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(NEW YORK) — With the U.S. military and diplomatic withdrawal now complete after 20 years in Afghanistan, the Taliban has taken over the country, including the Kabul airport, the site of an often-desperate evacuation effort in past weeks.

But even as the last American troops were flown out to meet President Joe Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline, other Americans who wanted to flee the country were left behind. The Biden administration is now focused on a “diplomatic mission” to help them leave but some hoping to evacuate are still stuck in the country. Meanwhile, the Taliban has announced its new “caretaker” government which includes men with U.S. bounties on their heads — and no women.

Here are the latest developments. All times Eastern:

Sep 10, 11:33 am
2nd passenger plane takes off from Kabul

A second Qatar Airways flight has taken off from the airport in Kabul with an unknown number of Americans on board, a day after the more than 100 foreign nationals left Afghanistan on the first flight out since the U.S. military’s withdrawal.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price confirmed that 39 Americans had been invited on Thursday’s chartered Qatar Airways flight from Kabul and from that group, 10 U.S. citizens and 11 lawful permanent residents, or green card holders, flew out.

Another 43 Canadian citizens, 13 British citizens and others were also aboard.

The Biden administration offered some praise for the Taliban on Thursday for their cooperation as officials try to fly out some 100 Americans without U.S. troops or a State Department presence on the ground.

Sep 10, 8:00 am
US has ‘many means’ to get intelligence in Afghanistan, Mayorkas says

The United States has “many means” of gathering intelligence in Afghanistan despite not having boots on the ground, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Friday.

“We no longer have troops in Afghanistan, but we have other resources to learn information on the ground and we certainly use those resources to the best of our abilities,” Mayorkas told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in an interview on “Good Morning America.”

“We are quite creative and quite capable of learning information from coast-to-coast and all over the world,” he added.

Mayorkas noted that the U.S. government is watching the potentially re-emerging terrorist threat in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan “very closely.”

“We watch the threat landscape all over the world,” he added. “We have built an entire architect to protect, to safeguard the American people.”

But the greatest threat to the U.S. homeland is currently domestic terrorism, according to Mayorkas.

“Individuals who are prone to violence by reason of an ideology of hate or false narratives that we see on social media or other online platforms,” he said. “I think it’s a sad thing to see hate emerge, as we have observed it emerge over the last several years.”

With the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks approaching, Mayorkas said the government is not aware of any “specific credible threats targeting the United States” on the somber date.

“But we are vigilant,” he added. “We watch the information, we learn information; but at this point in time, we don’t know of any threat on the anniversary.”

Sep 09, 3:57 pm
More than 30 Americans invited as passengers on flight from Kabul, some declined

More than 30 U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents were invited by the U.S. to be passengers on the first chartered flight out of Kabul since the American evacuation mission ended, but not all said yes. Some said no because of medical reasons, extended family members or their desire for more time, among other reasons, according to State Department spokesperson Ned Price.

Price said he could not give an exact number of those who did make Thursday’s flight to Qatar.

Echoing an earlier statement from the National Security Council, Price said he welcomed the Qatari Airways departure from Kabul. He said he hopes and expects more flights will be allowed to continue in the days to come.

Sep 09, 2:16 pm
White House confirms flight with Americans landed in Qatar, calls Taliban cooperation ‘professional’

National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne has confirmed that U.S. citizens and permanent residents were among the passengers on the first charter flight to leave the airport in Kabul since Qatar took over operations at the airport and that they have safely landed in Qatar.

The statement offered no passenger numbers, so it’s unclear how many U.S. citizens were on board, but it did provide some praise for the Taliban’s cooperation.

“The Taliban have been cooperative in facilitating the departure of American citizens and lawful permanent residents on charter flights from HKIA. They have shown flexibility, and they have been businesslike and professional in our dealings with them in this effort. This is a positive first step,” the statement said.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — Britain’s Prince Andrew and his lawyers have refused multiple attempts to serve the beleaguered royal with notice of a sexual assault lawsuit filed against him last month in New York, according to an attorney for his accuser, Virginia Giuffre, and documents obtained by ABC News.

“Process servers have shown up at his residence, and they have refused to take the summons and refused to let the process servers in to serve,” said David Boies, chairman of New York City-based law firm Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, which represents Giuffre. “He has stopped coming out in public. He has been moving around.”

The 61-year-old British prince was snapped by photographers on Tuesday in a black Range Rover as he was departing Royal Lodge in Windsor, England, the home he shares with his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson. He was photographed again several hours later arriving at Balmoral Castle, the Scottish estate of his mother, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II.

“Runaway Prince,” blared a headline in one British tabloid newspaper, The Sun. “Prince Andrew bolts for Balmoral in bid to avoid being served sex assault papers.”

A spokesperson for the prince declined to comment to ABC News on those reports.

The lawsuit by Giuffre, an alleged victim of disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide in a New York City jail in 2019, accuses Prince Andrew of engaging in sexual acts with her in 2001. Giuffre alleges the prince sexually assaulted her at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion and elsewhere when she was under the age of 18. She contended she did not consent and that the prince knew “she was a sex-trafficking victim,” according to the complaint, which was filed in federal court in Manhattan on Aug. 9.

Prince Andrew, who also holds the title of Duke of York, has long denied Giuffre’s allegations, which first surfaced in court filings nearly seven years ago. The prince told BBC News in a rare interview in 2019 that he had no recollection of ever meeting Giuffre.

“I’ve said consistently and frequently that we never had any sort of sexual contact,” he said in the interview.

An initial hearing in Giuffre’s lawsuit is set for Monday. To date, no lawyer for the prince has appeared on the public record of the case.

Boies told ABC News that he plans to inform the court on Monday that, in addition to attempts to personally serve the prince at his residence, Giuffre’s lawyers have mailed the complaint, emailed several law firms believed to be associated with the prince,and sought the assistance of British court officials — under established protocols for serving foreign citizens with notice of a civil lawsuit in U.S. courts.

“We don’t have to actually physically serve him with a subpoena. All we have to do is follow certain recognized procedures, which we have done,” Boies said. “We will simply tell the court what we have done, and then it’s up to the court.”

A lawyer for Prince Andrew, however, has objected to the methods employed by Giuffre’s legal team, calling their actions “regrettable” and procedurally improper, and questioning whether Giuffre has a valid legal claim against the prince, according to a letter obtained by ABC News.

“[Giuffre’s lawyers] have made several public, indeed well-publicised, attempts at irregular service of these proceedings in this jurisdiction, in at least one case accompanied by a media representative,” Gary Bloxsome, a lawyer with U.K. law firm Blackfords LLP, wrote in a Sept. 6 letter to senior master Barbara Fontaine, a British judicial official.

“These have included attempted personal service of our client at his home, the instruction of a private process server, and attempts to email the proceedings not only to this firm, but to barristers (who are not authorised to conduct litigation) who are known to have acted for the Duke,” he continued. “This is regrettable.”

Bloxsome contends British legal procedures require that a valid request for assistance from U.K. court officials must come from a judicial or diplomatic officer in the United States, not from Giuffre’s lawyers. If the judge overseeing the case makes such a request, Bloxsome wrote in the letter, “then it is likely that our client will be content to agree to a convenient method of alternative service.”

“However, absent being satisfied of some very good reason to do so, our client is highly unlikely to be prepared to agree to any form of alternative service while the approach to service of these proceedings remains irregular and the viability of the claim remains open to doubt,” Bloxsome added.

Although Bloxsome indicated in the letter that his firm is not presently involved in Giuffre’s case, he nonetheless raised questions about the viability of her claims, contending that a confidential 2009 settlement she reached with Epstein in Florida may contain a release of claims against others associated with her allegations against Epstein, potentially including Prince Andrew.

Bloxsome noted that “this settlement may have led last month to the dismissal by consent of similar causes of action Ms. Giuffre had included in her high-profile claim against Alan Dershowitz.”

Three days after Giuffre filed suit against Prince Andrew, she agreed to drop a battery claim from her long-running defamation lawsuit against Dershowitz, the famed criminal defense lawyer who formerly represented Epstein.

The agreement came after Dershowitz asserted that Giuffre’s confidential settlement with Epstein barred her from suing him for alleged battery.

Giuffre’s withdrawal of the battery claim was described in a joint court filing last month by lawyers for Giuffre and Dershowitz as “a compromise” that should not be viewed as an admission by either party of the validity or invalidity of the claims about the settlement agreement.

Giuffre has alleged in court filings that she was sexually abused on multiple occasions by Dershowitz, who was among a group of high-profile lawyers who — years later — represented Epstein during the negotiations that led to his so-called “sweetheart” deal with U.S. federal prosecutors in 2008.

Dershowitz has vigorously denied Giuffre’s allegations and counter-sued her for defamation, vowing to prove in court that she lied about him and other prominent men. On Wednesday, Dershowitz’s attorney sought permission from the judge overseeing his case to allow him to provide Prince Andrew’s lawyers with a copy of Giuffre’s confidential settlement agreement with Epstein. The court has not yet ruled on that request.

Giuffre is represented by a separate law firm, Cooper and Kirk, in her case involving Dershowitz.

Bloxsome argued in the letter that Prince Andrew’s legal team needs to review the confidential settlement before determining how to proceed.

“Once we are able to obtain a copy of the settlement agreement in Florida, which appears to be subject to confidentiality restrictions, we will be able to determine whether Ms. Giuffre has a viable claim,” he wrote. “Obviously until we have made that determination, it is difficult for us to give advice as to whether the Duke should voluntarily accept service.”

Boies said he was unable to comment on the details of Giuffre’s settlement with Epstein, citing its confidentiality. “But what I can say is that there is no evidence that Prince Andrew was intended to be covered by the release. And, indeed, Prince Andrew has never himself asserted that he was intended to be covered by the release,” he said.

Boies argued that whatever the prince’s legal team wrote in the letter to the U.K. official is insignificant unless his lawyers appear in Giuffre’s case in New York.

“I don’t know why they wrote what they wrote,” Boies said. “But unless and until they engage with respect to the complaint that we have filed here in the United States, anything they say is irrelevant.”

Giuffre’s lawsuit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages and accuses Andrew of sexual assault as well as intentional infliction of emotional distress.

“I am holding Prince Andrew accountable for what he did to me,” Giuffre told ABC News last month in a statement via her lawyers. “The powerful and the rich are not exempt from being held responsible for their actions. I hope that other victims will see that it is possible not to live in silence and fear, but one can reclaim her life by speaking out and demanding justice.”

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — With the U.S. military and diplomatic withdrawal now complete after 20 years in Afghanistan, the Taliban has taken over the country, including the Kabul airport, the site of an often-desperate evacuation effort in past weeks.

But even as the last American troops were flown out to meet President Joe Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline, other Americans who wanted to flee the country were left behind. The Biden administration is now focused on a “diplomatic mission” to help them leave but some hoping to evacuate are still stuck in the country. Meanwhile, the Taliban has announced its new “caretaker” government which includes men with U.S. bounties on their heads — and no women.

Here are the latest developments. All times Eastern:

Sep 10, 8:00 am
US has ‘many means’ to get intelligence in Afghanistan, Mayorkas says

The United States has “many means” of gathering intelligence in Afghanistan despite not having boots on the ground, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Friday.

“We no longer have troops in Afghanistan, but we have other resources to learn information on the ground and we certainly use those resources to the best of our abilities,” Mayorkas told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in an interview on “Good Morning America.”

“We are quite creative and quite capable of learning information from coast-to-coast and all over the world,” he added.

Mayorkas noted that the U.S. government is watching the potentially re-emerging terrorist threat in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan “very closely.”

“We watch the threat landscape all over the world,” he added. “We have built an entire architect to protect, to safeguard the American people.”

But the greatest threat to the U.S. homeland is currently domestic terrorism, according to Mayorkas.

“Individuals who are prone to violence by reason of an ideology of hate or false narratives that we see on social media or other online platforms,” he said. “I think it’s a sad thing to see hate emerge, as we have observed it emerge over the last several years.”

With the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks approaching, Mayorkas said the government is not aware of any “specific credible threats targeting the United States” on the somber date.

“But we are vigilant,” he added. “We watch the information, we learn information; but at this point in time, we don’t know of any threat on the anniversary.”

Sep 09, 3:57 pm
More than 30 Americans invited as passengers on flight from Kabul, some declined

More than 30 U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents were invited by the U.S. to be passengers on the first chartered flight out of Kabul since the American evacuation mission ended, but not all said yes. Some said no because of medical reasons, extended family members or their desire for more time, among other reasons, according to State Department spokesperson Ned Price.

Price said he could not give an exact number of those who did make Thursday’s flight to Qatar.

Echoing an earlier statement from the National Security Council, Price said he welcomed the Qatari Airways departure from Kabul. He said he hopes and expects more flights will be allowed to continue in the days to come.

Sep 09, 2:16 pm
White House confirms flight with Americans landed in Qatar, calls Taliban cooperation ‘professional’

National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne has confirmed that U.S. citizens and permanent residents were among the passengers on the first charter flight to leave the airport in Kabul since Qatar took over operations at the airport and that they have safely landed in Qatar.

The statement offered no passenger numbers, so it’s unclear how many U.S. citizens were on board, but it did provide some praise for the Taliban’s cooperation.

“The Taliban have been cooperative in facilitating the departure of American citizens and lawful permanent residents on charter flights from HKIA. They have shown flexibility, and they have been businesslike and professional in our dealings with them in this effort. This is a positive first step,” the statement said.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NORTH KOREA) — North Korea hosted its 73rd anniversary parade late Wednesday going into early Thursday morning, with a display of soldiers in bright orange hazmat suits and gas masks marching in Pyongyang, according to the Korea Central News Agency, the nation’s state media.

Along with top officials, a thinner Kim Jong Un appeared in the square, where he “extended warm greetings” and waved back to the crowds, KCNA reported. Parachutists came down from the sky, there was a fireworks display and tractors hauled artillery behind soldiers, the news agency reported, though photos depict only fire trucks and tractors.

But the image of a strong, healthy regime painted by the country’s state media is the opposite of what the parade truly showcased, according to Gordon Chang, author of “Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes on the World.” The parade indicated a much less ambitious North Korea, Chang said, one that has been decimated by the coronavirus pandemic despite zero cases reported by the country.

“All those guys in the red hazmat suits, which were really striking, that wasn’t directed to us, that was directed to the North Korean people basically saying that the regime has this well in hand because it obviously doesn’t,” he said.

The pandemic and international sanctions have damaged the economy and caused widespread famine. In July, South Korea’s central bank released its 2020 economic estimates for its northern neighbor, finding that North Korea’s economy shrunk by 4.5% last year — the largest decrease in at least 10 years, according to the report.

Photos of Kim at the parade also showed that his weight loss has continued since he began slimming down this summer.

Martyn Williams, a researcher at 38 North, which provides analysis about the country, tweeted that “It’s striking how much healthier Kim is looking in these photos from yesterday. However he is doing it — and there are theories — he looks a lot better than he did a few months ago.”

Chang also speculated as to why Kim had lost weight.

“I think he’s either realized it doesn’t look good from a public relations point of view to be overly heavy, or he’s just dealing with a personal health problem,” he said.

Aside from the apocalyptic looking hazmat suits, the parade lacked North Korea’s signature missiles, which are routinely used to boast the regime’s military might.

This was the nation’s first military parade since President Joe Biden took office. North Korea has been very quiet on the international scene in recent months — which is very uncharacteristic, according to Chang.

“They have been very, very quiet for a long time which means we should start to worry about what’s going on because something is not right,” he said.
 

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(AFGHANISTAN) — For girls and young women accustomed to mountain climbing and physical fitness training six times a week, being confined in a crowded wedding hall near an airport in northern Afghanistan is a different kind of challenge — one with their fates at stake.

It’s the new reality for dozens of them affiliated with Ascend, an organization that teaches Afghan women and girls athletic-based leadership skills. They came to the airport in Mazar-e-Sharif 10 days ago for evacuation flights the Taliban have blocked, heightening their fears they’ll be left behind.

“We’re trying to remind them we haven’t forgotten you. The world hasn’t forgotten you,” Marina LeGree, founder and executive director of Ascend told ABC News. “But some of them are losing hope.”

While the first passenger flight out of Kabul since the Taliban seized power took off on Thursday, carrying some U.S. citizens and other Westerners on board, life-and-death concerns loom for at-risk Afghans still in the country, especially for women like those of Ascend who have exercised independence in the last 20 years, free from Taliban rule.

Founded in 2014, Ascend is a U.S.-based nonprofit operating in Afghanistan that recruits a new group of Afghan girls and young women aged 15-24 each year to embark on a two-year mountaineering program. The recruits — who have trained in Ghaza Stadium, used by the last Taliban government for public punishment — have a mission of fostering leadership, volunteerism, and physical and mental well-being for the next generation.

But if the group in Mazar-e-Sharif is left behind, LaGree fears they’ll be married off to Taliban fighters — or worse.

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(KUWAIT CITY) — The United States has not seen evidence that the Taliban’s newly formed government will be as inclusive as promised, and it appears to be “more of the same” with “many of the same actors,” according to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

“I think the whole international community was hopeful that they would be inclusive as they kind of said they would be weeks and months ago,” Austin told a small group of reporters traveling with him to the Middle East. “But we’ve not seen evidence of that early on, and so it appears to be many of the same actors.”

Austin said the U.S. and the international community would continue “to listen to what they’re saying, but we’re watching what they’re doing and right now it just seems that it’s more of the same.”

The Taliban’s new government includes several leaders of the Haqqani network, including the group’s de facto leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, who was named as interior minister. The Haqqani network has been directly tied to violent attacks against American troops over the last two decades.

“We don’t get a choice, a vote in that but, but certainly these are people that I don’t look favorably upon personally, but again, it’s the Taliban government,” Austin said when asked about the inclusion of Haqqani network leaders in the government.

Austin said the United States has “put the Taliban on notice” that it expects them not to allow al-Qaida to regenerate — something he said would demonstrate that they “are serious about being a bona fide government and respected in the international community.”

“They want sanctions lifted, and that sort of business so they have goals and aspirations,” said Austin. “If they demonstrate that they’re going to harbor terrorism, and in Afghanistan, all of that will be very very difficult for them to achieve.”

“I think the international community will hold them to task, quite frankly,” Austin said. “But again our goal is to make sure that that terror cannot be exported from the spaces in Afghanistan to the homeland, and we will remain focused.”

But he acknowledged that al-Qaida and ISIS-Khorasan “will always attempt to find space to grow and regenerate, whether it’s there, whether it’s in Somalia, whether it’s in any on any other ungoverned space,” he said. “I think that’s the nature of the organization.”

He added that the U.S. military would address any terrorism threats to the United States with its “over the horizon” counterterrorism drone strike capability.

But not having U.S. troops or U.S. intelligence on the ground in Afghanistan may make it more difficult to identify threats and carry out such strikes, something Austin acknowledged to reporters earlier this week.

A veteran of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past two decades and a former commander of U.S. Central Command, Austin embarked on his trip to thank the leaders of Persian Gulf states that provided assistance for the airlift that evacuated 124,000 people from Afghanistan.

“The ability to shuttle back and forth and lift out as many people as we did as fast as we as we did could not have happened without partners and in this region, and in Europe,” said Austin.

Beyond the airlift, his goal is “to always reassure them that first of all, we’re a global nation of global interests, and, and this region will always be important to us,” he said.

“We will have to shift our stance from time to time to focus on what we describe as our main effort and and that’s understandable,” Austin said. “But, but we will always be interested in what is going on in this region.”
 

Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(KABUL, Afghanistan) — With the U.S. military and diplomatic withdrawal now complete after 20 years in Afghanistan, the Taliban has taken over the country, including the Kabul airport, the site of an often-desperate evacuation effort in past weeks.

But even as the last American troops were flown out to meet President Joe Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline, other Americans who wanted to flee the country were left behind. The Biden administration is now focused on a “diplomatic mission” to help them leave but some hoping to evacuate are still stuck in the country. Meanwhile, the Taliban has announced its new “caretaker” government which includes men with U.S. bounties on their heads — and no women.

Here are the latest developments. All times Eastern:

Sep 09, 8:41 am
Americans, foreigners to leave Kabul on first flight since Taliban takeover: Qatari envoy

A Qatari Airways flight has landed at Kabul’s international airport and will be the first to fly out of Afghanistan’s capital since the Taliban seized power, with U.S. citizens and other Westerners on board, Qatar’s special envoy for Afghanistan announced on the tarmac Thursday alongside the Taliban’s spokesperson.

A State Department spokesperson told ABC News, “As we have said, our efforts to assist U.S. citizens and others to whom we have a special commitment are ongoing, but we aren’t in a position to share additional details at this time.”

Mutlaq bin Majed al Qahtani, the Qatari envoy, told reporters during the joint press conference, “Call it what you want, a charter or a commercial flight — everyone has tickets and boarding passes.”

He said the airport in Kabul will be fully up and running, telling reporters, “Hopefully life is becoming normal in Afghanistan.”

While the number and breakdown of passengers it’s unclear, this is the first large departure — the first flight out — of Americans and other foreigners since the U.S. evacuation operation ended last week, leaving hundreds of U.S. citizens and thousands of Afghan partners behind.

Sep 08, 3:00 pm
All US service members who died in Kabul attack to be awarded Purple Heart

All 13 U.S. service members who died in the Aug. 26 airport attack in Kabul will be posthumously awarded the Purple Heart.

Both the Marine Corps and the Army told ABC News their members will receive the decoration after the Navy announced on Tuesday that the one member of its service that died was posthumously promoted and would also be awarded the Purple Heart.

“The 11 Marines killed-in-action while supporting Operation Freedom’s Sentinel will be awarded the Purple Heart,” said Capt. Andrew Wood, Marine Corps spokesperson on Tuesday.

The Army’s 1st Special Forces Command said in a press release the day after the attack that its member who died, Army Staff Sgt. Ryan C. Knauss, was awarded the Purple Heart, Bronze Star medal and Combat Action Badge.

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(RAMSTEIN-MIESENBACH, Germany) — The 8-year old Afghan girl, housed at Ramstein Air Base without her parents, decided to share her dreams with the U.S. staffers running the “youth pod” where she was staying.

She wanted to be a pilot, she told them.

When word got to U.S. Air Force personnel, they decided to let her know that dream could come true. They sent three female U.S. pilots to meet with her, give her a challenge coin and tell her that in the U.S., she could become anything she wanted to be.

The road to becoming one will be difficult, to say the least.

The young girl, whose name was withheld by the State Department to protect her identity, is one of 275 unaccompanied children evacuated from Afghanistan, according to UNICEF, as part of the massive U.S.-led evacuation operation.

Many of them lost their parents in the crowds and were sent on separate military aircraft or chartered flights out of Afghanistan. Others were pushed inside Kabul airport’s fortified walls by parents desperate to give their child a better life than what may come next in Afghanistan as the Taliban take control. And others still were orphaned in the final days of America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan — losing parents on the battlefield or in the crush of crowds outside the airport gates.

“They were all traumatized,” said one State Department official who served at Kabul airport as a consular officer. Children there were brought to a reunification center run by the Norwegian government, where some were able to be reunited with family. But as the clock ticked down on evacuation efforts, U.S. officials knew they couldn’t leave any children behind, per the official, taking them all out on evacuation flights to Qatar.

Some children were even separated there, according to the State Department. Safe from the chaos of Kabul airport, one 17-year old boy was told by his parents to guard his family’s luggage. But when the bags were loaded onto an aircraft to Ramstein, in Germany, he went with them — without his family. His family was later flown to Ramstein, and U.S. officials were able to reunite them.

But for the scores of other separated and unaccompanied children, finding close family members to reunify them with is now a challenge. U.S. officials from several agencies are working at military installations in Qatar, Germany and even the U.S. — with technical advice from UNICEF and the International Organization for Migration — amid concerns that some children could be trafficked or others may be claimed as child brides.

Visiting Ramstein Air Base Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with several of the 25 unaccompanied children currently housed there.

“Many, many, many Americans are really looking forward to welcoming you and having you come to the United States,” he told a group of them.

Already, there are at least over several dozen children that have been moved from Ramstein and other U.S. bases to the U.S., where their cases are handed off to the Department of Health and Human Services and its Office of Refugee Resettlement — the same agency that has handled cases of unaccompanied minors at the southern U.S. border.

HHS “works to find extended family or other appropriate sponsors to care for the child using established sponsor assessment procedures. Unaccompanied minors not immediately unified with an appropriate caregiver are placed in culturally and age-appropriate facilities,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Friday.

He declined to specify who qualifies as an “appropriate sponsor,” but said judgments are made on a “case-by-case basis.”

Blinken was briefed by one official from USAID at Ramstein, who told him before reporters that 11 minors would be departing Wednesday evening after 21 others had left in the last five days. Virtually all of them have been flown to Dulles International Airport in Virginia and onward from there to military bases across the U.S., where tens of thousands of Afghan refugees are being housed as their cases are processed.

Blinken asked the official where the 11 departing that evening, some of whom he met, would end up, but she said she did not know.

When he met with a group of them earlier that day, he engaged in small talk, asking where they were from and what sports they were playing. He toured some of their sleeping quarters in the pop-up facilities on Ramstein’s tarmac, passing sleeping bags and Spiderman pillows — each facility marked with a cartoon animal on its door to help kids remember their pod, like the giraffe outside Door #7.

Inside one tent, Blinken saw some of the kids’ artwork — drawings and paintings, including an eye, the Genie from Aladdin, boxing gloves and a couple landscapes — a beach and palm tree, a mountain valley.

“I know you all have a lot of questions. There are a lot of people who will look out for you and help you,” he told the group he met on his tour.

One young boy gifted Blinken a T-shirt — and he told them, “I will wear this in Washington and be able to tell everyone where I got it.” They laughed and applauded, according to the print pool of reporters.

Fatella, a 21-year old woman in a head scarf and black and brown checkered shirt, told reporters about how difficult it was to get to Kabul airport, with bullets “flying.” Her father died some years ago, and her mother was unable to escape — left behind in Kabul.

Fatella, along with U.S. authorities, have been in touch with her, but it’s unclear how the U.S. will reunite them with Kabul airport still not functional. Her mother would have to be evacuated from Afghanistan, as State Department officials have made clear they will not send anyone who has been evacuated back into the country.

But among the other challenges with reunification, officials are also concerned about child trafficking. There have been “multiple cases” of young girls being claimed as brides by adult Afghan men at one U.S. base in Wisconsin, according to an internal State Department situation report obtained by ABC News.

The State Department’s task force requested “urgent guidance” after staff at Fort McCoy reported “multiple cases of minor females who presented as ‘married’ to adult Afghan males, as well as polygamous families,” according to the Aug. 27 report.

Child marriage is not uncommon in Afghanistan, but it is illegal under U.S. law, and the State Department sanctions countries that don’t crack down on it and other forms of human trafficking.

U.S. officials in the United Arab Emirates reportedly sent a cable to Washington to warn that some young Afghan girls had been forced into marriages in order to escape Afghanistan and reported being sexually assaulted by these older men, according to the Associated Press, which first reported about the Aug. 27 report.

The State Department declined to confirm whether there have been any cases of forced marriages among Afghan evacuees or other forms of human trafficking, but a spokesperson told ABC News last Friday that they take allegations “seriously” and are “committed to protecting vulnerable individuals globally.”

“We are coordinating across the U.S. government and with domestic and international partners to detect potential cases of forced marriage among vulnerable Afghans at relocation sites and to protect any victims identified,” they added in a statement.

After touring the base in her home state, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., told reporters that an investigation had concluded there were no child brides at Fort McCoy, according to the AP.

ABC News first reported on the concerns about human trafficking, especially of unaccompanied minors, when Qatari officials raised it amid a wider warning about the conditions at U.S. facilities in the country. Qatar’s assistant foreign secretary told U.S. officials there was a “danger of human trafficking in such circumstances and highlighted the cases of unaccompanied minors coming from Kabul,” according to another internal situation report dated Aug. 23.

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(AFGHANISTAN) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday called on the Taliban to allow chartered aircraft to depart Afghanistan with Americans and Afghans ready to board, but said there were “limits” to what the U.S. can do to ensure they fly out.

For over a week now, the Taliban have not permitted at least six chartered flights to leave, saying some evacuees do not have the proper documents to depart. The standoff is turning dire for some passengers, with one aid group organizing a group of Afghan women and girls telling ABC News the situation is “uncontrolled” and “uncomfortable.”

The militant group, which has publicly said it will allow safe passage to foreigners trying to leave the country, unveiled an “interim” government on Tuesday that includes several top leaders already under U.S. and United Nations sanctions.

Blinken said the new Taliban cabinet “certainly does not meet the test of inclusivity,” but would only say its top members had “very challenging track records.”

The Biden administration has struggled to evacuate U.S. citizens and at-risk Afghan partners in the eight days since U.S. military and diplomatic personnel withdrew from the country, ending America’s 20 years of war in Afghanistan.

That includes for at least 19 U.S. citizens and hundreds of Afghans in the northern city Mazar-e-Sharif, where chartered aircraft have been waiting at the airport for over a week now, according to aid groups involved in organizing them.

“Those flights need to be able to leave and the United States government, the State Department – we are doing everything we can to help make that happen,” Blinken told reporters Wednesday at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where he met some of the thousands of Afghan refugees evacuated by the U.S.-led operation that ended on Aug. 30.

Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Sunday that the flights were being held “hostage” as the Taliban demanded concessions from the U.S., while some advocates blamed the U.S. for not clearing the flights. Blinken said Wednesday there was “a fair amount of confusion” about the situation — with State Department officials saying the U.S. is not involved in approving landing or overflight rights and doing what it can to help the chartered flights get approvals.

“While there are limits to what we can do without personnel on the ground, without an airport with normal security procedures in place, we are doing everything in our power to support those flights and to get them off the ground. That’s what we’ve done, that’s what we’ll continue to do,” Blinken said alongside German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.

State Department officials said U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has been sending urgent messages to the Taliban’s leadership to demand that they abide by their commitments on safe passage, and that the U.S. has so far no security concerns based on the manifests provided by advocacy groups.

But Marina LeGree, the founder and executive director of Ascend, a U.S.-based nonprofit seeking to empower Afghan women and girls through mountain climbing, blamed the State Department for standing in the way at times.

“We’ve given you all the details of these people and you cleared them and call them to come, and now you’re saying, ‘You have to have travel documents and don’t worry if you do, you get to go’? That’s a complete abdication of responsibility, and it’s just – it’s morally repugnant,” LeGree told ABC News Wednesday.

In total, there are more than 1,000 people now seeking a seat on these chartered flights, she added, complicating efforts to ensure Americans and vulnerable Afghans can safely evacuate first and degrading conditions at the airport itself where many have been waiting for days.

One hundred and ninety miles to the southeast, some conditions in Kabul are deteriorating as well. A top U.N. official said Wednesday her office is receiving daily reports of women’s rights being rolled back, including barring them from leaving home without a man or going to work.

“With the announcement yesterday, the Taliban have missed a critical opportunity to show the world that is truly committed to building an inclusive and prosperous society,” said Alison Davidian, the deputy representative in Afghanistan for U.N. Women, the global agency’s entity for gender equality and the empowerment of women.

That announcement is the formation of an “interim” government, led by Taliban commanders that played prominent roles in its previous government that ruled much of Afghanistan in the late 1990’s.

Instead of naming a woman to any position, the Taliban also dissolved the previous U.S.-backed government’s Ministry of Women’s Affairs and reinstated its Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which acted as a religious enforcement force.

Blinken said the U.S. was still “assessing the announcement,” but expressed concern that the list of ministers “consists exclusively of individuals who are members of the Taliban and their close associates and no women” and that some have ties to other terrorist organizations like al Qaeda and the Haqqani Network.

“It certainly does not meet the test of inclusivity,” he added, noting some individuals have “very challenging track records.”

Challenging is an understatement. Sirajuddin Haqqani, for example, has been put in charge of domestic affairs as acting Interior Minister. The leader of the sanctioned Haqqani Network, which is responsible for ruthless terror attacks across Afghanistan, he has a $10 million bounty on his head by the FBI.

Asked whether the U.S. government is still pursuing his capture, Blinken didn’t directly address the question – instead saying the U.S. will engage the Taliban “for purposes of advancing the national interests” of the U.S. and its allies and “in ways that are fully consistent with our laws,” including U.S. sanctions on the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, and Haqqani himself and others.

As he and other U.S. officials have said repeatedly, Blinken reiterated that the U.S. will judge the new government “by its action.”

But he was pressed by an Afghan journalist Tuesday on that. After Taliban fighters have beaten female protesters and journalists covering demonstrations against them, shut down media outlets and raided homes, and more, TOLO News’s Lotfullah Najafizada asked Blinken, “What else do you want to see?”

“We will see by its actions whether it corrects course on any of these incidents of abusive conduct,” Blinken said.
 

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(PARIS) — France’s long-awaited “trial of the century” began Wednesday in Paris as more than a dozen people tied to the November 2015 terror attacks — the deadliest in the country since World War II — face a panel of judges.

In a matter of hours, nine suicide bombers committed a series of attacks across Paris that killed 130 people and wounded over 400 more. The simultaneous attacks outside the Stade de France during a soccer match, on a number of Parisian cafés and restaurants and inside the Bataclan concert hall during a packed performance were later claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL. At the Bataclan alone, 90 people were killed by terrorists with machine guns after being taken hostage.

Six years after the terror attacks of Nov. 13, 2015, the landmark trial opened Wednesday and will last about nine months. With 1,800 plaintiffs and 330 lawyers, the trial is taking place in front of a specially composed panel of professional judges, instead of a jury of peers.

A historic event and a logistical challenge for the Paris courts, the trial is extraordinary in more ways than one.

For the occasion, the French government spent $9 million on a courtroom specially built in the former courthouse of Paris. The work was completed this summer, making it the largest criminal courtroom ever built in France, able to accommodate up to 550 people.

“All parties wanted the attacks that took place in the heart of Paris to be judged in a unique place, in the heart of Paris,” the French Ministry of Justice said in a statement.

Twenty defendants are being tried, including 14 who will appear before the court. Salah Abdeslam, the only one directly involved in the planning who’s still alive, is among those who will be tried. Of the nine terrorists involved in the attack itself, seven of those died during the attacks and another two were killed in a police raid five days later.

Six defendants will be tried in absentia, including five ISIS officials presumed dead in the Iraqi-Syrian zone.

The witness list is up to par with this historic moment, with a number of high-profile witnesses set to testify, including former French President Francois Hollande — who was inside the stadium when three suicide bombers blew themselves up outside — and a number of his ministers, and the former Paris prosecutor, Francois Molins. Several convicted terrorists will testify via videoconference.

Footage of the trial itself won’t be available for years, as hearings will be filmed only for posterity by the courts themselves. Like the trials of the Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher attacks, which took place in January 2015, the archival video will become available to the public and the media when a final judgment has been made and the full course of justice has taken place.

Unlike in the United States, trials are not usually filmed. This is the 13th trial filmed in France since 1985, when the method was authorized by law for historic trials.

The defendants face sentences ranging from six years in prison to life imprisonment. The main defendant, Abdeslam, is appearing for organized murder in connection with a terrorist enterprise and could be sentenced to the life imprisonment. This is also the case for 10 of the other defendants who are on trial for complicity in the murders. France does not have the death penalty.

The verdict is expected at the end of May 2022.

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