A16 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.FRIDAY, MAY 27 , 2022
in 2019, and a Canadian citizen,
Kristian Baxter, who had crossed
illegally into Syria from Leba-
non. In 2014, Ibrahim oversaw
the release of a group of nuns
kidnapped by the Nusra Front, a
group linked to al-Qaeda.
Ibrahim did not say with
whom he would meet in the
Syrian government, adding that
it was better if his efforts re-
mained in the “shadow.” “When
it’s under a spotlight, I believe
things will be spoiled,” he said.
In the past, Syria had insisted
on a complete withdrawal of U.S.
troops from the country and the
lifting of U.S. sanctions as a
condition for any further discus-
sions about the missing Ameri-
cans, people familiar with the
negotiations said.
“I am not sure what the Syri-
ans want now,” Ibrahim said.Fahim reported from Istanbul and
Haidamous reported from
Washington. Liz Sly in London and
Karen DeYoung in Washington
contributed to this report.U.S. officials, including Carstens,
visited Damascus for secret talks
with the head of Syria’s intelli-
gence agency about the fate of
Tice, in the first official talks
between the two countries since
2012.
At the time of Ibrahim’s 2020
visit, there were disputes within
the Trump administration over
how far it should go in dealing
with Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad. Another subject of dis-
cord involved the administra-
tion’s dealings with Ibrahim,
whose position puts him in fre-
quent contact with Hezbollah, a
party in the Lebanese govern-
ment that is designated as a
terrorist organization by the
United States.
Ibrahim dismissed those con-
cerns as political issues that
should not impede his work. “We
are talking about a humanitarian
case,” he said Thursday.
Ibrahim helped secure the re-
lease of U.S. traveler Sam Good-
win, who was detained at a
Syrian government checkpointMarc and Debra Tice, on May 2,
and “reiterated his commitment
to continue to work through all
available avenues to secure Aus-
tin’s long overdue return to his
family,” White House press secre-
tary Jen Psaki said in a statement
at the time.
Ibrahim, who also met with
Debra Tice this week, said it had
been a “long time” since any
credible information had
emerged about Austin Tice’s fate.
“I want to tell everyone that
she will not give up at all,” he said
of Tice’s mother. “I am beside her
with that. We want to close this
file. Everyone is eager to do so.”
This week marked the second
time in less than two years that
Ibrahim has been summoned by
the White House to assist in
locating missing Americans. His
previous trip, in October 2020,
was aimed at furthering negotia-
tions with the Syrian govern-
ment that President Donald
Trump launched to help secure
the release of the Americans.
Earlier that year, two seniorduring a news briefing.
“Of course, we talked about
the case of Austin Tice yesterday,
an American who has been —
who has been separated from his
family for nearly 10 years, who
has spent a quarter of his life
separated from his family,” Price
said. “He is always top of mind.
The other Americans who are
detained in places like Iran and
Russia and Afghanistan and Ven-
ezuela and elsewhere are always
top of mind for us too.”
Tice disappeared when he at-
tempted to leave the rebel-held
town of Darayya, outside the
Syrian capital, Damascus.
Darayya was surrounded by gov-
ernment troops at the time. His
family members have repeatedly
said they are confident that he is
alive. Syria has not publicly ac-
knowledged holding Tice or the
other Americans, including Majd
Kamalmaz, a psychotherapist
who went missing in 2017, and
four other U.S. citizens whose
families do not want publicity.
Biden met with Tice’s parents,tion came a few days after Presi-
dent Biden met with Tice’s par-
ents.
Ibrahim, who has helped to
secure the release of several hos-
tages in the Middle East over the
past decade, has for years been
involved in the effort to locate
Tice, who disappeared in Syria in
2012, as well as other missing
Americans. “They wanted me to
resume my effort to solve this
problem,” he said, referring to his
meetings this week with White
House officials. “They wanted
their people back, and this is
their goal.”
State Department spokesman
Ned Price on Wednesday con-
firmed that Ibrahim met with
Roger Carstens, the special presi-
dential envoy for hostage affairs.
“We are not going to comment on
the specifics of those discussions
beyond restating the fact that we
have no higher priority than
seeing the safe release of Ameri-
cans who are wrongfully de-
tained or held hostage anywhere
around the world,” Price saidBY SARAH DADOUCH,
KAREEM FAHIM
AND SUZAN HAIDAMOUSbeirut — Lebanon’s intelli-
gence chief said Thursday that he
met with Biden administration
officials this week to discuss
ways he could help secure the
release of six Americans who are
being held prisoner or are miss-
ing in Syria, including Austin
Tice, a freelance journalist who
contributed to The Washington
Post.
Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim, the
head of the Lebanese General
Security Directorate, said in an
interview that he received an
invitation to the White House
earlier this month to discuss the
missing Americans. The invita-
U.S. seeks Lebanese spy chief’s h elp freeing Americans in Syria
Officials have discussed
cases of A ustin Tice and
five o ther U.S. citizensBY DANIELLE PAQUETTE
AND BORSO TALLDAKAR, Senegal — At least 11
newborn babies have died after a
fire blazed through a public hos-
pital’s neonatal unit in Senegal,
the president of the West African
nation said Thursday.
The flames tore through Ab-
dou Aziz Sy Dabakh Hospital in
the city of Tivaouane, about 60
miles northeast of the capital,
Dakar, sparking outrage over dis-
repair at some of the country’s
health-care facilities.
One family was already griev-
ing when they got the call. Adama
Diagne, 55, said her daughter-in-
law died three weeks ago during
childbirth — the infant, her
grandson, lost his life in the blaze.
His name was Mouhamed.
“We only had time to baptize
him,” Diagne said, choking up.
A politician and public works
engineer, Cheikh Bamba Dièye,
called for a thorough review of
Senegal’s medical centers, saying
he was “appalled by the horrific
and unacceptable death” follow-
ing a “recurrence of tragedies.”
Four newborns were killed last
year in a fire at a maternity ward
in the northern town of Linguère.
At the time, the mayor blamed an
air conditioning malfunction.
Amnesty International’s Sen-
egal director, Seydi Gassama, de-
manded action from the nation’s
leaders Wednesday, saying this
kind of accident had become a
pattern.
“We sympathize with the pain
of the bereaved families,” he said,
“and urge the government to set
up an independent commission
of inquiry to locate those respon-
sible and punish the culprits.”
Yacine Thiobane, a social
worker in Tivaouane, said she
was called to the hospital just
before midnight Wednesday to
comfort families. She found a
heart-wrenching scene: People
gathered outside. Sobbing moth-
ers. Firefighters removing the
bodies.
“The babies were burned to
death,” Thiobane said. “The reali-
ty is, the system is sick and needs
reform.”
Health officials in Senegal said
they were launching an investiga-
tion. Emergency responders re-
mained at the wreckage Thursday
morning. An electrical short cir-
cuit probably ignited the fire,
officials said on television.
“To their mothers and their
families, I express my deepest
sympathy,” Senegalese President
Macky Sall tweeted.
Maternity care in Senegal was
already under scrutiny following
the recent death of a woman in
labor who asked for and was
denied a Caesarean section. Her
name, Astou Sokha, has become a
rallying cry for protesters.
The hospital’s director was
fired after the outcry, and three
midwives were found guilty of
not helping someone in danger.
After tragedies like this, people
lose trust in the public health
system, said Nour Elhouda Nsiri,
an obstetrician-gynecologist inDakar.
That could mean more pre-
ventable deaths in Senegal, where
the maternal mortality rate is
already far higher than the global
average.“It is going to stay in their
minds: If this could happen to
one person, it could happen to
them,” Nsiri said. “Then more
women stay home or come to the
hospital when it is too late.”Doctors have long sounded the
alarm about faulty equipment
and shaky upkeep in public facili-
ties, she said. An operating room
caught fire three years ago while
one of her colleagues was per-forming a surgery.
“Super-old everything,” she
said. “Not maintained. Risky for
personnel and patients. Nobody
does anything about it until an
incident like this happens.”Hospital fire kills 11 infants in Senegal as outrage builds
ZOHRA BENSEMRA/REUTERS
Kaba, a mother of a 10-day-old infant, is comforted by her mother, Ndeye Absa Gueye, on Thursday outside a hospital in Tivaouane,
Senegal, where at least 11 newborn babies died in a fire. “The reality is, the system is sick and needs reform,” a local social worker said.Tragedies pile up amid
dysfunction in nation’s
health-care facilitiesBY GABRIELA SÁ PESSOA
AND MIRIAM BERGERThe video starts off with three
highway police officers pinning a
man to a dirt road in northeast-
ern Brazil.
After a cut, the man’s legs are
shown thrashing as two officers
trap him inside a hatchback po-
lice vehicle. White-colored
smoke can be seen pouring out of
the car.
“Look at the man there, oh my
God,” a voice from behind the
camera says. “They’re killing him
inside the car.”
Genivaldo de Jesus Santos, 38,
was dead by the time police
brought him to a hospital
Wednesday, according to his rela-
tives. He was unarmed and suf-
fering from schizophrenia when
Federal Highway Police fatally
gassed him on the side of the
road, according to his nephew,
who said he was at the scene.
Even in a place long inured to
police killings, the video, shared
widely on social media, sparked
horror and outrage across Brazil.
“We told the police all the time
that he had a heart problem, he
had mental problems,” his neph-
ew, Wallison de Jesus, told The
Washington Post. “And they con-
tinued the torture, telling every-
one to stay away.”
Brazil’s Federal Police released
a statement Thursday that said
they were investigating Santos’s
death in the city of Umbaúba, in
the northeastern state of Sergipe.
In a separate statement, the Fed-
eral Highway Police also said it
would cooperate with investigat-
ing authorities and had already
suspended the officers involved
in the incident.
The video has sparked protests
in Santos’s hometown and calls
for justice across Brazil, where
police are notorious for warlike
raids — encouraged by far-right
Brazilian President Jair Bolson-
aro as part of his populist crime-
fighting agenda.
On Tuesday, the day before
Santos’s death, at least 21 people
died during a police operation inRio de Janeiro. It was one of the
deadliest raids in recent years,
but only the latest in a long list of
such operations.
Santos was Black, according to
Brazilian news reports, and his
death also ignited anger over the
police’s history of discrimination
and use of disproportionate force
against Black men.
“There is no way out for Brazil
that is not built on guaranteeing
the life of the Black population,”
said Douglas Belchior, a member
of an activist group called the
Brazilian Black Movement Del-
egation.
Lucas Rosario, a spokesperson
for Sergipe’s Public Security Sec-
retariat, which oversees the
state’s police, declined to com-
ment on the video’s veracity. She
said S antos’s family members
provided the video as evidence
when they filed a police report
Wednesday.
“The images are just shock-
ing,” said Samira Bueno, execu-
tive director of the nongovern-
mental Brazilian Forum on Pub-lic Safety. “He’s a mentally dis-
turbed person, and it’s the story
of you using the vehicle as a gas
chamber to immobilize a person.”
Sergipe’s Institute of Forensic
Medicine, which overseas autop-
sies, said Thursday that Santos
died of asphyxia but that it could
not determine the “immediate
cause” of death.
Santos’s nephew told The Post
that he saw police throw a tear
gas grenade into the car.
Rosario said the source of the
gas seen pouring from the vehicle
was under investigation.
Eyewitnesses and police pro-
vided contrasting accounts.
Officers said Santos “actively
resisted” police as they ap-
proached, according to a state-
ment released Wednesday, and
that he “fell ill” during his trans-
fer to a police station.
De Jesus, the nephew, said
police stopped his uncle, who
was riding a motorcycle, and
asked him to lift his shirt. Santos
began to get nervous after police
found packets of his medicationon him. The nephew said he
informed police officers about
his uncle’s mental health condi-
tion and that he required this
medication.
“Then the torture session be-
gan,” de Jesus said.
Police grabbed Santos’s arms,
kicked his legs and knocked him
to the ground, his nephew said.
After beating him on the ground,
officers tied his legs and threw
him in the car along with tear
gas, de Jesus said.
Santos’s wife, Maria Fabiana
dos Santos, told G1 that her
husband had been living with
schizophrenia for two decades
but was never violent.
“I have lived with him for 17
years,” she said. “He never as-
saulted anyone, never did any-
thing wrong, always doing the
right thing. And at a moment like
this they caught him and did
what they did.”
Ronaldo Cardoso da Silva, a
local teacher and social worker,
told The Washington Post that he
had been Santos’s friend. Hesurvived off social security ben-
efits and the occasional odd jobs,
sometimes driving a rickshaw
and letting cash-strapped pas-
sengers ride free, Cardoso da
Silva said.
Some 6,000 Brazilians died
after being shot intentionally by
on-duty police officers in 2020,
according to the data from the
Monitor of Use of Lethal Force in
Latin America, a consortium of
researchers and academics from
the region.
Bolsonaro has called for crimi-
nals to “die in the streets like
cockroaches” and has said that
police who kill criminals “should
be decorated, not prosecuted.”
José Luiz Ratton, a professor of
criminal studies at Brazil’s Feder-
al University of Pernambuco,
said the increase in violent raids
in recent years targeting the
“socially vulnerable” has been
“fed by authorities ... who en-
courage and reinforce violent,
unregulated and uncontrolled
police action in the name of
‘fighting crime.’ ”Video seems to show Brazilian police gassing man to death in car trunk
S0115-6x2.
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