Christmas miracle: Filipina Mary Jane Veloso returns home after 15 years on death row in Indonesia
Christmas miracle: Filipina Mary Jane Veloso returns home after 15 years on death row in Indonesia/node/2583516/world
Christmas miracle: Filipina Mary Jane Veloso returns home after 15 years on death row in Indonesia
Philippine drug convict and former death row inmate Mary Jane Veloso hugs her parents at the Correctional Institution for Women in Mandaluyong City, Metro Manila, Philippines, on Dec. 18, 2024. (Reuters)
Christmas miracle: Filipina Mary Jane Veloso returns home after 15 years on death row in Indonesia
Mary Jane Veloso was returned to the Philippines through a transfer deal with Indonesia
She and her family are asking for clemency from President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
Updated 18 December 2024
Ellie Aben
MANILA: After almost 15 years in prison, a Filipino woman who was spared from execution on drug trafficking charges in Indonesia returned to her homeland on Wednesday, with her family preparing to spend Christmas together next week.
Mary Jane Veloso, who will turn 40 next month, was arrested in 2010 at an airport in Yogyakarta for allegedly smuggling 2.6 kg of heroin from Malaysia into Indonesia.
While she denied the charge and has always maintained that she was tricked by a recruiter to bring a suitcase with the drugs hidden in its seams, she was convicted and sentenced to death but received a last-minute reprieve from execution by firing squad in 2015.
Veloso’s repatriation was made possible by a “practical arrangement” for the transfer of prisoners between Indonesia and the Philippines, which their officials signed on Dec. 6.
“I’m very happy that I’m finally back to our country,” she told reporters in Manila.
“My plea to President (Ferdinand Marcos Jr.) is he can hopefully grant me clemency so I can be with my family. I’ve been in prison for 15 years in Indonesia for a crime I didn’t commit.”
Her transfer removes the possibility of execution, as the predominantly Catholic Philippines has long abolished the death penalty.
Philippine drug convict Mary Jane Veloso hugs her two sons, Darren Veloso Candelaria and Mark Daniel Veloso Candelaria. (AN Photo)
She had a tearful reunion with her family at a prison facility she was brought to after arriving in the Philippines, as relatives and a small group of supporters gathered with banners and flowers to welcome her.
“I’m very happy because for the almost 15 years she was in prison, we hadn’t had the chance to spend time with her. Now we can be with her, the whole family … It’s a miracle,” said Celia Veloso, her 65-year-old mother.
“Our plan really is to spend Christmas here with her,” she added. “Her siblings have already made their plan and they have prepared their gifts for her. Even her children are also looking forward to it.”
Veloso’s two sons were 1 and 6 years old when she was arrested in 2010.
“I hope that it won’t take too long for her to get clemency … Mary Jane has been in jail a long time. I hope the president will give it to us as a Christmas present.”
Indonesia, which has one of the world’s harshest anti-narcotics laws, had previously said it would respect any decision made by the Philippines, including if Veloso were given clemency.
“I could not think of any better time for her to come home, given the Filipino tradition of celebrating the season and the spirit behind it,” Edre Olalia, a lawyer in Veloso’s legal team, told Arab News.
“I believe it is a miracle in a sense, and … the best Christmas gift because you cannot quantify the happiness and the joy of being reunited (with family).”
According to protocol, Veloso has to spend five days in quarantine following her arrival but will be able to spend Christmas Eve together with her family, said (Retd.) Gen. Gregorio Catapang, director-general of the Bureau of Corrections.
Justice Undersecretary Raul Vasques said Veloso’s return was “a beautiful gift” for the country.
“It’s a fitting gift during Christmas time, and we cannot say more. This is the result of more than 10 years of diplomatic efforts with the country of Indonesia, and the stars aligned, so to speak, that now we have achieved what we have long hoped for — the return of Mary Jane Veloso.”
Her case had sparked numerous protests in both Indonesia and the Philippines, where people demanded Jakarta spare her from the firing squad. The Philippine government has also sought clemency for Veloso in high-level bilateral meetings, including when former President Joko Widodo visited Manila in January.
For her family, the long wait for Veloso’s return is now over.
“Finally, she is here in the Philippines,” said her 22-year-old son, Mark Daniel Veloso Candelaria.
“We hope that our beloved president will grant the clemency that our family is asking for so that we can spend Christmas and New Year together.”
Indonesia rescuers search for survivors as landslide kills at least 17
Intense rainfall in a mountainous area near Pekalongan city in Central Java province sparked the landslide on Monday
Updated 22 January 2025
AFP
Pekalongan: Hundreds of rescuers were searching through thick mud and debris to find survivors Wednesday after a rain-triggered landslide in Indonesia killed at least 17 people and left nine missing.
Intense rainfall in a mountainous area near Pekalongan city in Central Java province sparked the landslide on Monday, collapsing bridges and burying cars and houses.
Search and rescue agency Basarnas said in a statement Wednesday that the toll remained unchanged from Tuesday at 17 dead, nine missing and 13 people injured.
But another body was found, Mohammad Yulian Akbar, a local official told AFP later Wednesday, giving a higher toll of 18.
Heavy machinery was deployed to clear road access for search teams and around 200 rescue personnel have been sent to help, Akbar said.
“The focus is to search for the victims,” he said, adding that the local government had declared an emergency in the district for two weeks.
The worst hit area was Kasimpar village according to the local official, where the landslide struck a coffee shop and people who were trying to shelter from the rain.
Police, soldiers and volunteers have joined the search alongside rescue workers, which is taking place around 90 kilometers (60 miles) west of the city of Semarang.
But efforts were intermittently suspended Tuesday as heavy rain continued to pound the area.
The weather forecast for the next three days suggests moderate rain that could “cause floods, flash floods and landslides,” warned Abdul Muhari, a spokesman for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), on Tuesday.
Indonesia is prone to landslides during the rainy season, typically between November and April.
In November, flooding triggered by intense rains in western Indonesia killed 27 people.
But some disasters caused by adverse weather have taken place outside that season in recent years. Climate change has also increased the intensity of storms, leading to heavier rains, flash floods and stronger gusts.
In May, at least 67 people died after heavy rains caused flash floods in West Sumatra, pushing a mixture of ash, sand, and pebbles from the eruption of Mount Marapi into residential areas.
Trump tests whether a bulldozer can also be a peacemaker
During his first stint in power, Trump ordered a strike that killed senior Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani and vowed confrontation with China
Updated 22 January 2025
AFP
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump has vowed to be a peacemaker in his new term, but his aggressive early actions threaten to alienate US friends in a way that could hinder his ambitions, experts say.
In an inaugural address on Monday, Trump said that his “proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and a unifier” and pointed to his support for a new ceasefire in Gaza.
Speaking to reporters as he returned to the White House after four years, Trump also suggested he would press Russia to make a deal to end its three-year invasion of Ukraine, quipping that President Vladimir Putin — with whom he had famously warm relations in the past — knows he is “destroying” his own country.
But in the throwback to the bedlam of his 2017-2021 term, Trump’s return was also consumed by rage over grievances at home, and the most memorable foreign-policy line of his inaugural address was a vow to take back the Panama Canal, which the United States returned in 1999 but where Trump charges that China has gained too strong a foothold.
Trump has also spoken of seizing Greenland from NATO ally Denmark, moved to send the military to the Mexican border to stop migration, vowed tariffs even against close allies and announced the withdrawal of the United States from the World Health Organization and Paris climate accord, both home to almost every other country.
“Trump’s worldview seems to be contradictory. He has a streak that is pro-peace and another streak which seems more confrontational and militarist,” said Benjamin Friedman, policy director at Defense Priorities, which advocates restraint.
During his first stint in power, Trump ordered a strike that killed senior Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani and vowed confrontation with China, although he also boasted of keeping US troops out of new wars and sought diplomacy with North Korea.
“In the first term, the more confrontational and militarist streak won out more often than not” on tension spots such as Iran, Friedman said.
This time, he said, at least on Ukraine and the Middle East, Trump appears to have shifted to a more progressive stance.
But on Latin America, and in his selection of aides with hawkish views on China, Trump remains hawkish, Friedman said.
He said that Trump essentially had a 19th-century philosophy in line with populist president Andrew Jackson, feeling a comfort with threatening the use of force to achieve national interests.
Such a way of thinking, for Trump, “isn’t consistent necessarily with being a peacemaker or a warmonger” but rather is a mix.
Trump made no clear mention of US allies on his inaugural day. In the past he has described NATO allies as freeloaders and pushed them to pay more for their own security.
However, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was meeting Tuesday with counterparts from Japan, India and Australia — the so-called Quad of democracies which China sees as an effort to contain its rise.
Jon Alterman, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that Trump should be mindful of lessons from China, whose assertive “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy brought together a number of Asian countries on the receiving end.
“It would be a profound shift if the United States went from being seen as the principal provider of security to being the principal source on uncertainty,” Alterman said.
Trump, as he seeks to negotiate deals, “has an interest in keeping friendly countries on his side,” Alterman said.
Kori Schake, who served in senior defense planning roles under former president George W. Bush, said it was too early to tell the impact of Trump’s “chaos” on peacemaking and said that early actions could have been even more severe.
“But the actions he did take are still damaging. Withdrawing from the World Health Organization will give us less warning of emergent disease,” she said.
“Antagonizing Panama is counterproductive and will fan anti-Americanism throughout the hemisphere,” she said.
Trump’s UN pick blasts ‘anti-Semitic rot’ in world body
Stefanik was pushed on her views on the war in Gaza, and noted that she voted to defund UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees
Updated 22 January 2025
AFP
WASHINGTON: Donald Trump’s nominee to represent Washington at the United Nations railed against “anti-Semitic rot” in the global organization as she was grilled by senators at her confirmation hearing on Tuesday.
New York congresswoman Elize Stefanik noted that America contributes more to the UN than any other country and called for reform to ensure its tax dollars were not “propping up entities that are counter to American interests, anti-Semitic, or engaging in fraud, corruption or terrorism.”
A right-wing firebrand who was considered a moderate before the Trump era, Stefanik is seen as one of the most vocal supporters in Congress of both Israel and US Jewish causes.
“It’s one of the reasons why, in my conversation with President Trump, I was interested in this position — because if you look at the anti-Semitic rot within the United Nations, there are more resolutions targeting Israel than any other country, any other crisis, combined,” Stefanik told the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
Stefanik, 40, made the same criticism of the US higher education system as she touted her record of holding the feet of college administrators to the fire during aggressive questioning last year over anti-Semitism on campuses.
“My oversight work led to the most viewed testimony in the history of Congress,” she said.
“This hearing with university presidents was heard around the world and viewed billions of times, because it exposed the anti-Semitic rot in colleges and universities and was a watershed moment in American higher education.”
Stefanik was pushed on her views on the war in Gaza, and noted that she voted to defund UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. Former president Joe Biden halted its US funding over allegations that members were possibly involved in the October 7 Hamas attacks.
Stefanik also revealed that she agreed with far-right Israeli ministers who believe Israel has a “biblical right to the entire West Bank” — but avoided being pinned down on whether she supported Palestinian self-determination.
Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman is the only Democrat to have pledged his support for Stefanik, but others have indicated they may wave her through and she is expected to be confirmed with little drama in a vote of the full Senate.
“If confirmed, I will work to ensure that our mission to the United Nations serves the interest of the American people, and represents American President Trump’s America First, peace-through-strength foreign policy,” she said.
Australia probes possible foreign funding behind anti-Semitic attacks
Vandals have in recent weeks torched a Sydney childcare center, set cars ablaze in largely Jewish neighborhoods and splashed inner-city synagogues with red paint and graffiti
Updated 22 January 2025
AFP
SYDNEY: Australia is investigating whether local criminals were paid by foreign actors to carry out a spate of anti-Semitic attacks, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Wednesday.
Vandals have in recent weeks torched a Sydney childcare center, set cars ablaze in largely Jewish neighborhoods and splashed inner-city synagogues with red paint and graffiti.
Masked arsonists firebombed a synagogue in the city of Melbourne in December.
Albanese said some of these attacks appeared to have been carried out by “paid actors.”
“Some of these are being perpetrated by people who don’t have a particular issue, aren’t motivated by an idealogy, but are paid actors,” he said.
“It’s unclear who or where the payments are coming from.”
Australian Federal Police commissioner Reece Kershaw said detectives were investigating whether cash to fund these attacks had flowed from “overseas.”
“We are looking into whether overseas actors or individuals have paid local criminals in Australia to carry out some of these crimes in our suburbs.”
Neither Albanese nor police offered any details about what evidence authorities may have collected, which foreign actors were under suspicion, or why they were supposedly involved.
Police on Wednesday charged a 33-year-old man with attempting to light a Sydney synagogue on fire.
Eight people were charged on Tuesday with a string of “hate crime-related incidents” dating back to November, police said.
Trump’s pardons will embolden Proud Boys, other far-right groups, say experts
Gavin McInnes, the British-born founder of the Proud Boys, said in an interview that he and his friends were celebrating late on Monday by “pounding bourbons and laughing our heads off”
“Our politics has always been violent,” Pattis said, pointing to events ranging from the US Civil War to the protests in the 1960s
Updated 22 January 2025
Reuters
WASHINGTON: A day after US President Donald Trump’s sweeping grant of clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the 2021 attack on the US Capitol, America’s far-right celebrated. Some called for the death of judges who oversaw the trials. Others partied and expressed relief. Some even wept with joy.
Several experts who study extremism said the extraordinary reversal for rioters who committed both violent and nonviolent crimes on Jan. 6, including assaulting police officers and seditious conspiracy, will embolden the Proud Boys and other extremist groups such as white supremacists who have openly called for political violence.
In a few pen strokes, Trump reversed the largest US Justice Department investigation and prosecution in history, as he attempted to rewrite what happened during the violent riot on Jan. 6, 2021. As he took office for a second term on Monday, Trump continued to claim, falsely, that the 2020 election was rigged and that he was the rightful winner. He has described the riots as a peaceful “day of love” rather than a melee aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 US presidential election.
William Sarsfield, who was released from serving time for his charges related to January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, wears his prison shoes, after U.S. President Donald Trump made a sweeping pardon of nearly everyone charged in the January 6, 2021 attack, in Washington, U.S. January 21, 2025. (REUTERS)
“We’re not going to put up with that crap anymore,” Trump said at a post-inauguration rally on Monday, describing the Jan. 6 offenders as “hostages.”
For the convicted Jan. 6 defendants, and for the Trump faithful, the pardons were vindication for unjust persecutions by the president’s political enemies.
Gavin McInnes, the British-born founder of the Proud Boys, said in an interview that he and his friends were celebrating late on Monday by “pounding bourbons and laughing our heads off.”
Before the 2020 election, Trump told the Proud Boys – a violent all-male extremist group – to “stand back and stand by.” Three months later, federal prosecutors say, the group’s leaders plotted the Jan. 6 attack.
“This is a victory for us,” said McInnes, now a right-wing podcaster. If Trump hadn’t given all the Proud Boys clemency, the president would have been “dead to me, and Proud Boys and MAGA and everyone,” he said. “But luckily that didn’t happen.”
In a video posted online shortly after the pardons, convicted rioter Christopher Kuehne, a Marine veteran from Kansas who traveled to Washington with the Proud Boys in January 2021, sobbed: “I am finally free. I don’t even have the words to thank President Trump for what he has done for us.” He was sentenced in February to 75 days in prison and 24 months of supervised release for obstructing law enforcement.
Another Proud Boy told Reuters the pardons would help recruit more members. “A lot of people stayed away from us after there were arrests,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Now they are going to feel like they are bulletproof.”
The riot began after Trump rallied thousands of supporters to march on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress certified Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. Inspired by Trump’s baseless rigged-election claims, they swarmed the Capitol, setting off pitched battles with police. Some bludgeoned officers with makeshift weapons that included metal pipes, wooden poles and baseball bats. Prosecutors said the rioters carried firearms, tasers, swords, hatchets and knives.
Four people died on the day of the attack, including a woman protester shot by police. One Capitol Police officer who fought the rioters died the next day. Another 140 officers were injured. Four officers who responded to the riot later committed suicide.
Norm Pattis, a defense attorney who represents three Proud Boys and the leader of the Oath Keepers, a militia, dismissed the notion that the sweeping clemency would somehow lead to an increase in political violence.
“Our politics has always been violent,” Pattis said, pointing to events ranging from the US Civil War to the protests in the 1960s. “And so a few-hours riot at the Capitol is going to warrant years, decades behind bars? For some people, it’s disproportionate, and in my view just repulsive.”
“YOU NEED ACCOUNTABILITY”
Two police officers who were beaten while trying to hold off the crowd said the pardons were a chilling sign that loyalty to Trump is now more important than the rule of law.
“It’s outrageous,” former DC Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone told Reuters. Fanone suffered a heart attack and a brain injury after he was beaten, sprayed with chemical irritants and shocked with a stun gun during the Jan. 6 violence. Fanone, 44, who spent 20 years as a police officer, said the pardons likely will inspire other supporters to violence, “because they believe Donald Trump will grant them a pardon. And why wouldn’t they believe that?”
Aquilino Gonell, a former US Capitol Police sergeant who was injured defending the Capitol, said Trump’s pardons had nothing to do with righting an injustice. Trump and his Republican allies “have lost their claim to having moral high ground when defending our system of governance, the constitution, and supporting the police,” he said.
Among the pardoned were more than 300 who pleaded guilty to either assaulting or obstructing law enforcement, including 69 who admitted to assaulting police with a dangerous or deadly weapon. Trump’s order commuted the sentences of 14 convicted of serious crimes, including Stewart Rhodes, former leader of the Oath Keepers. Trump also issued pardons for others, including former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, sentenced to 22 years for seditious conspiracy.
Nearly 300 rioters had links to 46 far-right groups or movements, according to a study from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, a University of Maryland-based network of scholars that tracks and analyzes terrorist incidents.
Heather Shaner, a Washington lawyer who served as a court-appointed defense attorney for more than 40 of the defendants, called the pardons an attempt to whitewash history. “You need accountability,” she said in an interview. “Only by acknowledging the truth and providing accountability can you move forward.”
Some political extremism experts said the pardons would incentivize pro-Trump vigilantes to commit violence under the belief they’ll receive legal immunity if they act in the interests of Trump. “They are going to feel they can do whatever they want,” Julie Farnam, who was the assistant director of intelligence for the US Capitol Police during the Jan. 6 riots, said of far-right groups. “
They’ll feel like they can because there is no leadership in the United States that tries to stop it,” said Farnam, who now runs a private investigative agency.
Couy Griffin, who was stripped of his seat as a New Mexico county commissioner after he was convicted of trespassing on Capitol grounds, said he instructed his attorney to decline Trump’s pardon, as he appeals his conviction in federal court. In an interview, Griffin said he believes Trump’s enemies distorted the truth about the Capitol riots.
“Was there some violence against police officers? Yes, there was also a lot of violence of police officers against the crowd,” he said, echoing a frequent complaint of Trump supporters.
DEATH THREATS TO JURISTS, POLITICIANS
Many Trump supporters praised the pardons in right-wing online forums. Some threatened those who supported the prosecutions.
On the pro-Trump website Patriots.Win, at least two dozen people expressed hopes for executions of Democrats, judges or law enforcement linked to the Jan. 6 cases. They called for jurists or police to be hanged, pummeled to death, ground up in wood chippers or thrown from helicopters.
“Gather the entire federal judiciary into a stadium. Then have them listen and watch while the judges are beaten to death,” one wrote. “Cut their heads off and put them on pikes outside” the Justice Department.
Others called for killing Trump’s political critics after former House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, an influential Democrat, called the pardons “an outrageous insult.” “If someone successfully whacked Pelosi, I would consider them a hero,” one Patriots.Win commenter wrote. Another wished for Liz Cheney, the Republican who defied Trump by spearheading the congressional investigation of the violence, to “hang.”
One of the most famous rioters, Jake Angeli-Chansley, who became known as the “QAnon Shaman” for wearing a horned hat in the Capitol, took to the social media platform X to celebrate after the pardons. Sentenced to 41 months in prison in 2021, he was released from federal custody in 2023.
“NOW I AM GONNA BUY SOME MOTHAFU*KIN GUNS!!! I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!!! GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!”
