The authorities closed several beaches in Peru on Sunday and warned about abnormal wave activity.
The deaths in Peru were reminiscent of the aftermath of the powerful tsunami set off by an undersea earthquake off Indonesia in December 2004 which killed more than 250,000 people. A dozen of the dead then were hit by waves on the eastern coast of Africa, in Kenya and Tanzania.
In Tonga on Sunday, many residents lost not only communication ties but power. Up to 80,000 people there could be affected, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies told the BBC.
One immediate need was clear: potable water.
“The ash cloud has, as you can imagine, caused contamination,” said Ms. Ardern, the New Zealand prime minister. “That’s on top of already a challenging environment, in terms of water supply.”
New Zealand and other nations in the region pledged to give Tonga aid to recover. So did the United States. But with heavy concentrations of airborne ash making flights impossible, it was difficult even to know what was needed.
Ms. Ardern said flights over Tonga were planned for Monday or Tuesday, depending on ash conditions. New Zealand’s navy was also preparing a backup plan, should the ash remain heavy, she said.
In a post on Twitter, Antony J. Blinken, the American secretary of state, offered his condolences: “Deeply concerned for the people of Tonga as they recover from the aftermath of a volcanic eruption and tsunami. The United States stands prepared to provide support to our Pacific neighbors.”
Tonga has experienced a succession of natural disasters in recent years. In 2018, more than 170 homes were destroyed and two people killed by Cyclone Gita, a Category 5 tropical storm. In 2020, Cyclone Harold caused about $111 million in damage, including extensive flooding.
The USS Nevada, an Ohio-class nuclear-powered submarine carrying 20 Trident ballistic missiles and dozens of nuclear warheads, pulled into the Navy base in the US Pacific Island territory on Saturday. It’s the first visit of a ballistic missile submarine — sometimes called a “boomer” — to Guam since 2016 and only the second announced visit since the 1980s.
“The port visit strengthens cooperation between the United States and allies in the region, demonstrating US capability, flexibility, readiness, and continuing commitment to Indo-Pacific regional security and stability,” a US Navy statement said.
Movements of the 14 boomers in the US Navy’s fleet are usually closely guarded secrets. Nuclear power means the vessels can operate submerged for months at a time, their endurance limited only by the supplies needed to sustain their crews of more than 150 sailors.
The Navy says Ohio-class submarines stay an average of 77 of days at sea before spending about a month in port for maintenance and replenishment.
It’s rare for one to even be photographed outside their home ports of Bangor, Washington, and Kings Bay, Georgia. The secrecy surrounding the ballistic missile submarines makes them the “most important survivable leg of the nuclear triad,” which also includes silo-based ballistic missiles on the US mainland and nuclear-capable bombers like the B-2 and B-52.
But with tensions brewing between the US and China over the status of the self-ruled island of Taiwan, and as North Korea ramps up missile tests, Washington can make a statement with its ballistic missile submarines that neither Beijing nor Pyongyang can, according to the analysts.
“It sends a message — intended or not: we can park 100-odd nuclear warheads on your doorstep and you won’t even know it or be able to do much about it. And the reverse isn’t true and won’t be for a good while,” said Thomas Shugart, a former US Navy submarine captain and now an analyst at the Center for a New American Security.
North Korea’s ballistic submarine program is in its infancy, and China’s estimated fleet of six ballistic missile submarines is dwarfed by the US Navy’s.
And China’s ballistic missile subs don’t have the capabilities of the US boomers, according to a 2021 analysis by experts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
China’s Type 094 ballistic missile subs are two times louder than the US subs, and therefore more easily detected, and carry fewer missiles and warheads, CSIS analysts wrote in August.
Besides the political signaling, the presence of the USS Nevada in the region presents another opportunity, said Alessio Patalano, professor of war and strategy at King’s College in London.
“The presence of this type of boat — especially in training and exercises — adds an important opportunity to learn how to hunt those of other actors in the region,” Patalano said.
“The DPRK (North Korea) is pursuing the development of such a type of a platform, and China already fields them. Honing in the skills to track them is as important as deploying them as strategic deterrent,” he said.
The last time a US Navy boomer visited Guam was in 2016, when the USS Pennsylvania stopped there.
Analysts said tensions across the Indo-Pacific have significantly increased since that time, and more such military displays are likely from Washington in the current environment.
“This deployment reminds us that the nuclear order at sea in the (Indo-Pacific) matters, and whilst often outside wider public conversation, we are likely to see more of it in the development of regional strategic balance,” Patalano said.
Seventy-five years after its publication, “The Diary of Anne Frank” remains among the most widely-read books in the world. Blinkering between hope and despair, the account of a Jewish teenager’s life in hiding in an annex behind an Amsterdam warehouse, gave voice and a face to millions of victims of the Nazi genocide, yet one question has gone stubbornly unanswered all these years: who alerted the Nazi search team, in 1944, to Anne Frank and her family’s hiding place? Two Dutch police inquiries and countless historians have come up with theories, but no firm conclusions… Then, in 2016, a team of investigators, led by a veteran FBI agent, decided to bring modern crime-solving techniques and technology to this cold case. And now, they believe they have an answer—one we’ll share with you tonight—to a question that’s bedeviled historians, and haunted Holland: who was responsible for the betrayal?
Anne Frank
Vince Pankoke had turned in his badge and gun. He was two years into a comfortable Florida retirement, when his phone rang in the spring of 2016.
Vince Pankoke: I received a call from a colleague from the Netherlands who said, “If you– if you’re done laying on the beach, we have a case for you.”
Jon Wertheim: Were you laying on the beach?
Vince Pankoke: I– I was actually driving to the beach. I w– (LAUGH) I wasn’t quite there yet.
Pankoke spent three decades as an FBI special agent, targeting Colombian drug cartels. His work had also taken him to the Netherlands, where his investigative chops left an impression.
Jon Wertheim: Were you looking to get back when he told you what it was about?
Vince Pankoke: After he told me it was to, you know, try to solve the mystery of what caused the raid– for Anne Frank and the others in the annex. I needed to hear more.
Vince Pankoke
Four-thousand miles away, in Amsterdam, Thijs Bayens a Dutch filmmaker and documentarian, had been asking around for a credentialed investigator to dig into a question that he feels Holland has never quite reckoned with, one that gets to the essence of human nature.
Thijs Bayens: For me, it was really important to investigate what makes us– give up on each other. The area where Anne Frank lived is very normal. And it’s a very warm area with the butcher and the doctor and the policeman. They worked together. They loved each other. They lived together. And suddenly people start to betray on each other. How could that happen?
Jon Wertheim: Of the millions, literally millions of stories to come out of the Holocaust, why do you think this one resonates the way it does?
Thijs Bayens: I think right after the war people were shown– the concentration camps, the atrocities that took place, the horror. And, suddenly you find this innocent, beautiful, very smart, funny, talented girl. And she as a lighthouse comes out of the darkness. And then I think humanity said, “This is who we are.
Betraying fellow Dutch to the Nazis was a criminal offense in the Netherlands, but two police probes and a whole library of books dedicated to the Anne Frank case, yielded neither convictions nor definitive conclusions.
Jon Wertheim: This question of who betrayed Anne Frank, that had been investigated for years. What was gonna make your investigation different than the ones before it?
Thijs Bayens: If it’s a criminal act, it should be investigated by the police. So we set it up as a cold case.
Thijs Bayens
Like so many, Pankoke had read the diary in middle school in Western Pennsylvania and it left a mark. There would be no perp walks or busted crime syndicates here, but he was intrigued… cautiously.
Jon Wertheim: You hear, “We’re gonna go back and look at Anne Frank.” And that might have the ring of some schlocky media creation. Did that worry you?
Vince Pankoke: Oh, it did. It did. Because as a career investigator, I didn’t wanna be associated with any type of a tabloid type investigation.
Jon Wertheim: You had to make sure this was serious.
Vince Pankoke: Let’s face it. I mean, the honor of the diary, the honor of– Anne Frank, we had to treat this with utmost respect.
What ultimately sealed it for Vince Pankoke, the guarantee of absolute autonomy. The ground rules: Thijs Bayens would oversee the operation and could film the process for a documentary he’s been making. There would be a book about it, which helped finance the project along with funding from the city of Amsterdam, but this was going to be an independent undertaking with serious investigators. And Vince Pankoke was going to take the lead digging in.
Jon Wertheim: You’d done cold cases before. Before this, what was the biggest gap in time between when you were approached and when the– the crime occurred?
Vince Pankoke: It was about a five year crime at that point.
Jon Wertheim: It’s 75 years. So a little different.
Vince Pankoke: It’s a lot different–
Jon Wertheim: This is more than cold.
Vince Pankoke: This– yeah. This was frozen.
To chip away, Pankoke had to draw up his own blueprint. He knew that there was going to be more information to plow through than any human could handle and that artificial intelligence could be a secret weapon.
An FBI man’s dream team was assembled… an investigative psychologist, a war crimes investigator, historians, criminologists plus an army of archival researchers.
Jon Wertheim: What did all these people with disparate skills bring to this?
Vince Pankoke: They brought a different view. It was all of these skills that help us understand and put into context, a crime that happened, you know, in 1944. We have to look at things differently.
Together, they dove into a familiar story: the Frank family had moved to Amsterdam from Germany to escape the rise of Hitler. They found safety in Holland, where Otto Frank ran a manufacturing business. But then the Nazis invaded in 1940, two years later, the Franks—Otto, wife Edith, Anne and her sister Margot—along with four other Jewish friends of the family went into hiding in an annex behind Otto’s warehouse. Today, it’s preserved as a museum. Dr. Gertjan Broek, a historian at the Anne Frank house, showed us in.
Correspondent Jon Wertheim and Dr. Gertjan Broek in front of the bookcase that hid the entrance to the Franks’ hiding place.
Jon Wertheim: Oh, wow. This– this is the famous–
Dr. Gertjan Broek: This is the bookcase–
Jon Wertheim: –bookcase.
Dr. Gertjan Broek: Th– this is the bookcase. It was used to camouflage the entrance to the hiding place.
The bookcase helped protect the Franks, as did a handful of Otto’s close colleagues at the warehouse who were in on the secret.
Dr. Gertjan Broek: We go inside, mind your head.
Jon Wertheim: Oh, wow.
After the raid, the Nazis took anything that wasn’t nailed down. Recreations show what it looked like. Two crammed floors, 761 days, more than two excruciating years indoors. The office workers brought food and supplies, but the eight in hiding couldn’t make a sound during the day. By night they could listen to the radio, desperately plotting updates from the front on this map.
Dr. Gertjan Broek: Here’s a newspaper clipping from shortly after– D-Day, so June, 1944. With the pins that tried to follow the advances of the allied troops in the days and weeks probably after.
Jon Wertheim: This is June, 1944–
Dr. Gertjan Broek: 4 June–
Jon Wertheim: –so–
Dr. Gertjan Broek: So there’s hope because allied forces are on the way. Their life depended on what would happen.
Anne’s bedroom walls, familiar to any teenager, preserved from the day she was taken away. Here, she chronicled the monotony and the horror of life in hiding. “Outside things are terrible, day and night,” she wrote in January 1943. “These poor people are being dragged away, with nothing but a backpack and a little bit of money.”
Her last entry was dated August 1st, 1944. She was 15.
Jon Wertheim: Take me to the day of the raid. It’s the summer of 1944 and what happens that day?
Dr. Gertjan Broek: It’s a warm day, sunny. And around 10:30, between 10:30 and 11:00, a couple of men walk in.
They were detectives with a Dutch police unit working with the Nazis. An SS officer named Silberbauer led the team. They demanded to be shown around the warehouse.
Dr. Gertjan Broek: They end up in front of the bookcase, which is hiding the entrance to the annex. And it’s important I think to realize that two of the policemen present had been seasoned detectives, well experienced. They had been searching this type of building in the inner city of Amsterdam before.
They knew there was likely something behind that bookcase. The stunned inhabitants they found were marched out. On the floor behind them, Anne’s diary – which a quick-thinking office worker, loyal to the Franks, preserved. Of the eight taken away, Otto Frank was the only survivor. The others were among the 100,000 Dutch Jews – 3/4ths of the country’s Jewish population – to die at the hands of the Nazis. In an interview with CBS in 1964, Otto recounted what happened when his family was put on the cattle cars to Auschwitz a month after their capture.
Otto Frank: On September 4th, 1944, the last transport went to Auschwitz. Well, when we arrived at Auschwitz there were men standing there with clubs — women here, men there. We were separated right on the station, so women went to Birkenau Camp and we went to Auschwitz Camp from the station and I never saw my family again.
After the war, Otto Frank was determined to find out who betrayed the hiding place to the Nazis. It was the question many readers asked after he published his daughter’s diary in 1947. But after a couple of years, Otto abruptly stopped looking—more on that curious decision, later. When Vince Pankoke went to Amsterdam to begin his search, his first stop, naturally, was the scene of the crime.
Vince Pankoke: I called this the most visited crime scene in the world because so many people from all over the world, you know, millions of people come here.
Jon Wertheim: So when you come here for the first time, what are you looking for?
Vince Pankoke: Well, as an investigator I wanna see what’s in the area. Of course I wanna see inside the building. I wanna reconstruct how the actual arrest took place, and who participated in it.
Pankoke and his team spent hours in the annex looking for any clue, however remote.
He also cased the exterior —today almost exactly as it was then.
Vince Pankoke: This is the courtyard that is behind the annex. And it’s– as you can see, it’s totally enclosed. This courtyard area is surrounded by the buildings of the neighborhood.
Jon Wertheim: I’m thinking one cough that gets overheard, one window that happens to be open at the wrong time, the sheer risk factor here is extraordinary.
Vince Pankoke: It is extraordinary. When we first started the case, one of the theories that was out there is that the raid may have been caused by somebody in the immediate area seeing something, hearing something, and reporting it. So, therefore, we tracked and identified every resident that lived in this block and adjacent streets.
Using the artificial intelligence program, Pankoke and his team mapped potential threats. In the courtyard surrounding the annex, they found Nazi party members and even known informants.
Vince Pankoke: All living just a wall or two away from one another. When you take a look at the threats the question isn’t, you know, what caused the raid. The question might be: how did they last more than two years without being discovered?
Jon Wertheim: It strikes me in a case like this, anyone could be a suspect. A Nazi sympathizer, an informant, someone who happens to walk by and hear a cough. How did you navigate that?
Vince Pankoke: We had to consider all those options. The team and I sat down and we compiled a list of ways in which the annex coulda been compromised. You know, was it carelessness of the people occupying the annex maybe making too much noise or being seen in the windows? You know, was it betrayal?
Jon Wertheim: There is a theory out there that no one betrayed the Frank family. This was coincidence, or this was good detective work. You buy that at all?
Vince Pankoke: No. No. I mean, we took that theory apart, you know, bit by bit.
Jon Wertheim: This doesn’t play out the way it does, but for a specific tip.
Vince Pankoke: Exactly.
Vince Pankoke, the 30-year FBI veteran, had worked plenty of cold cases, but none this cold. It had been more than seven decades since Anne Frank and her family had been discovered in their hiding place in central Amsterdam and ultimately put on cattle cars to Auschwitz. As to the question of who betrayed the family to the Nazis, all the witnesses were long dead, their evidence thinned by time, but Pankoke leaned on decades of experience and intuition, starting with the old case files.
Vince Pankoke: In a normal cold case, you go to a file. You pull it out. You read through everything that the previous investigation did. Interviews, leads that were followed up on.
Two previous Dutch police investigations into the raid on Anne Frank’s hiding place – one in 1948 and another in 1963 – were not exactly masterclasses in detective work. And a lot of time had passed.
Vince Pankoke: The files were incomplete. And they were scattered about in probably a dozen different archives. Reports were missing. Witnesses had passed on. Memories had failed.
Pulling from the standard cold case playbook, Vince Pankoke followed up on what leads he could. Otherwise he and his team had to take a fresh approach. They spent years in places like the Amsterdam city archives, where the meticulous Dutch record-keeping used so brutally by the Nazis proved a major asset to the investigation.
Wertheim, Pieter van Twisk and Pankoke
Along with Pieter van Twisk— a veteran dutch journalist who co-founded this project and led the research team—they showed us a trove of items they dug up. Including a residence card belonging to Anne frank.
Pieter van Twisk: You can see here her name: her first name, second name, and her surname; and the date of birth. Here you see “N.I.”, which stands for Nederlands (PH) Israelis (PH)– which is her religion.
Jon Wertheim: “Netherland Israeli.” So this–
Pieter van Twisk: Yeah, I don’t–
Jon Wertheim: –she’s “Jewish.”
Pieter van Twisk: –know why– that’s Jewish, she was Jewish, yeah,
Jon Wertheim: Every Dutch resident had to have one of these?
Pieter van Twisk: Yah. Yah.
Jon Wertheim: This is – This is very detailed, and this has her– her parents’ birthdates on it.
Pieter van Twisk: Yah. That’s, of course, also why it was quite easy for the Nazis to find people in the Netherlands, and to know if who was Jewish, or who was not Jewish.
Jon Wertheim: One piece of paper in the ’40s, and you’ve got everything you could want to know about someone.
Pieter van Twisk: Yah.
The team fed every morsel they could – letters, maps, photos, even whole books – into the artificial intelligence database, developed specifically for the project. Then they let machine learning do its thing.
Vince Pankoke: It would identify relationships between people, addresses that were alike. And we were looking for those connections. Clues to solving this.
Jon Wertheim: Quantify how much time that saved you.
Vince Pankoke: Oh– thousands and thousands of man hours.
Jon Wertheim: This also tells you what’s garbage, what’s excluded, what isn’t gonna help your case.
Vince Pankoke: Oh, yeah, because much of what we do is eliminating the unnecessary.
The team paid particular attention to arrest records from the time. The Nazis were hellbent on ridding the Netherlands of all Jews, part of the Final Solution. By 1942, the Franks were among some 25,000 Jews in hiding across the country. The Nazis were coldly skilled at getting people to talk.
Vince Pankoke: Their typical MO was once they arrested somebody, the first question that was posed to them, “Do you know where any other Jews are in hiding?” So what we did is we chronicled all the arrests prior to and just after the annex raid to try to find any connection, any loose thread that would show us that they went from one arrest to another and then ultimately to the annex.
Jon Wertheim: And the implication is, “I’ll make your sentence more lenient if you give up some names.”
Vince Pankoke: Yeah.
Jon Wertheim: Effective?
Vince Pankoke: Oh, it was very effective.
Before long, suspects emerged. Dozens of them, like Willem van Maaren, an employee in the warehouse where the Franks were hiding, whom the Dutch police had interviewed in their investigations.
Vince Pankoke: He was prime suspect number one after the war. He’s working downstairs in the warehouse. He was very shifty, suspicious. Actually a thief.
Jon Wertheim: So you say shifty, suspicious, thief. And yet, you eliminated him as a suspect.
Vince Pankoke: Not a betrayer, though. He was not antisemitic. He had incentive n– not to betray them because if he did, he woulda lost his job, the business woulda been closed.
Jon Wertheim: What specifically are you looking for when you’re considering suspects?
Vince Pankoke: We’re looking at, did they have the knowledge? We look at their motive. You know, what would the motive be? Were they antisemitic? Were they trying to do this for money? And then opportunity. Were they even in town?
Jon Wertheim: So this — knowledge, motive, opportunity, that’s I’m guessing what you were using when you’re infiltrating drug cartels. I mean, this is standard FBI technique–
Vince Pankoke: It’s standard law enforcement technique.
Bram van der Meer
Jon Wertheim: What kind of a person would betray the Frank family?
Bram van der Meer: You would expect maybe that a very bad person did this, a person with– I would say– a psychopathic mind would- would do this.
Bram van de Meer knows psychopathic minds. He had been an investigative psychologist with the national police force in the Netherlands. On Vince Pankoke’s team, he analyzed the behavior and mindsets of suspects they were considering.
Jon Wertheim: That’s your first instinct? So it had to be a psychopath to do this?
Bram van der Meer: Yeah. But you have to be so very careful. It’s war. You’re surviving. Your day-to-day life is filled with fear. Your family might be arrested the next day. You’re thinking everyday about your own survival. So that’s the context.
Jon Wertheim: In a vacuum it had to be a psychopath to do this. But given the context–
Bram van der Meer: That’s right.
Jon Wertheim: Then what kinda person might do this?
Bram van der Meer: Yeah, and then– and then you end up in– in a situation where it could be anybody.
Over time, their focus shifted to someone who, on the surface, might not have raised suspicions. This suspect wasn’t a neighbor of the Franks and didn’t work for them. But the FBI man’s sixth sense kicked in.Arnold van den Bergh was a prominent Jewish businessman with a wife and kids in Amsterdam. After the invasion, he served on the Jewish council, a body the Nazis set up, nefariously, to carry out their policies within the Jewish community. In exchange for doing the Nazis’ bidding, members might be spared the gas chambers.
Vince Pankoke: We know from history that the Jewish Council was dissolved in late September of 1943 and they were sent to the camps. We figured, well, if Arnold van den Bergh is in a camp somewhere, he certainly can’t be privy to information that would lead to the compromise of the annex.
Jon Wertheim: Was he in a camp somewhere?
Vince Pankoke: Well, we thought he was. So due diligence, we started a search. And we couldn’t find Arnold van den Bergh or any of his immediate family members in those camps.
Jon Wertheim: Why not?
Vince Pankoke: Well, that was the question. If he wasn’t in the camps, where was he?
Turned out, he was living an open life in the middle of Amsterdam, Vince Pankoke says, only possible, if Van den Bergh had some kind of leverage.
Jon Wertheim: To my ears, you’re describing an operator. Is that fair?
Vince Pankoke: I’d call him a chess player. He thought in terms of layers of protection, by obtaining different exemptions from being placed into the camps.
As it happened, Van den Bergh—who died in 1950— had come up before, in a report from the 1963 investigation. Though astonishingly, there was little apparent follow up by police.
Vince Pankoke: We read just one small paragraph that mentioned that during the interview of Otto Frank, he told them that shortly after liberation, he received an anonymous note identifying his betrayer of the address where they were staying, the annex, as Arnold van den Bergh.
Jon Wertheim: Wait, wait. So, in the files, there’s reference to a note that Otto Frank received that mentions this specific name?
Vince Pankoke: Remarkably so. Yes. It’s listed right there.
The note was so striking to Otto Frank that he typed up a copy for his records. Naturally, the veteran FBI man wanted to know: where was that note? Any seasoned investigator will tell you that, ideally, good shoe leather comes garnished with good luck. In 2018, Vince Pankoke and team located the son of one of the former investigators. There in the son’s home, buried in some old files: Otto’s copy of the note.
Jon Wertheim: I just wanna get this straight. You’re talking to the son of an investigator. He says, “Yeah, 50 years ago my dad looked into this and I might have some material.”
Vince Pankoke: Yeah. We were lucky.
Jon Wertheim: You’ve held the metaphorical smoking gun in your hand before in the FBI. This anonymous note. Does it feel like a smoking gun?
Vince Pankoke: Not a smoking gun, but– it feels– like a warm gun with the evidence– of the bullet sitting nearby.
Back at the archives, they showed it to us, Otto’s copy. The team used forensic techniques which they say authenticates it. That handwriting you see: the scribblings of the 1963 detective. The anonymous note informed Otto that he’d been betrayed by Arnold van den Bergh who’d handed the Nazis an entire list of addresses where Jews were hiding.
Vince Pankoke: Whoever it was that authored this anonymous note knew so much that– knew that lists were turned in.
Jon Wertheim: And this is information you were able to corroborate.
Vince Pankoke: Pieter was able to locate, in the national archive, records that indicated that in fact somebody from the– Jewish Council, of which Arnold Van Den Bergh was a member, was turning over lists of addresses where Jews were in hiding.
Jon Wertheim: So what’s your theory of the case here? How and why would Arnold van den Bergh have betrayed the Frank family?
Vince Pankoke: Well, in his role as being a– founding member of the Jewish Council, he would have had privy– to addresses– where Jews were hiding. When van den Bergh lost all his series of protections exempting him from having to go to the camps, he had to provide something valuable to the Nazis that he’s had contact with to let him and his wife at that time stay safe.
Jon Wertheim: Is there any evidence he knew who he was giving up?
Vince Pankoke: There’s no evidence to indicate that he knew who was hiding at any of these addresses. They were just addresses that were provided that– where Jews were known to have been in hiding.
We contacted the foundation Otto Frank started in Switzerland and the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam – neither of which formally participated in the investigation – to try to find out whether they could provide any other evidence that might implicate or clear Arnold van den Bergh. The Anne Frank house said they could not. The foundation is reserving comment until they’ve seen the entire results of the investigation.
The cold case team began to confront the real possibility that Otto Frank might have known the identity of the betrayer. What reason, they wondered, would Otto have had to keep this to himself?
Vince Pankoke: He knew that Arnold van den Bergh was Jewish, and in this period after the war, antisemitism was still around. So perhaps he just felt that if I bring this up again, with Arnold van den Bergh being Jewish, it’ll only stoke the fires further. But we have to keep in mind that the fact that he was Jewish just meant the he was placed into a untenable position by the Nazis to do something to save his life.
The team wrestled with these ethical questions. Thijs Buyens, the filmmaker and documentarian who conceived of the project, wondered whether the revelation would be fodder for bigots and antisemites.
Jon Wertheim: The conclusion was that this culprit was a Jewish man who by all accounts was doing what he did to protect his own family.
Thijs Bayens: Yeah.
Jon Wertheim: What was your emotion when you heard this?
Thijs Bayens: I found it very painful. Maybe you could say I even hoped it wouldn’t be something like this.
Jon Wertheim: Why?
Thijs Bayens: Because I feel the pain of all these people being put in– in– in a situation which is very hard for us to understand.
Jon Wertheim: I suspect when this is revealed people around the world are gonna be uncomfortable with the idea that a Jew betrayed another Jew.
Thijs Bayens: I hope so.
Jon Wertheim: You hope they will be?
Thijs Bayens: Yes. Because it shows you how bizarre the Nazi regime really operated, and how they brought people to do these terrible things. The– the real question is, what would I have done? That’s the real question.
Menachem Sebbag
Throughout the project, Bayens sought counsel from Menachem Sebbag, an orthodox rabbi in Amsterdam who also serves as Chief Jewish Chaplain in the Dutch Army.
Jon Wertheim: Is a greater good being served here?
Menachem Sebbag: I hope so. I truly hope so. I hope that people will understand that one of the things that the Nazi ideology did during the Holocaust was to dehumanize Jewish people. And going back into history and looking for the truth and attaining truth is actually giving the Jewish people back their own humanity. Even if that means that sometimes Jewish people are seen as not acting morally correct. That gives them back their own humanity, because that’s the way human beings are when they’re faced with existential threats.
After years of investigating this seven-decade-old cold case, we had a hypothetical for Vince Pankoke.
Jon Wertheim: You’re back to being an FBI agent. You’ve got this case you’ve built. You’ve got your evidence and you hand it over to the prosecutor, the U.S. attorney. You think you’re getting a conviction?
Vince Pankoke: No. There could be some reasonable doubt.
Jon Wertheim: To be clear, it’s a circumstantial case.
Vince Pankoke: It is a circumstantial case, as many cases are. In today’s crime solving, they want positive DNA evidence or video surveillance tape. We can’t give you any of that. But in a historical case this old, with all the evidence that we obtained, I think it’s pretty convincing.
Now back in retirement, Vince Pankoke thinks he’s glimpsed a new way to thaw cold cases. He marvels that an investigation that put no one behind bars, turned out to be the most significant case of his career and one, he believes, brought an answer to a painful historical question.
Produced by David M. Levine. Associate producers, Jacqueline Kalil and Elizabeth Germino. Broadcast associates, Annabelle Hanflig and Eliza Costas. Edited by Michael Mongulla.
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IWF senior fellow Dr. Qanta Ahmed gives her take on vaccines to target the COVID-19 omicron variant on ‘Fox Business Tonight.’
France’s government on Sunday approved a new law that will ban the unvaccinated from all restaurants, sports arenas, and other venues as COVID cases driven by the highly contagious omicron variant surge across the country.
France’s parliament adopted the law by a vote of 215-58 after a slight delay by resistance from lawmakers both on the right and left and hundreds of proposed amendments.
Parliament members attend a session of questions to the Government at the French National Assembly in Paris, Jan. 4, 2022. (AP Photo/Francois Mori, File) (AP Newsroom)
More than 91% of French adults are already fully vaccinated, and some critics have questioned whether the “vaccine pass” will make much of a difference.
FRANCE DEMANDS MASKS FOR 6-YEAR-OLDS
President Emmanuel Macron’s administration is hoping the new law will be enough to curb the number of patients filling up strained hospitals nationwide without resorting to a new lockdown. New confinement measures would strike another blow to the economy — and could also cloud Macron’s chances of reelection in the April 10 presidential vote.
A protestor waves a sign which reads ‘freedom’ in the middle of French flags during a demonstration in Paris, France, Saturday, July 31, 2021. (AP Photo/Michel Euler File) (AP Newsroom)
Up to now, a COVID-19 pass has been required in France to go to restaurants, movie theaters, museums and many sites throughout the country, but unvaccinated people have been allowed in if they show a recent negative test or proof of recent recovery.
Demonstrators march in opposition to vaccine pass and vaccinations to protect against COVID-19 in Paris, France, Saturday, Jan. 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Adrienne Surprenant, File) (AP Newsroom)
COVID TESTING COMPANY RAMPS UP PRODUCTION TO MEET US DEMAND
The new law requires full vaccination for such venues, including tourist sites, many trains and all domestic flights, and applies to everyone 16 and over. Some exceptions could be made for those who recently recovered from COVID-19. The law also imposes tougher fines for fake passes and allows ID checks to avoid fraud.
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More than 76% of French ICU beds are occupied by virus patients, most of them unvaccinated, and some 200 people with the virus are dying every day. Like many countries, France is in the grip of the omicron variant, recording more than 2,800 positive cases per 100,000 people over the past week.
Using data compiled by Forbes, Oxfam says in a new report that the total wealth of billionaires jumped from $8.6 trillion in March 2020 to $13.8 trillion in November 2021, a bigger increase than in the previous 14 years combined. The world’s richest 10 men saw their collective wealth more than double, shooting up by $1.3 billion a day.
The report was released ahead of the World Economic Forum’s online Davos Agenda, which will take place this week after the group’s annual in-person meeting was delayed due to Omicron. Oxfam argues that governments should tax gains made by the super-rich during the pandemic and use the money to fund health care systems, pay for vaccines, fight discrimination and address the climate crisis.
“Billionaires have had a terrific pandemic. Central banks pumped trillions of dollars into financial markets to save the economy, yet much of that has ended up lining the pockets of billionaires riding a stock market boom,” Gabriela Bucher, Oxfam’s executive director, said in a press release.
The combined wealth of the top 10 billionaires — including Tesla(TSLA) CEO Elon Musk and Amazon(AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos — doubled during the pandemic and is now six times greater than that of the world’s poorest 3.1 billion people, according to the report.
“Inequality at such pace and scale is happening by choice, not chance,” Bucher said. “Not only have our economic structures made all of us less safe against this pandemic, they are actively enabling those who are already extremely rich and powerful to exploit this crisis for their own profit.”
The pandemic has not been the “great equalizer” some predicted.
The World Bank estimates that 97 million people worldwide fell into extreme poverty in 2020 and are now living on less than $2 a day. The number of the world’s poorest also rose for the first time in over 20 years.
Vaccine inequality has become a major issue as many of the world’s richest countries hoard shots, buying up enough doses to vaccinate their populations several times over and failing to deliver on their promises to share them with the developing world.
Billionaires are being asked to use their wealth to help the less fortunate.
David Beasley, director of the United Nations’ World Food Programme, called on billionaires including Bezos and Musk to “step up now, on a one-time basis” to help solve world hunger in November.
The call-out got a direct response from Musk, who later said on Twitter that if the organization could lay out “exactly how” the funding would solve the issue, he would “sell Tesla stock right now and do it.”
The CEO did not publicly respond when the UN released a plan.
Novak Djokovic’s fight to compete in the Australian Open came to a definitive end on Sunday after three Australian federal judges ruled in favor of Immigration Minister Alex Hawke’s decision to cancel the tennis champ’s visa.
Djokovic released a statement following the court’s ruling, saying he was “extremely disappointed” with the outcome and was “uncomfortable” that the coverage of the Grand Slam tournament had focused so heavily on his status as an unvaccinated player.
DJOKOVIC OUT OF AUSTRALIAN OPEN AFTER LOSING DEPORTATION APPEAL
“I am extremely disappointed with the Court ruling to dismiss my application for judicial review of the Minister’s decision to cancel my visa, which means I cannot stay in Australia and participate in the Australian Open,” his statement read. “I respect the Court’s ruling and I will cooperate with the relevant authorities in relation to my departure from the country.”
Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic leaves a government detention facility before attending a court hearing at his lawyer’s office in Melbourne, Australia, Sunday, Jan. 16, 2022. (James Ross/AAP via AP)
He continued: “I am uncomfortable that the focus of the past weeks has been on me and I hope that we can all now focus on the game and tournament I love. I would like to wish the players, tournament officials, staff, volunteers and fans all the best for the tournament.”
Djokovic was accompanied by two government officials on his way to Melbourne airport before departing for Dubai. In his statement, he thanked his supporters and said he would be taking time to “rest and recuperate.”
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ATP also released a statement saying the court’s decision must be “respected.”
Defending men’s champion Serbia’s Novak Djokovic practices on Rod Laver Arena ahead of the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne, Australia, Jan. 12, 2022. (AP Photo/Mark Baker, File)
“Today’s decision to uphold Novak Djokovic’s Australian visa cancellation marks the end of a deeply regrettable series of events. Ultimately, decisions of legal authorities regarding matters of public health must be respected. More time is required to take stock of the facts and to take the learnings from this situation,” the statement read.
“Irrespective of how this point has been reached, Novak is one of our sport’s greatest champions and his absence from the Australian Open is a loss for the game. We know how turbulent the recent days have been for Novak and how much he wanted to defend his title in Melbourne. We wish him well and look forward to seeing him back on court soon.”
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Novak Djokovic of Serbia in action during the Davis Cup Finals 2021 on Dec. 3, 2021, in Madrid, Spain. (Oscar Gonzalez/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Sunday’s decision marked the end of a back and forth between Djokovic’s camp and the Australian government that began with Djokovic being detained upon arrival after being granted a medical exemption to enter the country unvaccinated. His visa was canceled and later reinstated on procedural grounds before Hawke canceled the visa for a second time.
A person holds a sign that reads “Freedom” as people attend a demonstration to protest against a bill that would transform France’s current coronavirus disease (COVID-19) health pass into a ”vaccine pass”, in Paris, France, January 8, 2022. REUTERS/Sarah Meyssonnier
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PARIS, Jan 16 (Reuters) – France’s parliament gave final approval on Sunday to the government’s latest measures to tackle the COVID-19 virus, including a vaccine pass contested by anti-vaccine protestors.
Lawmakers in the lower house of parliament voted 215 in favour to 58 against, paving the way for the law to enter force in the coming days.
The new law, which had a rough ride through parliament with opposition parties finding some of its provisions too tough, will require people to have a certificate of vaccination to enter public places like restaurants, cafes, cinemas and long-distance trains.
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Currently, unvaccinated people can enter such places with the results of a recent negative COVID-19 test. Nearly 78% of the population is fully vaccinated, according to the Health Ministry on Saturday.
President Emmanuel Macron, who is expected to seek a second term in an April presidential election, told Le Parisien paper this month that he wanted to “piss off” unvaccinated people by making their lives so complicated they would end up getting the COVID vaccine.
Thousands of anti-vaccine protestors demonstrated in Paris and some other cities on Saturday against the law, but their numbers were down sharply from the week before, just after Macron’s remarks.
France is in the grips of its fifth COVID-19 wave with daily new cases regularly hitting record levels over 300,000. Nonetheless the number of serious cases putting people in ICU wards is much lower than the first wave in March-April 2020.
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Reporting by Leigh Thomas
Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
UPDATE: Tsunami advisory canceled for Bay Area, California — but caution at coast still urged. Plus, read here about the maps showing what could happen if a once-in-a-millennium tsunami hit the Bay Area.
The ocean waves triggered by a major volcanic eruption near Tonga traveled more than 5,000 miles to Bay Area coastlines Saturday, causing tsunami surges and violent surf from dawn until past dusk.
Tsunami advisories triggered in the early morning remained in effect throughout the day. They were canceled late Saturday in the Bay Area and early Sunday for the rest of California, according to the National Weather Service.
The explosion of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano, largely submerged in the Pacific Ocean, appeared to be one of the most powerful eruptions in recent times, sending ash and smoke 12 miles up and 160 miles across the sky.
The event led to the most significant tsunami in California in a decade, with beaches closed up and down the coast and dock areas evacuated, including more than 100 live-aboard residents in the Berkeley Marina. Officials estimated tsunami wave heights to reach 1 to 2 feet.
The surges caused flooding at the Santa Cruz harbor, where cars and debris floated in the rising water, and resulted in at least one rescue of a surfer off Ocean Beach, whose surfboard broke in the pounding waves.
Some docks were also damaged at Richardson Bay in Marin County, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
Here are some of the tidal gauges from across the region. Several tsunami surges have occurred already this morning, and we are not done yet. Stay away from the coast today. #CAwx pic.twitter.com/qrr7lkGcRu
— NWS Bay Area (@NWSBayArea) January 15, 2022
The waves first hit the Monterey area around 7:30 a.m., and San Francisco around 8:10 a.m., just before high tide.
WATCH: Tsunami causes flooding at the Santa Cruz Harbor in California pic.twitter.com/bmd9VtmJov
— BNO News (@BNONews) January 15, 2022
Authorities throughout the region urged residents to avoid the beach and in some cases called for those at the water’s edge to move to higher ground.
#TsunamiAdvisory
Please avoid traveling to our coastal areas to observe the surges. It is not safe.
There are extremely powerful currents associated with the surges and if you are pulled into the water it will overpower you.
Dock damage in Richardson Bay area. pic.twitter.com/T9LHJs7j6T
— Marin County Sheriff (@MarinSheriff) January 15, 2022
Advisories were also issued in Washington, Oregon, Alaska and countries around the Pacific Rim. The advisories expired throughout the day as the threat receded, with the U.S. Tsunami Warning System map showing none remained in effect around the Pacific Rim on Sunday morning.
The tsunami was the most significant in California since earthquake-fueled waves from Japan hit the West Coast in 2011, killing one person in California and damaging 29 ports and harbors.
Officials issued similar warnings Saturday about possible flooding and surges. “Do not go to the coast to watch the tsunami,” California authorities exhorted residents several times throughout the day.
Not everyone listened.
A Tsunami *Advisory* remains in effect for our area this morning. Wondering what this means? Here’s a graphic explaining more along with what actions you should take. #cawx pic.twitter.com/0LvfaCSBdo
— NWS Bay Area (@NWSBayArea) January 15, 2022
At San Gregorio State Beach in San Mateo County, two people who were fishing were swept into the ocean by the current Saturday afternoon and reached safety on their own, Cal Fire officials said. They were in stable condition after being taken to the hospital, one by helicopter.
HAPPENING NOW: Two anglers are being taken to hospital, one by ground, one by @StanLifeFlight at San Gregorio State Beach. They were fishing when swept in. #CaWx Both self-rescued. pic.twitter.com/rURJvAz7RL
— CAL FIRE CZU (@CALFIRECZU) January 15, 2022
In Pacifica, at Linda Mar Beach, surfers and families ducked under the “Beach Closed” signs, which alerted them to the tsunami warning. They laid out towels, set up picnics and settled in to build sandcastles as dozens of surfers caught large, churning waves.
Occasionally, the surf chased parents and children to higher ground before receding 50 yards or more back off the sand.
A group of beginning surfers in a lesson sat on the sand next to several surfboards, getting guidance from instructors before hitting the water.
Surfer Sean Knox, 41, drove to Linda Mar from Berkeley to ride waves for an hour or two, saying he was aware of the tsunami advisory, but had checked out the surf cameras and decided it was safe.
“You just keep an eye on the conditions,” he said as he pulled on his wet suit, adding that the waves didn’t look that unusual given the time of year. “This is the big season.”
He did note, however, the waves were big, “some of the biggest of the year,” and he — and apparently many others — didn’t want to miss it.
Nearby, Veronica and Ariel Ochoa sat on the sand up against the beach wall watching the waves and the surfers, a charcuterie picnic laid out between them. The Oakland couple had decided to spend the day driving down Highway 1, stopping at points along the way.
“I was under the impression it ended at 9 a.m.,” Veronica Ochoa said after learning the advisory remained in effect. “I guess I was misinformed.”
Still, the couple lounged, feeling safe given the large crowd around them. And if the tsunami siren sounded, she said, “we’ll run.”
In San Francisco, Ruben Canonizado, Kathy Loughlin, Julia Stroud and June Jobin, who all live in the city, ventured to Ocean Beach specifically to see the tsunami after hearing about it on the morning news. Watching the larger than normal waves crash onto the coast on a beautiful morning was exciting, they said as they took photos with their phones.
1.14.2022: (correction on date) Large volcanic eruption near Tonga (Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano) today as seen from outer space. Shown on visible imagery using the Himawari satellite. #hiwx #tsunami #earthquake pic.twitter.com/Y18W7wvXl9
— NWSHonolulu (@NWSHonolulu) January 15, 2022
Canonizado said that he’d seen footage of the volcano erupting and that it was almost unbelievable. “Those poor Tongans,” he said.
The eruption was “significant,” said James Day, a professor and volcanologist at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
The volcano has been erupting since Dec. 20, but this was the most explosive event, he said. While experts had not yet precisely identified the Volcanic Explosivity Index, a scale for measuring eruptions, Day said it appeared greater than 4.
By comparison, the blast from Mount St. Helens in 1980 was a 5 and that of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 was a 6, an eruption that “noticeably cooled the Earth’s atmosphere,” Day said.
The fact that the Tongan volcano is partially submerged means the seawater interacts with the hot magma as an accelerant, “much like spraying gasoline on a fire or barbecue might,” Day said. “The interaction of the underlying magma and hot-rock with the water has almost certainly enhanced the magnitude of this eruption. This is a different scenario to Mount St. Helens, but no less devastating for the community surrounding the volcano.”
It remained unclear how much damage occurred in the nearby Tongan islands. Early reports showed waves slamming into buildings along the coastline and ash falling on the capital, Nuku’alofa.
But as of Saturday evening, communication with the island nation remained limited.
Across the Bay Area, which has the largest concentration of expatriate Tongans and Tongan Americans in the state, with about 13,000 in San Mateo County, those with family near the volcanic blast were glued to Facebook and social media, watching satellite footage that captured the huge volcanic explosion from above, and amateur footage of its frightening boom scattering beachgoers before internet service evaporated.
“It’s really sad,” said Manu Manumua, who has numerous relatives in Tonga. “I cannot reach them and see the situation.”
Manumua was at home in San Francisco with her husband and three children Friday evening — Saturday in Tonga — when they learned on Facebook about the eruption. Her mother, 79, and father, in his 80s, live in the island nation and have two adopted children. Her brother and his wife, also there, have five children. Most are not on the main island of Tongatapu, where a 4-foot wave is believed to have washed through the capital.
“I cannot reach them and see the situation,” said Manumua, who has numerous relatives in Tonga. “It’s really sad.”
San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Nanette Asimov contributed to this report.
Jill Tucker and Danielle Echeverria are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com, danielle.echeverria@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @DanielleEchev, @jilltucker
The former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly close to reaching a plea bargain in his corruption trial, a development that could mean an unexpectedly swift end to his turbulent political career and once again upend Israeli politics.
Israeli media were dominated on Sunday by the news that Netanyahu, the chair of the Likud party and leader of the opposition since being ousted last year from a 12-year-stint in government, has reached advanced talks with the state attorney’s office.
In the reported agreement, Netanyahu will admit to two counts of breach of trust, resulting in a suspended prison sentence and a few months of prison time that will be converted to community service.
The major remaining sticking point appears to be the insistence of the attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, on a charge of moral turpitude – a formal declaration that Netanyahu is desperate to avoid.
The former prime minister is on trial accused of trading preferential treatment for a major Israeli telecom company in exchange for positive articles on its Walla news site. He is also a defendant in a second case involving claims of soliciting favourable coverage, and a third alleging he received gifts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from wealthy friends.
The 72-year-old rejected calls to step down after he was indicted in 2019, using the podium as prime minister to repeatedly lash out at law enforcement, the media and the courts for conducting a “witch hunt” against him.
His trial formally began in 2020 while the country was embroiled in a two-year-long political crisis during which time there were four elections, with voters deadlocked over Netanyahu’s leadership and indictment.
Proceedings against him had been expected to drag on for years – but with Mandelblit’s term as attorney general due to end later this month, and his replacement unlikely to prioritise Netanyahu’s cases, it appears the former prime minister’s legal team has decided the window for a plea bargain is closing.
The retired supreme court president Aharon Barak, a longstanding ally of Netanyahu, has reportedly acted as the liaison between the former prime minister and state prosecutors. Speaking to the Ynet news website, he said of his role in the negotiations: “In my view, this is a unique indictment and trial, which is causing a rift in the nation. In the attempt to heal that rift, a plea bargain is the preferable option. This position is positive and vital for the state of Israel.”
The daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth on Sunday quoted a Likud source as saying that in recent months Netanyahu, who had kept the deal talks secret from his party, had “shifted into a lower gear”.
It said the former prime minister was “less centred, less focused, he didn’t participate much in Knesset plenum meetings, he cancelled faction meetings. The only thing he did was attack senior party members and post childish videos on TikTok. That’s no way to lead the opposition.”
Under a plea deal, Netanyahu could be banned from political life for up to seven years, effectively ending his career.
It would also trigger a leadership contest for Likud, the fallout from which could reverberate in unpredictable ways. The Likud could descend into internal warfare over the election of a new chair, hindering its attempts to destabilise the diverse coalition government that was sworn in last June.
However, if the party does manage to comprehensively agree on a new leader, rightwing elements of the governing coalition might consider scrapping the current arrangement in favour of a more politically coherent government with the new Likud chair at its head.
As well as striking a deal over his corruption charges, Netanyahu is also considering a compromise in a defamation case against his predecessor as prime minister, Ehud Olmert.
The Likud leader has demanded 837,000 shekels (£197,000) in damages from Olmert over allegations he made in interviews that Netanyahu, his wife Sara and eldest son, Yair – also rightwing figures – are mentally ill.
Judge Amit Yariv suggested in a hearing last week that Olmert state his comments were opinion rather than fact – a compromise that a Netanyahu family spokesperson said was acceptable, although there was no immediate indication that Olmert would accept it.
Other than Netanyahu, Olmert is the only Israeli prime minister to face trial for corruption-related charges. He was found guilty in 2015 and served two-thirds of a 27-month sentence for fraud.
Former president oversaw period of deep insecurity
Lost popular support and eventually ousted in coup
BAMAKO, Jan 16 (Reuters) – Former Malian president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, who was ousted by the military in 2020 after a turbulent seven-year rule, has died, officials said on Sunday. He was 76.
Known by his initials IBK, Keita ran the West African country from September 2013 until August 2020, during which Islamist insurgents overran large areas and ethnic violence flared.
Disputed legislative elections, rumours of corruption and low economic growth also fuelled public anger and drew tens of thousands onto the streets of the capital Bamako in 2020 to demand his resignation.
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He was eventually forced out by a military coup, whose leaders remain in charge despite strong international objections.
The interim government issued a statement on Sunday that read: “The government of Mali and the Malian people salute the memory of the illustrious deceased.”
Leaders from the region including Senegalese President Macky Sall and Burkina Faso’s president, Roch Kabore, sent condolences.
The cause of death was not immediately clear. A former adviser said Keita, who frequently travelled abroad for medical attention, had died at home in Bamako.
He was detained and put under house arrest during the coup, but those restrictions were lifted amid pressure from the West African political bloc ECOWAS.
Known for his white flowing robes and a tendency to slur his words, Keita came to power in a resounding election victory in 2013. He vowed to take on the corruption that had eroded support for his predecessor Amadou Toumani Toure, also toppled in a coup.
INSECURITY AND CORRUPTION
Keita had a reputation for firmness forged when he was prime minister in the 1990s, when he took a hard line with striking trade unions.
As president, he enjoyed strong international support, especially from former colonial ruler France, which poured in money and troops to counter al Qaeda-linked jihadists who in 2012 hijacked an ethnic Tuareg rebellion and swept across the desert north.
But continued insecurity ultimately marred his presidency.
French forces pushed back the insurgents in 2013. But they recovered, and have since killed hundreds of soldiers and civilians, driven out local leaders and in some areas set up their own systems of government.
The jihadist attacks also stoked ethnic violence between rival herding and farming communities, which claimed hundreds more lives and underscored the government’s lack of control. Abuses by the army bred more resentment, rights groups say.
Keita was also dogged by allegations of corruption.
In 2014, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund froze nearly $70 million in financing after the IMF expressed concern over the purchase of a $40 million presidential jet and the transparency of Mali’s defence spending.
When word got out in 2020 that Keita had been toppled, thousands celebrated on the streets.
With promises to end nepotism and corruption, the military struck a chord with millions of impoverished Malians who wanted a break from the past.
On Friday, 18 months on, thousands demonstrated in Bamako against strict sanctions imposed by ECOWAS on the transitional government for trying to extend its hold on power. read more
“IBK was a man who loved his country,” said a woman who came to Keita’s house on Sunday to pay her respects. “A good man who never betrayed Mali and who did everything so it did not fall.”
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Reporting By Tiemoko Diallo;
Additional reporting by Paul Lorgerie; Writing by Edward McAllister;
Editing by Angus MacSwan and Andrew Cawthorne
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
