Euro Arms Pipeline to Middle East

Posted on July 28, 2016July 28, 2016 by Denise Simon

Making a Killing: The 1.2 Billion Euro Arms Pipeline to Middle East

An unprecedented flow of weapons from Central and Eastern Europe is flooding the battlefields of the Middle East.

Lawrence Marzouk, Ivan Angelovski and Miranda Patrucic BIRN Belgrade, London, Sarajevo

BalkanInsight: As Belgrade slept on the night of November 28, 2015, the giant turbofan engines of a Belarusian Ruby Star Ilyushin II-76 cargo plane roared into life, its hull laden with arms destined for faraway conflicts.

Rising from the tarmac of Nikola Tesla airport, the hulking aircraft pierced the Serbian mist to head towards Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

It was one of at least 68 flights that in just 13 months transported weapons and ammunition to Middle Eastern states and Turkey which, in turn, funnelled arms into brutal civil wars in Syria and Yemen, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, OCCRP, has found. The flights form just a small part of €1.2 billion in arms deals between the countries since 2012, when parts of the Arab Spring turned into an armed conflict.

Belgrade Airport | BIRN

Meanwhile, over the past two years, as thousands of tonnes of weapons fly south, hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled north from the conflicts that have killed more than 400,000 people. But while Balkan and European countries have shut down the refugee route, the billion-euro pipeline sending arms by plane and ship to the Middle East remains open – and very lucrative.

It is a trade that is almost certainly illegal, according to arms and human rights experts.

“The evidence points towards systematic diversion of weapons to armed groups accused of committing serious human rights violations. If this is the case, the transfers are illegal under the ATT (United Nations’ Arms Trade Treaty) and other international law and should cease immediately,” said Patrick Wilcken, an arms-control researcher at Amnesty International who reviewed the evidence collected by reporters.

But with hundreds of millions of euros at stake and weapons factories working overtime, countries have a strong incentive to let the business flourish. Arms export licences, which are supposed to guarantee the final destination of the goods, have been granted despite ample evidence that weapons are being diverted to Syrian and other armed groups accused of widespread human rights abuses and atrocities.

Robert Stephen Ford, US ambassador to Syria between 2011 and 2014, told BIRN and the OCCRP that the trade is coordinated by the US Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Turkey and Gulf states through centres in Jordan and Turkey, although in practice weapon supplies often bypass this process.

BIRN and the OCCRP examined arms export data, UN reports, flight records, and weapons contracts during a year-long investigation that reveals how thousands of assault rifles, mortar shells, rocket launchers, anti-tank weapons, and heavy machine guns are pouring into the troubled region, originating from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia.

Read all the documents used in the investigation at BIRN’s online library BIRN Source.

Since the escalation of the Syrian conflict in 2012, these eight countries have approved the shipment of weapons and ammunition worth at least 1.2 billion euros to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, and Turkey.

The figure is likely much higher. Data on arms export licences for four out of eight countries were not available for 2015 and seven out of eight countries for 2016. The four recipient countries are key arms suppliers to Syria and Yemen with little or no history of buying from Central and Eastern Europe prior to 2012. And the pace of the transfers is not slowing, with some of the biggest deals approved in 2015.

Eastern and Central European weapons and ammunition, identified in more than 50 videos and photos posted on social media, are now in use by Western-backed Free Syrian Army units, but also in the hands of fighters of Islamist groups such as Ansar al-Sham, Al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ISIS, in Syria, factions fighting for Syrian President Bashar-al Assad and Sunni forces in Yemen.

On April 7, 2016, twitter User @bm27_uragan, who monitors the spread of weapons in the Syrian conflict, posted a video apparently of Free Syrian Army rebel using Serbian made Coyote M02 heavy machine gun in Southern Aleppo in Syria. The Coyote M02 has been independently identified as a Coyote M02.

Markings on some of the weapons identifying the origin and date of production reveal significant quantities have come off production lines as recently as 2015.

Out of the 1.2 billion euros in weapons and ammunition approved for export, about 500 million euros have been delivered, according to UN trade information and national arms export reports.

The frequency and number of cargo flights – BIRN and the OCCRP identified at least 68 in just over one year – reveal a steady flow of weapons from Central and Eastern Europe airports to military bases in Middle East.

The most commonly used aircraft – the Ilyushin II-76 – can carry up to 50 tonnes of cargo or approximately 16,000 AK-47 Kalashnikov rifles or three million bullets. Others, including the Boeing 747, are capable of hauling at least twice that amount.

But arms and ammunitions are not only coming by air. Reporters also have identified at least three shipments made by the US military from Black Sea ports carrying an estimated 4,700 tonnes of weapons and ammunition to the Red Sea and Turkey since December 2015.

One Swedish member of the EU parliament calls the trade shameful.

“Maybe they –[Bulgaria, Slovakia and Croatia] – do not feel ashamed at all but I think they should,” said Bodil Valero, who also served as the rapporteur for the EU’s last arms report.“Countries selling arms to Saudi Arabia or the Middle East-North Africa region are not carrying out good risk assessments and, as a result, are in breach of EU and national law.”.

OCCRP and BIRN talked to government representatives in Croatia, Czech Republic, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovakia who all responded similarly saying that they are meeting their international obligations. Some cited that Saudi Arabia is not on any international weapons black lists and other said their countries are not responsible if weapons have been diverted.

A question of legality

The global arms trade is regulated by three layers of interconnected legislation — national, European Union, EU, and international – but there are no formal mechanisms to punish those who break the law.

Beyond the blanket ban on exports to embargoed countries, each licence request is dealt with individually.

In the case of Syria, there are currently no sanctions on supplying weapons to the opposition.

As a result, the lawfulness of the export approval hinges on whether countries have carried out due diligence on a range of issues, including the likelihood of the arms being diverted and the impact the export will have on peace and stability.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia are signatories of the UN’s Arms Trade Treaty, which entered into force in December 2014, and lists measures to prevent the illicit trade and diversion of arms.

Member states of the EU are also governed by the legally-binding 2008 Common Position on arms exports, requiring each country to take into account eight criteria when accessing arms exports licence applications, including whether the country respects international human rights, the preservation of “regional peace, security and stability” and the risk of diversion.

As part of their efforts to join the EU, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro have already accepted the measures and have amended their national law. Serbia is in the process of doing so.

Weapons exports are initially assessed based on an end-user certificate, a key document issued by the government of the importing country which guarantees who will use the weapons and that the arms are not intended for re-export.

Authorities in Central and Eastern Europe told BIRN and the OCCRP that they also inserted a clause which requires the buyer to seek approval if they later want to export the goods.

Beyond these initial checks, countries are required to carry out a range of other risk assessments based on national and EU law and the ATT, although conversations with, and statements from, authorities revealed little evidence of that.

OCCRP and BIRN talked to government representatives in Croatia, Czech Republic, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovakia who all responded similarly saying that they are meeting their international obligations. Some cited that Saudi Arabia is not on any international weapons black lists and other said their countries are not responsible if weapons have been diverted. The three other countries did not respond to requests for comment.

The Czech Foreign Ministry was the only public body to directly address concerns about human rights abuses and diversions, saying it took into account both when weighing up an export licence and had blocked transfers on that basis.

How legal are these arms sales to the Middle East? Find out more here

Saudi Arabia – The weapons king

The Central and Eastern European weapons supply line can be traced to the winter of 2012, when dozens of cargo planes, loaded with Saudi-purchased Yugoslav-era weapons and ammunition, began leaving Zagreb bound for Jordan. Soon after, the first footage of Croatian weapons in use emerged from the battleground of Syria.

According to a New York Times report from February 2013, a senior Croatian official offered the country’s stockpiles of old weapons for Syria during a visit to Washington in the summer of 2012. Zagreb was later put in touch with the Saudis, who bankrolled the purchases, while the CIA helped with logistics for an airlift that began late that year.

While Croatia’s government has consistently denied any role in shipping weapons to Syria, former US ambassador to Syria Ford confirmed to BIRN and the OCCRP the New York Times account from an anonymous source of how the deal was hatched. He said he was not at liberty to discuss it further.

This was just the beginning of an unprecedented flow of weapons from Central and Eastern Europe into the Middle East, as the pipeline expanded to include stocks from seven other countries. Local arms dealers sourced arms and ammunition from their home countries and brokered the sale of ammunition from Ukraine and Belarus, and even attempted to secure Soviet-made anti-tank systems bought from the UK, as a Europe-wide arms bazaar ensued.

Prior to the Arab Spring in 2011, the arms trade between Eastern Europe and Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, UAE, and Turkey – four key supporters of Syria’s fractured opposition – was negligible to non-existent, according to analysis of export data.

But that changed in 2012. Between that year and 2016, eight Eastern European countries approved at least 806 million euros worth of weapons and ammunition exports to Saudi Arabia, according to national and EU arms export reports as well as government sources.

Jordan secured export licences worth 155 million euros starting in 2012, while the UAE netted 135 million euros and Turkey 87 million euros, bringing the total to 1.2 billion euros.

Qatar, another key supplier of equipment to the Syrian opposition, does not show up in export licences from Central and Eastern Europe.

Jeremy Binnie, Middle East arms expert for Jane’s Defence Weekly, a publication widely regarded as the most trusted source of defence and security information, said the bulk of the weapon exports from Eastern Europe would likely be destined for Syria and, to a lesser extent, Yemen and Libya.

“With a few exceptions, the militaries of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE and Turkey use Western infantry weapons and ammunition, rather than Soviet-designed counterparts,” said Binnie. “It consequently seems likely that large shipments of such materiel being acquired by – or sent to – those countries are destined for their allies in Syria, Yemen, and Libya.”

BIRN and the OCCRP obtained confidential documents from Serbia’s Ministry of Defence and minutes from a series of inter-ministerial meetings in 2013. The documents show the ministry raised concerns that deliveries to Saudi Arabia would be diverted to Syria, pointing out that the Saudis do not use Central and Eastern European stock and have a history of supplying the Syrian opposition. The Ministry turned down the Saudi request only to reverse course more than one year later and approve new arms shipments citing national interest. Saudi security forces, while mostly armed by Western producers, are known to use limited amounts of Central and Eastern European equipment. This includes Czech-produced military trucks and some Romanian-made assault rifles. But even arms exports destined for use by Saudi forces are proving controversial, given their involvement in the conflict in Yemen.

The Netherlands became the first EU country to halt arms exports to Saudi Arabia as a result of civilian deaths in Yemen’s civil war, and the European Parliament has called for an EU-wide arms embargo.

Supply Logistics: Cargo flights and airdrops

Weapons from Central and Eastern Europe are delivered to the Middle East by cargo flights and ships. By identifying the planes and ships delivering weapons, reporters were able to track the flow of arms in real time.

Detailed analysis of airport timetables, cargo carrier history, flight tracking data, and air traffic control sources helped pinpoint 68 flights that carried weapons to Middle Eastern conflicts in the past 13 months. Belgrade, Sofia and Bratislava emerged as the main hubs for the airlift.

Most frequent were flights operated from Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. The flights were either confirmed as carrying weapons, were headed to military bases in Saudi Arabia or the UAE or were carried out by regular arms shippers.

The Middle East Airlift

At least 68 cargo flights from Serbia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic have carried thousands of tons of munitions in the past 13 months to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan, three key suppliers of the Syrian rebels.

These were identified through detailed analysis of airport timetables, cargo carrier history, flight tracking data, leaked arms contracts, end user certificates, and air traffic control sources.

Cargo flights from Central and Eastern Europe to the Middle East, and particularly military bases, were extremely uncommon before late 2012, when the upsurge in weapons and ammunition purchases began, according to EU flight data and interviews with plane-spotters.

The most commonly used aircraft – the Ilyushin II-76 – can carry up to 50 tonnes of cargo or approximately 16,000 AK-47 Kalashnikov rifles or three million bullets. Others, including the Boeing 747, are capable of hauling at least twice that amount.

Of the 68 flights identified, 50 were officially confirmed to have carried arms and ammunition:

Serbia’s Civil Aviation Directorate confirmed that 49 flights departing or passing through Serbia were carrying arms and ammunition from June 1, 2015 to July 4, 2016. The confirmation came following weeks of refusal to comment on grounds of confidentiality and after BIRN and the OCCRP presented its evidence, including photographs showing military boxes being loaded onto planes at Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla Airport on four different occasions.

An official at the Bulgarian National Customs Agency confirmed one flight, operated by Belarussian cargo carrier Ruby Star Airways, was carrying arms from the remote Bulgarian Gorna Oryahovitsa Airport to Brno–Turany Airport, the Czech Republic, and on to Aqaba, Jordan.

An additional 18 flights were identified as very likely to have been carrying arms and ammunition based on one of three variables: the air freight company’s history of weapons supplies; connections to earlier arms flights; or a destination of a military airport:

Ten flights were made to Prince Sultan Air Base in Al Kharj, Saudi Arabia and Al Dhafra Air Base in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, indicating the likely presence of weapons or ammunition. Additionally, 14 flights to Prince Sultan and Al Dhafra air bases are confirmed as having carried weapons during the same period by Serbia’s Civil Aviation Directorate.

Seven flights were operated from Slovakia and Bulgaria by Jordan International Air Cargo, part of the Royal Jordanian Air Force, which were revealed to have carried weapons and ammunition from Croatia to Jordan in the winter of 2012. Bulgarian retired colonel and counter-terrorism expert Slavcho Velkov, who maintains extensive contacts with the military, told BIRN and the OCCRP that the Sofia-Amman flights “were transporting weapons to Saudi Arabia, mostly for the Syrian conflict.” Additionally, one other flight operated by this airline is confirmed as having carried weapons during the same period by Serbia’s Civil Aviation Directorate.

One flight was operated by a Belarussian cargo carrier TransAVIAexport Airlines, which has a long history of transporting weapons. In 2014, the airline was hired by Serbian arms dealer Slobodan Tesic to transport Serbian and Belarussian weapons and ammunition to air bases in Libya controlled by various militant groups. The United Nations, UN, Sanctions Committee investigated the case and found potential breaches of UN sanctions, according to a 2015 UN report. Additionally, five flights operated by this airline are confirmed as having carried weapons during the same period by Serbia’s Civil Aviation Directorate.

Many of these flights made an additional stop in Central and Eastern Europe – meaning they were likely picking up more weapons and ammunition – before flying to their final destination.

EU flight statistics provide further evidence of the scale of the operation. They reveal that planes flying from Bulgaria and Slovakia have delivered 2,268 tons of cargo – equal to 44 flights with the most commonly used aircraft – the Ilyushin II-76 – since the summer of 2014 to the same military bases in Saudi Arabia and UAE pinpointed by BIRN and OCCRP.

Distributing the weapons

Arms bought for Syria by the Saudis, Turks, Jordanians and the UAE are then routed through two secret command facilities – called Military Operation Centers (MOC) – in Jordan and Turkey, according to Ford, the former US ambassador to Syria.

These units – staffed by security and military officials from the Gulf, Turkey, Jordan and the US – coordinate the distribution of weapons to vetted Syrian opposition groups, according to information from the Atlanta-based Carter Center, a think tank that has a unit monitoring the conflict.

“Each of the countries involved in helping the armed opposition retained final decision-making authority about which groups in Syria received assistance,” Ford said.

A cache of leaked cargo carrier documents provides further clues to how the Saudi military supplies Syrian rebels.

According to the documents obtained by BIRN and the OCCRP, the Moldovan company AeroTransCargo made six flights in the summer of 2015 carrying at least 250 tonnes of ammunition between military bases in Saudi Arabia and Esenboga International Airport in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, reportedly an arrival point for weapons and ammunition for Syrian rebels.

Pieter Wezeman, of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a leading organisation in tracking arms exports, said he suspects the flights are part of the logistical operation to supply ammunition to Syrian rebels.

From the MOCs, weapons are then transported by road to the Syrian border or airdropped by military planes.

A Free Syrian Army commander from Aleppo, who asked to remain anonymous to protect his safety, told BIRN and OCCRP that weapons from Central and Eastern Europe were distributed from centrally controlled headquarters in Syria. “We don’t care about the county of origin, we just know it is from Eastern Europe,” he said.

The Saudis and Turks also provided weapons directly to Islamist groups not supported by the US and who have sometimes ended up fighting MOC-backed factions, Ford added.

The Saudis are also known to have airdropped arms and equipment, including what appeared to be Serbian-made assault rifles to its allies in Yemen.

Ford said that while he was not personally involved in negotiations with Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania over the supply of weapons to Syria, he believes that the CIA is likely to have played a role.

“For operations of this type it would be difficult for me to imagine that there wasn’t some coordination between the intelligence services, but it may have been confined strictly to intelligence channels,” he said.

The US may not have just played a role in the logistics behind delivering Gulf-sponsored weapons from Eastern Europe to the Syrian rebels. Through its Department of Defense’s Special Operations Command (SOCOM), it has also bought and delivered vast quantities of military materiel from Eastern Europe for the Syrian opposition as part of a US$500 million train and equip programme.

Since December 2015, SOCOM has commissioned three cargo ships to transport 4,700 tons of arms and ammunition from ports of Constanta in Romania and Burgas in Bulgaria to the Middle East likely as part of the covert supply of weapons to Syria.

The shipments included heavy machine guns, rocket launchers and anti-tank weapons – as well as bullets, mortars, grenades, rockets and explosives, according to US procurement documents.

The origin of arms shipped by SOCOM is unknown and the material listed in transport documents is available from stockpiles across Central and Eastern Europe.

Not long after one of the deliveries, SOCOM supported Kurdish groups published an image on Twitter and Facebook showing a warehouse piled with US-brokered ammunition boxes in northern Syria SOCOM would not confirm or deny that the shipments were bound for Syria.

US procurement records also reveal that SOCOM secured from 2014 to 2016 at least 25 million euros (27 million dollars) worth of Bulgarian and 11 million euros (12 million dollars) in Serbian weapons and ammunition for covert operations and Syrian rebels..

A Booming Business

Arms control researcher Wilcken said Central and Eastern Europe had been well positioned to cash in on the huge surge in demand for weapons following the Arab Spring.

“Geographical proximity and lax export controls have put some Balkan states in pole position to profit from this trade, in some instances with covert US assistance,” he added. “Eastern Europe is rehabilitating Cold War arms industries which are expanding and becoming profitable again.”

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic boasted recently that his country could produce five times the amount of arms it currently makes and still not meet the demand.

“Unfortunately in some parts of the world they are at war more than ever and everything you produce, on any side of the world you can sell it,” he said.

Arms manufacturers from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia are running at full capacity with some adding extra shifts and others not taking new orders.

Saudi Arabia’s top officials – more used to negotiating multi-billion-dollar fighter-jet deals with Western defence giants – have been forced to deal with a handful of small-time arms brokers operating in Eastern Europe who have access to weapons such as AK-47s and rocket launchers

Middlemen such as Serbia’s CPR Impex and Slovakia’s Eldon have played a critical role in supplying weapons and ammunition to the Middle East

The inventory of each delivery is usually unknown due to the secrecy surrounding arms deals but two end-user certificates and one export licence, obtained by BIRN and the OCCRP, reveal the extraordinary scope of the buy-up for Syrian beneficiaries.

For example, the Saudi Ministry of Defence expressed its interest in buying from Serbian arms dealer CPR Impex a number of weapons including hundreds of aging T-55 and T-72 tanks, millions of rounds of ammunition, multi-launch missile systems and rocket launchers. Weapons and ammunition listed were produced in the former Yugoslavia, Belarus, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic.

An export licence issued to a little-known Slovakian company called Eldon in January 2015 granted the firm the right to transport thousands of Eastern European rocket-propelled grenade launchers, heavy machine guns and almost a million bullets worth nearly 32 million euros to Saudi Arabia.

BIRN and OCCRP’s analysis of social media shows weapons that originated from the former states of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, and Serbia, Croatia and Bulgaria are now present on the battlefields of Syria and Yemen.

While experts believe the countries continue to shirk their responsibility, the weapons pipeline adds more and more fuel to a white hot conflict that leads to more and more misery.

“Proliferation of arms to the region has caused untold human suffering; huge numbers of people have been displaced and parties to the conflict have committed serious human rights violations including abductions, executions, enforced disappearances, torture and rape,” said Amnesty’s Wilcken.

Additional reporting by Atanas Tchobanov, Dusica Tomovic, Jelena Cosic, Jelena Svircic, Lindita Cela, RISE Moldova and Pavla Holcova.

This investigation is produced by BIRN as a part of Paper Trail to Better Governance project.

Spooky Dude Soros is Back with Big Bucks for Hillary

Posted on July 27, 2016July 27, 2016 by Denise Simon

NYT’s

When some new policy, decision or regulation comes out from government that we question, it generally has Soros behind it. Lately we are hearing so much about prison reform and criminal sentencing reform. Well, when it comes to these discussions, seems Soros was behind much of this as well going back to 2010 funding legal assistance for terrorists. What you say? Yup…..for a summary go here and you will find names like Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, “the Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman and Weather Underground terrorist David J. Gilbert.

George Soros rises again

The billionaire, who had dialed back his giving, has committed more than $25 million to supporting Hillary Clinton and other Democratic candidates and causes.

PHILADELPHIA — George Soros is back.

Politico: The billionaire investor, who scaled back his political giving after a then-unprecedented $27 million spending spree to try to defeat George Bush in 2004, has quietly reemerged as a leading funder of Democratic politics — and as a leading bogeyman of conservatives.

Soros has donated or committed more than $25 million to boost Hillary Clinton and other Democratic candidates and causes, according to Federal Election Commission records and interviews with his associates and Democratic fundraising operatives. And some of his associates say they expect Soros, who amassed a fortune estimated at $24.9 billion through risky currency trades, to give even more as Election Day nears.

The 85-year-old Hungarian-born New Yorker had planned to attend his first-ever Democratic convention here to watch Clinton, with whom he has a 25-year relationship, accept the Democratic presidential nomination on Thursday. But an associate said he decided to cancel the trip this week because Soros, who recently returned to active trading, felt he needed to closely monitor the economic situation in Europe.

Nonetheless, people close to Soros say he seems more politically engaged than he’s been in years, motivated they say by a combination of faith in Clinton and fear of her GOP rival Donald Trump, who Soros has accused of “doing the work of ISIS” by stoking fears.

Soros’s political adviser Michael Vachon said his boss “has been a consistent donor to Democratic causes, but this year the political stakes are exceptionally high.” Vachon added: “They were high even before Trump became the nominee because of the hostility on the other side toward many of the issues George cares most about and has worked to support for many years, including immigration reform, criminal justice reform and religious tolerance.”

The willingness of Soros to turn on the cash spigot full force to beat Trump is seen in Democratic finance circles as a very good sign for Clinton. Perhaps more than any other donor on the left, Soros is seen as having the potential to catalyze giving by others rich activists.

To be sure, other elite liberal donors are also stroking big checks, including San Francisco environmentalist Tom Steyer (who has donated $31 million in 2016, albeit almost entirely to a super PAC he controls), New York hedge funder Don Sussman ($13.2 million to various campaigns and committees) and media moguls Haim Saban and Fred Eychaner ($11.1 million each). But few have the bellwether effect of Soros.

The cumulative effect of the mobilization of the left’s richest benefactors has helped Clinton’s campaign and its allied outside groups mount a massive financial advantage over committees backing Trump, who is regarded with suspicion at best by the GOP donor class. That’s allowed Clinton and her allies to build a humming campaign machine that dwarfs Trump’s.

Soros has had a hand in funding many pieces of that.

Through the end of June, Soros had donated $7 million to a super PAC supporting Clinton called Priorities USA Action, according to FEC filings, making it the biggest recipient of his political largesse this cycle. And three Democratic operatives say he’s considering donating another $3 million to the group.

FEC records also show Soros gave $2 million to American Bridge 21st Century, an opposition research super PAC that has been targeting Trump and other Republican candidates, and $700,000 to an assortment of Democratic party committees, PACs and campaigns, including Clinton’s.

Soros has committed $5 million to a super PAC called Immigrant Voters Win that’s devoted to increasing turnout among low-propensity Hispanic voters in key swing states, though FEC records show he’d donated only $3 million through the end of June, the period covered by the most recent filings.

Soros has committed another $5 million to a non-profit devoted to fighting conservative efforts to restrict voting, according to the associate. That group, the Voting Rights Trust, is run partly by Clinton’s campaign lawyer Marc Elias. It’s registered under a section of the tax code that doesn’t require it to disclose its donors, meaning that Soros’s donations and those of other donors will never be formally publicly reported to the government, and also that it could be possible that some donations might be passed through from other groups.

Likewise, Vachon said Soros has committed or donated $2 million to a voter mobilization group called America Votes that doesn’t disclose its donors and another $1 million or so to a handful of state-based voter mobilization groups that are not required to disclose their donors.

And this month, according to Vachon, Soros donated $1.5 million each to Senate Majority PAC, a super PAC boosting Democratic Senate candidates, and to Planned Parenthood Votes, a super PAC that boosts candidates who support abortion rights, including Clinton.

The giving pattern and motivations seem similar to 2004, when Soros, motivated by a deep and abiding opposition to the Iraq War and other Bush administration policies, sprinkled $27 million around a handful of liberal groups boosting John Kerry’s unsuccessful challenge to Bush.

That spending, coupled with Soros’s inflammatory rhetoric — he compared the Bush administration’s rhetoric to that of the Nazis and described defeating the Bush as “a matter of life and death” — made him a target of sometimes vicious personal attacks from conservative politicians and media outlets casting him as a puppet-master, a self-hating Jew, a communist or worse.

Some allies say the public chastisement ate at Soros, as did the inability of his political spending spree to oust Bush, and his perhaps slightly ironic concerns that campaign finance laws allowed rich Americans like himself too much influence in politics.

And, after 2004, he dialed back his political giving, suggesting he might never again spend as heavily on politics, characterizing his involvement during the 2004 election as “an exception.”

Instead, he focused his philanthropic attention on his international foundations, which have donated more than $13 billion over the past three decades to non-profits that aim to defend human rights, shape the democratic process in Eastern Europe and expand access to healthcare and education in the U.S. and around the world.

And he played a formative role in the 2005 launch of a secretive club of major liberal donors called the Democracy Alliance. It sought to steer cash away from groups fighting short-term electoral battles and towards ones seeking to build intellectual infrastructure for long-term fights outside the Democratic Party, such as combating climate change, income inequality and the outsize role of big money in politics.

One liberal operative this week recalled asking someone close to Soros why the billionaire had reduced his spending on partisan politics.

“The answer was that he found it ‘odious’ for any one individual to throw too much political weight around through donations,” recalled the operative. “Maybe, in light of what’s happened in the last few cycles, it seems less so, or he feels like he needs to help balance the outside-money scales a bit,” the operative added.

Additionally, though Soros backed Barack Obama over Clinton in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, he quickly soured on the Democratic president, who he felt was insufficiently aggressive in pursuing liberal priorities. He expressed frustration with Obama during a private Democracy Alliance meeting in 2010, which some interpreted as a willingness to back a primary challenger in 2012. And though he backed Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, that year he told a close Clinton ally that he regretted supporting Obama over her, and praised Clinton for giving him an open door to discuss policy, according to emails released late last year by the State Department.

Soros “said he’s been impressed that he can always call/meet with you on an issue of policy and said he hasn’t met with the President ever (though I thought he had),” Clinton ally Neera Tanden wrote to the then-Secretary of State. Tanden continued that Soros “then said he regretted his decision in the primary — he likes to admit mistakes when he makes them and that was one of them. He then extolled his work with you from your time as First Lady on.”

The Soros associate dismissed the conversation characterized in Tanden’s email as “idle dinner party chatter,” suggesting it did not represent Soros’s full assessment of Obama.

But Jordan Wood, the national finance director for a PAC called End Citizens United, on Tuesday suggested Soros’s giving may have slumped in recent years partly because of Obama. “With George, his giving has spiked because of Hillary. He really likes Hillary Clinton and he didn’t like Obama as much,” said Wood, in an interview at a reception at a Center City bar for the campaign finance reform group Every Voice.

End Citizens United, which supports candidates including Clinton who pledge to push campaign finance reforms, this year received a $5,000 check from Soros, the maximum he could legally give to that group. He also has donated to Every Voice, as has his son Jonathan Soros, who attended Tuesday’s reception.

Jonathan Soros wouldn’t comment on his father’s increased political giving, but he pointed to George Soros’s recent writing about Trump, which includes one column in which Soros warned voters that it’s important to “resist the siren song of the likes of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz” if the U.S. is to effectively fight terrorism.

Hey FBI, the Investigation into the DNC Hacking is Over Here

Posted on July 26, 2016July 26, 2016 by Denise Simon

Anyone ever see that Jack Ryan movie ‘Shadow Recruit’? It is playing out in a more nefarious form in real time.

May 2016: Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said today that presidential campaigns are a target for cyber intruders and that this political season has already seen some attempted hacks.

“We have already had some indications of that,” he said in response to a question about campaign website hacking, after speaking at the Center for Bipartisan Policy in Washington, D.C.

“I anticipate as the campaigns intensify, we will probably have more of it,” he added. He did not provide specifics about any attacks, but it has been reported that some hacking groups, such as Anonymous, have threatened to launch “total war” against Donald Trump‘s presidential campaign. Read more from ABC here.

**** So –>> Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says the FBI is helping campaigns tighten up to protect against the threat and how has that worked out so far?

*****

Via ThreatConnect: In our initial Guccifer 2.0 analysis, ThreatConnect highlighted technical and non-technical inconsistencies in the purported DNC hacker’s story as well as a curious theme of French “connections” surrounding various Guccifer 2.0 interactions with the media. We called out these connections as they overlapped, albeit minimally, with FANCY BEAR infrastructure identified in CrowdStrike’s DNC report.

Now, after further investigation, we can confirm that Guccifer 2.0 is using the Russia-based Elite VPN service to communicate and leak documents directly with the media. We reached this conclusion by analyzing the infrastructure associated with an email exchange with Guccifer 2.0 shared with ThreatConnect by Vocativ’s Senior Privacy and Security reporter Kevin Collier. This discovery strengthens our ongoing assessment that Guccifer 2.0 is a Russian propaganda effort and not an independent actor.

Analyzing the Headers from Guccifer 2.0 Emails

On June 21, 2016, TheSmokingGun reported they communicated with Guccifer 2.0 via a French AOL account. We examined the French language settings observed in Guccifer 2.0’s Twitter metadata as well as a pattern of Twitter follows that suggested Guccifer 2.0’s account was created from a French IP address. We hypothesized at the time that Guccifer 2.0 might be using French infrastructure to interact with the media.

During the Email Import process ThreatConnect analyzes an email message header and highlights indicators of interest with a color code that reveals if the indicators already exist within the platform. This helps overburdened eyes or greenhorn analysts quickly understand what they are seeing. At the same time ThreatConnect excludes legitimate or benign details that are not of value to our investigation.

As we can see here within ThreatConnect, Guccifer 2.0’s AOL email message reveals the originating IP address as 95.130.15[.]34 (DigiCube SaS – France). This is the IP address of the host which authenticated into AOL’s web user interface and sent the email. We can also tell this IP was not spoofed because the metadata was added by AOL when sent from within their infrastructure with appropriate DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) configurations.

The fact that Guccifer 2.0 is indeed leveraging a French AOL account stands out from a technical perspective. Very few hackers with Guccifer 2.0’s self-acclaimed skills would use a free webmail service that would give away a useful indicator like the originating IP address. Most seasoned security professionals will be familiar with email providers that are more likely to cooperate with law enforcement and how much metadata a provider might reveal about their users. Taken together with inconsistencies in Guccifer 2.0’s remarks that make his technical claims sound implausible, this detail makes us think the individual(s) operating the AOL account are not really hackers or even that technically savvy. Instead, propagandist or public relations individuals who are interacting with journalists.

Drilling into Guccifer 2.0 Infrastructure: Picture of a VPN Starts to Emerge

As we focused in on IP Address 95.130.15[.]34 we queried public sources such as Shodan as well as Censys to discover what services might be enabled on this host. The goal of this was to better understand if this infrastructure is owned and operated, leased or co-opted by Guccifer 2.0 and how the infrastructure might be used to create space between an originating “source” network and investigators, or curious journalists.

According to Shodan, OpenSSH (TCP/22), DNS (UDP/53) and Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) (TCP/1723) services have been enabled on this host. Secure shell (SSH) and point-to-point tunneling protocol services strongly suggest a VPN and/or a proxy, both of which would allow the Guccifer 2.0 persona to put distance between his originating network and those with whom he is communicating.

The SSH fingerprint can be used as an identifier, linking other IP addresses that use the same SSH encryption key. The SSH fingerprint for 95.130.15[.]34 (DigiCube SaS – France) is Fingerprint: 80:19:eb:c8:80:a1:c6:ea:ea:37:ba:c0:26:c6:7f:61. Searching for other servers that share this fingerprint at the time of writing, we discovered six additional IP Addresses over the course of our research (95.130.9[.]198; 95.130.15[.]36; 95.130.15[.]37; 95.130.15[.]38; 95.130.15[.]40; 95.130.15[.]41).

Each IP address falls within the 95.130.8.0/21 network range. This range is assigned to Digicube SAS, a French hosting provider which is assigned the Autonomous System AS196689. An IP address is analogous to the apartment numbers in an apartment building. The entire building is owned and operated by AS196689, but certain IP addresses may be let out to other companies and organizations.

The fact that Guccifer 2.0 would use a proxy service is not surprising, and our first stop was to check with various TOR proxy registration sites. None of these seven IP addresses are part of reported TOR infrastructure from what we were able to uncover. Read the full comprehensive detailed cyber investigation as published here by ThreatConnect.

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Meanwhile: FAS: The headquarters complex of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) of the Russian Federation has expanded dramatically over the past decade, a review of open source imagery reveals.

Since 2007, several large new buildings have been added to SVR headquarters, increasing its floor space by a factor of two or more. Nearby parking capacity appears to have quadrupled, more or less.

The compilation of open source imagery was prepared by Allen Thomson. See Expansion of Russian Foreign Intelligence Service HQ (SVR; Former KGB First Main Directorate) Between 2007 and 2016, as of July 11, 2016.

Whether the expansion of SVR headquarters corresponds to changes in the Service’s mission, organizational structure or budget could not immediately be learned.

Russian journalist and author Andrei Soldatov, who runs the Agentura.ru website on Russian security services, noted that the expansion “coincides with the appointment of the current SVR director, Mikhail Fradkov, in 2007.” He recalled that when President Putin introduced Fradkov to Service personnel, he said that the SVR should endeavor to help Russian corporations abroad, perhaps indicating a new mission emphasis.

Russian intel buildings Russian intel from air Photos courtesy of FAS

What you Need to Know About the Gerasimov Doctrine’

Posted on July 26, 2016July 26, 2016 by Denise Simon

The FBI said on Monday that it was investigating the nature and scope of a cyberintrusion at the Democratic National Committee disclosed last month.

“A compromise of this nature is something we take very seriously, and the FBI will continue to investigate and hold accountable investigate and those who pose a threat in cyberspace,” the FBI said in a statement. More from BusinessInsider.

The FBI having any reach for prosecution in Russia is nil. Furthermore, the damage to America and American politics has already been done.

This site published an item as a primer of Russian aggression. Will the Obama administration address this condition with Russia? No, all deference has been given to both NATO with which to deal and further the deadly conflicts in Syria and Iraq have come under the management of Iran and Russia as decided by John Kerry and the White House National Security Council. How serious is this? Read on…

Gerasimov-Doctrine-and-Russian-Non-Linear-War-In-Moscow-s-Shadows

The above document describes the blurred lines between peace and war. This is an important condition and must be learned given the cyber hacks by Russia against the United States and most recently, the emails of the DNC. Russia has forged their way into American politics by which during the presidential election cycle, both nominees are ill prepared to address immediately.

General Valery Gerasimov, the Chief of Staff of the Russian Federation’s military, developed The Gerasimov Doctrine in recent years. The doctrine posits that the rules of war have changed, that there is a “blurring of the lines between war and peace,” and that “nonmilitary means of achieving military and strategic goals has grown and, in many cases, exceeded the power of weapons in their effectiveness.” Gerasimov argues for asymmetrical actions that combine the use of special forces and information warfare that create “a permanently operating front through the entire territory of the enemy state.”

An overview of Russian activity in Latin America shows an adherence to Gerasimov’s doctrine of waging constant asymmetrical warfare against one’s enemies through a combination of means. These include military or hard power as well as shaping and controlling the narrative in public opinion, diplomatic outreach, military sales, intelligence operations, and strategic offerings of intelligence and military technology. All are essential components of the Russian presence and Gerasimov’s view that the lines between war and peace are blurred, and that non-military means of achieving power and influence can be as effective or more effective than military force. Read more here.

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NATO, Russia, and the Gerasimov Doctrine

On April 29, a Russian fighter jet in the Baltic Sea flew within 50 feet of a U.S. reconnaissance plane and conducted a highly dangerous barrel roll, drawing a sharp rebuke from the Pentagon. Within the past month, there have been at least two other provocations by Russian aircraft in the region, with many officials suggesting it is in response to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) decision to hold large military exercises in Poland next month and significantly increase its troop presence within Allied countries bordering Russia.

Washington, perceived by Moscow as NATO’s puppeteer, has quadrupled its European defense budget for 2017, adding nearly $3.5 billion. The exhibitionism from both Russia and NATO has led experts to conclude that geopolitical tensions “are at the highest levels since the end of the Cold War.”

Perhaps. However, barring any egregious miscalculation by either side, a large-scale conventional war between NATO and Russia is unlikely. While it is necessary to maintain modern militaries, their presence in the 21^st century is more symbolic than practical—at least when considering the prospect of warfare between nuclear-armed adversaries. Any war that does take place will be far from conventional, requiring a skillful blend of military and non-military tools. Within this domain, it is Russia, shrewd and flexible, that will have the advantage, leaving NATO and its transnational bureaucracy to react and adapt effectively.

In a February 2013 issue of the Military Industrial Courier, Russia’s Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov discussed how the rules of war have changed and become more blurred. Whether called “hybrid war,” “ambiguous war,” “non-linear war,” or “special war,” this type of conflict is not new, but has been adopted and successfully updated by Russia to account for all the modern era’s technological complexities. As applied to Russia, it has been coined “The Gerasimov Doctrine,” and it is Russia’s new normal.

“Whether called “hybrid war,” “ambiguous war,” “non-linear war,” or “special war,” this type of conflict is not new, but has been adopted and successfully updated by Russia to account for all the modern era’s technological complexities.”

Russia has been aggressively exploiting its non-NATO “near abroad” as fertile testing ground for hybrid war. Through a calculated combination of disinformation campaigns, espionage, special operations forces, and the cultivation of a cadre of so-called “deniable agents,” Russia was able to successfully annex Crimea while Kiev was still recovering from its post-Euromaidan chaos.

These blatant violations of international law, while drawing substantial criticism and the economic sanctions that drove Russia into recession, have not been enough to deter continued belligerence. In fact, in many ways the sanctions have been counterproductive: Putin’s favorability increased significantly to nearly 90 percent following Crimea’s annexation; a similar spike in popularity was observed in 2008 following Russia’s military invasion of Georgia. Thus, Putin has been able to blame domestic woes on the West while simultaneously generating a patriotic rally-around-the-flag effect.

A March 2016 report from the prominent London-based think tank Chatham House asserts NATO is ill-prepared to handle these hybrid threats from Russia. The Very High Readiness Joint Task Forces, established at the 2014 NATO Summit in Wales, are “appropriate for addressing purely military threats, but hardly appear adequate when compared with the scale of Russian preparations for conflict.” Moreover, they only provide “a single dimension of reassurance to front-line states,” meaning “additional elements are required to protect against Russian tools of influence other than conventional military attack.”

“NATO should swiftly acknowledge it needs to focus its attention vis-à-vis Russia from conventional to hybrid threat readiness.”

It is strongly thought that the three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) are most vulnerable to Russian meddling. All three were previously part of the Soviet Union and border Russia directly. More worryingly, these three states have a relatively large percentage of ethnic Russians living within their borders that could be susceptible to Russian influence, just as the inhabitants of Crimea were.

Indeed, Russia is already dabbling in subversion within the Baltic and Nordic regions. Following a row in 2007 between Russian and Estonian officials over the removal of a Soviet monument in Tallinn, a host of Estonian government websites were subjected to persistent cyber-attacks for three weeks—although Moscow denies involvement. Furthermore, Sweden’s state security services have warned of an increased amount of Russian covert activity aimed at undermining closer collaboration between NATO and Sweden. Finally, Russian warships have been formerly accused by Lithuania, which receives nearly all of its gas from Russia, of disrupting the creation of power cables that would diversify its energy dependence.

NATO should swiftly acknowledge it needs to focus its attention vis-à-vis Russia from conventional to hybrid threat readiness. A good start would be to increase the number of NATO members meeting the defense expenditure requirements of 2 percent of gross national product. Only 5 of 28 Allied countries currently do so. This increased funding should then be allocated in ways that will address NATO’s greatest vulnerabilities, for instance, by precluding disinformation campaigns in the Baltics, increasing the number of experts on Russia, or solving the issue of weening Allied states off of Russian gas.

Already dealing with a raft of regional security concerns—the migrant crisis, terrorist threats, and sweeping nationalism—NATO must recognize Russia is doing everything it can to exploit Western disunity. But forget the tanks and planes: this conflict will be fought in the shadows.

The Desperation of Syrian Refugees

Posted on July 26, 2016July 26, 2016 by Denise Simon

While reading this post, consider that world leaders and mostly pointing to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, the declared baton carriers of human rights have done nothing to stop the genocide of Bashir al Assad noting that any case of war crimes and or removal as a leader of Syria has gone no where.

There is no end in sight for this civil war to be over, yet it speaks nothing of refugees ever to return to a war torn country where there is no country left in which to return. This is now a generational condition. The next question is when does it end for the United States, for Europe and for Syrians?

Syrian refugee’s trek from Colombia to Texas stalls in limbo

PEARSALL, Texas (AP) – To reach the U.S. and claim asylum, all Maissoun Hanaa Halawi had to do was cross a continent by foot.

Her one choice: Traverse the remote, roadless, impenetrable Darien Gap, a 10,000-square-mile tropical forest and swampland along the border of Colombia and Panama that separates the two continents.

Halawi, her husband and a group of about 20 Indian, Middle Eastern and other asylum seekers faced a harsh reality. Not only do jaguars, scorpions, poisonous frogs and insects lie crouched in the shadows, paramilitary groups, traffickers and guerillas hide under the thick canopy’s shelter in this dangerous jungle.

“In the jungle, the fear – you can’t imagine it,” Halawi, a Syrian, told the Houston Chronicle (http://bit.ly/29iZfj3 ) in her accented but fluent English. “You don’t want anything except to get out. There’s no food. It’s a savage, wild jungle. We took our chances.”

She and her husband, a Syrian surgeon, knew the risks. But as refugees fleeing a war-torn country infiltrated by violent militant groups, the six-day journey wasn’t a choice. Halawi, her husband and the other desperate men and women paid the smuggler $500 a head. Before they set off into the Darien Gap, he gave them a final warning.

“Every time I’ve made this trip, I must lose one person,” Halawi remembered him saying as she wiped back tears.

There was no going back.

“Through these doors enter the finest ICE, DHS & GEO staff in the nation.”

Those words are posted at the entrance of the South Texas Detention Complex in Pearsall, just 60 miles southwest of San Antonio. The complex is owned by The GEO Group Inc. under contract by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security.

Behind the barbed wire fence and through security checks at the entrance is a sprawling 238,000-square-foot complex that houses up to 1,904 men and women. Some are awaiting deportation. Others are stuck in limbo, counting the days for their asylum cases to be processed by ICE agents and the courts.

That’s where Halawi has been detained since Dec.??22, almost six months after turning herself over to border patrol agents at an international pedestrian bridge in Eagle Pass, two hours south of Pearsall. She was taken into custody alone.

The average length of stay in the Pearsall detention facility is, at most, 65 days, according to ICE.

A detention officer unlocks a heavy metal door. A slight woman with short brown hair and bright eyes enters the white cinder block room. Though she wears a hopeful smile, her face is creased with anxiety. A 46-year-old Halawi takes a seat at the metal table, yellow legal pad papers in one hand and a thick, brown accordion folder in the other.

“When the revolution started, I was first happy because I thought we would finally change the government that was ruling the country,” Halawi said of the Syrian government headed by President Bashar Al-Assad. “I didn’t know it would end in a sea of blood. Even today, I can’t believe what’s happened in Syria.”

An immigration judge will have the last word on whether to grant asylum or hand down a deportation order, and Halawi said she can’t face the thought of returning to Syria.

“I came here asking for help,” Halawi said. “I’m not a criminal.”

In a post-Paris attack world, European and U.S. governments are wary of refugees flowing from areas where the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, also known as ISIS, is active. U.S. governors of 31 states released public statements to the White House in November refusing to accept refugees, including Gov. Greg Abbott, who has been vocal about refugee vetting protocols and has publicly said that any incoming Syrians “could be connected to terrorism.”

Even with Abbott’s refusal of Syrian refugees, 152 were resettled in Texas between October and May????31 of the 1,865 Syrian refugees across the country, according to the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement. Between October 2014 and Sept. 30, 185 Syrian refugees were resettled in Texas.

Since the U.S. requires refugees to be outside of the states when filing a claim, Halawi is considered an asylum seeker. She is one of more than 1,000 Syrian nationals who have attempted to claim asylum since 2011, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Only 248 of those cases were granted asylum by the end of the 2015 fiscal year.

Asylum seekers must prove they have a “credible fear” to be granted asylum, which includes a “significant possibility” of torture or a “well-founded” fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a social group if returned to their country of origin.

“There are no words to describe the pain and fear we were living under. We hoped we would change the government, but then (ISIS) came into Aleppo, and there was no food or water,” Halawi said, recounting the years in an increasingly hostile Syria.

Halawi is also a Druze, which is an ethnic and a religious minority in Syria.

As the conflict in Syria has spread, Druze civilians have increasingly been under fire by radical militants. At least 20 were fatally shot by the al-Qaida affiliate Nusra Front in Idlib province in June 2015.

The casualties of the Syrian war are high. An estimated 400,000 Syrians were killed, according to the U.N. special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura. In addition, 4.8 million Syrians were registered as refugees in the Middle East and North Africa, and more than 1 million have sought asylum in Europe, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

After fleeing violence and bombardment in Aleppo, Syria, Halawi and her husband moved to Libya in late 2013. The plan was to put Halawi on a boat across the Mediterranean to Europe, and her husband would fly to Europe and meet her on the other side, since he had a German passport.

They called it “the boat to death.” Since the start of 2016, at least 2,510 refugees and migrants drowned in the Mediterranean, according to the International Organization for Migration. Those who attempt to cross the sea have usually done so on small boats or dinghies packed beyond capacity.

“When I saw the boat, I couldn’t do it. I’m scared of water too much,” Halawi said.

She backed out as she was making arrangements with the smuggler. So the couple lived for a year in Libya, where she taught English at a local school. She said she was later kidnapped from the doors of that school. When she was let go by her assailants, she was treated by Doctors Without Borders. The incident prompted the couple’s decision to leave Libya.

Since Halawi speaks four languages, including Spanish, the couple flew in late 2014 to Ecuador, one of a few countries that don’t require a visa for Syrian citizens. Then, they emigrated to Venezuela and, finally, arrived in Colombia in September. That’s when they attempted to cross the Darien Gap into Panama, where they initially hoped to settle down.

On the second day of her journey in the gap, Halawi was prepared to die. She was terrified, tired and hungry. Her legs were giving out as she struggled to push herself forward through the unrelenting jungle. That morning in September, Halawi asked her husband to carry their belongings. She didn’t want to be left behind, but if she did, at least her husband would have what little was left.

As the smuggler led his 20-person group up the mountain, she focused on pushing herself forward. One moment, her husband was behind her. The next moment, he was gone.

“I heard him shouting behind me,” Halawi said, unable to hold back tears. “He fell on the rocks. I could see from above the blood on the rocks. I think his head was broken.”

He fell to his death from a mountaintop in the Colombian jungle. There was no way to go back for her husband. And he had carried almost all of their belongings.

Halawi was too distraught to go any farther. She pleaded with them to send her back to the mainland because she didn’t have the strength to go on. The smuggler put her on a boat, fearing that she might report the group to authorities in Panama, Halawi said. But she would return to the Darien Gap to make the journey again with another group. After two days, one woman was left behind. On the fifth day, Halawi couldn’t keep up.

“The group wanted to leave me, but the smuggler said he would get me there even if he had to carry me. He could have raped me and killed me, but he didn’t, and thank God, I reached Panama,” Halawi said in a declaration that was compiled by attorneys in support of her parole.

After Panamanian authorities detained and interrogated her, she filed for asylum there but discovered that refugees are ineligible for work permits.

“How could I eat if I could not work?” Halawi said.

Knowing that she’d be dependent on the government and unable to care for herself, she decided to keeping going north.

She crossed through Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico, mostly by bus. While in Honduras, she was detained in November for illegally entering the country, according to several news reports. Her journey from Colombia to Texas spanned about three months. Halawi applied for asylum in Mexico, Ecuador and Panama before finally making it to the U.S.

Though Halawi is far from the daily bombardment and violence in Syria, she thought that if she reached America, the war would be behind her. She couldn’t predict the intense political climate and debate surrounding Syrian refugees in the U.S and abroad.

Halawi was denied parole twice by ICE officials, once on Feb. 17 and finally on May 18. Both times, she said she was not given a parole interview to discuss the merits of her case. ICE declined to comment on the case “due to privacy concerns.”

“ICE makes civil enforcement determinations on a case-by-case basis with a priority given to serious criminal offenders, recent border entrants and other individuals who meet the threshold set in the following civil immigration enforcement priorities memo issued by DHS Secretary Johnson in November 2014,” ICE said in a statement to the Houston Chronicle.

According to the denial letter she received, Halawi was rejected based on four factors: She did not establish her identity “to the satisfaction of ICE.” She did not establish that she was not a flight risk. She did not establish that she’s not a danger to the community or to U.S. security. And lastly, her case was denied because there were no additional documentation or changes in circumstance that would alter ICE’s initial decision to deny parole.

“We’ve had cases where ICE in their definition someone is a national security risk, whereas in reality, they’re not. We’ve had the same problem with the Central American families for a year-and-a-half,” said Mohammad Abdollahi, the advocacy director at San Antonio-based nonprofit RAICES, Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, which has taken her case.

Halawi believes ICE is purposely detaining her because of her nationality. ICE declined to comment on agency policies for processing and detaining Syrian nationals.

“If they have something against me, then show it to me,” she said. “I have done nothing wrong, so you don’t have to keep me here.”

Fleeing violence and losing her husband have taken a toll on Halawi. She takes a handful of medications, two of which are used to treat anxiety, depression and, potentially, post-traumatic stress disorder, according to ICE records released by her attorney to the Chronicle.

At the detention facility, Halawi has voluntarily spent the last four months in segregation, which is similar to solitary confinement. She stays in her room 23 hours each day with just one hour to enjoy the sun and fresh air.

In segregation, she’s alone with her thoughts and inner turmoil.

“I’ve started to feel like I’m a burden,” Halawi said. “I can’t get out.”

“There’s been no time to stop and grieve. She hasn’t been given that time in detention,” Abdollahi said.

Her asylum case will be heard in the courtroom of San Antonio immigration judge Meredith Tyrakoski, who was appointed by U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch in January.

If Tyrakoski denies Halawi’s asylum claim, she could appeal the decision within 30 days or face deportation. But the Board of Immigration Appeals, the first of three appellate bodies for asylum claims, could take up to a year to render a decision. Without parole, Halawi would remain indefinitely detained while in legal limbo.

“This is my only hope now,” Halawi said.