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      Inside the prisoner exchange that set an American journalist free – podcast

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      When the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested in Yekaterinburg in March 2023, he became the first American journalist in Russia charged with espionage since the end of the cold war. The Guardian’s Russian affairs reporter, Pjotr Sauer, had been talking to his friend Evan that very morning. And, as he explains to Michael Safi, he has spent much of the past 16 months still in contact with Evan – but now in the form of letters sent to a Moscow prison. Gershkovich’s sham trial ended after only two days in July with a 16-year sentence. But ironically – for Pjotr and Evan’s other friends and family – it was a moment of hope: hope that Evan’s case had been rushed through because he was being readied for a historic prisoner exchange. More

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      Assassination again shows Netanyahu’s disregard for US-Israel relations

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      Standing alongside Donald Trump in Florida a week ago, Benjamin Netanyahu was vague on the latest prospect of a ceasefire in the war in Gaza.“I hope we are going to have a deal. Time will tell,” the Israeli prime minister said, two days after his controversial address to a joint session of the US Congress.Throughout his three-day visit to the US, Netanyahu was careful to avoid making any commitment to the deal Biden unveiled on 31 May. While the US insisted publicly that the onus was on Hamas to accept the plan, the administration knew it also needed to pin down Netanyahu personally over his reluctance to commit to a permanent ceasefire.Yet, according to US reports, it now appears that at the very time Netanyahu was publicly speculating about a deal, a remote-controlled bomb had already been smuggled into a guesthouse in Tehran, awaiting its intended target: Ismail Haniyeh, the senior Hamas leader who was assassinated on Wednesday night.Haniyeh, reported the New York Times and CNN, was killed by an explosive device placed in the guesthouse, where he was known to stay while visiting Iran and was under the protection of the powerful Revolutionary Guards. Iran and Hamas have blamed Israel for the attack, which Israel has neither confirmed nor denied. It fits a pattern of previous Israeli targeted killings on Iranian soil.If the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, is to be believed, Netanyahu never divulged any such plan to his American allies. The first Blinken knew of the assassination was when he was told in Singapore, after the event. Later that day he insisted he had been left blind-sided, almost as badly as Iranian intelligence.In Netanyahu’s defence, Israel has not confirmed the US media accounts, nor has it ever made any secret of its intention to kill the senior Hamas leadership as a reprisal for the 7 October attacks. And even as he spoke to Congress, the prime minister could not have known that the reported plan would work so well, or have such a devastating impact.However, the potential consequences of such an assassination were clear to all. It took the frustrated Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, to accuse Netanyahu of sabotage. “How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” he asked.In Washington, the national security council spokesperson John Kirby put on a brave face, claiming the ceasefire process had not been “completely torpedoed”, and insisting: “We still believe the deal on the table is worth pursuing”.The assassination underlines how the US is often left looking like the junior partner in the relationship with Israel, observers say. Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Bernie Sanders, said: “It is another case of Netanyahu putting up two fingers to Biden. There has been month after month after month of these just repeated affronts and humiliations from Netanyahu, culminating in this ridiculous moment last week, where he came and spoke in front of the Congress yet again, to undermine Biden’s ceasefire proposal. Yet Biden, who sets such store by personal relations, refuses to change course.”Duss has said that by refusing to control the supply of US weapons as a means of leverage with Israel, Biden has left Netanyahu free to pursue the war. Biden was left to ring Netanyahu two days after the assassination, and to promise to defend Israel from any threats from Iran and its proxy groups. If there was any private admonition or disapproval, the public read-out of the call concealed it.Biden later expressed his frustration, telling reporters: “We have the basis for a ceasefire. They should move on it now.” Asked if Haniyeh’s death had ruined the prospect of a deal, the president said: “It has not helped.”The killing is a further indicator of how the Biden administration cannot capitalise on a security relationship with a politician whose methods and objectives it does not share, and who it suspects wants its political rival to triumph in November’s US election. Moreover, both Trump and Netanyahu share a common goal – having political power to stave off criminal proceedings against themselves.At issue, too, is the effectiveness of Israel’s long-term military strategy for dismantling Hamas, including the use of assassinations on foreign soil.Haniyeh is the third prominent member of Iran-backed military groups to be killed in recent weeks, after the killing last month of the Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif in Gaza and the strike on the Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut, in turn a response to the killing of 12 children and teenagers in the Druze village of Majdal Shams.In total, according to ACLED, a US-based NGO, Israel has mounted 34 attacks that have led to the death of at least 39 commanders and senior members of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran in the past 10 months.Hugh Lovatt, a Middle East specialist at the European Council on Foreign Relations, describes the killings as a tactical victory, but a strategic defeat. “Haniyeh was a proponent of Palestinian reconciliation, and of a ceasefire. So taking him out of the equation has an impact on the internal power dynamics within the group by strengthening the hardliners, at least in the current term,” he said.Netanyahu, Lovatt added, was undermining Haniyeh “by going back on agreed positions and by being very vocal in saying as soon as the hostages were released we recommence fighting Hamas”.Nicholas Hopton, a former UK ambassador to Tehran, said he feared the assassination was part of a deliberate attempt to sabotage the hopes of the new Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, to rebuild relations with the west.“You can overstate what a reformer means in Iran – he went to the parliament wearing an IRGC uniform – but he was going to give relations with the west a go,” Hopton said. “I think the supreme leader is deeply sceptical it will lead anywhere but thought it was worth an attempt. Pezeshkian may now be stymied right away, and I think that’s what the Israeli assassination of Haniyeh in Tehran was partly designed to do.”Inside Iran, Mohammad Salari, the secretary general of the Islamic Solidarity party, said the killing should be seen as more than the removal of one political figure. The hidden purpose was to overshadow the new government’s policy of engagement and de-escalation, he said.“Netanyahu will use all his efforts to lay stones in the path of realising Iran’s balanced foreign policy, improving relations with European countries, and managing tension with the United States, just like during the nuclear negotiations.”So when the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah,threatened an open battle on all fronts, he probably meant, according to Lovatt, a multi-pronged response designed not to trigger a regional war, but to go further than the retaliation mounted by Iran alone in April. It was notable that Nasrallah added a plea to the White House: “If anybody in the world genuinely wants to prevent a more serious regional war, they must pressure Israel to stop its aggression on Gaza.”At the moment that plea lies unanswered. More

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      Key Black Muslim group backs Kamala Harris for president over Gaza stance

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      Kamala Harris has won the backing for her presidential bid of a key US Muslim organization that had declined to endorse Joe Biden before he withdrew from his re-election campaign.The switch to Harris was a sign that those who voted “uncommitted” instead of actively voting for Biden in the primary, because of their objections to his response to Israel’s war on Gaza, may have found an ally in his vice-president.The group is the political action arm of the non-profit organization the Black Muslim Leadership Council, which was created in March to put pressure on the Biden administration to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.Salima Suswell, the founder and chief executive of the Black Muslim Leadership Council Fund, told NBC on Thursday: “[Harris] has shown more sympathy towards the people of Gaza then both President Biden and Former President Donald Trump.“During Prime Minister Netanyahu’s address to Congress, she decided not to attend. She has repeatedly called for a ceasefire, and I believe she has also expressed empathy towards civilian life and has been very caring as it relates to getting aid to the people of Gaza.”The move signals growing support for a Harris presidency from Democratic groups that were reluctant to support or were outright against another Biden term.The Harris campaign said it was “grateful to BMLC for their support”.“The vice-president is committed to combating Islamophobia wherever it exists and advancing opportunity for black Americans,” a Harris campaign spokesperson said in a statement. “We look forward to working with BMLC to win this November and defeat Donald Trump’s divisive, unpopular agenda.”Although Muslim Americans make up a small percentage of the electorate, they can prove to be crucial in battleground states in which they represent a large swath of the population.Muslims voted overwhelmingly for Biden in 2020, but many have since withdrawn their support due to the US’s strong support for Israel in its war in Gaza. Palestine, with a Muslim-majority population, and the rights of Palestinians, remain key issues for Muslim voters in the US.Harris has repeatedly called for a ceasefire in Gaza and a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine as the way forward to achieve sustainable Middle East peace.Harris has voiced support for Palestinians and said she “condemn[s] any individuals associating with the brutal terrorist organization Hamas”, but she has not explicitly broken with the Biden administration stance to condemn Israel for the killing and forced relocation of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Neither Biden nor the vice-president have called for an arms embargo on Israel – a point many Muslim, Arab American and progressive voters take issue with.In a meeting with Netanyahu in Washington last week Harris said she told him she “will always ensure that Israel is able to defend itself, including from Iran and Iran-backed militias, such as Hamas and Hezbollah”.But she added: “Israel has a right to defend itself, and how it does so matters.” She also said she would “not be silent” about civilian deaths and suffering in Gaza.A movement to vote uncommitted in the Democratic presidential primaries took off in swing-state Michigan and spread, garnering more than 700,000 ballots for the uncommitted cause.The Uncommitted National Movement is pushing for representation at the Democratic national convention later this month in Chicago.Abbas Alawieh, an uncommitted delegate from Michigan, told the Guardian that Harris had “expressed a level of concern about the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza that perhaps we weren’t seeing from the president”.Alawieh added: “We’re getting more engagement than we did under President Biden being at the top of the ticket, and so I’m hopeful that we can move in a direction that leads to her engaging directly.” More

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      The Guardian view on Guantánamo Bay: betraying the victims of terrorism too | Editorial

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      There is no neat exit point from grief. Each anniversary, each life event, each addition to or loss from the family, can bring renewed pain to the bereaved. For relatives of the almost 3,000 killed in the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, that suffering has been compounded by the lack of accountability for their deaths.This week, the US announced that it had reached a plea deal with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, described as the attack’s architect, and two accomplices, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi. They will avoid the death penalty, instead receiving life sentences in exchange for pleading guilty to all the offences with which they were charged. Negotiations continue with two more men. All have been in US custody since 2002, and are held at Guantánamo Bay, in Cuba. For many relatives, there is anger that there will be no trial, and in some cases that the men will not be executed. But for others there is some relief that after 23 years there is a kind of conclusion to the case, however partial and unsatisfactory.Last year, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, the first UN rights investigator to be allowed to visit since the camp’s establishment, described its use of torture as “a betrayal of the rights of victims” of terrorism, as well as breaching the rights of those who had spent more than two decades in indefinite detention. Torture was not merely the standard operating procedure at Guantánamo Bay. It was its raison d’etre. Men were taken there because it lay outside the rule of law. The abuse, however, made it essentially impossible to proceed with material derived from their interrogations, even under the conditions of a military tribunal rather than a criminal trial. Victims of torture lie so that it will stop. This week’s plea deals are not a vindication of the site’s existence: quite the opposite. Over a decade of pretrial hearings have been absorbed by litigating torture, rather than establishing responsibility for terrorism.While conditions have improved, Prof Ní Aoláin, then the special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, wrote that detainees were still subject to “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment”, in addition to living with the “unrelenting harms” from previous abuses. Several have killed themselves; others have been left with severe mental illness.Guantánamo Bay should never have been opened. This was the conclusion not only of human rights groups and lawyers, but of the US general tasked with setting up the detention camp, Michael Lehnert. Even without considering the moral and legal case, he – like others – quickly concluded that many detainees had little intelligence value, and insufficient evidence linking them to war crimes. Of the hundreds kept there, only 18 have been charged with a crime. In 2009, Barack Obama, then US president, vowed to shut the facility within a year. But despite releases and transfers, around 30 men are still held, at a cost of around $14m each annually.The conclusion of a legal process – however inadequate – means that for some, the detention camp will become more akin to a prison. But as Maj Gen Lehnert wrote almost a decade ago, it is hard to overstate the damage caused by its continuing existence. Repressive governments use it to deflect attacks on their own policies; violent extremists employ it as a recruiting tool. As long as it remains open, the place “where due process goes to die” will remain a stain upon the US. More

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      ‘Day of great joy’: Wall Street Journal’s crusade to free Gershkovich succeeds

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      The reporter Evan Gershkovich’s release from a Russian prison on Thursday was celebrated across US and global media but perhaps most happily by journalists at his own paper, the Wall Street Journal in New York.In an email to staff after news of Gershkovich’s release as part of a large-scale prisoner swap, Emma Tucker, the Journal editor-in-chief, said: “A few moments ago, Evan walked free from a Russian plane. He will shortly be on a flight back to the US.“I cannot even begin to describe the immense happiness and relief that this news brings and I know all of you will feel the same. This is a day of great joy for Evan and his family, and a historic day for the Wall Street Journal.“The strength, determination and resilience that Evan, his parents and his sister maintained throughout this long ordeal have been incredible. They have been an inspiration to all of us in the newsroom, to colleagues across the company and to supporters who have campaigned so hard for his release.”Tucker’s assistant editor, Paul Beckett, told the Guardian that this week, editors had detected “an inkling that something was coming”.From “seven o’clock this morning”, he said, he and other senior editors were in Tucker’s office, “trying to find out whatever information we could. We started to see some reports dribble out that things were in the offing, [and] we made the call to wait until we knew that our reporter was on the ground, out of Russian custody, free on the tarmac at Ankara, and then we’d publish.“We were sitting here and really trying to figure out what was happening and it was so complicated – we had flight tracking, we had people in the ground in Ankara, we had people at the White House, we had people at the national security council. We were essentially reporting on our own story, in a way.”Asked how staff reacted when Gershkovich’s freedom was confirmed, Beckett said: “It was great to see the newsroom gather around the office. There was applause. We had champagne, there were smiles, joy, there were tears of relief.“It’s a historic day for the Journal, it’s a historic day in geopolitics, in many ways. But there is just huge thankfulness after 16 months, it’s over.”View image in fullscreenIt has been a long 16 months. But after Gershkovich was arrested and accused of espionage, in late March 2023, the Journal mounted a high-profile campaign to stress his innocence, ensure he was not forgotten and press for his release.Speaking to the New York Times earlier this year, Tucker said: “After an initial flurry of attention in the weeks following Evan’s arrest, keeping the spotlight on his ordeal became a huge challenge for the newsroom amid jam-packed news cycles.“We used every grim milestone as a moment to organise publicity and get Evan back into the headlines: 100 days, his birthday in October, 250 days, every one of his court appearances.”The Journal’s story about Gershkovich’s release and the prisoner swap deal described some effects of the campaign: “Well-wishers raised banners at Major League Baseball games and Premier League soccer matches, calling for his release. Journalists and celebrity news presenters from [Tucker] Carlson to CNN anchor Jake Tapper spoke out on his behalf.“Supporters received upbeat and joke-filled letters from Gershkovich, written in his nine-by-12-ft cell at Moscow’s infamous Lefortovo prison, where Soviet interrogators once tortured and murdered alleged ‘class enemies’.”Beckett said: “We made a decision early on. Someone in the US government told me, really within 24 hours of Evan being taken, that there were times to be loud and there were times to be quiet. And that moment was the time to be loud, and we stayed loud.“Really the effort was to create a landscape in which there could be successful negotiation. We were never going to conduct those negotiations ourselves. But we also firmly believed that there’s so much going on in the world that if Evan ever fell out of the spotlight, it would make it that much more difficult for those negotiations to have been successful.“But this was not the Journal alone. The reaction from our colleagues in media globally, other governments, institutions supporting the free press and just people, well-wishers everywhere, that was the collective voice that spoke for Evan when he was silenced. That made the difference. We’re very grateful [for such] huge support, and we’re incredibly grateful for the happy outcome.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs Journal staffers celebrated, it was only 13 days since Gershkovich was sentenced, in a Moscow courtroom, to 16 years in a high-security penal colony. Then, Tucker and Almar Latour, chief executive of Dow Jones and publisher of the Journal, lamented a “disgraceful, sham conviction … after Evan has spent 478 days in prison, wrongfully detained, away from his family and friends, prevented from reporting, all for doing his job as a journalist.”On Thursday, as the good news spread but before the Journal had confirmed its reporter was free, a dedicated page on the Journal website still hosted a counter showing time elapsed since Gershkovich was arrested. It stood at 491 days, minutes ticking forward towards 492.At the top of the front page, headings read: “Evan Gershkovich, Wrongfully Convicted, Sentenced to 16 Years, A Stolen Year, His Family Reflects, A Timeline, His Reporting, How You Can Help, Write a Message, Latest News and Get Email Updates.”But the paper was ready. After it launched its report on the release deal – and as Annie Linskey, a reporter, described “applause in WSJ’s DC office” – the Journal also rolled out a detailed account of how “secret negotiations to free … Gershkovich unfolded on three continents, involving spy agencies, billionaires, political power players and his fiercest advocate – his mom”.Beckett said: “A lot has happened out of our sight, and appropriately so. Both sides said that was important. The US government obviously was in touch with Evan’s parents and our legal team, but we were still on tenterhooks until two hours ago.”In her email to staff, reported by the Times, Tucker said the paper would now “ensure Evan is well looked after. We want him to take as much time as he needs to recuperate privately and are doing everything we can to support him and his family. I will be travelling later today to meet him when he lands in Texas.”Tucker also said the Journal was “happy too for the other Americans released today who will soon be reunited with their families”. But the paper’s story about Gershkovich’s release and the prisoner swap deal also noted a prisoner not set free.“Marc Fogel, a history teacher at the high school where US Moscow embassy staff sent their children … is serving 14 years in a penal colony. He was arrested in 2021 for carrying less than an ounce of medical marijuana. He said he had intended to use the drug for medical purposes to treat chronic pain.“The US has sought to free him on ‘humanitarian grounds’.”“Obviously, we feel for” prisoners not yet freed, Beckett said. “That is very tough, and I hope that the US government can work its magic again and get these folks home.” More

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      Biden administration blames Hezbollah for ‘horrific’ Golan Heights rocket attack

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      The Biden administration formally placed blame on Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah for the rocket strike that killed 12 children and teenagers on a soccer field in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Sunday.National security council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said the attack was “conducted by Lebanese Hezbollah. It was their rocket, and launched from an area they control. It should be universally condemned.”The spokesperson described the attack as “horrific” and said the US is “working on a diplomatic solution along the Blue Line that will end all attacks once and for all, and allow citizens on both sides of the border to safely return to their homes”.The statement added that US “support for Israel’s security is ironclad and unwavering against all Iran-backed threats, including Hezbollah”.The statement was issued as the Israeli government announced on Sunday that it was withdrawing David Barnea, Israel’s foreign intelligence chief, from cease-fire negotiations between Israel, Egypt, Qatar and the US over the Israel-Gaza war.The day-long talks in Rome were convened to negotiate an Israel-Hamas truce that would see the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians jailed by Israel. Israel did not offer a reason for withdrawing its top negotiator.The attack on Majdal Shams village has intensified fears that without a ceasefire in Gaza of an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon is drawing closer and could draw the US deeper into a regional conflict.Senior US political figures on Sunday looked past the immediate responsibility for attack to blame Iran for escalating regional unrest.The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, emphasized Israel’s “right to defend its citizens and our determination to make sure that they’re able to do that”.But, he added that the US “also don’t want to see the conflict escalate”.“Iran, through its surrogates, Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, is really the real evil in this area,” said Democrat Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer on CBS’s Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.“Israel has every right to defend itself against Hezbollah like they do against Hamas. It’s sort of – it shows you how bad Iran and its surrogates are,” Schumer added, saying that the Hezbollah attack had hit “Arab kids”.“They don’t care – they sent missiles at and they don’t even care who that is. But having said that, I don’t think anyone wants a wider war. So I hope there are moves to de-escalate.”Schumer, the most senior Jewish-American politician in Congress, was part of the controversial bipartisan invitation to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before Congress last week, which led to accusations that US politicians had allowed the body to be used as a stage prop for Israel’s nine-month offensive in Gaza.Schumer, however, did not shake Netanyahu’s hand. “I went to this speech, because the relationship between Israel and America is ironclad and I wanted to show that,” Schumer said, adding that he also has “serious disagreements” with the way the Israeli prime minister “has conducted these policies”.The former house speaker Nancy Pelosi later tweeted that Netanyahu’s “presentation in the House chamber was by far the worst presentation of any foreign dignitary invited and honored with that privilege in American history”.On the other side of the political spectrum, Republican senator Lindsey Graham predicted that US and Lebanese efforts to cool tensions between Israel and Hezbollah would not be successful because “Iran is behind all of this” and warned of possible nuclear concerns.Speaking with CBS’s Face the Nation, Graham blamed the Biden-Harris administration for “a colossal failure in terms of controlling the Ayatollah. They’ve enriched him and Israel is paying the price.”Republican congressman Michael McCaul, chairman of the House foreign affairs committee, which oversees all US foreign military sales and transfers, accused the Biden administration of intentionally delaying weapons shipments to Israel in order to have “leverage” over Israel’s decision-making processes.McCaul said “daylight” between the US and Israel was “very dangerous, especially right now, for us to somehow put daylight between us and our most important US ally democracy in the Middle East.“We don’t want escalation for sure,” he said, describing Hezbollah, Hamas and Houthi rebels as “proxies of Iran”. He said Iran doesn’t want Saudi-Israel normalization, “so it’s not in their interest to have any cease-fire.” More