Saudi Arabia’s crown prince approved operation to ‘capture or kill’ journalist Jamal Khashoggi, report finds

The news is likely to herald new US sanctions on Saudi Arabia, after Mohammed bin Salman’s role in the journalist’s death has been all but confirmed

Jamal Khashoggi was killed while visiting the Saudi consulate in 

Istanbul, Turkey(Photo: Johnny Green/PA Wire)

By Laurie Havelock
February 26, 2021 

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, likely approved an operation to “capture or kill” the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to a declassified assessment of the killing released to the Congress by US intelligence agencies.

The central conclusion of the report confirms suspicions long held by intelligence officials after the 2 October 2018 murder of Khashoggi, a former Saudi insider in exile in the US who was an outspoken critic of the crown prince’s authoritarian consolidation of power.

The release of the assessment of the report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on Friday could escalate pressure on Joe Biden’s administration to hold the kingdom accountable for a murder that drew international outrage.

“We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” the ODNI wrote in a partly-redacted four-page summary.

It made the conclusion in light of bin Salman’s “control of decision-making in the kingdom, the direct involvement of a key adviser and members of [the prince’s] protective detail in the operation, and [his] support for the using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi”.

“Since 2017, the Crown Prince has had absolute control of the Kingdom’s security and intelligence organizations, making it highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this nature without the Crown Prince’s authorization,” it adds.

The news comes two years after Khashoggi attempted to visit the Saudi consulate in Instanbul to take papers that might have allowed him to marry his Turkish fiancee, Hadice Cengiz.

Though he was assured of his safety in the consulate, an investigation spearheaded by the UN and Turkish authorities found that a team of Saudi agents restrained, killed and then dismembered Khashoggi before smuggling his body out of the building. His remains have not been found since.

The prince said in 2019 he took “full responsibility” for the killing since it happened on his watch, but denied ordering it.

The release of the report is likely to be accompanied by further action from the US president’s administration, which could start with economic sanctions on top Saudi officials.

On Thursday, Mr Biden made a courtesy call to King Salman, the crown prince’s father, but a White House summary of the conversation made no mention of the killing and said instead that the men had discussed the countries’ longstanding partnership.

Former US President Donald Trump’s administration held back the long-awaited report despite a 2019 law passed by Congress requiring its release.

Additional reporting by news wires

Text of the U.S. assessment of Saudi government role in Khashoggi killing


By Reuters Staff


(Reuters) - Following is the text of the redacted report released on Friday by the Office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) 

“Assessing the Saudi Government’s Role in the Killing of Jamal Khashoggi,” dated Feb. 11, 2021:

“(U) EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

(U) This report is provided by the ODNI. Questions should be directed to the NIO for Near East.

“We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

• We base this assessment on the Crown Prince’s control of decisionmaking in the Kingdom, the direct involvement of a key adviser and members of Muhammad bin Salman’s protective detail in the operation, and the Crown Prince’s support for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi.

• Since 2017, the Crown Prince has had absolute control of the Kingdom’s security and intelligence organizations, making it highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this nature without the Crown Prince’s authorization.

“Assessing the Saudi Government’s Role in the Killing of Jamal Khashoggi

“We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. We base this assessment on the Crown Prince’s control of decisionmaking in the Kingdom since 2017, the direct involvement of a key adviser and members of Muhammad bin Salman’s protective detail in the operation, and the Crown Prince’s support for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi. Since 2017, the Crown Prince has had absolute control of the Kingdom’s security and intelligence organizations, making it highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this nature without the Crown Prince’s authorization.

• At the time of the Khashoggi murder, the Crown Prince probably fostered an environment in which aides were afraid that failure to complete assigned tasks might result in him firing or arresting them. This suggests that the aides were unlikely to question Muhammad bin Salman’s orders or undertake sensitive actions without his consent.


• The 15-member Saudi team that arrived in Istanbul on 2 October 2018 included officials who worked for, or were associated with, the Saudi Center for Studies and Media Affairs (CSMARC) at the Royal Court. At the time of the operation, CSMARC was led by Saud al-Qahtani, a close adviser of Muhammad bin Salman, who claimed publicly in mid-2018 that he did not make decisions without the Crown Prince’s approval.

• The team also included seven members of Muhammad bin Salman’s elite personal protective detail, known as the Rapid Intervention Force (RIF). The RIF - a subset of the Saudi Royal Guard - exists to defend the Crown Prince, answers only to him, and had directly participated in earlier dissident suppression operations in the Kingdom and abroad at the Crown Prince’s direction. We judge that members of the RIF would not have participated in the operation against Khashoggi without Muhammad bin Salman’s approval.

• The Crown Prince viewed Khashoggi as a threat to the Kingdom and broadly supported using violent measures if necessary to silence him. Although Saudi officials had pre-planned an unspecified operation against Khashoggi we do not know how far in advance Saudi officials decided to harm him.

“We have high confidence that the following individuals participated in, ordered, or were otherwise complicit in or responsible for the death of Jamal Khashoggi on behalf of Muhammad bin Salman. We do not know whether these individuals knew in advance that the operation would result in Khashoggi’s death.

• (U) Saud al-Qahtani

• Maher Mutreb

• Naifal-Arifi

• Mohammed al-Zahrani

• Mansour Abahussain

• Badr al-Utaybah

• Abdul Aziz Al Hawsawi

• Waleed Abdullah Al Shihri

• Khalid Al Utaybah

• Tha’ar Al Harbi

• Fahd Shiahb Al Balawi

• Meshal al-Bustani

• Turki Al Shihri

• (U) Mustafa Al Madani

• (U) Saif Saad Al

• Ahmed Zayed Asiri

• Abdulla Mohammed Alhoeriny

• Yasir Khalid Alsalem

• Ibrahim al-Salim

• (U) Salah Al Tubaigy

• (U) Mohammed Al Utaybah”

 

Where did COVID come from? Five mysteries that remain

In the wake of the World Health Organization’s investigation, there are still key questions about when, where and how the pandemic began.

WHO investigators visit sites in China as part of their probe into the pandemic's origins.Credit: Hector Retemal/AFP/Getty

Following a month-long fact-finding mission in China, a World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic concluded that the virus probably originated in bats and passed to people through an intermediate animal. But fundamental questions remain about when, where and how SARS-CoV-2 first infected people.

As the international WHO team finalizes a report of its findings, which is expected next week, Nature speaks to four of the investigators about what they still want to know.

Was the virus circulating in Wuhan before the first known cases?

To trace the virus’s origin, it’s crucial to pin down exactly when the first cases occurred in people. The WHO team established that the first person known to have COVID-19 was an office worker in Wuhan with no recent travel history, who began showing symptoms on 8 December 2019, says Peter Ben Embarek, a food-safety scientist at the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland, who led the investigation. But the virus was probably spreading in the city before that, because it was well-established by later that month, he says.

Yet evidence of earlier spread has proved elusive. Researchers in China conducted an extensive survey of patient reports from hospitals in Wuhan made between October and December 2019, and identified fewer than 100 people who had symptoms of COVID-19. They then tested the blood of 67 of those people for antibodies generated by past infection with SARS-CoV-2, but found none. This suggests there wasn’t a large cluster of infections before December, or an unusual spike in deaths in the surrounding province of Hubei.

‘Major stones unturned’: COVID origin search must continue after WHO report, say scientists

But Ben Embarek says the analysis should be repeated using less restrictive symptom criteria, to make sure that researchers spot all potential COVID-19 cases.

Scientists in China should also search for evidence of past infection in some 200,000 archived samples currently held at the Wuhan Blood Center and from other regions across China, says team member Dominic Dwyer, a medical virologist at New South Wales Health Pathology in Sydney, Australia. This would show whether the virus was spreading in the general population in China — not just among people who went to health facilities — before December 2019.

Some scientists not involved in the WHO investigation have already looked at blood-bank samples taken up to a year before the pandemic, in Guangzhou, southern China. Close relatives of SARS-CoV-2 have been found in bats and pangolins in southern China. Some of the samples tested positive for antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, but Ian Lipkin, an infectious-diseases researcher at Columbia University in New York City, who worked on the analysis, says the test was not specific enough to say for sure that the antibodies weren’t caused by infection with other viruses. “There is a lot of laboratory work that needs to be done that hasn’t been done,” says Lipkin, who also wants to know whether there are autopsy samples from before December 2019 that could be studied for traces of viral genetic material.

Was the virus spreading in people outside China before December 2019?

Answering this question is also key to establishing the timeline of the first COVID-19 cases. Previously, researchers in Europe have reported1,2,3 finding antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in samples taken at blood banks from November 2019 onwards.

Ben Embarek says this doesn’t necessarily suggest the virus originated in Europe, but supports the idea that it was spreading in Wuhan before the first known cases. “Wuhan at that time was a very well-connected international city with direct flights to the entire planet on a daily basis. So if it was circulating in Wuhan, it could easily have been brought to other parts of the world through travellers, and circulating again, undetected, in different regions,” he says.

Still, he recommends that the blood samples from Europe be retested to confirm that they indicate cases of COVID-19. Some of them, from Italy and France, are already being reanalysed, he says.

What was the role of the Huanan market?

The intermediate animal that passed the virus from bats to people has not been identified, but researchers think it might be a wild species that is sold as food in ‘wet markets’, which typically sell live animals. Early in the pandemic, investigators homed in on the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, because it sold fresh and frozen animals and many of the earliest infections were in people who had visited it. But the lead went cold when other early cases were found that were not associated with the market. Viral material was identified in drains and sewage at the market, but none was found on any animal carcasses.

Still, the market is the only place where a large number of the people infected at the start of the outbreak were exposed to meat and animals. It’s important to establish how the virus got into the market and whether it was on an animal, says WHO team member Hung Nguyen-Viet, an environment and food-safety researcher at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi.

Nguyen-Viet says the team identified ten stalls selling wildlife, either wild or farmed, that could have carried the virus into the market from farms in southern China. Some wild animals sold for meat, such as rabbits and ferret-badgers, are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 or the related virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

WHO team member Peter Daszak, president of the non-profit research organization Ecohealth Alliance in New York City, says the farms should be investigated to see whether there were infections in the animals or among workers. He also wants to know what animals were sold in other Wuhan markets. When the team interviewed the first person known to have COVID-19, he mentioned that his parents had visited a local community wet market, says Daszak.

Did frozen wild-animal meat have a role in the early spread of the virus?

The WHO team concluded that it’s most likely the virus jumped from live animals to people, but Ben Embarek says it is possible the virus entered the Huanan market through infected frozen wild animals from farms in southern China, and then sparked an outbreak. Daszak wonders whether frozen ferret-badgers sold at the market could have carried the virus. “These were carcasses skinned at the market, not just cubes of meat in a plastic packet,” he says.

Can COVID spread from frozen wildlife? Scientists probe pandemic origins

Although researchers in China have also isolated viral RNA from the packaging of imported frozen fish4, Ben Embarek says the WHO team concluded that these goods were not likely to be the route of the virus’s first arrival in Wuhan.

Lipkin says there is no evidence that the virus entered the market through infected frozen wild animals. It could have just as easily been brought in by infected people who handled wild animals, he says.

Was the virus circulating in animals in China before the pandemic?

To establish which animal passed the virus to people, researchers need to find evidence of the virus in that species. Researchers in China have tested some 30,000 wild, farmed and domestic animals in 2019 and 2020 but found no evidence of active or past SARS-CoV-2 infection, except in some cats in Wuhan in March 20205.

However, Ben Embarek says these surveys were not representative of China’s overall animal population, and that many more animals need to be tested for traces of infection, particularly on wildlife farms. “The amount of testing that’s been done is not sufficient to say, in any way, that wildlife farms were not carrying the virus,” says Daszak.

The explosive way in which the outbreak took off in Wuhan in December suggests that the virus was probably introduced once, through the wildlife trade, says Daszak. He says future testing should focus on farmed wild animals.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00502-4

References

1. 1.

   Carrat, F. et al. Eur. J. Epidemiol. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-020-00716-2 (2021).

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2. 2.

   Amendola, A. et al. Emerg. Infect. Dis. 27, 648–650 (2021).

3. 3.

   Apolone, G. et al. Tumori J. https://doi.org/10.1177/0300891620974755 (2020).

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4. 4.

   Liu, P. et al. Biosaf. Health 2, 199–201 (2020).

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5. 5.

   Zhang, Q. et al. Emerg. Microbes. Infect. 9, 2013–2019 (2020).

   • • 
       

Ta-Nehisi Coates is writing a new Superman film produced by J.J. Abrams

A new actor is also expected to play the Man of Steel

By Ian Carlos Campbell@soupsthename Feb 26, 2021

Photo by Cheriss May / NurPhoto via Getty Images


Celebrated author and essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates is writing a new Superman film that will be produced by J.J. Abrams, Shadow and Act reports. The project has no release date or director attached yet, and there’s still no word on whether Henry Cavill will reprise his role. Shadow and Act suggests a search for a new actor to play Kal-El / Clark Kent / Superman has yet to begin.

Coates is perhaps best known for his books Between the World and Me and The Beautiful Struggle, but he also has comics experience, writing popular runs on both Black Panther and Captain America. Coates is also working on several other in-development film and television projects, including a television series for HBO and a feature film adaption of a New Yorker article about Atlanta teachers, to be directed by Ryan Coogler and starring Michael B. Jordan.

It’s unknown at this point if this new Superman will be DC and Warner Media’s main version of the character going forward or more of an experimental side project like Joker and The Batman, but recasting the role opens up all sorts of exciting possibilities. Jordan himself reportedly met with Abrams about a new version of the character, which, given his work in Black Panther, could bode well for the new Man of Steel.


However things shake out, it seems like J.J. Abrams’ time as Warner Media producing guru (sealed to the tune of $250 million) is moving in some interesting directions: a Justice League Dark series, a new Superman, and a generally different future after years of Zack Snyder grimness.

Texans with disabilities left vulnerable after deep freeze

Disaster response programs can do better

By Justine Calma@justcalma Feb 26, 2021

Volunteers with the Living Hope Wheelchair Association distributed water and supplies to people after Texas’ deep freeze. Image: Living Hope Wheelchair Association

Disaster response plans often fail to include people with disabilities, and the deadly deep freeze that swept across Texas and much of the mainland US last week was no exception.

“A lot of people in our community, they’re like, ‘I’m so damn tired that I have to be resilient. This isn’t our fault,’” says Tomás Aguilar, disaster recovery coordinator for the Living Hope Wheelchair Association in Houston, a group that provides services to immigrants with disabilities. “No, we don’t need a cheerleader. We need water.”

“WE DON’T NEED A CHEERLEADER. WE NEED WATER.”

The winter storms that froze up power and water systems last week left a humanitarian disaster in its wake. First, people were left in the brutal cold without power or heat. Then came the shortage of food supplies and clean drinking water. As has happened before, the crises hit people with disabilities and chronic illnesses especially hard.

In one harrowing example, more than 100 residents of an Austin retirement community went two days without power and little food after its generator failed on February 15th. Staff at the high-rise facility for low-income people who are older or disabled ran up and down 16 flights of stairs to check in on residents and ration out food, the Texas Tribune reported. Losing power can be especially isolating and dangerous for people who use electric wheelchairs or who rely on electronic medical devices like feeding tube pumps. When emergency responders arrived on February 17th, they had to carry residents out who wanted to be evacuated.

As Texans’ food and water dwindled across the state because of storm-related disruptions, Aguilar says people who use wheelchairs had an even harder time getting supplies than people without disabilities. People with spinal cord injuries can have a more difficult time regulating their body temperature, making it difficult for them to brave the cold to line up at grocery stores or food banks. People who rely on paratransit services to get around can have a harder time lining up for supplies, too.

“Are you going to get in line with the hundreds of cars in line already with that paratransit service? They’re not going to do that,” Aguilar says. His group has been filling five-gallon jugs with water from the organization’s sink to bring to people without water.

THESE KINDS OF STRUGGLES AREN’T NEW

These kinds of struggles aren’t new. During Hurricane Harvey in 2017, people with disabilities were left waiting in floodwaters for emergency responders who could accommodate their wheelchairs. One photo of people sitting in waist-deep water in an assisted living facility in Dickinson, Texas, went viral after Harvey.

These problems are also not exclusive to Texas. Nearly a decade ago, after Hurricane Sandy, some New Yorkers with disabilities were left stranded in their homes. One woman spent six days in her apartment without power, heat, or running water. She spent much of that time in bed after her electric wheelchair ran out of juice. A bus actually arrived to evacuate people at her public housing building at one point, but she couldn’t get to it — and even if she had, it wasn’t equipped to accommodate a wheelchair. After surviving the storm, she became a staunch advocate for more inclusive disaster response programs. But five years later, her building still hadn’t installed one of the simple fixes she pushed for: an evacuation chair that allows people to get down stairs even when the power is out.

It is unacceptable that so many years later, similar stories keep playing out. The blackout could have been prevented by investing in making the grid — not people — more resilient. Similarly, the struggles that people with disabilities faced during the crisis could also have been avoided by some simple changes to planning and infrastructure. Back-up generators and evacuation chairs could be installed in buildings where people with disabilities live. Emergency shelters could make sure to incorporate accessible bathrooms into their design and provide access to medical treatments like dialysis. And emergency response vehicles should be made more accessible so that people can get on them with their wheelchairs or other mobility aids.

ALL IT TAKES TO FIND SOLUTIONS IS MORE ROOM AT DECISION-MAKING TABLES FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

All it takes to find those solutions is more room at decision-making tables for people with disabilities. Plenty of groups similar to Aguilar’s are pushing for change. There’s the Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies, which has a disaster hotline. There are also guidelines from the Department of Justice on how to ensure emergency preparedness and response programs comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“Vulnerable communities, the elderly, folks with disabilities — when everyone gets hit, they always get hit harder,” Aguilar says. “But it’s totally preventable.”

Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine works well outside of clinical trials, study finds

Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine is proving as effective in real-world settings as it did in clinical testing, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) co-authored by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health researchers.

The study looked at data on more than 500,000 people who received the vaccine in Israel between December 20, 2020, and February 1, 2021 and compared it with a similarly sized group of people who were not vaccinated. The vaccine was 94% effective against symptomatic illness a week after the second dose, according to the findings. It was also 92% effective against severe disease. The data were collected through Clalit Health Services, a research arm of Israel’s largest health care provider.

“In all studies of vaccine effectiveness, a major challenge is to ensure that those we are comparing to identify the vaccine’s effect are similar in the other characteristics that may predict whether they get infected or ill,” said Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology, director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, and a co-author of the NEJM paper, in a February 24, 2021, New York Times article. “Clalit’s extraordinary database made it possible to design a study that addressed these challenges.”

In a February 25, 2021, Time article, Lipsitch said the study findings are “close to the best possible news.” Yet, he said, many important questions remain, including how long immunity from the vaccine lasts.

Miguel Hernán, Kolokotrones Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, was also a co-author of the NEJM paper.

Read the New York Times article: The Pfizer vaccine’s initial success holds up in wider use, a study finds

Read the Time article: COVID-19 Vaccines Work. Here’s the Real-World Proof

UNSETTLED —
TikTok agrees to proposed $92 million settlement in privacy class action

Class members can get compensation, as long as most don't file for it.

KATE COX - 2/26/2021, 



TikTok parent company ByteDance has agreed to a $92 million deal to settle class-action lawsuits alleging that the company illegally collected and used underage TikTok users' personal data.

The proposed settlement (PDF) would require TikTok to pay out up to $92 million to members of the class and to change some of its data-collection processes and disclosures going forward.


FURTHER READING TikTok accused of breaching US child privacy regulations

The suit, which rolled up more than 20 related lawsuits, mostly filed on behalf of minors, alleged that TikTok violated both state and federal privacy laws, including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Video Privacy and Protection Act, through its use of data.

TikTok uses "automated software, proprietary algorithms, AI, facial recognition, and other technologies to commercially profit from" its users, the complaint (PDF) alleged. The data that TikTok allegedly collects, shares, and uses for machine learning training goes surprisingly deep, the suit added, including users' "identities, unique identifying information, biometric data and information, images, video and digital recordings, audio recordings, clipboard data, geolocation, names, email addresses, passcodes, social media accounts, messaging services, telephone numbers, and other private, nonpublic, or confidential data and information."

Additionally, the suit cited concerns that private and personally identifiable user data TikTok collected could have been shared with Chinese government entities, echoing the Trump administration's concerns in its failed attempts to ban TikTok from operating in the US.

TikTok denied any specific wrongdoing. "While we disagree with the assertions, rather than go through lengthy litigation, we’d like to focus our efforts on building a safe and joyful experience for the TikTok community," the company said in a statement.Advertisement

Money for the taking—unless everyone asks

Attorneys representing the plaintiffs touted the settlement as "one of the largest ever achieved" in such a case. Inasmuch as their assertion is true, it comes out as far more damning of the state of US privacy laws than complimentary of this particular case.

The total class, as defined in the settlement, includes 89 million US users. The attorneys ask for a collective payment "not to exceed 33.33% of the settlement fund," leaving $61 million for the class members to collect. On top of that, however, the proposed deal is structured such that each member of the "national" class can claim a share, and Illinois users can claim six shares.


FURTHER READING 

FTC kicks off sweeping privacy probe of nine major social media firms

TikTok identified 1.4 million users who would qualify in the Illinois subclass, leaving about 87.6 million other class members nationwide. According to the settlement, if every qualified member of the class filed for a claim, most users could expect to reap about $0.96 and Illinois users could get as much as $5.75.

In the filing, however, attorneys make clear that they do not expect a high percentage of the class to file claims, instead describing likely payouts for hypothetical claims rates from 1.5 percent ($383.33 for Illinois, $63.89 for everyone else) to 20 percent ($28.75 for Illinois, $4.79 for everyone else) of the class.

Of course, money isn't everything; lawsuits such as this class action often seek injunctive relief as well—that is, requiring the company not to do the bad thing anymore. This agreement is no different. Under the proposed terms, TikTok will implement a "companywide data privacy training initiative" to instruct employees and contractors to comply with data privacy laws.

As for its collection, storage, and use of sensitive data, TikTok does not actually say in the settlement that it will stop those activities, but it says instead that it will update its privacy policies to make sure those activities are more clearly disclosed "and in compliance with all applicable laws."

A judge will have to approve the proposed settlement before it goes into effect; the process is expected to take several months.

In Shamima Begum Case, UK Supreme Court Dismisses Rights and Overlooks Potential Victimhood

Begum, stripped of UK citizenship, will remain in inhumane conditions in a Syrian camp indefinitely.


by Sarah St.Vincent

February 26, 2021


In a decision with potentially sweeping consequences for due process rights in national security cases, the UK Supreme Court unanimously held Friday that Shamima Begum, a former UK schoolchild who traveled to a part of Syria then controlled by the Islamic State (IS) in 2015, does not have a right to return to Britain while she challenges the government’s decision to strip her of citizenship. The Court held that security concerns can override people’s right to “fair and effective” proceedings—while overlooking the critical and badly under-examined fact that Begum may be a victim of child marriage and human trafficking.

The Court’s startling conclusion that an individual’s alleged dangerousness can justify weaker procedural rights is likely to attract the most attention in legal circles. The Home Office had argued before the Court that Begum “is assessed to pose a real and current threat to national security,” remains “aligned with” IS, and is desensitized to violence. The Supreme Court maintained that the Court of Appeal had overstepped its bounds when it found that the government was overstating the risks Begum might pose to public safety. It went on to declare that “if a vital public interest – in this case, the safety of the public – makes it impossible for a case to be fairly heard, then the courts cannot ordinarily hear it”—potentially shutting the courthouse doors to a wide range of people the government suspects of posing some kind of threat.

However, if Begum is a victim of exploitation, this fact would render it all the more urgent for the UK government to approach her circumstances with a view to support, rights protections, and rehabilitation instead of exclusion. It should also obtain independent evaluations from medical professionals or other trauma specialists before concluding that she poses a threat to others.

Begum, who flew to Syria at age 15, has been harshly criticized in the UK press, which has depicted her as an “ISIS bride.” The Court of Appeal, too, described Begum as someone who “married an ISIL fighter” in the opening paragraphs of its July 2020 judgment. In its official justifications for its decision to strip Begum of her British citizenship in 2019, the Home Office has largely restricted itself to general allegations, such as that she “aligned [sic] with ISIL” in Syria; however, her purported marriage has loomed large in how the public, and presumably the Home Secretary and the courts, view her.

In an astute forthcoming report on gender and State efforts to prevent terrorist violence (A/HRC/46/36), UN Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights Fionnuala Ní Aoláin (also an executive editor at Just Security) has critiqued the purported gender-blindness—and actual gender bias—of governments’ national security activities. “Women … are immediately presumed to be suspect by virtue of familial or communal association with particular men,” she writes. While Ní Aoláin was discussing excessive surveillance, her observation is just as applicable in Begum’s case, in which influential press outlets have defined a woman’s identity by reference to her supposed marriage (and by the man’s ideology). Similarly, the Home Office’s assessments of her dangerousness seem to rest on few factors that would suggest an individualized analysis of Begum as a distinct human being.

In reality, Begum’s relationship may have been no marriage at all—and may instead have been part of an episode of child trafficking. In both Syria and the UK, Begum would have been below the legal minimum age for marriage at the time of the supposed wedding in Syria. Additionally, under the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings—to which the UK is a party—”[t]he recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of a child” under 18 “for the purpose of exploitation” qualifies as human trafficking. The exploitation need not be sexual; it could involve forced labor or other compelled activities. However, sexual exploitation explicitly counts for the purposes of the trafficking definition found in the treaty.

The Supreme Court’s failure to consider whether Begum is a victim who needs and is entitled to support, rather than a past or potential perpetrator, is partly a result of the questions before it. But the Home Office has no such excuse: the UK has an official “National Referral Mechanism” for identifying trafficking victims, and many Home Office agencies have the authority to refer people to it. Home Office officials therefore have every reason to be aware of legal definitions of trafficking and of the need to approach survivors with a view to offering support, not imposing punishment or making conclusory findings about dangerousness.

Worse, conditions in Roj, the camp in northeast Syria where Begum is now living, are so poor that multiple United Nations experts have called for all States to bring their nationals home immediately. In 2020, Rights and Security International—the organization I now direct—found that people in the camps, which are administered by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, suffer from serious deprivation and danger. Ní Aoláin and other top U.N. human rights experts have stated that people in Roj and al-Hol, the camp where Begum was initially held, “are exposed to violence, exploitation, abuse and deprivation in conditions and treatment that may well amount to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment under international law.” Begum’s own infant son became ill and died in the camps—one of three children she bore and whose deaths she has endured during her time in Syria.

Begum and her lawyers claim that while in the camps, Begum has not been able to participate sufficiently in the legal struggle for her rights, such as by joining hearings virtually; RSI’s research suggests that women in the camps can be punished if caught with a mobile phone. Her inability to participate in her own case was a major part of her argument that the government should give her leave to enter the UK while she appealed the deprivation of her citizenship.

In Begum’s case, the UK’s Special Immigration Appeals Commission, a lower tribunal that handles appeals from people deported under certain provisions, accepted that conditions in Roj amount to inhuman or degrading treatment. However, the Supreme Court left undisturbed the Home Office’s conclusion that any risk that Begum might experience mistreatment in the camps did not depend on whether her British citizenship was restored or remained canceled. The Court, therefore, did not grapple with the practical risk that refusing to allow Begum to enter the UK to pursue her citizenship deprivation appeal will result in continued exposure to torture or other harm—a risk that raises complex and important questions about the UK’s obligations under the Convention against Torture and other international laws.

Begum attracted intense controversy in 2019 after making comments to a reporter that seemed to support the Islamic State and justify violence, and it appears likely that these comments have influenced the courts’ treatment of her appeals against the Home Office’s decision to bar her from the UK. The Court of Appeal recounted Begum’s claim to the journalist that her first glimpse of a severed head in Syria had not bothered her. (The Court of Appeal did not delve into whether trauma experts might cast doubt on such a claim of indifference.)

However, if Begum is a victim of trafficking or other violations of international law, any comments she has made do not affect this status. In the domestic violence field, scholars and advocates have long pointed out that women who do not fit a stereotype of a passive—and White—victim are often regarded with suspicion and denied help. But if Begum is a survivor of trafficking, torture, or other trauma in need of support and treatment, then that’s what she is—regardless of anything she may have said.

The Home Office has argued that Begum could claim Bangladeshi citizenship due to her family origins, and that its decision to remove her British citizenship—which she has had from birth—therefore does not leave her stateless. However, Bangladesh has said Begum is not a citizen and will not be allowed to enter the country. Friday’s UK Supreme Court judgment therefore has the practical effect of leaving Begum stranded in the camps indefinitely, vulnerable to further exploitation, despite a theoretical right to continue pursuing her appeal against the deprivation of her citizenship from outside the UK.

The judgment also closes the door on other British adults in the camps who have been stripped of their citizenship, as well as their family members in the UK who have been searching for a remedy.

This case likely is not over: Begum could bring her arguments to the European Court of Human Rights, or—if possible—try to reapproach the UK courts later. Regardless of her next steps, the UK Supreme Court’s decision is a grievous one for rights—and an example of purportedly gender-neutral national security decision-making that harms women.

•  

  Why Democrats are blasting Biden’s attack against Iranian proxies in Syria

  It’s not clear that the president’s decision was legal.

  By Alex Ward@AlexWardVoxalex.ward@vox.com  Feb 26, 2021, 
  Why Democrats are blasting Biden’s attack against Iranian proxies It’s not clear that the president’s decision was legal.

Why Democrats are blasting Biden’s attack against Iranian proxies in Syria

It’s not clear that the president’s decision was legal.

By Alex Ward@vox.com  Feb 26, 2021

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Budget Committee chair, arrives to a hearing regarding wages at large corporations on February 25. One day later, he came out against President Joe Biden’s Syria strike.

 Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images

President Joe Biden is facing heat from fellow Democrats and law experts over his Thursday airstrikes against targets in eastern Syria tied to Iranian-backed militias, namely because they say he had no real legal justification for the attack.

The administration said the seven 500-pound bombs dropped on facilities two militias used to smuggle weapons were designed as a message: Attack US troops in the region and you risk retaliation. Over the past two weeks, Iranian proxies have fired rockets at anti-ISIS coalition forces outside Erbil, Iraq — killing a Filipino contractor and injuring US troops — and near the US Embassy in Baghdad.

“President Biden will act to protect American and Coalition personnel,” Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said in a statement hours after the strikes, calling them a “proportionate military response.” As of now, no deaths have been confirmed — the Pentagon is still assessing that — though US officials said they suspect the strikes possibly killed a “handful” of people.

Congressional Democrats denounced the strikes almost immediately, saying the US is not at war with Syria and that lawmakers didn’t authorize any attack on Iranian-backed militants. As a result, they essentially argue Biden ordered an illegal launch.

“Offensive military action without congressional approval is not constitutional absent extraordinary circumstances,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), a longtime advocate for bolstering Congress’s role in authorizing military operations, said in a Friday statement. “Our Constitution is clear that it is the Congress, not the President, who has the authority to declare war,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) added on Friday.

Criticism continued in the House. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), a leading progressive foreign policy proponent, stated, “There is absolutely no justification for a president to authorize a military strike that is not in self-defense against an imminent threat without congressional authorization.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) also highlighted a 2017 tweet from current White House press secretary Jen Psaki that criticized then-President Trump’s decision to bomb Syria in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack. “What is the legal authority for strikes?” Psaki asked, noting “Syria is a sovereign country.”

“Great question,” Omar tweeted in response on Thursday night.

Vice President Kamala Harris, then a senator, also questioned Trump’s 2018 bombing of Syria after another chemical weapons attack, tweeting, “I am deeply concerned about the legal rationale for last night’s strikes.”

While many Republicans showed their support for the attack, the pushback over Biden’s first known strike reflects a decades-long debate over what the president can and can’t do with the largest military in the world. Biden’s decision in Syria just provided the latest flashpoint.

It’s therefore worth looking at each side’s main arguments. They’ll dominate not only the discussion about this strike but future ones over the next four years, too.

The Syria strikes reanimated the presidential vs. congressional war powers fight

A National Security Council spokesperson told me the administration has two main legal arguments for why Biden had the authority to retaliate against Iranian-backed proxies operating on the Syria-Iraq border. Both of them rely on the idea that responding to the last two weeks’ attacks on coalition facilities counts as self-defense.

Regarding domestic law, the spokesperson said, “the President took this action pursuant to his Article II authority to defend U.S. personnel.” Simply put, Article II of the Constitution names the president as the commander in chief, thereby giving him ultimate authority over all military matters.

US troops were endangered by the proxies’ actions in recent weeks, and so he had every right to defend them from future attack, the argument goes. Importantly, the White House isn’t claiming it had the authority to drop bombs on Syria, just that the US had a pressing need to act in self-defense.

As for international law, the spokesperson said “the United States acted pursuant to its right of self-defense, as reflected in Article 51 of the UN Charter.” That article states, in part, that nothing in the UN’s laws “shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.” (We’ll come back to the full first sentence in a moment.)

By citing this provision, the administration is basically making the same argument as it did in domestic law: The proxies threatened US troops, and so America has the right to use force to defend them.

Congressional Democrats (and some Republicans) aren’t buying those arguments, though. Their case, based mostly in domestic law, stems from Article I of the Constitution, which states that only Congress can declare war or authorize military operations. There are some situation-dependent caveats to this, but that’s the main point.

Over the decades, Congress has abdicated that authority, rarely taking war votes while allowing the president to wield the military as he sees fit. The Korean and Vietnam wars, for example, were conducted without congressional approval. And the 2001 authorization passed to greenlight operations against al-Qaeda after 9/11 continues to be cited for counterterrorism operations around the world, even when al-Qaeda wasn’t the target.

Lawmakers have slowly begun to claw back their authority. In 2019, Congress passed a “War Powers Resolution” to block Trump from involving the US military in Yemen. Trump vetoed the bill, however, and without the supermajorities needed to overrule that veto, those offensive operations continued until Biden stopped them earlier this month. Still, it was a signal that Congress would rise against a president abusing his legal mandate.

Also in disagreement with Biden’s team are some law of war experts.

Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor at Notre Dame and co-author of Self-Defense Against Non-State Actors, told me she agrees that the president should come to Congress when there is time to seek authorization. There was in this case, she contends, as the aggressions weren’t happening now but rather occurred over the past two weeks.

That’s something Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) picked up on in his Friday statement.

“Retaliatory strikes, not necessary to prevent an imminent threat, must fall within the definition of an existing congressional authorization of military force,” he said. “Congress should hold this administration to the same standard it did prior administrations, and require clear legal justifications for military action, especially inside theaters like Syria, where Congress has not explicitly authorized any American military action.”

But O’Connell’s main critique is that the White House got the international law wrong. As promised, here’s the first sentence of the UN Charter’s Article 51 in its entirety: “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”

O’Connell said the attack wasn’t on the American homeland, and the US surely had enough time to work with UN Security Council partners to punish Iran using diplomacy — not force. That means Biden’s team either willingly misread what that provision says or didn’t comprehend its true meaning.

“They are citing the correct sources of law,” O’Connell said, but “they are wildly misinterpreting them.”

“They are undermining their attempt at becoming a leadership team for the international community in promoting good order, stability, and the rule of law,” she concluded.

Of course, the president had more than legal argument on his mind when making his decision to drop bombs. As president, it’s his responsibility to protect Americans wherever they are. He also surely didn’t want Iran to believe it could threaten US troops with impunity. Risking Congress denying an authorization request might send Tehran that exact signal.

But even Kirby, the Pentagon spokesperson, couldn’t define what imminent threat US forces faced in Syria or Iraq, except to say the Thursday attack was meant to deter future Iranian assaults on Americans.

Which means the debate over when a president can authorize a strike by himself and when he must ask lawmakers for permission is alive and well during the Biden years. It’s raging already, and will surely continue in the years to come.