Angelina Jolie Writes Impassioned New York Times Op-Ed About Iraq Trip, Syrian Refugees: "I Was Speechless"

Days after Angelina Jolie was photographed on a visit to northern Iraq, the Unbroken director has written an impassioned op-ed about her trip for theNew York Times. In it, she describes the devastation she witnessed in refugee camps and calls for action to help the millions of displaced Syrians and Iraqis who no longer have a home.

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"I have visited Iraq five times since 2007, and I have seen nothing like the suffering I'm witnessing now," she writes in the op-ed, published by the Times on Tuesday, Jan. 27.

"For many years I have visited camps, and every time, I sit in a tent and hear stories," she explains. "I try my best to give support. To say something that will show solidarity and give some kind of thoughtful guidance. On this trip I was speechless."

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Angelina Jolie wrote an op-ed about her visit to Iraq for the New York Times, calling on the interna …

As previously reported, the mom of six visited the Khanke Camp for Internally Displaced People on Sunday, Jan. 25. While there, she spoke with victims of ISIS — some of whom she describes in her Times op-ed.

"What do you say to the 13-year-old girl who describes the warehouses where she and the others lived and would be pulled out, three at a time, to be raped by the men?" the Maleficent star and U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees questions. "When her brother found out, he killed himself."

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She continues: "How can you speak when a woman your own age looks you in the eye and tells you that her whole family was killed in front of her, and that she now lives alone in a tent and has minimal food rations?"

The piece goes on to detail the increasingly dire situation in Syria, noting that neighboring countries "have taken in nearly four million Syrian refugees, but they are reaching their limits."

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With that in mind, Jolie calls upon the international community to take action. "What does it say about our commitment to human rights and accountability that we seem to tolerate crimes against humanity happening in Syria and Iraq on a daily basis?" she asks.

"It is not enough to defend our values at home, in our newspapers and in our institutions," she writes. "We also have to defend them in the refugee camps of the Middle East, and the ruined ghost towns of Syria."

Read Jolie's op-ed in full at the New York Times.

The Islamic State wants an Iraqi woman released from prison in exchange for a Jordanian pilot and a Japanese journalist.

Sajida al-Rishawi, 44, was placed on death row in Jordan for her role in terrorist attacks on three hotels that killed 57 others and injured 90 on Nov. 9, 2005.

Al-Rishawi, from Ramadi in central Iraq, strapped an explosive device to her body and entered the Radisson SAS Hotel in Jordan's capital city of Amman.

“My husband and I went inside the hotel. He went to one corner and I went to another,” she said in a confession on state-run Jordan TV. “There was a wedding at the hotel, with children, women and men inside. My husband detonated (his bomb). I tried to explode (my belt), but it wouldn’t.”

The failed suicide bomber survived because she forgot a vital part of the explosive belt in the car. She blended in with the panicked guests fleeing the scene but was captured later at a safe house.

Al-Rishawi reportedly has close family ties with the Islamic State terror group.

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Jordanian officials said one of her brothers was a close aide to Abu Musab Zarqawi, the founder of al-Qaida’s Iraq branch, theNew York Times reported. This terrorist group eventually splintered off to become the Islamic State.

Residents of Fallujah, speaking anonymously, told the New York broadsheet that three of her brothers, including the al-Qaida aide, died during U.S.-led “operations” in Iraq.

Al-Rishawi and her husband, Ali Hussein al-Shumari, traveled into the country using forged Iraqi passports under the names Ali Hussein Ali and Sajida Abdel Qader Latif, according to her confession.

On Wednesday, Mohammed al-Moman, a spokesman for Jordan’s government, said, "Jordan is ready to release the Iraqi prisoner,” if the pilot, Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh, is released unharmed, according to Jordan's official Petra news agency.

This would run against the stance of a major ally, the United States, not to negotiate with terrorists.

Jordan has faced increased domestic pressure since Tuesday, when the Islamic State threatened to kill both al-Kaseasbeh and Japanese journalist Kenji Goto if al-Rishawi is not set free.

Another Japanese hostage, Haruna Yukawa, has reportedly already been executed.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

BAGHDAD: Survivors tell the same story: they were taken from their homes by men in uniform; heads down and linked together, then led in small groups to a field, made to kneel, and selected to be shot one by one.

Accounts by five witnesses interviewed separately by Reuters provide a picture of alleged executions in the eastern village of Barwanah on Monday, which residents and provincial officials say left at least 72 unarmed Iraqis dead.

The witnesses identified the killers as a collection of Shi'ite militias and security force elements.

Iraqi security and government officials have disputed the accounts, with some saying radical jihadists from Islamic State could have perpetrated the killings.

The government said on Wednesday it was opening a probe into the killings.

"The prime minister has ordered an urgent investigation and we are awaiting the results," said Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's spokesman, Rafid Jaboori. "I don't want to come to any conclusions now. When the results of this investigation come out, we will have a full picture."

Iraq's Shi'ite-led government, backed by U.S.-led air strikes, has been trying to push back Islamic State since it swept through northern Iraq in June.

Monday's alleged massacre followed a three-day offensive in which Shi'ite militias and Iraqi security forces captured two dozen villages from Islamic State near the town of Muqdadiya in Diyala province.

Since September, hundreds of civilians have fled to Barwanah's relative safety from fighting in Sinsil, about 5 km (3 miles) to the southwest, and other nearby villages.

Abu Omar, a businessman displaced from Sinsil, was at home in Barwanah on Monday around 3:30pm when about 10 Humvees arrived carrying a few dozen men.

Black and brown uniforms suggested some were affiliated with Shi'ite militias and government security forces; others appeared to be civilians.

They dragged residents up to age 70 from their homes, beating and cursing them with sectarian slurs, Abu Omar told Reuters by phone.

He said the fighters took the men's mobiles and ID cards, then bound their hands, tying Abu Omar to his 12-year-old mentally ill son with rope. They did the same with his two older sons and three brothers.

The men were led a few hundred yards to a field where Abu Omar said more than a hundred others had been gathered.

For about two hours, they were forced to kneel and stare at the ground as the fighters selected their targets and led them to a spot behind a mud wall.

"They took them behind the wall. Less than a minute, then a gunshot," said Abu Omar. "All we could hear was the gunshots. We couldn't see."

Survivors say victims were taken also to alleyways, houses, behind a mosque, or an area used to collect garbage, and then shot.

Abu Maz'el, 25, a farmer from Sinsil who was displaced to Barwanah five months ago, gave Reuters nearly identical testimony.

He said some of the fighters wore green headbands emblazoned with the name Hussein, a defining figure in Shi'ite history.

They took him and his cousin from their home to the field, walking single file, heads down, with their hands on the other men's shoulders.

Kneeling beside his 35-year-old cousin, Abu Maz'el heard others beg for their lives as the gunmen dragged them off and shot them.

"My cousin raised his head, so someone slapped him," he said. "Five minutes later, they came and took him away and executed him."

Diyala has been plagued by sectarian violence with Islamic State and Shi'ite militias fighting for control of the strategic region northeast of Baghdad.

Sunni militants carry out frequent suicide bombings and assassinations. In turn, Shi'ite militias have been accused of carrying out killings of Sunnis, including two other mass atrocities in Diyala in the last year.

Monday's alleged massacre happened in the presence of Iraqi security forces, compounding Sunni doubts about Baghdad's control over the militias, which took the lead in battling Islamic State after the Iraqi army nearly collapsed last summer.

Abdullah al-Jubouri, a 23-year-old college graduate who fled to Barwanah from Sinsil a month ago, said the army let him go when they came to his house on Monday. Other witnesses told Reuters that soldiers stood by helplessly, some crying, as the militias executed civilians.

Jubouri told Reuters he fled when he saw Humvees entering Barwanah and hid in a pile of garbage. He watched as a group of soldiers and militiamen near the school fired at a line of 13 men, some with their hands bound.

"I saw them falling like domino pieces," he said.

Jubouri said he heard shots and screams until about 7 p.m., when the vehicles left. He discovered a neighbour and his two sons among the bodies by the school.

Women and children emerged to cover the men's bodies. Some spent the night in the streets mourning the dead.

Jubouri said he found the body of another neighbour outside his house with bullet wounds to his head and chest. He saw bodies with similar wounds in the field and in five separate streets throughout the village.

Abu Omar, the businessman, returned home after the fighters withdrew, and was reunited with his sons. He later found six brothers also from Sinsil had been killed, one at his home and the others behind the mud wall in the field.

A cosmetics salesman and four teachers were killed in the field, along with three other brothers and their cousin, Abu Omar said.

Haqqi al-Jobouri, a Sunni member of the Diyala provincial council, told Reuters at least 72 men were killed in Barwanah on Monday. He said 35 others were missing and suspected detained by the militias.

Sajid al-Anbuki, a Shi'ite member of the same body, urged restraint in drawing conclusions ahead of the government's investigation.

"If it revealed that those men executed were terrorists, then we don't have any problem because in this case they got what they deserve," he told Reuters.

"If the findings prove they were civilians, then justice should be done and those who did it must be arrested."

In the meantime, remaining residents of Barwanah fear further violence. They told Reuters the same militias and security forces encircled the village late on Monday, preventing anyone from leaving.

"We have been surrounded for days," said Abu Ahmed, 27, another survivor from Sinsil. "We have no food. We have nothing."

Wochit
Russia Says Kiev's Actions Will Escalate Ukraine Fighting

By Thomas Grove

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Wednesday military action by the Ukrainian government would prompt an "inevitable further escalation of the conflict" with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine and undermine any peacemaking.

Russia has stepped up criticism of Kiev since violence has intensified in the conflict, where a ceasefire collapsed after rebels drove Ukrainian government forces out of Donetsk airport.

A rebel advance launched last week appears to have buried the frequently violated truce. The separatists say they want to drive back government forces and their artillery out of range of the cities they hold and improve their grip on strongholds.

"The latest military actions provoked by Kiev will lead to the inevitable further escalation of the conflict (and) undermine efforts taken by the international community to end the bloodshed," Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Eduard Basurin, deputy commander of the rebels in Donetsk, said the terms of the ceasefire agreement, signed in the Belarussian capital of Minsk in September, were no longer effective.

"The form in which the Minsk agreement was signed doesn't work anymore, but we're prepared to continue talks," news agency RIA reported him as saying.

Kiev and the West accuse Moscow of supporting the rebels, while the Kremlin denies sending soldiers or arms to the separatists in Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk areas.

"Russia is on a path of isolation and it is driving the whole world into a state of cold war with hot conflicts," Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said at a government meeting, calling for a united response from the international community in the face of Russian "aggression."

With the latest outbreak of fighting, the EU has prepared a draft for its sanctions against Moscow to be extended by six months and expanding the number of targets.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said there had been 68 cases of shelling of civilian areas in the last day, including mortar bombs it said were fired by Ukrainian government forces at the rebel-held city of Luhansk and its surroundings.

Meanwhile in Kiev, the Ukrainian military said a total of 55 Ukrainian towns and villages had come under fire from the rebels over the past 24 hours.

Fighting over the last nine months has killed 5,000 people and caused more than a million people to flee.

(Additional reporting by Alessandra Prentice in Kiev; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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A 30-year-old father who reported his infant daughter missing has been arrested and accused of sexually abusing, torturing and killing the girl, who was less than a month old.

Matthew Warner, 30, was charged Tuesday with murder, assault on a child causing death, torture, oral copulation or sexual penetration with a child 10 years or younger and aggravated sexual assault of a child.

Matthew Warner in San Fernando Superior Court on Tuesday. (KTLA)

Warner, who at the time of the alleged crimes was under supervision by the Los Angeles County Probation Department because of previous convictions, is being held on $2.25-million bail and is scheduled to be arraigned Feb. 18.

He faces life in prison if convicted on all charges.

The Newhall man was arrested Saturday, a day after he and the baby’s mother reported to Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies that Ellorah Rose, 19 days old, was missing.

About 7 a.m. Saturday, Warner led deputies to a truck about a mile from the family’s home. Warner was arrested shortly after his daughter’s body was found in the cab.

Ellorah’s mother was cooperating with investigators.

Nan Allison, the baby’s grandmother, told the Los Angeles Times on Saturday that her daughter had gone to her job as a daycare provider early Friday and left the baby with Warner in the couple’s bedroom.

Later in the day, Allison said, she heard unusual noises coming from the room and thought the baby’s crying seemed weak.

The grandmother said she became suspicious and tried to call police about 5 p.m., but the phone had been disconnected. Warner and the baby were gone by the time she called from a neighbor’s home, she said.

The couple showed up at a sheriff's station about 9:30 p.m. to report the child missing.

The official cause of death has not been released.

In 2012, Warner was sentenced to two years in state prison after being convicted of joyriding. At the time of the alleged killing of his daughter, he was under supervision by the county probation department.

Warner has been convicted of joyriding three other times since 2003, according to a spokesman for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.

(Los Angeles Times)