Convicted rapist who was deported from US in 2017 is arrested at Washington’s Dulles International Airport after catching Ethiopian Airlines evacuation flight out of Kabul.
Ghader Heydari, 47, boarded evacuee flight but was flagged by border officials. How he got on flight unclear because it’s ‘unlikely’ he had Special Immigrant Visa.
Man whose name matches pleaded guilty to rape in Ada County, Idaho, in 2010 A convicted rapist who was deported from the US in 2017 has been arrested at Washington’s Dulles International Airport after catching Ethiopian Airlines evacuation flight out of Kabul.
Ghader Heydari, 47, boarded a flight for evacuees but was flagged by border officials upon arrival into Washington.
He was being held at the Caroline Detention Facility in Bowling Green, Virginia, according to DailyWire, after his criminal and immigration history was pointed that.
He was released in December 2015, according to state records, and was deported from the country in 2017.
When Heydari arrived in the US on the evacuation flight, officials tried to persuade him to cancel his request to enter but he appears to have refused.
The U.S. evacuated 13,400 people from Kabul last Thursday, taking the evacuees to bases in Qatar, Bahrain or Germany before they return to the states.
They flew 5,100 people out of Kabul on US military planes. Another 8,300 were saved by coalition flights. The total – 13,400 – was drastically less than the 19,000 rescued the previous day.
Senator Ted Cruz responded to the situation on Twitter, “Biden’s evacuation from Afghanistan has been chaos. He’s bringing TENS OF THOUSANDS of people into America without thorough vetting. We have a moral obligation to get Afghans who fought with us out of harm’s way. But all unvetted evacuees should be housed in safe 3rd countries.”
(27 Jun 1994) As the Tutsi-dominated rebel Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) intensified its drive to take control of Kigali on Monday (27/6), the Hutu-dominated government army was training more men to combat
💭 In Ethiopia, the National Flag (Red + Gold + Green) – which was first introduced by Emperor Yohannes IV (1872-1889) has been repeatedly changed / desecrated since Emperor Menelik II’s Reign (1889-1913)
👉 The Flag of Emperor Yohannes IV proudly displayed by priests at Hiruy Giyorgis Church near Dabra Tabor, Gondar.
💭 Around the World in Things You Can’t Do to Flags
A SYMBOL USED TO REPRESENT something powerful or influential—a person, a sports team, a religion—also makes itself vulnerable to destruction. It isn’t easy to, say, destroy a country, but you can destroy a symbol of that country fairly easily, and there’s no symbol more identified with a nation, and thus more commonly destroyed in protest, than a national flag.
In the United States, the Supreme Court has been clear and consistent in the opinion that the desecration of the Stars and Stripes is an American right, enshrined in the First Amendment. To change this, as has been continually proposed, would be extremely difficult, requiring—from a viciously divided Congress—a two-thirds vote on a constitutional amendment, followed by ratification by at least 38 fractious states. In short, it’s not likely.
How countries treat the destruction of their national symbols varies around the world. That the United States has such strong protections for flag burning makes it rather unusual. Most other nations, including many generally perceived as progressive and permissive, have some kind of flag-desecration laws on their books. These laws are, often, a fascinating blend of the seemingly arbitrary and the desire to suppress legitimate protest.
The concept of a national flag, or even a nation in general, is not particularly old. Nations as we think of them didn’t really exist until the 17th and 18th centuries; prior to that, there were territories, kingdoms, empires, and various other polities and geographic entities, but no universally recognized concept of nationhood, with specific borders and governments and rules for communication with each other. Flags themselves are very old, of course, but until the Age of Sail they were mostly used for communication, or to identify more localized groups, such as a specific family line or military unit. As national symbols, they didn’t begin to emerge until the mid-1800s, and it was a while longer before they became a seeming requisite for statehood.
Because flags are fairly recent developments, the concept of flag burning, or flag desecration of any sort, is a fairly recent idea as well. Effigies were a much more common form of big-concept protest prior to the modern era. In the United Kingdom, it has been a tradition to burn an effigy of the Pope, or of failed Catholic plotter Guy Fawkes, for hundreds of years. Leaders embodied the state, so in the absence of other symbols of a legal territory, people burned representations of specific people.
Flags have several advantages over effigies. They’re cheaper and easier to acquire than a reasonable likeness of a human—and fairly flammable, depending on material. Flag burning really became a go-to tactic in the United States in the 1960s, during the Vietnam War, but around the world, burning a flag has long been a simple, effective means of protesting a federal government.
Governments have some stake in this, as flag burning is most obviously a form of protest against them, often conducted by persecuted minority groups as a means to raise awareness (or by irate people in another nation). Governments don’t generally want negative publicity, or people angrily pointing out their shortcomings. In that sense, banning the action is not so different from actively breaking up a protest march with tear gas or worse. “If it’s a crime to burn the flag because it’s the flag, the only reason the government is doing that is because it disagrees with the message the protester is trying to convey,” says Brian Hauss, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union who focuses on free speech issues.
There are other reasons for these laws as well. Denmark, for example, bans the burning of any flag, with one exception: the Danish flag itself. According to Danish law, burning the flag of a foreign nation is a provocation that can hurt Denmark’s status in the world community. Burning the Danish flag, though? Fire it up; some even say that burning is the accepted way to dispose of a Danish flag in Denmark, though that doesn’t specifically appear in the law.
Australia is one of the few nations, along with the United States, Canada, and Belgium, to explicitly allow flag burning. As in the United States, this hasn’t stopped legislators there from attempting to ban the protest act, or at least provide the political appearance of attempting to ban it. During the violent 2005 race riots known as the Cronulla riots, a Lebanese-Australian teenager burned an Australian flag. He was charged and prosecuted, too; not for burning a flag, but for stealing and destroying personal property. This use of other laws to prosecute acts of flag burning is a common practice: Charges may include disturbing the peace, theft, destruction of property, arson, and other crimes, in lieu of symbolic desecration.
China, on the other hand, is going hard in the other direction. In 2017, the nation passed an amendment that dramatically increases the penalties and the scope of its symbol-desecration laws. Offenders can be hit with jail terms of up to three years for acts such as mocking the national anthem by singing it in a sarcastic voice. Burning, defacing, or stomping on the national flag is covered, too.
A lot of the countries that have such laws on the books don’t usually bother with the enforcement side. France, on the other hand, actually prosecutes. In 2010, an Algerian man, furious with the extremely bad customer service he was receiving at a local government office, grabbed a Tricolore and snapped its wooden pole in half. He was forcibly restrained and fined—not for destruction of property, but for “insulting” the flag.
“Insult” is a broad brush. India prefers bonkers specificity, with laws so granular that they cover much more than actual desecration. The country legislates which side of a room a flag must be installed in, what kind of material is allowed, who can mount a flag on a vehicle (only government or military personnel, and only some of them), the order in which the Indian flag must be placed when displayed with other national flags, and the specific weight of one square foot of flag material. Violate any of these and you’re already afoul of the flag laws. Sometimes it doesn’t even take a flag at all; in 2007, a petition was filed against cricketer and national hero Sachin Tendulkar for cutting a cake that had the flag on it.
Israel is another country with an aggressive stance toward symbolic protest involving flags. The government, in 2016, dramatically raised the financial penalty for conviction. Inflation and not one but two separate new currencies make it hard to track just how much it went up, but the new penalty is a maximum fine of over $16,000 and up to three years in prison. Last year, a Palestinian protestor stomped up and down on an Israeli flag as part of a protest against the Israeli army shooting people through the Gaza fence. He is not nearly the only one to be prosecuted for flag desecration in Israel.
Those fines will hurt, but sometimes such forms of punishment are as symbolic as a flag itself. In Mexico, flag desecration is illegal, but not often prosecuted. A notable exception came in 2008, when, after a very long legal battle, famed poet Sergio Witz was found guilty of desecrating the Mexican flag—in verse. In 2002, he published “La patria entre mierda,” or “The Motherland Among the Shit.” “I clean my ass with the flag,” he wrote, along with “I dry my urine on the flag of my country,” and a couple of lines about how the flag produces nothing but nationalist vomit. Witz has later conceded that the poem is not his best work.
In any case, in 2008, a judge gave Witz a symbolic fine of 50 pesos—about $2.50—as a “warning” to those who abuse freedom of speech, according to an article in El Universal. Witz has said the fine is ridiculous, and he refuses to pay it.
For a long time, the United States was all of these places and none. Before 1989, a whopping 48 of 50 states had some type of flag-burning law on the books. But a case called Texas v. Johnson, in which a young protester was tried for burning the American flag during the 1984 Republican National Convention, settled things. In a 5–4 decision in 1989, the Supreme Court declared flag burning to be protected political speech under the First Amendment, immediately invalidating those 48 state laws.
It’s not difficult to see a pattern connecting some of the countries that are serious about their flag-desecration laws—they have governments noted for active, even aggressive, responses to dissent and protest. Take note, in case the United States ever does pass a constitutional amendment to ban flag burning
A year later, 29 August 2014, Ahmet resigned as Foreign Minister and became Prime Minster of Turkey.
Djibrill Bassole, the foreign minister of the Colorado-sized West African nation of Burkina Faso, has joined the inauspicious ranks of people to faint on live television.
Bassole was holding a joint press conference in the Turkish capital of Ankara with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu when, in the middle of a question from a reporter, it became clear that something was wrong. He grips the platform, grimaces and begins to sway slightly. Bassole, obviously concerned, leans over to Davutoglu and says something.
The Turkish foreign minister looks immediately alarmed but, perhaps wary of embarrassing his official guest, extends an arm without actually grabbing Bassole. Then there’s a whooshing sound in the audio as Bassole, collapsing, brushes against his microphone and takes the podium down with him.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on August 28, 2021
💭 Ethiopia Conflict Leaves Diaspora in US Fearing for Families
As chaos envelops Kabul after Afghanistan’s government collapsed and the Taliban seized control, horrific stories and heartbreaking images also pour out of Ethiopia. Some in the U.S. with a connection to the African country are feeling a call to action.
In Washington, D.C., home to the largest concentration of Ethiopians in the U.S. and the largest Ethiopian population outside Africa, there’s an intense debate over the war and who’s at fault.
“Tigray is part of Ethiopia. Tigrayans are Ethiopians until they decide otherwise. So any war, any suffering in Ethiopia, should be a pain to everybody,” Assefa Fisseha, a man who fled the country 20 years to begin a new life in America, told ABC News.
In Fisseha’s homeland, within the northern region of Tigray, millions are caught in the middle of civil war between Tigrayan defense forces and the Ethiopian government.
Each side has been accused of atrocities throughout the conflict, with systemic rape and starvation used as weapons of war, according to the United Nations, senior U.S. officials and monitoring groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Roads, bridges, hospitals and farms have been destroyed, exacerbating the humanitarian catastrophe, according to aid groups.
But information can be hard to come by. Internet outages by the Ethiopian government have disconnected families inside and outside the country for days, weeks or even months at a time, according to Internet monitor NetBlocks.
With over 110 million people, Ethiopia is the second-most populous country in Africa. The conflict has left thousands dead and displaced roughly two million people in Tigray, according to the United Nations refugee agency.
“On the ground, what I’m really seeing is just hungry people there, people are extremely paranoid and protective,” Leoh Hailu-Ghermy, who made a two-day trek to the region to deliver supplies and aid to refugees, told ABC News.
Hailu-Ghermy is one of the voices in the movement to end the war many activists call a modern-day genocide.
Earlier this month, more apparent victims of the atrocities in the brutal, 10-monthlong civil war washed up on a riverbank in neighboring Sudan. Fifty bodies were believed to be Tigrayans from a nearby village, according to The Associated Press.
There have been reports of massacres, ethnic cleansing and widespread sexual assault by Ethiopian government troops, according to Amnesty International.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the U.S. has seen “acts of ethnic cleansing,” but stopped short of calling the atrocities genocide — a specific legal term in international law. The Ethiopian government has fiercely denied such accusations.
“It’s really heartbreaking to see that people’s livelihoods can be stripped away from them in such an unfair way and that the world wouldn’t care because of the geography of that place or because of the race of those people,” Hailu-Ghermy said.
Just last week, the Biden administration called out the Ethiopian government for obstructing humanitarian aid, including convoys, saying aid workers will run out of food this week.
In May, President Joe Biden issued a lengthy statement, calling for a ceasefire, negotiations to halt the conflict and an end to human rights abuses, including the widespread sexual violence.
The Biden administration also tapped a special envoy for the region to push for a diplomatic solution — and fired a warning shot at the Ethiopian government, a critical U.S. partner, by imposing limited sanctions.
MORE: US restricting visas, aid over conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region
In May, the State Department said it imposed visa bans on officials from Ethiopia and neighboring Eritrea — whose military crossed the border to fight Tigrayan forces. Because visas are confidential by law, it did not say who was impacted but the U.S. Treasury slapped financial sanctions on Monday on General Filipos Woldeyohannes, the chief of staff of the Eritrean Defense Forces, accusing his forces of massacres, looting, rape, torture and extrajudicial killings of civilians.
Hailu-Ghermy and other advocates say they are looking for more action.
Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed was once seen as a popular reformer when he came into power in 2018, even winning the Nobel Peace Prize for ending a decades-long war with neighboring Eritrea. His election unseated the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, which dominated Ethiopia politics prior to his administration, and tensions between his federal government and their regional leaders exploded into conflict last November.
“Now that the conflict has been ongoing for several months, it produces its own logic. And so every atrocity, every retaliation begets another retaliation and unfortunately, another atrocity,” Aly Verjee, a senior adviser to the Africa program at the U.S. Institute of Peace, told ABC News.
Tigrayans celebrated when Abiy declared a ceasefire in June, but now their forces are on the offensive and Abiy responded with a call for all capable citizens to take up arms and join the fight to show patriotism.
“Ethiopians at home and abroad, your motherland calls upon you. History has shown that there is no force that can stand in our way when we say no more,” he said in a statement.
Analysts fear the conflict will spiral further out of control, putting hundreds of thousands on the brink of famine and potentially spilling over borders to Ethiopia’s neighbors.
“Let’s not forget that the reason the majority of Ethiopian Americans are in the United States is because, at one time or another, there was conflict in Ethiopia. Let’s not see another generation of Ethiopians feel that they have to leave the country because of conflict,” Verjee said.
💭 Microwave Weapons That Could Cause Havana Syndrome Exist, Experts Say
Russia and possibly China have developed technology capable of injuring brain and a US company made a prototype in 2004
Portable microwave weapons capable of causing the mysterious spate of “Havana Syndrome” brain injuries in US diplomats and spies have been developed by several countries in recent years, according to leading American experts in the field.
A US company also made the prototype of such a weapon for the marine corps in 2004. The weapon, codenamed Medusa, was intended to be small enough to fit in a car, and cause a “temporarily incapacitating effect” but “with a low probability of fatality or permanent injury”.
There is no evidence that the research was taken beyond the prototype phase, and a report on that stage has been removed from a US navy website. Scientists with knowledge of the project said that ethical considerations preventing human experimentation contributed to the project being shelved – but they said such consideration had not hindered US adversaries, including Russia, and possibly China.
“The state of that science has for the most part been, if not abandoned, pretty much left fallow in the United States – but it has not been fallow elsewhere,” said James Giordano, professor of neurology and ethics at Georgetown University Medical Center.
Giordano, who is also senior fellow in biotechnology, biosecurity and ethics at the US Naval War College, was brought in as adviser by the government in late 2016 after about two dozen US diplomats began falling sick in Havana. He later took part in an assessment for US Special Forces Command on which countries were developing the technology and what they had achieved.
“It became clear that some of the work that was conducted in the former Soviet Union was taken up again by Russia and its satellite proxies,” Giordano said, adding that China had also developed directed energy devices to test the structure of various materials, with technology which could be adapted to weapons. A second major wave of brain injuries among US diplomats and intelligence officers took place in China in 2018.
Giordano is restricted from giving details on which country had developed what kind of device but he said the new weapons used microwave frequencies, able to disrupt brain function without any burning sensation.
“This was important – and rather frightening – to us, because it represented a state of advancement and sophistication of these types of instruments that heretofore had not been thought to be accomplished,” he said.
If a US adversary has succeeded in miniaturising the directed energy technology needed to inflict tissue damage from a distance, it makes such weapons a more plausible explanation for Havana Syndrome.
More than 130 US officials, from the state department, CIA and national security council (NSC), have suffered from symptoms, including dizziness, loss of balance, nausea and headaches, first identified in Cuba. The impact on some of the victims has been debilitating and long-lasting.
Some of the most recent incidents have involved NSC officials experiencing crippling symptoms in broad daylight in Washington. The state department, CIA and Pentagon have all launched investigations, but have yet to come to conclusions. A National Academy of Sciences report in December, found that the Havana Syndrome injuries were most likely caused by “directed pulsed radio frequency energy”.
Sceptics of the microwave weapon theory have pointed to decades of US efforts to build such a device during the cold war and since, without any confirmed success. They have also argued that a weapon capable of inflicting brain injury from a distance would be too unwieldy to use in urban areas.
However, James Lin, the leading US authority on the biological impact of microwave energy, said a large apparatus would not be needed to focus energy on a small area, heating it a minute amount and causing “a thermoelastic pressure wave” that travels through the brain, causing damage to soft tissue.
The pressure wave would initially be experienced by the target as sound. Many of the US diplomats, spies, soldiers and officials whose symptoms are being studied as part of the Havana Syndrome investigation reported hearing strange sounds at the onset of the attacks.
“You can certainly put together a system in a couple of big suitcases that will allow you to put it in a van or an SUV,” Lin, professor emeritus in the electrical and computer engineering department at the University of Illinois, said. “It’s not something that you need to have enormous amounts of space or equipment to do it.”
