United States President Donald Trump has granted full pardon to a former soldier who was convicted of killing an Iraqi prisoner.

Michael Behenna, who was sentenced to 15 years for the killing of Iraqi prisoner Ali Mansur Mohamed, was pardoned on Monday, according to a White House statement.

“Mr. Behenna’s case has attracted broad support from the military, Oklahoma elected officials, and the public,” read the statement.

The White House said that more than two-dozen generals and admirals, along with numerous Oklahoma officials, had expressed support for Behenna, an Oklahoma native.

The statement said that Behenna had been “a model prisoner.”

The move came specifically after Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter petitioned the Trump administration to pardon the convicted soldier.

Behenna deployed to Iraq as an army ranger of the 101st Airborne Division at the height of the US troop surge in the country. He led an infantry platoon of 18 men.

Following a deadly roadside bomb on a three-truck convoy, which Behenna was accompanying, north of Baghdad, Mansur was apprehended as a suspected al-Qaeda militant who may have helped carry out the attack.

Mansur was interrogated by the military but ultimately freed due to lacking evidence proving he had any role in the attack.

Behenna was ordered to transport Mansur back to his village to set him free.

The US soldier, however, decided to further “interrogate” Mansur. Behenna ultimately stripped the prisoner naked, interrogated him without authorization and killed him by shooting him twice.

“I stripped him naked to intimidate him,” Behenna later said about the ordeal during his trial.

“I told him I wanted more intelligence on local leaders of al-Qaeda, and that I wanted him to tell me about his stops in Saudi Arabia and Syria, and the [roadside] bomb explosion. But he kept saying, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ ”

Behenna killed Mansur by shooting him in the chest and head.

During court-martial, Behenna claimed that he had been protecting himself after the prisoner tried to grab his gun while being interrogated.

The Army, however, believed that the argument couldn’t be valid because Behenna had already been pointing his weapon at the prisoner before Mansur could’ve reached for his gun.

Behenna was consequently found guilty of unpremeditated murder in a combat zone and was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2009. The US Army Clemency and Parole Board reduced the sentence to 15 years a year later.

Five years ago, Behenna was given parole and started working in a ranch.

The US invasion of Iraq was carried out in 2003 under the pretext that the regime of Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD). No such weapons, however, were ever found in Iraq.

More than one million Iraqis were killed as a result of the occupation and the subsequent occupation of the country, according to the California-based investigative organization Project Censored.

The deteriorating security situation caused by the US occupation also lead to a surge of terrorism-related violence in the country, ultimately giving way to the formation of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group.

Source: Presstv

Sri Lanka’s police have announced that all the assailants involved in the deadly bomb attacks in the country last month have either been killed or arrested.

At least 257 people were killed and hundreds of others wounded as a series of bomb attacks hit churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka on April 21.

Police chief Chandana Wickramaratne said in an audio statement that the dead militants included “two bomb experts.”

“We have seized the explosives they had stored for future attacks,” he added.

Wickramaratne — who was appointed by President Maithripala Sirisena as acting police chief last week after his predecessor was suspended over his failure to act on warnings about the attacks — said public life was slowly returning to normal with the lifting of curfews imposed after the bombings.

Public schools were reopened on Monday, but attendance fell to below 10 percent in many places amid fears of further attacks.

“We have strengthened security for all schools,” Wickramaratne stressed, adding, “We are also conducting a program to create awareness about safety and security in all schools.”

Wickramaratne did not specify the number of those detained over the attacks, but police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera said on Monday that 73 people, including nine women, were being held.

The local group National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ) has been blamed for the Easter Sunday attacks, but the Daesh terrorist group has also claimed the bombings.

Meanwhile, police said religious tensions have eased at the town of Negombo, north of Colombo, which suffered the highest death toll in the April 21 attacks.

The Roman Catholic Church appealed for calm after Christians attacked dozens of Muslim-owned businesses, homes, and vehicles in the town on Sunday night. Two people were reportedly arrested.

Source: Presstv

Cameroon needs a rapid and deep-rooted effort to tackle a crisis of violence that has erupted in several areas of the country, U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said on Monday at the end of a visit to the West African country.

Violence has spilled over Cameroon’s borders from Nigeria, Chad and Central African Republic, while crackdowns on separatists in the southwest and Islamists in the northeast have caused long-running tensions to flare up, the U.N. has said.

Bachelet said the situation could spiral out of control and the challenges are immense, with ten or more separatist movements.

“I believe there is a clear – if possibly short – window of opportunity to arrest the crises that have led to hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people, as well as the killings and brutal human rights violations and abuses that have affected the northern and western areas of the country,” she said in a statement. “It will take significant actions on the part of the government, and substantial and sustained support from the international community – including us in the U.N.”

Cameroon was among the most settled countries in the region until a few years ago, but now villages have been burnt, civilians killed and mutilated, with children abducted and forced to join armed groups or used as unwitting suicide bombers.

Bachelet took part in three days of talks in Yaounde, including an in-depth discussion with President Paul Biya, and offered to help ensure that military operations respect human rights, which the statement said would help to win popular trust.

“If they fail to do that, they will not defeat an enemy that thrives on civilian mistrust of the authorities,” Bachelet said. “In the meantime, the civilians trapped between these two powerful, if asymmetric, opposing forces are increasingly vulnerable to lethal abuses and violations by both sides.”

She said the government had told her about steps to ensure that crimes committed by the armed forces are punished.

“This particular issue is damaging Cameroon’s international standing and undermining international support for efforts to combat the armed groups operating on its territory,” she said.

Source: Reuters

The United States is sending an aircraft carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Middle East in a “clear and unmistakable” message to Iran, declared John Bolton, the hawkish US national security advisor.

“The United States is deploying the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group and a bomber task force to the US Central Command region,” Bolton said in a Sunday statement.

The move, he said, is aimed at sending a “clear and unmistakable message” to Iran that “any attack on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.”

Bolton said the decision was “in response to a number of troubling and escalatory indications and warnings.”

He said the US “is not seeking war” with Iran, but it is “fully prepared to respond to any attack”, whether by proxy, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) or regular Iranian forces, Bolton said in a statement.

Bolton did not provide any further details, but a US official said the forces “have been ordered to the region as a deterrence to what has been seen as potential preparations by Iranian forces and its proxies that may indicate possible attacks on US forces in the region.”

The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the United States was not expecting any imminent attack on US forces, Reutersreported.

The move by the US comes as it had earlier vowed to cut Iran’s oil exports down to zero, prompting Tehran to warn that it will not allow any other country to export oil through the Strait of Hormuz if Tehran cannot sell its crude.

Meanwhile, the deployment seems to be a “regularly scheduled” one by the US Navy, and Bolton has just tried to talk it up.

Back on April 8, the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group (ABECSG) Public Affairs announced that the Strike Group has departed a naval station in Virginia on April 1 for “a regularly scheduled deployment.”

Therefore, what Bolton describes as a “response” to Iran’s warning does not seem to be genuine, as the ABECSG started its mission long before Iran’s warning.

Back on Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Iran does not seek to escalate tensions with the United States, but it will not let Washington disrupt the security of Persian Gulf, the “lifeline of Iran”.

“We have been very clear that we have no interest in escalation,” Zarif said in an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera TV.

“We have been clear that the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz are our lifeline. We depend on them for our livelihood, and we want them safe, secure, and free for navigation of all countries, including Iran,” he said.

“As we have stated before, Iran won’t permit the US to threaten the Persian Gulf,” the foreign minister added.

Last Sunday, Iran’s top military commander said Iran wants the strait — through which nearly one-third of all oil traded by sea passes — to remain open and secure, warning that the country will not allow anyone to destabilize the waters.

“As oil and commodities of other countries are passing through the Strait of Hormuz, ours are also moving through it,” said Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Baqeri.

Iran “will definitely confront anyone who attempts to destabilize the Strait of Hormuz, and if our crude is not to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, others’ [crude] will not pass either.”

The Iranian commander explained, “This does not mean [that we are going to] close the Strait of Hormuz. We do not intend to shut it unless the enemies’ hostile acts will leave us with no other option. We will be fully capable of closing it on that day.”

The US administration said in a statement on April 22 that buyers of Iranian oil must stop their purchases by May 1 or face sanctions. The move ended six months of waivers, which allowed Iran’s eight biggest buyers — Turkey, China, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan — to continue importing limited volumes.

Source: Presstv

US President Donald Trump has contradicted his national security team on pushing for a military intervention against Venezuela, saying he and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin share the goal of a peaceful end to the crisis in the Central American nation.

“He is not looking at all to get involved in Venezuela, other than he’d like to see something positive happen for Venezuela, and I feel the same way. We want to get some humanitarian aid. Right now people are starving,” Trump told reporters on Friday.

Trump’s reference to Russia’s hands-off approach towards Venezuela stands in contrast to insistence by his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that Russia is part of the problem in Caracas. Pompeo claimed earlier last week that President Nicolás Maduro was about to flee Venezuela until Russia persuaded him to stay.

In its description of the Trump-Putin conversation, the Kremlin said Putin stressed the need to respect Venezuelans’ right to determine their own future. He told Trump that outside interference in internal affairs and attempts at forceful regime change in Caracas undermine the prospects for a political settlement of the crisis.

Trump’s statement came shortly after acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan and other senior officials, including his National Security Adviser John Bolton, reviewed options following a failed effort earlier in the week by Venezuelan opposition leaders to fuel an uprising.

Bolton signaled support last week for military intervention in Venezuela to oust embattled Maduro, a move that would pose a challenge for Trump, who has so far indicated a preference for and campaigned on scaling down existing military conflicts and avoiding new ones, according to local press reports.

While Trump has also emphasized that all options are on the table for Venezuela, Bolton has become the public face of any military campaign. On Friday, Bolton met with Pompeo and Shanahan at the Pentagon to discuss the situation in the Latin American nation.

“We want as our principle objective the peaceful transfer of power, but I will say again as the president has said from the outset … all options are on the table,” Bolton told reporters outside the White House on Tuesday when the street protests were underway.

A day later, Pompeo further told Fox Business Network that if military action is required, “that’s what the United States will do.”

Shanahan told reporters on Friday that he, Bolton and Pompeo were briefed that day by US Southern Command chief Adm. Craig Faller on his observations in the region.

“And then we went through a number of the … options that we have,” Shanahan said.

He, however, declined to provide details and gave no indication they made decisions to take any military action.

“We have a comprehensive set of options tailored to certain conditions, and I’m just going to leave it at that,” he said. Pressed to say whether the options include direct military intervention, he said, “I’ll leave that to your imagination. All options are on the table.”

The Friday session highlighted Trump administration’s effort to suggest the possibility of a military action, intending to increase public pressure on Maduro, though local press reports indicate that there appears to be little likelihood of direct US military intervention.

US claims Russia, China, Iran involved in Venezuela

Asked whether Venezuela poses a national security threat to the US that would justify using a military force, Shanahan then claimed that Russia, China and Iran are involved in Venezuela.

He then added, “Right now it’s about Maduro and his illegitimate regime, and Guaidó and making sure that the people of Venezuela have the environment and the conditions to correct for all these humanitarian shortcomings.”

Veteran Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina also wrote on Twitter, “Where is our aircraft carrier?” Asked to comment on that suggestion, Shanahan told reporters, “All (options) would include all.”

Reacting to the failed US-backed coup in Venezuela, Pompeo told Fox News on Thursday: “The military didn’t fracture in the way that we would hope, but it’s just a matter of time.”

“It’s the case that Maduro may rule for a little while longer, but he’s not going to govern. Structurally, there’s no way he stays in power. It’s time for him to leave, and we need the Cubans and the Russians to follow him out the door.”

Also attending the Faller briefing were Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, and Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Source: Presstv