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Jonathan Chait | Report: Sinema Bent to Destroy Biden Presidency to Keep Taxes on the Wealthy Low
Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine
Chait writes: "News reports this week have portrayed Democrats in Congress as slowly converging on a deal to pass a shrunken version of President Biden's Build Back Better agenda."
This sounds extremely bad.
News reports this week have portrayed Democrats in Congress as slowly converging on a deal to pass a shrunken version of President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. But the main centrist protagonist in those stories is Senator Joe Manchin, the crusty dealmaker who has long been identified as the Democratic party’s 50th and most pivotal vote. There has been scant reporting on Senator Kyrsten Sinema.
The Wall Street Journal today reports that Sinema “has told lobbyists that she is opposed to any increase” in taxes on high-income individuals, businesses, or capital gains. Her opposition is reportedly “pushing Democrats to more seriously plan for a bill that doesn’t include those major revenue increases.”
If this report is true, it would likely be a death blow to Biden’s social agenda. Senate rules require that creating or expanding any social program — health care, child care, education, or anything else — can only be made permanent if it has some funding source. If Sinema refuses to support any tax increases on the wealthy, there’s no financing available to come anywhere close.
Biden’s plan does have some other funding. One stream of income is beefed-up enforcement of taxes owed by the Internal Revenue Service. That plan is under pressure from centrist Democrats and likely to exist in shrunken form, if at all. The other is a proposal to allow Medicare to negotiate the cost of prescription drugs, which would save half a trillion dollars over a decade that could be used to cover new spending. But Sinema reportedly opposes that, too.
Politico has a more restrained version of the same report on Sinema’s position, leaving open the possibility of theoretically finding some way of taxing rich people other than the ones Democrats have been planning on. But even if she identifies such a method, it would start the arduous process of building consensus and then overcoming the inevitable lobbying response from scratch, probably dooming the entire process. CNBC’s Kayla Tausche likewise reports that Sinema has endorsed small, but not nonexistent, increases in rates on the wealthy. Either she has changed her mind or is telling different things to different people, but the upshot is that she has a wildly divergent position on taxing the wealthy than any other member of her caucus.
What makes her opposition to taxing the wealthy so peculiar is that it is not a public opinion winner. Democratic promises to raise taxes on the wealthy are one of the most popular elements of their plan. What’s more, Sinema voted against the Trump tax cuts — and those tax cuts completely failed to produce the promised increase in business investment that was their rationale.
The Democratic party’s main political asset is its willingness to make a very tiny number of people pay more money that can finance programs that benefit a very large number of people. That only works up to a point — at some level, you can raise taxes on the rich so high it fails to yield any new revenue — but there is no evidence the current tax code is anywhere near that level. Indeed, after the Trump tax cuts, the tax code for the wealthy has become scandalously lax.
Scattered reporting has also suggested Democrats are pondering a carbon tax. Doing so so would violate Biden’s promise not to raise taxes on any households earning less than $400,000 and open up every Democrat to devastating political attacks. For that reason, it seems impossible to imagine it passing Congress. The carbon tax seems like a desperate ploy rather than an actual legislative possibility. But it illustrates the extreme political peril Sinema is exposing Democrats to and the degree to which she is not pushing the party closer to the center of public opinion, but much farther away.
Democrats have torn their hair out trying to discern Sinema’s motives. In all likelihood, she has simply been persuaded by the arguments made by the rich people and lobbyists she is hanging around with constantly. But unless either the reports are wrong or she changes her mind, she is setting Democrats on a course for an utter debacle.
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Rep. Ilhan Omar. (photo: Getty)
Ilhan Omar Blasts Manchin and Sinema for Siding With Big Pharma, Big Oil and Wall Street in Budget Talks
Rep. Ilhan Omar, Amy Goodman, Nermeen Shaikh, Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "For weeks, conservative Democrats in Congress have prevented the passage of the Build Back Better Act and the Freedom to Vote Act."
For weeks, conservative Democrats in Congress have prevented the passage of the Build Back Better Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. Congressmember Ilhan Omar of Minnesota has been a vocal critic of Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who have stalled the bills and forced President Biden to radically scale back the price tag of his agenda. “All Democrats are essentially on board,” Omar says, “except for these two, who are essentially doing the bidding of Big Pharma, Big Oil and Wall Street.” The Build Back Better Act, which began at $3.5 trillion when Biden introduced the bill, has reportedly been lowered to half the original amount due to resistance in Congress. Progressive initiatives that are in danger of being dropped include free community college, extended paid family leave and lower prescription drug prices.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show looking at how key elements of President Biden’s domestic agenda are in jeopardy. On Wednesday, Senate Republicans blocked passage of the Freedom to Vote Act. Not a single Republican supported the bill. Senate Democrats could pass the sweeping voting rights legislation, but only if they voted to end the filibuster. However, two conservative Democrats — Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — oppose doing so.
Manchin and Sinema have also forced President Biden to radically scale back the Build Back Better Act, which began as a proposed $3.5 trillion spending bill over 10 years to vastly expand the social safety net and combat the climate crisis. Biden has reportedly lowered the topline price tag on the package to $1.75 trillion — half the original bill. Manchin wants the bill to be even smaller, pushing for $1.5 trillion over 10 years. Initiatives that could be dropped include free community college, extended paid family leave and an initiative to lower prescription drug prices. Manchin has also demanded Democrats strip out funding for the Clean Electricity Performance Program, a critical climate initiative to replace coal- and gas-fired power plants with renewable energy sources. Democrats are also moving away from proposals to increase the tax rate on the rich and corporations.
On Wednesday, Mother Jones magazine reported Manchin has been privately telling associates he’s considering leaving the Democratic Party and declaring himself a, quote, “American Independent” if he doesn’t get his way in slashing the size of the Build Back Better Act. Manchin rejected the report.
We go now to Washington, where we’re joined by Congressmember Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, who’s been a vocal critic of Senator Manchin’s efforts to obstruct passage of both the Build Back Better Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. After the voting rights bill failed in the Senate Wednesday, Congressmember Omar tweeted, “The filibuster—and the Democratic Senators who continue to uphold it—are killing our democracy.”
Congressmember Ilhan Omar, welcome back to Democracy Now!
REP. ILHAN OMAR: Great to be with you, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: You have to wonder at this point, when we talk about “President Joe,” if we’re talking about President Joe Biden or President Joe Manchin. He is one senator but holds so much power. Though the $3.5 trillion spending — the $3.5 trillion spending bill, talking about scaling it back to $1.7 trillion, that’s only a bit over the $1.5 trillion that this one senator has demanded. Can you talk about the significance of his power and also how it is related to him being the number one recipient of oil, gas and coal money in the U.S. Senate?
REP. ILHAN OMAR: Well, thank you so much, Amy, for having me.
I think it is really important for people to understand just the level of obstruction that this one senator is causing to the agenda of the president and everything we are trying to accomplish as Democrats on behalf of the American people. You know, so, for so long people have said, “Washington is corrupt. You know, they’re not watching out for the interests of the people.” And what’s playing out right now with these senators really is giving people a front-row seat to what they have always talked about.
And we have to get past this. We have to be able to bring these senators on board. We have to be able to accomplish this agenda, because, truly, what is on the line? It’s investment in child care. It’s investment in expanding paid family leave. It’s an agenda to try to get vision, dental and hearing paid for for seniors. It’s trying to address the climate crisis so that there is something for the future generation. It’s, you know, trying to do everything that we can so that people in our communities can feel the impact of their government. And as you said, you know, all Democrats are essentially on board, except for these two, who are essentially doing the bidding of Big Pharma, Big Oil and Wall Street.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Representative Omar, how do you think that these senators — you said it’s essential to bring them on board. What can Democrats do to persuade them to get on board?
REP. ILHAN OMAR: We have to continue talking. You know, this agenda is too big to fail. We’ve made these promises to the American people for a really long time. Investment in child care, paid family leave, in home and community-based care, these are things that are not just going to help particular communities, but it will help all communities across this country. And if we do not continue to have this conversation to move them along so that we can get it done, then we will not only fail to get our agenda done, but we would have failed the American people.
AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Omar, I wanted to continue on this issue of Senator Manchin’s power by talking about his business holdings in West Virginia. The intercept recently published a report headlined, “Joe Manchin’s Dirty Empire.” It says, quote, “For decades, Manchin has profited from a series of coal companies that he founded during the 1980s. His son, Joe Manchin IV, has since assumed leadership roles in the firms, and the senator says his ownership is held in a blind trust. Yet between the time he joined the Senate and today, Manchin has personally grossed more than $4.5 million from those firms, according to financial disclosures. He also holds stock options in Enersystems Inc., the larger of the two firms, valued between $1 and $5 million.” So, maybe this isn’t a matter so much of ideology, but, straightforward, the amount of money that he stands to make or lose based on this Build Back Better Act. He has demanded the stripping out of the section on renewable energy. Can you talk about this and if this is raised in dealing with him, and what it would mean if he did leave the Democratic Party? Or do you think it’s an empty threat?
REP. ILHAN OMAR: I think it is important for these connections to be made, and certainly for his constituents to recognize this. You know, we have a representative democracy, where you elect someone to represent your interests, not the interests of corporations and not their own interests. This, to me, sounds like legalized corruption. And if it was happening, you know, anywhere else in the world, we would be appalled by it. But the fact that it continues to happen, not just with Manchin but so many others, you know, begs the question: How are we going to continue to have the kind of democracy that we can be proud of, and talk about transparency, accountability and ending corruption to other parts of the world, when we allow it to happen within our own country? You know, the devastation economically that is visible in West Virginia, when you talk about all kinds of measures, it’s the bottom of the 50 states almost always. And to have a senator that isn’t focusing on creating the kind of investments that will uplift the communities that he represents is something that we need to seriously address.
AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s talk about what’s in the act and what’s not in the act, and what are lines in the sand, if you will. I mean, you’ve got the proposed cuts being cutting free community college for two years, cutting the Clean Electricity Performance Program, reducing paid family leave — now at the federal level, there isn’t paid family leave, but it would go from 12 weeks to four weeks — child tax credit, funding for home care. Can you talk about those that are now threatened, but also what remains, like universal pre-K, like Medicare expansion, etc., and what you think is significant here, and how much power the Progressive Caucus has? You’re the largest caucus in Congress.
REP. ILHAN OMAR: So, first of all, I just will say, you know, it’s not done until it’s done. Nothing has been agreed to by all parties, so I can’t really say what is in and what is out at the moment. You know, we’re obviously still negotiating. We’re obviously still having these conversations. Some of the things that you had mentioned would be some red lines for some of our members within the Progressive Caucus, and they have raised those concerns. And so, we’re still at the drawing board and trying to finalize a deal that can get the support of the Progressive Caucus and can have the support of these senators, so that we are able to actually pass this piece of legislation.
What we are arguing for is that four principles should be used by Congress in the final package. We want to make sure that there is — there are transformative investments, that whatever piece of legislation we end up voting on touches people’s lives immediately, that they provide universal benefits, and that they keep the president’s commitment to racial equity. And so, whether we end up cutting the duration of the investment or not, you know, we will see. But right now things are still up in the air, and conversations are still taking place. So, I wouldn’t say this is out, this is in, just yet.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Representative Omar, we’d like to move on now to the Freedom to Vote Act. On Wednesday, Senate Republicans blocked debate on the Freedom to Vote Act, and you tweeted in response, quote, “The filibuster—and the Democratic Senators who continue to uphold it—are killing our democracy.” Could you talk about what happened and elaborate on what you said?
REP. ILHAN OMAR: Yeah. We know, obviously, that our democracy is under threat. And if we do not address the kind of challenges that are posed to our democracy with legislation, we are — you know, we are going to fail our democracy. And we’re seeing Democrats in the Senate not understand that urgency. We have these two senators that are beholden more to this filibuster, that is Senate procedure and not codified in our Constitution, that are willing to uphold that and not uphold the resiliency and health of our democracy so that it could continue to flourish.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Representative Omar, another issue on which you’ve been vocal has to do with the increasing reports of what’s being called modern-day slavery in Libya: the widespread abuse of migrants in detention centers there. You wrote in a press statement, quote, “The U.S. needs a comprehensive strategy to address the ongoing human trafficking and modern day slavery crisis in Libya.” Could you talk about what you know of what’s happening, and what strategy you’re proposing the U.S. pursue?
REP. ILHAN OMAR: Yeah. Thank you so much for that question. What’s happening in Libya is truly heartbreaking. As someone who comes from one of the countries in Africa where people are being enslaved in Libya, I and so many others have, you know, personally been touched. We know family members, we know friends, we know people who are personally impacted in Libya. We have seen routine reports of rampant abuse, torture, sexual violence, extortion of migrants in Libya from sub-Saharan African countries. It is really painful that it is not getting the attention and response that it needs. And, you know, instead of welcoming thousands of refugees fleeing violence and instability, the Libyan Coast Guards hand migrants over to militias who systematically torture, rape, abuse and enslave them. The European Union is making it worse by turning away migrants and, instead, arming these same militias that are committing these abuses.
The United States hasn’t had a comprehensive strategy to engage and to address this ongoing human trafficking crisis and this modern-day slavery. I’ve met with representatives from United Nations orgs that are dealing with this situation. And what they’re asking for is for the United States to step up, for us to help create a strategy, and for us to have a conversation with the European Union, because, you know, what’s taking place in Libya is a human rights crisis. It’s a human tragedy. It’s not something that we should allow to happen today. And it is something that needs the attention of the United States and other countries, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Two questions, one about vaccine equity in the world, what some call vaccine apartheid. As you heard in our headlines, you know, the FDA is quickly approving vaccines for children and also boosters to people as young as 40 years old. Can you talk about the issue of vaccine availability in the world? While the Western nations are massively vaccinating their populations, in some places, particularly the continent you come from, from Africa, we’re looking at 1% and 2% and 5% of the population vaccinated, not because of choice, but because they don’t have access. While President Biden has supported the TRIPS waiver at the WTO, it’s a question of expending political capital to force other countries, like Germany and Britain, where the pharmaceutical companies are based that are making billions, do the same. Can you talk about what has to be done?
REP. ILHAN OMAR: Yes, you’re right. We do have to spend political capital on this. This is, you know, a catastrophe. Vaccine apartheid is real. There are so many people across the world who are celebrating, you know, 5%, 10%, 20% vaccination, because that is the best that they can do with the limited resources that they have, while their wealthy counterparts are not doing their part, and providing not just an overall vaccination, but even boosters, as you said, which is happening here in the United States, and which will rapidly expand. Booster shots are not just going to be available for those who are at risk and older than 40. We’re going to provide it to everyone soon. And we are even providing vaccinations to young children now, when so many people around the world can’t even vaccinate their most vulnerable members of their communities.
So, yes, it is the right thing for the United States to spend its political capital, to say, “Let’s come together as a world and address this pandemic,” that doesn’t recognize boundaries and doesn’t recognize that someone is wealthy and someone is poor. Everyone has suffered from it. And, you know, as you know, I’ve lost my father to COVID-19. There are so many people who have been tragically touched by this pandemic. And we are now at a moment where we can help those within our borders and extend that aid to others in different countries.
AMY GOODMAN: And our deep condolences again on the loss of your father. Do you think that the U.S. should be requiring Moderna to release its recipe, given how heavily subsidized, publicly subsidized their research was?
REP. ILHAN OMAR: Yes. And I’ve said that from the start. But at this moment, Amy, it is going to take a long time for that recipe to be utilized, and a lot of these countries don’t have those resources. So what we’re asking for is for the excess amounts that exist in some of the wealthiest countries, including ours here in the United States, to be donated and for that transfer to happen in an urgent matter to every corner of the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Congressmember Omar, you’re calling on President Biden to intervene in the construction of the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline in your state, in northern Minnesota, and to protect Indigenous sovereignty and the environment. In this last week, more than 600 people, overwhelmingly Indigenous, were arrested in Washington, D.C., in this Native American-led climate protest. You also have The Guardian newspaper revealing that Enbridge paid Minnesota police $2.4 million in reimbursements, all costs tied to the arrests and surveillance of hundreds of water protectors. Can you talk about this and what needs to happen now?
REP. ILHAN OMAR: The president has to intervene. I have called on the president to intervene to stop this pipeline. Just yesterday, the president addressed our Boundary Waters and talked about tribal sovereignty and treaty rights. And it was astonishing, really, to hear these statements coming in regards to the wilderness and the Boundary Waters, when we are not using a similar statement in regards to Line 3 and what it means for the northern — for northern Minnesota and our Indigenous brothers and sisters, and what it means for their tribal sovereignty, what it means for the treaty rights, which are supreme laws in this land, and what it means for their livelihood, what it means in regards to their wildlife. I mean, the Anishinaabe communities in Minnesota say it is their culture, that they were told to go where food grows on water, and wild rice is their life. It’s their culture. It’s their tradition. It’s basically their existence. And we don’t have this president addressing the urgency of stopping this pipeline, that will essentially destroy their land and ultimately pollute everybody that has access to the Mississippi.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Congressmember Ilhan Omar, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Minnesota congressmember representing the 5th Congressional District. Her memoir is titled This Is What America Looks Like: My Journey from Refugee to Congresswoman. You can go to democracynow.org to see our extended interview with Congressmember Omar about her memoir.
And a quick correction in our Guantánamo Bay headline: Asadullah Haroon Gul is the first prisoner in 10 years, not two years, to win a habeas corpus argument. He is the Guantánamo prisoner.
Next up, we look at Senator Joe Manchin’s “dirty empire” in West Virginia. Stay with us.
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Afghan refugee Roman Khan in September 2020 displays a photograph of his brother Asadullah Haroon Gul, a detainee at the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. (photo: Abdul Majeed/Getty)
Judge Rules Afghan Militant Has Been Held in Guantánamo Illegally, in What Lawyers Say Is the First Such Ruling in 10 Years
Spencer S. Hsu, Washington Post
Hsu writes: "A federal judge has found that a former Afghan militant has been held unlawfully at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, the first time in 10 years that a detainee has won such a case against the U.S. government, his lawyers said."
A federal judge has found that a former Afghan militant has been held unlawfully at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, the first time in 10 years that a detainee has won such a case against the U.S. government, his lawyers said.
U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta in Washington on Tuesday entered a final order and two classified opinions on Asadullah Haroon Gul’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus and immediate release, court filings confirmed, without disclosing their contents.
Spokeswomen for the court and the Justice Department declined to comment, but a U.S. official confirmed that the petition was granted and that the opinion was undergoing classification review before release.
“This is a landmark victory for the rule of law and a much-needed reminder to the US government that there are limits on what it may do in the name of national security,” Gul attorney Tara Plochocki said in a written statement.
Gul’s counsel Mark Maher, with the nonprofit group Reprieve, said the lawyers were thrilled for their client.
“A federal court has finally affirmed what Asad has known for so long: He should be home with his family, and his detention is unlawful,” Maher said.
The basis of the ruling remains classified, and only brief opening statements of proceedings were made public earlier this year. U.S. prosecutors said they planned to keep arguments in secret sessions because of the detainee’s purported sensitive statements to U.S. interrogators and to an unnamed witness.
Gul, 40, was captured in 2007 by Afghan forces, turned over to the United States, and remains one of the last 39 detainees at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He is also one of only two Afghans who remain out of 219 sent there after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. President Biden formally ended the U.S. war in Afghanistan in August.
Earlier this month, in a separate proceeding, the U.S. government determined that it was safe to transfer Gul, who has never been charged with a crime, out of Guantánamo. He is among 13 men who have been recommended for transfer by the multiagency Periodic Review Board (PRB), on the basis that they are not considered to pose a threat to U.S. national security. Among factors in its decision, the PRB cited Gul’s “lack of a leadership role in extremist organizations and his lack of a clear ideological basis for his prior conduct.”
Three of the men have been held for more than a decade, and clearance is no guarantee of release. Lawyers for those detainees say their continued detention despite having been cleared necessitates action by a court.
Gul’s lawyers challenged his detention in federal court in July 2016 and argued in a hearing this spring that Biden’s troop withdrawal announcement effective September 2021 amounted to a declaration that the U.S. war in Afghanistan was ending and that all prisoners of said war should be released.
Early this year, the U.S.-backed Afghan government of President Ashraf Ghani also filed a court brief in support of Gul’s release, saying his continued detention was “detrimental” to U.S.-Afghan relations.
Gul “is a prisoner of war — a war that has been over for many years,” Plochocki argued in May for Gul’s legal team, which includes the law firm Lewis Baach Kaufmann Middlemiss. Plochocki said the fact that Gul remains detained has “gotten ridiculous,” saying he is one of about 20 men still at the prison “who have not been and never will be charged with a crime.”
Prosecutors argued that Gul’s detention, while lengthy, remained justified.
Gul at the time of his capture was a member of Hezb-i-Islami Gulbuddin, a paramilitary group then allied with al-Qaeda, that resisted the U.S. invasion in 2001.
The HIG made peace with the government in Kabul in September 2016. Hundreds of its members have been freed from Afghan prisons, and its former CIA-backed leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, continues to have a presence in the country’s political dialogue. The U.S. government also has freed scores of Taliban figures from Guantánamo, including high-ranking members who now hold leadership roles in Kabul.
But prosecutors argued that Gul’s ties to al-Qaeda went deeper and that the U.S. government remained at war with al-Qaeda.
Gul made several trips to training camps specializing in chemicals and explosives, helped transport money, communications and individuals, and carried out “other operational taskings” for al-Qaeda operatives, U.S. prosecutor Stephen McCoy Elliott said in May. Gul also became close to the only other Afghan still at Guantánamo, Muhammad Rahim al Afghani, a former translator for Osama bin Laden who helped the latter escape Afghanistan in late 2001, Elliott alleged.
The government’s position in Gul’s habeas case appears fundamentally at odds with the position reached by the PRB — a body composed of representatives from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department. The purpose of the board is to determine whether a detainee still poses a viable threat to U.S. national security, and, earlier this month, the board found that Gul did not.
But although the board assesses a detainee’s dangerousness and makes a recommendation on that basis, it does not make a determination on whether the person’s detention by the government is legal; that is where a habeas ruling comes in.
“The decision for the habeas petition is whether or not it’s legal, and the decision for the PRB is whether or not it’s wise,” Maher said in an interview last week, likening the PRB to a “parole board.”
At Gul’s hearing in May, prosecutors said they would provide the judge with classified evidence to support their allegations of Gul’s ties to al-Qaeda. They asserted that Gul had trained with a student organization associated with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — the alleged mastermind of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — and provided “substantial support” to al-Qaeda up to the time of his capture as evidenced by his purported disclosure of the locations of three of the group’s operatives, the prosecutor said.
The hearing for Gul was the first involving a Guantánamo Bay prisoner petitioning for federal court review in two years and was scheduled before Biden announced the planned withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, a process thrown into turmoil by the swift collapse of the U.S.-backed government and the return of the Taliban to Kabul.
Federal judges granted about 70 percent of 53 habeas petitions brought to them between 2008 — when the U.S. Supreme Court recognized a constitutional right by Guantánamo inmates to seek federal court review of the legality of their detention — and 2010, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sharply curbed that decision. Since then, every petition opposed by the government has been rejected, and previously granted petitions appealed by the government reversed.
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U.S. Border Patrol agents detain undocumented immigrants after they crossed the border from Mexico into the United States in McAllen. (photo: Getty)
US Border Agents Engaged in 'Shocking Abuses' Against Asylum Seekers, Report Finds
Ed Pilkington, Guardian UK
Pilkington writes: "Shocking instances of sexual and physical abuse of asylum seekers at the southern US border by federal officers have been uncovered by Human Rights Watch, after a years-long battle to wrestle the information from the Department of Homeland Security under freedom of information laws."
Revealed: documents released after six years of legal tussles uncover over 160 cases of misconduct and abuse
Shocking instances of sexual and physical abuse of asylum seekers at the southern US border by federal officers have been uncovered by Human Rights Watch, after a years-long battle to wrestle the information from the Department of Homeland Security under freedom of information laws.
A stash of redacted documents released to the human rights group after six years of legal tussles uncover more than 160 cases of misconduct and abuse by leading government agencies, notably Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and US Border Patrol. The papers record events between 2016 and 2021 that range from child sexual assault to enforced hunger, threats of rape and brutal detention conditions.
Some of the incidents involve alleged criminal activity by federal agents.
Human Rights Watch said that the documents “paint a picture of DHS as an agency that appears to have normalized shocking abuses at the US border. The US should take urgent and sustained action to stop such abuses”.
The newly released documents record a case of alleged child sexual abuse reported by a supervisor in the San Francisco asylum office. An asylum officer interviewed “a young child who was sexually molested by someone we believe to be a CBP or Border Patrol Officer ... The young girl was forced to undress and touched inappropriately by a guard wearing green”.
The Border Patrol uniform is green.
Another report recounts an incident in 2018 when a male asylum seeker was detained and taken to a detention center in San Ysidro, California. An officer told the man that “if he gave him sex, he would be set free”, and when the detainee refused “the officer swore at him in English and said that he would be locked up as punishment”.
Federal agents operating along the Mexican border have long been accused of misconduct and mistreatment of the migrants and asylum seekers attempting to enter the US. Conditions in detention centers can be harsh and detainees have frequently complained that they are kept so cold the holding pens are described as “hieleras”, or ice boxes.
A Honduran asylum seeker reported conditions in the McAllen facility in 2019: “I was there for 10 days sitting, I couldn’t move because it was 67 of us in that cell. We said we needed toilet paper and water and ... we reported the animals, the scorpions in there. There were scorpions, ants, ticks, fleas and they would tell us that it was fine, it was because of our own stink of being there 45 days.”
Concerns about inappropriate behaviour by officers at the border made international headlines again in September when Border Patrol agents on horseback bearing what looked like whips were photographed grabbing at Haitian migrants.
The Human Rights Watch documents point to numerous ways in which asylum seekers appear to have had their right to due process violated. One of the records released in the freedom of information suit appears to relate to a federal inquiry into CBP and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) violations of correct procedure.
The inquiry found 27 possible cases where asylum seekers were blocked from filing complaints or forced to sign papers they could not understand.
One Honduran man applying for asylum was told by a Border Patrol agent that unless he signed paperwork rescinding his application “he was going to be sent to a jail where they were going to rape him”.
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Reported members of the Oath Keepers walk along West Florissant Street as demonstrators mark the anniversary of the shooting of Michael Brown in August 2015 in Ferguson, Mo. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty)
Oath Keepers in the State House: How a Militia Movement Took Root in the Republican Mainstream
Isaac Arnsdorf, ProPublica
Arnsdorf writes: "North Carolina state representative Mike Clampitt swore an oath to uphold the Constitution after his election in 2016 and again in 2020. But there's another pledge that Clampitt said he's upholding: to the Oath Keepers, a right-wing militant organization."
A membership roster for the Oath Keepers, a violent extremist group whose followers have been charged in the Jan. 6 insurrection, includes state lawmakers, congressional candidates, and local government and GOP officials.
North Carolina state representative Mike Clampitt swore an oath to uphold the Constitution after his election in 2016 and again in 2020. But there’s another pledge that Clampitt said he’s upholding: to the Oath Keepers, a right-wing militant organization.
Dozens of Oath Keepers have been arrested in connection to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, some of them looking like a paramilitary group, wearing camo helmets and flak vests. But a list of more than 35,000 members of the Oath Keepers — obtained by an anonymous hacker and shared with ProPublica by the whistleblower group Distributed Denial of Secrets — underscores how the organization is evolving into a force within the Republican Party.
ProPublica identified Clampitt and 47 more state and local government officials on the list, all Republicans: 10 sitting state lawmakers; two former state representatives; one current state assembly candidate; a state legislative aide; a city council assistant; county commissioners in Indiana, Arizona and North Carolina; two town aldermen; sheriffs or constables in Montana, Texas and Kentucky; state investigators in Texas and Louisiana; and a New Jersey town’s public works director.
ProPublica’s analysis also found more than 400 people who signed up for membership or newsletters using government, military or political campaign email addresses, including candidates for Congress and sheriff, a retired assistant school superintendent in Alabama, and an award-winning elementary school teacher in California.
Three of the state lawmakers on the list had already been publicly identified with the Oath Keepers. Other outlets have also scoured the list, finding police officers and military veterans.
People with law enforcement and military backgrounds — like Clampitt, a retired fire captain in Charlotte, North Carolina — have been the focus of the Oath Keepers’ recruiting efforts since the group started in 2009. According to researchers who monitor the group’s activities, Oath Keepers pledge to resist if the federal government imposes martial law, invades a state or takes people’s guns, ideas that show up in a dark swirl of right-wing conspiracy theories. The group is loosely organized and its leaders do not centrally issue commands. The organization’s roster has ballooned in recent years, from less than 10,000 members at the start of 2011 to more than 35,000 by 2020, membership records show.
The hacked list marks participants as annual ($50) or lifetime ($1,000) members, so not everyone on the list is currently active, though some said they viewed it as a lifelong commitment even if they only paid for one year. Many members said they had little contact with the group after sending in their dues but still supported the cause. Others drifted away and disavowed the group, even before Jan. 6.
The list also includes at least three people who were arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and who federal prosecutors did not identify as Oath Keepers in charging documents: Andrew Alan Hernandez of Riverside, California; Dawn Frankowski of Naperville, Illinois; and Sean David Watson of Alpine, Texas. They pleaded not guilty. These defendants, their attorneys and family members didn’t respond to requests for comment. The Justice Department also declined to comment.
According to experts who monitor violent extremism, the Oath Keepers’ broadening membership provides the group with two crucial resources: money and, particularly when government officials get involved, legitimacy.
Clampitt said he went to a few Oath Keepers meetings when he joined back in 2014, but the way he participates now is by being a state legislator. He has co-sponsored a bill to allow elected officials to carry concealed guns in courthouses, schools and government buildings, and he supported legislation stiffening penalties for violent demonstrations in response to last year’s protests in Raleigh over George Floyd’s murder. Clampitt said he opposes violence but stood by his Oath Keepers affiliation, despite the dozens of members charged in the Capitol riot.
“Five or six years ago, politicians wouldn’t be caught dead hanging out with Oath Keepers, you’d have to go pretty fringe,” said Jared Holt, who monitors the group for the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. “When groups like that become emboldened, it makes them significantly more dangerous.”
The State Lawmakers
Then-state Delegate Don Dwyer from Maryland was the only elected official at the Oath Keepers’ first rally, back in April 2009. Dwyer was, by his own account, a pariah in Annapolis, but he was building a national profile as a conservative firebrand. He claimed to take direction from his own interpretation of the U.S. Constitution and a personal library of 230 books about U.S. history pre-1900.
The Oath Keepers’ founder, a former Army paratrooper and Yale Law School graduate named Stewart Rhodes, invited Dwyer to speak at the group’s kickoff rally — they called it a “muster” — in Lexington, Massachusetts, the site of the “shot heard round the world” that started the Revolutionary War in 1775.
“I still support the cause,” Dwyer told ProPublica. “And I’m proud to say that I’m a member of that organization.” He left politics in 2015 and served six months in prison for violating his probation after a drunk boating accident.
Dwyer said he was not aware of the Oath Keeper’s presence at the Capitol on Jan. 6. “If they were there, they were there on a peaceful mission, I’m sure of it,” he said. Informed that members were photographed wearing tactical gear, Dwyer responded, “OK, that surprises me. That’s all I’ll say.”
Among the current officeholders on the list is Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem, who was already publicly identified with the Oath Keepers. Finchem was outside the Capitol on Jan. 6 but has said he did not enter the building or engage in violence, and he has disputed the characterization of the Oath Keepers as an anti-government group. He is currently running to be Arizona’s top elections official, and he won former President Donald Trump’s endorsement in September.
Serving with Clampitt in the North Carolina assembly, deputy majority whip Keith Kidwell appeared on the Oath Keepers list as an annual member in 2012. Kidwell declined to comment, calling the membership list “stolen information.” A spokesperson for the state house speaker declined to comment on Kidwell’s and Clampitt’s Oath Keepers affiliation.
The membership list also names Alaska state Rep. David Eastman as a life member and Indiana state Sen. Scott Baldwin and Georgia state Rep. Steve Tarvin as annual members. Eastman confirmed his membership and declined to answer further questions. Baldwin’s spokesperson said he was unavailable to comment.
Tarvin recalled signing up at a booth in White County, Georgia, in 2009 when he was running for Congress. He lost that race but later became a state lawmaker. He didn’t view the Oath Keepers as a militia group back then.
Tarvin said he stands by the pledge he signed and said he isn’t aware of the Oath Keepers’ involvement in the Capitol breach on Jan 6. His congressional district is now represented by Andrew Clyde, who helped barricade a door to the House chamber on Jan. 6 but later compared the riot to a “normal tourist visit.”
Kaye Beach, who is listed as an annual member in 2010, is a legislative assistant to Oklahoma state Rep. Jon Echols, the majority floor leader. Beach sued the state in 2011, arguing that the Bible prohibited taking a driver’s license photo of her. She eventually lost at the state supreme court. Beach and Echols did not respond to requests for comment.
Two other lawmakers have long been public about their affiliation with the Oath Keepers.
Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers announced her membership a few years ago. She responded to Trump’s 2020 loss by encouraging people to buy ammo and recently demanded to “decertify” the election based on the GOP’s “audit” of Maricopa County ballots, even though the partisan review confirmed President Joe Biden’s win.
Idaho state Rep. Chad Christensen lists his Oath Keepers membership on his official legislative biography, in between the John Birch Society and the Idaho Farm Bureau.
Rogers and Christensen didn’t respond to requests for comment.
South Dakota state legislator Phil Jensen appeared on the list as an annual member in 2014, using his title (then state senator) and government email address. His affiliation was reported Tuesday by Rolling Stone. He did not respond to a request for comment.
South Dakota state Sen. Jim Stalzer, whose 2015 annual membership was first reported by BuzzFeed, said he never renewed his membership and stopped supporting the Oath Keepers because he disagreed with “their confrontational approach to what they view as federal overreach.” In an email, Stalzer said he supported peaceful demonstrators on Jan. 6 but “we do not have the right to damage property or harm others, whether it be at the Capitol or anywhere else.”
The Candidates
Virginia Fuller first encountered the Oath Keepers in 2009 at a meeting in San Francisco featuring Rhodes, the group’s founder. Fuller liked Rhodes’ message of upholding the Constitution, she told ProPublica. For a while she corresponded with one of the group’s leaders but they eventually lost touch, and she moved to Florida and ran unsuccessfully for Congress on the Republican ticket in 2018.
Rhodes and other leaders of the Oath Keepers embraced Trump’s lies about election fraud and promoted Jan. 6 as a last chance to make a stand for the republic. Asked about Jan. 6, Fuller said, “There was nothing wrong with that. The Capitol belongs to the people.”
The Oath Keepers rose to prominence when handfuls of heavily armed members showed up at racial justice protests in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, and their profile grew thanks to a series of standoffs between right-wing militants and federal agents in the Western U.S.
At the 2016 funeral for a rancher who officers shot while trying to arrest him, Stan Vaughan met several Oath Keepers and became an annual member. Vaughan, a one-time chess champion from Las Vegas, ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for the Nevada State Assembly in 2016, 2018 and 2020. Even though Vaughan ran in a predominantly Democratic district, he had the support of his party’s establishment, receiving a $500 campaign contribution from Robin Titus, the Assembly’s Republican floor leader. Titus did not respond to requests for comment. Vaughan said he’ll probably run again once he sees how new districts are drawn.
Vaughan said he wouldn’t join the Oath Keepers today. It’s not their ideology that bothers him or their involvement in the Jan. 6 riot. Rather, he said he has concerns about how the group’s leaders spend its money.
One Oath Keeper seen on Jan. 6 wearing an earpiece and talking with group leaders outside the Capitol was Edward Durfee, a local Republican committee member in Bergen County, New Jersey, who is running for state assembly in a predominantly Democratic district. Durfee has not been charged and said he did not enter the building.
“They were caught up in the melee, what else can I say? For whatever reason, I didn’t go in,” Durfee said. “They brand you as white supremacists, domestic terrorists. I don’t know how we got in this mix where there’s so much hatred and so much dislike and how it continues to get fomented. It’s just shameful actually.”
The Local Party Officials
When Joe Marmorato, a retired New York City cop who moved upstate, signed up for an Oath Keepers annual membership in 2013, he described the skills he could offer the group: “Pistol Shooting, police street tactics, driving skills, County Republican committee member.” Marmorato later rose to vice chairman of the Otsego County GOP, but he recently resigned that post because he’s moving. Reached by phone, Marmorato stood by the Oath Keepers, even after Jan. 6. “I just thought they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing. I know most of them are all retired police and firemen and have the best interests of the country in mind,” he said. “No matter what you do, you’re vilified by the left.”
Steven K. Booth, a twice-elected Republican county commissioner and state senate candidate in Minnesota in the 2000s, said he wants to run for office again if his wife agrees to it. He’s still active in the local GOP. Booth joined the Oath Keepers as an annual member in 2011 and said he hasn’t heard from them in years. He said he wasn’t aware of their role in Jan. 6 but he’s concerned that some Capitol breach defendants are being held in jail. “That seems kind of weird to me,” Booth said. “I also think it’s kind of weird that nobody is doing anything about all the fraud we were told about in the last election either.”
Asked about the possibility of Booth running for office again, local GOP chair Rich Siegert started talking through openings Booth could aim for. Booth’s Oath Keepers affiliation did not give Siegert pause. “When tyranny comes, that’s when you stop and say you’ve got to do something about it,” said Siegert, who heads the party in northern Minnesota’s Beltrami County. “To go out and get violent and kill people like they did in the early days, I’m not really in favor of that. How do you get the attention of liberals and get them to listen? Firing guns, I don’t know, it’s what they do in some countries. Define what ’radical’ is.”
Not all party officials shared Siegert’s view. Richland County, South Carolina, GOP chair Tyson Grinstead distanced his committee from Patsy Stewart, who is listed as an Oath Keepers annual member in 2015. “Personally,” Grinstead said, “I don’t think there’s a place for that in our party.”
Stewart has been a delegate or alternate to the GOP state convention and is currently a party precinct officer in Columbia, South Carolina. She didn’t respond to requests for comment. In recent months, Trump supporters have flooded into precinct positions in South Carolina and other states as part of an organized movement inspired by the stolen election myth, ProPublica reported in September.
The Poll Worker
When Andy Maul signed up for the Oath Keepers as an annual member around 2010, he touted his role in the Pittsburgh GOP. Maul said he let his membership lapse because there wasn’t a local chapter, but he still likes the group’s concept.
Maul became the party chairman of his city council district starting around 2016. But other local party leaders chafed at Maul’s confrontational style and lack of follow-through.
“Andy was getting a little out there,” said Allegheny County chairman Sam DeMarco, who had to ask Maul to take down some of his inflammatory social media posts. “If you want to be associated with our committee, you have to represent mainstream traditional Republican values and not be affiliated with fringe groups.”
Maul left the local party committee in 2020, but he continued serving as a poll worker. According to the county elections department, Maul was the “judge of elections” in charge of his precinct in every election since 2017, including this year’s primary in May.
In Pennsylvania, the judge of elections in every precinct is an elected position. If no one runs, as often happens, the local elections office appoints someone to fill in, so a person can sometimes land the job “if you have a pulse and you call them,” said Bob Hillen, the Pittsburgh Republican chairman.
“If I opposed people based on their views for being a judge of elections or anything, that would eliminate a whole lot of people,” Hillen said. “I’m a city chairman, I don’t have time to think about all those things like that.”
Maul said he observed “aberrative” ballots at his precinct on Nov. 3 — just a handful, but he asserted that if the same number occurred at every precinct in the state, it would add up to more than Biden’s margin of victory. (There is no evidence of widespread fraud that could have affected the outcome in Pennsylvania or any other state.)
On Jan. 6, Maul said he marched toward the Capitol but couldn’t make it all the way and returned to his bus. He said he wasn’t familiar with the Oath Keepers’ activities that day. “As a supporter of the Constitution, I had strong differences and concerns about Trump,” Maul said in a text message. “Although my feeling on Trump were mixed, I went to the Jan. 6 rally mainly due to what I experienced at my polling location.”
The Democrat
Around 2005, Marine veteran Bob Haran joined the Minuteman Project, a group of armed people who took it upon themselves to patrol Arizona’s border with Mexico. Haran resented that critics called the group vigilantes and Mexican hunters. All they did, he said, was call the Border Patrol.
Haran held positions in the local GOP and had run for the state House as a Republican. During the tea party wave, Haran became frustrated with the new activists’ anti-government tilt and turned to the Constitution Party, a minor party that’s to the right of the GOP. Haran rose to be the state chairman and secretary. By the time he became an Oath Keepers annual member in 2016, Haran was looking for a new political home.
When Trump rode down a golden escalator to launch his presidential campaign by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists,” Haran took offense. He faulted the government for failing to secure the border, but he didn’t blame people for seeking better lives for themselves and their families. Haran grew up in Coney Island, near a middle-class apartment complex built by Trump’s father, and he remembered Trump as a braggadocious playboy, not as the successful self-made businessman he later played on TV. Haran said he was appalled as Republicans fell in line behind Trump.
Then, Haran did something unusual, even among never-Trump Republicans: He became a Democrat.
Haran doesn’t agree with the Democrats on everything, but he said he feels welcome in the party. He’s still passionate about guns and immigration, but he also supports environmental protections and universal health care. Above all, he wanted to help get rid of Trump. In 2020, he joined his local precinct committee and started regularly attending party meetings.
Haran was so excited to see Trump leave office that he tuned in to watch the Electoral College certification process on Jan. 6. He couldn’t believe how fast the Trump supporters reached the Senate floor, or how Oath Keepers were attacking the Constitution they swore to defend.
Haran thought back to when he ran for office as a Republican, in 2000, and lost. “I called my opponent and congratulated him: I would have won except he got more votes,” Haran said. “I conceded, which is bestowing legitimacy on my opponent, which is more important than anything.”
He finds it disturbing that Trump and other Republicans today won’t do that anymore. “They were anti-government,” Haran said of the GOP, “but now they’re being anti-democracy.”
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The Moroccan Parliament is seen in Rabat, Morocco, on Aug. 31, 2021. (photo: Anass Laghnadi)
Morocco's Surveillance Machine Fuels a Crackdown on Dissent
Cole Stangler, Abdellatif El Hamamouchi, The Intercept
Excerpt: "In February 2020, Moroccan human rights activist Fouad Abdelmoumni received some bone-chilling news: He and his partner had been filmed having sex inside their own home, and videos of their intimate moments were circulating on WhatsApp."
In February 2020, Moroccan human rights activist Fouad Abdelmoumni received some bone-chilling news: He and his partner had been filmed having sex inside their own home, and videos of their intimate moments were circulating on WhatsApp.
Friends and family members told Abdelmoumni they’d received a sequence of seven videos from an unknown number, apparently filmed from air conditioning vents that provided a view inside the bedroom and living room. When Abdelmoumni went to check the vents himself, he found no cameras. “I felt violated,” he told The Intercept in an interview, “and sad for my country.”
The 63-year-old economist and frequent critic of the corruption and abuses of the makhzen, a broad term used to describe Morocco’s ruling elites and their allies, says he has no doubt that the videos were meant as retaliation for his outspokenness. Just months earlier, the activist, who is close to the Moroccan Association for Human Rights and a board member of the country’s affiliate of Transparency International, had publicly denounced a separate brush-up with surveillance.
In October 2019, Abdelmoumni had been informed by the Citizen Lab, a group based out of the University of Toronto that tracks digital surveillance worldwide, that he had appeared, alongside seven other Moroccan activists and journalists, on a list of potential targets of a then little-known software called Pegasus. Developed by the Israel-based NSO Group, the spyware could enable attackers to monitor communications and other data on Abdelmoumni’s cellphone. He responded by signing a letter, joined by the rest of the group, to Morocco’s data protection authorities denouncing the surveillance and demanding that the government open an investigation. (Full disclosure: One of this story’s co-authors, Abdellatif El Hamamouchi, was also informed at the time that he had appeared on the list and co-signed that letter.)
The video surveillance of Abdelmoumni’s home wasn’t the product of the Pegasus spyware. Instead, he believes, the intrusion into his private life was a form of extortion meant to discourage him from speaking out about corruption. He has publicly alleged that the surveillance was conducted at the behest of the king. “Mr Abdelmoumni says dozens of the king’s critics … have faced similar smear campaigns,” The Economist reported in January.
“I was filmed having sexual relations with my partner as a way to silence me,” Abdelmoumni told The Intercept. “I’m facing immense pressure, but I did not and I will not submit to the political police attempting to blackmail me.”
Abdelmoumni is just one of the many activists, journalists, and government critics caught up in Morocco’s sweeping surveillance apparatus. Though the Moroccan state is often regarded as less repressive than many of its neighbors in the Middle East and North Africa, critics at home feel that it is in the midst of a dangerous authoritarian drift. The recent Pegasus spyware revelations have helped shine a light on just one part of that far-reaching and sophisticated surveillance machine.
In July, an investigation led by the NGO Forbidden Stories, Amnesty International’s Security Lab, and a consortium of international reporters — known as the Pegasus Project — suggested that the Moroccan government is a major user of NSO Group’s surveillance software. The findings, which were based on a data leak, included a list of more than 50,000 phone numbers that Amnesty and Forbidden Stories believed to be potential Pegasus targets. Roughly one-fifth of those phone numbers were based in Morocco.
Media organizations participating in the Pegasus Project analyzed the list, and Amnesty’s Security Lab examined 67 smartphones, 23 of which had been successfully infected with spyware and 14 more of which showed signs of attempted infiltration. NSO Group has denied involvement, claiming that any surveillance of journalists, activists, or politicians is a misuse of its technology.
The list of possible surveillance targets extended well beyond Moroccan borders. According to records provided by Forbidden Stories and Amnesty, entries selected from Morocco included the phone numbers of French President Emmanuel Macron, prominent French journalist Edwy Plenel, and the U.S. diplomat and lead negotiator on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal Robert Malley. But within the country, high-profile independent journalists appeared often. In addition to the heads of state, activists, and politicians found among the 50,000 entries, 180 numbers belonged to journalists from 20 different countries. According to The Guardian, 38 were in Morocco, among them Taoufik Bouachrine, Soulaimane Raissouni, and Omar Radi — all of whom are now in prison.
The Moroccan government, a constitutional monarchy with a prime minister appointed directly by the powerful King Mohammed VI, strongly disputes the accuracy of these findings. In July, the state’s public prosecutor announced that it was opening an investigation into “the false allegations and accusations contained in news articles issued by foreign newspapers,” while the country’s embassy in Paris has filed a lawsuit in French court, accusing Forbidden Stories and Amnesty of defamation.
But despite the uproar, Pegasus is just a part of the picture — one of the many instruments in an expanding surveillance toolbox available to the Moroccan state to clamp down on journalists, activists, and government critics. Sometimes, advocates say, intelligence can be deployed in a bid to shame or blackmail targets — as in the case of Abdelmoumni. Other times, it can be mobilized by pro-government media to attack critical voices. It can even be used to bring full-fledged criminal charges against dissidents, as a handful of independent journalists have learned firsthand.
According to Maati Monjib, a prominent historian and activist who spent three months in prison this year on charges of “fraud” and “threatening state security” before being granted provisional release, Morocco’s state surveillance plays an integral role in sustaining the regime’s power. The head of Freedom Now, a group that defends freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and a history professor at Rabat’s Mohammed V University, Monjib says the goals go beyond discouraging the most outspoken critics. When Amnesty examined his phone, forensic analysts found evidence of suspicious processes that led to Pegasus installation domains. His device became “instrumental” for the analysts’ models, Security Lab researchers wrote.
“The general aim seems to be for everyone to feel like they’re surveilled, including politicians who work for the regime,” Monjib told The Intercept weeks before a court hearing tied to his case. “This general feeling paralyzes a good part of Moroccan society and encourages self-censorship at home. Before, even pro-regime politicians were at times critical of the regime when they were amongst themselves or outside of Morocco. This is no longer possible.”
Reached on his personal number over WhatsApp when he was in office, Morocco’s former Minister of Human Rights Mustapha Ramid did not respond to The Intercept’s requests for comment for this story. Former Prime Minister Saad-Eddine El Othmani did not respond to multiple requests for comment sent through his office. As of October 7, following September’s parliamentary elections and the king’s approval, Morocco has a new government. The new prime minister, Aziz Akhannouch, also did not respond to a request for comment.
Pegasus: One Tool in the Surveillance Toolbox
In August 2019, when Moroccan police stopped journalist Hajar Raissouni, she thought she was being robbed. She was leaving her gynecologist’s office in Rabat with her then-fiancé, now her husband, when a group confronted her with intimate details and accusations.
“I was told very personal information that no one could have known unless they had been listening to my calls all along,” Hajar told The Intercept. “They told me that at a certain hour I would go to my fiancé Rifaat’s house when he was traveling to take out the dogs, and they mentioned the specific hours and days to me.” That month, she was arrested and charged with abortion and sexual relations outside of marriage, both of which are illegal and often viewed negatively in Morocco.
Among the many issues Moroccan journalists have to navigate are the infamous “red lines” explicitly mentioned in the country’s penal code: the place of Islam, the legitimacy of the monarchy, and the country’s territorial integrity. (The latter is especially relevant to Morocco’s contested claim over the territory of Western Sahara, which the Trump administration recognized last December, breaking with years of international consensus and smoothing Morocco’s establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel.)
Hajar remembers interrogators bombarding her with questions about her political beliefs and her coverage of the 2016 Hirak El-Rif protest movement, which demanded socioeconomic improvements in Morocco’s northern Berber-speaking region for several months — until scores of activists were arrested and protests faded. In May 2019, Hajar had published a series of interviews with the father of the movement’s leader, Nasser Zefzafi, reflecting on the 20-year prison sentence his son had recently received. She says interrogators also asked her about influential members of her family, including a journalist and a scholar who are both known to be critical of the authorities.
So Hajar wasn’t surprised when, about two years later, Forbidden Stories informed her that her number was on the leaked list they had tied to Pegasus. She believes that government surveillance played a key role in her charges, for which she ultimately spent a month and a half in jail and then left her home country in exile.
According to Forbidden Stories, Hajar was selected as a target by Pegasus in May 2019.
At the time, the charges against Hajar generated international outrage, earning condemnation from groups like Human Rights Watch, Front Line Defenders, and Amnesty. The wave of criticism helped Hajar avoid further jail time. Although a Rabat court sentenced her to one year in prison in September 2019, she was released the following month after receiving a royal pardon directly from King Mohammed VI.
But even after being freed, Hajar says she continued to be followed by unidentified people in the streets of the Moroccan capital. “I couldn’t go anywhere anymore,” she told The Intercept. “Police agents in civilian clothes were constantly around me.”
Ultimately “fed up with all the harassment and targeting,” Hajar opted to leave the country in early 2020, settling in Sudan with her husband.
Information War and Defamation
Like Turkey, Egypt, and other authoritarian-leaning states across the Middle East and North Africa, Morocco’s government likes to keep a tight control on the flow of information. While no state-run media giant dominates the field, the country’s media landscape is marked by a bevy of nominally privately run outlets that regularly defend the actions of King Mohammed VI and attack those who take on the official state line — often by citing anonymous sources without corroboration and digging into the personal lives of subjects. In some cases, these outlets publish extremely specific information that many believe can only be culled from state intelligence.
These publishers, which activists commonly refer to as the “defamation press,” include the websites Cawalisse al-Youm and Barlamane. The latter, for instance, released an infamous video of Zefzafi, the leader of the Hirak El-Rif protest movement, in prison in 2017. In the images, the Rif movement leader undresses and exposes various parts of his body — a scene presumably meant to show that he hadn’t been tortured but also widely interpreted as an attempt to embarrass the activist. Similar outlets include Le360, Aldar, Telexpresse, and Anfas Press, but an indisputable leader in the genre is Chouf TV.
Soulaimane Raissouni, the former editor of Akhbar al-Yaoum, a now-defunct print daily launched in 2009 and known for its independent editorial line, has been in jail since May 2020. Five days before he was detained, Chouf TV published a story written by “Abu Wael” — a pseudonym often used to indicate proximity to intelligence officials — suggesting that he would soon be facing problems.
“The gates of hell had opened” on Soulaimane, the outlet claimed, adding that “[his] scorched earth policy would burn him” on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr holiday. Soulaimane, Hajar’s uncle, was arrested in front of his home that night, surrounded by a gaggle of journalists from Chouf TV. The outlet streamed the proceedings on its YouTube channel of over 6 million subscribers.
“About 20 days before Soulaimane was arrested, a secret security car would not leave the door of the house. They would follow us wherever we went,” Soulaimane’s wife, Kholoud Mokhtari, told The Intercept. “Some of Soulaimane’s calls were published word by word in newspapers close to the security services — conversations relating to the status of Akhbar al-Youm as well as some family and very private matters.”
Detained just two months after Soulaimane, Omar Radi was also a frequent subject of attacks in pro-government media — and Chouf TV in particular.
According to legal filings obtained by The Intercept, the prosecutor’s office appeared to rely on Chouf TV to build its case against Radi, a journalist known for his coverage of social movements. On June 23, 2020, the office sent a letter to the head of the National Judicial Police Division asking it to “carry out preliminary research to find out the truth of what was mentioned in two articles published” by Chouf TV. The first alleged that Radi was working with Western intelligence; the second detailed the “scandals” of Omar Radi” and accused the writer of selling information about Moroccans abroad.
As Radi’s case dragged on, a key witness named Imad Stitou declined to cooperate with the state. In September 2020, the prosecution converted Stitou into an alleged co-conspirator. He was convicted of “failing to report a crime” and sentenced to a year in prison.
“I was not the character they wanted in their novel, and it was necessary to make an example out of me,” Stitou, now released pending appeal, told The Intercept. “This plan largely succeeded in intimidating other sympathizers. I often heard in my circles, ’Do you want to be the Imad Stitou?’”
Weaponizing #MeToo
Soulaimaine and Radi help illustrate another disturbing pattern that has emerged in Morocco in recent years: They’re part of a trio of high-profile journalists known for criticizing state authorities, each of whom have been sent to prison over allegations of sexual assault. Their respective legal proceedings have all been criticized by leading human rights NGOs over irregularities. Reporters Without Borders, which ranks Morocco 136th out of 180 countries on its Press Freedom Index, has denounced what it calls “the use of trumped-up sex charges against journalists.”
The string of cases began with Taoufik Bouachrine, the founder and director of Akhbar al-Yaoum. In February 2018, Bouachrine was arrested at his newspaper’s headquarters in Casablanca. Charged with rape, human trafficking, and “abuse of power for sexual purposes,” the journalist was ultimately sentenced to 15 years in prison in October 2019. Both the conditions of Bouachrine’s detention and the trial itself earned condemnation from Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, while a report from the United Nations Human Rights Council’s working group on arbitrary detention documented how multiple alleged victims sought to distance themselves from the case.
That group includes Afaf Bernani, a former reporter at Akhbar al-Yaoum who maintains that the police forged her statements. First interrogated as a witness to an alleged sexual assault by Bouachrine, she was ultimately classified as a victim of her former boss. After contesting this narrative in court, Bernani was charged with a crime herself — “false communication and slander” — and sentenced to six months in prison.
“The purpose of my sentence was to intimidate the rest of the women who were involved in the lawsuit,” Bernani told The Intercept.
Shortly after the state leveled charges against her, Bernani said, authorities ramped up the pressure by spying her. “I was subjected to close security surveillance in the street, where the secret police were stationed in front of my house and followed me wherever I went,” she said. “I was even followed during my visits to the doctor.”
Ultimately, she opted to leave the country rather than serve prison time, moving in July 2019 to Tunisia, where she remains today.
In the meantime, Soulaimane, the man who replaced Bouachrine at the helm of Akhbar al-Yaoum, was himself detained and charged with sexual assault last May. Despite outcry from NGOs and a hunger strike that lasted nearly 120 days, Soulaimane was sentenced to five years in prison this July.
Radi, for his part, was detained last year and charged with rape and espionage before finally being sentenced to six years in prison in July.
Khadija Ryadi, former president of the Moroccan Association of Human Rights, says the cases are far from victories for women’s rights or the feminist cause in the country.
“The Moroccan regime fabricates criminal cases against independent journalists related to noble causes like fighting violence against women with the aim of discrediting the targets and limiting their influence in society,” she told The Intercept. “Fortunately, the majority of people now know that they are fabricated cases aimed at silencing and alienating journalists who are annoying to the authorities.”
Samir Bouaziz, head of the advocacy department for the North Africa desk of Reporters Without Borders, agrees. He said the Moroccan regime is adjusting its tactics in the hopes of better masking its repression. “The authorities have invested in #MeToo as a means of confusing national and international public opinion,” he said.
Bouaziz sees a pattern when it comes to what he views as the state’s repression of Bouachrine, Soulaimane, and Radi — each of whom were also on the list Forbidden Stories revealed of possible Pegasus targets.
“Preparations for the arrest of the targeted journalists are carried out in coordination with the defamation press close to the security services, which launch campaigns against targets before the arrests,” Bouaziz said. “This is the best and most efficient prelude to fabricating charges.”
In any case, the long list of court cases hangs over those willing to speak out about the makhzen — and those considering it — fueling a sense that surveillance is omnipresent and that legal troubles are never far away.
Despite the wave of repression, Maati Monjib, of Freedom Now, tries to remain hopeful. A public supporter of Radi, Soulaimane, and other imprisoned journalists, Monjib notes that “defamation based on surveillance seems to be more discouraging for the bulk of activists than physical repression.”
Monjib himself has experienced countless attacks in the Moroccan press. Last year, he was accused of money laundering by pro-government media, and Chouf TV published a photo of him at a Paris airport, suggesting that he was fleeing the country.
Facing charges of “threatening state security” since 2015, Monjib has been entangled in a seemingly never-ending case that has seen him serve a stint in prison and launch two hunger strikes. The 59-year-old returned to court last month, but he told The Intercept he draws inspiration from the fact that other writers and dissidents continue to plow along.
“Courageous intellectuals and journalists are defying defamation and imprisonment,” Monjib said. “They’re continuing their work for democracy and liberty by exposing the corruption of the state elite and their violations of human rights.”
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Protestors march in Dusseldorf, Germany, during the September 2021 Climate Strike. (photo: Lukas Schulze/Getty)
Leaked Documents: Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Argentina and Australia Working to Water Down Key Climate Report
Justin Rowlatt and Tom Gerken, BBC News
Excerpt: "The leak reveals Saudi Arabia, Japan and Australia are among countries asking the UN to play down the need to move rapidly away from fossil fuels."
A huge leak of documents seen by BBC News shows how countries are trying to change a crucial scientific report on how to tackle climate change.
The leak reveals Saudi Arabia, Japan and Australia are among countries asking the UN to play down the need to move rapidly away from fossil fuels.
It also shows some wealthy nations are questioning paying more to poorer states to move to greener technologies.
This "lobbying" raises questions for the COP26 climate summit in November.
The leak reveals countries pushing back on UN recommendations for action and comes just days before they will be asked at the summit to make significant commitments to slow down climate change and keep global warming to 1.5 degrees.
The leaked documents consist of more than 32,000 submissions made by governments, companies and other interested parties to the team of scientists compiling a UN report designed to bring together the best scientific evidence on how to tackle climate change.
These "assessment reports" are produced every six to seven years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body tasked with evaluating the science of climate change.
These reports are used by governments to decide what action is needed to tackle climate change, and the latest will be a crucial input to negotiations at the Glasgow conference.
The authority of these reports derives in part from the fact that virtually all the governments of the world participate in the process to reach consensus.
The comments from governments the BBC has read are overwhelmingly designed to be constructive and to improve the quality of the final report.
The cache of comments and the latest draft of the report were released to Greenpeace UK's team of investigative journalists, Unearthed, which passed it on to BBC News.
Fossil fuels
The leak shows a number of countries and organisations arguing that the world does not need to reduce the use of fossil fuels as quickly as the current draft of the report recommends.
An adviser to the Saudi oil ministry demands "phrases like 'the need for urgent and accelerated mitigation actions at all scales…' should be eliminated from the report".
One senior Australian government official rejects the conclusion that closing coal-fired power plants is necessary, even though ending the use of coal is one of the stated objectives the COP26 conference.
Saudi Arabia is the one of the largest oil producers in the world and Australia is a major coal exporter.
A senior scientist from India's Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research, which has strong links to the Indian government, warns coal is likely to remain the mainstay of energy production for decades because of what they describe as the "tremendous challenges" of providing affordable electricity. India is already the world's second biggest consumer of coal.
A number of countries argue in favour of emerging and currently expensive technologies designed to capture and permanently store carbon dioxide underground. Saudi Arabia, China, Australia and Japan - all big producers or users of fossil fuels - as well as the organisation of oil producing nations, Opec, all support carbon capture and storage (CCS).
It is claimed these CCS technologies could dramatically cut fossil fuel emissions from power plants and some industrial sectors.
Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, requests the UN scientists delete their conclusion that "the focus of decarbonisation efforts in the energy systems sector needs to be on rapidly shifting to zero-carbon sources and actively phasing out fossil fuels".
Argentina, Norway and Opec also take issue with the statement. Norway argues the UN scientists should allow the possibility of CCS as a potential tool for reducing emissions from fossil fuels.
The draft report accepts CCS could play a role in the future but says there are uncertainties about its feasibility. It says "there is large ambiguity in the extent to which fossil fuels with CCS would be compatible with the 2C and 1.5C targets" as set out by the Paris Agreement.
Australia asks IPCC scientists to delete a reference to analysis of the role played by fossil fuel lobbyists in watering down action on climate in Australia and the US. Opec also asks the IPCC to "delete 'lobby activism, protecting rent extracting business models, prevent political action'."
When approached about its comments to the draft report, Opec told the BBC: "The challenge of tackling emissions has many paths, as evidenced by the IPCC report, and we need to explore them all. We need to utilise all available energies, as well as clean and more efficient technological solutions to help reduce emissions, ensuring no one is left behind."
The IPCC says comments from governments are central to its scientific review process and that its authors have no obligation to incorporate them into the reports.
"Our processes are designed to guard against lobbying - from all quarters", the IPCC told the BBC. "The review process is (and always has been) absolutely fundamental to the IPCC's work and is a major source of the strength and credibility of our reports.
Professor Corinne le Quéré of the University of East Anglia, a leading climate scientist who has helped compile three major reports for the IPCC, has no doubts about the impartiality of the IPCC's reports.
She says all comments are judged solely on scientific evidence regardless of where they come from.
"There is absolutely no pressure on scientists to accept the comments," she told the BBC. "If the comments are lobbying, if they're not justified by the science, they will not be integrated in the IPCC reports."
She says it is important that experts of all kinds - including governments - have a chance to review the science.
"The more the reports are scrutinised", says Professor le Quéré, "the more solid the evidence is going to be in the end, because the more the arguments are brought and articulated forward in a way that is leaning on the best available science".
Christiana Figueres, the Costa Rican diplomat who oversaw the landmark UN climate conference in Paris in 2015, agrees it is crucial that governments are part of the IPCC process.
"Everybody's voice has to be there. That's the whole purpose. This is not a single thread. This is a tapestry woven by many, many threads."
The United Nations was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2007 for the IPCC's work on climate science and the crucial role it has played in the effort to tackle climate change.
Eating less meat
Brazil and Argentina, two of the biggest producers of beef products and animal feed crops in the world, argue strongly against evidence in the draft report that reducing meat consumption is necessary to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The draft report states "plant-based diets can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 50% compared to the average emission intensive Western diet". Brazil says this is incorrect.
Both countries call on the authors to delete or change some passages in the text referring to "plant-based diets" playing a role in tackling climate change, or which describe beef as a "high carbon" food. Argentina also asked that references to taxes on red meat and to the international "Meatless Monday" campaign, which urges people to forgo meat for a day, be removed from the report.
The South American nation recommends "avoiding generalisation on the impacts of meat-based diets on low-carbon options", arguing there is evidence that meat-based diets can also reduce carbon emissions.
On the same theme, Brazil says "plant-based diets do not for themselves guarantee the reduction or control of related emissions" and maintains the focus of debate should be on the levels of emissions from different production systems, rather than types of food.
Brazil, which has seen significant increases in the rate of deforestation in the Amazon and some other forest areas, also disputes a reference to this being a result of changes in government regulations, claiming this is incorrect.
Money for poorer countries
A significant number of Switzerland's comments are directed at amending parts of the report that argue developing countries will need support, particularly financial support, from rich countries in order to meet emission reduction targets.
It was agreed at the climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009 that developed nations would provide $100bn a year in climate finance for developing countries by 2020, a target that has yet to be met.
Australia makes a similar case to Switzerland. It says developing countries' climate pledges do not all depend on receiving outside financial support. It also describes a mention in the draft report of the lack of credible public commitments on finance as "subjective commentary".
The Swiss Federal Office for the Environment told the BBC: "While climate finance is a critical tool to increase climate ambition, it is not the only relevant tool.
"Switzerland takes the view that all Parties to the Paris Agreement with the capacity to do so should provide support to those who need such support."
Going nuclear
A number of mostly eastern European countries argue the draft report should be more positive about the role nuclear power can play in meeting the UN's climate targets.
India goes even further, arguing "almost all the chapters contain a bias against nuclear energy". It argues it is an "established technology" with "good political backing except in a few countries".
The Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia criticise a table in the report which finds nuclear power only has a positive role in delivering one of 17 UN Sustainable Development goals. They argue it can play a positive role in delivering most of the UN's development agenda.
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