Amna Nawaz:
Outside the State Department this afternoon, former officials rallied in support of outgoing staff.
And the American Foreign Service Association criticized the cuts, writing in a statement — quote — “As allies look to the U.S. for reassurance and rivals test for weakness, the administration has chosen to sideline the very professionals best equipped to navigate this moment.”
And appeals court in Washington, D.C., threw out a plea deal today for the alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks. The agreement would have allowed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to plead guilty in exchange for avoiding the death penalty and serving life in prison instead. Today’s decision validates a move by then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who had blocked the deal last year, arguing a decision on the death penalty should be up to the secretary of defense.
It also throws into question the future of the case, which has already been plagued by more than 20 years of legal wrangling.
Officials in Baltimore are investigating a suspected mass overdose event that saw more than two dozen people sent to the hospital. The city’s fire department first responded to an overdose incident yesterday morning in West Baltimore. Community members then directed emergency crews to more unconscious people in the area. More than a dozen medical units were deployed to take patients to nearby hospitals.
Several of them were in critical conditions, though there have been no fatalities so far. The cause of the overdoses has yet to be determined.
The son of Mexican drug kingpin El Chapo pleaded guilty today to drug trafficking charges here in the U.S. Ovidio Guzman Lopez is the first of El Chapo’s sons to enter a plea deal. Prosecutors say he and his brother Joaquin ran a faction of the infamous Sinaloa Cartel. They were known as the Chapitos, or Little Chapos.
Guzman Lopez admitted to helping oversee the smuggling of large quantities of drugs into the U.S., including cocaine, heroin, and fentanyl. He pleaded guilty to drug trafficking, money laundering, and firearms charges. Terms of the deal were not immediately disclosed.
Turning overseas, thousands of Bosnians marked 30 years since the Srebrenica massacre, when more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed during the Bosnian war. Today, crowds gathered at the town’s sprawling cemetery to remember the victims, and seven newly identified victims were finally laid to rest; 30 years later, partial remains are still being found in mass graves around the area.
Srebrenica has been recognized as Europe’s only genocide since the Holocaust. Some of those who suffered through it warn similar atrocities continue today.
Munira Subasic, President, Mothers of Srebrenica (through interpreter): I appeal to you, help us fight against hatred, against injustice, against killings, against rape, against expulsion. No one has the right to kill anyone’s child. As I stand here, many mothers in Ukraine and Palestine are going through what we went through in 1995.
