by Mindy Belz
Post Date:
July 18, 2019

A deadly anniversary in Buenos Aires

Name: WORLD
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Questions continue to linger after a terrorist bombing 25 years ago

ARGENTINA: Thursday marks the 25th anniversary of the AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will head to the region to discuss counterterrorism and immigration. No one has been convicted in the attack on the Jewish community center, which killed 85 people and injured more than 300. Prosecutor Alberto Nisman blamed Iran for orchestrating the attack after Argentina suspended a nuclear technology transfer contract and accused then-President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of covering up Iran’s role. Nisman was murdered in 2015, hours before he was to present evidence against Fernandez—and the former president is now a running mate on the presidential ticket of Alberto Fernandez (no relation).

UNITED STATES: World Relief will close its office covering resettlement of refugees in north Florida, as new arrivals there have dwindled from 1,500 a year to just three so far in 2019.

I spoke to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Wednesday during the State Department’s Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom about the drastic decline. Resettlement groups at the ministerial have argued the United States should admit more persecuted believers—particularly Christians from the Middle East—to promote religious freedom. “Our mission set has been to drive better outcomes for them where they are so that fewer individuals will have to come here,” Pompeo told me. In its statement, World Relief said the Trump administration’s new interim final rule (announced Monday) on asylum-seekers will “exacerbate” the crisis at the southern border. The rule exceeds statutory authority, legal experts contend, and was challenged in federal court in California.

CUBA: The government in Havana barred four Protestant church leaders from traveling to Washington to attend this week’s ministerial.

MEXICO: A federal judge in New York sentenced drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to life in prison plus 30 years. The 62-year-old Guzman, who twice escaped from Mexican prisons, will likely end up at the federal government’s “Supermax” prison in Florence, Colo.

IRAQ: A Turkish diplomat and two Iraqis working at the Turkish Consulate were killed in a shooting in Erbil, the notably terror-free capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. The three assailants escaped.

MYANMAR: The United States imposed sanctions on the military’s commander in chief and other leaders, charging them with extrajudicial killings of Rohingya Muslims in the country also known as Burma.

CHINA: With up to 1.5 million predominantly Muslim Turkic minorities arbitrarily detained in political reeducation camps, the ultimate goal in Xinjiang province “is to exercise complete ideological supremacy” and extend it to all of China.

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Mindy Belz

Mindy, a former senior editor for WORLD Magazine, wrote the publication’s first cover story in 1986. She has covered wars in Syria, Afghanistan, Africa, and the Balkans and is author of They Say We Are Infidels: On the Run From ISIS With Persecuted Christians in the Middle East. Mindy resides in Asheville, N.C.

@MindyBelz

A deadly anniversary in Buenos Aires

Questions continue to linger after a terrorist bombing 25 years ago

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