WASHINGTON: Defense Department leaders placed unusual restrictions on the National Guard for the day of the Capitol riot and delayed sending help for hours despite an urgent plea from police for reinforcement, according to testimony Wednesday that added to the finger-pointing about the government response.
Maj. Gen. William Walker, commanding general of the District of Columbia National Guard, told senators that the then-chief of the Capitol Police requested military support in a “voice cracking with emotion” in a 1:49 p.m. call as rioters began pushing toward the Capitol. Walker said he immediately relayed the request to the Army but did not learn until after 5 p.m. that the Defense Department had approved it. Guard troops who had been waiting on buses were then rushed to the Capitol, arriving in 18 minutes, Walker said.
The hourslong delay cost the National Guard precious minutes in the early hours of the Jan. 6 rioting, with Walker saying he could have gotten personnel into the building within 20 minutes of getting approval. As it stood, the support did not happen until the evening. The delay also stood in contrast to the swift authorization for National Guard support that Walker said was granted in response to the civil unrest that roiled Washington last June as an outgrowth of racial justice protests.
A senior Pentagon official who testified, Robert Salesses, said it took time for the Army to sort out what the National Guard was being asked to do and what its support might look like, especially since the Capitol Police days earlier had not asked for any help. Mindful of criticism that the response to the demonstrations last spring was heavy-handed, military officials were also concerned about the optics of a substantial National Guard presence at the Capitol, and that such visuals could inflame the rioters, Walker said.
“The Army senior leadership” expressed “that it would not be their best military advice to have uniformed Guardsmen on the Capitol,” Walker said.
The Senate hearing is the latest about the missed intelligence and botched efforts to quickly gather National Guard troops as a mob of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters laid siege to the Capitol. Taken together, the hearings have spelled out the challenge law enforcement officials face in sorting through an ocean of unverified tips but also highlighted how police inadequately prepared for the Trump loyalists; that FBI warnings about the threat of violence did not reach top police officials; and that requests for aid were not promptly answered.
“We in the FBI want to bat 1,000, and we want to not have this ever happen again,” said Jill Sanborn, the bureau’s top counterterrorism official and one of the witnesses. “So we’re asking ourselves exactly the questions that you’re asking: Is there a place we could have collected more (intelligence)? Is there something we could have done?”
Meanwhile, the Capitol Police disclosed the existence of intelligence of a “possible plot” by a militia group to breach the Capitol on Thursday. The revelation, coming as the acting police chief was testifying before a House subcommittee, differed from an earlier advisory from the House sergeant-at-arms that said police had no indication that any such violence was planned.
Much of the focus at Wednesday’s Senate hearing was on communications between the National Guard and the Defense Department. Walker described an “unusual” directive that required Pentagon approval before deploying a specialized 40-member “quick reaction force” and before relocating personnel from one traffic intersection to another.
As chaos escalated on Jan. 6, then-Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund asked him for National Guard help in a frantic call and then again on a call with Army officials, who said they did not “think that it looked good” to have a military presence.
“The response to the request took too long, so I think there needs to be a study done to make sure that never happens again,” Walker said. “It shouldn’t take three hours to get a yes or no answer.”
That account was consistent with the recollection of Robert Contee, the acting chief of police for the Metropolitan Police Department, who told lawmakers last week that he was “stunned” by the delayed response. Contee said Sund pleaded with Army officials to deploy National Guard troops as the rioting escalated.
Walker’s testimony, however, conflicts a bit with timelines that were put out and discussed by senior military and defense leaders in the weeks after the riot.
According to the Defense Department, Walker was called at 3 p.m. by Army officials, and was told to prepare Guard troops to deploy. That call was designed to give the Guard notice of the impending deployment so they would have time to move troops from their traffic posts to the armory where they would get new orders, protective equipment and weapons.
The Pentagon said acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller gave verbal authorization for the Guard troops to deploy at about 4:30 p.m., and that at 5:02 p.m., 154 members of the D.C. Guard left the armory, heading to the Capitol.
Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Missouri, said during a break in the hearing that senators “certainly will have questions” for Miller and for former Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy.
“Whether that’s going to require testimony or not, I don’t know, but it’s definitely going to require an opportunity to ask them questions about their view, from their perspective, of why this decision-making process went so horribly wrong,” Blunt said.
Salesses, the senior Pentagon official, stressed that military officials were concerned about responding forcefully to civil disturbance in light of what happened last spring, “where we had helicopters flying above US citizens, we had spy planes flying over folks who were protesting.”
The Capitol Police had not previously requested National Guard help, and in letters to Walker, District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser laid out the city’s request for help and made it clear there would be restrictions on the Guard members.
At last week’s hearing, officials in charge of Capitol security blamed one another as well as federal law enforcement for their own lack of preparation as hundreds of rioters descended on the building, easily breached the security perimeter and eventually broke into the Capitol. Five people died as a result of the rioting.
Thousands of National Guard troops are still patrolling the fenced-in Capitol, and multiple committees across Congress are investigating Jan. 6. The probes are largely focused on security missteps and the origins of the extremism that led hundreds of Trump supporters to break through the doors and windows of the Capitol, hunt for lawmakers and temporarily stop the counting of electoral votes.
Lawmakers have grilled law enforcement officials about missed intelligence ahead of the attack, including a report from an FBI field office in Virginia that warned of online posts foreshadowing a “war” in Washington. Sund has said he was unaware of the report at the time, even though the FBI had forwarded it to the department.
Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray said the report was disseminated through the FBI’s joint terrorism task force, discussed at a command post and posted on an Internet portal available to law enforcement agencies.
Though the information was raw and unverified, Wray said, it was specific and concerning enough that “the smartest thing to do, the most prudent thing to do, was just push it to the people who needed to get it.”
Pentagon hesitated on sending Guard to US Capitol riot, general tells Senate probe
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Pentagon hesitated on sending Guard to US Capitol riot, general tells Senate probe
- The hourslong delay cost the National Guard precious minutes in the early hours of the Jan. 6 rioting by Trump supporters
- Security boosted again amid warnings of a “possible plot” by a militia group to breach the Capitol on March 4
Serbia expels Croatian doctor married to Serb over security threat
She said a police officer called and said there was a problem with her residence.
"When I went to the police station I was given a piece of paper that said I was an unacceptable threat to the security of Serbia and its citizens. I was given one week to leave," she said.
"How can you pack up a life in a week?"
Stojanovic Ivkovic is one of about 20 Croatian citizens who have been ordered to leave Serbia in the past three months, according to Croatian embassy data. Dozens of others have been refused entry at the border. Relations between Croatia and Serbia, which fought a bitter war in the 1990s, have been strained in recent months after a wave of anti-corruption protests, which Serbian pro-government media have accused Croatia's security service of backing. Stojanovic Ivkovic said the only thing she can think of that may account for her being identified as a security threat after 12 years of living in Serbia was her support for the student-led protests, which included attending several rallies.
"However, we do not know if this is the real reason," she said. "We as a family we do not deserve this."
She has filed a complaint and hopes she will be allowed to stay with her family.
Serbia's Interior Ministry did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
"We are extremely worried that in three days last week we had five cases of expulsion (of Croatian citizens)," Hidajet Biscevic, the Croatian ambassador to Serbia, said.
UK Supreme Court rules that equalities law defines a woman as someone born biologically female
- Britain’s highest court scheduled to rule whether a transgender person with a certificate that recognizes them as female can be regarded as a woman under equality laws
LONDON: The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the UK equalities law defines a woman as someone born biologically female.
Justice Patrick Hodge said five judges at the court had ruled unanimously that “the terms ‘woman’ and ‘sex’ in the Equality Act refer to a biological woman.”
The ruling means that a transgender person with a certificate that recognizes them as female should not be considered a woman for equality purposes.
The case stems from a 2018 law passed by the Scottish Parliament stating that there should be a 50 percent female representation on the boards of Scottish public bodies. That law included transgender women in its definition of women.
The women’s rights group successfully challenged that law, arguing that its redefinition of “woman” went beyond parliament’s powers.
Scottish officials then issued guidance stating that the definition of “woman” included a transgender woman with a gender recognition certificate.
FWS sought to overturn that.
“Not tying the definition of sex to its ordinary meaning means that public boards could conceivably comprise of 50 percent men, and 50 percent men with certificates, yet still lawfully meet the targets for female representation,” the group’s director Trina Budge said.
The challenge was rejected by a court in 2022, but the group was granted permission last year to take its case to the Supreme Court.
What are the arguments?
Aidan O’Neill, a lawyer for FWS, told the Supreme Court judges – three men and two women – that under the Equality Act “sex” should refer to biological sex and as understood “in ordinary, everyday language.”
“Our position is your sex, whether you are a man or a woman or a girl or a boy is determined from conception in utero, even before one’s birth, by one’s body,” he said on Tuesday. “It is an expression of one’s bodily reality. It is an immutable biological state.”
The women’s rights group counts among its supporters author J.K. Rowling, who reportedly donated tens of thousands of pounds to back its work. The “Harry Potter” writer has been vocal in arguing that the rights for trans women should not come at the expense of those who are born biologically female.
Opponents, including Amnesty International, said excluding transgender people from sex discrimination protections conflicts with human rights.
Amnesty submitted a brief in court saying it was concerned about the deterioration of the rights for trans people in the UK and abroad.
“A blanket policy of barring trans women from single-sex services is not a proportionate means to achieve a legitimate aim,” the human rights group said.
Bangladesh restores ‘except Israel’ clause in passports after public pressure
- Bangladesh’s previous government dropped the wording in 2021 without public notice
- Immigration says it may take several weeks to finalize procedures to print it again
DHAKA: Bangladesh is reinstating the “except Israel” clause in its passports, the Department of Immigration said on Tuesday, after public pressure to reverse its removal by the previous government.
Bangladeshi passports carried the sentence: “This passport is valid for all countries of the world except Israel” until 2021, when authorities rolled out a new travel document, the phrase was removed without any public notice.
While authorities justified it by saying it was meant to “maintain international standard,” many people in the country — which has no diplomatic relations with Israel — questioned the move.
The new interim government, which took charge of Bangladesh in August after the ouster of its long-standing prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, has decided to undo her cabinet’s decision.
“We’ve received the government’s directive to reinstate the ‘except Israel’ clause in Bangladeshi passports. We are currently working to implement it,” Brig. Gen. Mohammad Nurus Salam, passports director at the Department of Immigration, told Arab News.
“For many years, our passports carried the ‘except Israel’ clause. But the previous government suddenly removed it. We were used to seeing ‘except Israel’ written in our passports. I don’t know why they took it out. If you talk to people across the country, you’ll see they want that line back in their passports. There was no need to remove it.”
Pressure to reinstate the clause has been mounting since the beginning of Israel’s ongoing deadly onslaught on Gaza which began in October 2023.
Over 51,000 people have been killed, 116,000 wounded, and 2 million others face starvation after Israeli forces destroyed most of the region’s infrastructure and buildings, while blocking humanitarian aid from entering.
A clear ban on travel to Israel in Bangladeshi passports was one of the key demands raised during a series of Gaza solidarity protests, which have been held regularly in Dhaka since last month, after Israeli forces unilaterally broke a ceasefire agreement and resumed bombing hospitals, schools and tents sheltering displaced people.
The biggest such protest took place in Dhaka on Saturday, with about 1 million people taking to the streets to call on the international community to “take effective and collective action to end the genocide,” and especially on Muslim countries to immediately sever all economic, military, and diplomatic relations with Israel and to “impose commercial blockades and sanctions on the Zionist state” and begin active diplomatic efforts to isolate it on the international stage.
“People will definitely welcome this new decision. It reflects the feelings of the people of this country,” Salam said, but he was not able to specify when the new passports will be available.
“There are some technical challenges involved with this change. Currently, we import e-passports from Germany under a government-to-government agreement ... It may take another week to finalize the necessary procedures. In the meantime, we are exploring whether there’s any option to modify the existing stock of printed booklets.”
China ‘not afraid to fight’ trade war with US – foreign ministry
- Foreign ministry spokesman: US should stop exerting extreme pressure, stop threatening and blackmailing, and talk to China on the basis of equality, respect and mutual benefit
BEIJING: China warned Wednesday it was “not afraid” to fight a trade war with the United States and reiterated calls for dialogue, after US President Donald Trump said it was up to Beijing to come to the negotiating table.
“If the US really wants to resolve the issue through dialogue and negotiation, it should stop exerting extreme pressure, stop threatening and blackmailing, and talk to China on the basis of equality, respect and mutual benefit,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said.
Britain’s audit watchdog probes EY over Post Office scandal
- Hundreds of self-employed workers at the state-owned Post Office were wrongly prosecuted or convicted between 1999 and 2015 for false accounting, theft and fraud, because of glitches in a software
LONDON: Britain’s Financial Reporting Council has opened an investigation into EY over its audit of Post Office Limited, it said on Wednesday, amid the lingering fallout from one of the country’s worst miscarriages of justice.
The FRC said in a statement it will focus on the audit firm’s role in approving the Post Office’s financial statements from 2015 to 2018, particularly the Horizon IT system which was at the heart of the scandal.
“We have been notified of the FRC’s intention to open an investigation into the EY audits of Post Office Limited for the financial years ending March 2015 – March 2018,” a spokesperson for EY said. “We take our public interest responsibilities extremely seriously and will be fully cooperating with the FRC during their investigation,” the spokesperson said.
Hundreds of self-employed workers at the state-owned Post Office were wrongly prosecuted or convicted between 1999 and 2015 for false accounting, theft and fraud, because of glitches in a software system that incorrectly showed money missing from accounts.
Some were jailed, lost their marriages or otherwise saw their lives destroyed while others died before their names could be cleared.
Spurred into action last year by public outcry following a television series that dramatized the scandal, then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak sought to quash the wrongful convictions while a police investigation and public inquiry have also been carried out.
