GENEVA: A United Nations humanitarian task force has been unable to make deliveries to desperate Syrians for the past two months as President Bashar Assad’s government has witheld approval for aid convoys, the UN humanitarian adviser said on Thursday.
Before they can move into besieged areas or across front lines, the convoys require letters from the government and security guarantees from armed groups.
“It’s an all-time low in giving us the facilitation letters,” adviser Jan Egeland told reporters after meeting senior diplomats in Geneva.
Insurgents fighting Assad’s forces were also creating obstacles, contributing to the worst situation since 2015, he said.
Egeland called on Russia, Turkey and Iran to de-escalate the fighting in Idlib governorate, which he said was “screaming for a cease-fire.”
“When we need their ability to influence the parties the most, in this bleak hour for humanitarian work, humanitarian diplomacy seems to be totally impotent. We’re getting nowhere at the moment.”
This week Russia convened a Syrian peace congress in Sochi. Egeland said it had so far not resulted in any progress but he hoped that it would.
Air strikes hit two crowded markets in Idlib this week, killing at least 31 people, and have deprived hundreds of thousands of health care.
“I told the members of the humanitarian task force, we cannot have conventional warfare in what is essentially a refugee camp,” Egeland said.
Further north, a Turkish offensive in Afrin district has displaced about 15,000 people, Egeland said, adding: “There are also reports...that local authorities have made it hard for people to flee from the Afrin area.”
And outside Damascus, the rebel-held enclave of Eastern Ghouta, where almost 400,000 people are under siege and about 750 need urgent medical evacuation, desperately needs a pause in the fighting, he said.
“We have indications from both sides that they want it, but it hasn’t happened. And it’s both sides that have to help us here. There are air raids, fighting from the government side, but there is a barrage of mortars and grenades going from this area going into civilian neighborhoods in Damascus.”
He also said 112 people had been killed by explosions in the town of Raqqa since it was recaptured from Daesh fighters in October because people had been allowed back to their homes before the town had been cleared of bombs.
UN calls on Russia, Iran and Turkey to break Syria aid deadlock
UN calls on Russia, Iran and Turkey to break Syria aid deadlock
Lebanese artists struggle to keep creativity alive in a nation at war
- Artists use their work as an outlet for the frustration and despair they feel
BEIRUT: As Israel presses a deadly offensive against armed group Hezbollah in his home country, Lebanese artist Charbel Samuel Aoun wrestles with the role of art in a country engulfed in conflict.
“Does art still have a place in such a crisis?” said Aoun, a 45-year-old mixed media painter and sculptor.
Lebanon has historically played a central role in the Arab world’s artistic scene, serving as a vibrant hub for visual arts, music and theater, blending traditional and contemporary influences.
Now, Lebanese artists are using their work as an outlet for the frustration and despair they feel after a year-long Israeli offensive that has killed more than 3,200 people, the vast majority of them since September.
Aoun’s pieces are a direct reflection of Lebanon’s back-to- back crises. In 2013, he began gathering dust from Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon to create a series of layered paintings, before moving on to explore other mediums.
Now, he says the darkness and hopelessness of the war — and the debris left behind by Israel’s intense bombing campaign across Lebanon’s south, east and Beirut’s southern suburbs — has revived his desire to work with dust.
“You either stop everything or keep going with the little that still has meaning,” he said.
Two of his exhibitions have been canceled due to the war. While he once lived on the income from his art, he now also relies on selling honey from his beehives, which he first set up as a project to create art from beeswax.
“I can no longer rely on the art market,” he said.
Galleries across Beirut have shut down in recent months, with owners saying there was no demand to buy art at this time. Lebanon’s famed modern art museum, the Sursock Museum, has moved its collections to underground storage.
Lebanese singer and musician Joy Fayad has grappled with the emotional toll of the conflict — which made it difficult for her to perform for months.
“It limited my creativity, it was like I shut down. I couldn’t give to others, nor to myself,” Fayad, 36, said.
Instead, she threw her energy into songwriting. One line in a new song reads: “You are from the downtrodden people, whose word has been silenced, and by their weapons, you are paying the price with your blood.”
She recently began performing again, singing for displaced and refugee children in Lebanon at a charity event north of Beirut.
“They’re changing the atmosphere, having fun after such a difficult period,” she said, especially for those who became accustomed to the sound of bombs instead of beats.
How Israeli far-right violations of East Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa compound are growing in scope and severity
- Jews and other non-Muslims may visit Al-Aqsa but must not pray there or display religious symbols
- In recent years, the restrictions have been increasingly flouted by hardline religious nationalists, prompting violence
LONDON: As feared, they came in their thousands, swarming into the Al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem at the height of the week-long Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot.
On Sunday, Oct. 20, while the world’s attention was focused on the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, more than a thousand Israeli settlers occupied the Al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem. Over the next two days, thousands more followed.
Inside, protected by police who prevented Muslims from entering, they performed Jewish religious rituals in defiance of the longstanding status quo at the Haram Al-Sharif, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.
The forced entries over three days, the latest in a series of provocative acts orchestrated by far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, came as no surprise to Ir Amim, an Israeli human rights organization that works “to render Jerusalem a more equitable and sustainable city for the Israelis and Palestinians who share it.”
On the eve of the Jewish High Holiday season, Ir Amim (“City of Nations” in Hebrew) issued a report revealing that 2024 was already “a record year in terms of the scope and severity of Israel’s violations of the status quo on the Mount.”
It warned that the situation “is particularly dangerous given that undermining the status quo on the Haram Al-Sharif/Temple Mount is liable to escalate into another front of violence” and added that the Israeli government’s “distorted priorities regarding the management of the war in Gaza and the north are also reflected in its conduct on the Haram Al-Sharif/Temple Mount.”
FASTFACTS
• Jews, other non-Muslims may visit Al-Aqsa compound in East Jerusalem, but may not pray there or display religious symbols.
• In recent years, the restrictions have been increasingly flouted by hardline religious nationalists, prompting violent reactions.
In January 2023, nine months before the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Ben Gvir staged one of his controversial visits to the site, ignoring warnings from other Israeli politicians that he risked provoking violence and saying that he would not “surrender to the threats of Hamas.”
According to Hamas, it was repeated provocations such as those orchestrated by Ben Gvir that led to the Oct. 7 attack, which it codenamed “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.” About 1,200 Israelis were killed and some 250 others kidnapped during the coordinated attack by Palestinian militant groups. The subsequent Israeli military retaliation has, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, left nearly 42,000 Palestinians dead and more than 92,000 injured.
Resolving the thorny status of Jerusalem is viewed as an important prerequisite to peace. On Monday, Arab and Muslim leaders concluded a landmark summit in Riyadh with a unified demand for Israel to withdraw from all occupied Palestinian territories.
The summit’s closing statement stressed that East Jerusalem is the “eternal capital of Palestine,” and rejected any Israeli decisions aimed at “Judaizing” it, considering such measures “null, void and illegitimate under international law.”
The leaders of 57 nations said they considered “Al-Quds Al-Sharif a red line for the Arab and Islamic nations,” and reaffirmed their “absolute solidarity in protecting the Arab and Islamic identity of occupied East Al-Quds and in defending the sanctity of the holy Islamic and Christian sites therein.”
For Muslims, the mosque compound is the third-holiest site in Islam. As the Temple Mount, it also holds great significance for Jews, who believe it was the site of both the First Temple, destroyed by Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar II in 587 B.C., and the Second Temple, built in the first century B.C. and destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70.
For decades, a delicate status quo has preserved the balance of interests at the site, which has been a waqf — an Islamic religious endowment — since the 12th century. Since 1948, the site has been managed by the Jordanian-appointed Jerusalem Islamic Waqf and Al-Aqsa Mosque Affairs Council, known simply as the Waqf.
By international agreement, the Waqf has retained responsibility for the site ever since, although since the occupation of the Old City of Jerusalem by Israel after the Six Day War in 1967, Israeli forces have controlled access to it.
The compound has always been open for Jews to visit during specified hours, but they are not allowed to pray there or display religious symbols.
Ironically, said Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer and founder of nongovernmental organization Terrestrial Jerusalem, it was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who “best defined this core understanding in 2015 when he said: ‘Muslims pray at the Temple Mount; non-Muslims visit the Temple Mount’.”
Seidemann added: “Until 2017, Netanyahu reasonably maintained the status quo. But since then, he has incrementally allowed Jewish prayer, while disingenuously asserting that Israel is committed to maintaining the status quo.
“That was, and is, a lie.”
The UN Security Council has repeatedly had cause to rebuke Israel for undermining the status quo, and last month the Waqf issued a joint statement with the Supreme Islamic Authority and the Palestinian Fatwa House accusing Israel of an “extremely dangerous escalation” by allowing settlers free rein in the compound.
In the past, said Seidemann, “many hundreds of Israelis, many Jewish, visited the mosques daily without incident. They came as guests and were treated as guests.
“But today’s visitors are best represented by Ben Gvir. He visits as the proprietor and treats the Muslims as his tenants.
“Jewish visits to the Mount no longer have anything to do with piety, and everything to do with ultra-nationalist religious triumphalism.”
He added: “Commencing with the new Netanyahu government, the veil has been ripped away. The violation of the status quo is both so blatant and consistent it cannot be denied.”
During Ramadan this year, “some of these new developments were temporarily suspended. That required a lot of discrete negotiations, leading to public safety being vested in security people with cool heads and steady hands.
“This year, as an exception, it was the quietest Ramadan in memory. Nothing stabilizes Jerusalem as much as the pursuit of the status quo in good faith.”
But following the end of Ramadan in April, said Ir Amim researcher Aviv Tatarsky, “Israel again imposed harsh restrictions on Muslim entry to Al-Aqsa, reverting to the unprecedented measures implemented after Oct. 7 and the subsequent outbreak of the war.”
Muslim worshippers under the age of 40 “are consistently denied access to the Mount by the police, even during Muslim prayer times.
“The most stringent restrictions are imposed during Jewish visits, which ultimately translates into a ban on Muslim entry while Jews conduct prayer unencumbered on the Mount.”
This systematic exclusion of Muslims from their place of worship during Jewish visits, he said, “is not only a breach of Muslim worship rights and the status quo, but also contributes to heightened tensions in an already volatile climate.”
According to Ir Amim, this past year there has been an up to 20 percent increase in the number of Jewish visits to the Mount, with over 50,000 recorded since the beginning of the Hebrew year in September 2023, surpassing the previous annual record.
But this figure refers to the number of visits, and not unique visitors, and what it reflects is an increasing number of visits primarily by “a small, albeit vocal, segment of the population alongside government supporters,” pushing for an increased Jewish presence on the Mount.
“This reality directly contradicts the Israeli government’s attempts to justify changes to the arrangements as a result of ‘pressure from below’,” said Tatarsky.
“The vast majority of the Jewish public remains uninterested in praying at the Holy Compound, while the erosion of the status quo is entirely the work of the government in service to a fringe extremist group.”
Israel’s Heritage Ministry recently announced its intention to fund Jewish visits to the compound with a budget of 2 million shekels (about $530,000.)
“The Temple movements, which are behind the Jewish tours and visits to the Mount, require government funding to sustain their activities,” said Tatarsky.
“Thus, the new budget constitutes a calculated government effort to manufacture further challenges to the status quo, aiming to engineer the Israeli public in service to its goals.”
Ir Amim has made a number of recommendations for maintaining the status quo. These include allowing unrestricted Muslim access to the Mount and, “if the police find it difficult to manage the simultaneous presence of Muslim worshippers and Jewish visitors, the entry of Muslims should take precedence,” it says, adding: “Muslim worship rights trump non-Muslim visiting rights.”
In addition, it says, Israel must prevent any Jewish prayer or worship activity on the Mount, prohibit government ministers from speaking against the status quo and visiting the Mount, and cancel the allocation of all funds to the Jewish Temple movements.
“Even after years of activity by the Temple movements, only a small minority of the Jewish public visits the Temple Mount,” said Tatarsky. “The government is ultimately promoting the interests of a fringe extreme Jewish group, while severely harming millions of Muslim residents and Israel’s relations with Arab countries, especially Jordan.”
In the past, Jewish extremists have made no secret of their wish to destroy the mosque and replace it with a “Third Temple.” This ambition is enshrined in the Amidah, the central prayer of the Jewish liturgy, which includes the entreaty “that the Temple be rebuilt speedily in our days.”
Over the decades, the mosque has been the target of arson and bomb attacks. In 1990, 20 Muslims were killed and dozens more wounded in clashes provoked by an attempt by an extremist Jewish group to lay a symbolic cornerstone for the “Third Temple” in the Al-Aqsa compound.
In recent years, extremist groups, encouraged by Ben Gvir and other right-wing politicians, have stepped up the campaign to see a third temple built on the site. Ben Gvir, who has made multiple provocative visits to the Mount, has insisted Jews should be allowed to pray on the site, a position denounced by some Israeli politicians and rabbis.
A threat made by Ben Gvir in August to build a synagogue at the Al-Aqsa compound drew condemnations from several Israeli officials.
A statement from Netanyahu’s office reiterated that “there (was) no change” to the existing policy.
US says it will not limit Israel arms transfers after some improvements in flow of aid to Gaza
- State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said Tuesday the progress to date must be supplemented and sustained
- “We are not giving Israel a pass,” Patel said, adding that “we want to see the totality of the humanitarian situation improve”
WASHINGTON: The Biden administration says Israel has made good but limited progress in increasing the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza and it will not limit arms transfers to Israel as it had threatened to a month ago if the situation had not improved.
State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said Tuesday the progress to date must be supplemented and sustained but “we at this time have not made an assessment that the Israelis are in violation of US law.” It requires recipients of military assistance to adhere to international humanitarian law and not impede the provision of such aid.
“We are not giving Israel a pass,” Patel said, adding that “we want to see the totality of the humanitarian situation improve, and we think some of these steps will allow the conditions for that to continue to progress.”
The decision from the US, Israel’s key ally and largest provider of arms and other military aid, comes despite international aid organizations declaring that Israel has failed to meet the US demands to allow greater humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip, where conditions are worse than at any point in the 13-month-old war.
The Biden administration last month set a deadline expiring Tuesday for Israel to “surge” more food and other emergency aid into the Palestinian territory or risk the possibility of scaled-back military support as Israel wages offensives against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s top national security adviser, Ron Dermer, in Washington a day earlier to go over the steps that Israel has taken since Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned in mid-October of possible repercussions if the aid situation had not improved in 30 days.
Blinken stressed “the importance of ensuring those changes lead to an actual improvement in the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, including through the delivery of additional assistance to civilians throughout Gaza,” the State Department said.
The obstacles facing aid distribution were on this display this week. Even after the military gave permission for a delivery to the northernmost part of Gaza — virtually cut off from food for more than a month by an Israeli siege — the United Nations said it couldn’t deliver most of it because of turmoil and restrictions from Israeli troops on the ground.
Hunger experts have warned the north may already be experiencing famine.
Meanwhile, in the south, hundreds of truckloads of aid are sitting on the Gaza side of the border because the UN says it cannot reach them to distribute the aid — again because of the threat of lawlessness, theft and Israeli military restrictions.
Israel has announced a series of steps — though their effect was unclear. On Tuesday, it opened a new crossing in central Gaza, outside the city of Deir Al-Balah, for aid to enter. It also announced a small expansion of its coastal “humanitarian zone,” where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are sheltering in tent camps. It connected electricity for a desalination plant in Deir Al-Balah.
US officials haven’t said whether they will take any action. President Joe Biden met Tuesday at the White House with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who said a “major objective” for the US should be reining in Iran and its proxies. Herzog also called for the return of the hostages taken from Israel in the Hamas attack that started the war, to which Biden said, “I agree.”
A day earlier, Israel’s new foreign minister, Gideon Saar, appeared to downplay the deadline, telling reporters that he was confident “the issue would be solved.” The Biden administration may have less leverage after Donald Trump won the presidential election — he was a staunch supporter of Israel in his first term.
Eight international aid organization said in their report Tuesday that “Israel not only failed to meet the US criteria” but also took actions “that dramatically worsened the situation on the ground, particularly in Northern Gaza. … That situation is in an even more dire state today than a month ago.”
The report listed 19 measures of compliance with the US demands. It said Israel had failed to comply with 15 and only partially complied with four. The report was co-signed by Anera, Care, MedGlobal, Mercy Corps, the Norwegian Refugee Council, Oxfam, Refugees International and Save the Children.
In an Oct. 13 letter, the US gave Israel 30 days to, among other things, allow a minimum of 350 truckloads of goods into Gaza each day; open a fifth crossing; allow people in coastal tent camps to move inland before the winter; and ensure access for aid groups to northern Gaza. It also called on Israel to halt legislation that would hinder operations of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA.
Aid levels remain far below the US benchmarks. Access to northern Gaza remains restricted, and Israel has pressed ahead with its laws against UNRWA.
Israel launched a major offensive last month in the north, where it says Hamas militants had regrouped. The operation has killed hundreds of people and displaced tens of thousands.
Through October and the first days of November, Israel allowed no food to enter the area, where tens of thousands of civilians have stayed despite evacuation orders.
Last week, Israel allowed 11 trucks to go to Beit Hanoun, one of the north’s hardest-hit towns. But the World Food Organization said troops at a checkpoint forced its trucks to unload their cargo before reaching shelters in the town.
On Tuesday, COGAT — the Israeli military body in charge of humanitarian aid to Gaza — announced it allowed a new delivery of food and water to Beit Hanoun a day earlier. Again, the WFP said that while it tried to send 14 trucks, only three made it to the town “due to delays in receiving authorization for movement and crowds along the route.” When it tried to deliver the rest Tuesday, Israel denied it permission, it said.
Aid into all of Gaza plummeted in October, when just 34,000 tons of food entered, only a third of the previous month, according to Israeli data.
UN agencies say even less actually gets through because of Israeli restrictions, ongoing fighting and lawlessness that makes it difficult to collect and distribute aid on the Gaza side.
In October, 57 trucks a day entered Gaza on average, and 75 a day so far in November, according to Israel’s official figures. The UN says it only received 39 trucks daily since the beginning of October.
COGAT said 900 truckloads of aid are sitting uncollected on the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom crossing in the south.
“Before the organizations give out grades, they should focus on distributing the aid that awaits them,” COGAT said in response to the aid groups’ report.
Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for UNRWA, said the miliary was not coordinating movements for aid trucks to reach the stacked-up cargos. “If we are not provided a safe passage to go and collect it ... it will not reach the people who need it,” she said.
COGAT blamed the drop in October on closures of the crossings for the Jewish high holidays and memorials marking the anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that triggered the war.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 people. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s bombardment and ground invasion have killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to local health authorities, who don’t say how many of those killed were militants. Around 90 percent of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced, and hundreds of thousands are packed into squalid tent camps, with little food, water or hygiene facilities.
The United States has rushed billions of dollars in military aid to Israel during the war, while pressing it to allow more aid into Gaza.
Trump has promised to end the wars in the Middle East without saying how. He was a staunch defender of Israel during his previous term, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says they have spoken three times since his reelection last week.
Humanitarian chiefs say Israel failed to meet US deadline for allowing aid into Gaza
- Aid organizations call on Washington to suspend arms sales to Israel and impose security restrictions, as required by US law
- Oxfam America accuses Israeli authorities of a ‘campaign of ethnic cleansing’ in northern Gaza
NEW YORK CITY: Israel has failed to meet critical Gaza-related humanitarian demands set by the US government, according to a report published jointly by eight major humanitarian organizations.
The failure comes “at an enormous human cost for Palestinian civilians” in the enclave, where the humanitarian situation “is now at its worst point” since the war began in October 2023, they said.
Their assessment comes a month after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sent a letter to Israeli officials demanding the implementation of concrete measures to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza within 30 days.
This deadline passed on Tuesday with no significant signs of progress. Instead, Israeli forces have accelerated their efforts “to bombard, depopulate, deprive and erase the Palestinian population of the North Gaza governorate,” said Abby Maxman, the president of Oxfam America.
“We are witnessing a campaign of ethnic cleansing,” she added. “Oxfam and partner organizations are unable to provide any support to the remaining civilians in the North Gaza governorate, where people are dying every day.
“Access to the rest of Gaza is also severely restricted, with civilians facing starvation and relentless violence. The US must finally make this overdue call to suspend deadly arms sales to Israel or be complicit in the horrific atrocities unfolding before our eyes.”
The aid organizations that contributed to the report, which also include Refugees International, Save the Children and MedGlobal, called on Washington to make an “immediate determination” that Israel is in violation of its assurances under US and international law, and to suspend arms sales and impose restrictions on security cooperation, as required by US law.
The report also urges the American government to press for immediate humanitarian pauses in military operations, the opening of more routes for deliveries of aid, and efforts to ensure civilians and medical facilities are protected.
“With experts again projecting imminent famine in northern Gaza, there is no time to lose,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International. The report “clearly demonstrates that the Israeli government is violating its obligations (to) facilitate humanitarian relief for suffering Palestinians in Gaza,” he added.
Zaher Sahloul, the president and co-founder of MedGlobal, said the organization’s local medical teams and international volunteers in Gaza have personally witnessed “the complete failure by the Israeli authorities to ensure the delivery of critical supplies, including food, water and medicines, and to protect civilians and medical spaces.”
He added: “Our teams are living through the relentless bombing of hospitals, and our medics continue to treat wounded women and children every day. These are egregious violations of the cornerstone principle of international humanitarian law, which protects civilians in time of war.”
Sahloul called on the Biden administration to “do everything possible to push for the full provision of aid to Gaza’s desperate people.”
In addition to the medical crisis, the blockade of Gaza has severely limited the ability of humanitarian organizations to deliver aid. The report says convoys are still often blocked, delayed or looted, and access to key parts of the territory, especially in the north, remains severely restricted.
“I witnessed during my visit to Gaza last week the deliberate starvation of almost 2 million civilians, while the bombardment continues,” said Jan Egelan, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council.
“There is barely any aid crossing into Gaza. The little that does get through is often looted, as the occupying power has obliterated the Palestinian police and refuses to secure, or provide secure access routes to, places where humanitarian organizations could distribute aid to a starving population.”
Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, the CEO of Mercy Corps, said the US government must do “everything in its power to ensure the unfettered provision of essential aid to people in desperate need.”
The report highlights the dire food insecurity among the population of Gaza. Janti Soeripto, the president of Save the Children, said: “Systemic impediments to the humanitarian system are making a deadly conflict even deadlier.
“Enough is enough. The facts are there. Adults have been failing children for over a year. What more will it take?”
With winter and famine looming, the organizations warned that children in particular are at imminent risk, with many of them already suffering the effects of malnutrition.
Sean Carroll, the president and CEO of American Near East Refugee Aid, said the organization’s “humanitarian workers in Gaza have spent the past year expending superhuman effort in subhuman conditions to provide assistance to civilians.”
He added: “In the past month, we’ve seen families throughout Gaza, and particularly in the north, subjected to increasingly horrific conditions. This is a damning indictment of Israel’s failure to follow international humanitarian law and to respond to the critical and reasonable demands of its greatest ally, the United States. The consequences will be more innocent lives ended and destroyed.
“They should also include restrictions on Israel’s ability to continue prosecution of this war in a manner that is increasingly being seen as consistent with ethnic cleansing.”
The report warns that with more than 2 million civilians in Gaza facing starvation, daily bombardments and lack of access to the basic necessities of life, the humanitarian situation in the territory is on the brink of catastrophe.
“There is no time to lose,” it concludes.
US contractor ordered to pay $42m to Iraqis tortured at Abu Ghraib
- CACI Premier Technology Inc. was found liable at the conclusion of a long-running trial for its role in the torture of the three men at the notorious prison in 2003 and 2004
- Suhail Al Shimari, a middle school principal, Asa’ad Zuba’e, a fruit vendor, and Salah Al-Ejaili, a journalist, were each awarded $14 million in damages, the center said
WASHINGTON: A federal jury on Tuesday ordered a US defense contractor to pay $42 million in damages to three Iraqi men who were tortured at Abu Ghraib prison, their lawyers said.
CACI Premier Technology Inc. was found liable at the conclusion of a long-running trial for its role in the torture of the three men at the notorious prison in 2003 and 2004, the Center for Constitutional Rights said.
Suhail Al Shimari, a middle school principal, Asa’ad Zuba’e, a fruit vendor, and Salah Al-Ejaili, a journalist, were each awarded $14 million in damages, the center said in a statement.
The three men filed suit against CACI, a private company based in Arlington, Virginia, in 2008.
Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad, became a potent negative symbol of the US occupation of Iraq after evidence emerged of detainee abuse by American soldiers at the facility.
Most of the abuse took place at the end of 2003, when CACI employees were working in the prison, according to the suit.
The company’s civilian employees were accused of having encouraged US soldiers to abuse the prisoners to prepare them for interrogation.
Criminal charges were brought against 11 low-ranking guards, including former army reserve specialist Lynndie England, who was shown smiling in photographs while posing next to naked prisoners.
The case against CACI was brought under a section of the US Code called the Alien Tort Statute, which allows non-US citizens to file suit in US courts for human rights violations for incidents that took place outside the United States.
CACI claimed that most of the alleged abuse was approved by the then-US defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and incorporated into rules of engagement by military commanders at the prison.
“Today is a big day for me and for justice,” Al-Ejaili said in a statement.
“This victory is a shining light for everyone who has been oppressed and a strong warning to any company or contractor practicing different forms of torture and abuse.”
Katherine Gallagher, an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, welcomed the jury’s verdict saying it “makes clear CACI’s role in this shameful part of our history.”
“Private military and security contractors are put on notice that they can and will be held accountable when they breach the most fundamental international law protections — like the prohibition against torture,” Gallagher said.
“For 20 years, CACI has refused to take responsibility for its role in torture at Abu Ghraib.”
