The United States has renewed calls for countries to take back their nationals who have been held in detention camps and prisons in northeastern Syria.

Since the military defeat of the Islamic State terror group in 2019, thousands of foreign fighters and their families have been detained in several camps and prisons in areas under the control of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF.

While many countries have been taking back women and children affiliated with IS who are held in two detention centers in northeastern Syria, U.S. officials have urged them to repatriate more than 10,000 IS fighters, who are also held there.

“This is the largest concentration of detained terrorists anywhere in the world,” said Ian Moss, deputy counterterrorism coordinator at the U.S. State Department.

He said IS continues to look for new opportunities to replenish its ranks by trying to free those detained fighters.

“If they escape, they will pose a threat, not only to northeast Syria, but they’ll also pose a threat to the region and to our homelands,” Moss said Wednesday during an event at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The best way to prevent this is to repatriate these individuals so they can be rehabilitated, reintegrated, and, where appropriate, prosecuted.”

More than 50,000 people, mostly women and children, from nearly 54 countries are currently held at al-Hol and Roj, two camps run by the Kurdish-led SDF. The 10,000 IS fighters are being held in more than a dozen prisons across northeastern Syria.

Syrian Kurdish officials say they cannot bear the responsibility of dealing with IS captives alone and that other countries should step in by taking back their citizens. They have also been calling for the establishment of a special tribunal inside Syria for those IS foreign fighters who have committed crimes in Syria.

Asked by VOA whether the U.S. would support such a tribunal in northeast Syria, Moss said the U.S. government believes that for those prisoners from third countries, their home nations have judicial systems that should be used to prosecute them.

“We’re also looking at all options to include the possible prosecution of individuals in northeast Syria. But again, the institutions most capable of effectively prosecuting those cases are found elsewhere,” he added.

According to U.S. officials, more than 3,000 individuals, mostly women and children, were repatriated last year to countries that include Albania, Barbados, Canada, France, Iraq, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, the Netherlands, Norway, Sudan, Spain and Slovakia. So far this year, at least 1,300 others have been repatriated to their home countries.

Moss said the U.S. anticipates that at least 25 countries this year will conduct around one repatriation operation from northeastern Syria.

Despite such efforts, experts say most countries have been reluctant to take back their citizens from Syria for domestic political and security reasons.

“But even in the best-case scenario, this is a time-consuming process because backgrounds need to be investigated and family members need to be tracked down and agree to act as guarantors,” said Calvin Wilder, an analyst at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington.

Wilder said the focus should be more on improving living conditions in al-Hol camp, which has witnessed a growing number of security incidents that have resulted in the deaths of many civilians.

“Repatriating citizens is a hard challenge with many different stakeholders, but increasing camp standards of living is far simpler for the United States to do unilaterally,” he told VOA.

But Moss said the U.S. military, in partnership with the SDF, has been conducting operations against suspected IS operatives inside al-Hol “to reduce threats inside the camp, to give individuals inside the camp some space and to also give space for the provision of humanitarian assistance.”

Americans repatriated

While it is not clear how many U.S. citizens are held in northeastern Syria, State Department official Moss said 39 individuals have been repatriated from there.

“That is certainly a priority for me and for my team and colleagues across the [State] Department,” he said.

“We do everything we can to bring folks home, whether that’s women and children, or other individuals who are in detention, whether they’re known foreign terrorist fighters. We work with our interagency colleagues, as appropriate as they work to develop cases and potentially prosecute those individuals for whom they can bring charges against,” Moss added.

The U.S. has prosecuted several IS members, but the most prominent prosecution involved El Shafee Elsheikh, a former British citizen, who – along with others in an IS cell known as “the Beatles” – was responsible for a hostage-taking that resulted in the deaths of four U.S. citizens, James Foley, Kayla Mueller, Steven Sotloff, and Peter Kassig, as well as British and Japanese nationals in Syria. Elsheikh was sentenced to life imprisonment in August 2022.

This story originated in VOA’s Kurdish Service.
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SpaceX’s giant new rocket blasted off on its first test flight Thursday but exploded minutes after rising from the launch pad and crashed into the Gulf of Mexico.

Elon Musk’s company was aiming to send the nearly 400-foot (120-meter) Starship rocket on a round-the-world trip from the southern tip of Texas, near the Mexican border. It carried no people or satellites.

The plan called for the booster to peel away from the spacecraft minutes after liftoff, but that didn’t happen. The rocket began to tumble and then exploded four minutes into the flight, plummeting into the gulf. After separating, the spacecraft was supposed to continue east and attempt to circle the world, before crashing into the Pacific near Hawaii.

Throngs of spectators watched from South Padre Island, several miles away from the Boca Chica Beach launch site, which was off limits. As it lifted off, the crowd screamed: “Go, baby, go!”

The company plans to use Starship to send people and cargo to the moon and, eventually, Mars. NASA has reserved a Starship for its next moonwalking team, and rich tourists are already booking lunar flybys.

It was the second launch attempt. Monday’s try was scrapped by a frozen booster valve.

At 394 feet and nearly 17 million pounds of thrust, Starship easily surpasses NASA’s moon rockets — past, present and future. The stainless steel rocket is designed to be fully reusable with fast turnaround, dramatically lowering costs, similar to what SpaceX’s smaller Falcon rockets have done soaring from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Nothing was to be saved from the test flight.

The futuristic spacecraft flew several miles into the air during testing a few years ago, landing successfully only once. But this was to be the inaugural launch of the first-stage booster with 33 methane-fueled engines.
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The yearslong fight by a Native American media outlet to have its editorial independence restored is the focus of a documentary that examines challenges for Indigenous journalists.

“Everyone says the same thing after watching the film: ‘I had no idea this was happening here in the U.S.,'” says Rebecca Landsberry-Baker, co-director of the documentary “Bad Press.”

Her film follows Angel Ellis of Mvskoke Media as she works to overturn the tribal council’s repeal of a press freedom act that had enshrined her paper’s rights.

That paper — Mvskoke Media — serves the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in Okmulgee, Oklahoma.

Tribal nations each have their own laws, constitution and governance. But of the 574 federally recognized tribes, only five have laws protecting freedom of the press. Without those protections, the media outlets are at risk of censorship and intimidation.

When the Native American Journalists Association, or NAJA, surveyed 65 media workers in 2018, it found that journalists were being restricted when covering the news.

More than half of the respondents said tribal affairs had gone unreported because of censorship at least some of the time, and 46% reported intimidation and harassment. One-third said officials had to approve stories before publication all or most of the time.

As a reporter and the executive director of NAJA, the promotion of press freedom is a core focus for Landsberry-Baker.

She started work at Mvskoke Media — then known as the Muscogee Nation News —right out of journalism school. There, she says, she experienced firsthand the “censorship from tribal administrations.”

Press freedom “provides a mechanism for accountability” between tribal officials and citizens, Landsberry-Baker told VOA. “If you don’t have an independent media outlet that’s reporting on what’s happening, then you don’t have educated and informed citizens and thusly, informed voters.”

But media rights on tribal lands are further complicated by funding.

A 2018 report by the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance found that 72% of Native American newspapers and radio stations were owned and controlled by tribal governments.

Less than half of 1% of media workers identify as Native American, according to 2019 data, the most recent available from the News Leaders Association, and mainstream media fall short in coverage of Indigenous issues. For some Native American communities, a tribal news outlet may be the only source of information about tribal affairs.

The Muscogee (Creek) Nation is in a minority of tribal outlets whose media rights are enshrined. In 2015, it passed legislation naming Mvskoke Media an independent news source. The law cited a need to have “news and activities reported objectively and without interference or bias.”

So when the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s National Council in 2018 revoked that act in an emergency session, Landsberry-Baker decided she had to act.

“I knew this story can’t go untold in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and I have to do something about it, and I have to document it in some way,” Landsberry-Baker said. She placed a phone call to Joe Peeler, who signed on as co-director of a documentary and flew from Los Angeles to Oklahoma to begin filming.

Their film, “Bad Press,” zeroes in on proceedings in which at least one council member argued that the news published by Mvskoke Media wasn’t positive enough, therefore warranting the repeal.

Following the decision, a Muscogee (Creek) Nation official took editorial control of the paper, requiring all articles to be submitted for approval before publication.

David Hill, principal chief of Muscogee (Creek) Nation, did not respond to VOA’s request for comment.

In the months that followed, 10 of Mvskoke Media’s 16 employees quit.

Ellis was one of the few who stayed, saying she felt compelled to support her community and continue to tell its stories.

“Our community is one that’s been almost left out of the textbooks, the history books,” Ellis told VOA. “Many of the stories were not considered interesting to the mainstream. And I see our journalism that we’re doing as a way to compile it, to take that snapshot of us. … That way when people are looking back, they know how we got where we are.”

Ellis, who is now director of Mvskoke Media, started at the paper in 2008.

“It’s more than just a newsletter. It’s more than a newspaper. It’s more than a news program,” Ellis said. “It’s the combative weapon against erasure that we’re trying to achieve.”

Ellis, who in 2011 was dismissed from the paper over a dispute stemming from a front-page story about an official arrested for embezzlement, had returned to the media outlet in 2018, just three months before the act was repealed.

She says having the documentary camera crew follow her provided not only visibility but protection.

The crew also kept Ellis committed as the fight dragged on. Landsberry-Baker and her team ended up filming almost 500 hours of footage over a four-year period.

“I had no idea how the story would end, but I felt some responsibility to be able to document this important moment for my tribe and to see how things would play out good or bad,” Landsberry-Baker said.

As it turns out, things ended up working in favor of press freedom. In 2021, a constitutional amendment was placed on the midterm election ballot of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. A majority — 76.25% — voted in favor of press freedom.

“To see that citizen engagement, and to see them embracing this concept of news, good or bad, is our story, and we feel like it’s an important component to our sovereignty — was an overwhelming, uniting factor throughout the whole thing,” Ellis said.

The Muscogee (Creek) Nation also went on to elect a principal chief who had campaigned on a pro-media platform. Several other candidates who supported press freedom were elected to the National Council.

Landsberry-Baker says the documentary, which debuted in January at the Sundance Film Festival, is a culmination of her life’s work.

Since its release, journalists from tribes across the U.S. have told her that the film reflects their own struggles with press freedom.

“Our ultimate impact goal is to see more tribes with free press protections at whatever level is comfortable for them,” she said. “And so I’m really hopeful that [the documentary] lays out one path and one way to do that.”
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A county commissioner in far southeast Oklahoma who was identified by a local newspaper as one of several officials caught on tape discussing killing reporters and lynching Black people has resigned from office, Governor Kevin Stitt’s office confirmed Wednesday.

Stitt spokesperson Carly Atchison said the office received a handwritten resignation letter from McCurtain County Commissioner Mark Jennings. In it, Jennings says he is resigning immediately and that he plans to release a formal statement “in the near future regarding the recent events in our county.”

The threatening comments by Jennings and officials with the McCurtain County Sheriff’s Office were obtained following a March 6 meeting and reported by the McCurtain Gazette-News earlier this week in its weekend edition. They have sparked outrage and protests in the city of Idabel, the county seat.

In a post on the sheriff’s office Facebook page on Tuesday, officials did not address the recorded discussion but claimed the recording was illegally obtained.

On Wednesday, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation confirmed it has launched an investigation into the matter at the request of the governor.

The recorded conversation included Sheriff Kevin Clardy, sheriff’s Captain Alicia Manning, Jennings and Jail Administrator Larry Hendrix. During that conversation, Clardy, Manning and Jennings appear to discuss Bruce Willingham — the longtime publisher of the Gazette-News — and his son Chris Willingham, a reporter.

Jennings tells Clardy and Manning “I know where two deep holes are dug if you ever need them,” and the sheriff responds, “I’ve got an excavator.”

Jennings also says he’s known “two or three hit men” in Louisiana, adding “they’re very quiet guys.”

In the recording, Jennings also appears to complain about not being able to hang Black people, saying: “They got more rights than we got.”

The Associated Press is working to verify the authenticity of the recording. None of the four officials returned telephone calls or emails from The Associated Press seeking comment.

Bruce Willingham told the AP the recording was made when he left a voice-activated recorder inside the room after a county commissioner’s meeting because he suspected the group was continuing to conduct county business after the meeting had ended, in violation of the state’s Open Meeting Act.

Willingham said he twice spoke with his attorneys to be sure he was doing nothing illegal.

Joey Senat, a journalism professor at Oklahoma State University, said under Oklahoma law, the recording would be legal if it were obtained in a place where the officials being recorded did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Bruce Willingham said he believes the local officials were upset about “stories we’ve run that cast the sheriff’s office in an unfavorable light,” including the death of Bobby Barrick — a Broken Bow, Oklahoma, man who died at a hospital in March 2022 after McCurtain County deputies shot him with a stun gun. The newspaper has filed a lawsuit against the sheriff’s office seeking body camera footage and other records connected to Barrick’s death.

Separately, Chris Willingham has filed a federal lawsuit against the sheriff’s office, Clardy, Manning and the Board of County Commissioners alleging Manning slandered him after he wrote an eight-part series of articles detailing problems inside the sheriff’s office. The lawsuit claims after the first few articles were published, Clardy and Manning began investigating which office employees were speaking to the newspaper and were attempting to get a search warrant for Willingham’s phone.

The lawsuit, which was filed on the same day the recording was made, alleges that after the series was published, Manning told a third party during a teleconference that Chris Willingham exchanged marijuana for sexually explicit images of children from a man who had been arrested on child sex abuse image charges.

“Manning made these (and other) false statements about Willingham in retaliation for articles he wrote about the (sheriff’s office) as a reporter for the McCurtain Gazette and to destroy his credibility as a reporter and journalist,” the lawsuit states.

On Tuesday, the Oklahoma Sheriff’s Association, a voluntary membership organization and not a regulatory agency, held an emergency meeting of its board. It voted unanimously to suspend Clardy, Manning and Hendrix from the association.
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Top White House officials such as Vice President Kamala Harris and first lady Jill Biden have crisscrossed the African continent this year to implement what President Joe Biden has described as partnerships between the United States and African countries. And a range of U.S. government officials — including lawmakers — have also traversed the continent, doing lower-profile work.

VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell sat down with Democratic Senator Chris Coons, a longtime and frequent visitor to Africa.

“This is a continent of incredible potential and opportunity,” Coons, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and its Africa subcommittee, told VOA. “If we can work in close partnership with young African nations to address climate change, food insecurity, human rights, sustainable development, urbanization — some of the key challenges of this century — we can solve those problems for the world.”

Coons also spoke about his upcoming participation in a classified Senate briefing over the recent leak of more than 100 classified documents by a member of the U.S. Air National Guard.

Those documents covered matters with global impact, like U.S. spying efforts around the world, assessments of the Russian and Ukrainian armed forces, and of China’s aerial capabilities and access around Taiwan, the democratic island that Beijing claims as its own.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

VOA: You recently accompanied the vice president on a multicountry Africa tour. What were the measurable, demonstrable outcomes of that and other high-profile U.S. visits to Africa this year?

Senator Chris Coons: The key goal here is to show up, is to engage, is to demonstrate that the United States is a trusted, valuable partner in public health, in economic development, in the transformation of the energy sector, in helping agriculture transform to combat food insecurity. The vice president, in the country that I traveled with her to — Ghana — focused on youth opportunity and entrepreneurship and creative enterprises, and the implementation of the Global Fragility Act.

She announced $100 million in investments to help stabilize Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Benin and Togo — countries that I’ve also been actively engaged in.

VOA: Let’s talk about Sudan. Yesterday, VOA talked to [former U.S. and U.N. diplomat] Jeffrey Feltman, who told us that the U.S. “got played” by both of the combatant leaders in Sudan. Is it time for Congress to break ties with the ruling military leadership in Sudan? Are you planning to author something on that?

Coons: This is something that had been feared for a number of weeks as relations between them got more and more tense. I have not given up hope that there is still a path towards an end to the violence, but we need to prepare for the very real possibility that Sudan is about to descend into all-out civil war. My concern is that this may quickly become a proxy war. I am talking with leadership here this week about our options for the path forward.

VOA: Kenyan media is reporting that you played a big role in bringing about an accord between President between President William Ruto and his nemesis, opposition leader Raila Odinga.

Can you take us into the room? What you did, what you promised? And is the U.S. seen as a capable negotiator, facilitator and guarantor in these sorts of disputes?

Coons: I had the opportunity to have, I hope, some positive and productive personal conversations with the deputy president, with the former prime minister and with the former president, to just help them hear each other and to act as an intermediary. I think central is the path forward for the [electoral commission]. That is critical to there being in the future free and fair elections in Kenya.

My core message, frankly, to everyone I met with was: The United States is not trying to push any specific outcome or alignment of this government. We’re simply trying to help you hear each other and recognize that democracy is fragile, is difficult, and requires there being space for a legitimate opposition to be heard, for complaints and concerns about the economy about the election to be heard, and for the duly elected president of the country to be able to lead the country forward.

VOA: What are your intentions and hopes for the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief [PEPFAR] and the African Growth and Opportunity Act [AGOA]? Is there bipartisan support for continuing both of them?

Coons: I had a chance a number of weeks ago to visit Botswana, South Africa, and Zambia to look at their PEPFAR programming, to look at the history and the future of PEPFAR. I think it can and should be reauthorized. And it will get a strong bipartisan vote to do so.

It is expensive, but it has a significant positive and sustained impact. I think it shows the world — but in particular, the countries that principally benefit in Africa — that the United States is capable of being a great partner over many years to persist in what is a really critical fight that helps the whole world, but that particularly helps those at the margins — the poorest women, children, those who are immunocompromised — to live good and full lives.

I was closely involved in the last reauthorization of AGOA. I’ve seen the positive impacts it has on the ground in a few countries, principally South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia. It’s possible for many more countries to benefit from AGOA, to use it to export apparel or produce or manufacture products into the United States.

VOA: This intelligence leak has triggered a review of security protocols. You’re going into this classified briefing. What concerns and questions do you have?

Coons: This is a significant breach of American intelligence. And there’s clearly going to be accountability at the unit level, as well as for this individual who I expect will end up spending a significant amount of time in jail for these actions. If someone with this relatively junior rank and youth in our military can expose such significant secrets for such a callow and simple reason, it has to raise larger questions about the control that we’re exercising over the flow of intelligence products both within our military and across our government.

I’m expecting to hear what else has been learned about how this happened, what response there’s been and how we’re going to better manage intelligence information.

VOA: And are you concerned about tightening information and the implications of that as the U.S. continues to fund expensive and sensitive efforts like the war in Ukraine?

Coons: I am optimistic that we can show that the oversight that’s happening both remotely and now in person on the ground in Ukraine gives us confidence that the money we are sending is being well spent.

In my visit to Kyiv last fall with Senator [Rob] Portman, we spoke to our ambassador there, some of the accountability teams, the outside contractors that are providing insight into how our funds are being spent. And I’m so far optimistic that we’re going to be able to meet that mark of showing the American people that the money we’re investing in Ukraine’s defense in Ukraine, fighting the Russian occupiers, is money well spent.
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The U.S. Justice Department is asking Congress for additional authority to funnel seized Russian assets to Ukraine.

In December, Congress authorized the Justice Department to transfer the proceeds of forfeited Russian assets to the State Department for Ukrainian reconstruction.

But the power applies only to assets seized in connection with violating U.S. sanctions under certain presidential executive orders. 

As a result, millions of dollars’ worth of Russian assets seized and forfeited in violation of U.S. export controls and other economic countermeasures cannot be transferred.

Now, the Justice Department is urging Congress to expand the range of seized assets that it can transfer for Ukrainian rebuilding. 

“We’re leaving money on the table if we don’t expand our ability to use the forfeited assets that we gain from enforcement of our export control violations and expanding the sanctions regimes that that transfer authority is applicable to,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday. “So I urge the Congress to give us the additional authority so we can make the oligarchs pay for rebuilding Ukraine as well.”

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Justice Department, led by Attorney General Merrick Garland, has cracked down on Russian oligarchs and investigated war crimes.

The law enforcement agency set up a task force shortly after the invasion to enforce sweeping U.S. sanctions and export controls. 

Task Force Kleptocapture has since seized more than $500 million in assets owned by Russian oligarchs and others who support Moscow and dodge U.S. sanctions, Monaco said.

The seized assets include a $300 million super yacht owned by Russian billionaire Suleiman Kerimov, and a $90 million yacht belonging to Viktor Vekselberg, another Russian oligarch. 

The Justice Department is believed to have used its congressionally granted authority to transfer seized Russian funds only once. 

In February, Garland authorized the transfer of $5.4 million seized from a Denver-based bank account of sanctioned Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev.

In the more than one year since Russia’s assault on Ukraine, the Justice Department has charged more than 30 individuals with sanctions evasion, export control violations, money laundering and other crimes, and arrested defendants in more than a half-dozen countries, Monaco said. 
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