Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich freed from Russia in prisoner swap – National & International News – THU 2Aug2024

Three Americans, including Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich, freed from Russia in prisoner swap.

9/11 plotters reach plea deal, avoid death penalty.

Hezbollah, Iran vow to retaliate against Israel for assassinations.

NATIONAL NEWS

Three Americans, including Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich, freed from Russia in prisoner swap

Americans Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich have been freed from detention in Russia as part of a massive prisoner exchange involving multiple nations. Paul Whelan is a former US Marine who was detained in Russia in 2018 and was serving a 16-year sentence following convictions on various espionage charges. Gershkovich is a Wall Street Journal reporter who was detained in Russia on espionage charges in March 2023. He had recently been sentenced to 16 years in prison following his conviction. Both Whelan and Gershkovich are now on their way back to the US.

Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva, who works for Radio Free Europe, was also freed as part of the deal. She was recently being sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison following her conviction in a secret trial for spreading false information about the Russian military.

The deal freed 24 people total. In addition to the three Americans, several Russian dissidents were also freed.

Who did the Russians want released?

The US, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway, and Turkey will release Russian nationals in their custody who have been convicted of various crimes, including fraud, embezzlement, and espionage.

The most high-profile detainee sought by Russia is Vadim Krasikov, reputed to be an agent of the FSB (the post-Cold War successor to the KGB spy agency). Krasikov was serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 murder of an exiled Chechen commander in Berlin.

In his February interview with Tucker Carlson, Russian President Vladimir Putin hinted that he would be willing to free Gershkovich in exchange for Krasikov. Just ten days after that interview aired, Russian dissident Alexei Navalny died in prison, apparently from natural causes. Navalny’s supporters have claimed that a deal involving the release of Navalny, Gershkovich and Whelan was in the final stages when Navalny died.

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Three 9/11 plotters reach plea deal, avoid death penalty

Nearly 23 years after the September 11 attacks, three men accused of plotting the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people have reached a plea deal, according to the Department of Defense. The plea deals for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi are not yet public, but it appears they will avoid the death penalty.

Groups representing 9/11 survivors and victims’ family members have previously voiced their displeasure about the death penalty being off the table, and have done so again following yesterday’s announcement. However, these three mean have each been imprisoned in Guantanamo for years without trial and each of them have also been subjected to torture. Prosecutors have long acknowledge that a plea deal would be necessary in order to keep some of the details of their torture (the methods used, the locations where it took place and the perpetrators) from becoming public knowledge. Some details of the torture are known from the 2014 Senate Torture Report. For example, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times. Any evidence obtained from the men through torture would also likely be inadmissible at trial. 

The men will plead guilty to the charges against them, including the murders of 2,976 people, and receive life sentences. It is not clear yet where they will serve their sentences.

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Hezbollah, Iran vow to retaliate against Israel for assassinations

It hasn’t yet been 48 hours since Israel carried out assassinations of two high-profile figures on foreign soil. First was Fuad Shukur, the military commander of Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Israelis targeted an apartment building in a Beirut suburb to kill Shukur, injuring over 70 other people in the process and killing a woman and two children, unrelated to Shukur. 

The second assassination, and arguably the more provocative, targeted Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas in Gaza. Haniyeh has resided in Qatar for nearly a decade but was killed in the Iranian capital of Tehran. He was attending the inauguration of Iran’s new President Masoud Pezeshkian. Haniyeh was apparently staying in a building on the Presidential compound, making this strike all the more humiliating for Iran. 

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has vowed to retaliate against Israel for Haniyeh’s assassination and the flagrant violation of Iran’s sovereignty. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah also said that the tit-for-tat conflict his group has been waging against Israel for the last 10 months has entered “a new phase” following Shukur’s assassination.

Threat of wider regional war looms

The leaders of Hezbollah, Iran, the Houthis in Yemen and the Iran-backed militant groups in Iraq are now considering their next move following these provocations from Israel. Following Israel’s most serious recent provocation in April when they bombed Iran’s embassy in Syria, Iran launched what was considered to be a largely symbolic retaliatory attack. Iran telegraphed its intentions for 2 weeks, giving the US, UK, France and other allies of Israel time to move assets into place to help defend it. In that attack, which consisted of hundreds of missiles and slow-moving attack drones, the US blocked more than half of the projectiles from ever reaching Israel’s airspace.

This time, however, the so-called Axis of Resistance will have to do more to exact retribution in order to maintain deterrence against further attacks from Israel and preserve their own domestic legitimacy. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is apparently expecting a much more damaging attack this time. All of Israel’s underground bomb shelters have been opened and prepared to withstand a sustained attack. It would suit Netanyahu politically for if Israel’s enemies were to carry out a much more damaging and perhaps even deadly attack. For months he has tried and failed to expand the conflict into a wider regional war in hopes of drawing in the US.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the other day that the US would again help defend Israel from attacks, but no commitment to aid in further offensive action against Hezbollah or Iran was forthcoming. However, this does not mean that no Americans will be in danger. Iran-backed militias in Iraq have recently resumed attacks against US soldiers stationed there, and this is only likely to escalate.