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Groton Daily Independent
Thursday, Feb. 22, 2018 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 223 ~ 41 of 52
Paul Donohoe, the Beirut-based media of cer for International Rescue Committee, said his group sup- ports ve medical facilities in eastern Ghouta that, because of the severity of the bombardment, were only able to treat the most urgent cases. He said more than 700 people, including some with chronic illnesses that need urgent medical evacuation, were trapped.
“People are terri ed. ... We need a cease- re immediately because of the horrible, horrendous number of people who have died so far,” he said.
Rebels in eastern Ghouta retaliated by sending mortar shells crashing Wednesday into Damascus, seat of President Bashar Assad’s power.
The Russian military is again supporting Assad’s forces as it did in the all-out assault on the rebel-held half of Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, in late 2016, which drove the rebels from their enclave there. Tens of thousands of civilians were forced to ee their homes, and many have been unable to return. Hundreds more were killed in indiscriminate shelling and bombardment. A subsequent U.N. investigation charged that the campaign amounted to forced displacement of a population and rose to the level of a war crime.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier this week that the assault on Aleppo could serve as a model for the military campaign in eastern Ghouta, which he said was necessary to uproot al-Qaida- linked militants from the area.
On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, rejected allegations from the U.S. and others that the Russian military shares responsibility, along with Assad’s forces, for civilian casualties in eastern Ghouta, calling such claims “unfounded.”
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Associated Press writers Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow and Bassam Hatoum in Beirut contributed to this report.
Much-touted MS-13 sweep keeps even most basic details secret By TOM HAYS and COLLEEN LONG, Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — It was a tally so impressive that President Donald Trump touted it at his State of the Union address: Since May, agents cracking down on the violent gangs terrorizing the working-class suburbs of Long Island had swept up 428 gang suspects, including 220 members of the notorious MS-13.
But the sweep, Operation Matador, also has been shrouded in secrecy. Federal and state authorities have declined repeated requests from The Associated Press for even basic information made public in most law enforcement operations, such as the names of those arrested and the crimes they are accused of committing.
They won’t divulge their ages, immigration statuses or current whereabouts. And while they say 44 of those arrested have been deported, they refuse to say what happened to the rest, including whether they are even still in custody. They say releasing more details could endanger the suspects and jeopardize ongoing investigations.
The lack of transparency comes amid accusations by immigration rights groups that the government is using unsubstantiated rumors of gang af liations to detain innocent people. Federal immigration judges have already ordered the release of some detainees arrested on suspicion of being MS-13 members when the government couldn’t produce any evidence of gang activity.
Some parents and activists say some of those included in the tally are innocent teenagers who came to the U.S. as unaccompanied minors, spending weeks locked in maximum-security detention centers based on imsy and false allegations of gang activity. Civil liberties lawyers say that in some cases their alleged “activity” was wearing a black T-shirt or making a hand gesture.
“They said we have a warrant for your arrest and we don’t have to explain anything to you now. We will tell you when you come with us,” one teenager, who asked not to be named because she is afraid of being deported, told the AP in Spanish. “Later, they told me I had been associated with gangs.”
The teenager said she was not a member of MS-13. She said she knew of people in MS-13, as do most people at Brentwood High School, a large school 45 miles east of New York City. Maybe she’s talked with