The New York Times - USA (2020-12-02)

A12 N THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONALWEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2020

to a request for comment.

But Congress has been dead-

locked over the legal peace legis-

lation, which essentially would

block victims of past terror at-

tacks from seeking new compen-

sation from Sudan. If a compro-

mise can be reached quickly, it

could be included in a large mili-

tary spending bill that Congress is

expected to approve over the next

two weeks, according to a Senate

official who is working to break

the impasse.

As part of the agreement for be-

ing removed from the State De-

partment’s terrorism list, Sudan

agreed to pay $335 million to set-

tle legal claims of victims of the

1998 bombings against American

embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The twin blasts, carried out by Al

Qaeda militants with Sudan’s as-

sistance, killed 224 people, includ-

ing 12 U.S. citizens; thousands

more were injured.

Most of the money, as negotiat-

ed between Sudan and the State

Department, will go to victims

who were American citizens at the

time of the blast. But other victims

— nearly all of whom are Black

and including those who have

since become U.S. citizens — will

receive far less compensation.

Some lawmakers, including

Senator Robert Menendez of New

Jersey, the top Democrat on the

Foreign Relations Committee,

have balked at the payment dis-

parity for victims who were natu-

ralized citizens after the attacks.

None of the victims will receive

any compensation until the immu-

nity legislation is approved; if that

does not happen by November

2021, the funds will be released

from an escrow account and re-

turned to the government of Su-

dan.

Lawmakers are also divided

over shielding Sudan from future

court judgments that could com-

pel Khartoum to compensate fam-

ilies of the victims of the Sept. 11,

2001, attacks. Those families are

working with lawmakers from the

New York City region, including

Senator Chuck Schumer, the Dem-

ocratic leader, to preserve their

claims to hold Sudan liable in part

for the five years it gave shelter to

Osama bin Laden, the master-

mind of the attacks by Al Qaeda,

between 1991 and 1996.

Officials close to the negotia-

tions said both senators recog-

nized Sudan’s fragile economic

situation, and described them as

eager to resolve the dispute.

But, the officials said, any com-

promise would have to allow the

families of Sept. 11 victims to pur-

sue compensation from Sudan —

even if that means the United

States must help Khartoum figure

out how to pay those claims years

from now. Moreover, the officials

said, the State Department should

not have promised that Congress

would do otherwise as part of the

diplomatic negotiations to remove

Sudan from the terrorism list.

A person familiar with Sudan’s

negotiating position called that

unacceptable.

It is not clear what will happen

if the dispute is not resolved by the

end of the year. But all sides

agreed that it could fester indefi-

nitely as Congress turns to more

immediate priorities with the in-

coming administration of Presi-

dent-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.

“I hope it doesn’t fall apart,” Mr.

Goldenberg said of Sudan’s dé-

tente with Israel, “but I’m not nec-

essarily all that surprised.”

WASHINGTON — A landmark

agreement between Sudan and Is-

rael to begin normalizing rela-

tions is at risk of unraveling just

over a month after it was an-

nounced by President Trump, re-

vealing a crack in Middle East

peace accords that he and Prime

Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of

Israel have sought to cement as

foreign policy legacies.

Sudan was the third Arab state

to agree to the Trump-brokered

Abraham accords that have

opened new economic and diplo-

matic partnerships with Israel.

The United Arab Emirates and

Bahrain signed on to the accords

in September and, as recently as

last week, Secretary of State Mike

Pompeo predicted other Sunni

Muslim countries in the Middle

East would soon follow.

Sudan reluctantly agreed to

open relations with Israel — but

only as part of a deal to be taken

off a State Department list of state

sponsors of terrorism — and

wants Congress to approve legis-

lation by year’s end that would

protect it from terror-related law-

suits.

The new deadline, and recent

negotiations between lawmakers

and representatives of Sudan,

were described to The New York

Times by five officials and other

people familiar with the talks on

the condition that they not be

identified.

That it could imperil the rap-

prochement with Israel is the by-

product of what Ilan Goldenberg,

the director of the Middle East Se-

curity program at the Center for a

New American Security, de-

scribed as rushed efforts by the

Trump administration to score a

foreign policy victory ahead of the

Nov. 3 presidential election.

“The whole thing felt forced all

along by an administration that

wanted to use a terrorism desig-

nation as a political tool to try to

get normalization with Israel,” Mr.

Goldenberg said. “When you cook

up these kinds of very transac-

tional deals with unrelated items

that don’t make much sense, this

sometimes happens.”

Without the congressionally ap-

proved immunity, foreign invest-

ors may be reluctant to do busi-

ness with Sudan for fear they

could end up financing potentially

billions of dollars in compensation

to terror victims.

Without foreign investment, Su-

dan’s transitional government has

little hope of pulling its country

out of widespread poverty and in-

stability — a crisis that has been

exacerbated by the influx of an es-

timated 43,000 Ethiopian refu-

gees fleeing unrest across the bor-

der.

Mr. Pompeo spoke on Monday

with Sudan’s de facto leader, Lt.

Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who

made clear that the East African

nation would not move forward

with warming ties with Israel be-

fore Congress passes the legal

peace legislation.

A person familiar with the con-

versation said Mr. Pompeo as-

sured General al-Burhan that the

immunity plan would be approved

in the next several weeks. Trump

administration officials are al-

ready planning a signing ceremo-

ny with Sudanese officials at the

White House in late December.

Spokespeople for the State De-

partment declined to comment

and the Israeli Embassy in Wash-

ington, which is closely following

the negotiations, did not respond

New Accord Between Sudan and Israel May Unravel, Officials Say

By LARA JAKES

Eric Schmitt contributed report-

ing.

Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-

Burhan, above left, told Secre-

tary of State Mike Pompeo, left,

that Sudan needs protection

from terror-related lawsuits.

EBRAHIM HAMID/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

POOL PHOTO BY NICHOLAS KAMM

A senior conservative Hungar-
ian politician abruptly announced
his resignation from the European
Parliament after police officers
broke up a party he attended in
Brussels because it violated co-
ronavirus restrictions.
Jozsef Szajer, a well-known fig-
ure in the right-wing Fidesz party
led by Prime Minister Viktor Or-
ban, confirmed on Tuesday that he
had been at the party last week.
He did not comment on Belgian
media descriptions of it as an all-
male orgy in the heart of the city’s
gay-bar district.
The office of the Brussels public
prosecutor said in a statement
that the officers had intervened
Friday after neighbors com-
plained about noise and found 20
people in an apartment. Two of
them invoked diplomatic immuni-
ty, it said.
“A passer-by reported to the po-
lice that he had seen a man flee-
ing” the scene, the prosecutor’s
statement said. It said: “The
man’s hands were bloody. It is pos-
sible that he may have been in-
jured while fleeing. Narcotics
were found in his backpack.”
“The man was unable to
produce any identity documents,”
the prosecutor said. “He was es-
corted to his place of residence,
where he identified himself as S. J.
(1961) by means of a diplomatic
passport,” the prosecutor said.
That matches Mr. Szajer’s initials
and year of birth.
Mr. Szajer denied that he had
used drugs that night.
Mr. Szajer enjoys immunity
from prosecution under the pro-
tections of the European Parlia-
ment, the European Union’s
elected legislative body.
“The news reported in the Bel-
gian press about a private party in
Brussels on Friday, I was
present,” Mr. Szajer said in a state-
ment shared by the European
People’s Party, the coalition of Eu-
ropean conservative parties that
includes his Fidesz. He also
posted the letter on his personal
website, which crashed soon after
it went up.
Mr. Szajer went on to say that
police officers had asked him to
identify himself but that he had
not had ID on him, and so he de-
clared that he was a member of
the European Parliament.
“I did not use drugs,” he said.
The official expressed regret for
violating the coronavirus rules. “I
apologize to my family, to my col-
leagues, to my voters,” he said.
The Belgian government has pro-
hibited all gatherings in Brussels
— the seat of the European Parlia-
ment — to control the spread of vi-
rus.
Mr. Orban’s party has cast itself
increasingly as a defender of con-
servative Christian values and
has used anti-gay rhetoric at
home in Hungary. The govern-
ment recently submitted legisla-
tion restricting marriage to un-
ions between a man and a woman.
Mr. Szajer is a founding mem-
ber of the governing party and

longtime ally of Mr. Orban, the
prime minister. He has served as a
member of the European Parlia-
ment since Hungary entered the
European bloc in 2004.
On Sunday, two days after the
party, Mr. Szajer announced that
he would resign from the Euro-
pean Parliament effective Dec. 31.
He cited the stresses of daily polit-
ical battle, though he said his res-
ignation was not related to Hun-
gary’s dispute with the 25 other
E.U. member states over the next
budget and coronavirus stimulus.
A week before announcing his
resignation, Mr. Szajer said in an
interview that the European Un-
ion was trying to punish Hungary
for exercising its sovereign rights.
Mr. Szajer’s fellow conservative
Hungarian parliamentarians of-
fered praise for him in a state-
ment.
“On behalf of ourselves and our
entire political community,” they
said, “we, the members of the
Fidesz-KDNP European Parlia-
ment group, thank Jozsef Szajer,
who played a crucial role in en-
abling Hungarian civic conserva-
tism and Christian democracy to
occupy their rightful place in the
European political arena.”
Mr. Szajer is married to Tunde
Hando, a justice on Hungary’s
Constitutional Court.

E.U. Politician

From Hungary

Resigns Post

After Sex Party

By MONIKA PRONCZUK

and BENJAMIN NOVAK

Jozsef Szajer of Fidesz

PETER KOHALMI/A.F.P. — GETTY IMAGES

Monika Pronczuk reported from
Brussels, and Benjamin Novak
from Budapest.

BERLIN — Four people were

killed and 10 others wounded after

a drunk man sped in his S.U.V.

through a pedestrian shopping

street in the city of Trier in south-

western Germany on Tuesday.

Prosecutors said the man did not

appear to be motivated by politi-

cal or religious beliefs and that

they were investigating the case

on suspicion of murder.

The man, a 51-year-old German

who was born in Trier and lived in

the surrounding area, was

stopped by police officers after

driving a zigzag course roughly

half a mile long down the busy

street lined with shops. Prosecu-

tor Peter Fritzen said the man,

whom officials declined to name,

was drunk and appeared to have

been living in the vehicle, which

was confiscated.

“There are indications that

point to a possible psychiatric dis-

order,” Mr. Fritzen said.

Among those killed were a 9-

month-old baby, a 25-year-old

woman, a 45-year-old man and a

72-year-old woman, all from Trier.

Four of the wounded were in seri-

ous condition, said Roger

Lewentz, the interior minister for

Rhineland-Palatinate state.

Images from a grainy video tak-

en by a bystander, the authentici-

ty of which was confirmed by a po-

lice spokesman, Uwe Konz,

showed a silver S.U.V. being

rammed by an unmarked police

car and three officers surrounding

and restraining the driver. Franz-

Dieter Ankner, vice-president of

the Trier police, said the vehicle

was a Land Rover that was not

registered in the driver’s name,

but belonged to someone who was

not involved in the incident.

Wolfram Leibe, the mayor of

Trier, speaking to reporters, broke

down when describing the car-

nage in a city where people were

out making the best of what is

proving to be a trying pre-Christ-

mas season during the coronavi-

rus pandemic.

“I just walked through the city

center and it was simply horrify-

ing,” Mr. Leibe said. “There was a

sneaker standing there. The girl it

belongs to is dead.”

Trier, in the wine-growing re-

gion of the Mosel Valley, boasts

several Roman ruins and prides it-

self as being the oldest city in Ger-

many. Its main pedestrian area,

which includes a Roman gate and

a market square lined with medi-

eval buildings, would normally

host a bustling Christmas market.

Pictures from the scene on

Tuesday showed dozens of ambu-

lances and police cars parked on

the cobbled streets of central Tri-

er, decorated for the holiday sea-

son with green garlands. Christ-

mas markets in Germany have

been largely canceled as part of ef-

forts to prevent the spread of the

coronavirus, but stores are still

open.

In December 2016, a 24-year-

old Tunisian drove a truck into a

Christmas market in Berlin,

killing 12 people before slipping

the country into Milan, where he

was killed in a shootout with Ital-

ian police several days later.

Following that attack, German

cities began installing barriers to

protect such markets and other

street festivals where large num-

bers of people gather, but there

was no such protection in place for

the pedestrian street, Mr. Leibe

said.

“If we had a Christmas market

now like we do every year, we

would have secured the city cen-

ter with bollards,” he said.

Survivors of the victims from

the Berlin attack reached out to

authorities in Trier to express

their solidarity, Mr. Leibe said. He

also thanked authorities from

neighboring Luxembourg and

France for offering help.

“No one can expect to be killed

while strolling through the city

center,” Mr. Leibe said. “What mo-

tivates a person to do such a

thing? Of course, I have no an-

swer to that question.”

The authorities said a 51-year-old drunken man sped an S.U.V. through a pedestrian shopping street Tuesday in Trier, Germany. At least 10 people were wounded.

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE VERHAEGEN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

4 Are Dead as Man Plows Car Through German City Center

By MELISSA EDDY

and CHRISTOPHER F. SCHUETZE