By Lyndsey Kelly Impunity Watch Reporter, North America
WASHINGTON, D.C., – United States of America – The United States Government is appealing a federal court ruling that reduced the potential penalty BP Plc must pay for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the biggest offshore oil discharge in U.S. history, by nearly $4 billion. The Clean Water Act would allow for BP to be fined a maximum of $17.6 billion but Barbier’s ruling on the spill size lowered the fine to $13.7 billion.
The aftermath of the Gulf Oil Spill in 2010. (Photo Courtesy of Reuters).
U.S. District Court Judge Carl Barbier decided the spill size in January, judging it to be 3.2 million barrels. BP appealed the spill-size decision last month. Additionally, Judge Barbier recently rejected claims that the London-based BP was reckless in preparing for a disaster or had acted unreasonably in responding to the spill. However, the U.S. didn’t say which part of the court ruling it was appealing in a notice it filed Friday. The U.S. is seeking a maximum $13.7 billion based on the size of the spill and the finding of gross negligence. BP has countered the U.S’ claim by stating that it did not deserve the maximum fines due to its efforts in responding to the spill and minimizing the impact. Wyn Hornbuckle, a Justice department spokesman, didn’t immediately respond to requested for comment on the substance of the U.S. appeal.
BP has incurred more than $42 billion of costs for the spill, including for clean up, fines and compensation for victims. Approximately 810,000 barrels were collected during the clean up.
By Kathryn Maureen Ryan Managing Editor, Impunity Watch
DAMASCUS, Syria – The future remains bleak for the millions of Syrians displaced by Syria’s prolonged civil war as the conflict enters its fifth year. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) conditions for internationally displaced persons and refugees and the political situation in the country continues to deteriorate as the war rages and the conflicts victims fail to receive international support. “With no political solution to the conflict in sight, most of the 3.9 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt see no prospect of returning home in the near future, and have scant opportunity to restart their lives in exile,” a UNHCR statement released in Geneva said.
for the youngest victems of the Syrian Civil War education has become an opportunity of the past, at least 2.6 million Syrian children are now out of school. (Photo courtesy of the Christian Science Monitor)
“More and more Syrians are losing hope. Thousands have tried to reach Europe by taking often deadly land or sea routes after paying their life savings to smugglers. Many have not made it. Those who do, face rising hostility as refugees are conflated with security concerns in a climate of rising panic,” the UNHCR statement said.
A recent survey of 40,000 Syrian families living as refugees in urban areas of Jordan determined that two-thirds were living below the absolute poverty line. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said much more must be done to address the plight of Syrian refugees. “After years in exile, refugees’ savings are long depleted and growing numbers are resorting to begging, survival sex and child labor. Middle-class families with children are barely surviving on the streets: one father said life as a refugee was like being stuck in quicksand – every time you move, you sink down further,” he said. “This worst humanitarian crisis of our era should be galvanizing a global outcry of support, but instead help is dwindling. With humanitarian appeals systematically underfunded, there just isn’t enough aid to meet the colossal needs – nor enough development support to the hosting countries creaking under the strain of so many refugees,” Guterres added.
The impact of the Syrian Civil War can now be seen from space. This satellite images posted by #withSyria shows the dramatic drop in lights at night in Syria between 2011 and 2015, at least 83% of Syrians now live without electricity. (Photo courtesy of National Public Radio)
In December, the United Nations began the largest aid appeal ever for $8.4 billion that if fully funded, would provide for the basic needs of refugees. The program would offer support to host communities to bolster their infrastructure and services utilized by refugees escaping a conflict whose end is not in site. “Further abandoning host countries to manage the situation on their own could result in serious regional destabilization, increasing the likelihood of more security concerns elsewhere in the world,” Guterres stressed.
Five years of war have taken a particularly devastating toll on the conflict’s smallest victims, many of whom are too young to remember a time of peace. Approximately 14 million children in Syria and Iraq now live every day in the shadows of war facing extreme violence, the hardships of displacement United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations agency charged with promoting the welfare of the children worldwide. “As the crisis enters its fifth year, this generation of young people is still in danger of being lost to a cycle of violence – replicating in the next generation what they suffered in their own,” said UNICEF director Anthony Lake. More than 2.6 million Syrian children are out of school and many more are now receiving education from extremist groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) which has begun teaching its extremist ideology in local schools and has forced young boys to become child soldiers.
By Kathryn Maureen Ryan Impunity Watch, Managing Editor
DAMASCUS, Syria –Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the militant Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) which now controls large tracks of Iraq and Syria has reportedly accepted the pledgee of allegiance from Nigeria’s Boko Haram, his spokesperson said in a statement, also calling on African supporters to take up arms. “Our caliph, God save him, has accepted the pledge of loyalty of our brothers of Boko Haram so we congratulate Muslims and our jihadi brothers in West Africa,” Islamic State spokesman Abu Mohammad al-Adnani said in recorded message.
An ISIS spokesperson has reportedly accepted Boko Haram alliance (Photo courtesy of CNN International)
The audio recording was posted online by ISIS supporters in a 28-minute message. The message says that the caliphate, or Islamic State ISIS purports to have founded has now expanded to western Africa. The spokesman congratulated the group’s “jihadi brothers” there. Al Adnani also encourages people to take up arms in Africa if they cannot make the trip to Iraq or Syria. While the authenticity of the message has not ben confirmed, it is feared the message marks the beginning of relations between these separate extremist movements which have together committed untold atrocities in Africa and the Middle East.
Boko Haram has killed thousands of civilians and kidnapped hundreds of people, including hundreds of young girls who were kidnaped from a Nigerian school, during a six-year campaign against the Nigerian government in an attempt to establish an Islamist state in northern Nigeria, the group pledged its allegiance to ISIS last week, highlighting increased coordination between Islamic extremist movements across north Africa and the Middle East.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has declared a caliphate in the territories it has captured in Iraq and Syria. The militants have targeted religious minorities and dissidents, kidnaping and murdering hundreds and forcing women into sex slavery. The group has also posted horrific videos of child soldiers, destruction of cultural antiques as well as videos showing the brutal murder of both Arab and Western hostages. ISIS militants, who have taken up arms against all but their own narrow and skewed interpretation of early Sunni Islamic theology issued a threat to religious minorities “If you want to save your blood and money and live in safety from our swords … you have two choices: Either convert or pay jezyah.”
Officials in the United States have said they were skeptical of whether Boko Haram’s allegiance ISIS would translate into attempts by ISIS militants to provide the Nigerian movement with financial support or even weapons. “We do not currently see any reflections that ISIL would seek to subsume Boko Haram into its own caliphate or even priorities a terrorist partnership with the group,” a U.S. intelligence official said. “Both groups, however, benefit from making the world think that the two deadliest terrorist organizations in history are working together more closely than they actually are,” the official said.
Even if the purported allegiances between these two extremist organizations does not translate into financial or logistical support from either side the allegiance may serve to increase the perceived legitimacy of ISIS and Boko Haram. According to Jacob Zenn, a terror expert who lives in Nigeria
“Boko Haram will get legitimacy, which will help its recruiting, funding and logistics as it expands.” He argued the allegiance “will also get guidance from ISIS in media warfare and propaganda. Previously Boko Haram was a sort of outcast in the global Jihadi community. Now it is perhaps ISIS’s biggest affiliate. ISIS gets more international legitimacy as a global caliphate.” For both Boko Haram and the ISIS movement, propaganda like the latest pledge of allegiance has become a weapon of extremism and an attempt to expand the reach of extremist ideology and power.
By Kathryn Maureen Ryan Impunity Watch, Managing Editor
DAMASCUS, Syria – A new propaganda video released by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) appears to show a young children shooting a detainee the group has claimed was an Israeli spy, a chilling representation of the organizations complete disregard for international law and basic human decency. The victim was identified in the video as 19-year-old Mohamed Said Ismail Musallam, an Israeli citizen of Palestinian descent. The video shows Musallam’s Israeli passport claiming that this document is somehow proof that he was an agent sent to infiltrate the group. The young man’s family says he had no ties with the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, and had, in fact, been recruited by ISIS as a potential member of the militant group. “Mohamed told me and his brother that ISIS took him,” according to Said Musallam, his father. “They sent him money through the Western Union. They said you will have girls, money, cars, villas, paradise, but afterwards he discovered that there is nothing.”
A photo showing a child taking part in ISIS’ alleged execution of Muhammad Musallam. (Photo courtesey of haaretz)
While propaganda videos depicting the brutal murder of detainees have become relatively common propaganda tools for the ISIS movement this video was particularly disturbing because of the young face behind the trigger. Unlike past videos the executioner was not a masked man but was instead a young child.
Another video released in January apparently shows a young boy with a pistol apparently shooting two men in the back of the head. The boy then stands over one of the bodies, fires two more times. Last August, a photo posted to Twitter from an ISIS stronghold showed a 7-year-old boy holding a man’s severed head and his father’s words, “That’s my boy.”
ISIS has taken over schools to indoctrinate children. Human Rights Watch reports ISIS and other extremist groups “have specifically recruited children through free schooling campaigns that include weapons training and have given those dangerous tasks, including suicide bombing missions.” ISIS makes no attempt to hide its use of child soldiers, proudly calling the young fighters “cubs of the caliphate. The group has even called on foreign fighters who come to Iraq and Syria to going the fight to bring their own children and families to the war zone.
The use of child soldiers, which includes any child under the age of 18, is a war crime. Child soldiers, far too young to understand the war around them, often experience psychological trauma from their experiences. According to The Guardian, a study of 300 former Ugandan child soldiers found that approximately one third of the young fighters were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Two-thirds were suffering behavioral and other emotional problems, mostly anxiety and depression.
By Kathryn Maureen Ryan Impunity Watch, Managing Editor
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraqi forces and militias have pushed into former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s home city of Tikrit on Wednesday, advancing from the north and south. The fight is part of their largest counter-offensive so far against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). If the Iraqi government is able to regain control of the oil rich city of Tikrit it would be the first time Iraqi forces have reclaimed a major city from ISIS forces and would likely pave the way for the liberation of Mosul, the largest city in ISIS hands.
A resident welcomed a relative who belonged to militias known as Hashid Shaabi, in the Iraqi town of al-Alam. (Photo courtesy of the Boston Globe)
Army and militia fighters reportedly captured part of Tikrit’s northern Qadisiya district, the provincial governor said, a security officer reported that forces have also made an advance from the south making a rapid push toward the center of the city. “The forces entered Tikrit general hospital,” an official at the main military operation command center said. “There is heavy fighting going on near the presidential palaces, next to the hospital complex.”
North of the city of Tikrit, Kurdish Peshmerga forces have intensified their offensive against ISIS forces, pushing back the militants south and west of Kirkuk while with the support of airstrikes launched by the United States and coalition forces. The Kurds also took control of a key route from Kirkuk to the ISIS stronghold of Mosul, the largest city in Northern Iraq, according to Kurdish officials. As ISIS retreated towards Hawija, residents reported ISIS militants killed some of their own members who had tried to flee the fighting.
In what may be retaliation for the efforts to liberate Tikrit ISIS forces have reportedly launched 13 suicide car attacks in the provincial capital of Ramadi, located 55 miles from Baghdad, in the ISIS stronghold, Anbar providence. The cars were used to attack security and military forces in the city. The death toll from the attacks was not immediately clear but a medical official reported at least give people were killed in the attacks. One of the car bombs was detonated near a bridge in the west of the city which borders the Tigris River, damaging at least part of the bridge, a police source said.
While the attempted liberation of Tikrit marks a major milestone in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant which has pillaged the region, murdering and raping civilians and destroying priceless cultural sites, some have expressed concern that Iraqi forces may seek to take revenge on the Sunni residents in and around Tikrit, as was reported with earlier militia victories in Diyala province. Camp Speicher, near the city of Tikrit, was the site of the massacre more than 1,000 Shi’ite soldiers by ISIS militants. Shi’ite clerics have called on the militias to act with restraint,
