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East Oregonian Page 9A NATION/WORLD U.S. says up to 116 civilians killed in drone strikes Saturday, July 2, 2016 Oficials: Man held in Oregon farm shooting deported six times By DEB RIECHMANN Associated Press Trump tweets ‘should have never been here’ about the case Friday, saying the suspect “should have never been here.” Two men who lived at the blueberry farm in the Willamette Valley town of Woodburn, in northwest By GILLIAN FLACCUS Oregon, died at the scene Associated Press of Monday’s shooting. The PORTLAND — A third victim, the girlfriend Mexican national charged of another resident who with aggravated murder in was not home at the time, the shooting deaths of three was pronounced dead at a people at a rural Oregon hospital. A third man was seri- blueberry farm had been ously wounded deported six times, but survived and most recently in is able to speak 2013, according to with investigators. U.S. Immigration The Oregon and Customs State Police Enforcement. arrested Oseg- Bonifacio uera-Gonzalez a Oseguera-Gon- few hours later on zalez, 29, has no Interstate 84 in the signiicant prior criminal convic- Oseguera-Gonzales Columbia River Gorge, about 100 tions, but ICE asked Oregon authorities to miles northeast of Wood- turn him over to them if he’s burn. He acknowledged to released from custody in the current case, the agency authorities in an interview said in a statement to The that he shot four people, Associated Press on Friday. according to a probable O s e g u e r a - G o n z a l e z cause statement. The victims were pleaded not guilty to three counts of aggravated murder identiied as Ruben Rigo- and one count of attempted berto-Reyes, 60; Edmundo murder Tuesday in Marion Amaro-Bajonero, 26; and Katie Gildersleeve, 30, of County Superior Court. His attorney, Deborah Logsden. Authorities have released Burdzik, did not immedi- ately return a call seeking few details about the case, comment about his immi- including the relationship between Oseguera-Gon- gration status. Presumptive Republican zalez and the victims, and presidential nominee have declined to specify a Donald Trump tweeted motive. WASHINGTON — Peeling back some of the secrecy of America’s drone strikes on suspected terrorists, the Obama administration on Friday said it has killed up to 116 civilians in counterterror attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and other places where the U.S. is not engaged in active, on-the-ground warfare. The irst-ever public assessment is a response to mounting pressure for more information about lethal U.S. operations overseas. Human rights and other groups quickly complained that the administration undercounted civilian casualties and called on the White House to release far more information. The report by National Intelligence Director James Clapper said the U.S. conducted 473 counterterror strikes, including those by unmanned drones, between January 2009 and December 2015. He did not mention where the strikes occurred, but the Defense Department and CIA have pursued targets in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya. The data didn’t include strikes in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, which the U.S. considers areas of active hostilities. The attacks killed an esti- mated 2,372 to 2,581 combat- ants in those seven years, the report said. Between 64 and 116 non-combatants were killed. The administration noted the much higher estimates by non-governmental organi- zations, which go as high as 900 for the same timeframe. Senior U.S. oficials cited several reasons for the discrepancy, including the government’s access to sensi- tive intelligence that helps it more accurately identify the deceased. Groups that have been tracking U.S. drone operations for years weren’t convinced. “The numbers reported by the White House today simply don’t add up, and we’re disappointed by that,” said Federico Borello, exec- utive director of Center for Civilians in Conlict in Wash- ington. “We’re concerned that as more countries gain access to armed drone technology, it’s more likely that drones will be used as a irst response in conlicts and more likely civilians will pay the price.” The Bureau of Investi- gative Journalism said the administration’s number is a fraction of the 380 to 801 civilian deaths it has tallied. It records such deaths on the basis local and international journalists’ reports, advo- cacy organizations, leaked government documents, court papers and ield investigations. The London- based group credited the administration’s release as a welcome step toward greater transparency, but said more information on speciic strikes was needed to recon- cile different assessments. Seeking to enhance safe- guards for civilian protection for the rest of his presidency and beyond, Obama also signed an executive order Friday that details U.S. policies to limit non-com- batant casualties. It makes protecting civilians a central “The American public can’t be conident that the government is using lethal force legally and wisely.” element in U.S. military operations planning. The order requires the government to publicize the number of strikes each year, and combatants and civilians killed. The 2016 report is due May 1, 2017. But the directive isn’t necessarily binding on the next president, who could change the policy with an executive order of his or her own. Bill Roggio of the Long War Journal, which also tracks drone strikes, said the administration’s report will “do little to quell the criti- cism” of those who want full disclosure of civilian casual- ties. This would include the names of those killed and dates, locations and other details on the strikes. Roggio, who has estimated 207 civilian deaths over the same period in Pakistan and Yemen alone, said discrepan- cies would narrow if the U.S. and observers agreed on the details of several especially lethal strikes. Hina Shamsi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, said Friday’s release provided little information. “The government continues to conceal the identities of people it has killed, the speciic deinitions it uses to decide who can legitimately be targeted and its investigations into credibly alleged wrongful killings,” Shamsi said. “The American public can’t be conident that the govern- ment is using lethal force legally and wisely.” Naureen Shah, Amnesty International’s director of national security and human rights, said it was impossible to assess the accuracy of the data without more details. Her group’s investigations, she said, “tell a different story.” Nevertheless, said hailed the precedent of announcing civilian deaths as a game- changer and said it would be hard for future administra- tions to step away from the commitment. Jennifer Gibson, an attorney for Reprieve, a New York-based human rights organization, said it was time for an independent investi- gation of whom U.S. drones have killed and the legal framework for the program. Gibson spoke of 14-year-old Faheem Qureshi, who she said was severely injured in Obama’s irst drone strike, and nine-year old Nabila Rehman, who traveled to the U.S. in 2013 to seek answers about an attack in Pakistan that killed her grandmother. “The most glaring absence from this announcement are the names and faces of those civilians that have been killed,” Gibson said. grounds that his original attorney, Cristina Gutierrez, didn’t contact Asia McClain Chapman, an alibi witness who said she saw Syed at the Woodlawn library about the same time prosecutors say Lee was killed. Additionally, Syed’s current attorneys argued cell tower data linking Syed’s phone to the burial site on the day of Lee’s killing was misleading because it was presented to jurors without a cover sheet warning that incoming call data was unreliable. In Welch’s order, he disagreed that Gutierrez erred when she failed to contact Chapman, or that prosecutors breached their duty by withholding exculpatory evidence. But Welch did agree that Syed’s attorney provided “ineffective assistance for the failure to cross-examine the state’s cell tower expert about the reliability of cell tower location evidence” that placed him near the burial site. — Hina Shamsi, ACLU director BRIEFLY Attention in Istanbul bombing focused on Chechen extremist ISTANBUL (AP) — Attention focused Friday on whether a Chechen extremist known to be a top lieutenant in the Islamic State group was involved in the suicide attacks that killed 44 people at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport. U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, told CNN that Akhmed Chatayev directed Tuesday night’s attack at one of the world’s busiest airports. The CIA and White House declined to comment on McCaul’s assertion and oficials said the investigation of the bombing is still ongoing. McCaul could not be reached for further comment. Turkish oficials also were not able to conirm Chatayev’s role. The Sabah newspaper, which is close to the government, said police had launched a manhunt for him. McCaul said Chatayev’s whereabouts are unknown. The 35-year-old one-armed militant, who fought in Chechnya against Russian forces and their local allies in the early 2000s before leeing to the West, was put on the U.S. list of suspected terrorists in 2015. That same year, he resurfaced in an IS video as the commander of the group’s Chechen battalion in Syria. Although no one has claimed responsibility for the airport attack, the Islamic State group is suspected, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan repeated Friday that IS was “most probably” behind it. The group has boasted of having cells in Turkey and other countries. “They have no connection to Islam. Their place is in hell,” Erdogan said, speaking in Istanbul following Friday prayers. “These people were innocent; they were children, women, elderly ... They embarked on a journey unaware, and came face to face with death.” The state-run Anadolu Agency reported Friday that the Bakirkoy Public Prosecutor’s ofice had established the identity of two of the airport attackers, Rakim Bulgarov and Vadim Osmanov, and was trying to identify the third. Other media reports have given different versions of Osmanov’s name. Anadolu said Osmanov’s identity was determined through a photocopy of his passport, which he submitted to a realtor in order to rent a house in Istanbul’s Fatih district. Attorney general wishes she hadn’t met with Bill Clinton WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Loretta Lynch is expressing regret that she sat down with Bill Clinton while his wife is under federal criminal investigation, a chance encounter she acknowledges “cast a shadow” on the public’s perception of a case bound to inluence the presidential campaign. “I certainly wouldn’t do it again,” Lynch said of the meeting. For Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, the episode raised the risk that voters will see her anew as half of a power couple that makes its own rules. Lynch hastened to add that she intended to follow the recommendations of career prosecutors on whether to ile criminal charges at the close of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, indicating that she would accept whatever decision is presented to her. The attorney general’s remarks at a conference in Colorado were aimed at tamping down concerns that the investigation could be politically tainted or that Lynch, an Obama administration appointee, might overrule the indings of agents and prosecutors who have spent months looking into the possible mishandling of classiied information on the private email server Clinton used as secretary of state. Lynch said she understood that her private meeting with Clinton aboard her plane in Phoenix might be seen as compromising the neutrality of the investigation, even though she said the chat was largely social and her department’s probe of Hillary Clinton was not discussed. Asked what she was thinking in permitting the meeting to occur, Lynch said: “I completely get that question, and I think it is the question of the day.” The outcome of the investigation is likely to shape the presidential campaign, whether to Clinton’s beneit if she emerges unscathed or to Republican rival Donald Trump’s advantage in the event that she or anyone close to her winds up prosecuted. strangling 17-year-old Hae Min Lee and burying her body in a shallow grave and sentenced to life in prison. But on Thursday, a judge’s decision to order a new trial for Syed, whose case is at the center of the “Serial” podcast, is opening old wounds for Lee’s family. “We do not speak as often or as loudly as those who support Adnan Syed, but we care just as much about this case,” Lee’s family wrote. “We continue to grieve. We continue to believe justice was done when Mr. Syed was convicted of killing Hae. While we continue to put our faith in the courts and hope the decision will be reversed, we are very disappointed by the Judge’s decision. “ Baltimore Circuit Judge Martin Welch ordered a new trial for Syed on Thursday after determining that his attorney failed in her duty when she didn’t challenge the testimony of a state analyst whose data linked Syed to Lee’s burial site. At a post-conviction hearing in early February, Syed’s attorneys argued he deserved a retrial on Go where cars can’t take you! Two Rivers Short Trips Wednesday, July 13 and Saturday, July 16 Deparing from Elgin at 10 a.m. Eagle Cap Excursion Train 800.323.7330 or book online www.eaglecaptrainrides.com After 16 years, man in ‘Serial’ murder case to get new trial BALTIMORE (AP) — The family of a murdered teenager is grieving again after her accused killer, whose case has become a cause celebre thanks to a wildly popular podcast, was granted a new trial. Adnan Syed, now 35, was convicted in 2000 of Enjoy the Jazz sounds of Brass Fire July 2nd, 2016 7 pm - 10 pm • No Cover In the Red Lion Lounge 304 SE Nye Pendleton 541-276-6111 Vendors Galore ● Kids Games Main Stage Entertainment K9 Kings Flying Dog ● Rotary Breakfast Lawn Mower Drag Races ● Club 24 Glow Run Chain Saw Wood Carvers PLUS Aucion Naional Guard Climbing Wall & Laser Shoot Summer Gift s for everyone on your list! Put a smile on the heart with the power of flowers. 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