WASHINGTON: A US judge has ruled that Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government is liable for at least $302.5 million in damages for its role in the 2012 death of renowned American journalist Marie Colvin while covering the Syrian civil war.
US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said in a ruling made public on Wednesday that the Syrian government “engaged in an act of extrajudicial killing of a United States national.”
Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik were killed in the besieged Syrian city of Homs while reporting on the Syrian conflict.
The lawsuit filed by Colvin’s family in 2016 accused officials in Assad’s government of deliberately targeting rockets against a makeshift broadcast studio where Colvin and other reporters were living and working.
Jackson wrote that “a targeted attack on a media center hosting foreign journalists that resulted in two fatalities and multiple injuries ... is an unconscionable act.” The judge ruled that compensatory damages to be awarded in addition to the $300 million in punitive damages would be calculated at a later date.
A biographical film about Colvin, called “A Private War” and starring British actress Rosamund Pike, was released last year, bringing fresh attention to her career.
US court finds Syria liable for journalist Marie Colvin’s killing
US court finds Syria liable for journalist Marie Colvin’s killing
- Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that the Syrian government engaged in an act of extrajudicial killing of a United States national
- Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik were killed in the besieged Syrian city of Homs while reporting on the Syrian conflict
Western Libya forces kill notorious migrant smuggler, security agency says
- The Security Threats Combating Agency raided the group’s hideout in response to the attack and killed its leader, Ahmed Al-Dabbashi
- Dabbashi had been under US sanctions since 2018
BENGHAZI: Western Libyan security forces said on Friday they had killed a notorious migrant smuggler in the coastal city of Sabratha after “criminal gangs” affiliated with him attacked one of their checkpoints overnight.
The Security Threats Combating Agency, a security agency under western Libya’s Prime Minister Abdulhamid Al-Dbeibah, said they raided the group’s hideout in response to the attack and killed its leader, Ahmed Al-Dabbashi, also known as “Al-Amu.”
Dabbashi’s brother was arrested and six members of the force were wounded in the fighting, the agency said in the statement on its Facebook page.
Dabbashi had been under US sanctions since 2018. Washington described him as the “leader of one of two powerful migrant smuggling organizations” based in Sabratha and said he had “used his organization to rob and enslave migrants before allowing them to leave for Italy.”
Human trafficking is rife in Libya, which has been divided between rival armed factions since a NATO-backed uprising toppled longtime leader Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.
The proliferation of smuggling gangs and the absence of a strong central authority have made the country one of the main staging points for migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe.
Dbeibah was installed through a UN-backed process in 2021, but significant parts of western Libya remain outside his control. Dbeibah’s Government of National Unity, or GNU, is not recognized by rival authorities in the east.
An armed alliance affiliated with an earlier UN-backed government in Tripoli – the Government of National Accord – had taken on Dabbashi’s forces in a three-week battle in 2017 that killed and wounded dozens and damaged residential areas and Sabratha’s Roman ruins.
