Migrant Crisis Intersection of Horror, Greece

Posted on April 1, 2016April 1, 2016 by Denise Simon

Take a Country on the Brink. Now Add 10,000 Asylum Hearings a Week.

Cargo containers used as courthouses. Camps flooded with sewage. A government on the verge of collapse. Why the EU refugee deal is a disaster for Greece.

FP: ATHENS — The ferries bound from the eastern Aegean Sea to Athens reach the port of Piraeus at the E2 Terminal. Immediately confronting disembarking passengers is a five-story banner proclaiming that, two-and-a-half millennia ago, the Greeks won a naval battle in the nearby straits of Salamis. Just below the banner, a concrete pier stretching several hundred meters into those straits is now the site of a tent city.

The 1,600 inhabitants of this city share 45 toilets, shower at the homes of local volunteers, and are coached in elementary Greek as they wait in parallel lines — “Men on the left! Women and kids on the right!” — for pasta and tangerines. International photographers capture their every movement. Out of a green cargo container, volunteer nurses distribute tampons and baby formula while from the back of a van, volunteer medical specialists pick through hair for lice during their breaks from local hospitals. Plates and trays are washed in a trough connected to the Athenian sewage system. Recent fist fights between Syrians — who are, broadly speaking, from middle-class families — and Afghans — typically poor, rural men — have led to the division of the pier into twin encampments: The Afghans face the sea; the Syrians, Iraqis, and Kurds face Athens.

A Greek state that cannot even provide basic services to these refugees has now been placed, as part of a deal struck this month between the European Union and Turkey, at the center of an enormous task. In return for 6 billion euros and vague promises of visa-free travel for its citizens, Turkey will supposedly take back anyone currently attempting to enter Greece. In exchange, for every person turned away at the Greek border, a Syrian will supposedly be relocated from a Turkish camp to an EU country willing to take him or her in. The execution of this deal, however, hinges on Greece successfully processing, with breathtaking speed, each individual who arrives in the country — determining where he or she came from and whether he or she is eligible for asylum.

Eight vessels, 30 coach buses, and 4,000 new workers — including several dozen Frontex police officers and potentially 1,000 army and security staff — will eventually be dispatched from various EU countries to Greek borders to help enforce the agreement by determining their eligibility as “exchangeable” refugees. But, even prior to their arrival, the Greek government is still responsible for documenting some 10,000 incoming asylum-seekers per week.

The process began last week on Lesbos: Each morning, the roughly 1,000 refugees who continue to arrive everyday from Turkey were detained, photographed, given a numbered orange wristband, read their rights — “please be patient” — and bussed to a camp near the village of Moria. There, 60 judges operating out of makeshift courts — mostly cargo containers and tents — presided over appeals committees for any refugee who refused to leave Greece voluntarily. Arabic specialists parsed accents to determine whether Syrians have come from sufficiently dangerous swaths of their country to qualify for consideration of eventual asylum. “There are certain questions we can ask to make sure they’re telling the truth,” one of these specialists, a volunteer named Dionysia, told me in Piraeus, before departing for Lesbos. “‘What is the biggest street in Aleppo?’ ‘Which river runs through Homs?’” To the chagrin of many Greeks, Turkish observers are working within these deportation centers — at Lesbos and elsewhere — to determine if those refugees actually passed through Turkey on their way to
Greece. (Only the ones who did will be accepted back.) “How can you tell if someone without a passport has passed through Turkey?” I asked Dionysia. She shrugged.“How can you tell if someone without a passport has passed through Turkey?” I asked Dionysia. She shrugged.

Meanwhile, the government tasked with handling this mammoth organizational project teeters on the edge of collapse. The events of last summer demonstrated that a coalition of nationalists and former communists could find ways to cooperate during a fiscal crisis — namely, by invoking patriotism as a last plank against the technocrats of the EU. But virtually no common policy unites the ruling Independent Greeks-Syriza coalition when it comes to refugees. The leader of the right-wing Independent Greeks, Defense Minister Panos Kammenos, courts popularity by attacking the “imminent Islamization of Greece.” He refuses to distribute Greek army rations to refugees on the grounds that the Greek military is not a “catering service.” Syriza, a left-wing political party, takes a different stance. It came to power on a promise to dismantle all detention centers in Greece (a promise it has nevertheless broken); last week, members of its youth organization hung banners from the Acropolis calling for the opening of all national borders. The coalition nearly collapsed early this month when Syriza’s alternate immigration minister, Ioannis Mouzalas, called the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia by the name nearly every other country on earth uses — “Macedonia” — and was almost forced into resignation by Kammenos for his grievous affront to Hellenic identity. (Failos Kranidiotis, a prominent member of the opposition New Democracy party, was forced to resign when he said that Mouzalas should be hung publicly and that he himself would provide the rope.)

One of the few tactics both parties agree on is tying the treatment of refugees to the relieving of the national debt. Kammenos threatened to unleash a “wave of jihadis” on the rest of Europe if austerity measures continue unabated. But this strategy has proved mildly effective at best; Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, has conceded that the Greek financial reforms will require some “flexibility” if Greece is to bear the brunt of Europe’s refugee crisis, but, so far, no changes to the bailout terms have been set.

The new arrivals, however, continue to come ashore. At the E2 Terminal, I met Muhammad from Iraq, who arrived in Piraeus on March 21. He speaks proficient English, worked 20 years as a tailor, and left his wife and 2-year-old daughter at their home in central Baghdad to seek a stable life in Germany, where he remains determined to go. In early March, Muhammad flew to Istanbul and then crossed to Lesbos in a dinghy with 120 others. Had he left Baghdad one week earlier, he would have likely crossed the Macedonian border and may have made it to Germany by now. Had he arrived several hours later than he did, he would have been turned back at Lesbos and very likely repatriated to Iraq under the terms of the new agreement, which makes no provisions for non-Syrians (though, in theory, looks at all asylum claims on their individual merits). As I got up to leave, Muhammad removed his sneaker and gestured to a horseshoe of scars curled around his left anklebone. Next, he pulled up his right pant leg, revealing a white cast that ended just below his knee. Both were the work of an Islamic State car bomb, he told me.

The current deal does nothing to address Muhammad — or the 53,000 other asylum-seekers like him who are now stuck in Piraeus, the former Olympic arenas in Attica, the squares of Thessaloniki and Kavala, the old Athens airport, the hills around Idomeni, and elsewhere in Greece. It’s likely they will be trapped in Greece indefinitely, victims of an EU that now feels it must overcompensate for months of doing nearly nothing to address the flow of refugees. Various entities and institutions allegedly trying to help people like Muhammad have found themselves at odds with one another and their goals incompatible: Last week, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), Médecins Sans Frontières, the International Rescue Committee, Save the Children, and the Norwegian Refugee Council all announced their withdrawal from Greece in protest of the prison-like conditions of its detention centers. Greece, for its part, blames the fenced-off camps on the EU, which habitually threatens Greece’s expulsion from the Schengen zone if refugees aren’t more carefully documented. (At least three of the Brussels bombers are known to have passed through Greece.)

Responsibility for caring for the refugees, meanwhile, continues to fall on private donations from Greeks, though it’s unclear how long a citizenry whose GDP has been devastated by an output drop of one-quarter can continue to do so. The Greek right has been quick to exploit the situation. On Greece’s Independence Day last week, a mysterious group calling itself the “Sacred Band” paraded through the main boulevard of Thessaloniki crying, “Greece stands for Orthodoxy!” The conservative Greek media, meanwhile, stoked fears of Greece’s Islamization by running footage of an Egyptian girl marching in the Athens parade wearing a headscarf. (The girl had absolutely no connection to refugees; she was born in Greece.)
The most damning critique of the EU-Turkey deal — that it breaks the Geneva Conventions by turning refugees back toward conflict zones — is partially offset by another: Rarely has the EU shown the organizational capacity necessary for its implementation. It has made previous commitments to move 160,000 refugees from Greece and Italy to northern Europe by the end of 2016; only 937 have been relocated thus far. Nearly everywhere you go in Athens, you see how haphazard any potential efforts to implement the deal will be on the Greek end alone — and how, even if the deal does work, Greece will inevitably be put in the position of having to pick and choose who has a chance to move on to prosperous northern Europe and who doesn’t. Beyond the 53,000 refugees currently living in asylum camps, an estimated 500,000 “irregular migrants” have been living for years on Greek streets without any care or recognition by the country’s inefficient bureaucracy.

When Macedonia closed its border to northern Greece in early March, human smugglers in Athens reportedly threw a party in celebration of the fact that their routes were soon to become more dangerous and, thus, their rates more expensive. Aid workers I met insisted that the current EU-Turkey deal will only do more of the same. “The EU is incapable of realizing that an Afghan family that packed all its belongings into a suitcase, walked halfway across the Middle East, nearly drowned in the Aegean, and is now living in a tent will find a way of getting to Germany,” a Hellenic Red Cross worker told me. He produced a map of the Mediterranean for me on his iPhone. “All the Balkan borders with Greece are now closed.” He pointed toward the Black Sea. “Smugglers are now sneaking them to Bulgaria by boat. They have already begun buying up small hotels on the northwest Turkish coast from which they will launch their boats. When the weather gets better, that will be the next crisis point.”

Turkey’s President Visit to DC Caused Major Chaos

Posted on March 31, 2016March 31, 2016 by Denise Simon

Protests were to support Kurdistan, as Turkey under Erdogan has been killing Kurds.

Chaos Outside of Turkish President Erdogan’s Washington Speech

A planned speech by the controversial Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan descended into violence and chaos Thursday, with one journalist physically removed from the event site by Turkish security personnel, another kicked by a guard, and a third — a woman — thrown to the sidewalk in front of a Washington think tank where he was to speak.

A small group of protesters gathered across the street from the Brookings Institute near Dupont Circle in Washington, with one holding a large sign reading “Erdogan: War Criminal On The Loose,” while another used a megaphone to chant that he was a “baby-killer.”

When the protesters tried to cross the street, Washington police officers blocked traffic and physically separated them from Turkish personnel. A Secret Service agent standing nearby told a colleague that “the situation is a bit out of control.”

Later, a shoving match between what appeared to be a Brookings Institute worker and Turkish security broke out. “I am in charge of this building,” the apparent Brookings employee shouted as the two tangled. A Foreign Policy reporter and others holding cameras outside the event were also scolded by Turkish security. One cameraman was chased across the street by Turkish guards.

Local Washington D.C. police officers were forced time and again to get between Erdogan’s security forces and journalists and protesters. At one point, an officer placed himself between one of Erdogan’s security guards and a cameraman he was moving to confront, while another angrily confronted several Turkish security guards in the middle of the street, telling them, “you’re part of the problem, you guys need to control yourselves and let these people protest.” Another Turkish security official pulled his colleague away after he began arguing with the officer. Other members of Ergodan’s team stood in front of the Brookings building, motioning for the protesters to come closer, and making obscene gestures.

There were also confrontations between Turkish security and D.C. police. The Turkish officials wanted police to remove protesters, and the cops refused.

In a statement late Thursday, Brooking’s spokesperson Gail Chalef said that the think tank did its “best to ensure that journalists and other guests who had registered in advance for the event were able to enter.” She added that she believes all journalists who registered were able to attend.

At one point, just before Erdogan arrived, the protest briefly turned violent.

***

As he arrived, law enforcement arranged a wall of large vehicles in front of Brookings, presumably to block anti-Erdogan protesters across the street.

***

Belgium, France, Greece, Holland, Sweden, Germany, Iraq, Syria The Network

Posted on March 30, 2016March 30, 2016 by Denise Simon

The most chilling and terrifying summary outside of the 9/11 Commission Report.

Go slow reading this and absorb it in total then consider how it can happen here at home. Has ISIS caused real fear in America? The results are here.

The inside story of the Paris and Brussels attacks

By Paul Cruickshank, CNN

For the photo essay go here.

This story is based on French police documents on the investigation into the Paris attacks obtained by CNN and interviews with investigators over the last four months, as well as the public statements of Belgian and French prosecutors.

(CNN)The night that shook Paris started with three rental cars: three cars with three teams of terrorists maneuvering through the Friday evening traffic, armed with the weapons of war.

A little before 9 p.m., a Renault Clio driven by Salah Abdeslam, the Paris plotter captured on March 18 in Brussels, pulled up outside the national stadium. An international soccer friendly match between France and Germany was just kicking off and 80,000 fans, including French President Francois Hollande, were already inside. Three men got out of the car and headed toward the stands.

One of them — Bilal Hadfi, a young French citizen living in Belgium — can be seen on surveillance video speaking into a cell phone. The other two were Iraqis who had slipped into Europe weeks before by posing as refugees. One of the trio was dressed in a Bayern Munich football team jogging suit. Concealed underneath their clothes were shrapnel-filled suicide vests held together with tape.

A few miles away, a black Seat Leon weaved toward the busy cafe district of Paris. The man behind the wheel, an already notorious Belgian ISIS operative named Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was on the phone speaking to Hadfi at the stadium to make sure everything went according to plan. In the passenger seats, two of his childhood friends, Chakib Akrouh and Salah Abdeslam’s older brother, Brahim, clutched their Kalashnikovs, readying themselves.

Not far away, a black Volkswagen Polo with another trio of heavily armed terrorists headed toward the Bataclan concert hall, where hundreds had gathered to hear the American rock band Eagles of Death Metal. The French ISIS fighters in the car — Ismael Omar Mostefai, Samy Amimour and Foued Mohamed-Aggad — had all recently been on the front lines in Syria, and were moments away from carrying out the worst massacre in the modern history of France.

A night of terror

It is still not clear why the stadium attackers arrived slightly late for the game, but eyewitness accounts suggest they did not have tickets. A security guard at Gate R told French police that starting at 9.05 p.m., he blocked a man resembling one of the Iraqi stadium attackers four times from trying to trick his way in, according to French police documents. One eyewitness interviewed by police remembered seeing three attackers, including Salah Abdeslam, talking to one another after being refused entry into the stadium.

Interrogated after his capture four months later, Abdeslam claimed he had been assigned to blow himself up at the stadium but backed out, according to Paris prosecutor Francois Molins, who said the claim should be treated with caution.

The French police reports make clear that eyewitness accounts are not always reliable and, in the case of the many interviewed after the Paris attacks, were sometimes contradictory. What is clear is that at a certain point after dropping off the stadium attackers, Salah Abdeslam drove away with his suicide vest.

Explosion at the Stade de France

At 9:20 p.m., the first of what would be several large bangs thundered across the stadium. The Iraqi suicide bomber — who according to the security guard had been trying to sneak in — blew himself up outside Gate D, killing one other person. A doctored Syrian passport in the fake name of Ahmad al Mohammad would later be found near what remained of his right foot.

At the moment of the first blast, Bilal Hadfi, the young Belgian member of the stadium attack team, was still on the phone with Abaaoud, the plot ringleader, who was impatiently maneuvering his Seat rental car through the traffic on Rue Bichat to get to the cafe district. Inside the car were his childhood friends Brahim Abdeslam and Chakib Akrouh. The elder Abdeslam brother had traveled from Belgium to Syria in January 2015, where like Akrouh he had joined ISIS.

Kalashnikov fire in the cafe district

Their attack began at 9:25 p.m. when a car in front of Abaaoud blocked his path. Five shots were fired from the Seat Leon, killing the driver of the car. According to some eyewitnesses, Abaaoud stopped the car in the middle of the road, turning on the blinking hazard lights. Shouting “Allahu akbar,” Arabic for “God is great,” all three terrorists then got out of the vehicle and sprayed the terrace and windows of the Cambodge and Carillon cafes with their Kalashnikovs, killing 13 people.

At 9:30 p.m., a second bang was heard in the stadium. A second suicide bomber, dressed in the colors of Bayern Munich, detonated his vest outside Gate H. Fortunately, no one was killed. Hollande, the French president, would soon be evacuated from the stadium. The third suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest 20 minutes later, next to a McDonald’s restaurant near the stadium, injuring over 50, including seven seriously.

By the time of the second explosion at the Stade de France, the Seat Leon was at a new location. At 9:32 p.m., Abaaoud’s team got out of the vehicle, again shouted “Allahu akbar” and opened fire at revelers at the Casa Nostra and Bonne Biere cafes near the Place de la Republique, killing five. One of the surviving eyewitnesses noticed one of the shooters was wearing orange sneakers, Abaaoud’s footwear selection that night.

The killers then jumped back in the car. At 9:36 p.m., the cafe killers opened fire on La Belle Equipe cafe, killing 19. As at the other cafes, most of those who lost their lives were sitting on the outdoor terraces. Eyewitnesses later recalled the gunmen did not speak to each other as they calmly sprayed the cafes and cars traveling down the road with bullets.

The car again sped off to a new location. At 9:40 p.m., Abaaoud dropped off Brahim Abdeslam at the Comptoir Voltaire cafe. According to eyewitnesses interviewed by police, he was wearing a hooded jacket over several layers of clothing when he brusquely entered the covered interior terrace of the establishment. He smiled at the other patrons, apologized for interrupting their dinner, then blew himself up. Their killing done for the night, Abaaoud and Akrouh drove up toward the Montreuil suburb of Paris, where they would abandon the car.

The Bataclan attack: ‘We’re starting’

At around 9:40 p.m., Bataclan attackers Ismael Omar Mostefai, Samy Amimour and Foued Mohamed-Aggad parked their Volkswagen Polo in front of the concert hall. At 9:42 p.m., one of them took out a Samsung smartphone and sent a last text to a cell phone located in Brussels: “We’re getting going; we’re starting.” They then tossed the Samsung phone into a garbage can near the entrance of the Bataclan.

The phone was later recovered and has provided key information to investigators. They believe one of the men who received the text message in Belgium outranked Abaaoud in the Paris attack conspiracy. He has been identified as Mohammed Belkaid, an Algerian confectioner turned ISIS operative who was killed on March 15 in Brussels. Investigators believe he was the overall commander of the ISIS cell behind the Paris attacks as well as the attacks that shook Belgium five months later.

Investigators believe Belkaid was being assisted in Brussels on the night of the Paris attacks by Najim Laachraoui, the cell’s suspected bomb-maker, who went to Syria in February 2013 and returned to Belgium using a fake identity. On March 22, 2016, Laachraoui was one of two suicide bombers who detonated suitcase bombs at the Brussels airport.

MORE: New Paris attacks suspect named

In total, 21 phone calls and two text messages were exchanged between the Samsung phone and the cell phone geolocated in Belgium after the latter phone went active, 24 hours before the Paris attack.

Investigators believe Belkaid and Laachraoui provided direction to the Paris attackers from Brussels before, during and after the night of the attacks, using multiple cell phones. According to French police reports obtained and viewed by CNN, the second of those cell phones, geolocated in precisely the same area in Belgium as the first, was communicating with Hadfi at the stadium and with Abaaoud’s cafe team as the attacks unfolded, suggesting the attack was being coordinated in real time from Brussels.

The encryption app

Several hours earlier, at 2:14 p.m., the Bataclan attackers had downloaded the encryption messaging app Telegram onto their Samsung smart phone, according to police reports. No recovered content from the messaging app is mentioned in the French police documents, suggesting there were likely communications by the Bataclan attackers that will never be recovered.

As well as offering end-to-end encryption, the Telegram messaging app offers an option for users to “self-destruct” messages. At 4:39 p.m. on November 13, one of the attackers downloaded detailed floor plans of the Bataclan venue onto the Samsung phone and conducted online searches for the American rock band playing there that night, the Eagles of Death Metal.

Almost all of the 89 people killed inside the Bataclan lost their lives during the first 20 minutes of the attack. The gunmen first killed three people on the sidewalk outside the concert hall, then entered and moved to the floor area of the venue, peppering the concertgoers with automatic fire, while shouting “Allahu akbar.”

Inside the Bataclan

As one fired his weapon, the other reloaded so they could kill as efficiently as possible. Researching the floor plans appears to have paid off for the perpetrators. As some of those inside tried to escape through an emergency exit, they found a third terrorist waiting for them on the other side, according to the French police documents.

According to the eyewitnesses cited in the French police documents, the attackers spoke perfect French, taunting those lying wounded on the floor of the concert hall by saying, “Anybody who moves, I’m going to kill.”

‘Where are those Yanks?’

After the initial wave of killing, the gunmen stopped and asked each other “Where is the singer? Where are those Yanks? It’s an American group, you’re bombing us with the Americans, so we’re going to hit the Americans and you,” according to an eyewitness cited in the police documents.

The terrorists then addressed those fighting for their lives on the floor, telling them they had been dispatched from Syria by ISIS to carry out the attack to avenge French airstrikes in Iraq and Syria.

At 10 p.m., two local French police officers arrived at the venue. Although only armed with handguns, they managed to take out Samy Amimour. As Amimour fell mortally wounded to the floor, he triggered his suicide vest. According to police documents cited by Le Monde, when the other two terrorists opened fire on the police officers from above, they were forced to retreat.

The two surviving terrorists, Mostefai and Aggad, then took some of the surviving hostages, and according to documents cited by Le Monde, herded them to an L-shaped corridor deeper inside the building. According to police documents obtained by CNN, by then the terrorists had seized several cell phones from concertgoers to try to access the Internet but could not find a signal.

Hostage rescue

By 10:45 p.m., France’s rapid response commandos, a unit known as RAID, were on the scene. According to the French police documents obtained by CNN, they started communicating with the hostage-takers from outside the corridor via cell phone. The terrorists threatened to start executing their prisoners unless they received a signed paper promising that France would leave Muslim lands.

At around that time, Abaaoud, the Paris team leader, was spotted by a witness outside the Bataclan concert hall, apparently barking orders into a hands-free cell phone to the two surviving terrorists inside. Investigators later traced the cell phone he was using that night to the area outside the Bataclan. After abandoning the Seat Leon in Montreuil, he had ridden the metro back into the center of town to coordinate the final phase of the attack.

Just after midnight, the RAID commandos stormed the corridor, rescuing all the hostages alive. According to eyewitness reports cited by Le Monde, Mostefai and Aggad were cut down by police bullets. At least one of them managed to detonate his suicide vest.

A second attack is thwarted

Seven terrorists in the 10-man attack team were now dead. Only Salah Abdeslam, Abaaoud and Akrouh remained alive. Their attack was the deadliest in Europe since the 2004 Madrid train bombings. The death toll would soon rise to 130, with hundreds of others injured. Only fast detective work over the next few days prevented the death count from increasing further.

Instead of returning to a house rented by the cell in Bobigny, Abaaoud and Akrouh set up a makeshift camp that night in a small wooded area near a highway overpass near Rue des Bergeries in Aubervilliers, not far from the national stadium.

A helpful cousin

This is when Abaaoud’s female cousin Hasna ait Boulahcen came into the picture.

According to close associates interviewed by French police, she had been in love with Abaaoud ever since nearly marrying him when she was 16 and had stayed in touch with him online after he joined ISIS in Syria. According to others interviewed by police, she had recently herself become radicalized and had started wearing a full veil.

According to French police documents, Boulahcen received several calls from Belgium between November 13 and November 16 to guide her to Abaaoud’s location. The working assumption is these calls were placed by Belkaid or Laachraoui in Brussels, asking her to help Abaaoud find a place to stay.

She met him in his hideout late in the evening of November 15, according to French police documents. Police received a tip about the meeting the following day from a female confidential witness who had accompanied Boulahcen to the hideout. When this witness was eventually interviewed, she told police she had met a man wearing orange sneakers who claimed he had taken advantage of refugees to come to France with 90 others to carry out attacks.

French police began monitoring Boulahcen’s phone and following her after the tipoff, and also put the wooded area in Aubervilliers under surveillance, according to police documents.

According to the female confidential witness, Abaaoud was planning a followup attack on the La Defence shopping district in Paris on November 19, while his accomplice was hoping to hit a police station. In order to help them carry out the attack, Boulahcen was given 4,000 euros to buy suits and shoes for Abaaoud and Akrouh.

On November 17, the cell’s commander, Belkaid, accompanied by Laachraoui, transferred 750 euros to Boulahcen from a Western Union office in Brussels so she could rent lodging for Abaaoud and Akrouh. Boulahcen then contacted somebody she knew in the criminal underworld to arrange for the men to stay at a ramshackle dwelling with no running water in Saint-Denis. That night she went to the wooded area to pick up Abaaoud and Akrouh in a taxi and took them to the property at about 10:30 p.m.

Just a few hours later, in the early morning of November 18, RAID commandos moved against the residence. The firefight that followed was so intense, one of the ceilings caved in. Akrouh detonated his suicide vest, Abaaoud was also killed, and Boulahcen suffocated to death, according to the police documents.

Slipping through the net

After driving away from the stadium on the night of November 13, Salah Abdeslam abandoned his Renault Clio rental car in the 18th district and then jettisoned his suicide vest in a trash can in the southern Paris suburb of Montrouge.

Around 11 p.m., Abdeslam called Mohammed Amri, a friend from Brussels, to ask him to pick him up. A few hours later, Amri and a second friend, Hamza Attou, picked Abdeslam up in the capital and drove him back to Belgium.

Their car was stopped three times before it reached the Belgian border, including at 9 a.m. near the town of Cambrai, but the men were not detained because French police had not yet established that the Volkswagen Polo that was recovered outside the Bataclan had been rented by Salah Abdeslam.

After their arrest in Brussels later that day, Amri and Attou — who face trial for helping Abdeslam escape — told investigators that he was in a state of emotional distress and threatened to blow up the car unless they drove him to Brussels. When they dropped Abdeslam off in the city, he melted away, and for months the trail for him went completely cold.

Investigators get a break

Fast forward to March 15, and investigators got a lucky break.

When Belgian and French police arrived at what they thought was an abandoned residence which intelligence suggested was connected to the Paris attack, three terrorists inside opened fire on them.

One of them was Belkaid, the cell’s commander, an Algerian ISIS operative who had helped coordinate the Paris attacks by phone from Belgium. He provided covering fire as the other two fled, and was later shot dead by a Belgian police sniper.

When police moved in they found Abdeslam’s fingerprints and DNA and other evidence suggesting he had been in the apartment recently. They also found a Kalashnikov, ammunition, an ISIS flag and detonators, raising concern the men inside may have been planning an attack. The trail of Europe’s most wanted terrorist had gone from stone cold to red hot.

Abdeslam would soon make a critical mistake. After fleeing from the apartment, Abdeslam and an accomplice using the fake identity “Monir Ahmed Alaaj” phoned an associate who was under surveillance, according to a senior Belgian counterterrorism official. “He came right into our net,” the official told CNN.

As a result, three days later police located Abdeslam and “Alaaj” in Molenbeek and took them into custody. Investigators had no idea that just a few miles across Brussels, the remaining members of his ISIS cell were accelerating an attack plan that had already been in the works.

A drumbeat of terror

The road to the Paris attacks began several months earlier, when an ISIS media team in Syria arranged for the attackers to be filmed in a gruesome propaganda video. Nearly all the attackers who later gathered in Paris are seen clutching the throats of prisoners in orange jumpsuits before beheading them. “If it’s not with our knives it will be with our Kalashnikovs. It’s an order from our emir Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to fight you in your lands, and Allah willing our appointment will be on the Champs Elysees,” declared the future Bataclan attacker Mostefai.

Western intelligence agencies believe the top leadership of ISIS signed off on the Paris plot. The group has set up an external operations division reporting up to Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, one of Baghdadi’s top deputies, according to U.S. officials.

Laying the groundwork

Abaaoud was assigned the task of leading the attack team in Paris. Radicalized in jail in Belgium for a string of robberies he committed with Saleh Abdeslam, he had risen up the ranks of ISIS after first traveling to Syria from Belgium in early 2013. Later that year, Abaaoud briefly returned to Belgium to abduct his 13-year-old brother Younes, who his family believes has since been killed in Syria, according to French police documents.

During his stay in Belgium, Abaaoud received a phone call from Mehdi Nemmouche, a French ISIS fighter who is the prime suspect in the May 2014 killings of four people at a Jewish museum in Brussels, suggesting a possible role in that attack. When Abaaoud returned to Syria in January 2014, according to the testimony of a French ISIS fighter, he was assigned to an internal security unit of ISIS before being tasked with organizing plots against Europe.

Plotting against France

Abaaoud escaped the dragnet and returned to Syria. According to French police documents, one of those interrogated in Belgium in the weeks after the plot was thwarted was Abaaoud’s childhood friend Salah Abdeslam, who claimed he did not share Abaaoud’s radical views.

Back in ISIS’ Syrian de facto capital, Raqqa, Abaaoud worked feverishly with several other French-speaking ISIS operatives to set in motion a string of plots against France.

A key figure in the group was Fabien Clain, a veteran French jihadi about 10 years Abaaoud’s senior, who European intelligence agencies believe is a driving force behind Dar al-Islam, ISIS’ French magazine. Before arriving in Syria, Clain had spent jail time in France for recruiting for al Qaeda in Iraq and, as CNN has previously reported, also threatened to attack the Bataclan concert hall.

During the course of 2015, Dar al-Islam’s repeated threats against France did not escape the notice of European counterterrorism officials. The day after the Paris attacks, it was Clain who claimed responsibility on behalf of ISIS, suggesting he played a senior role in the conspiracy.

Looking for recruits

According to a senior Belgian counterterrorism official, Clain and Abaaoud were on the lookout for fresh recruits who could be given quick training for a week or two and then sent back to Europe to launch attacks.

The first plot Abaaoud and Clain allegedly instigated was a plan by Sid Ahmed Ghlam, a Paris-based student, to attack a church in Paris. Ghlam made two trips to Turkey, where he met with operatives connected to Clain who assigned him to launch an attack. The plot was thwarted in April 2015 after Ghlam accidentally shot himself in the leg.

In June 2015, Nicholas Moreau, a French suspected ISIS recruit, was taken into custody by French authorities after being deported from Turkey. He was later charged with being part of a conspiracy with relation to a terrorist enterprise. Under interrogation, he claimed Abaaoud was “the principal commander of future attacks in Europe” and had been charged by ISIS with examining the background of potential recruits for those attacks, according to French police documents. Although analysts believe Moreau exaggerated Abaaoud’s importance, it was clear he was quickly becoming one of the caliphate’s most dangerous operatives.

Weapons training in the park

That same June, Abaaoud assigned Reda Hame, a French ISIS recruit, to return to France and launch an attack on a crowded concert venue. Hame claimed he had backed out of the planned attack when he was arrested by French authorities.

CNN has obtained the transcript of his August 13 interrogation by French police. Rame claimed he had been provided hands-on weapons training, including in the use of Kalashnikovs and grenades, by Abaaoud in a park in Raqqa in early June. According to Hame, Abaaoud gave him his assignment, “choosing an easy target, like a group of people, a concert for example, where there is a crowd. He specified that after carrying out the attack I should wait for security services to arrive and die while taking out the hostages. He added that if lots of civilians were hit, the foreign policy of France would change.”

A few minutes later Hame was asked if he was aware of any attacks in the works against France. “All I can tell you is that it’s going to happen soon. It’s a veritable factory over there — they are really looking to hit France or Europe,” Hame replied.

Hame also revealed that ISIS had set up an elaborate encrypted communication system so that it could keep in touch with its European operatives. In Raqqa, he said, he was instructed to encrypt communications with a software tool called Truecrypt, which authorities found on a thumb drive he had been given by Abaaoud. Hame said he had been taught to copy a message into the software, select an encryption option and then paste the message into a password-protected sharing site.

“An English-speaking expert on clandestine communications I met over there had the same password,” Hame told interrogators. “It operated like a dead letter drop.”

There were also links to Abaaoud in an attempted attack on a high-speed train heading toward Paris later in August 2015, which was thwarted by the heroic intervention of three Americans. The gunman, Ayoub el Khazzani, had connections to associates of Abaaoud, according to French police documents.

Moving fighters into Europe

Although investigators do not yet have a complete picture, they believe most of the 10-man attack team entered Europe in the late summer and early autumn of 2015.

In early August, Salah Abdeslam took a ferry from Greece to Italy in the company of Ahmed Dahmani, a Belgian associate. It is not clear if they were in Greece to pick up operatives coming back from Syria. All 10 of the Paris attackers except Salah Abdeslam were featured in the ISIS video filmed in Syria and released after the attack. Dahmani, who investigators believe was part of the broader Paris attack conspiracy, was subsequently arrested in Turkey after boarding a flight from Amsterdam the day after the attacks.

On September 9, Salah Abdeslam was checked at the Hungarian-Austrian border on his way back to Belgium in a rented Mercedes, on one of two trips that month that Belgian investigators suspect were to pick up members of the cell who had worked their way from Syria through Greece and the Balkans.

In the car with him that day were two key figures in the Paris conspiracy: Belkaid, the cell’s commander, and Laachraoui, the suspected bomb-maker, who had slipped into Europe from Syria using fake identities and had been picked up by Abdeslam in Hungary.

Abaaoud, the attack team leader in Paris, had slipped into Europe by the end of September. Investigators later established through eyewitness accounts that he had been present at some point that month on the Greek island of Leros. It is still not clear whether he disembarked in Leros or went there to pick up other members of the cell.

Two other ISIS operatives are thought to have entered Europe through Leros that September. One was the man later arrested with Salah Abdeslam in Brussels on March 18 who carried the fake identity papers of “Monir Ahmed Alaaj.” The other was carrying a Syrian passport in the name of Naim el Hamed. German investigators believe both men were picked up at a hotel near a refugee center in Ulm, Germany, by Salah Abdeslam and driven to Brussels on October 3.

That same day, the two Iraqis tasked with blowing themselves up at the Stade de France disembarked on Leros from a boat carrying almost 200 migrants. They used doctored Syrian passports to register as refugees and then took a ferry to Athens, before traveling through the Balkans to Hungary, then Austria. They then joined the other members of the conspiracy in Belgium.

Building bombs in safe houses

Investigators have established that the group gathered in at least three safe houses in Belgium in the weeks before the attack. An apartment they rented on Rue Henri Berge in the Brussels district of Schaerbeek on September 1 served as the bomb factory. Here the group manufactured the high explosive TATP and inserted it into suicide vests. It is not yet known who made the bombs. A sewing machine used to stitch together the vests, as well as the fingerprints of Salah Abdeslam and the DNA of Laachraoui, were later found at the property. Laachraoui’s DNA was also found on parts of the suicide vests used by the Paris attackers.

According to Belgian public broadcaster RTBF, the apartment was rented by Mohammed Bakkali, a Belgian extremist. He — along with Salah Abdeslam, Mohammed Belkaid and Najim Laachraoui — played a key role in the logistics and planning of the attack, officials told CNN. Bakkali was arrested in Brussels on November 26 and faces trial. According to a senior Belgian counterterrorism official, police recovered surveillance footage at his residence of an official working at a Belgian nuclear site.

On September 3, the conspirators rented an apartment on Rue de Fort in Charleroi, Belgium, where Abaaoud’s fingerprints were subsequently found. And on October 5, Laachraoui rented a large villa with a climate-controlled cellar in the small town of Auvelais near Charleroi, where traces of Abaaoud’s presence were also found, according to a senior Belgian official.

Rental cars and final preparations

Between November 11 and November 13, rental cars arranged by Salah Abdeslam shuttled back and forth to Belgium, ferrying the attackers to Paris. After the attacks, authorities recovered surveillance footage showing the attackers stopping off at various highway service stations en route. One of the drivers, Mohamed Abrini, a Belgian-Moroccan from Molenbeek, is still at large.

The Bataclan attackers congregated at the “City” hotel in the Paris suburb of Alfortville. Syringes were later found in one of their rooms, which investigators believe were used to add the final detonating chemical necessary to arm the suicide vests.

The stadium and cafe attackers stayed at a dilapidated house on the Rue Georges Tarral, in the northeastern suburb of Bobigny, rented by Brahim Abdeslam. At 8:30 p.m. on November 13, an eyewitness saw a Renault Clio pulling away from the residence. Driven by Salah Abdeslam, it made its way toward the national stadium just a few miles away in Saint-Denis to launch the opening phase of an attack that would traumatize France.

The Brussels attack

The very same ISIS cell behind the Paris attacks launched last week’s twin attacks on Brussels, killing at least 32.

After Salah Abdeslam returned to Brussels the day after the Paris attacks, he went to ground in a safe house unknown to Belgian police in the Forest district of Brussels. There he was reunited with Belkaid, who investigators believe was the commander of the cell that carried out both the Paris and Brussels attacks. Investigators believe Belkaid was preparing a Paris-style gun and bomb attack in Brussels or a series of attacks on the city involving at least two attack teams, and that Abdelsam was primed to participate. At a bomb factory at the Rue Max Roos in Schaerbeek, the cell had prepared a large quantity of TATP for the attack.

When their safe house in the Forest district was discovered and Belkaid was killed and Abdeslam was arrested, investigators believe the remaining conspirators accelerated their plans to avoid capture.

Early in the morning of March 22, three men were picked up by a taxi driver at the bomb factory in Schaarbeek. He later told investigators the men brought down so many bags — later found to be filled with explosives — that they had to leave one behind.

Just before 8 a.m., their attack began at the airport. Two of the men detonated explosives they had placed in luggage on a trolley, killing about a dozen. They were later identified as the bomb-maker Laachraoui and Ibrahim al Bakraoui, a former bank robber who had tried to travel to Syria earlier in 2015 before being detained near the Turkish-Syrian border and deported by Turkey. The third suspected airport bomber, seen in a light jacket and hat on surveillance video, fled the scene and is still at large. He failed to explode his device, which was detonated by authorities later in a controlled explosion.

At 9:11 a.m., Bakraoui’s brother Khalid, also a former bank robber, blew himself up at the Maalbeek metro station, killing at least 20. Investigators later established he had rented Salah Abdeslam’s hiding place in the Forest district of Brussels and the Charleroi safe house used by the Paris attackers, underlining the close connections between the Brussels and Paris plots. A second suspect seen on surveillance video with a bag at the station is still at large.

So far, according to French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, eight people with direct links to the Paris attacks are in custody in Belgium and two in France. Eight others are wanted by European security services in connection with the Paris and Brussels attacks, according to a security bulletin distributed the day after the attacks. A source with access to the document provided details to CNN.

Various suspects on the list spent time relatively recently in Belgium, France, Holland, Sweden and Germany, underlining the Europe-wide reach of the network. One of those on the list is “Naim el Hamed,” the operative picked up by Salah Abdeslam in Ulm, Germany, who is suspected to have played an operational role in the Brussels attacks, according to a source close to the investigation. Another is Yoni Patrick Mayne, a Belgian-Malian extremist who traveled with Abaaoud to Syria in January 2014 and who may have subsequently faked his own death.

Fabien Clain, Mohammed Abrini and an unknown number of others also remain at large.

Senator Leahy’s Written Challenge to Israel on Human Rights

Posted on March 30, 2016March 30, 2016 by Denise Simon

Is this senator nuts or has he in fact been void of news or foreign policy updates provided to Congress? Both perhaps? And some fellow senators appear to have the same problem.

What is worse, the letter is addressed to SecState, John Kerry who is quite anti-Israel and for sure anti-Egypt but perhaps the White House has a few in the senate taking on this written challenge…..

Check this out…..

First comes Prime Minister Netanyahu’s response:

PM Netanyahu’s Response to US Senator Patrick Leahy’s Letter (Communicated by the Prime Minister’s Media Adviser)

Following is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response to US Senator Patrick Leahy’s letter:

“The IDF and the Israel Police do not engage in executions. Israel’s soldiers and police officers defend themselves and innocent civilians with the highest moral standards against bloodthirsty terrorists who come to murder them.

Where is the concern for the human rights of the many Israelis who’ve been murdered and maimed by these savage terrorists?

This letter should have been addressed instead to those who incite youngsters to commit cruel acts of terrorism.”

Then we need to ask some deeper questions regarding the influence some communist lobby groups have in Congress like American Friends of Service Committee. Perhaps this organization is also tied or maybe funded by Iran?

Leahy asked State Dept. to investigate Israeli human rights ‘violations’

Politico: Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and 10 House members have asked the Obama administration to investigate claims that the Israeli and Egyptian security forces have committed “gross violations of human rights” — allegations that if proven truei could affect U.S. military aid to the countries.

In a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry dated Feb. 17, the lawmakers list several examples of suspected human rights abuses, including reports of extrajudicial killings by Israeli and Egyptian military forces, as well as forced disappearances in Egypt. The letter also points to the 2013 massacre in Egypt’s Rab’aa Square, which left nearly 1,000 people dead as the military cracked down on protesters, as worthy of examination.

Leahy’s signature is particularly noteworthy because his name is on a law that conditions U.S. military aid to countries on whether their security forces are committing abuses.

“In light of these reports we request that you act promptly to determine their credibility and whether they trigger the Leahy Law and, if so, take appropriate action called for under the law,” the signatories state in the letter, which was obtained by POLITICO on Tuesday evening from an organization that provided input for it.

The Leahy Law’s application and impact have been difficult to measure, and while U.S. funding to a particular foreign military unit may be cut off as a result of the law, overall U.S. military aid to the country need not be stopped.

The letter’s real impact may be political: Israel’s unusual, if not unprecedented inclusion with Egypt on such an inquiry is likely to rile Israel’s allies in Washington, who bristle at the notion that the Middle East’s only established democracy could be lumped in with a notorious human rights abuser like Egypt.

Though it was sent to Kerry well beforehand, the timing of the letter’s release comes just days after an Israeli soldier was filmed executing a Palestinian prisoner at close range – setting off fury in the Arab world and launching a military disciplinary process that has many on the Israeli right fuming.

Leahy spokesman David Carle downplayed Israel’s inclusion in the request, noting that the Vermont Democrat “has always said” that the law that bears his name “should be uniformly applied.”

Egypt’s inclusion may be no easier to navigate, as the military-backed Egyptian regime has proved a vexing problem for President Barack Obama as he has sought to balance the U.S.’s traditional concern for human rights with its need to maintain Cairo as an ally in an increasingly chaotic Middle East.

The U.S. is so wary of losing Egypt’s friendship it declined to call the military’s 2013 takeover over of the elected Muslim Brotherhood government a coup — a label that would have triggered a legal obligation to suspend military aid. Israel, meanwhile, remains America’s closest ally in the region despite tense relations between Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and it has received billions in U.S. military assistance over the years.

The letter questions the current mechanisms that the U.S. has to monitor its military assistance to both countries and asks for clarity on how the various divisions of the State Department “document and determine the credibility of information related to allegations of gross violations of human rights by foreign security forces.”

“According to information we have received, the manner in which U.S. military assistance has been provided to Israel and Egypt, since the Camp David Accords, including the delivery of assistance at the military service level, has created a unique situation that has hindered implementation of normal mechanisms for monitoring the use of such assistance,” the letter states.

A State Department spokesman said it would provide a comment later Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the letter was hailed by left-leaning organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace, the National Lawyers Guild International Committee and others. These groups also provided input for the letter.

“Both Israel and Egypt receive billions of dollars in U.S. military aid, and both countries’ security forces have opened fire on protesters with impunity. This letter from key members of Congress is an important first step in the right direction,” said Sunjeev Bery of Amnesty International USA.

Added Raed Jarrar of the American Friends Service Committee: “We call on the Department of State to investigate all the cases mentioned in the letter, and to provide Congress with a comprehensive answer.”

**** About American Friends of Service Committee as noted in part from Wikipedia:

For its anti-war, pro-immigration, and anti-capital punishment stances, the AFSC receives criticism from many socially conservative groups. Often the criticisms allege that the AFSC has supported Communist activities.^{[citation needed]}

Throughout much of the group’s history the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and other government agencies have monitored the work of this and many other similar organizations.^[17]^[18]^[19]

Since the 1970s, criticism has also come from liberals within the Society of Friends, who charge that AFSC has drifted from its Quaker roots and has become indistinguishable from other political pressure groups. Quakers expressed concern with AFSC’s abolition of their youth work camps during the 1960s and what some saw as a decline of Quaker participation in the organization. The criticisms became prominent after a gathering of Friends General Conference in Richmond, Indiana, in the summer of 1979 when many Friends joined with prominent leaders, such as Kenneth Boulding, to call for a firmer Quaker orientation toward public issues.^[20] Some Jews have accused AFSC of having an anti-Jewish bias.^[21] Jacob Neusner calls the Committee “the most militant and aggressive of Christian anti-Israel groups.”^[

WH Nuclear Summit Details

Posted on March 30, 2016March 30, 2016 by Denise Simon

3 countries by the way are ‘no-shows’ Iran, Russia and Pakistan.

The basis of the summit could and should begin with Western powers at UN seek meeting on Iranian missile tests

Washington, Paris, London and Berlin said as much in a letter dated Monday to the Spanish ambassador Roman Oyarzun Marchesi, who is in charge of the issue within the council.

The same powers last July signed an historic nuclear accord with Tehran to limit its nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of crippling sanctions.

The letter obtained by AFP says the missile launches were “destabilizing and provocative” and defied a 2015 UN resolution, number 2231. Much more here.

FACT SHEET: The Nuclear Security Summits: Securing the World from Nuclear Terrorism

Progress Since Prague

The Obama Administration’s focus on nuclear security is part of a comprehensive nuclear policy presented by the President in Prague in 2009. In that speech, President Obama described a four-pronged agenda to pursue a world without nuclear weapons. He laid out new U.S. policies and initiatives towards nuclear disarmament, nuclear nonproliferation, nuclear security, and nuclear energy.

President Obama in his Prague remarks identified the risk of nuclear terrorism as the most immediate and extreme threat to global security, and he called for a worldwide effort to secure all vulnerable nuclear materials in four years. He also highlighted the need to break up black markets, detect and intercept materials in transit, and use financial tools to disrupt illicit trade in nuclear materials.

The Nuclear Threat

It is almost impossible to quantify the likelihood of nuclear attack by extremist groups. But we know that roughly 2000 metric tons of nuclear weapons usable materials — highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium — are present in both civilian and military programs, and we know that terrorists have the intent and the capability to turn these raw materials into a nuclear device if they were to gain access to them. A terrorist attack with an improvised nuclear device would create political, economic, social, psychological, and environmental havoc around the world, no matter where the attack occurs. The threat is global, the impact of a nuclear terrorist attack would be global, and the solutions therefore must be global.

The President’s call-to-action in Prague was intended to reinvigorate existing bilateral and multilateral efforts and to challenge nations to re-examine their own commitments to nuclear security. Given the global repercussions of such an attack, all nations have a common interest in establishing the highest levels of security and protection over nuclear material and strengthening national and international efforts to prevent nuclear smuggling and detect and intercept nuclear materials in transit. World leaders have no greater responsibility than ensuring their people and neighboring countries are safe by securing nuclear materials and preventing nuclear terrorism.

Nuclear Security Summit Successes

The Nuclear Security Summit process has been the centerpiece of these efforts. Since the first Summit in April 2010 in Washington, DC, President Obama and more than 50 world leaders have been working together to prevent nuclear terrorism and counter nuclear smuggling. This Summit community has built an impressive track record in meaningful progress towards nuclear security, and on actions that back up our words. Collectively, Summit participants have made over 260 national security commitments in the first three Summits, and of these, nearly three-quarters have been implemented. These outcomes – nuclear material removed or eliminated, treaties ratified and implemented, reactors converted, regulations strengthened, “Centers of Excellence” launched, technologies upgraded, capabilities enhanced – are tangible, concrete evidence of improved nuclear security. The international community has made it harder than ever for terrorists to acquire nuclear weapons, and that has made us all more secure.

In addition to national actions, Summits have provided opportunities for countries to step beyond the limitations of consensus to highlight steps they are actually taking as a group to reduce nuclear threats. These so-called “gift baskets” have reflected joint commitments related to countering nuclear smuggling, radioactive source security, information security, transportation security, and many other topics. It would be an overstatement to suggest that these national and collective commitments have come about exclusively as a result of the Nuclear Security Summits, but it is fair to say that they would almost certainly not all have transpired in the absence of the kind of high-level forcing effect that summits can have.

Across the four Nuclear Security Summits, we have maintained the momentum of tangible actions to reduce the threat of nuclear terrorism and to make progress towards strengthened international norms and standards for nuclear security.

The number of facilities with nuclear material continues to decline: We successfully completed removals or confirmed the downblending of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium from more than 50 facilities in 30 countries — in total, enough material for 130 nuclear weapons.
- In 2010, Ukraine committed to remove four bombs’ worth of HEU and completed that removal in 2012, fully eliminating all HEU from its territory – a particularly vital step in light of Russia’s subsequent breaches of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
- Japan is on track to remove over 500 kilograms of HEU and separated plutonium from its Fast Critical Assembly. This is the largest-ever project by a country to remove nuclear material from its territory and we look forward to continued work with Japan on additional removals.
Fourteen countries and Taiwan highlighted the elimination of all nuclear materials from their territory; as a result, wide swaths of Central and Eastern Europe and all of South America can be considered free of HEU and therefore no longer targets for those seeking nuclear materials.
Security at sites and on borders is increasing: All Summit countries reported progress in enhancing nuclear security practices, including 20 countries committing to increase cooperation to counter nuclear smuggling efforts, and 13 countries pledging to improve nuclear detection practices at ports;
A majority of Summit states will implement stronger security practices: 36 countries pledged to implement stronger nuclear security practices in their countries by – among other things – incorporating international guidelines into national laws, inviting international peer reviews of their nuclear material, and committing to continuous review and improvement of their nuclear security systems.
The legal basis for nuclear security continues to be strengthened: additional countries are adopting binding legal commitments, such as the Amended Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, which will soon achieve entry into force with over 80 new ratifications since 2009, and the International Convention on Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism.
Nuclear Security Training and Support Centers and other nuclear security Centers of Excellence have increased and become more connected: 15 states have opened centers since 2009 in support of national nuclear workforce training requirements, as well as international capacity building and research and development on nuclear security technologies.
Radioactive source security has been enhanced: 23 countries agreed to secure their most dangerous radioactive sources to levels established in international guidelines by 2016.

Strengthening the Architecture

Key aspects of the Summits’ success have included the personal attention of national leaders; a focus on tangible, meaningful outcomes; a regular event that elicits deliverables and announcements; and a forum that builds relationships that can help advance joint efforts. We need to find ways to capture some of these attributes in more lasting vehicles to promote nuclear security progress.

The IAEA’s first-ever nuclear security ministerial held in 2013 is an important step towards strengthening the Agency’s role in promoting nuclear security, and we look forward to regularizing those high-level meetings, with the next one being held in December 2016. The 2012 special session at the UN on nuclear terrorism reflects the unique convening power of the United Nations in this arena. INTERPOL plays a unique role in bringing together law enforcement officials, as seen through its recent convening of the recent Global Conference to combat nuclear smuggling. Other fora for collective action – the Global Partnership, the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism (GICNT), the Nuclear Suppliers Group – have all been invigorated in recent years. The United States hosted the first Nuclear Security Regulators Conference in 2012, and Spain will host the second such meeting in May 2016. The World Institute for Nuclear Security, professional societies and nongovernmental expert communities are also key components of this architecture and must continue to contribute to this mission as we move beyond Summits to nurture new concepts, build professional skills, and develop global connections.

The Summits were designed to enhance, elevate, expand and empower this architecture of treaties, institutions, norms and practices to effectively address the threats we face today and in the future. As the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit represents the last summit in this format, we will issue five Action Plans in support of the key enduring institutions and initiatives related to nuclear security: the UN, the IAEA, INTERPOL, the GICNT and the Global Partnership. These Action Plans represent steps the Summit participants will take as members of these organizations to support their enhanced role in nuclear security.

Another key component of the Summit’s success has been the effective network of “Sherpas” – the senior expert officials in each Summit country responsible for developing the outcomes of the Summits and for preparing their respective leaders. These Sherpas cut across multiple agencies to form a tight-knit community of action. This community will be carried forward after the 2016 Summit as a “Nuclear Security Contact Group” that will meet regularly to synchronize efforts to implement commitments made in the four Summit Communiqués, national statements, gift baskets, and Action Plans. Recognizing the interest from those who have not been part of the Summit process, this Contact Group will be open to countries that wish to promote the Summit agenda.

Looking Ahead

As much as we have accomplished through the Summit process, more work remains. We will continue to seek additional tangible results in nuclear material reductions and better overall nuclear and radiological security practices; we will look for ways to enhance the global nuclear security architecture; and, we will continue to promote an architecture that – over time – is comprehensive in its scope (including civilian and military material), is based on international standards, incorporates measures to build confidence that states are applying security responsibly in their countries, and promotes declining stocks of directly useable fissile material.

We all need to do more together to enhance nuclear security performance, to dissuade and apprehend nuclear traffickers, to eliminate excess nuclear weapons and material, to avoid production of materials we cannot use, to make sure our facilities can repel the full range of threats we have already seen in our neighborhoods, to share experiences and best practices, and to do so in ways that are visible to friends, neighbors, and rivals – and thereby provide assurance that we are effectively executing our sovereign responsibility. We also need to reflect the principle of continuous improvement, because nuclear security is never “done”. As long as materials exist, they require our utmost commitment to their protection—we continue the march toward the goal of a world without nuclear weapons.