Blasts kill at least 20, injure more than 600 at barracks in Africa
Key questions await in ex-officer’s case as jurors to be selected
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — A series of explosions at a military barracks in Equatorial Guinea killed at least 20 people and wounded more than 600 others Sunday afternoon, authorities said.
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema said the explosion was due to the “negligent handling of dynamite” at the military barracks in the city of Bata.
“The impact of the explosion caused damage in almost all the houses and buildings in Bata,” the president said in a statement, which was in Spanish.
The defense ministry released a statement late Sunday saying that a fire at a weapons depot in the barracks caused the explosion of high-caliber ammunition. The country’s president said the fire may have been due to residents burning the fields surrounding the barracks.
State television showed a huge plume of smoke rising above the explosion site as crowds fled, with many people crying out “we don’t know what happened, but it is all destroyed.”
Equatorial Guinea, an African country of 1.3 million people south of Cameroon, was a colony of Spain until it gained its independence in 1968.
The Health Ministry said its workers were treating the injured at the site of the tragedy and in medical facilities, but feared people were still missing under the rubble.
US bombers over Mideast:
A pair of B-52 bombers flew over the Mideast on Sunday, the latest such mission in the region aimed at warning Iran amid tensions between Washington and Tehran.
The flight by the heavy bombers came as a pro-Iran satellite channel based in Beirut broadcast Iranian military drone footage of an Israeli ship hit by a mysterious explosion days earlier in the Mideast. While the channel sought to say Iran wasn’t involved, Israel has blamed Tehran for what it described as an attack on the vessel.
The U.S. military’s Central Command said the two B-52s flew over the region accompanied by military aircraft from nations including Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. It marked the fourth such bomber deployment into the Mideast this year and the second under President Joe Biden.
Vote on face coverings:
Swiss voters narrowly approved Sunday a proposal to ban face coverings, both the niqabs and burqas worn by a few Muslim women in the country and the ski masks and bandannas used by protesters.
The measure will outlaw covering one’s face in public places like restaurants, sports stadiums, public transport or simply walking in the street. It foresees exceptions at religious sites and for security or health reasons, such as face masks people are wearing now to protect against COVID-19, as well as for traditional Carnival celebrations. Authorities have two years to draw up detailed legislation.
Two Swiss cantons, or states, Ticino and St. Gallen, already have similar legislation that foresees fines for transgressions. National legislation will put Switzerland in line with countries such as Belgium and France that have already enacted similar measures.
The Swiss government had opposed the measure as excessive, arguing that full-face coverings are a “marginal phenomenon.” It argued that the ban could
harm tourism — most Muslim women who wear such veils in Switzerland are visitors from well-heeled Persian Gulf states, who are often drawn to Swiss lakeside cities.
A left-leaning human rights organization accused Philippine security forces of killing nine activists Sunday in coordinated raids in four provinces.
Cristina Palabay, leader of the rights group, Karapatan, said the raids were carried out at the activists’ homes and offices. Two of the victims, a couple, were killed as their 10-year-old son hid under a bed, she said.
A government spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment, but a security official confirmed that nine people had been killed in raids carried out jointly by the military and the Philippine National Police. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to
Philippine killings:
discuss the matter.
The Philippine outlet GMA News said a police spokesman, Lt. Col. Chitadel Gaoiran, had confirmed the deaths.
Palabay said the killings had occurred in the provinces of Cavite, Laguna, Batangas and Rizal, all in the southern part of Luzon Island, near Manila. She said the activists who were killed had worked for a variety of organizations, including a group that works on behalf of Philippine fishermen and another that campaigned for the rights of the urban poor.
The Saudi-led coalition fighting Iran-backed rebels in Yemen said Sunday that it had launched a new air campaign on the country’s capital and other provinces, in retaliation for missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia.
“The targeting of civilians and civilian facilities is a red line,” Col. Turki al-Maliki, a spokesman for the coalition,
Saudis strike Yemen:
was quoted as saying by the official Saudi Press Agency. He was referring to the missile and drone strikes on Saudi cities in recent weeks that the Iranian-backed rebels, known as Houthis, had claimed.
The Houthi-run al-Masirah satellite TV channel reported at least seven airstrikes on the Sanaa districts of Attan and al-Nahda. Al-Masirah did not say what facilities were hit by the coalition, but back smoke was seen rising over military camps in the areas.
The coalition said the Houthis were encouraged by a decision of President Joe Biden’s administration last month to remove them from the U.S. terror list. The designation of the Houthis as a terrorist organization was announced in the waning days of former President Donald Trump’s administration, and caused widespread outcry from the United Nations and humanitarian groups working in Yemen.
Colorado party violence: A prosecutor vowed Sunday to bring charges against anyone that can be identified who damaged property or caused injuries at a party involving hundreds of people near the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Violence and destruction erupted as officers broke up the party Saturday, police said. Three officers suffered minor injuries from being struck by bricks and rocks, Boulder police told news outlets. The department brought in its SWAT team to help clear the flood of people along a street in an area near the school known as the Hill.
Images shared by local media showed no social distancing and most without masks despite the coronavirus pandemic. An estimated 800 to 1,000 people were there. A few in the raucous crowd damaged and flipped over a vehicle. Others set off fireworks in the middle of the street. A law enforcement armored vehicle and a fire truck were damaged.
MINNEAPOLIS — A Minneapolis police officer was swiftly fired and charged with murder after bystander video showed him pressing his knee into George Floyd’s neck, ignoring the Black man’s cries that he couldn’t breathe.
But even with that powerful footage, legal experts say the case isn’t a slam dunk.
Jury selection begins Monday in Derek Chauvin’s trial, which is expected to come down to two key questions: Did Chauvin’s actions cause Floyd’s death, and were his actions reasonable?
“It’s hard not to watch the video and conclude that the prosecutors will not have any trouble with this case,” said Susan Gaertner, the former head prosecutor in neighboring Ramsey County. “But it’s not that simple.”
Floyd was declared dead May 25 after Chauvin, who is white, pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck for about nine minutes, holding his position even after Floyd went limp as he was handcuffed and lying on his stomach. Floyd’s death sparked sometimes violent protests in the U.S. and led to a nationwide reckoning on race.
Chauvin is charged with second-degree unintentional murder and second-degree manslaughter, and a panel of appeals court judges ruled Friday that the judge must consider reinstating a third-degree murder charge that he dismissed last fall. Three other officers, all of whom
also were fired, face trial in August on charges of aiding and abetting the second-degree murder and manslaughter counts.
The second-degree murder charge requires prosecutors to prove Chauvin caused Floyd’s death while committing or trying to commit a felony — in this case, third-degree assault. The manslaughter charge requires proof that Chauvin caused Floyd’s death through negligence that created an unreasonable risk, and consciously took the chance of causing severe injury or death.
Exactly how Floyd died is shaping up as a major flashpoint of the trial.
Chauvin’s attorney, Eric
Nelson, argues in court documents that Floyd likely died from fentanyl he consumed, or a combination of fentanyl, methamphetamine and underlying health conditions — not as a result of Chauvin’s knee on his neck.
But Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill wrote last fall that for the second-degree murder charge, prosecutors don’t have to prove that Chauvin was the sole cause of Floyd’s death, only that his conduct was a “substantial causal factor.”
Still, defense attorneys who aren’t connected to the case say all Nelson has to do is raise reasonable doubt in a single juror’s mind.
“Although he had him pinned under his knee and he’s yelling ‘I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!’ there’s an argument that (Chauvin) wasn’t exerting pressure and his inability to breathe was due to the drugs in his system or something to that effect, or his anxiety,” said F. Clayton Tyler, a prominent local defense attorney.
Criminal defense attorney Mike Brandt and Tyler said Chauvin will likely have to take the stand to explain why he felt he had to hold Floyd down for so long. Brandt said he’ll likely say he followed his training, and that it was necessary because his experience with other suspects under the influence of drugs shows
that things can suddenly become erratic and dangerous.
Prosecutors, however, have submitted a list of previous instances in which Chauvin used chokeholds or similar restraints on the job. Cahill ruled they can admit only one as evidence: a 2017 arrest in which Chauvin restrained a female by placing his knee on her neck while she was prone on the ground.
Cahill also ruled that prosecutors can tell jurors about a 2015 incident in which Chauvin saw other officers place a suicidal, intoxicated male in a side-recovery position after using a stun gun on him. Cahill said prosecutors can introduce that if they can show Chauvin was present when a medical professional said that the male could have died if officers had prolonged the detention.
Brandt said telling the jury about those events will allow prosecutors to show that Chauvin knew the proper way to restrain someone and provide relief, and that he had done it wrong before.
Brandt said the third-degree murder charge could be easier for prosecutors to prove if it’s reinstated because they wouldn’t have to show Chauvin intended to commit assault. Instead, they must prove his actions caused Floyd’s death, and that they were reckless and without regard for human life.
The second-degree manslaughter count alleges Chauvin took a risk that a reasonable person would have known could cause death. To defend against that, Brandt said, Chauvin could argue that he had used the same hold in the past and didn’t think it would cause a problem.
However, Brandt said “the whole case” against Chauvin is the video capturing the amount of time he restrained Floyd.
“You hear on the video the passersby, the onlookers saying, ‘Dude, he can’t breathe. Let him up. What are you doing? You are killing him,’ ” Brandt said. “I mean, it’s almost like they are giving a play-by-play.”
Tyler said if he were a prosecutor, he’d use a still shot of Chauvin’s expressionless face from that video and keep it in view for the jury.
“You want to show indifference? Just look at him,” Tyler said.
BOGOTA, Colombia — The testimony is searing. “They tied me to a tree,” said one victim of Colombia’s guerrillas. “They put us in a cage,” said another. “I was kidnapped for four years.”
“Until then, I had not heard of ‘mass graves,’ ” said a victim of the military. “Finally I understand that those in charge of protecting civilians killed thousands of Colombians.”
After decades of civil war, Colombia has created a historic postwar court designed to reveal the facts of a conflict that defined the nation for generations, morphing into the longest-running war in the Americas.
Thousands have testified. Wide-ranging investigations are underway. The first indictments were issued in January — and the first pleas are expected in April. Perpetrators will be punished, with those who admit responsibility receiving lesser, “restorative” sentences, like house arrestorremainingfreewhile doing hard physical labor. Those who refuse to do so will face trial and the possibility of decades in prison.
The goal of the court, which began its work in 2018, is to give the country a common narrative about the conflict, one that will allow Colombians to move forward, together. The success of the court, called the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, could help change the trajectory of a nation that has been at war for much of its history, with one conflict rolling almost immediately into the next.
Its failure could mean the repetition of that cycle.
“We have a window — a generational opportunity — to leave behind the insane violence we have lived in
all our lives,” said Ingrid Betancourt, a former presidential candidate who was kidnapped and held by guerrillas, sometimes in chains, for more than six years. “I would like us to be able to open that window and let the light in.”
Colombia’s most recent conflicts date to the 1960s, when a leftist rebel group called the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, launched an insurgency meant to remake a sharply unequal society.
The war grew into a complex battle among leftwing guerrilla groups, rightwing paramilitaries, the military, drug cartels and the United States, which supplied and advised the military.
For years, everyday life was marked by bombings, kidnappings and assassinations. At least 220,000 died, and more than 5 million were displaced. The war ended in 2016, when the FARC and the government signed a peace deal that
included the creation of the postwar court.
But if the goal of the court is to dig up buried truths, it is clear that this search is also exhuming and exacerbating long-standing divisions — and that the road to a common narrative, if one can be found, will be lined with conflict.
Some see the court as their best chance to find answers about lost loved ones and the country’s best hope for peace; others are angered that assassins and kidnappers will not receive prison sentences; still others simply dismiss the court’s findings, saying the institution is biased in favor of the former guerrillas.
The court’s most prominent critic is former President Alvaro Uribe, who presided over some of the final years of the war and who remains the country’s most divisive and influential political figure. A recent report by the court implicates the military in more than 6,400 civilian deaths from 2002 to 2008,
during his presidency.
Uribe responded to the report by calling it an “attack” with “only one purpose”: “to discredit me personally.”
The court is held in an imposing black building on a main avenue in Colombia’s capital, Bogota. Some testimony is public and has been streamed on social media or released in public documents, offering a window into decades of suffering. To protect participants’ safety, much of it takes place behind closed doors.
So far, the court’s findings have been explosive, revealing victim counts far higher than previously confirmed and hard-hitting accusations that many skeptics did not expect.
In January, magistrates issued their first indictment, accusing eight top FARC leaders of orchestrating a kidnapping-for-ransom operation that lasted decades and resulted in more than 20,000 victims, many of them civilians,
some of whom were raped or murdered. The kidnappings were used to fund the insurgency, said the court, and amounts to crimes against humanity.
The accused former FARC leaders have indicated that they will admit guilt. If they do, they will receive nonprison sentences, which could include up to eight years digging up old land mines or tracking down bodies. If they do not admit guilt, they will face a trial and the possibility of decades behind bars.
They have until late April to reply to the court.
“We are assuming collective responsibility,” said Julian Gallo, who is among the indicted leaders.
“These were practices that in some form delegitimized our fight,” he went on. “What we have asked for is forgiveness.”
Some see the charges and the defendants’ response as signs that the court’s decisions will be taken seriously, enabling it to establish that common narrative.
Hector Angulo’s parents, a metalworker and housewife, were kidnapped by the FARC in 2000. He sold his home and paid a ransom for their release, but the guerrillas never returned his parents. He has spent two decades searching for their bodies, he said.
He is not sure he can ever forgive, he said, “because the pain one feels for a family member is irreparable.” But he supports the court’s work, he added, because “it’s what we have.”
Ximena Ochoa opposes the court. Her mother was kidnapped by the rebels in 1990, held for four terrible monthsandreleasedafterher family paid a hefty ransom. She believes that the court is a distraction designed to gloss over the FARC’s unresolved crimes. The guerrillas, for example, have yet to hand over much of their war chest.
The court, she said, will allow the former rebels to admit to some things, an effort to placate the international community by claiming that justice has been served in Colombia.
“This whole transitional justice thing is a hoax,” she said. Of the FARC, she added, “They are never going to tell the whole truth.”
In February, magistrates turned their attention to the crimes of the military, issuing the scathing report that implicated officials in the intentional killing of at least 6,402 civilians when Uribe was in office.
The killings were part of a previously revealed strategy in which Colombian soldiers or their allies lured civilians from their homes with the promise of jobs, then killed them and tried to pass off their deaths as combatant kills. Many of the victims were poor; some were mentally disabled.
The idea was to show that the government was winning the war.
Mia Schultz has watched three other Black women in Vermont leave leadership posts in the mostly white state because of harassment and threats. She’s also seen Black acquaintances move away from the progressive state that is home to Bernie Sanders and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream because they felt unwelcome.
But the 45-year-old mother of two teenage boys feels called to continue fighting racism, which she’s done since moving to the state from Southern California six years ago. Now, the former insurance professional is carrying on a broader fight for her community in her new leadership role as president of one of Vermont’s two NAACP branches.
“I really don’t feel like I have a choice,” said Schultz, who replaced another Black woman, Tabitha Moore, who decided not to run for reelection citing harassment. “We’re talking about our children.”
Vermont was the first state to abolish slavery and is remembered as being both 94% white and liberal. Missing from that image, though, are realities like the state’s history of eugenics starting in the 1920s that led to sterilizations, said Pablo Bose, an associate geography professor at the University of Vermont.
A recent report from the University of Vermont continued to find racial disparities in traffic stops with Black drivers stopped at rate of 459 per 1,000 Black residents compared with 256 stops of white drivers per 1,000 white residents based on data from 2014 to 2019. The state also leads New England in racist propaganda, such as stickers,
banners and flyers, from the white supremacist group Patriot Front, according to the Vermont Intelligence Center.
Since 2018, at least three Black female leaders in Vermont, including a state lawmaker, a town board member and the former head of the Rutland-area NAACP branch, have left their roles in response to persistent harassment and sometimes violent threats. Democratic state Rep. Kiah Morris, who was the only Black woman in the Vermont state Legislature, resigned that year partially in response to harassment from a self-described white nationalist.
“What is clear is that the way we treat electoral politics, candidates and (elected officials) from marginalized identities in Vermont is unacceptable,” Morris, now politics director for the advocacy group Rights & Democracy and creator of a
documentary video project about racism in Vermont.
Anyone holding public office or high profile advocacy roles takes on risks as a public figure, but Black women face harassment and threats of violence aimed at them for both their gender and race. It’s a challenge Black women leaders across the United States face and coincides with a surge of women, and women of color, running for office.
Lisa Ryan, who became the first woman of color to be elected to the city board of Rutland, Vermont, recently said she would not seek a third term in the city where she grew up. She called the last two years almost unbearable starting when she requested that city employees get implicit bias training after another board member put a racist meme on Facebook.
“It wasn’t until that point where things really started
to get just gritty and scary. The harassment, the bullying, the name calling from people I know and from people I don’t know,” she said during a recent press briefing highlighting the challenges women of color face serving in elected office.
“I’m sorry to have to step out of my role, but it is time to put my family first, my self first and my safety first,” Ryan said at the briefing.
In many cases what these Black women are talking about — from Black Lives Matter to defunding the police — challenges the status quo and is seen as a threat to people who dislike or push back against criticism of white supremacy and misogyny, said Kimberly Peeler-Allen, a visiting practitioner at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Many times the messages are delivered anonymously through social media, adding
a layer of impunity.
“It is very easy to lob these very violent threats against these women’s lives and their families in ways that, you know, 15 years ago weren’t possible,” she said.
For that to change, people need to hold each other accountable, said Curtiss Reed Jr., executive director of the Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Equity. White residents need to confront people in their family, community or churches who are racist or anti-Semitic and say: This is unacceptable and that they must bear the consequences of their words, Reed said.
“And that would be in losing their jobs, in losing status in their community and their reputation as a good citizen,” he said.
To help Black candidates and other people of color run for office in Vermont, the state’s two NAACP branches last month announced the creation of the Bright Leadership Institute, supported by a $100,000 grant.
Just this week during Vermont’s annual town meetings, at least three Black women won seats on town and school boards. Two others lost their bids in their communities.
“I am proud of their political courage to step up to the plate and serve their communities despite the incredible pushback and reasons that they shouldn’t,” said Schultz.
Schultz used to walk around Bennington a lot when she first moved there, but after hearing some trucks rev their engines when she tried to cross the road, she’s found other places to walk, she said. Within the first week of arriving in Vermont, her fifth grade son got pushed against a wall and called a racial slur by a fellow student, she said.
This past summer, when a mural reading “Black Lives Matter” was being painted on the street, a number of protesters stood in the way to try to disrupt the work, the Bennington Banner reported. Several people were arrested.
Schultz brings these experiences and many others into her new position as head of one of the state’s two NAACP branches. She recently developed a Black History Month education guide, which she sent to schools and received appreciative feedback from teachers, she said. She also wants to work with the press to ensure that the stories written about Black people are not always about their trauma and pain.
“That we’re productive members of society who have really, like a lot of things to contribute,” she said.
Schultz has thought about leaving Vermont many times but owns a home and does see change happening ever so slowly.
“It’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever lived,” she said. “And I’m like, I need to enjoy this too.”