 28 by a shot to the
head with a military-grade tear
gas canister.
“Going home is giving up and
risking kidnap by the security
forces. We are willing to stay and
die here for our rights,” he said.
The protests, initially quashed
in early October before resuming

made, according to Adam Rawns-

ley, a contributor to the Bellingcat

open-source documentation net-

work, who focuses on Iranian

weapons. Researchers say they

were probably transferred to

Iraqi forces during the fight

against the Islamic State.

“We have never seen these gre-

nades being used in this volume,

in this way, or in any sort of

civilian protest,” said Brian Cast-

ner, Amnesty International’s se-

nior crisis adviser on arms and

military operations. “The [casual-

ty] photos are almost unshare-

able. These are truly gruesome

deaths.”

Weighing five to 10 times heavi-

er than standard canisters used

for crowd control, these grenades

have been fired directly at the

heads and chests of protesters,

according to doctors in a Baghdad

hospital, smashing skulls and kill-

ing at least 31 people on impact.

In a makeshift clinic on the

edge of Ta hrir Square, a volunteer

medic and former intelligence of-

ficer weighed one of the canisters

in the palm of his hand. “Listen,

we used to use this stuff against

the Islamic State. We’d throw

them into a building with fighters

in it and not care because they

were the enemy,” he said, placing

the canister down with a thud.

“These were never meant for

crowd control, these were never

meant for civilians.”

On his cellphone were a stream

of messages, apparently from

state authorities, requesting

more information about protest-

ers.

“That’s all they’re asking for

right now,” he said. “Names, de-

tails of the people who are here.”

As official death tolls are sup-

pressed, medics across Baghdad,

and interviewed by phone in

Iraq’s southern cities, said pro-

testers were increasingly fright-

ened to go to hospitals, fearing

surveillance or arrest. In a Tahrir

Square tent, a young man writhed

and strained in the fetal position

as blood seeped through his ban-

dages.

“He needs urgent treatment,

but he is too scared to go with the

ambulance,” said one doctor,

speaking on the condition of ano-

nymity for fear of reprisals. “No

one feels safe to leave here, so

we’ll stay.”

[email protected]

Government crackdown sows fear among Iraqi protesters

khalid mohammed/associated Press

Riot police fire tear gas and smoke bombs during clashes between Iraqi security forces and anti-government protesters in Baghdad.

Crowds shrink in face of

violence, arrests, threats;

official tolls kept secret