The Wall Street Journal - 11.09.2019

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Wednesday, September 11, 2019 |A

WORLD NEWS

WORLDWATCH

BRAZIL

Sky-High Murder

Rate Begins to Fall

Homicides in Brazil have de-

clined by a fifth this year after

falling in 2018 at the fastest

rate in at least a decade, revers-

ing a trend that has haunted

Latin America’s biggest nation

and propelled a law-and-order

politician to the presidency.

Justice Minister Sergio Moro

told The Wall Street Journal

that murders dropped about

20% this year through June,

compared with the year-earlier

period. His comments come as

the Brazilian Forum on Public

Safety, a nongovernmental re-

search group, on Tuesday re-

leased data showing there were

57,341 murders last year, a 10%

decline from 2017. It was the

first year homicides fell since

2015 and the sharpest yearly

decline since 2007, when the or-

ganization began corroborating

data state by state to produce a

nationwide figure.

“Our expectation is that this

trend continues and that’s what

we’re working towards,” said Mr.

Moro, who has spearheaded

President Jair Bolsonaro’s crime-

fighting efforts since taking of-

fice in January. Brazil’s murder

rate of 27.5 per 100,000 inhabit-

ants remains high, but is now

below that of Mexico.

Crime experts attribute the

decline in large part to a truce in

the bloody turf war between

Brazil’s biggest drug gangs, vio-

lence that in 2017 helped gener-

ate 64,000 murders, the highest

on record and the most for any

country in the world. State gov-

ernment strategies to isolate

and transfer imprisoned drug

lords, who often run criminal en-

terprises from inside jail, have

also had an impact. The federal

police, meanwhile, has aggres-

sively targeted money launder-

ing by violent criminal gangs,

weakening them, researchers

say.

However, an alarming rise re-

cently in police killings—which

Mr. Bolsonaro has enthusiasti-

cally supported—provides reason

for caution, they say. Police offi-

cers were responsible for 6,

deaths last year, 20% more than

2017, according to FBSP data. In

Rio de Janeiro, police carry out a

quarter of all homicides, roughly

equivalent to levels now seen in

Venezuela.

—Luciana Magalhaes

IRAQ

Stampede in Holiday

Processions Kills 31

A walkway collapsed and set

off a stampede in the holy city

of Karbala as thousands of Shi-

ite Muslims marked one of the

most solemn holy days of the

year. At least 31 people were

killed and about 100 were in-

jured, officials said.

It was the deadliest stam-

pede in recent history during

Ashoura commemorations, when

hundreds of thousands of people

converge on the city, some 50

miles south of Baghdad, for the

occasion every year.

The stampede happened to-

ward the end of the Ashoura

procession, causing a panicked

rush among worshipers near the

gold-domed Imam Hussein

shrine, according to two officials.

—Associated Press

mounting suspicions, U.S. offi-

cials and a German official fa-

miliar with the case said Ger-

many’s foreign intelligence

service, the BND, has now

joined the probe. The BND

didn’t respond to a written re-

quest for comment.

One official said the suspect

had recently come out of Rus-

sian prison after serving a

murder sentence. Upon his re-

lease, he was given a bona fide

Russian passport under the

name Vadim Sokolov, which

U.S. officials believed to be a

cover. Within days, he used

the document to apply at the

French Embassy in Moscow

for a special visa allowing

holders to travel freely

through Europe’s Schengen

document-free travel bloc.

“A fake identity with a real

passport can only be provided

by authorities in Russia,” one

U.S. official said.

The suspect then flew to

Paris and from there traveled

to Warsaw, where he stayed

for several days before travel-

ing on to Berlin, the U.S. offi-

cial said. He rented out a room

at a Warsaw hotel and left his

luggage there when he de-

parted for Berlin, with the in-

tention of returning, a Polish

government official said.

In Berlin, the suspect,

whose real identity remains

unknown to investigators, is

thought to have been briefed

by accomplices about the daily

routine of Mr. Khangoshvili.

Around midday on Friday,

Aug. 23, investigators said, the

suspected killer confronted the

Chechen émigré in a park in

central Berlin as Mr. Khang-

oshvili was on his way to the

mosque where he regularly

worshiped.

The suspect rode to the vic-

tim using a bicycle that offi-

cials said had been placed

near the scene before the

shooting. He sped toward Mr.

Khangoshvili and shot him

twice in the head with a Glock

26 handgun fitted with a si-

lencer in full view of pass-

ersby, the people familiar with

the probe alleged.

The suspected assassin then

hid in a bush, changed his

clothes and disposed of the

gun and the bicycle in the

Spree River near the park

where the murder took place,

according to police. Witnesses

called the police, who arrested

the suspect as he was about to

flee on the scooter, police said.

German police are now in-

AUSTRALIAN HEAT: Fire consumes trees in Angourie, Australia, where hundreds of firefighters have

been deployed to bring blazes under control in the states of New South Wales and Queensland.

JASON O’BRIEN/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK

People held portraits Tuesday of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a slain Georgian who once commanded forces against Russia, in front of the

German Embassy in Tbilisi. Below, officials gathered evidence at the Berlin site where he was shot dead with a silenced Glock 26 handgun.

FROM TOP: ZURAB KURTSIKIDZE/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK; PAUL ZINKEN/DPA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

The pontiff, seen on his flight back to Rome, has faced criticism for

focusing on social causes while playing down traditional doctrine.

ALESSANDRA TARANTINO/PRESS POOL

vestigating who procured the

bicycle and the scooter. The

suspect was intending to

travel back to Poland after the

killing, officials said.

Police are likely to run into

uncertainties in determining

who, precisely, the gunman

was working for inside Russia.

Western officials said that

Russian assassinations outside

its borders have traditionally

been directed either by the

federal government in Moscow

or by Chechnya’s pro-Kremlin

leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, who

commands a security appara-

tus of ethnic Chechens.

The people familiar with

the investigation said there is

another possibility—namely,

that the murder was ordered

by Chechnya, not Moscow, but

still executed with the help of

Russian operatives who fitted

the assassin with a fake iden-

tity and new passport.

Friends of Mr. Khangoshvili

said he had for years dodged

attempted assassinations and

that his death in Berlin capped

a career of fighting Moscow.

A confidant of Chechnya’s

former president, Aslan

Maskhadov, said Mr. Khang-

oshvili distinguished himself

as a midlevel commander in

the breakaway region’s second

war against Russia in the early

2000s.

One acquaintance said he

likely aroused the hatred of

Russia’s security services for

his role in a raid on the Rus-

sian city of Nazran in 2004 in

which dozens of security ser-

vice officers died.

In Germany, Mr. Khangosh-

vili applied for refugee status,

but was refused repeated re-

quests for special protection

from the German government,

said Givi Targamadze, a for-

mer official in the Georgian

government.

At the time of his death,

Mr. Khangoshvili was still try-

ing to obtain state-appointed

bodyguards, Mr. Targamadze

said. “He felt that even though

he wasn’t able to get the pro-

tection he asked for, he felt

relatively safe in Germany,”

Mr. Targamadze said. “Appar-

ently he wasn’t.”

cials marks the first time the

U.S. linked Russia to the slay-

ing. German officials initially

said the killing might be re-

lated to organized crime. Au-

thorities in at least three

countries—Germany, Poland

and France—are now investi-

gating.

“The United States believes

that Russia is responsible for

this assassination,” a U.S. offi-

cial said.

German authorities haven’t

commented further about the

attack and the man in custody,

despite speculation that the

killing might have been politi-

cally motivated. The Kremlin

hasn’t responded to requests

for comment. It has denied

any involvement in Mr. Khang-

oshvili’s death.

U.S. officials declined to say

which government officials or

organizations in Russia they

believe to have been involved

in the alleged plot to kill Mr.

Khangoshvili.

The Kremlin has emphati-

cally denied any involvement

in killings overseas even

though Russia formally legal-

ized the practice in 2006.

Since then several Kremlin op-

ponents have died in attacks

in the Middle East, Turkey and

in Ukraine. Attacks in Europe

have been rarer.

The absence of a German

government reaction to Mr.

Khangoshvili’s murder has

sparked criticism from opposi-

tion parties that Berlin is ea-

ger to avoid a confrontation

with Russia. A spokesman for

the German government de-

clined to comment and said

the investigation was continu-

ing.

The Berlin prosecutor’s of-

fice, which is leading the in-

vestigation, declined to com-

ment. But in a sign of the

Continued from Page One

Russia Is

Implicated

In Killing

from Americans, they are a lit-

tle bit everywhere,” even in

the Vatican, the pope said on

Tuesday, adding that he wel-

comes such feedback as long

as it is straightforward.

“At least those who criticize

have the honesty to say it. I

like that. I don’t like it when

the criticisms are under the

table and they smile and show

their teeth and then there is a

knife in the back,” Pope Fran-

cis said.

a weeklong trip to Africa.

A schism is the secession of

a group of believers, which

typically leads to the estab-

lishment of a new church.

Pope Francis noted that such

splits have been a recurring

feature in the history of Chris-

tianity.

“There is always a schis-

matic option in the church,”

the pope said, but added that

the “path of schism is not

Christian.”

Pope Francis was respond-

ing to a question prompted by

a comment he had made last

week, on his outbound flight

from Rome to Mozambique,

when he told a French journal-

ist that it was “an honor that

Americans attack me.”

One of pope’s most promi-

nent critics in the hierarchy is

U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke,

a former head of the Vatican’s

supreme court, who along

with three other cardinals

publicly presented the pope

with critical questions about

his teaching on divorce.

In a departure from tradi-

tional doctrine, Pope Francis

has encouraged priests to

waive the ban on Communion

for some divorced Catholics

who remarry without an an-

nulment.

Conservative Catholic me-

dia in the U.S. have aired fre-

quent criticisms of the pope

on various issues.

The U.S. also has been the

source of the biggest scandal

of the current pontificate: the

accusation last year by a for-

mer Vatican envoy to the U.S.

that Pope Francis had ignored

a history of sexual misconduct

by then-Cardinal Theodore

McCarrick and made him an

influential adviser.

Mr. McCarrick, a former

archbishop of Washington,

D.C., has denied wrongdoing.

He was convicted of sexual

abuse of minors and sexual

misconduct with adults by a

Vatican court this year and

permanently removed from

the priesthood—the first car-

dinal in modern times to re-

ceive such a penalty.

The pope and the U.S. bish-

ops also have clashed over

how to handle sexual abuse

and its coverup by members of

the hierarchy.

“The criticisms aren’t just

ROME—Pope Francis made

his most explicit public ac-

knowledgement of tensions

with conservative Catholics in

the U.S., saying he hopes the

divisions within the church

don’t lead to a schism.

The pope has been criti-

cized by conservative Catho-

lics, many of them Americans,

for playing down traditional

teachings on marriage, sexu-

ality and bioethics while fo-

cusing on social causes such

as climate change and migra-

tion.

“I pray that there will not

be schisms, but I am not

afraid,” the pope said Tuesday

to reporters accompanying

him on his flight to Rome after

BYFRANCISX.ROCCA

Pope Francis Doesn’t Fear Schism

Frederick Carl Frieseke

Portrait of the Artist’s Wife

The Marian Sulzberger

Heiskell & Andrew Heiskell

Collection. Auction Nov 6

NEW YORK

BEVERLY HILLS

FLORIDA

WASHINGTON, DC

CHICAGO

MASSACHUSETTS

CONNECTICUT

PENNSYLVANIA

NEW JERSEY

NORTH CAROLINA

DOYLE

Auctioneers & Appraisers

175 East 87th Street

New York, NY 10128

212-427-

DOYLE.COM

Doyle.com/Locations

[email protected]

Discover

Doyle

Near You!