Police express outrage over Trump’s Jan. 6 Pardons by NYT, Brennan Center for Justice, agencies USA   Jan. 2025   Police express outrage over Trump’s Jan. 6 Pardons, by Luke Broadwater for the New York Times   More than 150 officers from the Capitol Police and the D.C. police were injured when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol four years ago.   When inmates are released from federal prison, the Justice Department places a call to their victims, notifying them that the defendant who attacked them is now free. On Tuesday, the phones of U.S. Capitol Police and D.C. police officers were buzzing nonstop.   For Aquilino A. Gonell, a former Capitol Police sergeant, the automated calls began on Monday evening and continued into Tuesday morning after President Trump issued a sweeping legal reprieve to all of the nearly 1,600 defendants, including those convicted of violent crimes, in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.   Between 7:03 a.m. and 9:37 a.m., Mr. Gonell received nine calls from the Justice Department about the release of inmates.   Mr. Gonell, who was assaulted during the attack and retired because of the injuries he suffered, was as outraged and distraught as he was shortly after the violence.   “It’s a miscarriage of justice, a betrayal, a mockery, and a desecration of the men and women that risked their lives defending our democracy,” he said of the nearly 1,600 pardons and 14 commutations.   More than 150 police officers from the two agencies were injured during the assault on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob four years ago. Some were hit in the head with baseball bats, flagpoles and pipes. One lost consciousness after rioters used a metal barrier to push her down as they marched to the building.   Now many of those officers described themselves as struggling and depressed in response to Mr. Trump freeing their attackers.   In the days and weeks after the riot, several police officers at the Capitol on Jan. 6 died, including Officer Brian D. Sicknick of the Capitol Police, who was attacked by the mob, suffered a stroke and died of natural causes on Jan. 7. Officers Jeffrey Smith of Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department and Howard S. Liebengood of the Capitol Police died by suicide in the days after the violence.   Craig Sicknick, the older brother of Brian Sicknick, has dedicated an area of his house to his brother, putting up a portrait and displaying the pocket-size military medallions known as challenge coins and other mementos on a table.   “I think about my brother almost every day,” Mr. Sicknick said. “He spent his life trying to do the right thing. He did it while he was in the military. He did it as a police officer. He did it in his personal life.”   The pardons, Mr. Sicknick said, leave him heartbroken that there will be no accountability for those who stormed the Capitol.   “We almost lost democracy that day,” he said of Jan. 6. “Today, I honestly think we did lose democracy.”   On Capitol Hill on Tuesday, there were few condemnations of the pardons from Republican senators, even those who have spoken out against the violence. And those who did speak out often used the occasion to condemn pardons issued by both former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Mr. Trump.   Senator John Thune, the South Dakota Republican and majority leader, sidestepped questions on Tuesday about whether Mr. Trump acted properly in pardoning the rioters.   “We’re looking at the future, not the past,” said Mr. Thune, who called the pardons “the president’s decision.” He added, “We know the presidential pardon authority was expanded in a massive way by President Biden, and obviously we knew all along President Trump can exercise it like most presidents have, and he did.”   Still, some of the officers who were victims that day are pledging to fight on.   “For anyone who cares about truth and respect for law and law enforcement, his pardons are an unspeakable outrage,” said Patrick A. Malone, a lawyer for seven officers who sued Mr. Trump over the attack. “The officers I represent will not forget!” Mr. Malone said.   Harry Dunn, one of the most outspoken officers who protected the Capitol on Jan. 6, spent Monday and Tuesday checking in with his former colleagues.   “Everybody’s angry and sad and devastated,” said Mr. Dunn, who has left the Capitol Police.   One officer, Mr. Dunn said, went to bed after a long shift only to be awakened by an automated voice mail from victim services informing him of the release of a Jan. 6 defendant.   “Every officer who testified in court is now getting these automated calls that, ‘Hey this defendant is being released,’” Mr. Dunn said. “The number of calls people are getting, it’s unbelievable.”   Mr. Dunn himself said he is feeling a mix of emotions, including frustration and resignation.   “It’s mind-blowing to me that everybody is now surprised and up in arms about it,” he said, adding that Mr. Trump “said he was going to do it, and what me and the other officers were doing speaking out was getting people to realize what was coming.”   He added: “I get so many messages, ‘Harry, you’re a hero.’ I don’t want to be a hero. I want accountability.”   http://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/21/us/politics/jan-6-pardons-police.html http://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/trump-pardoning-jan-6-insurrectionists-would-endorse-attacks-democracy http://www.justice.gov/storage/Report-of-Special-Counsel-Smith-Volume-1-January-2025.pdf http://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-justice-dept-releases-report-trump-attempt-overturn-2020-election-2025-01-14/ http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/14/key-takeaways-jack-smith-report-trump http://apnews.com/article/trump-jack-smith-election-supreme-court-0b9969b480036bb1f7c61a73980d406c http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25182548-chutkan http://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/25/politics/trump-special-counsel-jack-smith/index.html http://www.citizen.org/news/history-if-not-the-courts-will-judge-trumps-unconstitutional-democracy-destroying-actions/ http://www.govinfo.gov/collection/january-6th-committee-final-report   Jan. 20125   President Trump ignores Science, makes decision to Withdraw US from Paris Agreement - Statement from Rachel Cleetus, Union of Concerned Scientists   As part of what is expected to be a spate of deeply anti-scientific and destructive executive orders released his first week in office, President Trump announced today that he would seek to remove the United States from the Paris Agreement—adopted by nearly 200 countries in 2015 with the aim to limit global climate change.   United States withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement would take effect a year after submitting the required letter of intent and mark the second time the country has done so.   Pres. Trump’s announcement of his intention to take the United States out of the Paris Agreement comes as massive wildfires continue to rage in California and just weeks after U.S. and global scientific agencies confirmed the planet experienced its hottest year on record in 2024.   Last year, the United States also endured at least 27 extreme weather and climate-related disasters that each reported damages of $1 billion or more, many of which were worsened by climate change.   Statement by Dr. Rachel Cleetus, the policy director and lead economist for the Climate and Energy Program at UCS. She has attended the U.N.’s international climate talks and has partnered with the international community on climate and energy policies for about 20 years:   “Withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement is a travesty. Such a move is in clear defiance of scientific realities and shows an administration cruelly indifferent to the harsh climate change impacts that people in the United States and around the world are experiencing. Pulling out of the Paris Agreement is an abdication of responsibility and undermines the very global action that people at home and abroad desperately need.   “Regardless of politics, the scientific imperative to address the climate crisis remains clear and necessitates urgent actions from U.S. and global policymakers. Last year was the first time global average temperatures exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels for an entire year. Unless world leaders act quickly, the planet is on track for up to a 3.1 degrees Celsius increase, which would be catastrophic.   As the largest historical emitter of heat-trapping emissions, the United States has a responsibility to do its fair share to stave off the increasingly dire consequences of the climate crisis.   “Instead of seizing the opportunity to expand the economic and public health benefits of clean energy for people across the nation, while working together with the global community to solve this shared challenge, Pres. Trump is choosing to begin his term pandering to the fossil fuel industry and its allies.   His disgraceful and destructive decision is an ominous harbinger of what people in the United States should expect from him and his anti-science cabinet hellbent on boosting fossil fuel industry profits at the expense of people and the planet.   In addition to the obvious climate harms, such an extreme isolationist posture on a paramount issue of international diplomacy will have wider repercussions for the United States’ standing in the world and its ability to secure international cooperation on other issues of national importance.”   Experts say fossil fuel emissions must be cut quickly and deeply to avoid the worst outcomes including more extreme weather, sea level rise, biodiversity loss, food and water insecurity and worsening health impacts.   Paul Bledsoe, a former Clinton White House climate official who now lectures at American University’s Center for Environmental Policy, speaking at the time of the Biden targets being announced in December last year, said: “Trump is risking the climate stability and safety of the planet as part of a culture war political strategy, heedless of billions who will suffer.”   http://wmo.int/media/news/wmo-confirms-2024-warmest-year-record-about-155degc-above-pre-industrial-level http://www.ucsusa.org/about/news/president-trump-ignores-science-makes-disgraceful-decision-withdraw-us-paris-agreement http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/20/trump-executive-order-paris-climate-agreement http://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/21/climate/trump-climate-change-executive-orders.html http://www.dw.com/en/what-does-trumps-second-term-mean-for-the-climate/a-70932970 http://usclimatealliance.org/press-releases/alliance-paris-withdrawal http://www.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2025/01/sierra-club-reaction-trump-s-absurd-energy-emergency http://ips-dc.org/release-climate-justice-groups-paris-agreement-withdrawal-is-deeply-misguided http://350.org/press-release/keeping-optimism-alive-centering-the-climate-agenda-under-president-trump/ http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-news-that-the-united-states-has-withdrawn-from-the-paris-agreement-again/ http://www.wri.org/statement-paris-agreement-withdrawal-erodes-americas-standing-world http://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/pik-statement-on-donald-trumps-inauguration-serious-concerns-about-the-future-of-international-climate-cooperation Visit the related web page
	Iran announces ‘psychological treatment clinic’ for women who defy strict hijab laws by Deepa Parent for Guardian News, Zan Times   Dec. 2024   The Iranian state has said that it plans to open a treatment clinic for women who defy the mandatory hijab (headscarf) laws that require women to cover their heads in public.   The opening of a “hijab removal treatment clinic” was announced by Mehri Talebi Darestani, the head of the Women and Family Department of the Tehran Headquarters for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. She said the clinic will offer “scientific and psychological treatment for hijab removal”.   Iranian women and human rights groups have expressed outrage at the announcement.   Sima Sabet, a UK-based Iranian journalist who was a target of an Iranian assassination attempt last year, said the move is “shameful”, adding that: “The idea of establishing clinics to ‘cure’ unveiled women is chilling, where people are separated from society simply for not conforming to the ruling ideology.”   Iranian human rights lawyer Hossein Raeesi said that the idea of a clinic to treat women who did not comply with hijab laws is “neither Islamic and nor is it aligned with Iranian law”.   He also said it was alarming that the statement came from the Women and Family Department of the Tehran Headquarters for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which falls under the direct authority of the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.   The news has since spread among the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protest groups and female students, sparking fear and defiance.   One young woman from Iran, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: “It won’t be a clinic, it will be a prison. We are struggling to make ends meet and have power outages, but a piece of cloth is what this state is worried about. If there was a time for all of us to come back to the streets, it’s now or they’ll lock us all up.”   The announcement about the opening of the clinic comes after state media reported that a university student who was arrested after stripping down to her underwear in Tehran, reportedly in protest at being assaulted by campus security guards for breaches of the hijab law, had been transferred to a psychiatric hospital   Human rights groups including Amnesty International say there is evidence of torture, violence and forced medication being used on protesters and political dissidents deemed mentally unstable by the authorities and placed in state-run psychiatric services.   Human rights groups have also expressed alarm at the crackdown on women who are considered to be in breach of Iran’s mandatory dress code, saying there has been a recent spate of arrests, forced disappearances and the shuttering of businesses linked to perceived breaches of the hijab laws.   Last week, the Center for Human Rights in Iran highlighted the case of Roshanak Molaei Alishah, a 25-year-old woman who it said was arrested after confronting a man who harassed her on the street over her hijab. The NGO said her current whereabouts is unknown.   http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/nov/14/iran-announces-treatment-clinic-for-women-who-defy-strict-hijab-laws http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/12/iran-un-experts-call-hijab-and-chastity-law-be-repealed http://news.un.org/en/story/2024/12/1158171 http://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/16/women-and-human-rights-organizations-urgently-call-release-women-human-rights http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/01/iran-un-experts-alarmed-supreme-court-upholds-death-sentence-kurdish-woman http://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/09/iran-two-years-after-woman-life-freedom-uprising-impunity-for-crimes-reigns-supreme/ http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/03/iran-institutional-discrimination-against-women-and-girls-enabled-human   Dec. 2024   Draconian new laws in Afghanistan allow mass incarceration of women and children forced to beg because of work ban, Yalda Amini for Zan Times.   Destitute Afghan women arrested for begging under draconian new Taliban laws have spoken of “brutal” rapes and beatings in detention.   Over the past few months, many women said they had been targeted by Taliban officials and detained under anti-begging laws passed this year. While in prison, they claim they were subjected to sexual abuse, torture and forced labour, and witnessed children being beaten and abused.   All the women said they had no other option to begging on the streets for money and food for their children after being unable to find paid work.   Since the Taliban took power in August 2021, women have been barred from most paid work, which has seen levels of destitution, especially among female-led households, increase across the country.   In May, the Taliban passed new laws prohibiting “healthy people” from begging on the streets if they had enough money on them to pay for one day’s food.   A commission was established to register beggars and categorise them as “professional”, “destitute” or “organised”, which involves taking their biometric data and fingerprints. According to Taliban officials, nearly 60,000 beggars have already been “rounded up” in Kabul alone.   Zahra, a 32-year-old mother of three, said she was forced to move to Kabul and beg on the streets for food when her husband, who was in the national army of the former government, disappeared after the Taliban took power in August 2021.   “I went to the neighbourhood councillor and told him I was a widow, asking for help to feed my three kids,” she said. “He said there was no help and told me to sit by the bakery and maybe someone would give me something.”   Zahra said she was unaware of the Taliban’s anti-begging laws until she was arrested.   “A Taliban car stopped near the bakery. They took my son by force and told me to get in the vehicle,” she said. Zahra claimed she spent three days and nights in a Taliban prison and that initially she was made to cook, clean and do laundry for the men working there.   She was then told she would be fingerprinted and have her biometric details recorded. When she resisted, she was beaten until she was left unconscious. She said she was then raped.   “Since being released I’ve thought about ending my life several times, but my children hold me back,” she said. “I wondered who would feed them if I weren’t here.   “Who can I complain to? No one will care, and I’m afraid they’d arrest me again if I spoke up. For my life and my children’s safety, I can’t say anything.”   Another woman, Parwana, said she was detained while begging in Kabul in October with her four-year-old daughter after her husband abandoned them. She said she was taken to Badam Bagh prison and held for 15 days.   “They brought in everyone, even young children who polished shoes on the streets,” she said. “They’d tell us women why don’t we get married, beat us, and make us clean and wash dishes.”   Parwana also said she, along with another two women, was raped while in detention and that the attack had left her traumatised and depressed.   Along with multiple reports of rape and torture of women arrested under the anti-begging laws, former detainees also told the Afghan news outlet Zan Times that they witnessed the abuse of young children in prison, with one woman alleging that two children were beaten to death while she was in detention.   “No one dared speak,” she said. “If we spoke up, they’d beat us and call us shameless. Watching those children die before my eyes is something I’ll never forget.”   The death of detainees rounded up under anti-begging laws is factored into the wording of the Taliban’s new law, in which Article 25 states: “If a beggar dies while in custody and has no relatives or if the family refuses to collect the body, the municipal officials will handle the burial.”   Under the new laws, those classed as “destitute” are legally entitled to financial assistance after their release, but none of the women said they had received any help.   Parwana said that since her release she had been too afraid to beg for food again and instead relied on her neighbours for handouts.   “These days, I go door to door in my neighbourhood, collecting stale, dry bread. I have no other choice,” she said. “The Taliban are brutal and oppressive but where can I go to complain about them? We are alone.”   The Taliban authorities did not reply to multiple requests for a response.   This article has been published in partnership with Zan Times, an Afghan news agency.   http://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-aa-khan-kc-applications-arrest-warrants-situation-afghanistan http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/nov/29/afghanistan-taliban-women-children-arrested-begging-rape-torture-killings-jails-destitution-work-ban http://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2024/12/afghanistan-licenses-ngos-must-not-be-revoked http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/08/new-morality-law-affirms-talibans-regressive-agenda-experts-call-concerted http://reliefweb.int/report/afghanistan/phenomenon-institutionalized-system-discrimination-segregation-disrespect-human-dignity-and-exclusion-women-and-girls-report-special-rapporteur-human-rights-afghanistan-ahrc5625-enarruzh http://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-afghanistan http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/02/gender-apartheid-must-be-recognised-crime-against-humanity-un-experts-say Visit the related web page
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